The Man with the Golden Liver

Dear Diary, I had a pretty neat weekend. I even remember some of it.

As I regrettably do every Saturday morning, I woke up at seven, took a shower, and prepared for an hour of "work"/work. TOEFL. Lovely. After class, Legs prepared me a Spamwich* and I took a two-hour-long nap that, I must tell you, Constant Retard, reinvigorated my mind, body and soul. Upon waking up, I [censored] and lounged around Chez Sparkles**, channel surfing and no doubt annoying the hell out of my lovely wife. Legs teaches a "working girl" (no lie) every Saturday, but her two o'clock class was canceled -- again, no lie -- because her student was bitten in the ear by some kind of bug and developed an infection (probably a lie). This, in turn, meant that Legs dragged me to the hair salon so that I could have my scruffy mane sheared, my scalp massaged, and be reminded by staring at myself in a mirror for a half hour what a handsome man I am. That task completed, we hopped in the Legsmobile -- a used KIA Carens that runs on liquid propane gas, if you must know -- and headed to Seoul to have dinner with my father-in-law.

Dinner was naengmyeon, Constant Retard, and I must say that, while it wasn't as superlative as Sincheon's outstanding (and really fucking spicy) Haeju Naengmyeon, it was pretty darn good, even if the 육수 was somewhat lacking and the noodles had a little too much garlic. After dinner, the three of us drove (well, technically only Legs drove, but you get the point) to Misari for "coffee." Coffee for me was a bottle of Cass poured into a Heineken glass (irony!), for Legs and her father an icy bowl of 팥빙수. I must tell you, that beer hit the spot on such a warm evening, and it cooled my considerably, understandably annoyed demeanor after spending 15,000 won for the three of us to tour a "garden" roughly the size of my apartment. I don't care that there were two ostriches or statues of Humphrey Bogart and an astronaut; that shit was definitely NOT worth the price of admission.

We drove Legs's father home and returned to the 'Dang. Legs watched the Korean drama, Style, starring a man-coiffed Kim Hyesu***, and I watched The Hangover**** for the second time in two days. Seriously, that film is the funniest, most-quotable comedy in recent memory, even if it is the male equivalent of female-geared romcoms starring Katherine Heigl and Kate Hudson. Afterwards, we headed to our favorite watering hole for beer in green bottles, witty repartee, and pretending to cut people from Osaka (hat tip to Kmart). I'm a little hazy after that, but I'm sure I kept my composure while riding the brown wave of insobriety. At least I think I did.

The sun greeted me at ten a.m. on Sunday morning, and Legs, who knows exactly what to fix me for breakfast after a night of carousing, presented me with a plate of hash browns and a BLT sandwich. (I swear, my arteries must be getting blocked like a guy trying to pick up women at a lesbian bar. Our deep fryer: the gift and the curse.) Again, I took the nap of the just, and upon awakening [censored*****] and farted around the apartment all morning and early afternoon (literally. You would too if you ate what I ate and drank what I drank). When two o'clock hit, I showered, dressed, and braved the abject mid-August heat to meet/meat your friend and mine, Kmart. We bought tickets for the four-o'clock showing of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and then took the subway to Jeongja, Flamin' Hot Cheetos our primary quarry.

Sadly, I Love Cookie, the foreign goods shop in Jeongja, was closed (again). No sublime snackfoods would be had, but on the plus side we helped out an amiable woman from Goje Island who was in search of seasoning for the burritos she was making for her sister. Come to think of it, since the shop was closed, her burrito experiment was considerably hindered, but it's the thought that counts, right?

Arriving back at Seohyeon, Kmart and I passed the time by smoking Dunhill Lights and arguing over the fairly obvious ending -- for smart people -- of Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island. Also, I repeatedly tried and failed to pull out an eyebrow hair the length of a 1984 Buick LeSabre. Twenty minutes before our minds -- and eardrums -- would be blown by the idiotic sublimity of G.I. Joe, we headed to the theater, unaware that our lives would be forever altered by Stephen Sommers's superbly dumb, outrageously entertaining film.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is a movie that revels in its stupidy, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Instead of trying to legitimize A FUCKING LINE OF ACTION FIGURES FOR KIDS, Sommers acknowledges and embraces the sheer madness of the concept, from Cobra's outlandish raison d'etre all the way down to a Return of the Jedi-esque underwater battle replete with aboveground gravity and ice that sinks(!). Kmart summed up the film best when he said that, if he had seen it when he was ten years old, it would have been the greatest thing he'd ever seen. Hell, I'm thirty-one, and it kinda still is (which probably speaks volumes about my intelligence level). I'm definitely bumping it up on my ranking of the best comic book movies******.

Our synapses still reeling from Joe glory, we walked to Wara Wara, that good old Seohyeon standby, for "broju" and a poorly decided-upon meal consisting of tofu and pork gristle. Two hours later and considerably drunker, we traipsed******* to Dublin only to find out that Quiz Night (question: What is actress Meryl Streep's alma mater?) was in full swing and no seats were available. Downtrodden yet still hopeful, we crossed the plaza to the excellently designed and immoderately deserted Pub 210 for Samuel Adams's terrific brew, shots of whiskey, and pool tables replete, I say, replete with balls with numbers so large that it was hard to tell whether they were striped or solid. They reminded me of telephone dial pads for seniors with poor eyesight or arthritis, actually, but the bar's dim lighting basically required such.

That excursion into foreign waters complete, we made our way back to Whisky Heaven, where, thankfully, Quiz Night was wrapping up. Kmart and I took (by force) our seats at the bar and proceeded to do what we do best: attract the species feminina. It's so easy it's embarrassing, actually. Kmart is the magnet, women steel, and it came as a surprise to none when a comely young lass asked him...well, given our slight inebriation and G.I. Joe-induced comedown, we're still pretty hazy what she asked, but a bilingual conversation ensued, and numbers were input into cell phones. The girl's, anyway. Because I don't think Kmart's prehistoric cell phone can handle phone numbers larger than ten digits.

The 333 bus (that blackguard) bound for its final jaunt back to Anyang, Kmart unfortunately had to bow out before exchanging other things with the crop-cutted woman of his dreams, like baseball cards and saliva; but all was not lost, Constant Retard. I proceeded to stick around a little while longer, shooting pool and making an ass of myself, the whole time telling (pleading with?) Girl with a Man's Name to make sure she'd give Kmart a call the next day.

As far as I know, that call never came. I hope it eventually does, mostly because, while downplaying his handicap, I promoted Kmart like the OJ Simpson trial promoted Kato Kaelin, and I have my integrity to uphold. Plus, it would be cool to have a double date with two women whose names read as men's when transliterated into English.

It's mostly for that reason, admittedly.


* AKA God's chosen food

** in my underwear!

*** Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

**** foreshadowing!

***** [censored]

****** While you're here, I don't know what foul demon possessed me to list Spider-Man 2 ahead of Ironman. Go back to that post and swap their respective places, please and thank you.

******* because that's what grown, heterosexual men do, right?