Elephant Talk

I’ve been listening to a lot of Wilco lately. Four months ago or so I didn’t have a single album. But so many of my friends praised them up and down that I had to give them another shot.

I tried once before, somewhere around 2002. That’s when everyone was talking about them. Their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album was the cause de celebré for the independent minded youth of the digital age. It was a triumph of art over commerce. They were the band that stuck it to The MAN. Of course, that was all I heard about. Nobody seemed to mention the music. I hate that kind of media-generated buzz, so I had no interest in getting to know them.

But one day I was driving around Palo Alto with my girlfriend at the time. She was more curious than I was so she bought the album. OK, sure, let’s give it a shot. So she put the CD in the car stereo. Thirty seconds into it, I knew I hated it. Once I heard that sad-sack voice I thought “God no, not another self-emasculaed, indie whiner please.” Two minutes into it I couldn’t take it anymore. I begged her to turn it the hell off. My preconceptions were confirmed: Of course the critics loved them, I thought. These guys hate themselves. They fit perfectly into that drab, post-punk attitude where you have to sound like you don’t care. Critics love that shit. I can’t fucking stand it.

Fast-forward some five or six years into the future, to March 2008. I went with a group of friends to the Korean countryside for some fresh air and to climb a mountain. It had been raining the whole drive up and that night. When we woke up the next morning I opened the curtains and looked outside. The trees were dripping with last night’s rain, the hotel pavement was soaked. But it looked like the weather was going to break and we could climb that mountain.

And then someone put on some music. I heard this really nice, mellow guitar, and then the singer sang the first lines: “Maybe the sun will shine today. The clouds will blow away. Maybe I won’t feel so afraid…” Wait a minute, who’s this? Wilco. First song off their most recent album, Sky Blue Sky. I loved it. It was pretty, it was mellow, the singer was really singing, the mix was beautiful, and it was a great song. In short, it was everything my first experience was not.

And that’s Wilco. There’s a reason every website’s favorite adjective for them is “interesting.” As evidence of this, everyone I know who is a fan has a different preferred phase, a different favorite album. My friend in Pittsburgh thought nothing was ever quite the same after A.M. The bass player in my band prefers Being There. One of the guitarists in my band likes Summerteeth best. The other guitarist swears by A Ghost Is Born. His girlfriend digs Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I, to this day, still prefer Sky Blue Sky by a mile.

Before I dig into my praise of them, and of that album in particular, I gotta get something off my chest.
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It is July 4, which is not only the birthday of the United States of America, it is also the one-year anniversary of this here blog. Let’s see, in that time there have been…

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Looking at blog stats feels wrong, but I do it anyway. I had a huge peak in January, when I was posting a lot about my Europe trip. I guess naming all those places got the search bots buzzing. Now it’s like a ghost town, probably because I don’t post very much. When life is most interesting, there’s less documentation of it: fewer photos snapped, less writing, less blogging. Interesting.

I’m celebrating America’s birthday tonight by playing my final gig with my band. The guitarist and keyboardist are moving on to other parts of the world. I’ve played with a lot of musicians in my life and been in a lot of bands, but this is probably the most talented collection of folks I’ve ever had the privilege of playing with. So it’s sad, but we’ll have fun.

It’s the end of an era. I feel a kind of fall hibernation coming on. But I’ve learned that nothing happens according to plan in Korea, so we’ll see how things go.

Liberals may not admit it now, but we are so going to miss this guy when he’s gone. Obama will be too intelligent, McCain dry as a bone. But Bush, oh the laughs we’ve had over the years…

“And I reminded the President that I am reminded of the great talent of the — of our Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House.”
- President George W. Bush (From the Huffington Post.)

I’m glad he cancelled his trip to South Korea. In the current political-social climate, we really don’t need him fucking things up more than they already are.

We only get the major blockbuster US movies here in Busan, which means we get a lot of crap. But it also means we get all the big animated films, which are most definitely not crap. Kung-fu Panda, for example, was not only a laugh-out-loud riot, it was also beautifully made.

The new Pixar movie, Wall-E, sounds really interesting. In particular, I was intrigued by this little bit about the approach to dialogue:

Throughout the film, the lead characters, and most of the robots they encounter, utter not a single word of traditional dialogue. (There is ooooing, eeeping and beeping.) It’s yet another variation from previous Pixar films in which toys, rats, fish and bugs all have talked - and talked smart.

Still, Stanton says, “there’s dialogue from Frame One. It’s just unconventional dialogue.

“I knew this was a big bite to chew, and it had been a long, long time since someone tried to do a film with this unconventional dialogue in it. I kept saying, ‘It’s like I’m trying to do R2-D2 the Movie.’ I kept using that phrase so many times that one of my producers said, ‘Why don’t you just call Ben Burtt,’ ” the legendary audio and sound man who was the “voice” of R2-D2.

“So I called him and asked him if he could sign on early and help me with dialogue for these characters and grammar for each of the characters,” Stanton says.

“Now that I’m on the back end of working with him for two years, I realize that was the smartest move I ever made. I got 25 years of knowledge of how to do this stuff. He’s just the master of it, and I don’t think I could solved [sic] it without him.”

I’ve been waiting for something like this. Movies tend to “talk” very fast and too much, but I’m always fascinated by those that strip away the need to explain everything. A film like The New World, for example, is a great love story even though the main characters barely speak to each other. Another is Triplets of Belleville. What little language it has is unnecessary. This requires a filmmaker to be more creative in storytelling.

And of course, the other reason I like films without little or no dialogue is that I have more examples I can show in class.

Edit (June 24): Here’s the trailer… looks and sounds great!

Monsoon season has arrived. I know this because on my walk from Starbucks to my office I was nearly lifted off the ground from the wind. I’m now soaking wet (umbrellas are useless in these conditions), and I’m sweating from the heat and humidity.

This is how it works. You’re either wet from the rain outside or wet from sweating inside (at least until the aircon gets going). My office door is locked because I’m half naked waiting for my clothes to dry. More information than you really need, but there you have it.

If you look at it bleakly, all the recent protests signal — at least in part — a new wave of anti-Americanism, and the Marmot’s Hole has been posting about this reality. At the same time, there’s a certain charm to the whole thing. This article made me laugh about a half dozen times. I could see a lot of the “good Korea” in it, because I see smaller versions of this in daily life all the time.

I particularly liked this middle section:

Besides the lack of violence, what is surprising - even to South Koreans - is that there is no organizer for the already weeks-long demonstration. People took to the streets and formed ad hoc protest groups, usually around 6pm or 7pm each day. This has been bewildering to South Korean civil society, labor unions and opposition politicians - the usual players in such public protests. Tuesday’s rally was the first officially organized protest and had the biggest turnout - police estimate 105,000 demonstrators, while the organizers said the number was closer to 500,000.

Still, one might think it was some kind of mass picnic, until you spot the riot police standing stiff, waiting for a crackdown order. Some people are holding impromptu concerts complete with guitars and violins, singing and dancing. In some cases, entire families have arrived to literally “camp out” in the middle of traffic. Of course they brought tents with them.

Other “protesters” have brought hot coffee to serve anyone who needs it. And high school students have given out roses to riot police, a move that definitely brings down the tension level. Some are distributing water bottles to the aggressive “frontliners” who usually shout more and work up a justified thirst. There are even volunteer medics walking around, shouting “Does anybody need help?”

Young couples use the protest for a romantic outing. They march with hands held tight, and the other hand holding a candle. Local TV footage has shown a man celebrating his girlfriend’s birthday with a protest-candle cake. Other “demonstrators” have brought an outdoor movie projector and are showing the US documentary Sicko.

With the party atmosphere in full swing, the street vendors are enjoying a heyday of extra money and unusual business hours. It’s 2am, and here they are selling kimbob (Korean sushi) or bundaegi (roasted silkworm larvae) right in the middle of roads that have been declared “no-traffic zones” by protesters who’re occupying them.

This is South Korea’s street protests 2.0. Or, perhaps, South Korea’s “postmodern” demonstrations. With some Koreans mistrustful of mainstream media reports on the demonstration, they’ve taken matters into their own hands by broadcasting and reporting themselves. Using high-speed wireless Internet, some “embedded” citizens are using their own laptops and camcorders to broadcast real-time events. There are “citizen reporters” conducting interviews and taking pictures and posting them on their personal blogs and Internet forums. In fact, these news hounds have been so effective that some established newspapers have begun quoting them.

I was leaving a restaurant when I saw the HDTV showing news of the massive protests against President Lee Myung Bak in Seoul. The girl behind the counter pointed at her forehead, smiled, and said “mad cow.” Here’s a picture from the International Herald Tribune, the lead story for the day.

And the story.

The Koreans do protest way better than Americans do, that’s for sure.

Classes are winding down and the semester’s coming to a close. I’ve been crazy busy lately, working on projects, helping students, grading assignments, playing gigs, and hanging out. I also have to finish my taxes before June 14. Then it’s fully into final grades, final dinners, final parties. I’ll emerge at some point at the end of next week, ready for the welcome abyss of no-plans-whatsoever.

This weekend was a full one. A gig on Thursday, which turned into a late night; a full 8 hours of animation sound design with some students on Friday; an aborted recording session Saturday and then another gig in Dalmaji that night.

I was looking forward to a mellow Sunday, but I got talked into going to my first baseball game in Busan. The team is the Lotte Giants, and their fans are rabid, to say the least. It was more like a European football match. They chanted songs, did the wave, did a double wave (quite impressive), and yelled a lot at the opposing pitcher.

Then, somewhere around the 8th inning, out came the orange bags. The purpose is to dump your trash into them, but while the game’s still going on, people blow them up with air and then tie them on their heads. So everyone’s got these bulbous orange growths on their heads and they bob up and down while doing silly chants and songs. Quite a sight. I wish I had pictures, but I can’t seem to find my camera.

Alas, Lotte lost 3-1, but it was exciting at the end. Afterward we had sam-gyup-sal because, well because that’s what we do.

Here’s an interesting article on Korean president Lee Myung-bak’s vision for the future of Seoul. The idea is to emulate Seattle and make Seoul more eco-friendly.

Seoul’s population is 10.3 million. Seattle’s is 0.5 million. But I like the effort.

I went on a day trip to Jochiwon yesterday to give a guest lecture at a university. I should get a map and start putting thumb tacks in places I’ve been over the past 15 months. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of the country now, enough to forget all the places I’ve been.

It was a three-hour drive there and another three back. A colleague from my university drove. South Korea is full of toll booths on the highways. As we returned to Busan we went though one. I looked at the charge and it was just under 18,000 won. (about $18 ) I was shocked. Eighteen dollars just to drive. So I asked if Koreans pay taxes for highways. He said no. It seems that the highway system, as far as I can tell, is a pay as you go kind of thing. The price depends on the distance you travel.

I thought about this and about whether it would work in America. It sounds to me like it would be a good idea. Rather than everyone paying a small share in taxes to the government to build and maintain roads, only those who use it pay for it. This makes sense to me from two angles: First, you’re directly paying for a service that you are actually using when you use it.

Second, and more interesting to me, is the incentives aspect. If you have to pay for the trip, you’re more likely to take one together and thereby reduce traffic and pollution. You’re also more likely to find some alternate forms of transportation, such as a bus or train.

I would guess that most Americans would hate the idea. I wonder how many other countries do this, and whether it works.

By the way, for Americans freaking out about the price of gas: It costs about $8 a gallon in Korea. You’re still way under what the rest of the world has to pay.