Looking Down from a Hotel Room (Hungry)

When I was five years old I ate duck, and that was an adventure. My five-year-old daughter used to regularly eat dried squid, but after moving continents she won't get near the stuff.

I used to flee from the dinner table if the steak my father cooked leaked the littlest amount of "juice," and kids in Southeast Asia eat bugs on the regular.

I've become fond, in my old age, of eating chicken anuses with liquor.

---

When it comes to food, the familiar and the unknown entice. Conversely, they bore/repulse.

Replace those previous four paragraphs about food with various human counterparts (chicken anuses = drunk salarymen), and consider how tolerable each is.

Anthony Bourdain wrote in his terrific book, Kitchen Confidential, that when he was a young lad he tasted oysters for the first time and his culinary world widened. As far as human beings go, my world also expanded when I made friends with an Indian kid at the age of four and, later, my high school friends started doing hard drugs.

Foods, good and bad. People, too.

Leave it up to the reader.

___

I'm willing to bet, however, that a select few people knew Dana Crawford, in my opinion the most fascinating woman...no, human being, alive.

And the fact that she ate a bicycle is the icing on the cake.

For me, she proved a point I wanted to make but never could.

What it was we can only guess.

I have my theories, though.

A Hose Filled with Sand

Now give that to the crack-man.

Song of the Year Candidates

Last March or so I proclaimed The Mars Volta's "Goliath" to be, unquestionably, the song of the year. I still think it is...sorta; because since then two songs have emerged (and it's a damn shame only two have) in the past month or so to give it a run for its money.

Here are the nominees:







___

Obviously, Game's not taking it, despite Raekwon's goose bump-inducing verse. "Bulletproof Diaries" is like Daegu going up against Tatooine and Gondor to host the summer Olympics.

Which means it's either unfairly maligned The Mars Volta or TV on the Radio.

Tough call.



I hate myself right now for posting this.

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=K-s_O7YhE3Q&feature=related

The Magic Number

Pity the expatriate sports fan in Korea, especially if he, like me, is more inclined to prefer balls made of brown, non-synthetic leather. To paraphrase Tim Dog, I'm cool with baseball, I'm down with soccer, but those sports aren't shit to me compared to the NBA and the NFL. Basketball is God's sport once remembered, now forgotten; but football is Cain in exile; which is sadder, because Cain, despite killing his brother, was a human being, fool. A funky human being.

Modern science and Professor X (he of the X-Clan, not the Shi'ar) have discovered that there are nine innings in a baseball game, yet 16 games of pigskin -- I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly -- over the span of four and a half months prove to be special for a rare species, namely North Americans.

I know this to be true, because, Earth people, New York and California, I was once one of you.

Summon Cthulhu, because something has awoken me from my ancient slumber. If Cthulhu doesn't pick up, call Mumra. (Even though his cell ringtone is "Mickey" by Toni Basil.)

The Buffalo Bills are 3-0.

Word to James Lofton, Don Bebe, Thurman Thomas, and the ghost of Marv Levy, some voodoo shit's going on.

Common Sense is the resurrection.




Trent Ewards, can you be my Jesus?

The More You Know

Sometimes, people say they can do 300 pushups a day, seven days a week. Those same people manage to pull a pectoral muscle by waving a Wii controller around while playing the latest installment of the Zelda series.

(I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.)

Here's to you, He-Man. Take a breather, smoke a Parliament, and make sure to open that door when the bell rings. The PK Nurse has been flown in on special assignment.



She'll assuage that raging pec in no time.

Abbreviated Omnibus

This is for DFW, Mitch Hedberg, Kmart the Chef, and myself -- for individually differing reasons.



Call me presumptuous (just don't call me late for Ramadan), but that song right there is PK. In. A. Nutshell.

For totally different reasons.

(BTW, I haven't read Infinite Jest or anything else by the late David Foster Wallace, but apparently he pioneered the asterisk trend. Funny; I thought I did that. It's pretty weird to discover that you've been influenced by someone whose works you've never even read. Great minds, I suppose.)

Choose Your Temple of Fanaticism With Great Care

David Foster Wallace

February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008

Sleep well, sweet prince, and always remember, te occidere possunt sed te edere non possunt nefas est. They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier.

Her silhouette leans and says 'And Lo, for the Earth was empty of form, and void.

'And Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep.

'And We said:

'Look at that fucker Dance.'

010-867-5309/Jinhui

First, let me clear up some possible confusion before I make an oblique point: Psychedelic Kimchi is not going the way of the dinosaur, by which I mean that this blog will not be in a museum someday. What last night's post ambiguously indicated is that I, Eoin Forbes, don't have enough time to blog, and I won't again until March of next year. I gotta chase that paper, yo; so I'm going to be working extra-long hours* until that time.

Why?







Let's play hangman. B_ _ _ _ ng, you're my home.



* not as a male pimp, regrettably

Cartel

I'm sorry.

American Zombie -- Review

As far as horror movies go, I have this theory that the sexual undertones of vampire films naturally intrigue young people, whereas adults tend to prefer the underlying theme of mortality that zombie pictures offer. (That, and the fact that most of us could probably beat zombies at Jeopardy!)

This is just a theory, mind you -- one which could very well be incorrect. Truthfully, I have no idea what to expect from a zombie movie these days. I certainly don't want to be scared, because, let's face it, ZOMBIES ARE SYMBOLIC. Zombies help us reflect on today's society. Zombies are the new millenial Aesop. Zombie films, as a mattter of natural selection, have become morality tales.

Which is cool and all, but what I want from a zombie movie -- besides a sex scene of undead coitus and Thomas Jane as Jonah Hex -- is enjoyment in the face of symbolism. George Romero is* of course the godfather of zombie cinema, but he may be guilty of going back to the well so much that he influenced a generation of acolytes who believe that a zombie movie can make any statement about modern society, be it consumerism, militarism, and so on. Zombies have become a cliche, an easy way to comment upon North American society.

Honestly, I'm fed up. I'm sick of zombies. Why can't we give werewolves some more play, huh? There's a lot of untapped thematic resources right there: aggression, rage, body hair...

Maybe I'm too smart for my own good, but when I watch a movie like Grace Lee's American Zombie I can't help but cringe when seemingly undead people are revealed to be, in fact, human. It's a cheap statement -- one which has been beaten into the ground so much that groundwater has flooded terra firma.

Thankfully, Zombie is light on the covert sermonizing and heavy on the laughs, however sublimely subdued. Which isn't to say that the film doesn't try to get a message across. It does, but it's more meta than sociological. Get rid of the zombies and it's clear that Grace Lee is trying to address the nature of documentary filmmaking and, ultimately, the invasion of personal space.

She doesn't quite achieve the latter, but she gets close enough. Which is forgiveable for a film that meshes mockumentary, metafiction, horror, and, to a much lesser extent, social commentary all into one with zombies as its sleight of hand. And the performances by every single actor -- save Ms. Lee, who has onscreen presence but acts wooden and, especially near the film's end, looks like she's trying not to laugh -- make American Zombie a film that will reward viewers upon second, third, or fourth viewings; particularly for the "void" and refrigerator-peeping gags, as well as Suzy Nakamura's Best Supporting Actress Oscar-worthy role** as Judy.

4/4 *_*



* was?

** I'm not kidding, Nakamura steals the movie.

Hurts So Good

I smoke too much. On average, I run through 2/3 of a pack per day. If I'm drinking, make that 2 or 3 packs in an evening.

Yet I'm loath to quit. Why? Because smoking has never hurt me. Quite the opposite, actually -- a couple of Dunhills every morning and I'm set to conquer the world. I hear dudes my age who smoke hacking and coughing like they've inhaled sarin gas, but, as far as I can tell, my lungs are pretty clean. Word to Ricky Davis and Bonzi Wells, I may indeed have malignant tumors growing inside my third-favorite non-sexual organ, but I don't think so. And my personality is such that, unless I have actual, physical evidence that something is detrimental to my health, I'm going to keep on keeping on*.

So, for the foreseeable future, cigarettes are still on the menu. Cheetos, however...

If someone tells you his biggest complaint about the snack food equivalent of cocaine** is that eating it turns his fingers orange (insert dick-masturbation joke here), you know that person is a casual user. But if he complains about mouth sores that last a week or longer, it may be time to stage an intervention.

Such is my dilemma. I feel as though I've been chewing razor blades. I don't know when my Cheetos addiction started, but it's recently gotten out of hand. The right side of my mouth is scratched and scraped, my gums as sore as Kmart after a Mario Kart whupping. The ostensibly easy solution to this problem, naturally, is to stop eating Cheetos; but if you think I'm just going to lie down and die over a snack food-related injury, you don't know me very well.

Never say die: my incredulity at being scorned -- again -- by your favorite cheese snack's favorite cheese snack will manifest itself as obstinate denial. Like calluses on a manual laborer's hands, my wounds will harden and heal, and I will master my high. The real reason my mouth gets fucked up after eating Cheetos is because, living in Korea, I don't eat them as much as I would were I back home***. (Word to ballerina feet.)

I plan to rectify that discrepancy, not now but right now.

Stand by me, Cheetos. If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be Lorenzen Wright.



* You should have seen me grin like a 12-year-old getting a blowjob when the doctor told me my liver is perfectly healthy the other week. I celebrated that diagnosis with half a bottle of Danzca vodka -- and shaving cream -- last Saturday.

** Puffs = regular coke, Crunchy = crack, Twists = the 8-ball that killed John Belushi

*** Having spent nearly a third of my life on the peninsula, "back home" is pretty much a misnomer.