The Great Stumble-Upon

Once in a while, I mentally flirt with the idea of moving to Los Angeles, even though it's a city that I never ever in a billion years thought I'd be interested in living in. But sometimes it's winter in New York City and it's cold and my skin is all pale and sallow from lack of sun and I think about Ed Ruscha and Charles Bukowski and John Darnielle's lyrics in The Sunset Tree, and all of a sudden Southern California seems very romantic in a burnt-out, Hollywood sense.

And then there are days like last Thursday, when I can't fathom leaving New York.

Gayle and I spent the late afternoon and evening weaving around Greenpoint, with no goal in mind, just exploring the neighborhood in the nice spring weather. We stumbled upon a really wonderful bookstore, where I purchased Under the Banner of Heaven, and we meandered through the "historic" district (although the informational signage was covered in graffiti). We passed kids playing on quaint, narrow streets under leafy trees, and other kids playing in sad, littered playgrounds near the docks. We bought sauerkraut-and-mushroom pierogis from a Polish restaurant and ate them on the steps of a church. We browsed through cheap DVDs at an independent video store and bonded with the store owner about Boy A and what an underrated movie it is. Then we met up with some friends and went to a free neighborhood concert at a Mexican restaurant, where the lead singer of Wheatus (and Greenpoint resident) played "Teenage Dirtbag" for a bunch of hipsters.

It was great and almost completely unplanned. And that seems to be the beauty of living in New York: the ability to walk around a neighborhood and stumble upon all the weird and wonderful gems it has to offer. It's also what worries me about a city like Los Angeles. When you have to drive to your destination, do you ever see any of the places in between? Is there any unplanned wanderings? Any getting lost on foot?

Current or former residents of L.A., is the stumble-upon possible in your city? Or do you find your metropolitan thrills in other ways?

(Now I'm done with my Carrie Bradshaw-esque musings, I promise.)

So Bad It's Good

I recently saw two epic films, Troll 2 and The Room, both which have become cult classics due to their overall terribleness. For films like these to achieve a certain type of campy fame, there has to be an earnestness on the part of the director, a sense of megalomania, the notion that their work will stand next to Citizen Kane and The Godfather in the annals of film history.

The backstories to both films are great (Italian crew who can't communicate with the cast? Bizarre director who raised money through imported leather jackets?), but even without a great backstory, the films stand on their own. Two short reviews below.

TROLL 2

I watched this with my friend Matt, with whom I share a love for bad movies. He is the one who introduced me to this scene from Mac and Me, a blatant rip-off of E.T. He is the one who would entertain us in college by reading aloud reviews of Duncan Checks In on IMDB.com. He also just generally makes me laugh, to the point of embarrassment.

So in this grand tradition, we settled in to watch Troll 2, on Matt's recommendation, and it turned out to be one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. I swear, I did not stop laughing for that entire film. It is so utterly ridiculous, with a plot that makes no sense, and awful acting, and monster masks that look as though I painted them. (Like, fifteen years ago. In fifth grade art class.) Without giving anything away, I'll just say that there is a lot of green food, an incredible love scene involving corn, and not a single troll anywhere in the film.

GRADE: A+

THE ROOM

I saw The Room in a completely different environment: a post-midnight screening downtown with a bunch of friends and co-workers. I had never been to the Village East Cinema before and although it's fairly unassuming on the outside, the interior is a gorgeously renovated Yiddish theater.

After waiting in line for quite some time, we all clutched our plastic spoons and piled in with our fellow hipsters at around 12:45. From the moment the film started, people did not stop yelling. I guess if I had seen the film before, I might have appreciated it, but it meant I missed a great deal of the dialogue. To me, terrible dialogue is what makes a terrible movie terrible! Granted, you need no words to understand the softly-lit, disgusting soft-core sex scenes, or the completely unnecessary chroma-keyed San Francisco skyline, or the randomness of a bunch of dudes playing football in their tuxedos. But it would have been nice to at least hear some key lines.

Also, a lot of the yelling was directed towards "Lisa," one of the main characters. While she is supposed to be a manipulative and awful person, there was something disconcerting about being in a darkened room while a faceless mass of guys yelled things like, "Whore! Slut! Bitch!" at the screen. I know she's the worst ("You are tearing me apart, Lisa!") but for me, it took some of the fun out of it. Whereas Troll 2 is just pure, unadulterated silliness, The Room is just a few yards away from some terrible student films I had to sit through. (Including my own.)

GRADE: B

Hail Satan!

A few weeks ago, on a very dark, cold, rainy night, I found an old paperback of Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin at the free book shelf at the Education Alliance. Rosemary's Baby is one of my all-time favorite movies and the novel proved to be no disappointment. It's pretty much an exact blueprint for the film, down to the most minute of details. And so while I think Roman Polanski did an excellent job directing the film, many of the dark and wonderful touches that I formerly attributed to him (Laura-Louise with the magnifying glass, the Japanese photographer, "I won't have an abortion!") were actually Mr. Levin's creation. Polanski barely changed a thing.

It confirmed for me what I heard many years ago at University of Michigan, at a lecture given by Chuck Palahniuk. I had a bunch of friends who read his books religiously and I tagged along for fun. (Personally, I think he's a good writer, but once you've read one Palahniuk book, you've read them all.) That night, he read some revolting stories from Stranger Than Fiction, but the one that I found most compelling was an essay entitled "Dear Mr. Levin."

The piece is a personal letter to Ira Levin and while time has dulled some of the initial wonder I felt while hearing it, the key points are still very resonant. Some excerpts:

Your books take some of the thorniest issues in our culture and charm us into facing the problem. What's creepy is, these are issues the American public is years away from confronting, but in each one - in each book - you ready us for a battle you seem to see coming. And, so far, you're always right.

In Rosemary's Baby, published in 1967, the battle is over a woman's right to control her body. She's controlled by her religion, her husband, by her male best friend, by her male obstetrician. All this you got people to read - to pay money to read - years before the feminist health-care movement. The Boston Women's Health Cooperative. Our Bodies, Ourselves. And consciousness-raising groups where women would sit around with a speculum and flashlight and look at changes in each other's cervix.

Mr. Levin, your skill to tell an important, threatening story through a metaphor, maybe it comes from your experience writing for television's "golden age," shows like Lights Out and The United States Steel Hour. This was television in the 1950s and early '60s, when most issues had to be masked or disguised to avoid offending a conservative audience and the even more conservative sponsors of a program. In a time before "transgressive fiction," such as The Monkey Wrench Gang, American Psycho, and Trainspotting, where a writer could stand on a soap box and shout about a social issue, your writing career started in this era, in the most public form of writing, when the mask, the metaphor, the disguise was everything.

In addition to what Palahniuk touches on, what I find so striking about Levin's work is the mundaneness of evil, right down Minnie Castavet's ill-fitting green toreador pants. And while I can't articulate exactly why, I think it's brilliant.

So if there's a stormy night coming up, I plan on watching Rosemary's Baby for the hundredth time, vodka blushes in hand.

Mr. Castevet came in, holding in both hands a small tray on which four cocktail glasses ran over with clear pink liquid. “Mr. Woodhouse? A Vodka Blush. Have you ever tasted one? They’re very popular in Australia." He took the final glass and raised it to Rosemary and Guy. “To our guests,” he said. “Welcome to our home.”

The Vodka Blushes were tart and very good.

VODKA BLUSH RECIPE

1. Chill a martini glass by filling with ice. Set aside.

2. Fill the cocktail shaker 2/3 full of ice. Add 2 1/2 ounces vodka, 3/4 ounce freshly squeezed and strained lime juice and a dash or two of grenadine.

3. Empty the martini glass and dispose of the ice. Shake the cocktail, and strain into the chilled glass. This will make one serving.

The Sound of Music

Two blogs about music have recently come to my attention. Mostly because they are authored by my friends, but I can guarantee that they are of the utmost quality.

1. SHADES OF ETERNAL NIGHT

http://shadesofeternalnight.tumblr.com/

This blog is written by my friend Ned. He is a music-lover and musician and there are a great many wonderful and obscure findings on his site. (Well, obscure to me.)

2. AUDIOVOLE

www.audiovole.com


This site is written by my friend Brandon and his friend Sarah. It's a unique take on a music blog, in that they each listen to an album and proceed to have a written dialogue about that album. I think it's easy for critics to feel all-powerful and all-knowing, so this is a way to avoid that, while still producing really interesting critiques. In the words of the authors themselves: "Ultimately, we feel that the greatest accomplishment any piece of art can achieve is the incitement of discourse."

City of Brotherly Love

This year is going by so quickly that I only recently realized I hadn't left New York since July, when I came back from China. Also, this winter was cold and gray and rainy and I think I was left with a slight case of seasonal depression, topped with a dollop of cabin fever. So I decided to take a very mini holiday to Philadelphia, to visit my friend Chris (from China) and Helen (from University of Michigan).

Philadelphia is one of my favorite cities. It has pretty much everything. It's small enough to feel intimate, but big enough to qualify as a "real" city. It has neighborhoods. It's very walkable. It has history and gravitas and cobblestone streets, without the preppy elitism of Washington, D.C. It's diverse and interesting and only two hours away from New York City.

When I arrived on Friday morning, I was happy to be there, despite the pouring rain. It always feels good to be in a new place and I was nostalgic for all my Asia traveling. Being in a new place is all about learning. How do you take the SEPTA? (Philadelphia's public transit). What are the best museums? What does it feel like at night or during the day or in the earliest hours of the morning?

My first stop was the Franklin Institute, where I met up with Helen and her boyfriend, Antoine, who was visiting from France. We went to see an IMAX movie about tornadoes. I haven't seen an IMAX since I was about nine years old. It was both cool and horribly nauseating. We also explored some of the galleries. It's always fun to be looking at museums from a critical perspective, now that I've worked in several of them.

I wasn't quite sure what this was, but it had something to do with cell phones and electricity and energy and Ben Franklin. When Antoine used his cell phone near it, the lights went crazy.

Some of the hands-on features seemed a little bit worn out, but even so, I got a major kick out of this one, pictured above. It was set up like a pinball machine and your ball landed on various ailments and time periods. So you might land on "broken arm" and "England, 1788" and an actor would appear onscreen and tell you how he or she might treat you for the problem in that place and time. It was pretty goofy and the historical actors were cheesy, but for kids (and myself) I found it entertaining and effective.

After the museum closed, we walked in the pouring rain to meet Chris at his favorite restaurant, Mercato. I really love the fact that Philadelphia is teeming with BYOB restaurants. I had some delicious pasta with beef bolognese, rosemary and shaved grana padano, we drank lots of wine, and then Chris and I dashed off to a show. Our friend Tae had attended Penn and been part of an historic, all-male musical comedy troupe called Mask & Wig, and they were performing that night.


It's hard to describe the show, except to say that the dancing and songwriting was excellent and that I've never seen such heterosexual drag in my entire life. It reminded us of Tae and that made us happy. Afterwards, we went out to a bar, where I talked Chris's ear off about all my white girl problems.

The next day was beautiful. Chris and I went to Reading Terminal Market for French Toast and eggs and grapefruit juice. Then we walked to the Italian market (they love markets!) and wandered around, checking out record stores and cheese shops. I met up with Helen and Antoine again, and then split off on my own to explore some other neighborhoods. I saw wonderful old signs and lettering, some Philly hipsters, some winding streets, and Ben Franklin's old house. All in all, a really lovely 36 hours.

Bodies

A few years ago, I went on a diet. It was the usual thing: I went to the gym and restricted my calories and as a result, I lost about eight or ten pounds. At a family get-together, one of my relatives commented on it. "Have you lost weight?" he asked. "You look great!"

But instead of feeling great, I felt uncomfortable. Which in turn, made me feel even more weird. Wasn't that the point of this whole thing? To have people give me compliments and tell me how good I looked? And yet even the most supportive of comments only served to make me feel monitored and evaluated. I gained back all the weight pretty quickly.

Flash forward to this past summer. I had just returned from China, so I hadn't seen any of my friends or family members for almost a year. I noticed one of my friends, already somewhat slender, looked like she had lost a little weight. I almost made a comment, intended to be complimentary. It was on the tip of my tongue before I stopped myself. There could be a million reasons why she looked thinner, and perhaps none of them involved deliberately trying to lose weight. She could be stressed. She could be sick. She could be dealing with a breakup or a food allergy or a new medication. In that moment it dawned on me that it was truly none of my business and that I have no right to comment on someone else's body without their explicit invitation.

Since that day, I've tried to remove myself from the culture of policing other people's bodies, even when the intentions are good and the comments are nothing but flattering. We're all observatory creatures by nature and that can't be helped, but it just doesn't seem to add anything to the conversation. It's hard sometimes, because it's so second-nature, but I try. I know I am grateful to friends of mine who feel the same way.

On a related note, the women over at Feminists With Disabilities have some great posts on body policing and disability. The authors have decided to cease updating, but here's a good one from the archives: Yes, I Have A Limp, And No, It's Not Really Any Of Your Business.

And now, I'm going to put this tired body of mine to sleep. Good night!

Book Club: North Korea

Last year, while I was in Asia, my friend Hanna suggested we go to Korea for a week. I had never been particularly interested in Korea (China's my jam, for whatever reason), but I like Hanna and I like travel, so I agreed to go. We had a grand old time, and it sparked a fiery interest in me, in regards to North Korea. Over the trip, it crept up on me, until it developed into a minor obsession. I couldn't believe this country had been around for so long and only now did I take the time to learn about it. It was like having a platonic friend that you fall in love with. "You've been here the whole time and I never realized how amazing you are!" Except for North Korea, replace "amazing" with "completely twisted and utterly insane."

Since returning to the States, I've read two books on the subject and watched this documentary. One book is called UNDER THE LOVING CARE OF THE FATHERLY LEADER by Bradley K. Martin. It's 718 pages and it took me about five months to read. That being said, it's a fantastic book and probably invaluable if you're doing any sort of serious study on North Korea.

Martin is a good writer with a sense of humor, as well as an unfortunately noticeable case of yellow fever. For example, on page 355: "[Kim Jong-Il] had encouraged girls and young women to fix themselves, wear makeup, and look nicer. North Korean women - among the most beautiful in the world to begin with - obviously were taking far more care with their appearance than a decade earlier." Emphasis mine. Also, ew.

The other book is called NOTHING TO ENVY by Barbara Demick. It's 296 pages and you can probably glean the same amount of information as "Under the Loving Care..." Because it follows the lives of ordinary North Koreans and tells their stories in a novelistic way, it's gripping in a way that Martin's book, although extremely interesting, often isn't.

Demick's book can be painful and graphic. She tells of the famine that struck in the 1990's: "People did not go passively to their deaths. When the public distribution system was cut off, they were forced to tap their deepest wells of creativity to feed themselves... North Koreans learned to swallow their pride and hold their noses. They picked kernels of undigested corn out of the excrement of farm animals. Shipyard workers developed a technique by which they scraped the bottoms of the cargo holds where food had been stored, then spread the foul-smelling gunk on rooftops to dry so that they could collect from it tiny grains of uncooked rice and other edibles."

Demick also follows love stories, defection, family ties, medicine, and a plethora of other storylines. Even if you're not particularly interested in North Korea, I can't recommend it highly enough. And in case you don't feel like reading either book, here are some things that I learned in my studies:

WE CREATED THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH

For about 1,300 years, Korea was a unified country. In 1910, Japan "annexed" Korea and began an oppressive and cruel regime over the country. The occupation only ended when Japan lost World War II in 1945. At that point, it would make sense to let Koreans rule Korea, right? WRONG! What happened instead was that two American army officers drew an arbitrary line on a map and split the country into North and South. The North went to the USSR; the South went to the United States. As one could probably predict, a war broke out. At the end of the war, the border was pretty much back to where it was in 1945. So like most things in the world, a great deal of the conflict in Korea was generated by Western control and hubris and Domino Theory paranoia.

NORTH KOREA OPERATES ON A POLICY KNOWN AS JUCHE

Kim Il-Sung, the founder/leader of the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, created the phrase juche, which roughly translates to "national self-reliance" and permeates many aspects of domestic and international policy. This, despite the fact that the country has often depended on aid and other assistance. One North Korean defector, Dong, tells Martin in his book: "There's an amusing story about Kim Il-Sung and foreign cars. In the mid-1970s, he met with foreign reporters. Someone asked him, 'You hate the United States so much, how can you ride in an American car?' He replied, 'I'm not riding in it. I'm driving it.' Just seeing it made me proud. [However], now that I have come to South Korea, I'm used to free thinking. I feel a discrepancy between juche and his riding in a foreign car."

KIM IL-SUNG WASN'T TOTALLY THE WORST

Like most Communist leaders, the beginning of Kim Il-Sung's rule was pretty positive. After the Japanese occupation and the horrors of war, people were grateful to have food, electricity, water, free education, and a perceived end to the hierarchy and patriarchal traditions of old Korean society. That's when Communism is super exciting and I honestly wonder what it must be like to be in the throes of that kind of ideology and devotion.

Although later, Kim Il-Sung would greatly exaggerate his role in the fall of Japan, he was a guerilla fighter as a young man and did fight to help free Korea from Japanese rule. He did some reprehensible things later on, wasted tons of money on personal luxuries, and brewed up a bizarre and looming personality cult - yet, there was still a great deal of reverence for him as a "savior" of the country and restorer of national pride.

KIM JONG-IL IS PRETTY MUCH THE WORST

Unlike his father, Kim Jong-Il had no reasonable claim to leadership. He was born to the Great Leader and thus did not earn the respect and adoration of the people in the way that Kim Il-Sung did. "Under The Loving Care..." includes many reported stories of Kim Jong-Il's extreme cruelty and complete lack of regard for human life. On a less tragic but equally interesting note, he's also a huge movie fan. So while his citizens are subject to Communist propaganda films, he has a collection of upwards of 20,000 DVDs. He also kidnapped South Korean filmmakers to force them to make films for North Korea. No joke.

INSTEAD OF FEEDING THE PEOPLE, THEY MOSTLY FOCUSED ON SEX...
From "Under the Loving Care...":

From mere philandering, Kim Il-Sung had advanced to presiding over something not far removed from a harem. The "volunteer" corps was a small-scale operation at first, said a former elite official, but "the extravagance built up year after year." As a birthday present for Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il greatly expanded the operation. Female companions had been organized into three corps. Members of the "Happy Corps" were actresses and singers who entertained at parties and might have slept with Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il. The "Satisfaction Corps" was more explicitly focused on sexual services. So, too, was the "Felicity Corps" - whose members were recruited from the Workers' Party organization and from female bodyguards.

About two thousand girls were selected each year and given a year of training. Some five to six hundred who were expected to be available for sex would be assigned to the lodges and villas. Others were given secretarial and other jobs where, officially, they were not expected to provide sexual services.

AND MANSIONS...

For his sixtieth birthay, Kim got the most expensive mansion up to that point, costing the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars. The funds came from gold mining. "North Korea can mine up to 50 tons of gold a year, so they can afford that sort of thing."

AND GIFT-GIVING...

"Party rules prohibit gift-giving among members," a former elite official told me. "But Kim Jong-Il gave gifts to try to buy people off from forming factions against him." Besides cars, Kim Jong-Il's gifts included television sets, radios, and watches - all foreign-made, of course. The overall scale of his gift-giving soon grew so enormous as to affect the economy seriously. Various sources confirm that a special unit in the party, dubbed Room 39 on account of its office location, was given the mission of bringing in foreign exchange to pay for Kim's purchases. Because of Room 39 activities, the government had no bank reserves and became nearly broke.

...AND OF COURSE, THE MASS GAMES, WHICH ARE CRAZY.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBWOEdy_-qM

(They wouldn't let me embed it, but please, click on it. Flip cards.)