He wasn't dead, he was working construction in Detroit

This song's too good not to share. And what a great story:

After failing to make an impact in America, he gave up his career as a musician. However, although he was relatively unknown in his home country by the mid 70’s, his albums were starting to gain airplay in countries like South Africa, Rhodesia, New Zealand and Australia ... Unbeknownst to Rodriguez it went platinum in South Africa, where he achieved cult status. With a new buzz around Rodriguez, in 1979 he toured Australia with the Mark Gillespie Band as support. Two shows from the tour were later released on the Australian only album "Alive" - the title being a play on the rumors caused by his public obscurity that Rodriguez had died years ago. It wasn't until the late 1990's (which at the time he was working on a Detroit building site) when his daughter discovered his fame thanks to a South African fan website.

Rodriguez: Sugar Man

It's not a zero-sum game

This, for me, was the golden age of basketball. When the best players were coming up, pushing each other to get better, to be better.

NBA Slam Dunk Contest: Michael Jordan vs. Dominique Wilkins

This is what we're looking at on Nov. 5

Here's a comprehensive look at what's happening with the U.S. elections, with timetables for the results in Korea.

Happy belated birthday, Mr. Berryman

October 25 was the birthday of one of my very favorite poets, John Berryman. From the Writer's Almanac:

His mother was a schoolteacher. His father, who was a banker, committed suicide when John was 12 years old. A few months later, his mother married a man whom she'd been having an affair with for the past year. They moved to New York, and Berryman went to a prestigious boarding school and then to Columbia University. He was an excellent student — a good poet and passionate about Shakespeare. He earned a grant to study Shakespeare at Cambridge in England. When he came back to the United States, he tried to get a job in advertising, but instead he went into academia. He became an "academic nomad" over the next decades, teaching at many different schools before settling at the University of Minnesota.

His personal life was tumultuous. He struggled with alcoholism and mental illness, and he was a chronic womanizer. One summer, two years into his first marriage, he fell in love with the young wife of one of his graduate students, and they began a passionate affair, which he chronicled in a cycle of 100 Petrarchan sonnets.

He made his name with Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956), a dialogue between Berryman and the 17th-century poet Anne Bradstreet. He worked on the project for five years, and it was so consuming that it led to the end of his second marriage. But critics thought the work was brilliant.

Berryman sought treatment for his mental illness, and part of his psychotherapy regimen was to keep a log of his dreams. Many of these dreams made their way into his poetry cycle Dream Songs. The poems were an enormous critical success.

He described his 385 Dream Songs as "essentially about an imaginary character named Henry, a white American in early middle age, sometimes in blackface, who has suffered an irreversible loss." He said, "These Songs are not meant to be understood. … They are only meant to terrify & comfort."

The first of the Dream Songs begins:

"Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point, — a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked."

Berryman was also a great scholar of Shakespeare. For decades he worked on a critical work on Shakespeare. Before publishing the book, he committed suicide by jumping off a bridge on the University of Minnesota campus on a January morning as students walked to class.

He wrote: "It is reassuring to consider that Shakespeare wrote four failures, plays that few have ever cared to produce and mostly scholars read. These failures are The Two Gentlemen of Verona, King John, All's Well That Ends Well, and Timon of Athens. The reasons for his failure in each case were different, but at least he was always capable of failure, and it is pleasant to know this."

"South Koreans reliving nightmare of last financial crisis"

Quite an alarming headline from the IHT. This place can feel nightmarish sometimes, but it's not because of the economy. Read the story, if you dare.

That'll teach you to make international phone calls

It's easy to forget that North Korea's only 40 kilometers away from safe, benign Seoul. Then you read something like this:

North Korea is using public executions to intimidate its citizens and has imposed restrictions on long distance calls to block the spread of news about rising food shortages, the U.N. investigator on human rights in the reclusive nation said Thursday.

The rest of the story.

He's very well-read, it's quite well known

Lee Siegel writes about the influence of reading classic literature in the books section of the NYT.

Somehow, we’ve been sold a bill of goods about how literature empowers us. But the idea that great literature can improve our lives in any way is a con as old as culture itself.

Take the power back

I'm really late to this, but it's too awesome not to blog. Cops shut down Rage Against the Machine at the RNC, so they did an acapella set for the crowd outside.

More on the Kundera case

A longer story in the IHT today provides more background -- and more speculation -- about the allegations that Milan Kundera ratted out a spy to communist Czechoslovakia.

"The reality is that the totalitarian regime was constructed in such a way that 99 percent of people cooperated in one way or another, and the Kundera case helps them to feel morally absolved, like they are the good guys and he was one of the baddies," Pehe said.

Many historians have found the evidence wanting. The policeman mentioned in the secret police report identifying Kundera is dead, while Kundera's signature is nowhere on the document.

There are trolls and then there are just plain assholes

No one should have to read something like this. The Korea Times has terrible judgment about what to put into their newspaper and if I was an English teacher I would cancel my subscription chigum.

Unfortunately, most native English speakers make no attempt to learn Korean; and even if they did, they probably could not, anyway. Look around you. Does the typical English native teacher strike you as being someone who is of high sophistication? Not! The sad fact is that the typical native teacher graduated near the bottom of his/her class from a lower-tiered university, and probably could not hold down anything better than a minimum wage job in his/her home country. The creme de la creme do not come here, I am sorry to say.

"The most ferocious fighting since the Korean War"

An eight part video series of the fighting in Afghanistan from embedded reporter Ben Anderson. Top tracks include "This guy lives for firing his RPG" and "Nothing like a little opium to get you ready for a firefight." Watch it here.

Where'd Russia go?

What if McCain had a heart attack from caring too much about his friends? Enter the Oval Office with Palin in charge.

The Unbearable Heaviness of Lying

This reads to me like Kundera's hiding something.

The allegations could diminish Mr. Kundera’s moral stature as a spokesman, however enigmatic, against totalitarianism’s corrosion of daily life.

The reclusive Mr. Kundera vehemently denied the account.

“I object in the strongest manner to these accusations, which are pure lies,” he said in a statement released by his French publisher, Gallimard.

In a rare interview on Monday with the Czech CTK news agency, Mr. Kundera also accused the news media of committing “the assassination of an author.”

That's pretty reactionary, defensive language.

North Korea's Octopussy

Like something out of a James Bond novel, the North Korean woman who seduced multiple S. Korean military officers, spread propaganda, and did other shady, spy-like things has been sentenced to prison.

Investigators have also accused her of scheming to murder intelligence agents using poison-tipped needles, though the plot did not go ahead.

Take the debate to the corner bar

Columnist Jim Shea has a suggestion to liven up the next presidential debate -- have it in a bar.

The candidates want to relate to Joe Six-Pack? This is where he hangs out, along with Joe Twelve-Pack, Frankie Foreclosed, Jimmy Jobless and all the rest of the blue-collar voters the candidates want to impress with their regularness.

(If you're in Korea, the debates start at 10 a.m. on Thursday the 16th.)

A Cartoon

Mr. Fish

Anarchy in the S.K.

Korea Herald reporter Bae Hyun-jung put together a greatest hits of the most absurd courtroom moments in recent months. One of my favorite stories I've read since working for the paper.

We set controls for the heart of the sun, one of the ways that we show our age

Did a little disco dance for the Korea Herald hyping LCD Soundsystem coming to town tonight. Read it here.

UPDATE: The event was poorly organized -- oversold, a clusterfuck at the doors, and then understaffed at the bar -- but the music was good. They played for 3 and a half hours. My legs are still sore, and even though Murphy and Mahoney didn't play any LCD, the lyric "I wouldn't trade one stupid decision for another five years of life" is running through my head.

LCD Soundsystem "All My Friends"

We're gonna need a bigger clock

The digital counter that marks the U.S. debt has run out of digits.

The more I seek the more I'm sought

I like the sincerity of this.

Joe Pug "Hymn #101"

Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it

In the first presidential debate John McCain said:

"The next president of the United States is not going to have to address the issue as to whether we went into Iraq or not. The next president of the United States is going to have to decide how we leave, when we leave, and what we leave behind. That's the decision of the next president of the United States."

The quote makes for a good lead into a book review I never wrote about What Happened, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's memoir about his days working for the Bush administration. Members of the administration fed him bad information and then left him to deal with the public and the media on his own when it was found out he had relayed lies. He writes about journalists, the practice of the permanent campaign, the run up to the war and how it was sold to the public, and, most interestingly, the character of the man who has done more to change the world than any single president in U.S. history.

About the war:

Today, as I look back on the campaign we waged to sell the Iraq war to the American people--a campaign I participated in--I see more clearly the downside of applying modern campaign tactics to matters of grave historical import.

They are caught up in an endless effort to manipulate public opinion to their advantage.

It is all part of the political propaganda effort to advance one's causes.

About his relationship with Bush:

I know the president pretty well. I believe that, if he had been given a crystal ball in which he could have foreseen the costs of war--more than 4,000 American troops killed, 30,000 injured, and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens dead--he would have never made the decision to invade, despite what he might say or feel he has to say publicly today.

But Bush was not one to look back once a decision was made. Rather than suffer any sense of guilt and anguish, Bush chose not to go down the road of self-doubt or take on the difficult task of honest evaluation and reassessment. Rather than look back, he would always look forward, focused on the challenges of the future rather than the regrets of the past. That was especially true when it came to a decision as irrevocable and consequential as war in Iraq.

Which is what McCain doesn't understand when he talks about not having to address the issue of how we got into Iraq. If he becomes president, under these current economic conditions, he could possibly be asked to make a decision about going to war with another country.

About the media:

The American public hungers for truth--not just as it relates to petty partisan squabbles and the controversy of the day, but larger truth, including the hard truths we too rarely hear emphasized on television or see written prominently about in our major newspapers and magazines.

We need to give a greater emphasis to who is right and who is wrong, who is telling the truth and who is not, and the larger truths about our society and our world might achieve some amazing results.

About Bush putting shit up his nose:

"The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors," I heard Bush say. "You know, the truth is I honestly don't know whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember."

I remember thinking to myself, How can that be? How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine?

Fuck the police

A Slate piece on Obama and Biden's criminal justice policy worries me.

In particular, Biden and Obama have promised to beef up two federal grant programs critics say have exacerbated many of the very problems Obama expressed concern about earlier in the primaries. Obama and Biden's position shows an unwillingness to think critically about criminal justice. They are opting instead for the reflexive belief that more federal involvement is always preferable to less.

One of the least appealing aspects of American life is the police state it has become.

The New Yorker endorses Obama

The mighty magazine from NYC has spoken.

The incumbent Administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican Party—which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time—has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign.

Read the rest here.

Can't put all the blame on Bush, at least not for this

An article in the Oct. 6 edition of the Washington Post helps to make sense of the deregulation argument.

So the first cause of the crisis lies with the Fed, not with deregulation. If too much money was lent and borrowed, it was because Chinese savings made capital cheap and the Fed was not aggressive enough in hiking interest rates to counteract that. Moreover, the Fed's track record of cutting interest rates to clear up previous bubbles had created a seductive one-way bet. Financial engineers built huge mountains of debt partly because they expected to profit in good times -- and then be rescued by the Fed when they got into trouble.

Read the rest here.

Songs for musical chairs

Chicago multi-instrumentalist and bad ass whistler Andrew Bird's new album Noble Beast drops on January 27, on Fat Possum Records. No Seoul tour dates yet.

Bird performing the new single "Oh No" from Noble Beast:

The pulse thing was optional: 23 dead people in Ohio were also approved

If you're anything like me, it's hard to get all these economic terms to sink in. This week-old New York Times article about the media trying to make this all less nonsensical helps a little.

“We ordered three, four bottles of Cristal at $1,000 per bottle,” he said on the broadcast, recalling a night when he had a table at Marquee, a nightclub in Manhattan. “They bring it out, you know they’re walking through the crowd, they’re holding the bottles over their heads. There’re firecrackers, sparklers. You know, the little cocktail waitresses,” he said. “You know so you order three or four bottles of those and they’re walking through the crowd and everyone’s like: Whoa, who’re the cool guys? We were the cool guys.”

"This American Life" has a follow-up show here.

Don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

Palin's claim that Obama hangs out with terrorists is tenuous at best. This is a little background on that.

Irishman shares wave with a Great White

"Just imagine being in the barrel and looking at a massive shark like you're at the bloody aquarium or something."

I'm going to pass, but thanks. Story here.

Seeing South Korea

Home and Away Magazine ran a story on their website last month I wrote about traveling in Korea. I wrote the story last year during Chuseok, when I traveled through Gangwando, visiting Seoraksan and Sokcho. The story was written for an American audience without prior knowledge of Korea, so please forgive some of the generalities. From the story:

"If you are the type that needs your vanity affirmed, Koreans are happy to oblige. They often stare from a short distance as though you are unaware, especially children. This takes some getting used to, but once you manage it, stare back. They mean no harm. Some of them are quite interesting to look at."

To read the rest here you have to enter a zip code -- 46032 -- and then click on Web Exclusives on the left. It's probably really of the most interest to you poor suckers living outside of Korea.

Al-Jazeera People Power North Korea

Sing along: The pathetic Americans kneel on the ground/they beg for mercy. A long (22 min.) news program on the North from Al-Jazeera. It looks bleak, devoid of color.



(Stolen from Korea Beat.)

Obama Kids: Sing for Change (Pyongyang Remix)

(Stolen from the Marmot's Hole)

Super Kim

Palin the Post Turtle

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year-old rancher, whose hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Palin and her bid.

The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a Post Turtle."

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a "post turtle" was.

The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle.'"

The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain. "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, and she doesn't know what to do while she's up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with."

Have you ever heard of Philip Roth?

Slate's Adam Kirsch has a nice rebuttal to Horace Engdahl's claim that "the U.S. is too isolated, too insular" to have competitive authors for the Nobel Prize.

It kept on raining

This is old news, but I just watched Spike Lee's "When The Levees Broke," about the causes and effects of the disaster in New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina. It's a sad and angry documentary, and worth your time. Three years after Katrina bands of armed raiders prowl the asbestos-lined FEMA trailers.

"Use the double-wide!"

Even Homer voted. Will you? (HT to Matt)

3 thoughts on the VP debate

1. Sarah Palin would make an excellent talk show host, but I don't want her running the United States of America.

2. Joe Biden makes me feel like I'm listening to a wise man, but I'm skeptical of his ability to lead the country with real dynamism, and that's what is needed.

3. The lack of potential for controversy is disappointing.

4. Biden won.

Chinese children

Slate has an interesting story here about Asian-Americans in the political system.

"Unless I'm hit by a bus or fall off a horse, I don't see why not."

Do you all remember Sufjan Stevens? C'mon, try hard. He was that indie songwriter with the ethereal textures, the one with all the instruments, that wrote all those songs you liked? Remember?

(Casmir Pulaski Day, from "Illinois")


Does that do it? No? Remember he said he was going to write an album about all 5o states? Well, it's been three years. The rumor was the next one is going to be Oregon, but it's been a long time since I've heard anything. Dude better hurry up or he's going to be double-discing the Dakotas and the Carolinas just to get it done.

Oh how I love the shirts you wear

As I'm not a street photographer, I don't have pictures of these. Imagine them on women in their 30s with long t-shirts, the words written in all caps down the front.

DROP ACID NOT BOMBS

SUN YOUR BUNS

I WAS IN NAM WHEN YOU WERE IN MOM

YOU LOOKED BETTER AS A FRESHMAN

PUREFUCKINGCANADIAN (Made in Italy, born in Canada)

THE HANDSOME BOY IN BLUE OFTEN DANCES WITH A GIRL

I SUPPORT THE COSMETIC SURGERY

And my favorite, I mean I stopped on the street to laugh -- a boy wearing a bright, canary yellow t-shirt that read in big block letters, I'M WITH STUPID and the arrow was pointing up.

Where are all the protest songs?

How long have we been at war in the Middle East? Where is Phil Ochs? Where is Woodie Guthrie? Where are the songwriters? We have talented lyricists, we have David Berman, John Darnielle, Conor Oberst--we have all these so-called folk singers that play acoustic guitars and sound "folky," but they forget what it is to be a folk singer. Is it going to take to a depression before our country makes the type of art that the world we live in requires? I wrote about this four years ago, and still nothing's changed.

At least Steve Earle's trying ("Come Back Woody Guthrie" at the 2008 Philadelphia Folk Festival)


Phil Ochs singing "I Ain't Marching Anymore":

Cleanse song

Korean food, even if I avoid gochuchang (red pepper paste) and keep it mild, can seriously hurt. Especially if there's a lot of beer and soju involved. Saying I live in a place where it's culturally required to drink misplaces the responsibility; it's ultimately up to me what goes in and out of my body. For a long time now, though, I've pretty much taken in everything put in front of me. I am an excessive American, and at times it catches up to me. I'll have brutal nights of stomach pain that over-the-counter medicine doesn't salve, doesn't cure.

I've long talked about getting a colonic, which I've heard great things about, and would love one if I find the right clinic. In the meantime, when I was back in the States I picked up a cleanse. As much as I laugh at West Coast New Age philosophy, there are some parts of their culture people can benefit from, namely their ideas about food and health.

For the past week I've been on the First Cleanse, an herbal program intended to detox. At the health food store in my hometown, the woman clerk told me it wouldn't be overly intense, not send me running to the bathroom, and I'd be able to work on it. So far I haven't noticed any real differences in anything. I have to piss a lot, but that's about it. If anything I'm acting healthier knowing that I'm on this, so that's a start.

Joe Six-Pack my ass

This is the type of Republican deceit that I find the most maddening. It's what got W. elected and what I can't understand. Why do American voters want a quality of average in their leaders? I don't know about you guys, but I want exceptional.

Cities in rivers, Oregon Trail, end of summer, and Hymn California

One of my great favorite writers is also one of my great favorite friends. He wrote a book that got published this year, and it's Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac, but today. It's stories about America from a guy that's done more living in 30-some years than three people do in their lives. Raw, vivid, lyric descriptions--sung stories about fighting through hard times in hard places.

Hymn California’s characters witness a strange wide-sweeping, panoramic America unfolding before them, while its 200 pages examine death obsessions, regional history, difficult love, and having an abusive relationship with a place (California) rather than a person. It shows displaced characters scattered across the continent, burdened by fear and homesickness while fighting to have a good time, raise hell, and live unencumbered by bourgeois ideology and “bullshit consumer culture.” Death stalks at every intersection and on every riverbank. Lives sway in the delirium of wartime. Waffle Houses, UFO cults, dead friends, serial killers, yellow-lit billboards, reluctant soldiers, suicidal teenagers, drug dealers, grandparents, Mexican cops, drunken cat-killers, and the Pope collide like trains. As its road story unravels, the characters find heavy violence, superstition, hard drugs, and surreal and wonderful mornings set across the contidental US and Mexico. Says Gnade, “a friend of mine asked me if I was trying to write ‘American magic realism’ with the book and I didn’t really have an answer for him. If it is, it was an accident.”

He lives in Portland, Oregon, and if you do too you can buy the book at Powell's Bookstore. If you don't, you can order it here.

5 podcasts

1. NPR: World Story of the Day Podcast

Hard news from around the world. Short, usually 3-4 minutes.

2. The FADER

Street-level music magazine set lists. If I had a house, I would have a party every month when these come out and all my friends would think I had excellent taste in music.

3. Rocketboom

Smart, breakneck 3-minute videos on internet culture. I have a huge crush on the host, Joanne Colan, who is often funny, always attractive.

4. Slate Magazine Daily Podcasts

Insightful commentary on the world. News stories everyday are relevant and sharp. My favorite part is the Gabfest, where three whip smart journalists hash out the week's news and give recommendations for party chatter.

5. This American Life

Great stories.

6. New Yorker: Comment

Analysis about America from the best writers in America.

7. APM: Weekend America Enhanced Podcast

Stories about America that remind me why I miss it. John Moe is hilarious. Last week he told the joke: "What is brown and sticky? A stick."

Find all these by searching the titles in iTunes.

Someone great in Seoul?

LCD Soundsystem is playing a disco set in Seoul on Oct. 10. Maybe. I don't trust Korean promoters, especially whenever it sounds too good to be true, as this does. I'm trying to do a story on it for the Herald for next Thursday's paper. We'll see. If it does go down, I'll be there with my disco boots and gold chain, and you should too.

Mix Tape #1

If I would make you a mix CD right now, I'd make you two, and this is what I'd put on them.

Disc 1
1. "People As Places As People"-- Modest Mouse
2. "Call It A Ritual"-- Wolf Parade
3. "You Belong"-- Hercules and Love Affair
4. "Let's Make Love and Listen To Death From Above"-- CSS
6. "No Substitute Love"-- Estelle
7. "First Class Riot"-- The Tough Alliance
8. "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover"-- Paul Simon
9. "Lost Coastlines"-- Okkervil River
10. "Love Dog"-- TV On the Radio
11. "Visions of Johanna"-- Bob Dylan
12. "Skinny Love"-- Bon Iver
13. "Twilight"-- Elliott Smith
14. "Waiting Around to Die"-- Townes Van Zandt

Disc 2
1. "Four Provinces"-- The Walkmen
2. "Constructive Summer"-- The Hold Steady
3. "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As Your Told)-- The White Stripes
4. "Gobbledigook"-- Sigur Ros
5. "Party Barge"-- The Silver Jews
6. "I Luv the Valley OH"-- Xiu Xiu
7. "Where Summer Goes"-- Peter and the Wolf
8. "Fools"-- The Dodos
9. "Rise Above"-- The Dirty Projectors
10. "Little Brother"-- Grizzly Bear
11. "Lawyers, Guns, and Money"-- Warren Zevon
12. "Sympathy For the Devil"-- The Rolling Stones
13. "If I Had a Boat"-- Lyle Lovett
14. "Green Gloves"-- The National

Ways of Seeing

For the duration of this blog, nearly two years, I have been posting longish pieces written for newspapers in Nebraska and Korea. I have since decided to take a slightly different approach. It won't always be about Korea -- in fact it probably won't be that much about Korea at all, aside from the obvious fact that I live in Seoul and that will underscore my writings. I'll still post stories I write for the Herald and elsewhere, but I'll try to keep my posts brief and more frequent. As always, comments, feedback, etc. are encouraged.

--Bart