Memory Lane (IX)

After returning from Pearson airport for the 2nd time in just over 12 hours, the first thing I wanted to do was take a nice, long walk in the forest behind my parents' home. After the marathon of sleep depravation I'd just been through, only making up 5 measly hours the night prior, I had a painfully acute headache; but this nature hike was somehow very important to me. I had to know if my virgin Mary statues filled with heroin remained where I had hidden them years before.

But really, after having spent the past two years cooped up in the concrete confines of Seoul, walking into the shade of the canopy and smelling the grass, trees, flowers, soil and fresh air was like a cup of cool water to a long-parched throat.

We walked for about 10 minutes, until my wife spotted a family of racoons living in a hollow tree. We took them home and ate them. Seriously though, not long after that discovery, we came across a placid-looking mother deer standing directly in our paths. It was as though someone or something was sending me a message: welcome home. Whenever my wife is asked about her first trip to Canada, that's the anecdote she invariably relates. I on the other hand slightly embellish the tale, claiming that it wasn't a female deer but rather a buck, and that, soon after we first espied it, a tiger ran out of the brush, and both creatures stood on their hind legs to embrace in a hug so beautiful it cannot faithfully be depicted in story nor art.

The next order of business was to hop in the car (a 1997 Pontiac Grand Prix, if it matters) and head over to Burger King for a Whopper w/cheese, large fries (yes, they have BK in Korea, but, like human flesh, the fries back home are a billion times tastier; there's really no comparison), a large vanilla milkshake and an angioplasty on the side. As you can tell, this was a very high priority.

Afterwards, we bought tickets to see Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, which had recently opened. I spent half of the movie clutching my throbbing cranium, which hurt worse than I've ever felt it, before or since. Because of the jet lag, not George Lucas's shitty dialogue. Thought I should clear that up.

Then we drove to the mall and I picked up DJ Shadow's sophomore CD.

Then we drove to Rogers Video and I rented Halloween, and was asked to show ID as proof that I was over 18. Again, welcome home.

Then I bought a case of Labbatt's Blue at The Beer Store (oddly, no need to show ID there), ordered Little Caesars pizza, and got drunk with my brother while watching the Lakers/Kings Western Conference semifinals.

And things of a similar nature as those described above went on for another 4 and a half months.

Oh, Canada.

Dispatch From America: Dark Days on This, the Darkest of All Continents

MEMO

Date: 7/30/2006

To: Editor-in-Chief, Psychedelic Kimchi

From: TMH, Foreign Correspondent

RE: Increasingly Dire political situation/cause for hope

I can only hope this dispatch reaches the home offices of Psychedelic Kimchi in some reasonable amount of time. I had to give my text to a llama farmer as he passed through Ellensburg, WA on his way to the coast to ply his wares. He promised me that once there he would give it to a sea-faring compatriot of his who could get it safely out of the country and to civilization. To reveal anymore of my whereabouts or methods would endanger not only my work but also my life and the lives of those who have aided me in my charge: To shine light into this misbegotten, god-forsaken little hole in the world; to attempt to convey the seriousness of our situation in stark enough terms that the international community is forced to take action. Make no mistake friends, America may not be the most pressing human rights crisis yet, but the harbingers are on the horizon, and they portend doom for freedom, egalitarianism and brotherhood.

When accepting the assignment to become embedded in America I was naturally reluctant, but even at my most paranoid I could never have fathomed, while sitting safe and sound in Korea, just how bad, how positively Orwellian, things had gotten in this once proud land.

The newest tactic of the ruling elite (having taken power in a coup d'etat in all but name in 2000) is to distract the voting populace with moronic and inconsequential domestic issues while pursuing an aggressive foreign policy that is steadily bankrupting the nation. Issues as mundane as gay marriage, flag burning (a tactic I have come to refer to as Wag the Flag/Wag the Fag) and deciding on an official language (we made it 230 years without one, but we definitely have to get it done now) are trumpeted in the state-controlled media (FOX News) as life or death matters, while lists of the war casualties are considered unpatriotic and pictures of returning coffins draped in flags are outright banned. The President and his staff engage in forms of blackwhite that would make Big Brother and his Inner Party blush, as they manage "to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed.”

Is there then, no hope? Has this one proud beacon of freedom and justice gone too far? Has she betrayed her beliefs in a fit of brazen cowardice? Did she lack the courage of her convictions after all? Is there no one left like Joseph Hewes who, on July 3rd, 1776, while representing North Carolina at the continental congress, was informed that a written threat of a bomb in the cellar had been received and responded: "Mr. President, I am against wasting any time searching the cellars. I would as soon be blown to pieces as proclaim to the world that I was frightened by a note"?

Admittedly, the causes for hope had been few and far between. I had begun to despair in my little bunker office in Ellensburg, WA, with the subversive books and the forbidden typewriter stashed in a cupboard in case of an unannounced search. But then something began to happen. Slowly at first, but then it built. There was a brief setback in the middle of the month, but for the most part the phenomenon lasted the entirety of June and it was blissful to behold. 18-8, it wound up, and by the time the dust cleared tonight, the 1st of July, there they sat, where I thought I'd never see them again. The Mariners were a game out of first place in the AL West.

These are dark times indeed, and far be it from me, your humble American correspondent, to sit here and tell you everything's going to be alright. I wouldn't insult your intelligence in such a manner. Things are bleak. The evil, and rich, and stupid hold the power. They hold the cards. It is a blistering hot summer in the Yakima Valley, friends, and every night through my tiny slit of a window in my tiny bunker of a room I see the light fade and I see the darkness fall.

But the sun also rises.

Vive le resistance.

Vive le Ichiro.

Tiberious aka Sparkles > JRR Tolkien

JRR Tolkien, the great linguist, is credited as claiming that cellar door is the most beautiful combination of words in the English language; and while it's great and all, conjuring both images of a D&D character and something Ron Popeil might hawk in an infomercial, I do believe I, myself no slouch as a proficient wordsmith, have Tolkien beat.

With an ungodly proclivity

I believe I coined the phrase in this very blog, sometime last year, in reference to my onanistic tendencies.

Go ahead, say it to yourself a couple hundred times. It just rolls off the tongue.

Next goal: write a trilogy of novels that will one day be considered the greatest work of fantasy literature ever written.

Kid's stuff.

Take, Double Take

A month or so ago someone, possibly my mother, sent me a comment calling me a bigot for claiming that certain NBA players (Dallas' Darrell Armstrong and Detroit's Ben Wallace, to be exact) look similar to the two male African-American actors on ABC's Lost.

I deleted the aforementioned comment, because dude was obviously trippin' like Jack Tripper. But just to show that I don't discriminate based on creed or color, here are some similarities between this year's NBA draft class and past-and-present entertainment icons:

1)

Blue Oyster Cult's Donald Roeser (a rock-and-roll name if ever there was one), pictured 2nd from the left.

And...

Gonzaga's Adam Morisson.

2)

Uber-hunk Jude "I fought myself, and I won" Law


And...

Potential no. 1 pick Andrea "I'm a boy, I'm a boy, but my Mom won't admit it" Bargnani.

3)

Psychedelic Kimchi-endorsed party animal JJ Reddick.

And...

This dude.

PS - Only just a week ago I promised I'd try not to write any basketball-related posts until the fall. I guess this makes me a filthy liar.

And, like a dog is wont to drink out of a toilet, I doubt I'll change my errant ways.

Mom.

Psychedelic Kimochi

Ms. Han Jang-Hee, who, according to people who will likely never have sex, apparently looks like an elf from the game Lineage.

Junebug

Like Gary Larson's The Far Side, an inordinate number of my Psychedelic Kimchi posts are bug-themed.

And this one is no different.

Last night I, my wife, and our daughter went shopping for groceries at E-Mart, which on a weekday feels kinda eerie, sort of like when you were a kid and had to visit your school on Parent/Teacher Night.

We shopped. I stocked up on the four food groups: hot dogs, SPAM, potato chips and beer, and further amused myself by emancipating canned goods from their labels; my wife had fun tasting every free sample offered -- WARNING: AJUMMAHOOD APPROACHING! -- and spent roughly 20 minutes trying to decide which brand of milk to buy; and our daughter, the precocious scamp, ran amok until she became mesmerized by the king crabs, and in a voice filled with deep longing said she'd like to hop in the tank with them. She chickened out when I picked her up and tried to toss her in, though, the wimp.

But the real fun didn't begin until we reached the check-out counter upstairs on the main floor. My wife, ever the Frugal Francine, pulled an old plastic E-Mart bag from her purse. Because plastic E-Mart bags cost an astronomical 50 won. Outrageous, non?

Anyway, she handed the bag to me. That's when I noticed there was a round black insect of considerable size -- what do I look like, an entomologist? -- on it.

Initially I didn't do anything. Because, you know, bugs are icky. I instead pointed the bug out to my wife.

In retrospect, probably a bad idea.

Now, it's kinda late in the story here, but I should mention that, as all this occurred, two children -- brother and sister -- of the mother behind us were standing next to me, gaping. I think it was my handsome eyes. Might have been my alluring smell.

Regardless, these two kids were standing close by, mouths ajar. And when my wife saw the bug, she hastily flicked it.

Right into the boy's open mouth.

[Marv Albert Voice]

YES!

And no. See, as funny as I found it, the little boy felt the opposite, and that's an understatement. After taking a couple of seconds to register what had just happened, he spit the bug out and started to wail. Amazingly and perplexingly, his sister started crying too. Their mother, who was behind my wife and busy unloading her groceries, became startled. I, on the other hand, was riveted. The whole scene weirdly reminded me of the part in A Christmas Story when Ralphie's parents take him and his brother to the department store to see Santa Claus.

My wife did her best to try to calm down both children and placate their mother. Meanwhile, every shopper and clerk in the vicinity looked on, trying to figure out what the hell had happened.

And as much as I enjoyed the show, I was pretty relieved when, groceries bagged, it was time to fly.

(I kill me.)

Spider-Me

In case you've ever wondered what my day job is, Marvel Comics recently revealed my secret identity in issue no. 2 of their ground-breaking/sales-whoring series Civil War.

I'm not one to get spooked easily, but right now I feel like the chick in that old Twilight Zone episode, Mirror Image.

Freaky stuff.

Tell me it's all in my imagination:

Sockville-Bagginses

Every day before I leave for work, my wife tells me to be careful. She's afraid I'm going to get run over by a car or something. I appreciate the sentiment, but, as I've reminded her hundreds of times, being careful doesn't have much to do with it. One can be as careful as a neurosurgeon performing brain surgery and still get struck down by misfortune.

Just ask Kobe Bryant.

The awful reality is that we never know when hard luck will befall us, and all the precautions in the world don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy, dangerous world.

Case in point: today, as I was getting dressed, I pulled a pair of socks out of my drawer, only to notice that they were mismatched. Subsequently, I rummaged in the drawer until I located my sock's twin, bundled up -- in what I colloquially like to refer to as a sock grenade -- with a stranger.

I yanked my sock free, but it was still bunched up, so I cracked it like a whip to unfurl it.

And in doing so clocked myself in the nuts.

Now, a bundled-up sock to the scrotum may not sound very painful, but believe me, it is. I felt a jolt of pain, shouted out, and curled up in a ball (no pun intended) on the floor.

My wife of course found this the funniest thing in the world, going so far as to suggest we take a photo of me writhing in agony. Needless to say, I was not amused.

As far as my ongoing list of scrotal assaults goes, it wasn't the nadir, but it was close.

Polyester/Cotton Blend

If there's one inanimate object I'm most fond of, besides sandwiches and Gary Payton, it's T-shirts. It's the ultimate article of expression (and comfort), and tells a lot about a person.

Having lived in Korea for nearly 6 years, my search has been somewhat inactive, due to my discerning taste and a substantial lack of good product.

I've flirted with a few good ones, but the T's I've bought here invariably turn out to be one-night stands. And I need a stable relationship. No shrinking or turning into a beach umbrella after one wash, what I want is a T that I can spend the next 5-10 years of my life with, without fear of abandonment (or color fading).

I want to find the perfect T-shirt.

Relatedly, I'd like to hear any Favorite T-shirt anecdotes from youse guys (and gals). A solid T-shirt story -- good or bad -- is riveting to me. Seriously.

If you have a passionate T-shirt tale, send me an e-mail at taka_spark@yahoo.com, or post it in the comments section.

Photos are encouraged, but not required.

E

PS - No V-necks.

Just Hangin' Out