Nintendo is right, Nascar is wrong.

I'm Killin yo FB Memes

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:57:00 +0000

There’s a new(ish) FB meme floating around called The Travel Challenge List. 100 places are named, and people check off where they have been. Everyone gets around 25 or 30 of the 100 and then complains about how poorly traveled they are. This is similar to the “BBC” book list that circulated around Facebook a while back - in that both lists are completely arbitrary bullshit.

The plus side - for lazy writers like me, the only easier column gimmick than making a list of some sort is to poke holes in an existing list. Let’s have some fun.

Here are my major complaints:

A lot of the sites are range from "okay" to "worth checking out if you happen to be in the same postal code, but otherwise lame." All of the sites are theoretically impressive, but some of the lamer ones include:

Devil's Tower, Wyoming. I've never been, but I've seen pictures. No way is it amongst the most impressive places in the world. Shiprock in New Mexico didn't make the cut, and it looks far more awesome to me. Ditto Saddle Rock in Arizona. That's just two superior monoliths in the Western US that I can think of off the top of my head. Extend this to the world, and no way should Devil's Tower be included.

The Gateway Arch - come on. It's a fucking arch.

Gettysburg Battlefield - Sure, an important battle to the US, but it's the only battlefield on the list. Lazy, lazy pick.

Hollywood Boulevard - If they wanted to list a place to see washed up celebs and score hookers and blow, they should have gone with Avenue Revolution in Tijuana.

Napa Valley - I've never been. I''m sure it's nice. Other nice places to see grapevines include Chianti, Tuscany and the Loire Valley in France. I'm sure the latter are much nicer than the former, but only Napa makes the list as a wine country rep.

Niagara Falls - Angel Falls and Victoria Falls do make the list, as does another waterfall in Africa that I've never heard of. Do we really need four waterfalls on the list? Wouldn't two work?

Portland Head Lighthouse - it's a fucking lighthouse.

Sears Tower - See, I'm not just being a homer here. The Sears is the tallest and most famous skyscraper in Chicago, but it's not in my top 20 Chicago sights. If Chicago gets one attraction (and on a list of the 100 best sights in the world, I'm okay that Chicago only gets one) then it should be the Tribune Tower. Or Millennium Park. Science and Industry would work too. I'd have no argument with Wrigley Field. Michigan Avenue or State Street or The Loop would suffice. Even the John Hancock Building or the new Trump Tower would be more worthy of this spot.

The Space Needle - Why? I love Seattle, and I know the Needle is the most famous landmark, but there are plenty of more architecturally interesting observation towers in the world. I'd actually rank Seoul Tower higher, and I have no great love for Seoul Tower.

The Alamo - I've never been, but all accounts I've heard have been underwhelming. Historical significance you say? Sure, if you're a Texan. Why not Deally Plaza? At least that's national history rather than just Texas history. If history is key, then why not Westminster Fucking Abbey? Did the Roman Forum do something wrong?

The Leaning Tower of Pisa - insanely famous, but Pisa sucks. There are plenty of more interesting things to see in Italy. The Leaning Tower is probably the most famous place that I've been to that's far more interesting in pictures than real life.

The Pebble Beaches of Nice - interesting I suppose, but there are far better beaches in the world. Hell, there are far better beaches in France.

Atlantic City Boardwalk - y'know, downtown Gary, Indiana was important in the earlier part of the 20th century as well. Since I don't have much interest in getting shot, I'll avoid them both for the time being.

A lot of these sights are in clumps, either right next to each other or visible from one another.

St. Peter's Cathedral and the Sistene Chapel - right fucking next to each other. Everybody sees them both in the same day. Sure, both are worthy sights, but couldn't they have just listed "The Vatican" and been done with it?

The Washington Monument/The White House/The Smithsonian. Why not just go with "The National Mall?" There are several vantage points in DC from which all three of these sights are visible.

New York - do we really need to include The Empire State Building, Times Square, The Met, and the Statue of Liberty? I'm not knocking the Apple here - no one city, neh, borough, should include 1/25th of this sort of list. Between New York and DC (4 hour train ride), one could theoretically see 7 of the top 100 sights in the world in a single day.

This list is WAY too US-centric specifically, and Western in general. I'm not saying this as an apologist. I think the west has awesome sights, and America particularly so. I understand that this list has to be grounded in some sort of travel realpolitik, and I know most people reading this list would much prefer to visit the 8th best sight in Spain than the best sight in Burkina Faso. Still, this list includes:

An insane 32 places in America. 32! Nearly a third of the list is in the States. The island of Manhattan (33.7 square miles) ties the continent of Africa (11,668,599 square miles) at 4.

On top of that, the western world (North America, Europe, Australia) makes up a whopping 70 sights.

Southeast Asia has two sights, which is one more than Wyoming. Russia has one sight, which is one more than Indonesia. Even Canada gets slighted at one, which ties it with the city of St. Louis.

Nuts. Lazy. Bullshit.

Finally, this list leaves off all kinds of worthy sights, which I suppose is predictable. Where is Boracay? Where is Bali? Did Shanghai do something wrong to piss off the creators of this list? Did Dubai? On a U.S.-centric list like this, where the fuck is Yellowstone?

I admit that creating a list of this ilk is an absolutely impossible task, and I'd have an argument with it even if it were my own personal list. However, I maintain that they could have done better than this steaming pile of wildebeest excrement.

Fire It Up!! (part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:39:00 +0000

If you missed part one, click here

The Culture

So, how do you keep staff at a horrible job with next to no chance for success? Here's were the marketing work that they were promising in their ads really comes in. You essentially create a cult around the business. You ... I don't know why the fuck I'm writing in the second person.

I mentioned the charming interviewers/branch managers and the morning meetings before. These are not minor details, these are the core of the business, especially a business that values constantly hiring new recruits above moving product, since new recruits create new warm markets to move the product into. Every branch manager openly brags about how much money they make in their position every single day. Why? To dangle the carrot, so that hopeless recruits will continue to sling art door to door in hopes of opening their own branch one day.

What else do the short meetings achieve? They kill a longer part of each peon's day, which makes each peon less likely to have a life outside of work. Life outside of work is bad. Outsiders might have crazy ideas about what a horrible job this is, and the less time a peon is exposed to outsiders, ie, friends and family, the better.

The job also thrives on the cult of positivity. If someone said "what's up?" it was forbidden to respond with the usual "nothin' much." The only acceptable answer was "Everything!" See, positivity breeds good feelings toward the company, makes a peon less likely to walk. My unshakable cynicism kept me from ever taking this job too seriously.

What did the meetings consist of? A whole bunch of chants and cheers. Lots of seemingly intelligent people yelling "Fire it up!" in a shitty warehouse in an office park. Lots of loud music. Lots of jumping around. Of course, there was always a recitation of the "5 and 8," ie, the 5 steps of a sale and the 8 steps to success. I wish I remembered them or could find them online.

The message board community regarding these companies is unbelievable too. Try googling any pertinent information in this post - any time somebody starts a thread dissing one of these companies (art or otherwise, they're all the same), there's always a douchy customer response. The response always blames the individual peon because they couldn't hack it, couldn't take advantage of the greatest opportunity ever. You'll notice that I haven't named any names throughout this lengthy post, largely because I don't want to attract the vindictive Kool-Aid drinking victims of this scheme to this space. I've openly attacked Mark Zuckerburg here before (hey Zuckerburg, fuck you!) , but I also know that he and his people are too busy to come down here to NES/NAS, the Gary, Indiana of the internets, whereas my former bosses are not and would totally sue me.

These responses and the meetings also regularly cast aside normal working folk. I was jealous of every single office worker I ever pitched to, because they had a real job. The "company" preached that these people had a JOB, Just Over Broke, and they were slaves to their four walls. We had the whole world to experience on a daily basis, even if that "whole world" was just the next office or store or restaurant on Lincoln Avenue that also wouldn't be buying fake art from me.

The original want ad promised travel, and it did deliver. One week, the whole operation went on the road to exotic Bloomington, Illinois. I was back in Kansas for the first part of the week, so I originally opted out of the trip. I even went out on my own to look for sales.

It came to my attention that I had an ancient bank account in Rock Island, Illinois with $104 in it, and it would be closing and I would lose the money, and I had to collect the money in person. Destitute bastard that I was, I drove 3 hours to Rock Island to collect my cash. Bloomington was now a shorter drive than home, so I joined the work road trip. I shared a room in the Bloomington Motel 6 (as nice as it sounds!) with a fellow peon, and was told my portion of the room would be taken out of my future profits, should they happen. These trips were supposed to be awesome and fun and rock and roll, according to all the hype I'd heard at last weeks meeting. I helped people move art from one hotel room to another. Then, nobody was doing anything. My roommate went to sleep. I went to the liquor store next to the hotel and purchased two 40s, which I proceeded to drink in the hotel parking lot alone. Rock!

Everyone went to breakfast the next day, and I hated it. Spending eight bucks at the Cracker Barrel for breakfast felt obscene, but I couldn't get out of it, it was "team building." Of course, at real team building exercises at real companies, the boss pays for breakfast. My portion of the hotel the night before was $18. On the road, I would have to buy my own lunch rather than eating ramen in my apartment. Add in gas, and $45 of my $104 windfall was gone, and I had maybe 11 bucks in my bank account.

For most of the day, I did horribly in Bloomington, just like in Chicago. At the end of the day, I finally hit a pretty big score at a truck stop restaurant. Lots of the staff, fry cooks, busboys, and other people I was jealous of bought several prints. I went to the hotel to cash out. After room and breakfast, I still got $68. Huzzah! The staff was staying in Bloomington another day. I knew to cash out while I was hot. Rather than paying another 18 bucks for a room, I went home. Why drink 40s alone in a parking lot when I could do it indoors in my shitty apartment while watching TV?

Getting Out

I pretty much hated every second of life working this job. I hated the meetings, I hated the commute, I hated the selling, I hated the lies, and I hated the fact that I made such little money that saving up for rent was pointless - I generally spend half my earnings at the bar.

One day, like any other, I got up early, I fought traffic, I went to the stupid meeting, I fought traffic, and I started hitting up businesses on Lincoln Avenue. Then, I got the call. A phone slinging job in Evanston that I'd applied to and interviewed at months ago wanted to hire me, and wanted me to start work the next day. They paid an actual salary, so I would make a wage every day. They were in Evanston, so I could take the El to work and skip traffic. They were a JOB, but unlike my current "career," I would move from destitute to legit middle class wages in a few months.

The call came at around 9:30. In one of the great moments of my life, I immediately stopped hustlin' Lincoln Av. I drove home, and got there in time for The Price is Right. After that, I took a nap. I read some, and played some Nintendo. I went back to the "office" at 6 and unloaded all of the art from my car. I was impervious to their hard sell as I did it. I was another statistic, another turnover. I suppose I owe them something on the positivity tip, since that was their thing. Basically every single day since I quit that didn't involve a death in the family or a break up has been better than any of the 16 days that I sold art out of my car.

Fire it up!

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:29:00 +0000

I've had a lot of bad jobs. I've slung phones. I've (poorly) advised people on how to fill out their student loan applications. I've called alumni to beg for money for a university that I only attended during freshman year. I had a job that I rather liked as a cameraman for a TV station, but it required me to wake up at 4:18 a.m., and after tolls and gas for a daily 68 mile round trip, it actually cost me money. I've sold fireworks for 14 hours a day in a non-air conditioned shipping container in July, although I dug that job too. I've worked for the dreaded McD. Still, if I'm asked my worst job, the unequivocal answer requires less than .00001 seconds of thought.

See, for 16 days (not counting weekends, holidays, or days that I was out of town), I sold art out of my car. I've already made it sound far better than it was. Already, I'm sure you imagine that I painted something, or that people that I knew put together a sculpture, and that I was parked next to some public square and selling art to passers-by that may have been a self-selecting bunch that may care about the arts. Real life at this job was far less romantic. I sold Monet and Van Gogh and Dali prints to businesses door to door. Door to door.

Essentially, I would walk into a place of business, be it a law firm or a KFC, and I would bring a couple prints with me. I would present the "company's" scripted lies (Hey, I'm with a design company, and we were just decorating an office across the street. We have a couple paintings left over and we're selling them for 80% off. Would you be interested in checking out a couple?) Generally, it was my job to get kicked out of places. Hey, why not? I'm good at getting kicked out of places.

The want ad

Maybe this would be a good time to talk about the "company," and why I use the term "company." When I first moved to Chicago, I was flat broke. Flat broke. I applied for every job in the paper. Some of these jobs were "marketing" opportunities, which my major was somewhat related to. I responded to ads that said things like "Account Executive needed! Work in a rock and roll atmosphere. $600-$1000 a week to start. Advancement opportunities. Only apply if you love to travel." Of course this sounded good, as it would to pretty much anybody, and I was in my early 20s so I didn't know any better.

The Interview Process

The economy sucks now, but it wasn't super awesome then either, at least not compared to what I grew up with in the Clinton years. I never heard back from most of the jobs that I applied to, but I heard back from these sorts of ads. I would get a call a day after applying, and the secretary would ask me to come in the next day for an interview. I was broke, so I would, even though I still knew nothing about the job. At the interview the next day (always in the suburbs), I would be greeted by the super foxy secretary and asked to fill out an application. I would go to the interview, always a really charming dude in a suit talking about magical opportunity, but very little about the job itself. Again, I was young, so I was kinda too dumb to ask about job specifics. I would invariably be asked back to a second interview, which was always the next day.

At the second interview at the first company of this sort that I interviewed at, I realized the game. I was partnered with a sales rep, and was told it was a whole day interview. He drove us to Lake in the Hills or some far flung suburb like that, and then we went door to door selling coupons for office supplies to businesses. At lunch (I paid for mine) I was told how I could become a manager in 6 weeks and be making six figures within a year. I stuck around for the whole "interview," largely because I didn't have a car with me and din't have enough money in my bank account to cover the $70 taxi ride back to my car from Lake in the Hills. After watching this cold calling all day, I decided this wasn't for me. Once we got back to the office, I pretty much skipped out and drove home.

Trouble is, I was still broke, and I still wasn't getting calls from legit companies. A couple days later, I went to a similar first interview. I agreed to a second interview, knowing that I would be selling for free, but I asked the guy if I could drive my own car and follow from place to place. No dice. This company was selling spa treatment coupons to women in malls, and everyone who worked there was stunningly good looking and well dressed. I'd just spent 4 months driving across America and camping in Montana and drinking in Mexico. I had nothing in common with these people. Fortunately, the "second interviewer's" territory was Orland Square Mall, in the south burbs. I sorta new the area, and more importantly, I knew how to figure out the bus system there. After watching this dude hustle mall customers and fail for an hour or so, I ducked out for a smoke. I took the chance away from the "rep" to catch a suburban bus back into town and then the El back to my car.

I went to another interview with Vector Marketing. They were in the same north Chicago building as the 50th ward alderman's office. I hoped that Vector had something to do with the Chicago Democrats, but sadly they were focused on selling knives door to door. We had a group interview, and I got up and left in the middle of the presentation. I felt like a rock star walking out.

You would have thought I'd have learned my lesson, but I still needed to pay my rent and had no source of income. I went to yet another interview with a shady company because they called. I didn't even pay attention to the spiel at the first interview. I knew what the second interview would be, cold sales all day, but I didn't care, I came back for it anyway. I had nothing else to do the next day anyway.

It seemed like the universe wanted me to work at a shady door-to-door sales company. This last interview, selling art, seemed like the least obnoxious of the groups I had come across. I decided to throw in my lot with whatever this company was called. They changed their name often enough that it didn't really matter.

The Work Day

Being on time and meetings were of the utmost importance with these people, so there was a morning meeting at 8 a.m. every day. The "office," (an unmarked warehouse space with a couple offices) was in a business park exactly 11 miles north of my apartment, but nowhere near the El so I had to drive to the meeting. Because of traffic, it took at least an hour to cover those 11 miles, so I left home before 7. At the office, we would load our cars with art and have a meeting, which I will discuss at length shortly. At 8:30, we were free to go to our territories. I had no interest in going to Lake in the Hills or some far-flung burb, so I was assigned a territory in the city. My turf would be Lincoln Avenue, from the Chicago line all the way to the road's terminus down in Lincoln Park. Thus, at 8:30, I left the "office" and drove back into town, still during rush hour. It would take another 45 minutes to get the the far northern parts of the city.

We kept our unsold pieces in our cars at all times, in case we wanted to sell after hours or on the weekend. My car was filled to the brim with framed prints. Since I didn't sell much, I didn't have much need to reload. As the meetings were totally ridiculous but required, I basically left my house at 6:45 and got to my territory to start selling at 9:15. Two and a half hours killed to get to an area that was a 15 minute drive from my house.

One of the tenets of the company was the "5 at 5." We were officially done at 5 p.m., but we were expected to hit up 5 more businesses after 5 struck, then to return to the office (again, at rush hour). As I plied Lincoln Avenue from north to south each day (covering about a mile a day, there are A LOT of businesses on Lincoln), I would always finish the day a mile closer to home than I started, but then had to return to the office in a northern burb.

Why go back to the office? To cash out, of course. If I made any sales (it wasn't a daily occurrence), then I had to got back to the office to give my money to the boss and get my paltry cut. Even if I didn't make sales, I had to go back for a "rap session." I would get back to the office at around 6 (I learned that showing up before that was bad, I obviously wasn't committing to the "5 at 5."). By the time I got back home, it would be close to 7, because again, rush hour. four times a day. I was away from home over 12 hours a day, and 4 of those hours were to make pointless trips to the office.

The System

My job, and the other jobs that I interviewed for selling office supplies or spa coupons or knives were all multi-level-marketing schemes, which are legally not pyramid schemes but employ some similar practices. Only the absolute most gifted salesmen in the world could actually make a living making cold calls with no leads and no customer qualification. The way to make money in the short run and to keep the bosses happy and rich is to use warm leads, i.e., selling useless shit to friends and family. Since I'm not one to bug my peeps about products they don't need nor want, I was a dead end.

The way to make money in the long run is to recruit friends, family, or suckers into the fold of the company and make a commission off their sales to their warm leads. Recruit a few people to the fold, and you move from an "associate" to a "trainer." See, the guy who gave me my "second interview" was actually "training" me, thus he would get a piece of anything I sold. If you are a trainer, you rotate who trains what new meat, and get a percentage of anyone that sticks around. Train enough people that stick, and you become an "assistant manager." Assistants, of course, get a vig off of every trainer under them and every peon under them. Assistants take n00bs on their second training, two weeks after the n00b starts. Of course, the assistant gets 100% of that day's sales take, just like the trainer did on the "second interview," only now the n00b is a little more likely to make them money.

From assistant, one can become a branch manager, who runs the office. He's the cat that ran the bullshit meetings and spent most of the day hanging out in the office, although he still went out and sold too. That was always one of my questions early - why is a guy who claims to make 6 figures managing an office out doing the same bullshit that I did? It couldn't have been for fun, nobody could enjoy cold call outside sales. Of course, the manager made cuts off of everyone in the office. Above him was the regional manager, and now we get to people that have actually been entrenched in the company for awhile, people that have the top of the, um, triangle on speed dial. The regional manager that I dealt with ran an older Chicagoland branch, and a Google search shows that she is still with the company. She really doesn't go out in the field, and she really does stay at the office and rake in cash. The people above her in Seattle or Atlanta or Cleveland (the location of the main office was kind of a moving target) do likewise.

I'm sure you get the pattern. So yeah, there's good money to be made, the peon just has to wait for people in the regional management level or above to be promoted, or to quit, or to get fired, or to die. Thing is, they never do. They hang around forever like an unwanted party guest. If I were to look up the middle and upper management of Sprint, I'm sure it would be vastly different now than it was when I left. Recently, I've done some research on my old art sales "company," and the middle and upper management are the exact same people it was nearly a decade ago when I was there. Like any self-respecting gang, the street level has constant turnover, but the king stay the king. Best way to make money at a pyra.. er, MLM - be early to the party.

Happy Old Year

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:04:00 +0000

2011 is ending the way it began for me - in a confused and terrified rage. Just like in late December of 2010, I have absolutely no clue where I'll be or what I'll be doing this time next year. Nothing would particularly surprise me, other than, say, toasting the Chiefs team that I personally coached to 16-0, looking forward to hosting a playoff game that we would invariably lose.

Lots of pretty cool shit has happened this year though. If 2011 happened to fall in the 90s, I'd probably rank it the best year ever. Last winter was arguably the best of my life, and the summer was no slouch either.

I had two absolute top-5 pantheon trips to the Philippines.

The Old Man visited.

I had cups of coffee (and beer) in Taiwan, Thailand, and Hong Kong.

I quit smoking. Hell, it was so easy to do, I did it several times.

You all know I hate meeting new people and making friends, but I've met more cool people this year than most 3 combined.

I walked to every Gu in Seoul, and then for good measure walked on to the suburbs.

I went 1-1 in Hongdae street brawls. To be fair, the one I lost was to like 30 dudes.

I was absolutely murdered on the girl front in a way that hasn't been seen in years and rendered dead inside, but bounced back.

Osama bin Laden, Gadaffi, and Kim Jong Il all died. Pretty much the worst humans alive that never wore number 7 for the Broncos. I didn't actually have anything to do with this, but I'm still willing to take credit.

This blog had it's biggest year ever, and by an exponential standard.

My fantasy football team in one league might win the championship. Somehow, I've never done that before.

I became a regular contributor to an actual print magazine. 10s of people have likely read my articles while taking a shit in an Itaewon bar.

All in all, the term "all in all" is a horrible transition into a conclusion, but I'm using it anyway. If 1999 was an "A" and 2005 was an "F," I'll give 2011 a B+.

Happy New Year all.

Top 11

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:47:00 +0000

So it's come to this. The blog version of the clip show. In a totally subjective move, I'm ranking the top 11 posts for 2011. If you missed any of these along the way, they are all totally worth checking out. Or at least clicking on so I get the hit. Either way, Merry holidays and all, and enjoy.

11. Dork. Geek. Nerd. Wanker. Turdburgler. Etc... . I thought it was kinda funny, and it changed the course of this site, ramping up the hits.

10. Gobble Humbug. Complaining about Thanksgiving, which I maintain is a stupid holiday.

9. The Epikest Walk (so far) - a representative photoblog. I've done many. This was one of the better ones this year.

8. FB World - some solid jokes making fun of other countries
Internets Forget

7. Get off my Lawn! - I'm old.

6. ऍम इ अ हिपस्टर? - or maybe I'm hip.

5. Philipines Photoblog - A lifetime top-5 trip is in the top 5 for the blog year.

4. The Only Band That Matters - cuz I'll think of 2011 any time I hear SNSD.

3. The Internets Forget - last week's post was two months in the making. Google tells me you didn't read it, so check it out.

2. This One Goes Out to All the Bitches Out There (and harlots, hood rats, wenches, and gold diggers) - only because of the massive amount of hits this post gets.

1. The Gu Project -This is probably my best idea of the year. It is really 6 posts, but this is the introduction.

Good times.

The Internets Forget

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:05:00 +0000

My youth is largely forgotten.

Sure, this is a common sentiment, but in my case, I mean forgotten by the internet. I can't be expected to remember everything. However, if iconic pop culture elements of my childhood and youth don't exist at all on the internet, how long will it be before they are gone forever?

There are a couple reasons for this lack of being able to dig up awesome nuggets on the web. For one thing, I'm old. Or I'm not. I fall into something of an online gap. The boomers have all of their memories covered on the web, since there are so goddamn many of them. The millennials do too, since they were able to create more web content. I'm in a grey area.

Another factor - I'm from Lawrence, Kansas. Sure, Larry is a great town and a stone's throw from the Kansas City metro area, but a lot of KC's non-coastal, non-Great Lakes collective pop culture memory simply does not exist on the web.

Finally - I'm weird. There's shit that sticks out for me that most people wouldn't care about.

Some things that do not exist on the web -

The Billy Smith professional tree climber PSA. I don't know anyone from back home who cannot quote this spot verbatim, yet nary a Youtube clip exists. Anybody within 5 years of me from within a 100 mile radius of me certainly must know of the kid who climbed trees all his life, but never near overhead lines. Best I could find was a recent reference on Grantland.com.

Lazlo the Great, Teller of Fortunes. I was so obsessed with this talking fortune telling machine that I actually created a cult surrounding it in the early 90s. Amazingly, the machine still exists. It is located in an Indiana Beach arcade in northwest Indiana. Tens of thousands of people go to IB every year, and many come across Lazlo. Somehow, on the entire Internet, there is one picture of him. One. There is more Lazlo media on my hard drive than on the whole of the internet. In all these years, nobody has decided to take a video of him and post it? There's no way that the company that built the Lazlo machine still exists, so it can't be a matter of Youtube taking down videos of him. Allow me to literally double the internets' Lazlo collection:

Quackers. This is an awesome ball rolling game, also at Indiana Beach. Somehow, it's classic line of "Give it another quack" is not recorded anywhere online.

The Orient Express. For a couple decades, this was Kansas City's primary roller coaster. It was torn down in 2003. 2003 ain't that long ago. Sure, the internets has tons of information regarding the former coaster, but only one non-CGI first person recording of the ride exists on YouTube, and that single recording was from 1993 and is of putrid quality. People had digital cameras in 2003. How did nobody bother to record and post the Orient Express? Some rides are just rides. The Orient Express was essentially a Kansas City Bar Mitzvah. Once you ride it, you are a man. Case in point - I had zero friends who made it to second base before riding it.  

When I was a little kid, there was an alphabet learning 45 that I used to listen to. Well, "A My Name is Alice" does not fucking exist anywhere. It still pops into my head from time to time. "A my name is Alice, I live in a palace, and every afternoon at three my footman serves me tea." Go ahead, google it. There are articles, but no fucking recording. The real mystery - I was like three when I used to rock this on my Fisher Price record player. I didn't know what a footman was at the time. I doubt I knew what tea was either. How do I remember a lyric for vocabulary that I didn't have?

On slightly more recent music - good luck finding anything by the band Black Label online, or even anything about them. Yeah, they were a shitty local punk band in Lawrence in the mid-90s, but they were a pretty well known shitty local punk rock band. I may have the largest remaining Black Label collection in the world. My freshman year of college, the drummer, a sorta buddy of mine, gave me a copy of their new 7 inch because I had a radio show in Tacoma, Washington. I lost the 7 inch a long time ago, but I played a few of the songs from it on my show, and I recorded my show on a damn boombox at my dorm. I found those tapes a couple years ago and converted them to MP3. So basically, the only known extant Black Label recording was a record played over the radio, then recorded onto cassette, then converted to digital. As you may expect, it is not of high quality.

Black Label and kids songs aside, for me the holy grail of missing music has long been some random late 90's rock song that includes the lyric "You can call it familiarrrrrr...." While Black Label probably only got radio airplay on my show, this song was on legit radio all the time in Lawrence. It wasn't even that great of a song, I just want to find it to prove I didn't make it up.

Some of my internet gaps aren't even from America. It's not just a Lawrence thing. In my Euro days, I used to frequent a bar in Florence called Stonehenge, or Stonehenge Rock Club. Stonehenge was THE SPOT back in the day. Every other bar and club that we frequented was less awesome and often less busy, yet all of them have a web presence now. It was a bar with no sign on the outside, just a nondescript door. Keep in mind, this was before every other bar in Brooklyn adopted this model. Stonehenge required a membership, it is was rocking every night of the week until at least 5. I don't think we ever went there before 2 or 3. Maybe Stonehenge shut down in 2000 or 2001 and missed the true web explosion. Maybe they stayed underground enough to avoid any web presence. Still, if the Shenago Lounge in Lawrence can be easily googled, I would think anything could be.

As a closer, I should mention the ultimate internet transgression. There are all kinds of songs, institutions, and roller coasters that I hold dear that don't exist on the internet. What have I forgotten so far? People, of course. Lots of people that I care about, or at some point cared about do not exist in any capacity online. I could go down an ex-girlfriend tangent here, but this isn't that kind of post. Perhaps the most inexplicable internet absence would be my buddy Stong. This is a cat that actually more than flirted with a congressional, neh, Congressional run a couple years back, yet does not exist online. A dude who essentially coined the phrase "some dude." Yet, Stong doesn't even have a Facebook or Twitter. A google search of Stong leads to dead ends, then back NES/NAS. For all you know, I made him up. If he didn't really exist, I probably would have. Only trick is, I can't come up with lines like "I took the uptown train, and she took the downtown, and that's the last I saw of her."

HK PI

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:20:00 +0000

Rick Santorum will not be president. Greg Maddux was a good pitcher. Missouri is a horrible place. Only assholes wear stocking caps when it's warm. Communism didn't work. I've been on a lot of trips. You know all of these things already.

Some trips involve setting off to new places, crossing the unknown void. Some trips go backwards, retrace old steps, and prove that you can go home again, or you can't, whatever "home" may happen to be. Sometimes, like last week, a person such as me can get lucky and follow both paths. I headed off to Hong Kong and the Philippines, two somewhat known quantities for me, and in both spots I strived to check out uncharted territory while returning to old haunts. Both the road less traveled and the superhighway lead me in directions I never expected.

Enough. On to the reason you're here - cool pics of cool places.

The Harbourplace Mall entrance in Kowloon, Hong Kong. These are just figurines, they don't move or talk or anything. I have no idea why it draws such a crowd.

Jollibee in Kongers! The Pinoys are here and they're selling Champ Burgers!

I.M. Pei's Bank of China Building is the one on the left. Easily my favorite Hong Kong skyscraper.

Night View from Victoria Peak. I never made it to The Peak on my first trip to Hong Kong, even though I was there for four nights. No clue why, really, it's pretty much the most famous sight in town. Getting there was easy, no line for the tram on the way up. Getting back down was more difficult. There was a massive line. The line was only made worse by the fact that the Chinese (likely Mainlanders, I doubt many locals go to such a touristy spot) cut in line like crazy. This was a common occurrence everywhere I went in Hong Kong. It seems the Brits didn't impart any of their love of queuing to the locals.

The Koreans are here, and they're selling food with hilarious vaguely racist signs.

My crappy guesthouse room my first night. This was far and away my most expensive hotel room of the trip. The computer monitor there was the TV, and one of the 14 channels I got was a CCTV feed for the building. It was oddly hypnotic, watching random strangers ride the elevator and walk through the hall in real time.

One of the nerdy skyscraper websites that I frequent ranks the Hong Kong skyline at number one in the world, and Chicago at two. I may agree. HK is the only city that may, may have a better skyline than Chi-town, at least that I've seen.

The south end of Nathan Road in Kowloon. Nathan Road is a pretty amazing place. Hong Kong calls itself "Asia's World City," and I really can't argue. Nathan Road feels like New York or London - every nationality seems represented. The number of languages overheard while walking a block is mind boggling. The road is home to some of the world's finest hotels, and some of the world's worst.

Signs overhang the road all over the place in Hong Kong, particularly in Kowloon. From the second deck on a two-level bus, they really scream.

My second night in Hong Kong, one week after the first. This is a view from the Star Ferry, the best 25 cent public transit option in the world.

The gate to Temple Street Night Market.

Chinese knock-off Legos for sale at Temple Market.

More large overhanging signs.

Japan gets all the press for this, but I guess Hong Kong also gets A List Hollywood celebs doing ads. I feel like Korea kinda gets cheated in this regard.

Hong Kong is a great city, but it can be pretty lonely on your own. It probably didn't help that I was pretty much permanently hungover while I was there. Fortunately, I spent most of my trip in the much friendlier islands of the Philippines.

Alona Beach in Panglao, an island off Bohol. This was my first trip to Bohol, so it was cool to check out a new island or two. It was as hot as it looks.

Alona Beach.

A wider view of Alona.

Alona sunset. Sure, it's no Boracay sunset on a south-facing beach, but it wasn't without its charms.

A final look at Alona.

Robinson's Mall in Dumaguete. Strangely, the Robinson's in Duma is far nicer than the dump of a Robinson's in Cebu, though Cebu is a much larger city.

Porta Vida resort in Dauin, just outside of Dumaguete. Here's what I did that day in Dauin: Nothing. It was awesome.

Looking out at the dive boats along the beach at Dauin. I would have gone diving, but that would have required leaving the lounge chair. Who needs that?

Boats at the little wharf to the north of Dumaguete when I headed back to Cebu.

I took the bus to Cebu. That's it, on the left. It needed a little help from this rickety ferry to get to Cebu Island.

C'mon, like I wasn't going to finish with hilarious Engrish? I saw this sign near the Peak in Hong Kong. I still have no idea what it means.

November's Best Holiday

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 06:16:00 +0000

It's Salsa Rio Dorito day! So far, this may be the best Salsa Rio Dorito Day ever, and it's only 2 p.m. I'm on vacation, but fortunately I wrote something last week to post now.

My desert island, all time, top five most memorable break-ups, in chronological order:

Liz

Katie

Monica

Angie

Allison

The first names are real. I know Nick Hornby used last names too, but in this age of social networking, I obviously can't do that. Like in "High Fidelity," the early ones stick out. Sure, I've been involved with girls whose names I don't even remember for well longer than the four and a half days or so that I knew Katie, but I didn't meet them at an out of town amusement park over the summer between 8th and 9th grades.

I'm not here to talk about this top five. It's most likely inaccurate anyway. I'm here to talk about number one on the list - Liz. Like in Hornby, some kernel of every relationship I've had since then can be found in the first one .

Liz was a pretty, tall brunette who was in a couple of my seventh grade classes. I would have noticed her earlier, if not for the fact that 7th grade is pretty much the biggest clusterfuck of ongoing awe and bewilderment in life outside of infancy. Lockers? Class breaks? Wait, we have to shower in gym class now? Holy fuck, are there cheerleaders here? Are those breasts? Note to self - stop wearing sweat pants to class. 7th grade is an acid trip. Dude, it's a tree! Fuckin' A!

In 7th grade, I was first exposed to the concept of the school dance. I had no idea how to handle myself, of course. I worked up my "game" slowly, danced with friend girls, danced with non-threatening girls. Then I danced with Liz. She was a head taller than me, but she didn't seem to think that I was a total spaz. I danced with her again. I liked her. She was cool, and I liked talking to her. In between dances, I couldn't of course, because I was indeed a total spaz.

After the dance, in health class, she passed me a note. It was folded up in one of those ways that girls know how to fold. She wrote a paragraph or so. She asked my last name and phone number. It was pretty much the single greatest moment of my life up until that point until I realized that I would have to write a note back.

Liz and I exchanged notes regularly for the next month or so, though almost never actually spoke in person. Eventually, I felt like I had to up the ante. She wrote me a two page note about some dude asking her out, and how she didn't like him, and how she didn't think I liked her. This had to be a sign. She definitely like me, right?

I didn't have her number, because it never occurred to me to ask for it, so I looked it up in the phone book. I unplugged my phone and repeatedly practice-dialed. Eventually, I built up my nerve enough to plug in my phone and make the call.

Me: Is Liz there?

Liz: This is Liz.

Me: Oh hey. This is Jaehak, from school.

Liz: Oh, hey!

Me: Um, will you go with me? (note, in that particular year and in that particular postal code, the common vernacular for dating was "go with," rather than the more standard "go out with." By 8th grade, "go with" was eradicated from everybody's vocabulary.)

Liz: Um, okay, yeah...

Me: Oh, um, cool. Bye.

Thus ended my first ever call with a girl. I thought it would be all sunshine and roses after that. It was November 13, and I had a girlfriend. I literally leapt into the air and cheered once the call ended. I'd spent the last couple years focused on getting a girlfriend. Now that I had one, I had no clue how to, y'know, have a girlfriend.

For the next couple of weeks at school, we basically never spoke. What was there to talk about? Plus, I was too busy talking to my friends and acquaintances about how I had a girlfriend.

Liz was in a play. She had a bit part. I went, of course. Afterword, I saw Liz and said "you were really good," but in the lamest, shyest voice you could imagine. I called her for the second time that night, to say "you were really good."

A few days later, disaster struck. After gym class, in the locker room, Brad Hauber told me that he had heard Liz broke up with me. Poppycock, said I. Oh, and I swear I wasn't born in 1953. All of this note passing and school dance and locker room shit really happened.

I was dumbfounded. Despite the fact that I never spoke to Liz in class or in the hall or on the phone and that we almost never exchanged notes anymore, I was positive that our relationship was on solid ground. Why was Brad Hauber running his mouth in the locker room? And why did people that I trusted seem to believe him? Clearly, a third call was in order.

On November 30th, I called Liz up to find out what the hell was going on. I wouldn't take no for an answer. I was going to get to the bottom of this. Only a firm answer would let me sleep. We were together, or we weren't. Hopefully we were. Either way, it was time to put all the rumors to rest, to lay down the law, to prove the Brad Haubers of the world wrong.

Me: Hello, is Liz there?

Liz: This is Liz.

Me: Oh, um, hey, this is Jaehak.

Liz: Oh, hi.

Me: Um, so what's going on?

Liz: I dunno.

Me: I mean, like, are we still going together?

Liz: I dunno.

Me: ...

Liz: But don't listen to Brad Hauber.

Me: Yeah.

Liz: He's a liar.

Me: Yeah.

Liz: ...

Me: I have to go.

And there it was. In no uncertain terms. We may have still been going out. She didn't know. That was enough for me. I knew I was punching above my weight (and in 7th grade, that was literal, since I was 4'11 and 97 pounds). I didn't want to rock the boat. I still didn't necessarily not have a girlfriend. I went downstairs and ate some Salsa Rio Doritos, felling good about life, and Salsa Rio Dorito Day was born.

For 7 weeks, it went on like this. Neither of us knew if we were still going out.

There was the eventual hard out, of course.

At the January school dance, Liz avoided me all night. I suddenly had the gumption to chat, but she wouldn't. Instead, she danced with my buddy Daniel once to tell him to tell me that she was officially breaking up with me. In case I didn't get the message, she also danced with my buddy Shane to give him the same message to give to me.

Rough first breakup? Yeah.

It could have been worse tough. At least she didn't dance with Brad Hauber.

Gobble Humbug

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:45:00 +0000

Thanksgiving is quite possibly my least favorite holiday. I know this basically makes me a communist, but I have my reasons. I'm a Thanksgiving Scrooge. It's like I'm one of the Pilgrims, or the Indians. Wait, which ones were the bad guys again?

I do think that my dislike of Thanksgiving comes from the very fist one. When I first learned about the Thanksgiving origin story in early grade school or kindergarten or whatever, I remember thinking it was the most boring story that I'd ever heard. Think about it. It's a story about the single dullest group of Europeans that ever existed (the Puritans) and the least interesting indigenous people on earth (that didn't live in igloos) sharing a bland meal. If the story would have involved a couple fistfights or at least somebody getting too into the firewater and telling off Prudence Goodwyfe, I may have been on board. A story about two groups of boring motherfuckers sharing turkey and maize? Wake me up when Custer gets pwnt or somebody bangs Pocahontas.

Thanksgiving is about tradition, and more importantly, 4 days off. I haven't had a "traditional" Thanksgiving since the 90s, and my last 4 day break over Thanksgiving was in the year 2000. A quick breakdown:

2011 - Korea

2010 - Korea

2009 - Korea

2008 - Korea

2007 - Korea

2006 - Korea (obviously, American Thanksgiving is not a holiday in Korea, so I work on Thursday and Friday).

2005 - Chicago, worked sales

2004 - same

2003 - same

2002 - same. When you work in sales, you fucking work Friday. You work early on Friday. There's too much money to be made on Black Friday to not go to work. I had family in Chicago, but I never spent Thanksgiving with my parents. I never could have gotten the time off work anyway.

2001 - I was in Lawrence, my hometown, yet every member of my family no longer lived there. I went to a buddy's house. Pretty sure I worked Friday.

2000 - 4 days off school and I had no job. No traditional table though, I met the Old Man and his girlfriend at the time for a whirlwind trip through Vegas, Sedona, the Grand Canyon, LA, San Diego, and Tijuana. We got to enjoy watching the 1-15 San Diego Chargers getting their 1 win against the Chiefs at Jack Murphy Stadium. Stupid Chiefs.

1999 - Florence. Actually, this was the best Thanksgiving ever. I ate pasta. No complaints.

1998 - No idea. I don’t want to talk about it.

1997 - I worked on Thanksgiving Day, at a convenience store. I thought I had it bad, then I spent the day selling single cans of Spaghetti-O's to random dudes. I'm no fan of Thanksgiving, but I still haven't hit the level these dudes were at.

Thanksgiving is also about football. Well, I don't care about the Cowboys or the Lions. Sure, when I was in America, I would watch these games every year, and I know NFL Network has added a more interesting night game. Maybe I'm a bit more grudging because Dallas and Detroit were both horrible the last few years before I left the States, which made the games lamer. Living here, all Thanksgiving does is make fantasy football extra complicated during a critical week leading up to the playoffs.

Mostly, Thanksgiving is about food. I dig turkey sandwiches and turkey cold cuts, but I really don't give a fuck about a large roasted turkey. If turkey was so good, Americans would eat it more than once (or twice with Xmas) a year. If there were traditional Thanksgiving ribs or tacos or sushi or steak, I'd be down. I'm also no fan of cranberry sauce. I'm pretty sure I would rather eat goat feces than stuffing. My three favorite Thanksgiving meals as as follows: 1999, the aforementioned pasta at Danny Rock; in 2002-2005, I ate a Thanksgiving spread at Beverly Country Club in Chicago and largely filled up on lox and bagels. In 2010, I had a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and some traditional Thanksgiving Chee-tos.

Finally, what does Thanksgiving really mean in the expat life? It's mostly a nuisance. The Daily Show and Colbert go dark for a couple weeks. Podcasts are interrupted. Facebook becomes insufferable. TV shows essentially go on hiatus. Once Thanksgiving hits, most of my precious, precious TV shows will run one Christmas episode some time in December, but other than that, there is basically no new content until mid-January. I am forced to endure upwards of 7 cold, dark, lonely weeks with nary a new episode of Parks and Rec and the 22-minute postponement of the desire to shoot myself in the face that it would bring.

Gobble humbug.

This is why we can't have nice things

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:18:00 +0000

Thanksgiving is coming up. There was talk of some sort of Thanksgiving event happening in my apartment, as it is the largest and best located of teachers at my school The girl who had my apartment last year hosted a large and successful Thanksgiving event, and some want to keep the tradition alive. I'm fully in favor of this notion, so long as it doesn't involve me cooking, planning, decorating, or doing anything whatsoever to prepare for this event outside of buying beer.

Two girls, the previous occupant of my apartment and her best friend, essentially ran my school last year. They also put on all kinds of events and made Halloween costumes from scratch. I've hung out with both of them and they are both super cool, but they also, like, did stuff. Stuff isn't really my thing.

Now seems like a good time to provide an anecdote from the hazy Kansas days that made up my first year after graduating. It was basically my third senior year. My brother, Dr. Kickass as you may know him, was still in college. While in college, him and some of his fresh-faced classmates made a couple of movies. Dr. Kickass always seemed to surround himself with people that were, like, into doing stuff. The movies were good.

My buddies and I were inspired. We had a video camera. I can shoot. I had editing software. Several of us were good at writing and editing. Nobody could act very well, but whatever. After watching Kickass's movie and drinking some 40s of high gravity malt liquor, we decided to put our talents to use. We were going to make a movie too, goddamnit.

I should probably note that our group made the gang from Always Sunny look motivated, hardworking, and decidedly un-petty.

We decided to make a western. We got to work on a script right away. It had every character that a good western should have - The Sheriff, The Stranger, The Whore, The Piano Player.

Not surprisingly, this endeavor unraveled quickly. Every scene we wrote was fraught with arguments over the plot. Plus, every dude wanted to play The Stranger other than Brown, as he was clearly going to be The Piano Player. We never shot anything, and a couple nights into writing, the endeavor collapsed into a fistfight that was originally sparked from a disagreement on, if I'm not mistaken, French Revolutionary history. The project was never completed, nor spoken of ever again.

My co-worker Sandy said that the Thanksgiving thing last year was really awesome, and everyone had a good time, largely because these two girls worked really hard on it and put together a solid event. Sandy said that they were able to do amazing things like this since the girls were best friends and lived 5 minutes away from each other.

I still can't relate to that. My first two years in Korea, I lived next door to Don, one of my best buddies here. We generally spent our time together drinking beer in my apartment and watching Korean reality TV (TV Ngels, of course) or Borat for the 6,000th time. I also spent close to a year living across the hall from my buddy Martin, certainly my best friend here now, and we pretty much just spent weeknights playing Nintendo. We never made any Halloween costumes or planned any events or shot any videos. How could we? Mario 3 wasn't going to solve itself.

I guess the point is that some people are good at making, y'know, stuff, from whatever things are are around. I may have inherited the apartment, but I didn't inherit the motivation. Some people put on events. I'm not delusional. I know where my talents lie. I'm good at showing up for these events, and most likely making fun of them. That is, so long as there's nothing good on TV and I'm not on a later level of Zelda.

John Brown

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:08:00 +0000

Looks like we gotta change the lyrics...

Fuck Missouri. Death to slavery.

I Came All the Way From Taipei Today

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:45:00 +0000

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall in Taipei

Recently, I went to Taiwan with The Old Man.

Now my country list reads like this: 'Merica, Bahamas, Mexico, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Morocco, Monaco, Italy, Vatican City, UK, Denmark, Austria, Czech Republic, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong (China sorta), People's Republic of China*, Thailand, North Korea**, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan. 26 proper countries (20 of which could even be considred real countries. Sorry, Bahamas, Canada, Monaco, Vatican, Hong Kong, and Singapore), and two more (PRC, DPRK) that I've technically been in without clearing customs.

The Old Man kinda left me in charge of travel/transit related matters, and I learned something I kinda already knew - I'm the best.

As always, click on the pics to expand. Sorry about the lighting - it was raining 100% of the time we were there.

Honor guard at the shrine. These guys put the Buckingham Palace constables to shame. They were like wax figures.

Statue of Chian Kai-Shek. You can see the two honor guards in the foreground.

Taiwan is serious about squatters. This one was on the train. I opted out by loading up on Imodium every morning.

Something the Old Man is good at - thumbs upping a pic. This is the entry gate to the Taroko Gorge in eastern Taiwan.

Bridge gargoyles at the gorge. Try saying that 5 times fast.

The gorge from said bridge.

This temple was dedicated to the hundreds of people who died in constructing the first inland Taiwan highway - right through the gorge.

Pretty awesome little shrine inside a cave near along the gorge.

A shrine near the gorge. There were tons of makeshift shrines all around, this was one of my favorites.

A bridge over the gorge.

The Pacific Ocean, from the other side. I've been in Asia a long time, but this is the first time that I had seen the Pacific proper rather than an ancillary sea. Get a raft, sail due east, next stop Baja.

Longshan Temple, Taipei

Old Man at the National Museum. This was a pretty boss museum, said to have the greatest collection of Chinese antiquities in the world. I really felt like there should have been a large statue of a middle finger pointed at Beijing outside the museum. The museum had a really interesting take on history as well. It was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Republic of China, which was China proper until 1949 and has been Taiwan since Mao took over. No mention is ever made of the PRC at the museum. It's not Taiwanese history presented here, it's Chinese history from a Taiwanese lens.

These statues of dragons with a ball under their foot are everywhere in Taipei. I sort of wondered what they represented, but it was a 4 day trip so I couldn't be bothered to find out. My camera broke right after taking a pic of this dragon, I thought it may have been the finale of Camera Number Five.

It wasn't. Here's the first pic Cam 5 took after its resurrection.

101.

As you can see from the view at the top, construscting this sort of skyscraper in Taipei is kinda like raising this magnitude of building in Omaha. Taipei 101 is ridiculously taller than any other building in town.

Good to know.

101 at night.

Taipei at night.

Night market gate.

A stall at the market where we stopped to get a beer. I was happy to see drunks, gamblers, and whores at this market. Up until this point, I had seen zero vice in Taiwan. Taiwanese people are insanely nice, but I was starting to worry that they may be the Mormons of Asia.

Daan Station, where our hotel in Taipei was. I figured it would be pronounced Da-ahn since there are two Chinese characters, indicating two syllables. However, the locals all pronounced it "Don." Thus, these are clearly the Chinese characters for fail.

Look at the upper right corner of this vending machine. Chi-town represent!

This was a pretty cool pack of dogs we ran into.

Hey, you can't have a photoblog of a Chinese region without the requisite panda shot.

Endnote 1: So, why am I so awesome at travel? On our way out of Taipei, The Old Man and I got on a bullet train to the airport without really paying attention. After a few minutes, I read the list of stops on its signboard. The airport was not one of the stops. I acted quickly and got us out of the train. Once on the proper train, I noticed several locals who had been on our original train boarding ours.

From the train station, we took a bus to the airport. We didn't know if we were flying from Terminal 1 or Terminal 2. The bus driver told us to get out at Terminal 2 for Cathay Pacific. However, the sign on the bus and at the airport said that CX was Terminal 1. English signs at the Taipei airport only speak in airline codes rather than proper English names. I was 97% sure that Cathay is CX despite the bus driver's suggestion (and 3% sure it was CZ, which of course was terminal 2). Turns out I was right, as any airline nerd reading already knows. For the record, CZ is China Southern.

Endnote 2: Taiwan was solid. Maybe I'll move there. It felt more Southeast Asian than Chinese, and I love Southeast Asia. Of course, nobody would ever confuse Taipei's nightlife with that of Bangkok, Tokyo, Bali, Seoul, Hong Kong, or even Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. Hell, from what I saw of Taipei, I'd rank its bar scene somewhere below Daegu. While chatting with an Aussie dude who lived there, he said (and I agreed) that the locals are nice as hell, and it rubs off on the foreigners, so most every foreigner is really nice too. I mentioned that Koreans are a lot of things, many of those things positive, but aren't exactly famous for being nice. Maybe there's a similar local influence here. Most every whitey I've met in the Korean provinces has been weird, and most every one I've met in Seoul has been a dick. Clearly, I include myself in this category as well.

In conclusion, Taiwan is a land of contrasts, or as the Indians called it, maize.

ऍम इ अ हिपस्टर?

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 05:56:00 +0000

The other day, my friend Megan called me a hipster. She couldn't be more far off, of course. I hate hipsters. I am the opposite of hipster. Then, I stopped to think. I suppose she may have her reasons.

I've got facial hair from time to time. I generally rock sideburns that may extend to mutton chops. I've also had a full beard, a mustache, a goatee, a douche circle beard, and a fu manchu. One time, I busted a Chester A. Arthur. Okay, twice.

I love PBR. It kind of bothers me that the hipsters do too. I've been drinking it since the mid '90s, way before they started. Then again, claiming street cred for doing it first is kind of a hipster move.

I've got a pretty extensive collection of awesome T-shirts. I'd like to say that none of them are ironic, but I don't, in fact, eat ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, nor do I want to make it rain. At least I can say that none are skin tight or faux vintage. Then again, plenty of my clothes are basically vintage now since I go shopping once every six years or so.

I spent two years living in Uptown, Chicago. I never veered as hipster as Wicker Park, but mainly because the rents are too high, the bars are too expensive, and the Blue Line sucks. I lived in Lawrence, of course, which has way more cache than similar towns like Madison or Ann Arbor or Boulder, largely because most people have never heard of it. I also "lived" in Brooklyn and in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, though not for very long in either locale.

So what? A lot of these same parameters could be used to describe my buddy Dylan, and he's definitely not a hipster. He works for the railroad for fuck's sake. I feel absolved. I feel, y'know, that I'm clearly better than all of hipsterdom.

And there it is. My unfounded sense of entitlement back at work. Also, I see that I've painted myself into a corner here. Maybe I really believe my previous statement, that I am better than every hipster. That sort of self righteousness is a total tenet of hipsterism. Maybe I don't think I'm better than all hipsters (and don't classify a large swath of people as hipsters to begin with). I'm just making a joke. Well, then I'm being ironic. Lose/lose.

Are there any other strikes against me? I'm an asshole to pretty much everybody new I meet, foxy girls excepted of course. Hell, 10 minutes ago, I met a couple randoms at a bar in my hood and I was a total dick to them. I get all of my news from The Daily Show and The New York Times. I like the idea of reading books, but I don't actually do it anymore. When I do read, I go for Klosterman and Gladwell. I wear sunglasses everywhere, regardless of cloud cover. I don't own a TV. Not only do I love pirate humor, I basically invented it (y'know, cuz I'm awesome, and I was telling pirate jokes before you had ever heard of them). I love drinking 40s. I particularly love drinking 40s on a stoop. Ironically, I actually have the perfect stoop for drinking 40s on at my current apartment (i.e., urban but crackhead free, not at an apartment complex, and not on a residential street) but I live in a country where 40s in the true sense (high-powered malt liquor in glass bottles that can be procured for 2-3 dollars) do not exist (also, I don't know if this is hipster, but I blatantly overuse parenthetical phrases).

I should also note that I own a number of Apple products, and I am currently writing this very sentence on my iPad while wearing a PBR trucker hat and a mustache.

Perhaps most damning: I don't consider myself a hipster.

So I'm fucked then, yeah? I may as well move to Williamsburg or Silver Lake and get it all over with then. Not so fast, Sancho.

T-shirts aside, I don't subscribe to hipster fashion. I don't wear skinny jeans. If I were skinny (and since I'm not, that makes me less hipster), I still wouldn't. I don't carry a messenger bag (although since purchasing the iPad, I've considered it). I don't have glasses. Old Eagle Eye has no use for such things. I don't have any tattoos. Who knows, I may want to join the CIA one day. Silly to rule out options like that.

I don't own a fixed-gear bike. I don't own a bike at all right now, although I'm not against them. If I had a decent place to stow a bike, I'd probably buy one. However, I have no idea what the appeal of the fixie is. I haven't owned one since grade school, and really the only reason I had one then is because they don't make proper geared bikes for little kids, or at least they didn't in my day. A fixed-geared bike for adults makes about as much sense to me as a fixed-geared car, at least if one is using a bike primarily for transportation.

I like sports. I know I could be a hipster (at least an American hipster) and still like soccer or rugby. Because Kansas Basketball is clearly the most important thing in the world of sports, hipsters in Lawrence are allowed to rabidly follow the Hawks and still maintain their status. The Kansas Basketball Jayhawks are my favorite overall team, but I am not eligible for this loophole. See, I also like baseball. One can be hipster and like theoretical Bill James baseball or historical (read: Negro Leagues) baseball, and I do like both of these things, but I also like baseball baseball. I suppose following the Kia Tigers of the Korean League (I know, It's KBO, K-League is actually soccer) balances out my like of MLB for hipster purposes, but I go a step too far for any hipster. I love the NFL. I'm in fantasy football leagues. I read NFL news every day of the year. Worse, I follow the decidedly unhip Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs are coached by ultra-douchy Todd Haley, and we all know that hipsters and douche bags are natural enemies in the wild.

Probably the biggest reason that I'm no hipster - my knowledge of music that came out after the year 2000, or lack thereof. Forget the notion of only liking hipster bands, I don't know any current bands for the most part. While I'm spotty for post-2000, I'm essentially clueless on music that came out after 2006 or so. Being out of the country doesn't help, but I spent the majority of 2009 stateside and didn't add much to the regular rotation. It's entirely possible that my mom has a hipper iTunes collection than me at this point. I could argue that I'm first and foremost a fan of rock and roll, and that Radiohead took the genre as far as it could possibly go with Kid A (in 2000), and therefore there was no reason for me to pay attention anymore since everything henceforth would essentially be a copy of something else. Then again, there is the fact that I might just be old, lazy, and uncool.

Seoul Origin Story (or McDonald's, Burger King, McDonald's)

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:59:00 +0000

Note - this post is kind of a throwback. I wrote it months ago for "The Point" and I meant to run it here sometime in 2010, but forgot about it until this week. If you know me or if you're a wehg living in Korea, this may appeal to you. If not, I wouldn't blame you for giving this one a miss. Just be sure to come back next week, I've got a real humdinger in the works.

So you Johnnys out there in Northeast Kansas and points less awesome may ask yourself how all this Asia shit began. How did it come to pass that a run of the mill Replay barfly like myself ended up traveling around the great cities of Asia and living a comfortable, rent-free life with minimal work?

The “how” answer is a bit lame and dull - I started the same way you met your girlfriend and sold your old iPod - I answered a Craigslist ad. The “why” answer I can’t really give either, that would require years of intensive therapy. I can, however, answer the “what” - my Asian origin story, which strangely I’ve never written.

In late September of 2006, I flew from my then-temporary home in Baltimore to Chicago on a United flight. After a day of seeing friends and family and a night of boozing at my favorite Chicago bar, I headed for O’hare the next day. I checked my bags and smoked my last cigarette for 14 hours and headed to the United 777 that would take me to Tokyo. My final meal in the US - a couple of Snack Wraps from the O’hare McDonald’s. Weak, I know.

The flight from Chicago to Tokyo was, predictably, horrible. I watched "The da Vinci Code" and "Mission Impossible 3." Then, I started watching bad movies. I drank 13 or 14 Kirin beers. I was on the aisle and in the third to last row, so eventually I started just walking back to the galley to order another beer. Somehow, I never got remotely drunk.

We landed in Tokyo. We had to go through a small amount of security to reach the Narita airport departure lounge. The security checkpoint was staffed by a small army of slim, young, cute Japanese women dressed like stewardesses and wearing red berets. Something on my person set off the metal detector. One of these Japanese security stewardesses asked me in deliberate English “Can...I...touch...you?” I liked Tokyo Narita airport immediately.

I made a rush for the smoking room. These Asian airports know how to operate. I smoked two cigarettes in under 3 minutes. The first was awesome. After the second, I suddenly felt top-10 level hungover despite never feeling tipsy on the flight. I was parched and disoriented. I stumbled around and found a money changer so that I could change a fiver for yen, then started indiscriminately throwing the yen into the nearest vending machine to buy water. I guzzled a couple bottles, then went to smoke 3 more cigarettes. Thus ended my first experience in Japan.

My connecting flight to Seoul lasted only two hours. Like halftime at a Belgian soccer game, I drank coffee. I landed at Incheon Airport early on a Thursday night. I’d left Chicago on Wednesday afternoon. Up until bit ago, the the sun had never set.

I was met at baggage by a man holding a sign that read “Tobb.” He spoke no English. I had no clue where we were going. I was totally unaware of how Seoul was set up, or where my school would be in relation to Seoul, or if we were going to my school or elsewhere.

2006 isn’t so long ago, kiddies, but back then, there was no way to find out these kinds of things. Google Maps only covered details of American cities. Wikitravel and Google Earth didn’t exist. In this regard, 2006 is further removed from now than it is from 1983.

My monolingual driver and I drew closer to the lights of Seoul. I had to laugh at how many freeway and road signs made use of the word “dong.” At some point, the driver’s cell phone rang, and it was for me. Somehow, this made sense. It was my recruiter, telling me that I was being driven to a hotel, and that I should call my school’s director the following day. After getting the director’s number, I wondered how I would go about calling her as I had no phone.

We left the freeway and drove down a major thoroughfare. We were in Gangnam, and the lights were impressive, the buildings tall, the pedestrians formally dressed, and the traffic bumper to bumper. I knew just enough about Seoul to know that Gangnam wasn’t downtown, but it sure as hell looked like it.

We went down a back alley to my hotel. The driver set me up, as the proprietor also spoke no English. I went to my room. It was easily the smallest hotel room I had ever seen. I flipped through the channels, and discovered two of them were porn. Pixilated, but porn nonetheless. I also noticed various massage oils and a couple of wrapped condoms on my dresser. I wondered what kind of place I was in.

It was late. I was jet lagged like never before. Of course, I went out. I was in a new city/country/continent. I couldn’t just stay in and watch pixilated porn. I was pretty sure it would be there later.

Having failed to convert money at the airport, I had exactly $0 in local currency, $2 in Japanese Yen, and $40 or so American. I went to a 7-11 to withdraw money. No dice. I was paranoid that my US bank had put a hold on my card. Being broke in a new country wasn’t part of my plan. I bought a pack of gum with my debit card to see if that would work. It did. My card wasn’t cut off. I tried out some other ATMs. Again, no luck. This could be bad. After trying 5 or 6 ATMs, I happened across a Citi Bank branch. Last shot. It worked. Armed with local currency, I headed for the bars. All I found were some overpriced suit bars. After a couple of $10 Heinekens, I was ready to crash.

The next day, I tried to call my new boss. I was in over my head trying to use a Korean hotel phone. I conveyed what I needed to do with the hotel proprietor, and he dialed the number from the front desk phone. After a few gestures and grunts, I learned my first Korean phrase from the hotel owner - kamsa hamnida, “thank you.”

I headed off for lunch. I could not figure out the process of eating local food as I was under the (sometimes true) impression that it is always shared, I ended up having my first Korean meal at... Burger King. Sad, I know. I was amazed at the small size of my fries and Coke, and that the Coke came in a solid plastic glass that can’t be taken to go. I found the nearest “internet cafe,” i.e. PC room in Korea, where I was shocked by its cheapness and its lack of smoking restriction.

It was time to go to my new school. I knew from talking to my boss that I had to walk to Gangnam subway station and then take the subway one stop. I met the boss there, and we caught a bus for the short distance to the school. She graciously paid my 90 cent fare. Later, I figured out that she could have taken a taxi to my hotel, picked me up, and driven me to the school for $3.

I met the guy I was to replace, Josh. Josh walked me through the general way a class works on paper. He then walked me to his apartment, which would become my apartment the next day. It was smaller than my hotel room. This should have been a red flag too, but I had seen exactly zero Korean apartments to compare it to. We returned to the school for my training. Unfortunately, Friday was listening day for Josh’s classes. The lesson largely consisted of listening to a CD over and over, then answering questions. There wasn’t a lot of live training Josh could do. I stuck around for a class.

I went back to my hotel and took a nap, then returned to the school at 10 pm, closing time. I met a few more teachers, most notably Julie, my soon-to-be across the alley neighbor, whom I would be able to yell at through my window like Rocky.

We went to a nearby bar, The Barrel. I never did have dinner. The bosses left early, and things got silly. After everybody was sufficiently trashed we went to Itaewon, the “foreign” district of town. Jet lag was beat.

The next day, a Saturday, I woke up at around noon. I had to leave my hotel and get a taxi to my new place. I arrived “home.” Hungover like a banshee and completely unaware of my new surroundings, I immediately returned to the familiar environs of the Gangnam Station area. I’d been in Korea 42 hours and eaten once. Near Gangnam Station, I found what I desperately needed. I scarfed some greasy McD. Lame, I know. I felt mildly human and ran some errands.

Later on, Julie called me Rocky-style. She and our other coworker Leah were going to Itaewon for dinner. I certainly didn’t have any other plans, so I joined them for Egyptian food. We decided to drink at Leah’s apartment later on with other coworkers, as she had roof access. She also had a couch and an apartment 4 times the size of mine. Palazzo We all over again.

I hadn’t had Korean food yet, but the drink of choice at Leah’s that night was soju - my first dalliance down that road. She recommended that I mix it with pomegranate tea, but I misjudged the bottle she was pointing at and instead bought Milkus - a strange Korean Sprite/milk soda mix. Soju and Milkus was delicious.

Leah’s rooftop deck had several cheap plastic chairs on it, the type that could be found at low rent bar patios the world over. As these $4 chairs were more comfortable than the metal folding chair that my school had provided me, I stole one. Life would become 8% more comfortable.

Comfort, Madden 07, and soju would be the order of the next day. I ventured out to my local PC room and to check out the local grocery store, but I largely sat at home playing Madden. I kept my window open should Julie decide to call, but I had no way to actually contact anybody that I had met in the last couple of days. Ultimately, the night ended with two bottles of soju and my DVD of Airplane. I started work the next day. No Josh. I would be operating without a net.

The Epikest Walk (so far)

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 07:28:00 +0000

When I was a little kid, I had this crazy dream. It was about this girl I liked, and it also involved walking from Lawrence to Topeka, which was an incomprehensible distance of 20 miles. I immediately started writing about it, it was pretty much the first time I ever took pen to paper for kicks. I'm sure I've over- romanticized this dream in the intervening decades, but really, it all started for me that night. Since then, it's all been road trips (extremely successful), writing (less so), and girls (depends). Shit was influential, mythology or no.

Recently, I had a four day holiday weekend with nothing in particular to do. I wrote a post listing a few choices, and ultimately I landed on an epic walk. In the spirit of that nutty dream, I decided to hoof it about 20 miles, to Incheon. Since Incheon is basically the Topeka of Korea, it seemed like a good choice. Add in the fact that I'd be able to hit up a new Taco Bell on the way, this definitely seemed like a solid plan.

Just under an hour into the walk, I passed through downtown Seoul. Sure, I've seen the Jongno Tower a million times, but it felt more photo-worthy under the circumstances.

I always dug the Mies van der Rohe style of the SK building.

Two hours in. The back side of Seoul Station. My first run in with fairly ghetto-style buildings.

Took a note of this place, hit it up later in he weekend. Great sauce. Samgakji Station if you're local.

The Han River, with the 63 building looming.

D-Cube Mall, Seoul's newest. This is also the home of the new Taco Bell. It's also Korea's best mall, with a Uniqlo, an H&M, and cool outdoor spaces on upper floors to drink.

Finally leaving Seoul. Between Seoul and Incheon lies Bucheon, where I would spend the night after 8 hours of walking. Maybe I should have left home before 4 p.m.

At best. I would have gone to this bar if it were B-.

Here's the hotel room that I overpaid for in Bucheon. I was too lazy to comparison shop. At least it had HD, and it even ran real (non-edited) porn, which I think is illegal here.

Day 2 - finally made it to Incheon.

Bupyeong Station. Busiest part of Incheon. It was here that I met my buddies Martin and Kris, who took the train from Seoul. We went straight to a Mongolian bar we saw to drink Mongolian beer, cuz hey, how often do you get to try Mongolian beer?

I liked this, because outside of the tile roofs it kinda looked like neighborhood Chicago architecture.

Cool dog eh?

New Songdo City. This is the crazy futuristic hood they are building in southwest Incheon. Full disclosure - we took the subway here. I was wiped from day one. Right now, not much goes on in Songdo, as you can see.

Back at Bupyoeng. Amazing amount of love motels around. This was just one of many blocks that had nothing but motels.

Here's another.

Day 3. The skyline of Songdo from old downtown Incheon, near the port. Again, we took the subway here from Bupyeong.

The Incheon Bridge. Notice my horrible photography skills.

Wolmido, an amusement park near downtown Incheon. Happiest place in western northern South Korea.

Sign says it best.

Home of Korea's spiciest chicken on a stick. For reals. Wolmido.

A final word - Incheon may really be the Topeka of Korea. People I meet in the provinces tend to be weird, but in Incheon they were exceptionally so. Incheon has nearly 3 million people, yet it felt like everyone knew everyone. When we went to Incheon's "coolest" expat bar,u the scene made Topeka feel legitimately metropolitan. Said it before and I'll say it again - I have no idea why any foreigner would live outside of Seoul or Busan.

whether the weather

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:48:00 +0000

Time for this blog to go old school. NES/NAS has always been about sports, pop culture (particularly TV and video games, often from the 80s), ranting, travel, girls, booze, and Korea (although it’s decidedly not a “life in Korea” sort of blog, I’m proud to be the only expat blogger in Seoul who doesn’t just focus on Korean matters). Occasionally I mix in politics, and from time to time throw in masturbatory typing on matters that could only interest me. Here and there, I make fun of Canada. Check through the archives, and most everything can be matched up with these topics. However, one of those core subjects has long been missing from this page - girls. It’s been since May of 2010 since I’ve written a girl-focused post, not counting last week's novelty gag. This ends tonight.

Girls are still a source of confusion, you see. I still don’t get it.

I was out with three girls from work the other night. (Well, two months ago. This post has been in the hopper for a while now).

Anyway, while I was talking to these girls, a brief exchange they had blew my mind. See, one of them, Dre, has this new guy she’s dating.

We were all planning to go paintballing for another girl at the table, Anna’s birthday. It rains every day in Seoul in the summer, so rain was a real possibility for Saturday.

Let’s jump back a bit. I’ll give my anecdotal reaction before I deliver the punchline.

In my early Chicago days, life was cartoonish. I had a 13 inch Curtis Mathis TV/VCR combo and a cardboard box for a coffee table. I couldn’t afford dial-up internet. I generally subsisted exclusively on Old Style tall boys and Flamin’ Hot Funyuns.

The first job I had in those days consisted of selling art out of my car. I worked for a pyramid scheme who provided me with framed prints of Van Goghs or Monets or Capone-era Chicago photos. It was my job to drive up and down Lincoln Avenue, visiting every single business establishment to sell them art. Oftentimes, I would sell zero pieces, netting me exactly $0, minus gas and lunch for 10 hours of work. It was unbelievably soul crushing. If I got lucky and sold a few pieces and made $20, I’d spend it all in the bar that night, knowing that I could never actually save up enough money to pay my rent.

There was this girl that things were kinda starting to happen with. Her birthday was coming up.

I made a few sales, put a couple dollars together.

I went down to the Art Institute. I wanted to get her something awesome. I walked around the Art Institute for three hours, looking at paintings, waiting to be inspired. I came across a Monet piece. It was really abstract, just blues and greens and purples, but it struck me. I saw her in it. It was perfect.

I went to the gift shop. They sold a small print of it for $20. I had around $50 to my name at the time, maybe less. I bought it anyway. It was fucking perfect. It was the most “her” thing hanging on the walls of one of the greatest art museums in the world.

Her birthday came around. I was armed with the perfect gift and $27 or so to buy drinks at her party. Her reaction? Meh. It may have been even less enthusiastic than that.

Back to Thursday night, Anna’s birthday at the bar in Seoul. Talk of rain at paintball.

Dre mentions that her new dude looked up the weather for Saturday. The reaction from the other two girls at the table? Awww!

Are you fucking kidding me? Listen, no hate on Dre’s beau whatsoever, but seriously - are you fucking kidding me? Bah. This cat spends four seconds checking an app, and he’s Aaron fucking Ralston.

That’s it. I’m getting ahead of the game. Notice the shiny new weather gadget in the upper right? It’s in German as there is currently no English weather gadget. I suppose knowing the weather in Stutgart is better than meh.

This One Goes Out to All the Bitches Out There (and harlots, hood rats, wenches, and gold diggers)

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:12:00 +0000

Bitch

Ah, the inevitable sequel. Hey, any time I put up the hottest post this space has ever seen, I gotta give the people what they want. Plus, I don’t have time to write a real post this week.

In case you missed the last post like this (and I don’t think you did), the rules are simple. Google an insult, and post the first usable pic on Google Images. Like last time, I avoided memes and celebrities, at least to the best of my knowledge, and tried to avoid any picture that looked professional.

This was a lot harder than the first time around. Turns out there’s kind of a dearth of good female-centric insults. Hell, most insults that directly involve female genitalia are generally directed at dudes. I’m no misogynist, so I feel like we need to invent more. From the obvious department, a female douchebag should definitely be a snookie. Also, the Korean word “boji” (pussy) should be brought into the vernacular, and should absolutely not be relegated toward male-centric insults. Anyway, on with the show.

Harlot

Hussy

Skank

Hood Rat

Slut

Gold Digger

Ditz

Crack Whore

Bimbo

Ho

Butterface

Wench

Cooze

Fat

Full disclosure - I actually had to cheat and google “fucking bitch” for the title picture because the images for “bitch” fail for being memes, celebs, or just plain stupid. Standards like "cunt" and "whore" also proved to be impossible. On Google moderate safe search, the images were just horribly lame. On safe search off, well, take a guess.

Until next week. I'm going to Taiwan.

The Only Band That Matters

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:01:00 +0000

Fair warning: this post will change your life, at least for a little while. If you are outside Korea or the K-Pop universe, continue at your own risk. Or maybe I’ve just lost my mind.

For the last week or two, Girls’ Generation songs have been running through my head pretty much 97% of the time, awake or asleep. Shit is catchy. I’m well aware that shit might be shit too, but we’ll get to that.

Much like chess, or the Korean script that Girls’ Generation members actually write in, this is a band that's easy to learn but near impossible to master. To kick off, they have a ridiculous 9 members, none of whom play an instrument. However, they are so crazy popular and prolific on the K-Pop/Korean Wave scene that each member has her own Wikipedia page... in English.

Becoming a Nirvana completionist (which, for the most part, I am) is a reasonably easy endeavor. Doing the same for, say, Bob Dylan or all jam bands takes a considerable degree of effort. To own every Girls’ Generation recording is next to impossible. K-Pop is an insanely fluid medium, chock full of remixes, EPs, and of course Japanese imports. According to Wikipedia, Girls’ Generation boasts 3 studio albums, two repackaged albums, 3 EPs, a live album, and a single in Korea, plus an album, an EP, and three singles in Japan. Yet, they’ve only been releasing music since 2007. That’s 15 recordings in one way or another. I downloaded nine, and they don’t match up with those 15 at all, and all nine are all from 2008 or before. Plus, this doesn’t even count commercial music that, like, they literally make for commercials, which themselves are massive hits here.

For a seemingly simple girl band, this is just the beginning of the mystery. Girls’ Generation, of course, is not their only name. In Korean, they’re called 소녀시대, which is romanized as Sonyeo Shidae. They are also abbreviated as SNSD, or as Soshi (소시). Having a Korean name is no surprise for a Korean band, of course, but most K-Pop bands are called the same thing in English and Korean. To make matters more confusing, Girls’ Generation not only has two self-titled albums, they also have a song called, yes, “Girls’ Generation,” of which there are several different versions that appear on multiple recordings. I suppose to keep all the loose ends straight, one could visit soshified.com. This website is dedicated to all things SNSD, and has been updated every day, sometimes several times a day, since 2008. They have 82,000 Twitter followers, including me as of right now, and Twitter is still in its infancy in Korea.

So why them? Why now? Did spending all this time in Korea finally make me crack?

SNSD hold a lot of potential appeal. If you watched the video at the top of the page, I don’t think I really need to explain. Yet, Asia is dripping with sexy girl pop groups, so why fall for this one?

A. Girls’ Generation are totally real. They put together interesting videos. The one at the top is one continuous shot, but, like all things SNSD, there are other versions of the video. In their recent, catchy-as-fuck Run Devil Run video, they even glance at their own dark sides, away from their usual saccharine oeuvre. Of course, the “good” side ultimately wins, but come on, they aren’t 2NE1, that’s the way it had to go.

B. Girls’ Generation are totally fake. Rumors of plastic surgery are widespread, including stories that they had their calf muscles surgically altered. None of them play instruments or write songs, at least so far as I know. They change their hair so often and look so similar that only Soshiefied message board nerds and Korean middle school girls can tell them apart. I sure as hell can’t. That kind of plastic is kind of refreshing, for some reason. I was a little heartbroken when the Reverend Horton Heat did a car commercial, though I know they deserved the payday. SNSD makes no qualms about selling out. As I mentioned, at least two of their largest hits were originally jingles for LG cell phones. Thus, I can never be disappointed.

C. What, are you a NES/NAS n00b? There has never been, nor will there ever be a “c.”

To continue to explain the “why them?” factor, I should mention two other things that I like - cute girls wearing shirts with numbers on them, and good old mysteries. Here, in the video (one of the videos) for “Oh,” we see both. (BTW, notice the beginning of the light side/dark side battle at the end of the video here.)

As we can see, the girls are all wearing jerseys or tank tops or whatever with a number on it. Why? See, I covered both the cute girls in numbers and the mystery factor there. Fortunately, the internets has answers. According to blog.ningin.com, there is a reason. Taeyeon (the leader) is 9 because there are 9 girls in the group. Sooyung is 24 because she loves her fans and wants to be with them all day (sure). Seohyeon is 11 to be number one in all things (then why not 1?) Tiffany is 0 because of a printing error. A printing error! Apparently, she wanted to be 01. Jessica is 22 for her age, but almost all of them are the same age, so that’s kinda weird. I guess Yuri was 21 at the time, so she went with that. Hyoyeon took 32, because it was her favorite number. Too bad she didn’t pick 34. Maybe she respected Walter Payton too much to rock his number. Sunny is 12 because her favorite numbers are 1 and 2. That seems really suspect, especially since 12 is a fine number on its own, particularly for those of us who didn’t grow up with the metric system. Yoona is lucky 7, which means she’s at best a beginner at craps.

Mystery solved, right? Then what the fuck is this?

Yep, in this video, they were wearing sweatshirts with their names and numbers on them, but with different numbers. I guess we'll never really get to the bottom of this.

As for the other argument, the “did Korea finally make me crack?” aspect, there’s another reason for liking this band.

Korea is a wonderful country in a lot of ways, particularly Seoul, but there are times, many times, that it just drives me nuts. Often times, there is no escape. You can’t get to any other country overland, so it’s not like I could flip out and drive to Mexico like I could back home. I’ve learned to appreciate the differences in Korean cities and regions, but they are still a whole lot more the same than they are different. On top of that, there’s no drugs. Fucking Tylenol isn’t available outside of pharmacies, Ny-Quil is prescription, and real drugs simply don’t exist.

Essentially, there are only two ways to alter your reality. Booze of course, but that can get annoying/fattening/boring/routine. The other? Pop music, of course.

Pop music is escapist and other-worldly most everywhere, but the only places I can really compare for living are Korea and America. American pop is certainly not grounded in any sort of real life, particularly the more pre-fab top-40 sort. Then again, America is so vast that one could imagine NSYNC living out the false universe that they created in Orlando or Orange County, and more recently, one could imagine somebody living some sort of Lady Ga Ga existence in Manhattan. Nobody could live an SNSD video in Korea. It would be hard to pull off in Narnia. It’s pure aural drugs of the highest grade.

To sum up - Girl’s Generation is a group of nine leggy girls that don’t wear much and ride the line between real and fake as well as between fantasy and reality. They deliver ocular heroin with ridiculously catchy songs that they didn’t write. They are unquestionably the most popular girl group in Korea and form the very core of what modern Korean pop culture is, yet at the same time they are the single most escapist entity available in a country of 50 million in which over 30% of the populace has the same surname. They are at the same time imminently mysterious and lowest-common-denominator approachable. They are concurrently worthy subjects of a doctoral dissertation and dismissible by the most base of music critics. To come full circle, with apologies to The Clash, they are the only band that matters.

You want more? Here’s a couple bonus videos.

Seoul Walks

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:13:00 +0000

If there’s anybody who has walked around Seoul more than me, I commend him or her (no way it’s a her though). I tend to doubt any such person exists. I’m sure plenty of people have walked more cumulative miles than me about the city, but this would be based on some sort of necessity rather than my particular brand of insanity. In my case, I genuinely like walking. I also have an eternal glut of podcasts that I need to listen to. I hate most types of weather, but I’m willing to walk under almost any weather conditions. I have no fear of getting lost, and rarely do. Probably more than anything, it’s the travel thing. I love seeing new things and finding new places, and treating one of the world’s largest cities like it’s Holcomb Park is a boss way to do that.

Tonight, I’m throwing up some pictures I’ve taken around town of weird or interesting shit. I’ve posted a couple of these on FB before, but most are new. By the way, Zuckerberg, I know I’m now officially violating your intellectual property rights, as the pics that I took with my camera and then posted on FB are technically yours. Come after me, motherfucker.

This is pretty roadgeeky here. This lane says “Busan” in Korean, Korea’s second city on the other side of the peninsula. Long commitment for downtown Seoul. This is like if the George Washington Bridge had a lane saying “San Francisco.”

Yo, Seoul summer haters - this is what you have to look forward to. Trust me, it sucks.

The East Coast isn’t the only place that can flood. This is a good 30 feet above the river’s usual banks. This is last year too, not even the major flooding from this year, which I was too lazy to investigate.

How epic are my epic walks? I walked to the fucking airport. Gimpo though, not ICN. One day though...

Another spot showing how pretty this town can be.

If there’s one spot you don’t want a bad design....

Sometimes, I aimlessly end up in places like this - Noryanjgin Fish Market, Seoul’s largest. I was just trying to get to Hongdae.

A McDonald’s drive-thru in Seoul? So far as i know, this is the only one.

Yoon Seok Min, my favorite Korean baseball player came out of nowhere to throw a one-hitter. Every paper in town gave him props. Kia!

Just last week, I walked from Ilsan to Seoul. I came across a country area chock full of these spiders. They were everywhere, and they build huge webs that spanned trees.

Here, you can see how big they were. They were easily the largest spiders I’ve seen outside of Malaysia. I’ve never seen spiders like this in town or on any mountain or countryside area in the country. On this mile-long or so stretch between central Ilsan and the Seoul city limits, they were everywhere.

Outer Goyang City, between Ilsan and Seoul. I didn’t expect this. Pastoral landscapes, right within the second most-populous urban area in the world.

I ended up gate-crashing a large Christian rock concert. I was easily spotted, since I was the guy holding a beer.

In conclusion, Seoul is a land of contrasts. Walking rules.

On this topic, I had an even crazier walk over the long weekend. More to come, most likely.

Chuseok

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 05:18:00 +0000

Sorry, I had something chambered for this week, but I still don't like it.

It's Chuseok this weekend, Korea's largest holiday. It's a three day holiday that corresponds to the lunar calender, so it's not on any set date. Sometimes it results in a 5 day weekend. Sometimes, like last year, it falls on a Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday, which essentially forces most schools here to close for the whole week. In 2008, it was Saturday-Sunday-Monday, so that sucked. Then again, if a solar calendar based Korean holiday such as Children's Day or Independnce Day happens to fall on a Sunday, everyone is fucked and nobody gets an extra day off.

This year, Chuseok causes a 4 day weekend.

Normally, I have some sort of plan for Chuseouk. Last year I parlayed it into an America trip. I've also done local trips and a Tokyo trip back in aught seven. This year, I've somehow managed to avoid planning anything. I've got 7 hours until this vast unknown weekend.

Here are some options:

1. Fly somewhere. This one is DOA, because flights cost too much last minute. Plus, I'm going to Taiwan in a couple weeks anyway.

2. Take a domestic trip. I haven't traveled anywhere in Korea in a few months, so I'd actually be really into this. Unfortunately, Chuseok is a horrible time for domestic travel. Trains are all sold out, and the traffic jams on Saturday and Tuesday will be mammoth.

3. Go to the beach. I may do it, but it's supposed to rain all weekend. Of course it is.

4. Check into the Hilltop Hotel in Itaewon and spend 4 days drinking at Polly's Kettle House. This one holds some appeal, although it would be kind of silly to stay in a hotel that's a 15 minute subway ride from my house.

5. Walk walk walk. Maybe attempt some sort of 4 day epic hike to say, Daejeon. It would be really difficult and the rain may get in the way, but this option is sounding more and more appealing, given the others.

6. The usual. Go to my usual bars, eat at the usual spots, take a couple shorter walks, spend a million hours on the internets hungover. The odds-on favorite.

7. Check into a 5 star hotel in town, just for shits and grins.

Thanks 1000

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:22:00 +0000

I have three fresh posts in the hopper that still need a little finesse before they are ready to go live. For now, I’ll ignore them and throw together a quick gimmicky post on my favorite gimmick - this very blog.

First off - huge love to you. August was the most trafficked month in NES/NAS history. Before that, July was the biggest month. It’s been a steady climb, but August had nearly three times the traffic than March did. I’m especially appreciative to those of you who have reposted this blog on their Facebook pages, blogs, or on message boards. Thanks for being rock stars, and for making sure my mid-week drinking and writing isn’t in vain.

I discovered something fun today. When checking my stats, I saw that some people found this blog by googling “dork.” Turns out, on Google Images, the picture of the gentleman that led off my post last week no longer links to wherever it used to go when I found it - now it links here! I also googled “scumbag.” The scumbag image that I used last week is now the number 2 image for the term on Google, and that image also links here. Woot! NES/NAS is changing the internets.

I wrote a post a few months ago called Spy Bar Itaewon Russian Girls, because that was a keyword search that somebody used to find this blog. I’m happy to report that, if one were to google that now, this post is the number one hit. Googling “Nintendo is right” also brings you here if you're feeling lucky. So does “Mount Barmore,” though to be fair I invented the term.

Anyway, I could go on and on about these stats, but as a thank you to everyone, I’ll give you the greatest gift of all - an abnormally short post.

Dork. Geek. Nerd. Wanker. Turdburgler. Etc...

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:25:00 +0000

New! Check out the female-centric sequel here!

Wow, I go anecdotal for a post and this blog gets creamed! It’s amazing how many people didn’t check out my last post. Message received. Tonight, I’m ditching the narrative and going mass market. Am I selling out? Um, where can I sign up?

Small backstory - a buddy at work and I were trying to explain to a Korean co-worker what a “dork” is. I decided to Google “dork,” and the first picture that I came across was pretty hilarious, and is the pic that leads off this post.

Who is this poor bastard? Does he know that he has the first non-produced picture that comes up on Google Images when somebody searches for dork? If he does, is he happy about it? I can’t decide if I would be horrified or if I would be overjoyed if it happened to me.

Basically, the rules of the game here are to google various insults, then post the first legit picture of a person that comes up. I avoided demotivationals and other memes, and I skipped celebrities, at least to the best of my knowledge. Who is the biggest fuckwad on the internet? The head nerd? The chief chode? Lets find out.

Wanker

Turdburgler

Scumbag

Nerd

Loser

Fuckwad

Cuntrag

Douchebag

Lamo

Asshole

Chode

Fucktard

The pictures in this post, by the way, come with no permission whatsoever. I'm a lazy asshole, so I couldn't be bothered to cite all my sources. If I stole your shit, I apologize. Don't worry, based on my last post, only four people will see this anyway.

The long arm of Thai Law

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 05:56:00 +0000

I had a hell of a week on the escaping the law tip. I’ve had two pretty solid events, and that’s not even counting the jaywalking, street drinking, and tax fraud that I commit on a daily basis.

First off, to my parents: skip this post. Just skip it. You don’t want to read it. If you do read it, I don’t want to hear about it. Make it easy and click on a “best of” link on the left side toolbar. Seriously.

Alright, I assume that worked.

I ended a recent post with a pretty awesome pun about the long arm of Thai Law. In my last full day in Bangkok, I did in fact have a run in with the law, sorta.

I got off a canal boat near Siam Square, and I was heading to the BTS Skytrain to go back to my hotel and to drink with my friends.

I’m not that regular a smoker and I frequently jump off the wagon. However, in Bangkok, I smoked all the time, just like everyone else. I feel fine mentioning this fact, as I’m sure my parents respected my wishes and stopped reading.

Anyway, as I neared the Skytrain station, I flicked my butt, just like always, unless I’m in the woods or something. I walked up onto the skybridge to the train platform, and some guy in an official looking uniform stopped me. I was wearing headphones, a Kia Tigers hat, and sunglasses and wearing my backpack. I had no idea why he stopped me.

“Where you come from?”

I took this for an English lesson. “The canal boat.” I replied.

“You threw a cigarette.”

“Did I?” I’m not going to do this in dialogue. The dude pulled me aside and made me sit sown, and his friend in a similar uniform showed up. They said that I would have to pay a 2,000 baht fee, around $70, an outrageous price in Thailand. Hell, the fine for smoking in the subway in Korea is $30, and Korea is a much richer country, and nobody would ever smoke in the subway anyway.

They asked my name, when I was leaving, and where I was staying. I evaded answering any of these questions. I said that I had learned my lesson and I wouldn’t toss cig butts anymore. Also, I was never sure if they were legit or scammers, so I didn’t want to pay. Plus, I didn’t want to pay. They told me Bangkok was like Singapore, “same -same,” and that litter laws were harsh. I've been to Singapore. Bangkok is a lot of things, but it has next to nothing in common with Singapore.

At some point, the guy (security guard I guess) tipped his hand and said that he would call the police if I didn’t pay. Ah, so you aren’t the police! He asked me to sign a paper admitting guilt, and I scribbled a false signature. I never gave my name or ID or anything. I asked if I could call my friend for advice. They saw my iPod and mistook it for a phone, but I said I could only call with wifi, which was unavailable where we sat. They told me to go downstairs to collect my cig butt.

I went downstairs. I searched a long time for my butt, but it had clearly blown away. I found a cigarette butt and made a big production about picking it up. I don’t know if they were still watching me, but they were obviously still upstairs and a bit far behind me.

I made a break to the north, the way I had come from. 3 minutes later, I was back at the canal. I crossed under the main road at the canal bridge. I was sure I didn’t have a tail, so while under the bridge I took the opportunity to remove my hat and sunglasses to throw them in my pack, and I started carrying my backpack like a brief case. On the other side of the road, I cut into the mall, the Siam Paragon. I walked through the mall and took an alternate route onto the subway. Really, I probably should have just taken a motorcycle taxi, but I also wanted to do this on my own.

Three stops later, I was home, and scott free. The next day, I was in Hong Kong, then Seoul, fully out of the woods.

A few nights later, some friends and I went to Monkey Beach, a club in Apgujeong, Seoul. I had beer for dinner at a local bar beforehand, so I was pretty liquored up by the time we left. I was wearing flip-flops. A few girls in my group were too, but clubs in Seoul tend to either forbid flip-flops or allow them regardless of gender. Not Monkey Beach. At Monkey Beach, girls with flip-flops are cool, dudes ain’t. Strange, since it’s a Thai themed club, and everyone wears flip flops in Thailand.

I tried to get in anyway, of course. The door guy stopped me. Other friends of mine went in after me. The guy still wouldn’t let me in. “Wait here,” he said. For what? At first, I thought there would be some kind of resolution, but apparently he meant for me to wait until my friends wanted to leave the club in a few hours.

Anyway, as my friends are all rock stars, at some point one of them comes back to the door holding shoes. I put them on and gave him my flip flops. He was still wearing shoes. I had no ida whose shoes I had.

The door guy asked me where I got the shoes. A friend, I said, but I have no idea who. I guess my friend had extra shoes. Three door guys immediately shined their flashlights on the floor and walked into the club. Who knew this was such a major transgression?

Turns out it was my buddy Dong Ho who spotted me the shoes. We traded back in the bathroom, and I got in line to buy him a bucket, along with one for me. I never did get kicked out.

The lesson? Jaehak 2, Comeuppance 0.

BaKK to the BKK

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:57:00 +0000

I recently took a short trip to Bangkok.

The trip kicked off with an Incheon Airport party. I headed to the airport with my friend and co-worker Megan, then met Martin and Kiki there later. All of us were flying out to different places at the same time. I kicked off something of a marathon booze day with a Bloody on the way to the airport.

I am the goddamn mayor of ICN Airport. Two important things to know: If one is at the airport early with time to kill, the thing to do is go down to arrivals to hit up Family Mart for normal priced beers. Also, if there is a long check-in line and you aren’t checking a bag and there’s no automated kiosk for your airline, do like me - march up to Business Class check-in like General Sherman and don’t ask questions. Save 40 minutes of wait. Win. That 40 minutes can be spent at Family Mart.

My flight stopped in Hong Kong, which I didn’t know would happen until I boarded. I guess it’s hard to focus on the details when booking a flight 32 hours in advance. Stopping at HKG, this year’s top ranked airport in the world, is mildly inconvenient verses a direct flight, but still not a bad situation. There are downsides to my current life and work, but definitely one of the upsides is knowing exactly where to go for a beer and a snack on a surprise visit to HKG. It’s way more fun knowing my way around ICN and HKG than KCI and BWI.

My first night in town, I had an epic night hanging out with my buddy Scottie. I think we went to every single bar in Bangkok, all the while making obscure KU Basketball references and jokes about Dylan and Daniel. Somehow, this picture of a Family Mart was the only one I took all night, which was probably for the best.

The next day, Sunday, I took a hungover trip through Old Bangkok. Here is one of the many canals.

Here is Chinatown, looking pretty Chinese with it’s long overhead signs.

Hua Lamphong Train Station. It was here that I realized how impossible it would be to get out of town on a 4 night trip. Train rides anywhere cool were in the 14 hour range. The flags were at half staff because the princess of Thailand had just died. Don’t freak out, she was like 85.

On Monday, I made use of the canals on the boats. During the day, canals are the way to go on the old side of the city. Boats cost 35 cents or so and they are far faster than a taxi in the eternal traffic jam that is Bangkok.

On Scottie’s recommendation, I headed for the tallest building in Thailand, Baiyoke Tower. I probably could have chosen a less overcast day. Oh well.

View from the tower - roadgeek porn.

After the tower, I headed to Khao San Road to shop, hit up my favorite Phad Thai stand in the world (which used to be one dude, a wok, and a couple stools, but is now almost a full-fledged restaurant), and to throw back a beer or seven.

More Khao San

This guy has a collar, so he may not be stray. Still, It’s worth noting that Bangkok has arguably the nicest dogs in Southeast Asia. Strays are everywhere, but they hang out together and they all seem happy. They trot down the street, they wag their tails, and I’ve never seen one in a foul mood. In Malaysia and Bali, I’ve run into absolutely terrifying stray dogs.

No surprise, a few Korean fiefdoms were around. Korean pop culture was everywhere, actually. When Scottie and I went to a mall to eat, we heard nothing but K-Pop. Even a large share of the commercials I saw were Korean, but dubbed in Thai.

On Tuesday, I passed the robot building. Seriously awesome.

Wat Arun. I passed it on the river boat but didn’t get out, since I already went a couple years ago. Making a stop could have cut into valuable drinking time.

My hotel. Kidding, kidding. The place I stayed in 2007 wasn’t much better though.

South Bangkok is burning! I never did find out what this was all about, as I left the next day.

Soi Cowboy.

I ended the trip on a literal all night rager with a couple buddies of mine from Seoul that were also in town. I don’t think I’ve had a true all-nighter in a while. Sure, I’ve been out until 6 or 7 or 8 plenty of times in Seoul, but I always went to sleep after that. This time, I headed for the airport and really didn’t get any sleep at all until midnight the following night. Two things about this all nighter:

- I’ll go ahead and strongly recommend my hotel, the Siam Inn. Great location at Sukhumvit Soi 8, nice enough room, and an awesome staff. I requested a wake-up call at 6:45 to catch my flight. Even though the front desk staff saw me trudge into the hotel at 6:30, they still made the call.

- At this point of the trip, I was, like an AFC East wide receiver a decade ago, on the run from the long arm of Thai Law. More on this next time.

Rick Perry and Kim Jong Il: Assholes

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 09:51:00 +0000

Goddamn Texans and North Koreans.

Didn't we do this dance last year?

Texas A&M is considering moving to the SEC.

North Korea is rattling the sabre again.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't I single-handedly resolve similar Big 12 and North Korea issues last year?

Get with the fucking program.