"Alrigh Lads, We Nee'a Talk"

<--Deokjeokdo. defn. A small Korean island near Incheon. Well known for its inaccessibility, fishing industry, minbaks (small "motels" where you sleep on the floor) and attractiveness to loudmouthed drunkards.

I had all of last week off and so for the second of the bookending weekends me and some buddies decided to head over to Deokjeokdo for soju soaked good times. We got that, sorta.

Friday night was Canada Buddy's last night open for business at its old location, and all shots of liquor were discounted. I decided to celebrate by trying one of each, including the mythical Bacardi 151, and long story short I didn't last very long.

I also woke up Saturday with a hangover the size of Montana. So the ferry ride over wasn't much fun.

But by the time we got there I was more or less in the spirit of things and the day/night went according to plan. Drinks were had, games were played, people were met, bonfires on the beach were lit, etc etc. There were incidents, there always are, but nothing extraordinary.

Having lost the other two (lightweight) members of our party around 3 or 4 Dave and I staggered back to our minbak and collapsed beside them. They were awoken, still drunk, and eventually we forsook slumber in lieu of bombastic conversation.

Earlier in the day Bryce (who, let it be said, in a bombast competition would probably place well) had brought up the movie Dumb & Dumber and specifically some moment in it when someone screams "Gaaaaaaaary!!" funnily. He'd been doing it all night. I guess you had to be there. Anyway, a few hours before the cock was set to crow he'd been screaming it over and over again in our room, and we'd matched him with inadequate interpretations and general mirth and whatnot.

So when I slipped open the door to our room and stood just outside to smoke a cigarette, and when the conversation continued unmuffled, a neighboring door did the same and from it emerged a very blonde, very British, very pissed off young lady who stomped over to me, thrust her wiry finger in my face and accused me and my cohorts of keeping the whole place awake all night (justly, I might add). I countered with the ineffective "c'mon, we're just trying to have a good time," which she volleyed back to me by way of some sort of cockney defamation, which was immediately seized upon by the Mississippian Bryce as indecipherable and idiotic. The confrontation was then escalated by the insertion of curse words and of Chloe, a sizable Irish lass I'd once before pleasantly greeted and conversed with but who can apparently go from zero to cunt pretty fast. Anyway, there was shouting and whatnot but we backed down and went back inside.

But it wasn't over yet.

At this point I would hasten to remind the reader that I was drunk, and thus not fully accountable for what happened next.

We continued our conversation in our room, at first quietly discussing the problems we had with Chloe in specific, and then less quietly discussing the problems we had with her country in general. We knew she was sitting right outside, well within earshot, and it must be said provoking her wasn't far from our minds. Or should I say: mine. Anyway, some things I recall saying, a bit too loudly:

"Fuck all you potato eatin micks."
"Fuck Bono and his stupid fucking glasses."
"Fuck that snake scaring motherfucking St. Patrick."

And so on. At the time, it was hilarious. It became less funny when our door slid open.

Chloe it seemed, despite being no belle of the ball, was not traveling alone, and into our tiny room walked four or five husky Irishmen. "Alrigh Lads, We Nee'a Talk," said the ringleader. "Oh, fuck," thought I. "Let's step outsi'a," he said. And so we did.

To quote Martin Short: "here's where the story gets weak." There was no fighting. There wasn't even any pushing. Hell, we hardly argued. In fact, instead of bludgeoning each other, we sat down at the courtyard table and finished off a bottle of tequila. I daresay we even became friends, well...at least polite acquaintances.

Eventually everyone staggered off to sleep (except for me, what can I say, I have the stamina of an ox) and I took this picture. Jodie, the ringleader and first into our room can be seen slumped over in his chair, passed out on Jose Cuervo.


All in all, not a bad night.

JIFF, part the second

I saw four movies while in Jeonju, three of them were good, if not great; all four were memorable, if not necessarily for the right reasons.


First up was a Romanian film called California Dreamin'. It was the story of an American Army communications unit that gets stranded in a small town whilst enroute to the conflict in Bosnia circa the late 90s. The starry eyed locals and the indifferent passers-through get up to all sorts of hijinks you can probably imagine for yourself, in the end the Americans leave the town in the throes of a civil war (metaphor, anyone?) and more or less worse off than they were before their idyllic existence was violated by the Americans. It was alright, just too erratic and poorly acted for my tastes.


The acting was definitely better in the second movie I saw, 'In the Valley of Elah,' which was also a story about American soldiers albeit with a much more somber perspective than the first film. The "Valley of Elah" was the setting for the biblical battle between David and Goliath, and our film's David is Tommy Lee Jones, the father of an Iraq War Veteran who was murdered by his colleagues shortly after returning from the war. The Goliath of the picture is the military infrastructure which attempts to thwart his investigation into the murder. It was really well acted and pretty touching, a bit slow at times maybe, and tho I'm no Iraq War fan even I at times thought it was a bit over-the-top anti-American (especially the final scene) but all in all it was the best film of the four.


Another film I'd heard good things about but hadn't been able to catch on the internet or at Yongsan was this one, 'Jessie James.' I liked it. Again, the acting was good, and again, parts of it were pretty moving, but it was a bit too in love with the idea of itself to be great. I really enjoy the whole "anti-Western" motif, tho, and what was so striking and memorable for me about this flick was how there were no heroes and no perfect characters - everyone had a dark side.


The last film I saw was the one I was most excited about, which possibly contributed to why it was such a disappointment for me. I love zombie movies. Love the hell outta them. Would marry them if I could. And George Romero is the king of zombie movies, and we're not talking about someone who's cred rides on what he did in the 70s (hello! Wes Craven), he's made good stuff lately. But this ain't good. The script is so awful, the lines are so flatly delivered, and the acting is so terrible that I just couldn't get into it. I'm willing to forgive quite a lot in a zombie movie (heck I even enjoyed one or two of the seemingly writer-less Resident Evil movies) but the problem with this movie was the writing was so upfront and so message-driven. Instead of killing fucking zombies in all sorts of gory ways the motley crew of 20 somethings and their surly whiskey swillin' philosophy professor scamper around the Pennsylvania countryside debating the nature of the media. "Is something real if it's not on TV?" "We live in an age where everything can be seen everywhere by everyone." "You have to keep filming or it doesn't exist." Blah blah blah. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. And. Kill. Some. Fucking. Zombies!

All in all tho, no regrets, I enjoyed the heck outta Jiff.

JIFF, part the first

This is a long weekend in Korea, with Monday being Children's Day or Buddha's Birthday or some other bullshit holiday which I can't specifically recall. So, too, is next weekend. This fortuitous arrangement of the stars means those of us in the public employ have the whole week off.

Friday, for me, also happened to be a half day because my students are taking exams. So when I'd finished my "work"day at 12 I scrambled over to the Incheon bus terminal and hopped on the next bus for Jeonju. Why?

JIFF - the Jeonju International Film Festival. There are quite a few film festivals here in the Korea, and my attempts to attend them previously have all met with something less than success. I spent one frantic Sunday afternoon with Dave rushing back and forth to theaters learning about all the different ways Koreans can say "sold out" during the Bucheon festival. And tho I've wanted to attend the more renowned Busan Film Festival both of my years here in the Korea, there've been calendar conflicts both times. (<--That's Jeonju, btw, and yes, it looks like everywhere else in Korea, too.) So when I read about this on-line, and saw the lineup of films being shown, I wasted no time getting my azz down there. I'll go through the films I saw in a later post, let me instead herein relay why I'm home on Sunday evening, a full day or two earlier than I'd planned on returning.

The trip down was cake. No problems. And when I walked out of the Jeonju bus terminal there was an information booth that was 1)actually manned by someone and 2)manned by someone who could speak English pretty well and helped me with maps/directions. Friday night I had no trouble getting to a theater, seeing a movie I wanted to see, getting a room for the night at one of the dozens of motels surrounding the bus terminal(s), getting dinner, etc etc.

But then came Saturday. I was planning on seeing four films Saturday, and I didn't have any real trouble getting tickets or getting around during the day. I saw a film at 2, at 8, and then at midnight. The midnight show was a triple feature, and I'd planned on staying for the first two. But the first film was so horrible and I was so exhausted by the time it was over I decided to hop in a taxi and head back to the motel district.

So, I jump in. "Odi kasayo?" he says.
W:"Bus-uh terminal ka jusayo."
TD:"Mwo bus-uh terminal?"
W:"Han-bon."
TD:"Mwo yo?"
W:"Hangul mal ul chal molayo."
TD:"(Angry sigh)"
W: "Cham ship man yo. (Desperately searching pockets for map) Igo ka yo. Igo yo."
TD: "Igo mwo ae yo?"
W: "Han bon bus-uh terminal kinchinayo. Da kinchinayo."
TD: "(mumbling curses)"

Let me translate: "Where to?" he says.
Wayne: Bus terminal go to please.
Taxi Driver: What bus terminal?
Wayne: Number 1!
Taxi Driver: Uh, what?
Wayne: Korean well I don't know.
Taxi Driver: Egads, I hate dealing with ignorant foreigners.
Wayne: Little time give me. (pointing to map) This go to. This!
Taxi Driver: What is this?
Wayne: Number 1 bus terminal it's ok. Everything's ok!
Taxi Driver: Fucking jackass.

Well anyway eventually we got there. I was so relieved when I stepped out of the taxi. I was going to get my bag which I'd stored in the terminal lockers, get a motel room, get a bottle of soju and have some fun with channel 18 on Korean cable. I was less relieved when I noticed that the bus terminal, which I was sure had to be open 24 hours, was as dark as a cloudy night and as empty as a baby's head. That meant no bag. Well, so what, I'll just get it in the morning and use the motel's toiletries. I was even less relieved, however, when I started down motel alley behind the bus terminal and noticed, oddly enough, that everything was dark. The familiar hum of the neon lights upsayo.

Now, I've been around the block. I've been to more than my fair share of Korean cities. I've arrived late, much later than the time it was then (around 2AM). And I have never known motels to shut down so early. Let alone all of them. I was surrounded by a good two dozen motels, all of them as accessible to me at the moment as the moon.

Well, ok, no problem I thought. I'll just find a sauna and spend the night there. I've done that a few times, and tho it's less comfortable than sleeping in a bed, it also happens to be much cheaper. So I started walking. And walking. And walking. No saunas. No motels. More walking. More walking. Still no saunas. No motels.

Finally, in the distance I see neon lights that read, in Korean, "Mo-something." It must be another motel district, I thought. So even tho it was a good mile away I kept walking. And once I got closer, sure enough, I could make out this "district" was comprised of two motels sitting side by side. I approached.

I got close. 200 yards away, the first one flicked its lights off. Shit. I started running. I made it to the second one before they closed for the night, dashed in, and encountered two crooked backed helmonis. "Hana olmaeyo?" (One how much?) "Derka derka upsa." (We don't have a room.) Cackling laughter. "You fucking dried up cunts." Ok, I thought that, didn't say it.

I walked back onto the street. I was in the middle of nowhere, with no prospects for finding a place to lay my weary head. Ok, I thought, I'll go back to the party district, maybe there'll be something there, if not I'll find a PC room and hunker down until morning.

To try and cut this already way too long story short, I did make it back to the party area, I did find a PC room, wherein I was able to search for saunas online and discover where one was, which I was able to reach in a taxi and where I spent a more or less restless 4 hours until morning.

The film I'd wanted to see most was showing Sunday afternoon (Francis Ford Coppolla's latest, Youth Without Youth) but I was so exhausted I headed back to the bus terminal (after some trouble, again, communicating which terminal I wanted to go to) to retrieve my bag.

I get there. It's open. I go to the locker. I type in my number. It says I owe another buck. I try to put it in. It won't take my money. I try again. Still won't take it. I try all different variations in coin, it won't work. I try my key. It won't open. My shit is stuck in there. All of my clothes, my cell phone, everything is irretrievable. I approach someone for help. She tries. It still won't work. We approach an employee of the bus terminal. She doesn't know what to do. Someone else tries. It still won't work. Finally, this helpful college student comes over and figures out we need to push one more button.

Yes! I've got my stuff. I buy coffee for everyone who's helped me with the locker and then go buy a ticket for home. "Chigum derka derka yo," says the clerk. ("The bus is leaving now.") I look at my ticket. Sure enough, it says 7:40, and so does my watch. I race downstairs to where the buses are departing just in time to see the Incheon bus, my bus, pulling away. I start chasing it, duffel bag flopping on my back ridiculously. I bang on the bus's side. It stops, praise Jeebus. I get on to the half empty bus, filled with cackling adjumas, pointing and staring at me.

You fucking dried up cunts, I think.

Crazy Cows

Do you live in America? Do you eat beef a few times a week (I know you do, because Koreans have informed me that Americans eat cheeseburgers every day)? Did you know that you're taking an awful risk?

Well, you are. American beef is dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that ever since President Lee Myung Bak lifted the S Korean ban on it the threat to the Korean people has been the number one story on the news. Not, you know, surging oil prices, or the sinking Korean economy, or the Chinese shenanigans surrounding the Olympics, but rather the dire and deadly threat posed by American beef. So dangerous that hundreds of people held a candlelight vigil in downtown Seoul the other night, not for some recently-tragically departed young person or some moral social agenda, but because Koreans now have the option of eating American beef again.

Maybe I'm in a bad mood. Maybe it's that one of my students blurted out "fucking USA" in class the other day. Maybe it's the succession of anti-American sentiment I encountered at the Jeonju Film Festival (see a later post). But it seems to me the media in this country will seize any opportunity they get to try and whip up anti-American hysteria, and I'm a little sick of it.

Some other US/Korea beef stories:
No government officials likely to eat US beef on TV
One million Korean netizens favor impeachment because of beef controversy