23 movies that have stuck with me

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send a hug

My e-friend Jelly (those who know her know her real name) is back in Canada to be with her dad, who is dying of metastatic stomach and liver cancer, and has perhaps days to live.

Every cancer crisis is unique, but having just come out of a similarly hellish experience, I have some small idea of what Jelly and her family are going through. One major difference, though, is that her dad still possesses his faculties: this isn't brain cancer. Luckily (if the word "luckily" even applies in this situation), he's receiving meds that are, one hopes, reducing his suffering. Jelly notes, however, that her dad is in a lot of pain.

If you want to send Jelly a compassionate message, now's the time. Her blog-- specifically, the relevant blog post-- is here. My thoughts are with her, her dad, and her family.


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advice on teaching English in Korea

NB: This is a reprint of an email I sent to a friend of my brother Sean. There's been some minor editing for style and privacy's sake. The email is actually for Sean's friend's sister, which explains all the "sister" references.

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Mr. L,

I received the following snippet from my brother Sean:

yes it's true. My sister's BF works for the [redacted], and he's stationed in Seoul for the next two years. She's moving out with him in [redacted]. I was wondering if you could put me in touch with your brother for some job ideas for her. She's got two english degrees...so she's be perfect for some type of English teaching job....just want to make sure she gets in touch with the right people to give her the best chance etc.

I promised Sean I would tell you and your sister what I could about teaching English in Korea. Essentially, it boils down to this: if your sister has a choice, she should choose university-level teaching over teaching at a "hagwon," i.e., a cram study institute. Hagwon hiring practices are so lax that they'll accept anybody with any sort of degree, as long as they "look" the part. Yes, that's code for a kind of institutional racism: the whiter you look, the more likely you'll get an English teaching job. Koreans born and raised in the US might speak both English and Korean with perfect fluency, but many parents in Korea don't trust non-whites to teach "real" English to their children. Why this prejudice still exists, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary, is beyond me. At the same time, there are plenty of gyopos (ethnic/racial Koreans who live outside Korea) at the other end of the spectrum: they obtain sweet positions teaching at various large corporations, where their Korean looks and their fluency in two languages are seen as an advantage. So if a person is Korean-looking, it's a gamble as to what might happen. If a potential employee is black, Latino, Southeast Asian, or South Asian, however, prospects will be dimmer all around. This is, alas, one of the harsh realities of working in Korea.

Anti-white racism can also be problematic, and might not be immediately visible to the first-time foreigner in Korea. Jobs might be easier to obtain for the light of skin, but living in Korea can still present problems. I can write more on this point later, but I did want to cover this ugly state of affairs in as up-front a manner as possible. Of course, the risk of painting Korea with too broad a brush is that I may be disrespecting those Koreans who aren't racist-- and their number is increasing, especially as the foreign population inside Korea continues to rise (roughly 2% of the South Korean population right now, or a little over 1 million). However, even now, such open-mindedness is evident only in a minority of the population. On the whole, those of us who don't look completely Korean can never hope to blend in; the Korean notion of "dan-il minjok," the (bogus) idea that all Koreans are proudly of one blood, is prevalent even today, despite obvious genetic/racial differences among Koreans. Dan-il minjok is a strong national myth, which isn't going away anytime soon, and it produces a cultural filter that's hard for foreigners to penetrate. (To their credit, Koreans who have spent years in the States, or in other Western countries, are often repulsed by "dan-il minjok.")

Universities, especially the better ones in the big cities like Seoul and Busan, tend to take their image more seriously than the hagwons do, but here again, the potential employee should be careful. Nowadays, many universities have at least two different departments devoted to the study of foreign language. One department is a sort of low-rent, hagwon-style outfit; the other is a more "legitimate" department devoted not only to teaching, say, conversation classes but also to teaching "serious" classes on literature, critical theory, etc. A person with a Master's degree in English should probably shoot for the more prestigious department, but they should also do some research before signing on with any given university. Sometimes, even the Big Three universities, Seoul National U., Yonsei U., and Korea U. (which are also collectively known as the "SKY" schools) can be nightmarish. I heard from one lady who taught at Ehwa Women's University, the most prestigious women's uni in Korea, that she'd had a horrible time getting along with the administration, and was happy to step "down" to teaching at Sookmyung Women's University.

Hagwons are problematic for more reasons than just the racist and slipshod hiring practices. Most of my teaching experience in Korea was at hagwons, so I know this fact intimately. Your coworkers can be fantastic, but they can also be bitter, maladjusted freaks who are basically in Korea to hide from their home country and/or make money to go Asia-hopping (I won't go into detail as to what that might mean, but you can guess). Hagwons often require their workers to work split shifts, which sounds fine at first blush, but is onerous in practice. A split shift might run from, say, 7AM (yes-- many schools do start classes that early) to 11AM, then go from 6PM to 10PM. If you live far away from the hagwon you're working at, going home for a long afternoon nap is nearly impossible, and even hagwon veterans find that it's difficult to catch a nap during the day. Essentially, whether you're working or not, you're "on" from 7AM to 10PM, which very quickly becomes oppressive. Some hagwons will push their employees to work more than 40 hours per week. At my final hagwon, I was averaging 44 weekly hours, which included full-day Saturdays every other week.

Korean hagwon bosses, being businessmen and not scholars, can often be capricious and unreasonable. It's the rare boss who truly values what you have to contribute to the school. Most bosses feel free to fire even the good teachers, on the assumption that all teachers are replaceable. Hagwons are less schools than they are businesses, so from the admin perspective, the bottom line is more important than actual learning: teacher popularity is a must, as are student reregistration rates. Many expats also complain about "having to act like a monkey" in order to keep the students interested-- an act that merely reinforces Korean stereotypes about foreigners, whom they already view as goofy. Sometimes bonus pay is set up according to a competitive scale, with the high-reregistration teachers earning more. Such competition might seem like a decent motivator at first, but it often poisons the otherwise-collegial atmosphere that's conducive to faculty productivity. Far from being colleagues, teachers in such an environment become rivals.

Some hagwons partner a foreign teacher up with a Korean teacher. While the foreigner might find this pairing nice (and it often is), the Korean teacher is sometimes asked, usually against his will, to spy on the foreign teacher, to make sure that she's punctual, professional, etc., and to monitor private student complaints about the teacher. As a matter of culture, many students have trouble addressing complaints directly to their teacher (then again, some students can be a little too outspoken when addressing an expat, demonstrating a rudeness that would be inconceivable were the teacher Korean). Expats deal with this Big Brother-ish situation in different ways-- by not caring, by becoming overly conscious of what others think, etc.

The pay at hagwons tends to be somewhat better than it is at most universities, but people who have had a taste of university life tend to prefer it to going back to hagwons. University teaching schedules, even at the university hagwon-style departments, tend to be more reasonable: instead of a 30- to 40-some-hour work week, a teacher might teach as little as 9 hours per week or as much as 22-25 hours. Also, it's been my experience that universities are less likely to ask teachers to teach on split shifts. When I entered the Sookmyung Women's University hagwon-style department, I taught only block shifts, usually from 7:40AM until about 2PM, with plenty of hours between classes, often teaching only 3 or 4 one-hour classes per day. My contract stipulated 18 teaching hours per week during any given semester; if my class schedule was below 18, I'd be given extra duties, such as scoring essays or proofreading textbooks. Compared to the grinding schedule I had been working at my previous place of employment, a hagwon called [EC], Sookmyung's schedule was marvelous to me. We occasionally had to work 20-22 hours per week during the summer and winter intensive periods, but we were also working only four days a week with Fridays off. Eight weeks in a row of three-day weekends. Not bad.

Another major difference between your typical hagwon and a typical university is that a university can afford to give its teachers large blocks of paid vacation time. My time at Sookmyung afforded me an entire month off every June and December, and in between semesters, we also had a week during which we weren't teaching, adding up to yet a third month off. This between-semester time wasn't vacation, technically: it was teacher prep time. But in practice, most teachers viewed it as extra vacation time. On top of all this, we had all the regular national holidays, and almost every university will have a day off for some sort of "founder's day"-- in honor of the dude or dudette who established the original campus. (Quite a few modern universities came into being around the same time-- circa 1905, so it was only a few years ago that many unis were celebrating their centennial.) Hagwons, on the other hand, generally act like corporations: they offer the teacher only ten work days' worth of vacation per year, plus the regular smattering of national holidays. Which sounds better to you: 3 months' vacation plus national holidays, or two weeks' vacation plus national holidays? To me, the choice is obvious.

The Korean administrator's attitude toward the employment contract will vary according to the place of work, with hagwons generally being more devious and miserly than universities. Sookmyung University was, on the whole, pretty good about honoring my contract. I did, in fact, teach roughly 18-22 hours per week, and my vacation dates were always consistent. I was also fortunate to have reasonable supervisors who allowed us teachers some creative leeway in how we taught, but who were also concerned enough to want to sit down and discuss departmental standards. My only complaint was the mishandling of how to calculate overtime pay. This was truly bothersome, but the problem never cropped up frequently enough to become a major issue.

By contrast, every hagwon I worked at presented me with huge and constant problems; it's a wonder I didn't switch to university teaching sooner! Hagwon bosses routinely violate the terms of one's employment contract, tacking on extra hours, suddenly assigning new courses to teach, taking mysterious deductions from one's monthly pay, fudging tax figures, etc. My very first hagwon experience ended with me suing my boss for $4000 that he owed me. My second hagwon, which had just started up in the rich Kangnam region of Seoul, was so awful that I quit after four months there. My final hagwon experience, at the aforementioned [EC], lasted seven months, but the grinding split shift, the soul-crushing lack of free time, and the assholery of the bosses convinced me to leave. (I did, however, make plenty of friends while there; my coworkers were all wonderful folks, suffering just as much as I was, if not more.) In April 2005, I started work at Sookmyung Women's University, and spent a very happy three years there: good bosses, great coworkers, nice students, and a decent work schedule.

It's important, however, to shop around for a sweet deal. I discovered, after talking with some friends, that Sookmyung was at the lower end of the "cushy" spectrum: some of my friends were happily pimp-rolling onto campus to teach their 9 weekly hours, and each weekday they would leave before noon and do whatever they wanted the rest of the day-- all while earning at least $2000 per month-- net. (A bit of perspective: to earn $24,000/year net in the US, you have to have a salary of about $32,000, assuming roughly $25% lopped off for taxes and other deductions. Also of note: the Korean tax on income was only about 3.3% when I was there. We kept most of what we earned. These days, however, I've heard that extra taxes/fees are being levied on foreigners' income, so I no longer have an accurate picture of what's going on.)

$2000 a month may not seem like much if a person is used to making $35,000-$50,000 a year, so let's branch out a bit from discussing hagwons and universities. Truly high-paying English-teaching jobs are hard to find legally, but the illegal market is wide open, and everyone knows that that's where the money is. The advantage of having a 9-hour-a-week university job is that one has free time to stack up on all the private tutoring. In Korea, a competent (or even an incompetent) tutor can charge upwards of $50-200 per hour to teach at people's homes. There's some risk involved, however, as Immigration will perform very occasional random sweeps of houses and apartment complexes. Sometimes, Immigration will pay residents to inform on families that might be hosting a foreigner who appears regularly at their doorstep. None of this seems to deter the illegal private tutoring trade, however, and if you're willing to overlook the ethical considerations, private tutoring is definitely the biggest cash cow in town.

I've done some of my own tutoring (and copy editing/proofreading) on occasion, so I can't claim to be a paragon of integrity. At the same time, I chose university work precisely because I didn't want to be spending all my time teaching, day in and day out. I have some professional pride, and would rather devote more "down" time to things like lesson prep, as opposed to rushing breathlessly from home to home, all across town, just to earn an extra $100 a day with private classes. Which is more important: money or sanity?

Professional pride is as much an issue, in selecting a place of work, as the money question. Many foreigners come to Korea and teach English merely as a way to pass the time, not because they have any deep feelings about pedagogy, or because they feel any special warmth toward Koreans. This lack of care shows in how they teach. To me, that sort of attitude is a crying shame. Despite the negative things I've said about Korean hagwon bosses, I don't want you (or your sister) to think that that's how I feel about Korean culture as a whole. Koreans are fantastic people, especially once you get to know them, and a widespread network of mostly-dirty businessmen doesn't change that fact.

It may be that, once a foreigner gets his or her bearings in Korea and starts to understand the rhythm of the culture, the act of teaching English will have engendered some-- to use a pedagogical term-- intrinsic motivation, i.e., a desire to teach for the sake of others, because one loves teaching, and not merely because it's a way to pass the time or to earn money for the next shopping trip to Tokyo.

Koreans, right or wrong, see English as a gateway to the wider world, and for all their "frog in a well" xenophobia ("frog in a well" is an Asian metaphor for a blinkered perspective), they are serious about wanting to learn the language. One task of the foreign English teacher is to help students unlearn years of poor language training. Such training was given by well-intended Korean instructors who had been taught to teach by rote, often allowing students little to no time to produce language by speaking and writing. A truly committed expat English teacher will want to invest him- or herself in helping students learn English correctly. At the same time, he or she will try to avoid acting like a monkey in front of the class, thereby falsely conflating education and entertainment. Incorporating humor into one's pedagogical repertoire is OK; being a perpetual clown is just degrading.

Anyway, this email has gone on way too long, and I apologize. But in my defense: I wanted to provide as thorough an initial orientation as I could for your sister. Any foreigner who teaches in Korea (1) should be on their guard, because English teaching is Big Business-- a fact that has attracted all the usual ugly elements of the society; and (2) should have a strong sense of their own worth, i.e., they shouldn't settle for a school that pays peanuts and offers dispiriting work conditions. Private tutoring will definitely net the most cash, but some big universities allow degreed foreigners into their "legitimate" English departments to teach courses in Modern American Lit or Deconstructing Totalizing Metanarratives or whatever. A person with two English degrees should have little trouble finding a decent teaching position. If that person is like me, s/he will keep in mind the following deal-breakers when searching for a job:

1. No teaching on weekends.
2. No split shifts.
3. No teaching at children's "camps" during the vacation months. (Some universities sneak this into the contract, which means that one's vacation time isn't as plentiful as one had thought. On the up side, such camps offer great hourly pay, and that pay is usually on top of the regular vacation pay. A workaholic might enjoy such an arrangement.)
4. No teaching more than 25 hours per week. University teaching hours are, in the normal range, around 12-18 hours per week. The 9-hour figure I quoted above strikes me as pretty rare, and probably hard to sustain from semester to semester. I also imagine that such positions are eagerly sought out, i.e., there's plenty of competition for them.

One option I haven't discussed has gained popularity fairly recently: teaching in a Korean public school. While I personally would find such a situation to be a nightmare, some expats report that they love doing it. My experience has been that Korean youngsters can often be as undisciplined and rambunctious as their US counterparts. Having taught high school French in America, and having visited a few high schools in Korea, I've seen the similarities. Adolescents are adolescents. But this might be a live option for your sister. Unfortunately, I don't know much about this option, though I might be able to find people who do.

Oh, yes, another thing: I should note that, as regards private teaching, the fat end of the market involves teaching children-- often elementary schoolers, but also secondary schoolers. If your sister and her boyfriend have decent connections in Korea, they might be able to obtain some sweet private arrangements with richer families. Don't be modest: charge such families at least $80-100 per hour. With well-paying private arrangements in place, it might not even be necessary for your sister to find an actual school to work at. (Again, a lot depends on visa restrictions and one's ethical orientation. Koreans themselves regularly bend and break rules and laws-- cheating on campus is rampant, for example, as are traffic violations-- so a lot of foreigners just shrug and do as the Romans do. Everyone for themselves. Besides, are Americans really in a position to lecture other countries about corruption and illegality?)

OK... I've emptied out my brain, and will need time for it to refill slowly. If you or your sister have any questions, please feel free to write me. When you do, please put "Kevin" in the subject line of the email, otherwise the email will be diverted directly to the trash. "Kevin" doesn't have to be the only word in the subject line; you can write "Screw you, Kevin," and that'll pass through the filter just fine. I created that filter to screen out the massive amount of spam I receive; it's 99.999% effective, as very few spam emails specify my name.

Good luck to your sister!

Pax,


Kevin

PS: One place to look for work is a site called Dave's ESL Cafe, which includes a constantly-updated section on jobs in South Korea. Check it out:

http://www.eslcafe.com/jobs/korea/

I found my Sookmyung job this way, and it turned out great. Beware, though: some people end up in nightmare situations. It's always good to sniff around before settling on a job.

PPS: At the university level, there's a world of difference in student psychology between teaching a non-credit course versus a for-credit course. Students in non-credit courses often tend to drop out in droves as the semester wears on. A class that starts off with ten students might end up with just three, for example. For-credit courses have far better attendance, and the grade acts as an "extrinsic motivator," forcing the student to worry about their own progress. In terms of teacher morale, teaching for-credit courses is much better than teaching non-credit courses, but unfortunately, most of us expats end up teaching non-credit courses. Competition for teaching positions in the "legitimate" English departments on campus can be fierce, but someone with massive credentials should have less of a problem obtaining such a post.

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I imagine that some folks might take a dim view of the above-quoted email. My advice sounds cynical, as if I'm all about bilking rich families and treating Koreans as suckers. My response to such an accusation is that the above is actually a pretty blunt and factual account of What the Market Will Bear in Korea. Like it or not, English is a hot commodity there-- nothing like it is in the States (where even native speakers seem intent on destroying the language through poor spelling, grammar, and punctuation). While I might agree that Koreans should put less stress on learning English and more stress on other ways to develop their global influence, I see no problem with encouraging foreigners to carpe the diem and take advantage of current conditions. I should also note that people who charge too little are often viewed as being of lesser quality. Image matters, as does one's ability to negotiate one's fee. Make no mistake: Koreans are astute hagglers.

For what it's worth-- I personally have never charged $100 an hour to teach English to anyone. I have friends who have no compunction about doing that, but such behavior just isn't me. I have, however, taught for several months at a proposed rate of $75 an hour (how could I say no?), and once-- only once-- I did twenty minutes of proofreading work for a large conglomerate, and received a completely unexpected $600 for my trouble. The document wasn't even ten pages long, and whoever had written it had already done an excellent job of putting it together. The English was as perfect as could have been expected; the only errors were three or four very minor typos. More jobs like that one, please!


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happiness is...

...finding this old UFC video of Gary Goodridge doing a Kuk Sul Weon takedown of Paul Herrera (whose fighting style, whatever it was, played no part in the bout). Amazing takedown and knockout.


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naked chicken with cashews and green peppers, Hominid-style

PREP FOR THE LIQUID (modified teriyaki sauce)

1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses (or a bit less)
a splash of whisky
Asian red pepper flakes (to taste)
garlic powder (to taste)
black pepper (to taste)
ginger powder (to taste)
1 heaping tablespoon dried onion
1 heaping tablespoon of cornstarch in 3-4 oz. of cold water (prepare this just before adding it to the sauce while cooking; do not add well in advance)


PREP FOR THE SOLIDS

4 large chicken breastuses (preferably from Costco's Kirkland line; their breasts are enormous)
3 large green bell peppers
3-5 green onions
3 handfuls of cashews (I use salted, and they work fine, but there's nothing wrong with washing off the salt or buying unsalted cashews)
salt
pepper
oil

rice (prep separately in a rice cooker)


DIRECTIONS

1. Make the sauce first by combining all the ingredients except the cornstarch-and-water mixture. Stir thoroughly to allow the molasses and brown sugar to mix well with the rest of the ingredients. I often heat the mixture for a few seconds in a microwave so as to thin it out and make the ingredients easier to combine. (If, by the way, you don't like molasses in your teriyaki sauce, feel free to replace it with some other sweetener: dark corn syrup, more brown sugar, etc., though I'd advise against table sugar. In my opinion, molasses works just fine, and has appeared in quite a few recipes for teriyaki sauce.)

2. Set the sauce aside, and start up the rice cooker. The rice is now on auto-pilot. Don't worry about it for the rest of this procedure.

3. Prep green peppers by cutting away all the irrelevant portions (seeds, core, membrane), and cut the peppers into sections roughly half an inch square. This is a chunky-chicken preparation, and I want the chicken pieces somewhat larger than the green pepper and cashews.

4. Put the prepped green peppers in a bowl and set aside.

5. Put three handfuls of cashews in a bowl and set aside.

6. De-fat and cut up four thoroughly thawed chicken breasts into cubes/chunks, perhaps 3/4 of an inch on a side, maybe a bit smaller-- but larger than the green peppers. Trim away any morsels that look like connective tissue.

7. The chicken won't be coated with flour or anything like that (hence the "naked" in the blog post title); once the meat has been cubed, place it all into a large bowl.

8. Set stove top to "high." Put down a generous amount of oil for the chicken. Once oil is hot, throw the bird chunks on. Add salt and pepper. Stir-fry until the chicken flesh is zombie-white and all the pieces have been thoroughly cooked through (no red centers!).

9. At this point, you'll find you have a lot of liquid that's cooked out of the chicken. I find that this extra liquid impedes the subsequent cooking process, so at this point, I'd recommend draining the chicken in a strainer or colander, then tossing it back into the pan with more oil.

10. Now we're at Phase 2 of the chicken-cooking process. Cook the chicken until you start to see some-- not all-- of the pieces develop significant browning along edges, corners, and sides. Be careful, because it's now a delicate balancing act between (a) dryness, and (b) the extra taste and texture that accompany such browning. Once you start to see the browning, add the cashews. After a minute or two, add the green peppers. Cook another minute or so, stirring constantly.

11. While this is going on, prepare the cornstarch-and-water mixture, and have it at the ready. Do this by mixing the heaping tablespoon (not too heaping!) of cornstarch with 3-4 ounces of cold water. Stir until you have a cloudy mixture. Caution: too much cornstarch, and you'll have to figure out, within seconds, how to thin out your sauce. Unlike flour, which usually needs to be made into a roux to act as a decent thickener, cornstarch reacts almost instantly to high heat, and the thickening process begins right away. Be careful.

12. By this point, the green peppers should have a shinier, more intense green color than when they started. Don't move too far beyond this phase, or you'll end up with dead, faded-looking green peppers. ADD THE SAUCE. Stir for another 30-50 seconds, allowing all the solid elements to be thoroughly coated. At this stage in the process, the moment the sauce is added to the heat, the entire dish acquires its signature fragrance, and all your efforts suddenly make sense. This is the part of the process that I've been waiting for. (The dish, you'll notice, won't look half bad, either.)

13. Finally! It's time to add the cornstarch-and-water mixture to thicken up the sauce. You don't want the sauce too thick, but you don't want a runny sauce, either. The water from the green peppers, the residual water from the chicken, and the oil in the pan should ideally combine quite well with the modified teriyaki sauce and the cornstarch.

14. Once the sauce has thickened, you're done. Do be sure that you've been checking the state of the chicken the entire time. Breast meat in particular has a tendency to turn into the meat version of hard tofu if overcooked, so be on the lookout for any potential textural difficulties.

15. Scoop some rice into a large serving bowl (or plate), top with the naked chicken mixture, and eat. Sides optional. Sesame seeds sprinkled atop the glistening dish optional. Oh, yes-- the green onions! Chop them up into little 1/4-inch cylinders and sprinkle atop the dish as a garnish.

CAUTION: The sauce is definitely sweet, and might not be to everyone's liking as a result. One idea, which I got from my brother David, is to add a tiny splash of rice vinegar. Personally, I'm not a big fan of this addition because it gives the sauce an almost citrus-y taste, but that's not to say that the resultant taste is bad. It's not. Another way to reduce sweetness in the sauce might be to reduce the amount of sugar and replace it with something tasteless, like water. You do risk having a bland sauce, though, as the water will also dilute the saltiness of the soy sauce.

I cooked and served this dish for Tuesday dinner. Alas, I didn't have the super-large Kirkland chicken breasts, so the meal ended up serving just me and my brother. We slaughtered the entire thing, so if you were to ask me how many people this dish serves, I'd say "two hungry adult males." In our case, this meant one full-sized serving in a large bowl, followed by one half-sized serving in the same bowl.

Please consider the recipe a guideline only. Vary the proportions of the cashews, chicken, and green peppers according to your preference. Throw in other ingredients, such as carrots and/or mushrooms. I put my cashews in whole, but you might prefer breaking them up slightly for a different mouth-feel. And if you'd prefer a different type of brown sauce, there are plenty of recipes online. I've found that the above modified teriyaki recipe works well for me and my palate, but I'm biased toward sweetness.


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thank you, Facebook friends

I'm ecstatic that someone on my list of Facebook friends linked to this hilarious YouTube video of a woman (a contestant on the show "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?") who didn't seem to understand that Europe isn't a country.

This, folks, is why people from other countries think Americans are inbred rubes. (Of course, the reply to such scorn is simple: Judge us by our rubes, and we'll judge you by yours.)

Were I in Korea right now, I'd use this video in my English class. Jeff Foxworthy, the game show host, even takes a moment to rib women and their tendency to listen selectively.


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2010 Oscar predictions

NOTE: Updates to this post, showing the actual winners, are in red.

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I have no idea why I'm doing this since, excepting "Star Trek," I haven't seen any of the films that have been nominated. All the same, here we go. Commentary accompanies each prediction.


Best Motion Picture of the Year:

"Avatar," for sheer scope and ambition. I still haven't seen the film, but I've read a lot of commentary on it. Yeah, I know: "Hurt Locker" is the current favorite. All the same, I think this might be Cameron's moment. I doubt "Avatar" will clean up in every category, but a Best Picture nod isn't implausible. The film's had incredible buzz.

UPDATE: Nope. "The Hurt Locker."


Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role:

Morgan Freeman for "Invictus," mainly because Freeman pretty much is God in my mind. The man can do no wrong. Sure, sure: like his buddy Clint Eastwood, Freeman basically plays himself in every movie. But also like Eastwood, he fully inhabits his limited range with the same degree of mojo you find in fellow narrow-rangers like Nicholson, De Niro, and Hackman.

UPDATE: Wrong! Jeff Bridges.


Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role:

Helen Mirren for "The Last Station." It was painful for me to choose between Mirren and Streep. Both women are ferociously talented actresses; both understand how to disappear completely and egolessly into a role (which I suppose makes them the professional opposites of the guys mentioned above); both deserve every award they pick up -- and they seem to pick them up every year. In the end, it was a coin toss for me, and I decided to go with the Brit. Sorry, Meryl.

UPDATE: Right! Hooray!

Wrong! Sandra Buttock-- uh, Bullock. Hooray.


Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role:

Christopher Plummer for "The Last Station." Although I've heard that Christoph Waltz was incredible in "Inglourious Basterds," Plummer is a sentimental favorite. Remember when he was the Satan-worshiping reverend in the Tom Hanks/Dan Aykroyd version of "Dragnet"? Remember Dabney Coleman as the other villain in that movie, lisping to Plummer, "Reverend? You got ballth ath big ath church bellth!" --to which Plummer responds with a sly smile and a purred, "Thank you"? Genius!

(OK, I'm joking. But Plummer resembles Ricardo Montalban in his unpretentiousness: he'll play amazingly serious roles and amazingly goofy ones. Cf. his scenery-chewing, Bard-quoting Klingon general in "Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country.")

UPDATE: Per many other people's predictions, Christoph Waltz was the wiener. Winner.


Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role:

Penélope Cruz for "Nine": sheer sexiness. I'm driven to this prediction primarily by animal lust.

UPDATE: Wrong again! Mo'Nique won the award.


Best Achievement in Directing:

Kathryn Bigelow for "The Hurt Locker," mainly because this seems like a safe prediction, and because the Academy will want to snub Cameron wherever they can. Not that I blame them: from what I hear, the man is a temperamental dick.

UPDATE: Indeed.


Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen:

"Inglourious Basterds," Quentin Tarantino. The man can write, and of the nominees on offer, Tarantino's writing is the style I know best. I would kill to have written "Pulp Fiction."

UPDATE: Incorrect! "The Hurt Locker" clinched the award.


Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published:

"Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire," Geoffrey Fletcher. I just don't think "District 9" can win, given the prejudices against SF films. And I have no idea about the other nominees in this category. "Precious" is my wild guess.

UPDATE: My wild guess was correct.


Best Achievement in Cinematography:

"Avatar," Mauro Fiore. I expect it to come down to either this movie or "Inglourious Basterds," and of the two, I suspect that "Avatar" was ballsier in terms of cinematography. Just a guess, of course, but fully rendered alien landscapes can be very impressive, especially in 3-D.

UPDATE: I somehow got this one right.


Best Achievement in Editing:

"Avatar," Stephen E. Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron. I suspect that, much as George Lucas did in his heyday, Cameron's SF adventure will be recognized less for its story value and more for what it represents in terms of the technical aspects of filmmaking.

UPDATE: Well, testicles. "The Hurt Locker" won.


Best Achievement in Art Direction:

"Avatar," Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg, Kim Sinclair. Again, it's the George Lucas factor. Lucas was and is primarily an editor at heart, or so the prevailing wisdom goes. Cameron is generally better than Lucas with story and character, but despite the much-discussed weaknesses of the script for "Avatar," I suspect that the visuals alone might be enough to net Cameron and Company the Oscar.

Then again-- and I promise that this will be the only category in which I hedge-- there's a very good chance that Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" (which, if I'm not mistaken, also features Christopher Plummer!) might steal the Oscar away from Cameron. Another reason for me to pick Gilliam is that his film isn't nominated in nearly as many categories as "Avatar": "Parnassus" is vying for only two Oscars. Pity for Gilliam and residual sympathy for Heath Ledger might augur well for the film.

UPDATE: I got this right. Unbelievable.


Best Achievement in Costume Design:

"The Young Victoria," Sandy Powell. When you say "costume design," I think "period pic."

UPDATE: YES! I got it right!


Best Achievement in Makeup:

The nominees in this category are merely three:

"Il divo," Aldo Signoretti, Vittorio Sodano
"Star Trek," Barney Burman, Mindy Hall, Joel Harlow
"The Young Victoria," John Henry Gordon, Jenny Shircore

Of the three, I'd say "The Young Victoria" will win. As mentioned before: period pic. I can't see how "Star Trek" could possibly win, especially since the costume designer for "Trek" decided merely to go retro with the Enterprise crew's uniforms.

UPDATE: "Star Trek" won. I find this absurd.


Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score:

"Avatar," James Horner. Horner is up there in the pantheon with the likes of John Williams and John Barry. The sheer scale of the "Avatar" story demands an equally ambitious score. I think a win not only possible, but probable. The main factor working against Horner is his annoying tendency to crib themes and leitmotifs from his own previous work. This is more obvious in some films than in others.

UPDATE: Michael Giacchino won this one for "Up." Nuts.


Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song:

"Crazy Heart," T-Bone Burnett, Ryan Bingham ("The Weary Kind").

Just a guess, but some member of the Academy might have a soft spot for country music. (I don't.) If Jeff Bridges doesn't win Best Actor for "Crazy Heart," this category might serve as a way to get him an Oscar, anyway. I assume that Bridges sings "The Weary Kind" in the movie.

UPDATE: Correct!


Best Achievement in Sound Mixing:

"Avatar," Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson, Tony Johnson. As before: the Lucas factor. "Avatar," if it garners any Oscars, is most likely to win them in categories like this one.

UPDATE: Wrong, wrong, wrong! "The Hurt Locker" won.


Best Achievement in Sound Editing:

"Avatar," Christopher Boyes, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle. Yep: same deal.

UPDATE: And... NO! The winner was "The Hurt Locker." Dammit.


Best Achievement in Visual Effects:

"Avatar," Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham, Andy Jones. And here again, if the Academy wants to recognize Cameron, it's likely to be in a category like this one. "Star Trek" is also nominated in this category, but I don't think it had anywhere near the same number of effects shots. Cameron basically had to invent a whole new method of shooting and editing on the fly; "Trek" (if the DVD special features are any indication) went the opposite direction and found clever ways to create special effects in as thrifty and technologically simple a manner as possible. The Academy won't reward thrift, so it's a sure bet that "Trek" will NOT win this category.

(Now watch me turn out to be wrong.)


UPDATE: "Avatar" won! So I wasn't wrong.

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year:

"Up," Pete Docter. I kept hearing good buzz about this film. "Coraline" is also nominated in this category, but I don't see how stop-motion animation can win against beautifully rendered CGI.

UPDATE: Yes! I got it right!


Best Foreign Language Film of the Year:

"Un prophète," France. Gotta root for my adoptive homies.

UPDATE: Balls, balls, balls. "El secreto de sus ojos" won. Ach, du liebe PENIS!


Best Documentary, Features:

"Burma VJ: Reporter i et lukket land," Anders Østergaard, Lise Lense-Møller. Here, I have no idea who might win, so this is a shot in the dark. The names sound Scandinavian, and Scandinavians make good porn, so I'm going with Østergaard and Lense-Møller.

UPDATE: Damn. "The Cove" won. Another kick in the nuts.


Best Documentary, Short Subjects:

"China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province (TV)," Jon Alpert, Matthew O'Neill. The title of this documentary was the scariest of the bunch, so I'm going with it.

UPDATE: No! The winner was "Music by Prudence." Drat.


Best Short Film, Animated:

I didn't realize that that dude was still churning out "Wallace and Gromit" films (does he do them just to be nominated in this category?), but I'm going to predict that "La dama y la muerte," Javier Recio Gracia, will win. No reason. Just a cool title.

UPDATE: Wrong again! The winner was "Logorama."


Best Short Film, Live Action:

"Miracle Fish," Luke Doolan, Drew Bailey. Total guess. The title sounds like some sort of allusion to Christian scripture. Hollywood has a love/hate relationship with religion, and that ambivalence might serve as an attractant during Oscar season.

UPDATE: Ha ha-- WRONG! The winner was "The New Tenants."


So-- voilà. There are my 2010 Oscar predictions. I'll revisit them after the show's over on Sunday and see how well I did. If I score more than 60% right, this will confirm my psychic ability. I will then spend the rest of the year using my mind to command entire ant colonies to march in formation and perform miniature Arirang Festival maneuvers.


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too much time on their hands

While I'm the last person to accuse anyone of having too much time on their hands, I'll note this bit of silliness that just occurred at my other blog. Read the comments. Do people seriously have time to waste on the "proper" romanization of a Korean president's name?

Who was that commenter? Some fuck from VANK? VANKing away on my blog?


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on Goldie Hawn

I've heard and spoken the name "Goldie Hawn" many times over the years, but it was only thirty seconds ago that I began to realize just how strange-sounding the surname "Hawn" is.

Hawn. Hawn. Hawn.

It's eerie-- like the forlorn call of a farm animal in the wee hours of the morning. Especially when the name is said slowly, around a mouthful of chocolate cake and Rocky Road.

Hawn. Hawn. Hawn.

It's the sound of Darth Vader's breathing. He's inside his clamshell meditation chamber, mask off, muttering a sinister mantra through lava-seared lungs and lips. Possibly with chocolate cake and Rocky Road in his mouth.

Hawn. Hawn. Hawn.

It's the sound of an angel shot through the lung by a bolt from a metaphysical crossbow. Its wings splay awkwardly; its body lies face-down in a filthy puddle next to a dumpster in a Chicago alley, the crossbow bolt protruding from between its shoulder blades.

Hawn. Hawn. Hawn.

It's the groans during sex.

Hawn. Hawn. Hawn.

It's the angry barking of a misanthropic codger who sees kids trespassing on the front lawn:

Hawn! Hawn! Hawn!

It's the mournful sound of your heart after a breakup.

Hawn. Hawn. Hawn.

The more I think about Goldie's surname, the more mystified I am by it.

Hawn. Hawn. Hawn.

The pulse of the universe.


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back

I'm back from my week of solitude and reflection. The first thing I did upon entering the house was to charge downstairs, drop trou, and shoot out a massive turd that had been battering at my asshole for release: it began as a proud, solid tube of Metamucil-infused shite but ended, sadly, as a scattershot blat of alternately weak and powerful diarrhea. I'm still feeling some aftershocks from the event, so it's possible I may have to rush off to the toilet agai--


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to tide you over: reminiscences

I won't be blogging for a week, so here's a re-post of some tasteless animations and images I made long ago:


Obama's special talent:

My take on the most recent Rambo movie (which, as of this writing, I still haven't seen):










What it's like to be pope:










What it's like to be pope 2:










Life at Hogwarts:










Bowing to terrorism (a response to South Korea's negotiation for the return of its missionaries from Afghanistan):










Having never been a fan of either George Bush or the late Ted Kennedy...










One of my favorite Christmas images:










One of my favorite pictorial sequences:
















Back on March 1.


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shoving off tomorrow

I'm off in the morning to DC, then taking a seven-hour bus ride to Parts Unknown. Much walking and thinking (and possibly ch'am-seon/zazen) to ensue. I can't guarantee that I'll return a new man, but I'm hoping the relative quiet of the place I'm going to will be conducive to clearing my head at least a little bit.

You're free to leave comments, write emails, etc. I won't be totally out of touch with the world, but I won't be frequently in touch, either.

Have a good week. See you on March 1: samil-jeol in Korea.


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authorial wisdom

In his "gradual interview," fantasy and science-fiction author Stephen R. Donaldson wrote the following:

"...in general I'm confident of two things: you can't really be a writer if you aren't an avid reader; and you can't really be a writer if you prefer not to think."*

Many writers, when talking about the craft of writing, have mentioned the first part: to write well, you must read well. Almost none of them go on to mention the necessary flip side: it's not enough merely to read well.

Language teachers, because they've taken their linguistics classes, are aware that the mind possesses two separate libraries: one for active vocabulary, and one for passive vocabulary. The two libraries have some connection, but no necessary or absolute one. Passive vocabulary is the storehouse we develop as we're exposed to language through listening and reading; active vocabulary develops through speaking and writing. These four "macroskills," as they're called-- listening, reading, speaking, and writing-- are themselves divided into passive (or "receptive") and active (or "productive") categories: speaking and writing are active; listening and reading are passive.

Some people immediately chafe at such a categorization: "Reading isn't a purely passive activity," they argue. And they're right: it isn't. When I engage a story, my imagination helps the author by filling in the gaps. The author lays out the framework for his fictional universe, but it's up to the reader to flesh it out and inhabit it. Furthermore, as the story progresses, the reader begins to form questions along the way, indicating an ever-deepening involvement with the plot and characters.

But this sort of engagement isn't the same as constructing the story. Creation is, at heart, a very different beast from mere consumption. It takes far more imagination and drive to create than it does to read, which is why being a good reader is no guarantee that one will be a good writer. A writer is constantly stretching his active vocabulary, which is largely informed by his passive vocabulary, but isn't the same thing.

If you've learned a foreign language, you already have an instinctive comprehension of the difference between active and passive vocabulary. Recognizing the French expression for "bathroom" is one thing, but having to produce the expression when you're desperately seeking relief at a train station in Rennes is quite another. The only way to increase active vocabulary is through the practice of speaking and writing, and this is what Donaldson is alluding to when he emphasizes the importance of thinking for good writing: it's not enough to be borne away by a narrative. Paddling along the author's fictional river is still not the same as creating the universe in which that river flows. That's the writer's task, and honing that skill requires more than the ability to read well. "Wow!" is a readerly reaction. "Fiat lux!" is a writerly act of will.

---

*We'll refrain from commenting on Mr. Donaldson's misuse of the semicolon, a punctuation mark that he often mistreats in his novels.


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postal scrotum: John McCrarey on Ann Althouse on Tiger Woods

John McCrarey writes:

Kevin, thought you might find Althouse's thoughts on Tiger Woods' presser yesterday of interest. She [questions] why Tiger is substituting therapy for his religious faith.

Althouse on Tiger

Hope you are well. Gotta say that I love Skyline Drive although not sure I'd be up for camping in February. Good luck to you.

John

Thanks, John. Alas, the drive is totally closed along its entire length, so to access it, I'd have to walk in from the Appalachian Trail at a point outside the drive. Once I've walked in a ways, the problem then becomes... what to do next? If I leave a car at the trailhead, I'll have to double back to reach it again, and I'd rather not walk the same length of trail in both directions (having someone drop me off at one point of the AP, then pick me up many miles hence, is possible, but defeats the purpose of being alone the whole trip). A loop trail would be nicer, in which case I'd prefer to go to a mountain and not the Appalachian Trail. As you know, Skyline Drive itself has some loop trails, most of which are short but some of which are quite long, but again we run into the problem of the park being closed. I'd have to start hiking from outside the drive, hike all the way to whichever loop trail I've chosen, do the loop, then essentially backtrack again. Not fun.

This is all moot, though. I've narrowed my head-clearing sites down to a couple choice spots in Virginia, after which I'll be going off the grid on Monday, for about a week.

re: Althouse/Tiger/Buddhism

Just read through Althouse's post. Interesting stuff. I'm guessing the most obvious answer to her question-- "Why therapy and not Buddhism?"-- is that a lot of Americans go into therapy. It's a fairly common, accepted life-choice these days, so perhaps it seemed like the natural thing for Tiger to do.

There's a definite overlap between religion and therapy, because therapy does involve the creation and maintenance of something like, for lack of a better term, an "internal worldview." Along with the internal, religion often brings an "external" worldview to the table-- insights about the fundamental nature of all reality, the origins of the cosmos and humanity's place/role within that cosmos, etc.-- but psychotherapy deals almost exclusively with mind-related issues-- inner reality. Being a soft science, psychology doesn't seem to mind drifting into religious language when it's in therapeutic mode (we're talking "-iatry," not "-ology"). Buddhism, too, has often been referred to as a type of therapy, and many Buddhists will say that, just as you don't have one single medicine in your medicine cabinet (because different ailments require different treatments), we each need different methods for dealing with different personal problems. This ties into the Buddhist notion of upaya, or "expedient means." You go with what works.

So in Tiger's case, we could say, cynically, that he's following the well-trodden path of many an American celebrity, turning to therapy as a sign of public penance, to garner sympathy, keep the public off his back, and regain some of his sponsors. Less cynically, and in a more Buddhist vein, we might say that Tiger has chosen the route that seems best for him right now. Maybe a more overt religious/spiritual practice will come later. Who knows? Tiger's mother is Thai, if I'm not mistaken, and Thailand is perhaps the biggest bastion of Theravada Buddhism, which is all about salvation through self-effort by following the "arhatic" ideal, sort of an imitatio Buddhi. If we charitably assume that Tiger has truly owned up to his responsibility for his marital woes, then perhaps we can further assume that he'll try to "work out his salvation with diligence" (supposedly the Buddha's final words) at a later date. Maybe he needs the hand-holding of psychotherapy first, after which he can toddle back to the temple and begin the real work of self-salvation.

I like Althouse because she holds liberals' feet to the fire (and isn't she either a liberal herself, or a "reformed" liberal?), but in this case it feels as if she's making a mountain out of a molehill. Tiger appears willing to accept all responsibility for everything that's happened, and in a very public manner (albeit after a shameful period of hesitancy and prodding from others); at the very least, we can say that that's a first step toward redemption. In point of fact, he might not be solely responsible for his mess; we know little to nothing about his wife's character and behavior. But the fact that Tiger has chosen to make himself somehow better and more marriage-worthy has to be cause for-- well, not exactly praise, per se, but at least grim satisfaction.

Of course, the ultimate test is time. Everything good and true and real shows its nature only through its ability to endure. Whether a marriage is weak or strong can only be determined over the course of years; a single glance at a couple can never provide enough data to know the reality. Whether Tiger will emerge a better man is something we won't know for a while (and, to be frank, I'm not sure how much I really care). By the same token, we'll eventually learn whether his current contrition is merely a sham. Actions speak louder than words. In the meantime, I'd say we should give the guy a chance. If he falls spectacularly off the path to redemption, then we'll shift into tough-love mode and pound his lame ass mercilessly.


UPDATE: With thanks to Skippy, we have the Onion's take on the matter.


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le soleil brille, le ciel est bleu, et les mouches pètent

Bright sun outside, and the formerly icy roads continue to melt. It'll be days before we can see the grass of our back yard again, but the time is almost upon me to motor off to Parts Unknown and spend a week in relative peace and quiet.


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bromotion

My brother Sean, the professional cellist, is moving to another apartment starting today. He says he doesn't have much to move, but because he's back to his busy schedule, he needs to perform the move in several stages. Today is IKEA day; he's bought some furniture for the new place, and needs help with assembly, so he'll be picking me up momentarily.

I'm curious to see the new digs. Sean says this is the first time he's lived anywhere alone; before this, he's always had a roommate/housemate. I wish him luck, and I hope his neighbors won't mind all the cello practice. A pro has to keep his edge.


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much to do

I'm still getting back into the rhythm of blogging, so you'll pardon me if I don't write with quite the same frequency as I did back when I was in Korea.

My plans to escape to the boonies are currently on hold, given the snowy conditions that have turned my neighborhood into the boonies. Before the big snows, I had thought about hitting Skyline Drive and being dropped off along the Appalachian Trail to do some hiking and camping for a week, but the entire drive is closed to vehicular traffic. Skyline Drive is still accessible to hikers, as is the Appalachian Trail, which runs more or less alongside the drive. Were I to hit the AP, I'd need to find a portion of the trail that lies outside of Skyline Drive, which is part of Shenandoah National Park. I could then follow the AP into the Park. In theory, with everything closed this time of year (snow or no snow, most of the guest-oriented facilities are closed from late fall to early spring), it ought to be a pretty quiet hiking and camping session.

The problem, though, is that any hike into the park would probably mean hiking back out the way I came: with the drive closed to visiting traffic, a driver would have no way to reach me once I was deep inside the park. So I'm not even sure that Skyline Drive is even a good venue for my needs.

"What are your needs?" I hear you ask. Well, I need to get on with my life, but I've been wanting some quiet time-- time to mourn, to reflect, to cry, to put the pieces of my mind and heart back together. Time to recover my irreverent sense of humor. Time to do some heavy-duty existential ass-scratching. A week or two of quiet will do me fine. After that, I'll be looking for work in the northern Virginia area-- probably teaching, but one never knows. I might even try voice recording, and parlay that into something acting-oriented.

In the meantime, I've got a pile of personal projects to work on, along with house-related projects-- another reason why I'm staying in the area and not returning to Korea right away. I'm looking more closely into self-publishing through Lulu.com, a publish-on-demand service that has vastly improved since 2004. Marketing on Lulu is easier than it is on CafePress, and the per-book profit margins look to be bigger than they are at CP. Along with re-formatting my old humor book, Scary Spasms in Hairy Chasms, I'm going to be reformatting Water from a Skull to match Lulu specs, and working on the manuscript about our family's battle with Mom's brain cancer. That latter manuscript might be shopped around to various agents, but it'll most likely end up being self-published. I'm an impatient guy; once a ms is finished, I don't like the idea of waiting 12-18 months to see my book in print, which is what would happen were I to take the traditional publishing route.

The house's renovation still isn't finished, and now we have the additional task of figuring out what to do with Mom's stuff. Personally, I'm not too sentimental about things like clothing or makeup, but I'll be consulting with Dad at every step to see what he wants done. Whenever I get a steady job, I'll likely work on my personal and parent-related projects over the weekend.

Finally, there's the question of money. I want to earn enough to get back to Korea and secure an apartment this time around; I turned 40 last year, and a 40-something without decent digs is a sad, sad sight. I've also got a whole library of books that deserve to be properly housed on decent shelves; right now, Sperwer and Joe have been holding boxes and boxes of my stuff, in Korea, since April of 2008. I had intended to get back to Seoul earlier than this, and they've been saddled with the burden of my mortal possessions for too long. Both guys (and their saintly wives) deserve a big dinner (or a truckload of cash) for doing what they're doing.

I also need cash so as to pay poor Dad back. I've been jobless since Mom's cancer made itself known to us; quitting work was the only way to be there all day and night, every day. From at least January 2009 until now, Dad has covered my expenses which, thanks to old scholastic loans and my BlackBerry bill, amount to about $700 per month. That's a lot of cash. I need to calculate what I owe Dad, then start paying him back. I might not be able to finish paying off that debt until I'm back in Korea, but I need to start.

So to sum up, Kevin's life looks like this for the next year or so:

1. Take time off from the world for a week or two.
2. Get a job.
3. Work on house and other parent-related projects.
4. Work on personal writing projects.
5. Earn enough money to start paying Dad back and have a lump sum of cash to take to Korea, then move back to Korea.

Money is the top priority right now; the trans-America walk will have to wait.

Much to do.


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Percy Potter

On Saturday, I drove south and visited my buddy Mike and his family. It was his second daughter's birthday, and we went to see "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief." Had I been more up on my Greek mythology, I would have realized who the thief was much sooner than I actually did (hint: who's the Greek god of, among other things, thieves?).

The movie proved to be decent popcorn fare for the kids, and some of the performances-- especially that of Uma Thurman as Medusa-- were memorable even for us adults. Unfortunately, my main beef with "Lightning Thief" is something that many critics have also picked up on: the storyline is a shameless Harry Potter ripoff. This Slate review says it best:

The series delighted my daughter but irritated me with its overwhelming, blatant borrowing from Harry Potter. Percy is American-- that's a difference. And his magic comes from Greek gods, not wizards. But almost every other significant element in the books-- particularly the first book, The Lightning Thief-- is derivative. An average boy living with a vicious, bullying relative suddenly learns of his special powers and finds out that he's actually a celebrity in the magical world. (Hmm, where have I heard that?) Percy's quickly transported to a mysterious place where other extraordinary kids learn to harness their powers, but it's not Hogwarts, it's "Camp Half-Blood." Hogwarts has "houses"; Camp Half-Blood has "cabins." Hogwarts has Quidditch; Camp Half-Blood has epic games of capture-the-flag. Hogwarts is supervised by a gentle, bearded, and mighty wizard; Camp Half-Blood by a gentle, bearded, and mighty centaur. Our hero-- whose name even has the same rhythm as Potter (Har-ry Pot-ter; Per-cy Jack-son)-- soon attracts two sidekicks. One, Annabeth Chase, is a book-smart girl who starts out as a rival but becomes a friend. The other, Grover Underwood, is goofy, physically awkward, and loyal. These three set out to retrieve an all-powerful magical object that's been lost (Potter: sorcerer's stone; Jackson: lightning bolt of Zeus), confront the forces of darkness, and-- through courage and guile-- emerge victorious.

In short, it's a rip-off.

Children might strenuously object, citing a long list of differences in biographical detail between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson ("Harry's got a lightning bolt on his forehead! Percy doesn't!"), but we adults accumulate multiple forms of wisdom as we get older, one of which is the ability to step back from a cloud of minutiae to take in the underlying or overarching structure of a literary or filmic work-- to behold its skeleton and proclaim it, when necessary, a poxy clone. Elementary schoolers see only difference because they haven't yet refined their ability to descry abstracta and make intelligent comparisons.

So the above reviewer hit the nail on the head as far as I was concerned, and since his critique applied as much to the books as to the movie, I now know that I won't be perusing the books anytime soon.

None of which is to say that I spent two hours in the cinema grinding my teeth in barely-suppressed fury. Quite the contrary, I thought the film was a hoot-- corny and overly Hollywoodized, yes, but watchable. Uma wasn't the only reason why "Lighting Thief" was enjoyable: Pierce Brosnan, as a centaur, made a joke about his own fat ass, and several naughty instances of bestiality humor (some of it goat-oriented) were slipped into the dialogue for the sake of the grownups watching the film. Would I see the movie again? No. But if you have to watch it with some kids, it's a perfectly harmless experience.


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happy Lunar New Year

A quick Happy Lunar New Year to the readership as we celebrate the arrival of the Year of the Tiger.

And Happy Valentine's Day to all the ladies.


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off to see friends

I'm off to see my buddy Mike and his family. They're celebrating Mike's second daughter's birthday, and I've been invited to go out and see "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" with the gang.

This will be my first outing in a while. While I don't look forward to the snowy drive down to Mike's part of the world, I think it'll be good to step out and get some air.


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Stephen R. Donaldson's "gradual interview"

It's not often that a fan can interact with an author he admires, but Stephen R. Donaldson, who gained fame in the 1970s and 80s for his first and second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever trilogies, has a website wherein he regularly responds to fan questions. Most authors wouldn't bother, but Donaldson, despite being in the middle of writing a Thomas Covenant tetralogy, budgets enough time to address many of the inquiries he receives through his website. One section of the site is, in fact, devoted to what he has termed a "gradual interview," i.e., a written give-and-take with fans that has been slowly unfolding over the course of time. It begins in 2004 and continues to the present. Donaldson, who is in his sixties, averages about two to four questions per day.

I began reading the gradual interview during the latter stages of Mom's cancer, and found strange comfort in reading the thoughts of one of my favorite authors. Donaldson is, predictably, a private individual, so he shies away from questions that are overly personal. He also evinces understandable irritation when different people ask the same question, but he never allows his irritation to boil over. Far from doing anything that might alienate his fans, he does his best to remain civil and patient, and will even revisit certain "repeat" questions if he feels they deserve more nuanced answers than the ones he has originally given.

Donaldson is quite frank about his limits as an author. He says, for example, that writing "dialect" and "doing humor" are nearly impossible for him, and that he's not at all a visual person. He's also not afraid to address readers' confusion about this or that concept or plot point (though he discourages unsolicited criticism-- an attitude I appreciate*). The fans have, over the several years' worth of questions that I've read, asked many of the story-related questions that I had wanted to ask. Donaldson's replies to these questions have ranged from prickly to humorous to evasive, but the fact that he answers them at all is remarkable. Thanks to the interview, fans have learned that Donaldson considers his Gap series (a science fiction pentalogy) his best literary achievement, despite its failure to sell. He chafes at the way publishers pigeonhole their authors in much the same way that actors resent being typecast. He has also offered aspiring writers plenty of writerly advice throughout the interview, but one of the questions that irritates him is "How/Where do you get your inspiration?"-- a question that can only be answered in a subjective way, which both makes the answer useless to anyone else, and requires Donaldson to explain a process that is fundamentally unexplainable for him.

Thus far, I've read a little more than halfway through the gradual interview, which puts me in the early months of 2007. For those of you who know Donaldson's work, I highly recommend the interview; I'd also recommend the interview to others who, despite not knowing Donaldson or his oeuvre, might nevertheless desire some small glimpse of a writer's inner life. Donaldson has done his best to guard his privacy, but his answers still reveal much about the man.

---

*On April 19, 2006, Donaldson wrote:

There is no such thing as "valid" or "constructive" criticism--unless the person on the receiving end asks for it. If the recipient doesn't ask, he/she isn't, well, receptive; and the criticism is wasted. So it follows that what people choose to call "valid" or "constructive" criticism exists for the benefit of the critic, not for the good of the person being criticized. It serves the ego of the critic.

A little context: Donaldson is here referring primarily to criticisms of a work that are directed at the author after a work has been published. I don't think he's seriously contending that there's simply no such thing as valid or constructive criticism. The validity and constructiveness of any given criticism has, at least in my opinion, as much to do with the tenderness of the authorial ego as it does with the critic's personality and motivation.

That said, I side with Donaldson's general claim: I, too, often resent unsolicited criticism. And unsolicited advice. As someone who prefers to keep his own counsel when it comes to the things that matter in life, I've often had to swallow my ego and practice patience while listening to somebody tell me something I already know.


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finally!

Terrible self-promoter that I am, I've finally done something I should have done back in 2006: I've put up an excerpt from my book, Water from a Skull. The link to the excerpt is now a permanent fixture on the sidebar, directly under the little ad for the book, but if you're one of those putzes who's too lazy to glance at the sidebar, click here. And thanks in advance for reading.


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language rant: the vocative comma

In the comments to the previous post, John McCrarey writes:

correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't it be:

Thanks Anne, for stopping by versus thanks, Anne, for stopping by?

Anyone who has studied a bit of Latin knows that it's a language with a gazillion different cases—nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, ablative, etc. These cases can be found in all languages, but they're either difficult to see or morphologically invisible, as is often the case in modern American English. Example:

He brings the kid the ball.

He = nominative case (subject of the sentence)

the kid = dative case (indirect object of the action "brings")

the ball = accusative case (direct object of "brings")

Compare the above with German, where the cases are more visible because you have to change the articles to reflect changes in case.

Er bringt dem Kind den Ball.

Er = he, in the nominative

dem Kind = originally das Kind (the word "child" is grammatically neuter in German), but in the dative case, der and das become dem

den Ball = originally der Ball in the nominative, but because Ball is the direct object of the action (accusative case), der becomes den

Sorry for the grammar lesson, but my point is that languages have cases, and different languages show those cases in ways ranging from invisible to quite visible. Languages like German, Latin, Greek, and Russian often show differences in case quite clearly. English, by contrast, doesn't normally change the form of words to indicate variations in case.*

But there's one major exception: the vocative comma.

The vocative case is all about calling or addressing people or things. In English, we indicate the relationship between the speaker and the one spoken to by inserting commas.

Examples:

Hey, dude. What's up? (Not: Hey dude.)

Thanks, Emma.

Annette, I don't get why you keep dropping vocative commas.

Dammit, Spock, I'm a doctor, not an astrophysicist!

Hear, O Israel!

Buy, minions! Buy!


The last example gives us a chance to see how the vocative comma is helpful. With the comma in place, we have a despot commanding his minions to save the economy by shopping more. Without the comma, we have a despot (or somebody) telling some unknown person to go out and buy him (the despot) some minions:

"Buy minions!" = "You! Buy some minions for me!"

It's possible that the vocative comma may drop out of modern American English altogether, simply as a matter of "common usage," with people intuiting the vocative case through context. I'll be one of the holdouts, though; just as older folks still refuse to split infinitives (despite the fact that most current grammar and style manuals these days claim there's no damage in doing so), I'll be holding on to** those vocative commas until the barbarians come and pry them from my cold, dead brain cells.

In the meantime, I find it excruciating to read vocative locutions that lack vocative commas. I've seen "Hey Kevin" at the start of more emails than I can count, and it's all I can do to keep from weeping and smashing everything around me with a baseball bat.

As the "Buy, minions!" example indicates, vocative commas have their use. Instead of letting the barbarians erode the language further, take a stand and use the comma.

So: Thanks, Anne, for stopping by is correct.

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*For the purposes of this discussion, I'm considering the pronominal shift from "he" to "him" (or "she" or "her," or "they" to "them") to be so common as not to merit discussion. In English overall, very little morphological change occurs when switching cases. Beyond these basic pronouns, it becomes very difficult to cite examples of such changes. Only one other example comes to mind right away: the use of prepositions to indicate case, e.g., "She threw the ball to Clara." Clara is marked as the indirect object of "threw."

**Not "holding onto"! But that's a rant for another time.


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revving up

This blog will be starting up again soon. It never went dead, of course, but I did avoid posting very much here over the past year or two. Right now, I'm checking the blog for holes and leaks, revving its engine a bit, slapping some pink back into its tentacles, and making sure the thing is still drivable. I already see, from an examination of my sidebar, that certain links are now dead and will have to be dealt with. (I also see that the Photobucket censors decided that some of my pics were too graphic for their Terms of Service). In addition to cropping parts of the sidebar, I might also want to add some links from my other blog, which will remain open as a memorial to my mother, who died this past January 6. If you followed our family's ordeal from April 16, 2009 to now, thank you. At some point, I'll be writing a book about what it's been like to deal with Mom's cancer.

How will the tone of the Hairy Chasms change in light of the past ten months? Will Kevin now be older, wiser, more serious, and less of an asshole? Will his blog now show greater focus and increased dedication to writerly excellence?

Or will readers be disappointed to see yet more jokes about using one's scrotum as a drogue when decelerating on the salt flats?

Stay thou tunèd and find out.

UPDATE: I'm switching templates from my old, archaic, 2003-era HTML one to what I hope will be a slightly better CSS framework. You'll notice plenty of cosmetic changes over the next few weeks as I rebuild my sidebar and add all manner of doodads to the blog.


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re-opened, but not necessarily for business

Some people emailed me when they discovered that this blog was no longer publicly available. My main reason for shutting it down was that I wasn't doing much here. But I rethought the matter and decided that, hell, if people want to comb through the blog-- even though it's largely dormant-- they should feel free to.

So the blog is open to the public again.


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