Science

I have a 700-page hardcover book about basketball*. We're fresh into the 2009-10 NBA season, and I have time off from "work"** in the late morning/early afternoon to watch any game on the sched via The Great Time Killer (AKA the Internet). I work until past ten three nights a week, and on the nights I don't I'm busy getting shitfaced at The Best Bar in Bundang***. I recently received the Back to the Future trilogy on DVD (I've since watched Part One roughly 800 times). The foliage outside is beautiful, and I spend countless hours staring at it from the comfort of my apartment, my dog nestled in my lap, Simon and Garfunkel playing on my stereo. AK Plaza now sells Ballreich's superlative potato chips, and those shits aren't going to eat themselves. Since last week, I've had sometimes manageable, oftentimes unbearable intestinal cramps (Ballreich's? Nah. Voodoo doll? Probably). Kmart and I**** broke -- with the help of steroids -- the PK post record this past October, and I'm a man who not only rests on his laurels but falls into a coma on them. Legs is three months pregnant and her mood from day to day can be described as either Ron Artest (bipolar) or Courtney Love (batshit insane)*****. And Stephen King's new 1000+-page novel, Under the Dome******, is set to arrive sometime in the next two weeks. Hopefully I won't get run over by a bus before then. But I'm not making any promises.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I'm occupied like WWII Poland. I wish it wasn't the case, but it is. The Constant Retards who make up this hallowed blog's readership know by now that every six months or so I get a little antsy and contemplate quitting Psychedelic Kimchi, but that song has been played so much that even I'm willing to admit it's tired. (And I'm the last person to admit his wrongdoings. Ask my wife. She nicknamed me "Japan.") Because, invariably*******, I'll be back before anyone realizes I'm gone.

(See? It's November 22nd and you've failed to visit since a fortnight last Thursday. Shame on you. And greetings from the future!)

However, before I go, a few points:

1) Dave's ESL Cafe is nothing but tranks, lobos, and zipheads these days, but there are a few posters who get it, and Jongnoguru was one of the few. The best at it, in fact. Sadly, he was killed in a motorcycle accident last month. The news hit me particularly hard because, while I had never met the man, we collaborated via MSN Messenger******** on a copy-writing project********* three years ago and stayed in touch via private messaging afterwards. (Jongnoguru was without a doubt the PM prime minister.) And while it may sound weird for me to lament the loss of someone I've never met, that's the Internet for you. Trust me, your kids will understand.

2) The Miami Heat are(is?) 6-1. I know they/it have/has had a pretty easy schedule so far, but let an old man relive past glories, why dontcha? Conversely, the Phoenix Suns are 7-1 with a bitch of a road trip to start the season. Since I jumped off New Orleans' ship like it was on fire last month, can the Suns bandwagon come pick me up? These waters are cold, and I miss Steve Nash. SOS.

3) I cannot say this enough: fuck these elevators. Two elevators, over 120 residences, half of them businesses. Pretty soon, elevator rage will boil to the surface like the race riot at the climax of Do the Right Thing, I'm convinced. It's just a matter of time. Until then, fuck these motherfucking elevators. Squared.

4) You haven't lived until you've heard a French-born Korean speak. It's like peanut butter and chocolate. Trust me.

5) 1. Lee Hyori 2. Son Danbi 3. Hwang Jeongeum 4. Jeong Gaeum (the Mortal Kombat to Song Hyegyo's Street Fighter 2) 5. Ha Huira 6. Kim Saerom, even though she looks like she's had too many Botox injections -- and she's only twenty-two! 7. I'm forgetting a few names, like when I listed the best movies of the decade and forgot to include Slumdog Millionaire (and Oldboy, and The Reader**********).

6) Even if I lied and told you I threw up, it hasn't happened in going on seventeen years. I had a rough time yesterday, but I worked myself through it and the streak lives on. You'd have a better chance betting against the sun rising tomorrow than you would betting on me puking. Also: I never ate that muffin. Sometimes I lie about the most inconsequential of things. (A ladybug bit my ear!)

Guten nacht.


* Bill Simmons's hubris-titled The Book of Basketball. I know I've given Simmons -- once my favorite Internet writer, now a podcast "legend," and that's far from a good thing -- shit over the years, but the man knows roundball. What an entertaining read. It's like basketball pornography; and, free from the constraints of ESPN, he doesn't exactly cuss up a storm, but he at least cusses up an April shower. Props. I love swear words.

** work

*** the Family Mart in Jeongja behind the K-1 anma. Their plastic chairs are so green and sooo shiny.

**** Mostly Kmart, to his credit. You may know him by his new alias, New Coke (I mean Chicken Wire). I now know him as the twenty-nine-year-old curmudgeon. Blame infrequent bowel movements(?).

***** None of that is true. Calm down, Mom. Sometimes I get my current and ex wives confused, like when parents with multiple children call out the wrong kid's name. (And in the case of my father, a kid of the wrong gender.) What can I say, I have shell shock from four years of sleeping with one eye open and a knife beneath my pillow.

****** How cruel is it that the literary gods cursed King with a concept similar to The Simpsons Movie? King hasn't published such a lengthy novel since the unedited version of The Stand was released almost twenty years ago, and now, while reading every single page of his latest epic, I'm afraid I won't be able to get the yellow-hued image of Homer Simpson out of my head. Still, I'm aboard for the ride. Duma Key was a fucking blast, and I can't wait to find out what's in store in the master's -- after Dostoevsky, Maugham, before Dave Eggers, Eoin Forbes -- latest. (Just promise me one thing, Stevie: no explosions as plot devices or time loops, okay? Promise? Pinky promise?)

******* except for the time between late 2006 and early 2007 when I was getting divorced and my life was in constant danger. That was definitely not a self-imposed hiatus. Spoilers: I lived. And so did the 18th Letter. Ever after. Happily.

******** eoinforbesisanincredibleassholejustaskanyonewhoknowshim_78@hotmail.com

********* He was asked to write a 3G cell phone advert for LG that would be published in Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal, and he passed it on to me because, in his words, they wanted a twenty-somethingish spin which, surprisingly, he thought I could deliver, even though I was nearing my thirties at the time and knew -- due to living in Korea for over six years -- little to nothing about twenty-somethings who read either publication. But I was honored. And I gave that copy everything I had, every little esoteric nuance I knew. (Copy writing, you see, is an art, I was and still am convinced.) I likened the coming 3G revolution to "Kubrick's big black monolith," and while at the time I knew I was setting myself up for disaster, I wrote as naturally as I knew how. Nobody could have been more shocked than me when Jongnoguru wrote back a few weeks later that not only had LG accepted the copy but that they had done so without any nitpickings, a first according to him. I was floored. Really, I'm getting paid for this, and on my own terms? It was unbelievable. In fact, I still can't believe it. You'd have to read the copy to fully understand, but I basically went for broke in my wheelhouse (sans rampant punctuation and asterisks, although I threw around a few semi-colons. I gotta be me, after all.) I messaged the guru later to inquire about whether he knew when the ad would be published, and he hadn't a clue. That's the freelancer's bane, he told me. Truer words: never spoken.

********** But seriously, fuck that movie to pluperfect Hell. You wanna see a Holocaust love story? Watch Big.