the things that keep me awake at night

the other night i was thinking about the rapidly approaching new year, and where i would be spending in. southeast asia? mississippi? little bit of a no-brainer, right? anyway, i realized that the new year is going to be 2010. and i had the most troubling thought: what are we going to do for new year's eve novelty glasses? observe:

2009 was the last year the two zeroes would be together, making convenient eye holes. basically, the novelty eyewear people have had an entire decade to rest on their laurels. "two goes here, eight goes here, eyes in the middle, badda bing, badda boo!"

but what now? my god! what now!?! the zeroes are no longer together! do we just stop wearing novelty glasses to commemorate the passing of another year? do we wear really truncated awkward 1s on our noses and have lopsided 2010 glasses? fail!

the world's most perfect bad movie

if you've spent any amount of time with me, especially after a few cocktails, i have made it perfectly clear how badly i love a terrible movie. not just any ordinary bad movie - i'm looking at you, mission impossible franchise, but a movie so bad it transcends terribleness and swings back around into a thing of beauty.



for good or ill, i am very hard to please, cinematically speaking. movies that i consider legitimately good are few and far between: singin' in the rain, big fish, blade runner, l.a. confidential, wall-e, sunshine. after seeing each of those i thought, i will never see anything like that again.



which is why i like bad movies. they're comforting, like mcdonalds. i swear it off ten times a year, but can't get away. bad movies have just the right combination of irony, un-intentional irony, actors who know the score, and actors trying for their oscar reel that it just adds up to pure magic. throw in a hangover and a pizza, and it's like looking into the face of god.



thanks to korean cable (jean claude van damme: still relevant on channel 201!) i have rediscovered what may be the single greatest bad movie ever made: 3000 Miles to Graceland.

let's put it this way: if bad movies were the winter olympics, figure skating, and there were certain technical elements to be met, 3000 Miles to Graceland would have an unstoppable lead going into the free skate. let me break it down for you, in terms of dick-flick movie cliches

nineties heartthrob, trying to hang on - kevin costner

teen heartthrob, ditto above - christian slater

former child star - kurt russell (totally counts, google it)

cast member of friends - courtney cox (arquette)

an aquette (by birth) - david

black dude who dies 20 minutes in - bokhem woodbine

athlete - howie long

plucky kid - some poor s.o.b. who hopefully went to college

as i was sitting in the theater (yes, i saw this movie in the theater, nachoes and all) i thought to myself, "holy crap, all this movie needs is a rapper. it has every bad thing ever. where's the rapper?" and then, like some beat-slingin' deus et machina, Ice T descends from the ceiling. upside down. on a cable. firing uzis. yes, plural.

i have not done this film justice. trust me: like looking into the face of god.

In Retrospect

i just finished reading In Retrospect by Robert MacNamara, who was the secretary of defense during the vietnam war. it took my quite a while to finish this tome, because i kept having to put it down out of anger. why? because i feel like if you had a copy of the book and performed a simple "find and replace" function, swapping the word Vietnam for the word Iraq, you'd have the story of our current adventure in the middle east. lack of planning, lack of understanding of the culture being invaded, lack of victory strategy. it's all there.

but here's the really galling part: the book was written in 1996. that means it was just sitting around, waiting to be learned from, for a full 7 years before the US invaded iraq. "hello," it called out from bookshelves and libraries, "garner some knowledge from my mistakes. i'm begging here!"

homophones.

sometimes they are confusing. sometimes they are malicious. misuse them at your own risk.

you'll have to believe me when i tell you....

that the yonsei funeral hall (a very modern, large building near my house) has it's own starbucks. the reason you have to take my word for this is because i couldn't bring myself to photograph it with iPhone. at least not in my walking clothes, which are cut-offs and a tank top. when there are stately people clad in back, coming and going. and drinking coffee. but, really, for reals, there is a starbucks in the funeral hall.

secret single behavior

so, sometimes when i'm bored i count my spare change. i tend not to spend any of the change i accumulate during the day, and i keep it all in a glass vase in my closet. and sometimes when there's nothing good on tv or i don't want to read my book or just because, i count al of my spare change. i make a big pile of chage on my floor, and then count it all. i start with the ten wons, which are the smallest, and work my way up. stacks of ten coins (of course) and rows of five. and then i always feel such a sense of accomplishment. and then, shortly thereafter, i feel sad for myself, and my sad, sad life.