EVEN MORE STUDENTS!!!

From left, Holly, Simon, Sally, and Jane. Out of all of my students, Simon is probably the most annoying. The three girls, as is usually the case, are among the least. They also help me carry my stuff back to the office at the end of class each day.

From left, Kurt, Mary, Mike, Elwood, and Sally. Kurt has been pegged as gay by his previous teacher, but aside from a "John Teacher... very handsome", I haven't seen it first-hand. Apparently he fondled the previous teacher's man-boobs on a few occasions, but I don't know if I'm going to let that go down. This class reaches an ear-shattering decibel-level, but they're very enthusiastic and bright. Mike's casual peace sign is, to me, hilarious.

From left, Quincy, Megan, Ralph, and Jeannie. Ralph WILL be the Korean Louie Anderson some day... not the washed-up, three-packs-a-day Louie that you see on "The New Family Feud", but the more-affable, not-dying-in-front-of-your-eyes tub o' lard from the "Rodney Dangerfield's Young Comedian's Showcase" days.

At first I thought Jane's Pictionary rendering of "smell" was unique, but Marie told me that Korean children will often draw people taking a whiff of poo, kind of in the same way that high schoolers scribble anarchy symbols and pentagrams all the time. I'm not kidding.

From left, Anna, Liam, Kaleigh, and Joseph. Liam is the student who I find to be the most fascinating; I haven't been able to tell yet whether he's brilliant or dumb as stone, and it's rare that you have a kid who hits both ends of the ability spectrum. He's also a genius at making card castles, further cementing my fascination.

Just to let you know, my digital camera seems to be broken right now. I'm concerned about this.

The best fake split photos ever!!!

Mad ups go out to my roommate, Ryan, who captured the oft-applauded fake-split-off-the-wall move in all of its shin-destroying glory. If only he had taken a shot when I touched ground...
At least I'll always have these testaments to my dancing ability when I'm 40 and no longer capable of walking.

Then after the show it’s the after party...

Ryan offers a kind remembrance of River Phoenix while Nick wonders where his mic is.

Do not mess with an army of tambourine-wielding Korean teachers. (I love, by the way, how every noraebang comes outfitted with several tambourines, greatly increasing the audience-interaction threshold)

Mr. Kim (center) provides the financial muscle for my hagwon. He also made us American teachers chug a concoction that was 3/4 beer, 1/4 soju. Brutal... if you want to re-enact at home, fill a pint glass with 3/4 Pabst (the closest equivalent to Korea's omnipresent Hite beer) and 1/4 Congress Vodka. Tell me how it goes for you.

Hotel bar... not a whole lot going on in this photo, but it was a nice bar.

A split-second before a proper knee drop. Nick (left) is hopefully considering giving me a hefty bonus for the havoc I wreak on the dance floor.

I have to get ready to go to school now, but this post will be coming up hopefully by the end of the night. Until then, here's footage of Mark Shelley's gay lover.

STUDENTS!!!

From left, Ally, Mandy, Becky, Scout, Radley, and Fiona. Ally wrote my name on her "Wake Up" book and surrounded it in hearts, and all of the other girls followed her lead. It's a charmed life I live.

From left, Brian, Nick, Chris, Merpit, and Jenny. Important to note that girls seem to become uninterested in having their photos taken as they grow older, but for boys, it's the opposite. I can't back this up with any credible sources, so don't quote me on this.

From left, Jenny, Alice, Todd, and Chad. This is probably my favorite class-- small, manageable, and very skilled at English. Chad and Alice are particularly good, the former always entering things into his Korean-English Electronic Dictionary to get complex messages across to me. I also think Chad is kind of a heart-throb, a matinee idol, not that the girls would ever let on.

Radley acts as the pit boss during a heated game of Twister. Kevin, the kid on the far right, always wears really good shoes (Koreans have the best taste in footwear ever), but is also unbearably slow. The other kids have caught on to this, and it makes me trying to give him help very embarrassing for him.

Taking photos of Korean children, especially with my sub-par camera, is often a blurry affair. Here, Gabe makes his Deniro-as-Jake-LaMotta face, while Seven (yes, that's his name) looks positively angelic in the left corner.

A few of you have been asking for photos of the adorable gremlins that occupy my classroom each day, and I aim to please.

I apologize for turning my blog into a caption-writing contest, but I do feel a certain need to get material on here, despite limitations in the time that I have to write.

Pusan International Film Festival (II)

The crowd outside Lotte Cinema

We do (and will) get the blockbusters here in SoKo generally, although there are some bizarre features that have only just recently gotten here. For instance, the Brett Ratner opus "After the Sunset" was playing in most first-run movie houses when I first arrived, despite the fact that it was released well over a year ago in the U.S.

Power Movie. Power Feeling. Little else needs to be said. "Manderlay", by all accounts, was a Power Movie.

Tough job getting a good shot inside the theater... this was the best I could muster.

The lobby of Lotte Cinema

While I don't have photos to share, I figured I'd drop by and tell you about my second visit to the PIFF this week. Somehow we managed to have Thursday off at my hagwon, allowing me to enjoy the annual festival for one day more than I thought I would. Things started off badly when I woke up from a strenuous night of free alcohol supplied by my bosses. My head felt like I had went through a few rounds with Bob Sapp, my legs were damaged from at least a dozen knee-drops on the dancefloor, and for one reason or another my room contained the equivalent of a few buckets of Haeundae sand scattered on sheets and floors, within backpacks and juice bottles, particles lining my scalp. Also, I had managed to sleep through my alarm clock, so those wicked PIFF crowds had surely already developed; I had little hope of actually seeing a movie this day, but I showered in record time, downed a glass of water, and packed my bag with a granola bar and a banana for lunch.

That Sunday, I had went to Nampodong with Marie to catch a film, but I figured it'd be best if I saw what Haeundae was offering this time around. (If you weren't with me earlier, half of the festival is held in Nampodong, the other half in Haeundae). The standout film playing at the Megabox 10 for me was "Princess Raccoon", the latest movie directed by Seijun Suzuki, the Japanese auteur responsible for the psychedelic noir of "Branded to Kill". After an hour-long subway ride, I got to Haeundae and rushed my ass to the Special Fun Zone (abbreviated as "SFunZ"), a Korean shopping mall / entertainment center.

Holy shit! If not for a broken camera, there'd be some visual glory coming your way to supplement this post. Unlike American shopping malls that occupy several football fields worth of land, the SFZ stretches 10 floors vertically, making for a slightly-different psychological shopping experience. The moment I entered, I realized I was probably going to waste the day there, movie or no movie. No time to tarry, so I darted towards the box office, although I was periodically sidelined by the sight of a Subway and KFC, two American staples that have escaped my grasp so far in SoKo; actually, I have passed a KFC in Nampodong and near Pusan National University, but I could never manage to convince my company to go. Today I was flying solo, so the Colonel's allure was oh so sweet.

I get to the box office only to find out that everything is sold out. Everything. I look at the board where they list sell-outs for all of the participating theaters, and it seems like there isn't a vacancy among them, so my heart sinks a little. I raise it up again by visiting a genuine hot dog shop, one that touts a Chicago-style foot-long adorned with onions, cheese, and chili. Clouds wash away, the world tremors with my newfound hope, and almost immediately upon stepping out of said hot dog shop, some Australian girl comes up to me to tell me that she has an extra ticket to a film and can't find anyone to take it. I pump my fist and accept her gift.

Shit... I had no time to kill, so I took the elevator up to the eighth floor to what I thought was the movie theater. Instead, I ended up on a rooftop penthouse with a bunch of global celebs and hobnobbers. I walked along the roof briefly just because it seemed like I could. Very few highlights up here, aside from a stand where commoners were getting their photos taken with giant guns. If I had the time, I definitely would have gotten a portrait, but I needed to get back in the 'vator and find my theater.

The Megabox 10 was considerably more American in terms of streaking neon and massive LCD monitors displaying the latest trailers than the Lotte Cinema in Haeundae, or at least that's the way I saw it; also, the crowd was nowhere near the horde I witnessed there, but I'd imagine that's because I was there on a weekday. The film I was fortunate enough to see was a Korean documentary called "On the Road II", one of the dullest rock movies I've ever seen. The cameras followed Yoonband, a bland Korean fusion of Coldplay's mom-rock and Creed's self-important religio-dude tunes, as they set out on a European tour with an even worse British act called Steranko.

More than anything else, the documentary showed a clear juxtaposition between Korean and British rock stars. The lead singer for Yoonband could be mistaken for any average Korean man walking the streets of Busan, clearly confident and happy, but extremely meek and polite. Steranko's frontman had a serious Iggy-via-Morrison thing happening, and had a little too much delight in butchering the Korean language, especially in comparing gimchi to the shit from his ass. The supporting cast of Yoonband seemed to wear Homer Simpson t-shirts most of the time they weren't on stage, a style faux-pas that I'm sure would be met with outright contempt from NME and Melody Maker. Where Steranko seemed to thrive on dopey stage theatrics (mostly from the lead singer, of course), Yoonband would never dare smash a guitar. If the film had focused more on the bands as people and less on the music, I would have liked it a lot more, but the Korean audience seemed to enjoy themselves.

After the movie wrapped up, I made my way out of the theater to dine on some KFC for dinner and purchase a box of Dunkin' Donuts before heading home. On the way out, I passed a gorgeous Korean couple that was being trailed by several dudes in well-tailored suits. Given the cacaphonous "oohs" and "ahs" coming from the crowd behind them, I assume they were celebrities of some sort, so I can now brag that I saw some Korean movie stars live and in person. It doesn't quite match being cousins with "Party of Five" star Scott Wolf and having the opportunity to ask him what it was like dating Alyssa Milano, a chance one old acquaintance of mine had, but I think it's at least on the level of discussing the flaws of the Bruce Willis/Jane March erotic thriller "Color of Night" with its director, as another friend of mine did.

All in all, it was a good day.

Pusan International Film Festival (I)

This past weekend, Marie and I woke early in the morning so we could take part in the Pusan International Film Festival, celebrating its 10th year of turning the city's movie theaters into a potential trampling disaster. While not Cannes or Sundance, the PIFF is definitely considered to be the best film festival in Korea (potentially all of Asia), and the people here take great pride in it. The only festival I've ever been to was the St. Louis International Film Festival, and I can easily say that this trumped it. Where to begin:

The festival is held in two separate areas of Pusan: Nampodong (a very cosmopolitan downtown area where you'll find both expensive Western stores and street vendors selling wares at negotiable prices) and Haeundae (home to the most popular beachfront in Pusan, and while not quite as vibrant as Nampodong, still a lively area, especially if you like looking at ritzy hotels).

(Reason to pause: I just wrote an entire post for this and came back to find it erased. I'm upset.)

We arrived at Nampodong around 10:00 in the morning, and already the streets were lined wall-to-wall (didn't I tell you that the streets have walls here!?) with people. Awe-inspiring was that the ratio of Koreans to foreigners was less than 1000 to 1, truly justifying the "International" part of the festival's moniker. Despite the early arrival time, the movies that we had circled in my guide had already sold out; for any of you who would plan on going to the PIFF, the easiest way to assure yourself that this won't happen is to buy tickets online, but 10% of the theater's seats are available for purchase the day of the show, a route that I chose to take once but won't again. Still, we managed to get two tickets to the 5:00 showing of "Manderlay", the latest slice of pretensious hooha from Lars Von Trier.

This gave us several hours to waste, so waste we did...

For those recently removed from pay day, Nampodong can be a callous succubus, with 1000 won Che Guevara socks and adorable Engrish stationery waiting to reel you in at any given footstep. Those of you who have been kind to me throughout the years can expect a sweet bounty of novelty gifts in the next couple of weeks. While the Che socks are glorious, these things are a-dime-a-dozen among the street vendors, and I bought several varieties to win friends and influence people; the second and third best feature Astroboy (known as Mighty Atom in Korea) and a pair of jellybeans sharing a heart with the words "I Lub U" emblazoned above respectively. One of you-- I haven't decided who yet--will get a set of five soju glasses that each depict a different scene of ancient Korean lovemaking, a gift so good that I almost want to be a selfish bastard and keep it for myself. Oh, and I did buy some things for moi, of course; to be specific, I now own a sharp sweater featuring a penguin emblem, two Engrish t-shirts that Marie bought duplicates of so that we could "match", an authentic Kart Rider alarm clock, and some incense that I bought from a guy who I thought was a strict Buddhist until I saw that he was playing Starcraft behind the counter. He runs this great shop right on the base of Yongdusan; Marie believes he has the best incense deals in Pusan, and I'm not one to argue.
By the time we needed to be at Lotte Cinema, I had spent around 100,000 won ($100).

Oh... we also hit up some video arcades. Pictures and descriptions to come.

Something I want to say before I talk about the theater and the movie: even when the streets are so crowded that you feel part of an amorphous humanoid blob, some dudes still have the gall to try to drive their motor scooters (and even cars) through it all. Walking in Pusan is like living "The French Connection" each and every day. No matter where I am, it's always in the back of my mind that at any moment a KIA is going to veer onto the sidewalk, take out some fruit stands, and send hordes of people diving out of the way. One of my co-workers refers to Korean traffic laws as "suggestions", which I've found to be an apt description.

The Lotte Cinema is different from any other movie theater I've been to, but that's not surprising. For one thing, seats are assigned, meaning that you don't have to go into the theater 30 minutes ahead of time to be assured that you won't be craning your neck the whole movie. Also, whereas American movie theaters are large in terms of length and width, Lotte is just fuckin' tall. To get to our theater, we had to go up eight floors in an elevator, and then another one on an escalator. The lobby felt like an airport waiting area and didn't have the neon sheen that I was expecting. The concession stand was also a little reserved, and rather than candy, it sold prawn chips, a close cousin to the shrimp chips that Marie swears by but that I can't stand. Popcorn came in bags with the triumphant slogan "Power Movie, Power Feeling!" For the film festival, you need to be at your movie on time or else you won't be allowed to enter, so we got to hang out here for a solid 30 minutes before showtime.

I don't know if this was standard or not, but the theater was among the largest I've ever been in. Massive screen, what looked like at least 50 rows of seats... I was definitely not disappointed, although I'm not sure if "Manderlay" was the ideal movie to be seeing on this monstrosity. Because of our tardiness, Marie and I were actually assigned to sit in the third row, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that even the front rows are distanced quite a bit from the screen, meaning I wouldn't have to twist my neck like I was at a tennis match. The only thing that disappointed me was that the theater didn't have a proper sound system, only two large amplifiers in front of the screen; this might have something to do with the film festival's print (it's not like a Lars Von Trier film requires THX or anything) though.

I had a lot more to say about "Manderlay" earlier in the week, but I'm not sure how informed a reaction I can muster right now. Not having seen its prequel, "Dogville", I can only discuss it as an individual film, and while it sucks getting preached to about race in America from a Dane, there was some truth to it. Things I liked:

Bryce Dallas Howard... not for her acting, but because I can now say that I've seen Ron Howard's daughter nude. If that's not reason to brag, I don't know what is.

Danny Glover... again, not for his acting, but because he delivered every line in his weary Murtaugh voice. If Lars had a sense of humor, he would have had him say, "I'm getting too old for this" at least once.

The end credits... great song choice ("Young Americans") that at least tied things up with a humorous bow, and the montage themed around the mistreatment of blacks in America effectively pissed me off.

The theatrical storytelling device... Just like with Dogme, Von Trier has come up with a genuinely unique and interesting way of delivering a narrative, and I never felt like it was gimmicky.

Things I didn't like:

The melodramatic screenplay... I get that it's an allegory or whatever, but the few moments of naturalism stand out as the best in the movie. Bryce Howard's line delivery makes me feel like I'm being force-fed an anti-American shit sandwich, and this is coming from a guy who often has mixed feelings about the land o' the free.

Chloe Sevigny... she doesn't do anything in this movie. Why is she even in it? I know she was in "Dogville", but still... this was a role that they could have hired an extra to play.

Alright... I have to watch the end of the Cardinals game and cook up some lunch. It's nice to be back here.

Noraebang and Insane Bar Photos (Narratives in waiting)

This is my least favorite of the two mascots at Junco, the bar I had talked about in a post long ago. Important note: don't criticize my photos of Junco because when these mascots appear, the lights go off with only a strobe providing any visuals.

My roommate and I singing like only true men can. Despite his rugged exterior, Ryan is capable of delivering a tear-jerking "More Than Words", and Glenn Frey would be ill to duel with his "Desperado".

Now this is a Junco mascot that I can really applaud. The dude dry-humped this glass barrier for a full ten seconds while the manic clapping drowned all other noise.

Despite being Canadian, now-departed Mike and Christina more than hold their own in the Noraebang. These two are sweet duders who played an essential role in helping me feel at home in SoKo, so it was sad to see them go. Good luck in Seoul, Team MacKenzie.

Of all the anthropomorphic movie titles, this one's my favorite...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134969/

Did I mention there's a sequel?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365770/

I hate you fuckin' Americans who have access to this awesome shit.

And in case you ask, no, this isn't what I've been doing rather than writing blog posts, although it was a great diversion for about 10 minutes on a Saturday night.

(Of course, I would be compelled to send a pencil case if any of you still reading this could trump this find. "Air Bud" ain't shit, so don't bring it up.)