300 Reasons Why You Shouldn't See '300'

1) It's probably gonna cost you somewhere between 6 and 10 bucks.

2) You're also gonna need a good two hours to devote to it, and like the money, you ain't getting that back.

3) Do you see the picture over there ---->? If you had to characterize his manner of speaking, what would you choose? Whispering? Shouting? Pompous bellowing? I'd lean towards the latter of those three, too, and now try and imagine a full length feature film wherein that is the only way folx communicate. Yeah.

4) Shirtless dudes to scantily clad ladies ratio --> 300: 1.

5) Sloooooooooow mooooootiooooon allllllllllll oooooooooooffff tttttttthhhhhhhhhheeeeeee tttttttttiiiiiiiiiimmmmmmmmeee iiiiiissssssss rrrrrrreeeeeaaaaaaaallllllllllllyyyyyyyy aaannnnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooyyyyyyiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnggggggg.

6) You know how it ends already.

7) Apparently the Persians circa few thousand years ago were all gray skinned monsters. Who knew?

8) There's a needless subplot about the wife and politics and I don't have the energy to go into it.

9) After the 15th pointless slow motion decapitation, you get kinda bored with it.

10) For some reason one of the Spartans looks like this guy:

And they DON'T play it up for laughs.

11) Every mundane gesture gets verbally slobbered all over by the voiceover dude. Example from how I imagine the script:

(Leonidas picks up his sword)

Voiceover Guy: Leonidas was skilled with the sword from the start, his inner steel matched the strength of his blade, in his glorious youth he had slain eight mountainous wolf beasts in an epic struggle over the rights to feed on a felled deer yadda yadda yadda....

Or

(Yookpilones takes a bite from an apple)

VG: Oh, the Spartans were a hungry bunch, but their hunger for battle was even greater, indeed in taking a bite out of his apple Yookpilones yearned to do the same to his foe, the hordes of the Persian Empire who had massed on yonder shore....

All of this would be filmed in slow motion, of course, while the hero gazes thoughtfully into the distance or at a fallen comrade or straight into the sun.

12)There are all sorts of eye-rolling inducing winks and hints at our current war in Iraq, things like "We are at war, why can't you realize it, we have to stand and fight!" and "Freedom comes at a price."

13) Leonidas has a stupid looking beard.

14)One homeboy takes out a charging rhino with his spear.

15) There's a group of dudes who all look just like the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. Struck me as kind of a rip off, specially since they're baddies, too.

16) The archetypal noble queen totally bangs the bad guy, and then she murders him, and then, surprise surprise, she has a witty little thing to say to him as he dies. Cliche factor 5.

Bad Guy: I'm turning the tables on you and exposing you as a whore and doing generally evil things blah blah blah....

Queen: How dare you!

Bad Guy: Blah blah blah whore blah blah blah I banged you blah blah blah...

Queen: (steals his sword and stabs him in the gut)

Bad Guy: Whoa, I wish I hadn't been bad.

Queen: I am going to say something witty as you die that will make your death even worse, so there!

17) There are all these cool giant monster guys that have like 10 minutes of buildup and then die in 10 seconds. There's this one dude who's chained up by the Persians (so you know he must be super badass) and he's like 8 feet tall and his face is all fucked and everything, and we see him coming to the battle for like 10 minutes, roaring the whole time. Seriously, imagine like this:

Goliath guy: (10 minutes) Raaaaaaaarrrrr rarrarararara!!! ARRRRRR!!!!! (/10 minutes)

Leonidas: Hello extra ugly and tall bad guy. I will kill you!

Goliath: No you won't!

(Leonidas kills him) (End Scene)

18) For some reason Sparta has a giant pit in the middle of town. They should put a fence up or something.

19) People have weird accents. One dude's from Australia, another's from the UK, another's from India, etc etc.

20) The Greeks are wholly good and the Persians are wholly bad. From what I know about both peoples, I think I'd've rather been living in Perseopolis about this time than Sparta.

21) The Spartans are a fucked up people, and yet they're cast as the absolute good. These guys threw babies who weren't up to snuff out into the woods, enslaved their neighbors so they could perpetuate their warrior culture while 'lesser' people minded the fields and whatnot, and generally caused lots of problems. Give me the Persians with their cool elephants and shit anyday. Plus, number of brothels per civilization seen in 300: Persians -1 Spartans - 0. Check. Mate.

22) Leonidas has to bust his ass to get up to this Greek temple on the top of this inaccessible rocky protrusion, and then there's like 8 old guys up there. And they later get visited by flabby bad guy and his cohorts. How the fuck did they all get up there?

23) Dudes stand around and talk about their hearts a lot. "My heart is filled with love" "my heart is filled with hate" "What fills your heart?" and so on. Gay.

24) I started pulling for the Persians about 1/4 of the way through the movie.

25) The Persians are constantly falling down. Falling off of cliffs, falling to the bottom of the sea, falling off of horses, etc etc. What's with that?

26) Sin City was way better. It was fun. 300 isn't.

27) Enough with the comic book movies. I love comic books, but just b/c someone has an idea and it was in a comic book doesn't mean it should be made into a film.

28) I nearly walked out.

300) It's worse than Mel Gibson's The Passion.

More Inane Korean Kid-Chatter!

Giving the people what they want-

Dancing Queen

What can be said about this? It pretty much speaks for itself. From our rehearsal for the upcoming graduation:

The Blasphemy Challenge

This is interesting, I think, if perhaps a bit misguided.

Belated Best Wishes for Christmas

Sure, I'm a few weeks late in posting this, but I think it's pretty funny so it's worth it. My kids gave me a bunch of cards for Christmas, and they were filled with the usual platitudes and misspellings. This one was the best:

The many faces of SLP Santa

There's this great Far Side cartoon I saw once called "The Many Faces of a German Shepard" or something like that. There are a series of portraits of the same dog's face, some are labeled "ecstatic" "thrilled" "jubilant" some say "bored" "ill" "suicidal," and of course...they all look the same. With that introduction, I bring you the many faces of the SLP Santa.

Happy Santa:


Distraught Santa:

Sweaty Santa:

Mischievous Santa:

Murderous Santa:

And a few non-Santa related SLP pictures:

Booty

Stuff is cheap in China. I bought a shitload of clothes...some of it fits, some, well, doesn't, but I still made out ok in the end trust me. But the best deal I found while I was there was buying bootleg movies...Christ I thought Yongsan had some good shit, they've got nothing on these little places underground in Beijing. I bought all of this for about 5 bucks -

And this ain't no pan and scan shit from the back of a movie theater in Moscow, which is half of what you get here in Korea. This is DVD quality stuff for movies that are still in the theaters back home...heck, Flags of Our Fathers came out like last week.

Anyway, it's enabled me to catch up on a lot of movies I've wanted to see but missed, being in Korea and all...so far I've watched The Departed, Clerks II, Talladega Nights, and World Trade Center, and they all ranged from good to great. Thank you bootleggers!

China

So, I went to China for 8 days during my end of year vacation. It was great...I saw a lot of interesting stuff and I liked a lot about the country. There were things I didn't like...by the end of my visit I was telling the incessant random strangers that come up to you there trying to sell you shit or scam you or knife you in the back in their "art gallery" that's just around the corner to fuck off. This is how it would go:

Day 1 -

Random Chinese person: "Hi, how are you?"

Me: "Oh, I'm good, and you?"

CP: "Fine. Where are you from?"

Me: "America."

CP: "Oh, America good country. Very nice. I am a poor art student. Would you like to buy some of my random shit?"

Me: "No, thank you. Have a nice day."

Day 3-

CP: "Hi, how are you?"

Me: silence

CP: "Where are you from?"

Me: "America."

CP: "Oh, America is very good country. You want to buy Mao T-shirt?"

Me: walking away faster, in silence

Day 8 -

CP: "Hi, how are-"

Me: "Fuck off you fucking lowlife."


Seriously, the Chinese folx need to do something about the hawkers before the Olympics get revved up in 2008. It was the biggest blight on an otherwise fun trip.

Oh, I got into a fight with a 10 year old street urchin. That was kind of a downer. Dude had the holey mittens and the wool cap, Dickens style. He was a classic stereotype...of course, I felt like something of a stereotype, too, after I kicked him in the face so he'd let go of me and I could close the cab door...for the rest of that day I kept looking in the mirror and seeing Mr. Burns. Oh well, it's a long story and I don't feel like explaining it all, but I felt more or less justified.

I also met a midget with a huge cock. You see, there's this bar in Shanghai...no, just kidding, well, about the bar, I really did meet a well endowed midget. Picture below. Seriously (more or less).

I saw the sights, of course.

Impressive: the Great Wall, the Summer Palace (it was especially beautiful when I visited b/c it was snowing and the lake was frozen - people could walk all the way across it), the Temple of Heaven, Shanghai's skyline

Cool Enough: the Bund area in Shanghai (it's the historic European district), the Shanghai museum (supposedley the best in China - it was cool, but if that's your best, well, let's just say the Louvre folks aren't sweating), Tiannemen square, the Beijing art museum, Beijing's various shopping areas especially Sanlitu Lu

Meh: Forbidden City, Yu Yuan in Shanghai, the Oriental Pearl Tower

There's plenty more to say, but pictures're worth 1000 words, and I can post them a lot faster than I can type so many words.


Tiannamen Square.

Mao sees all.

Christmas Eve dinner with a show.

The Temple of Heaven on Christmas morning.

The Temple of Heaven, again.

Peking duck on the 25th. Yummy!

Climbing towards the Great Wall at Badaling there are these bears in a cage as an added distraction.

Me looking goofy on the wall.

Can you guess what that is?

The really, really tall Oriental Pearl tower in Shanghai. 350 meters.

One of the tasteful exhibits on display at the Shanghai Sex Museum.

The aforementioned midget. Yowza!

Also at the sex museum: (I don't think you can read it) "A knife for castration."

Ok, so I took a lot of pictures there. It was a fun place.

One of the old European buildings in central Shanghai, along the river. If you could somehow only look at the buildings, and ignore the Chinese people and Chinese words everywhere, you'd swear you were in some old European city half the time. It was a really fascinating city to walk around in.

One of the not so old buildings in Shanghai.

Bikers queued up for the light. Yes, there are bicyclists everywhere in China.

I like the contrasts in this picture, despite the blurriness.

Yes Virginia, there is a Taco Bell in Asia.

And no, it's not good. Mis enchiladas had weird cheeses and spices, and they were served with a side of corn on the cob and a cold bean/corn salad of some sort. They did have corona, however (with a lemon - sigh).

The tablet of 1000 buddhas or somesuch nonsense, at the Shanghai museum.

This was some ancient warrior king, but I couldn't figure out why he was dancing on a baby. The staff wasn't able to give me a solid answer.

"The Curse of the Golden Flower." It's good.

Shanghai's Western skyline, as seen from atop the OP tower.

The Eastern Skyline, as seen from the boardwalk. Yes, it really looks like that.

Yu Yuan in Shanghai.

Yu Yuan shopping district.

Back in snowy Beijing at the Forbidden City.

The Summer Palace (on a not so summery day):

People walking around on Kunming (I think) lake

The marble boat.

I didn't take enough pictures that day, but it was probably the most impressive place I visited...aside from the Great Wall.

And we end our visual narrative there. In the end I was so enamored of China that I enlisted in the military. Because of my vast military expertise I was quickly promoted up the ranks. I salute you all, my former capitalist brethren.

An Open Letter to Korean Children

Dear Children,

There's something we need to discuss. I'm leaving soon, and I don't think I'm likely to return. As much as I can enjoy your company, I can say that I've enjoyed spending many an hour a day with you, teaching you and learning a few things from you. A lot of you are great, and I'm sure you'll mature into accomplished adults. Some of you "need to work harder," in the parlance of teachers. And some of you are snot nosed spoiled bastards who I'll miss about as much as I'll miss the bi-weekly head colds your incessant sneezing gifted me.

There's still a lot you need to learn, of course, and most of that I can't teach you. But there is one area where I can help. Please listen.

Enough with the fingers up the ass. Enough. I don't want your fingers in my ass. There is no little part of me that desires this, not even in a joking way. I get no joy from it. I get no joy from scolding you about it. There is nothing about the experience that pleases me. Were there, you might see me trying to recreate it from time to time, but I ask you, children, when was the last time I shoved my index fingers up your bum?

(For those not in the know, this is a favorite sadistic 'game' Korean boys [and to some extent the girls] like to play. When you're distracted and have your backside turned to them, they'll sneak up, touch their index fingers together and then try to shove them as far up your asshole as they can. And no, I'm not joking. Really, I'm not joking. They really do this. Seriously.)

The answer to the question is: never. Not ever. Not once has little Sung Pil twisted his underdeveloped features into an expression of primitive puzzlement while trying to figure out what that strange sensation in his body's nether regions is, only to relax those features again upon the unsurprising discovery that it was the playful Wayne-teacher's index fingers producing said sensation. This has not happened. You see, there are some lines of playfulness I will not cross, and one of them is the asshole.

So...it's time to stop. Please stop. The fingers in my bum do not endear you to me in any way. It's not fun, it's not funny, it's got to go. And let's face it, your country is already unconsciously gay enough as it is, what, with the dudes fondling/grooming each other constantly and the saunas everywhere...do you really need to go around fingering each other?

Stop it.

From Youtube

Fuck you McDonald's, II

Check this out boys and girls. McDonald's seeks patents on sandwich making -

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,232373,00.html

On some bright sunny day in the not too distant future you could violate patent laws by making a sandwich in your own home! Yay!

More Korean Video

Fuck you, McDonald's

FYI. I don't live in America. I exist more or less outside of the McDonald's umbrella...which means that there're only 2 or 3 Micky D's within a mile of where I'm sitting, instead of, say, 20. And I only visit McDonald's once, maybe twice a month these days...which given my history and normal eating patterns back home is pretty fucking rare, trust me.

But I couldn't let this pass.

I was reading my hometown paper's website today and I saw an ad at the top of the screen for, get this, the 'McRib Farewell Tour II.' 2. As in, we already had a fucking farewell tour for the McRib last year, but you stupid suckers'll come crawling back for some more of that pink gooey BBQ sauce covered shit so we're gonna have another go at it.

Where the fuck do these McDonald's assholes get off? It's like they're not even trying anymore. You know these advertising types were just sitting around in their office doing their usual intellectual masturbation and one of them was like, "d00ds, we totally need to bring back the McRib, coz the idiots who eat our shit haven't cottoned on to that whole carrot and stick thing we've got going on...but how to bring it back? We retired it last year, d00ds!"

And then d00d 2 was all like "why don't we just have another Farewell Tour, you know, like all of those aging rockers who keep coming back for another tour to squeeze a few more dimes out of their decrepit geriatric fan base whose pathetic existence is periodically rejustified by lurid bands of grandfathers singing about sexual liberties and the political issues of 50 years ago...and to pretend to be 'cool' and 'in on' the whole thing we'll call it Farewell Tour II."

"Great idea, Chad," says d00d 1. "And we can design this whole hipster internet site that will totally speak to the rock and roll generation whom we will be exploiting and simultaneously appealing to purchase our disgusting product."

Which is what they did. Check it out-

http://www.mcrib.com./

I encourage you to visit this website. Marvel at the depths to which Western civilization has sunk. Introduce yourself to the weirdly gesticulating late 20s/early 30s ish woman (young enough to appeal to 60 year olds but old enough for it to not be entirely creepy) who greets mcrib.com's visitors. She encourages us to "rock out" with "t-shirts, downloads" and other merchandise. She wears a shirt with a picture of a bone on it with a cross through it. No boners? I have to admit I don't get that one. After she's said her spiel she rocks her head back and forth repeatedly, obsessively crosses and uncrosses her arms, while the mcrib band performs a sound check in the background. Throngs of people who've apparently been worked up into a frenzy over the 2nd coming of the mcrib sandwich teem in the background, they've gathered themselves together to pay homage to a disgusting slab of processed meat.

My thanks to Mcdonald's for restoring my faith in the worst of humanity.

Thanks Mom + Dad

Now I just have to eat all of that....I had the collards and some mashed potatoes for dinner last night...it was good...

Today in Seoul...

So I went into Seoul today to run a few errands and whatnot...I wound up picking up an iPod...what can I say, I'd been thinking about getting one for a while and decidede to splurge. But the point of this post is related to this article -

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061125/ap_on_bi_ge/skorea_us_free_trade

I was in Gwanghwamun when this was going down and I actually checked it out. A few pics not featured in the story you read above: