Song for K (Cavalier Here)

Bloc Party - Song for Clay (Disappear Here)

If I were to mention Anticipation, you'd talk about the House, and if I were to speak of the House, you'd bring up the fact that the House always wins, but you can rest easy, for come what may, I am lukewarm, and nothing ever really touches me. Now, let us eat with complete disdain.

(Are you afraid to merge on the freeway?)

Sore Loser

On June 12, 2011, I was sitting at my desk during lunch, listening to ESPN Radio. The Miami Heat were minutes away from losing the NBA Finals to the Dallas Mavericks. I wanted to throw up. I went into the bathroom, but not to vomit. I just needed a time-out. I sat in the toilet stall -- lid closed, of course -- while staring at the ESPN app on my phone. Final score: Dallas 105, Miami 95. Swear word.

I had predicted this. When the Heat landed LeBron James in free agency (and signed Chris Bosh, and re-signed Dwyane Wade), I guessed that they wouldn't win a title in their first year together. Talent of that caliber doesn't...calibrate so easily. It takes time. At least a season, if it ever does.

Expectations were high, but expectations don't often match reality. And, throughout the season, I became guilty of letting my 'what ifs' and 'I think we can do its' take over (I grew up in Toronto, after all; I think they put Go Leafs! chemicals in the tap water). After Miami dispatched Philadelphia, then Boston, then Chicago in the Playoffs, the championship was all but assured. Right?

Nope.

I was crushed. I wanted to cry. The universe is cruel, and the only sure things are disappointment and black licorice.

I will admit that I am a little sucky baby. I called my wife immediately after the game:

"Hello?"

"Can you buy us a Dachshund*?"

God bless her, she did. Sitting at work that afternoon, she sent me cell phone photos of a 12-week-old Dachshund whom she had just bought.



I decided to call him Flash after the nickname of my favorite basketball player. He has gone on to live up to, and transcend, that name, though, through speed, vertical leaping ability, and dog. He has an 'S' on his chest that I just haven't found yet, and he's my hero.

I'm glad the Miami Heat lost the 2011 Finals.





 * The proper-noun capitalization -- or non-capitalization -- of specific animals has bugged the shit out of me for a while. If you can call a bicycle made by a specific company a Schwinn, you should be able to call a dog bred for a specific purpose a Dachshund, capital D.

Hide and Seek (숨바꼭질) Review

After dinner, Leon and I wanted to watch a movie. She suggested 감기 (Flu), which we had wanted to watch for a while (because it was filmed in Bundang, and because it features Soo Ae, toward whom I have a strange attraction), but it was never available at the rental place downstairs. Apparently they didn't stock it because it's not very good, and I have to cry bullshit there. Because it surely can't be as bad as Hide and Seek.

The film starts out promising, though predictable. A single woman living in a rundown area of Incheon is stalked and murdered by a figure in black: black jumpsuit and motorcycle helmet. After the title reveal, we're introduced to our protagonist, who for some reason is never given a name. He's rich, he owns a cafe, has a wife and two kids, and crippling OCD, which, as you might expect, is movie OCD and not real OCD, in that his disorder comes and goes based on the needs of the plot.

It turns out our protagonist (whom I'll just call Guy from now on for brevity's sake) was adopted, and his older brother was accused of molesting a girl when he was a teenager. The older brother was probably innocent, but, because he has scabs all over his body, Guy, who hates his scabs (because OCD), lies and said he molested the girl. This led to Guy's brother becoming a social outcast who did some prison bids and was shunned by the family and denied an inheritance when their parents passed. 

Years later, Guy gets a call from someone asking about his brother. He's been missing from his apartment, but it's not really a big deal (so why the phone call?). The neighborhood is shady, one petitioned for demolition, and people around there go missing all the time. 

Guy goes to investigate the neighborhood, telling his wife and children to stay in the car*. While he's there, his kids are kidnapped inside the car by a crazy dude and saved by a woman with a taser. Taser Lady insists that they come in for a cuppa, and explains that she and her daughter hate the neighborhood and are moving soon. Her husband is in Australia.

Then Guy mentions that his missing brother lived in #317, and everything goes to shit: Taser Lady kicks them out of her apartment, yelling at Guy to make his brother stop peeping at her daughter.

And here is where I have to take my leave, at least as far as a proper review or synopsis goes. A movie this bad doesn't deserve spoiler warnings, but I'm a man of principle. Needless to say, things get pretty ridiculous. 

Some points:

- It's shot really well.

- Every Korean movie I've watched with a status war theme is always terribly written ("Mom, I want pizza! Pizza!" "My friend at school has a 3DS, so buy me a 3DS!"). And like 하녀 (The Housemaid), they both end in a conflagration, this one weirdly localized as Guy and his kids stare dumbfounded.

- I kind of want to rewatch the movie to take inventory of just how many times people are hit in the head by objects (flower pots, concrete bricks, lead pipes, fists, umbrellas**).

- Best line of the movie: "It's not the yogurt lady! Don't open the door!"

- I'm no film cricket, but opening a movie titled Hide and Seek with a family literally playing hide-and-seek is a bit much, no?

- That is the worst ending to any movie I've ever seen. That kid has to eat or go to the bathroom. 

2/4


*  Like that ever works. And it happens twice in this movie!

** been there

For a Limited Time Only (Restrictions May Apply)

We accept her, one of us, we accept her, one of us Gooble, gobble, gooble, gobble We accept her, we accept her Gooble, gobble, gooble, gobble! 'They're going to make you one of them, my peacock!' -- Todd Browning's Freaks

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -- Ferris Bueller's Day Off

I am about to find myself, in a few months, on the wrong side of 30. Which I can accept. I would rather be 36 than 46; and I'm sure that, when (or if), I turn 46, I'll be thankful that I have a decade left until I turn 56, and so on. But what I can't reconcile with is the ostensibly faster passage of time as I age. Until my late 20s, everything seemed to move at an agreeable pace. It's only when I am reminded that 2007 was seven(!) years ago that the cruel momentum of time's passing becomes a fearsome locomotive, gaining speed with each passing year, until last stop...

...Willoughby?


I am going to die someday, later rather than sooner, Plinko God willing, and hopefully not painfully. I have accepted this idea. But only in theory. I'm not at peace with dying, because I want to keep doing stuff: talking with people I love, getting nudged (not mugged, though) on the subway by some impatient guy, cleaning the grease off of a bicycle chain, eating a burrito at 4 AM with a group of carousers, throwing a snowball at a snowman and appreciating the weird irony, sitting in a movie theater as hundreds of -- or dozens, or a few -- people stare rapt at a white screen and share a communal experience in silence...

Laughing at fart jokes despite myself...eating French-fried potatoes...pretending to not cry at movies...getting indignant when someone notices I'm pretending to not cry and calls me on it...the pretty sound of women talking in hushed tones on the phone...Mario Kart...fucking dachshunds...

I don't want to stop living. One day, though, I will; and the biggest rub is that I won't be able to complain about it. That fills me with terror. If I am no longer Me, how will I know? Everything will vanish. Nothing will be all. How will I know if the Bills win the Super Bowl? How will I know my friends and family are happy when I won't know anything?

I can't fathom nonexistence. I don't think that's an unreasonable statement. Smile, flashbulb...gone.

Souvenirs are 50% off in the gift shop. Tell your friends.

Finish Line

I'll tell you what, I'm never eating at Benihana again. I don't care whose birthday it is.

 February is the cruelest month when it comes to Hollywood movies. After all the jockeying for Oscar votes has been completed, the studios dump their flotsam and jetsam on the movie-going public. Shit like I, Frankenstein gets released*. Combined with all the snowfall in the northeast, where my heart always resides, it makes for a pretty shitty time of year.

This dearth of quality films does however serve as a time to reflect on the feast that was served before last year's nominations deadline, to pick at the leftovers. I've reexamined most of the notable films** and performances, and I've come to two conclusions.

1

The Wolf of Wall Street would be my vote, if I had one, for Best Picture. Darkly comic and enormously enjoyable, only Martin Scorsese, with assists from Thelma Schoonmaker and Terence Winter, could craft such a remarkable film about absolutely horrible human beings. Marty did on purpose what Brian De Palma did accidentally 31 years earlier with Scarface: he made his protagonist a litmus test to examine the character of the viewer. Jordan Belfort is not a person anyone should ever want to be like. But a lot of people want just that: to be a villain and consider themselves the hero.

2

Rush, directed by Ron Howard***, is my personal runner-up for the best movie I watched last year. That it got completely shut out of Academy Awards nominations is borderline criminal. It is, perhaps, the finest movie ever made about a rivalry, and Daniel Bruhl's performance is stunning. It got shut out, but, like the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar, nature finds a way. Rush will be discovered and rediscovered over the years. It is so good.


* The only exception in recent years to this rule of thumb, in terms of both box office and critical success, was Taken in 2009.

** I still haven't seen American Hustle.

*** "Cloying" is the term I used to use to describe Ron Howard after A Beautiful Mind and the Da Vinci Code movies. But Rush is as honest a film that someone can make. I would love more from Real Ron Howard, less from Studio Robot Ron Howard.

Wait. What Now?

Honestly, I'm not quite sure what to say about this video... I'll say that a person probably shouldn't watch it at work, but to those that do, hats off to you, sir or madam, as there are some brass balls clanging between those legs of yours. I'll also say that this video isn't family friendly, but again, if one chooses to watch this video with children present, hats off to you, sir or madam, as traumatizing your children is part of being good parent.

The Fifteenth

Stabbing that which isn't meant to lie dormant seems pretty dumb to me. On the flip side, do carry on.

Alanis Morissette - Hands Clean

Where Countries Come together, to Hate Each Other in the Name Of Sport

The Olympics medal rankings and which country is "winning" is truly stupid, yet fixable. The total number of medals should not define a country's overall performance. Just being pretty good -- albeit on an exceptional level -- all around shouldn't amount to the same thing as being unquestionably great. Six pennies plus 3 nickels plus a sole 10-cent coin equal 31 cents; Six dimes plus 3 nickels plus a single penny equal 76 cents. I made you math.

It's ironic that the value of precious metals is easily disregarded every 4 years. Norway (6), the United States (6), and the Netherlands (5) currently have more bronze medals than they have golds, yet they sit, at least on Yahoo! as the top 3 "winners" so far of these Olympics. I find this very petty, like a child going around picking up detritus just so he can say he is its sole owner. To paraphrase the man, you can't turn shit into Shinola. There is much to respect in an Olympic participant: the skill he possesses, the dedication; but to reward in a 3rd -or 2nd-place Olympic athlete the same as a Gold Medalist (proper noun) is wrong. I'm all for equality, but not at the expense of cheapening greatness.

So, how to judge each country based on its medal count? It's easy, like Sunday morning and shoplifting. If you've ever played Mario Kart or have a logical working brain, you would assign points to medals as follows:

Gold: 3
Silver: 2
Bronze: 1

Based on this radical supposition, here is the true Sochi Olympics current rankings (top 5):

Germany: 26 pts*
Norway: 24 pts
Netherlands: 23 pts
Canada: 22 pts
Russia: 20 pts

* Germany collected 7 gold medals in like a day or two (!), yet the Western media, as far as I've seen, have been dumb on the achievement. That shit ain't right. Credit where it's due!

Double Dip

More than a decade ago, I was seated on a rickety chair at an unsteady table in a dilapidated bar of an unsound college town. A young man sitting across from me reached across the table to a pack of Marlboros lying next to my pint of Guinness, removed a cigarette, lit up, and said, "Some people are givers, and some people are takers."

I laughed, mostly because he was a simpleton in the truest sense of the word, and said, "If only I were interested in people." He was a bit too stupid to figure out he'd just been taken, but that's a given.

---

Occasionally, people will ask me for something, such as, "Are you going to eat those cheese balls?" and whether someone is asking for food, requesting permission to lay hands upon that which is mine, or simply offering a pleasantry as premise to pilfering a plate is irrelevant as well as perplexing, for the people who ask are the ones that needn't. Folks are funny like that. 

Stars / Alignment

"A bag of black licorice jelly beans just saved your friend from a fiery death, so shut the fuck up and smile already."

"What's that supposed to mean, anyway?"

"It means that magic still exists within this world even if it isn't seen as magic, and what we do isn't who we are even if the stars are in alignment." 

"Yeah, yeah."

"Precisely."

Morningwood - Nu Rock