Blooga blooga

"Winter" here is pretty sweet. I'm sure the abnormally warm weather can be in part attributed to global warming, but I say we enjoy it, at least until New York and London are under water. It's like ten degrees outside today, and I've been wearing a spring jacket for the past week or so.

I've been downloading more music than I've had time to listen to. I have fallen in love all over again with the Jesus and Mary Chain, especially their Munki album. Holy crrrrrap is it good. And I listen to "Elephant Stone" by the Stone Roses like a hundred times a day. I kind of want to learn Portugese just so that I can sing along (poorly) to Seu Jorge's Bowie covers from The Life Aquatic. I love The Thermals' new album, The Body, The Blood, The Machine, as well as Fuckin' A. They're touring with the Hold Steady. I assume they're going to be in Toronto. And I've been listening to my friend Jeff Latosik's new album a lot since he e-mailed it to me a couple of weeks ago. He's an incredible songwriter and a gifted musician, so it'll only be a matter of time before you can go see him play if he's not already doing so on a regular basis. Get on it! (And Jeff--despite the fact that MySpace is really annoying, it wouldn't be a bad idea insofar as you want people to have access to your songs, no?) So, what have you all been listening to?

I think I might have figured out how to put photos in order, which has got me pretty fuckin' stoked. Turns out it was really easy and I'm just technologically inept. I'd like to learn how to post YouTube videos directly onto my blog so that you can laugh along with me at videos of people hurting themselves pretty badly or getting tasered by angry police officers. (What the fuck did people do before Teh Internetz? Read books?)

Greg and I went into the big electronics market, Yong-san, so that Greg could pick up a sweet pair of headphones. Of course I ended up buying a pair too, as well as a new mp3 player and a bunch of movies and blank DVDs for Greg to rip movies onto for me. At some point in my life I will think about curbing my impulsive shopping habits, but not today. No, sir.

Here's a poster for a musical I might go see. I hate musicals, but I've heard this one is good. I've never actually seen the movie, but it's on my list.



Here are some pictures of one of the buildings at Yong-san. I'd say each floor is about thirty thousand square feet, and there are five or six floors in each building, and maybe four buildings. Of course these are guesstimates, but the idea is, it's effing big.





Here's us taking pictures on the subway. Greg got that camera, a manual SLR with a nice zoom lens, for three hundred bucks in Hong Kong (or maybe it was Beijing...?) over Christmas. He's a really good photographer, and is working on getting a website set up to show off his work on. Manual photography is actually an even better idea these days, because for like five bucks you can get your pictures developed onto CD-ROM instead of photo paper and manipulate them like any other j-peg file.






We got back to Beomgye, the part of Anyang nearest our building with a subway stop. Here's Greg admiring one of the nice establishments:



If you're a fan of Arrested Development, as you damn well should be, you're probably wondering if this guy here inspired the odd name of the place.



This kid was running around, slaughtering imaginary jerks with his balloon lightsaber. He was pretty cool, so naturally we stuffed him into a sack and added him to the collection. His sister didn't make the cut, though, so we let her mom keep her.






Here's Greg modeling Absolut "Bling Bling" vodka. It's just a regular bottle with gold wrap on it, but still... ballin'!!!




Amanda, Jimmy, Colin and I went into Hongdae later in the evening. I've mentioned the place before, but since you've forgotten, it's an area full of artsy, Westernized Koreans and foreigners who for the most part aren't military douche bags. We ate Thai food and, after searching for what seemed like a billion years, finally found this neato hookah bar. It's a catacomb-ish basement converted into a hippie den, with good music, beer, and good sheesha. There were pools of water with flowers and candles floating in them, and everybody sits on cushions on the floor or in elevated recesses. Pretty cool place. When we left there, we ran into Drew from Montana and her friend Marlie. We went to a bar called Tin Pan, which has really cheap tequila, but stayed for half an hour because the top-40 hip hop soundtrack was super shitty. Then we went home. Fun!







Finally, some more pictures of students. The cute kid is James 3, as there are two other James in his class. He refers to himself as such, which is pretty funny. "James 3! 100%! O-KAAAAY!!!!" The other kid is 'Short-Shorts', a.k.a. Paul. Apparently he used to wear short-shorts. I hate him. He likes to threaten to punch girls in the face for fun, which is actually an improvement over his previous tendency towards actually punching them in the face. He's the tough, cool kid in the class, which is all the more ridiculous considering his affinity for yellow corduroy pants with red stains all over them and that ridiculous shaggy haircut. He sucks.