I send a message to my director last night to ask when I was supposed to go to work today. I wanted to arrive on time for the intensive classes starting this week. It turns out that there are no classes today, and that no one had passed the message on to me. My director said that she had posted a notice on the elevator about the classes being canceled, in Korean. Oops, I thought that was about the elevator being out of order or something. An extra day of vacation? How best to spend it? TO SEOUL! I braved the wind and snow to make a trip for more media to last me through winter.

With the Wii game I’m looking forward to release 2 months away, and Yongsan electronics market only selling Japanese Wii games or pirated stuff, I didn’t think my probability for success was going to be very high. I wanted to get a Classic Controller for the Wii so that I could play Virtual Console games and not worry about having the right controller all the time. While the games I have work with a Wiimote (NES and Megadrive games) or a Wavebird controller (N64 games), the “Classic” controller works will all games on the Virtual Console regardless of their system of origin. This means I don’t have to worry about controllers anymore when I’m thinking about purchasing a Virtual Console title. I’m going to get a few more retro games in the future once I finish Paper Mario on the VC.

My second purchase was Worms Open Warfare 2 for the Nintendo DS. My friend recommended this game to me, and after looking into it, I started looking for it immediately. I stress that I was looking for “Open Warefare 2″, as the FIRST game in the series is utter shit. No one in Daejeon had Open Warfare 2, but the first place I checked in Seoul had a used copy. The only one in the whole market it turns out. Sweet. I gave it a good long play while I was on the train coming back to Daejeon and this is a solid game for Worms fans like myself. It’s Wifi enabled, so I’ll be able to challenge my friend and kick some worm ass. Worms Open Warfare 2 might just be the best “length of time it takes to use the toilet” strategy game ever. For a used game, this is an absolute STEAL. Pick this up if you see it.

I picked up a few books too. Free Culture, and I am Legend. They should keep me busy a few weeks.

The ride home on the slower speed train was interesting. I was sat next to a mother and her two young kids. The girl was just walking, while the boy was under six with a Nintendo DS. The mother sat the boy next to me, and encouraged him to play a game together. He had a Korean version of the New Super Mario Brothers, but whatever was going on, his would absolutely not link with my system wirelessly. Sometime on the two hours back to Daejeon he dropped his stylus and the entire train was searched up and down for this piece of plastic by his very stressed mother. I calmed her nerves by telling her she could get a replacement pack of stylus cheaply at any game store. She was very relieved she didn’t have to worry about the boy scratching up his screen.

I’m not planning on staying up late for the New Year, but for those that do, ring in 2008 with a bang for me!

Tags: Wii, Seoul, Yongsan, Train, DS, Nintendo, Worms, Wiimote, Classic Controller

Last night we went to see American Gangster. I hadn’t been following it, but it was recommended by a few reviewers I like to follow. I’m not big into the “gangster” genre most times, but this was a very enjoyable movie.

I thought it was really interesting and very well made. I liked the stories working in parallel, as well as the way the details of the world around them were so well done. Touches like the Vietnam updates on television working as a sort of time line for the rise and fall of the characters worked really well.

The drug use always makes me queasy. Watching people do heroin just really grosses me out. There were a lot of scenes in this movie that grossed me out with needles popping in veins and people in a drug haze that really was terrible to watch.

The very first scene was extremely graphic violence and shocking. So, “It’s going to be this kind of movie?” I thought as someone was burned alive, then shot. This was to let you know the gangster character was a cold blooded killer from the start and to stop you from feeling too much empathy for him.

Still, for being a bad guy that ruined thousands of lives, you still care about the gangster character. I have to credit Denzel Washington’s amazing performance for that. Even if he was a “bad guy with a heart of gold”, he was still ruthless. He might have taken care of his family, but he used them in his schemes and profited from it too.

I’ve seen three of the last four Denzel Washington movies released in Korea, and I walk out of the theater every single time blown away. I never got to a movie with the intention of seeing one particular actor, but it might sway me to choose one movie over another. He’s probably my favorite actor at the moment because he hasn’t delivered a bad performance.

Russel Crowe’s character was also interesting. He was a cop beyond bribery and trying to do the right thing professionally, but a terrible father. The scene in the courtroom when he is fighting for his child from a bitter ex-wife that puts him in his place was very good. Seeing him rise to the occasion because of the epidemic of drug crime was great. The film made an interesting point about the police force, penitentiary, and law systems being dependent on criminals to perpetuate their work. Sometimes the police just want a cut of the action because it’s in their best interest to let things keep going so they can keep their jobs. I had never seen that sort of idea put forth in a movie before, and would love to see that explored in another film. Any recommendations?

I’d say American Gangster is a solid film worth checking out if you have the time. It is a long film, but it doesn’t feel that way because it is so well made.

Tags: americangangster, Russel Crowe, Denzel Washington, movie, awesome

I heard about Traineo through a website that tried a “Wii Sports” diet. Traineo is a personal trainer “manager” sort of website where you can track your exercise and workouts, chart weight gain or weight loss, and potentially track calories. I decided to try out Traineo for a bit to keep track of my exercise routine.

First, I had to develop an exercise routine. Traineo had a drop down menu for “Wii”, as well as for “walking”. Since this is 90% of the exercise I get these days before work, this would work out well enough. I started out today stretching to get the cobwebs out, then played an hour of Wii Sports semi-intensely.

After that, I put on Yoshi’s coat and tried to go for a jog with my dog. My dog decided all he was up for today was a slow walk. It was a bit cold, with light snow so I wanted to keep moving to stay warm. He was not cooperating. We headed to a walking bridge and went up the stairs, down a ramp, ran around to the stairs, and went back up for a few laps. Yoshi was so confused. Every time we’d go around for another lap he’d look up as if to say, “What the hell man? We’ve already done this.”

I came back, estimated my times and intensity, and then put the information into Traineo. Unfortunately, while it can estimate what my calorie burn might be, I don’t know if my diet is excessive or not. I can’t track calories because Korean food has poor labeling (Admittedly, it is getting better). I’ll keep eating what I normally do, and hope an increase in activity is enough to knock off a few kilograms.

After all that exercise, I connected my Wii to the Internet and did some Youtube’ing on the television. After messing with the Zoom, it’s the same as watching any compressed video you might watch online. I’d watch something for ten minutes, then have to get out the Wiimote to bump over to the next file of a multi-part show. Instant gratification while you sit on the couch and take it easy.

Tags: wii, Nintendo, Traineo, youtube, wifi

I teach some twins that are basically some of the most “hardcore” students I’ve ever met. The parents are very strict about their schedule, and often comment that the work I give them isn’t hard enough. The students will come to class and tell me that they must get more homework to make their mother happy. I do what I can to make their lives a little better.

I asked if they happened to be on break from school at the moment. They said they were not in school, but they were sad about it. These are the only students not bouncing off the walls about their vacation. I had to find out more.

I asked them about their holiday this week. Their “Christmas present” was a bag of Chinese medicine. This was to increase their health and vitality for all the tough studying they’ll have to do during the break.

Yikes. How much studying do they fit in during their vacation anyway?

The students started telling me about their day. Their day started after lunch. They had tests, classes, more classes, and after everything was finished, would go home to do homework.

“Well, at least you can sleep in, that’s good.”

“Oh no teacher, we can’t sleep in. Our mother is worried that we don’t get enough exercise because we study 9 hours a day during vacation.”

“So you have to play in the mornings?”

“No, we have to go to a health club with our mother to exercise before we start studying.”

They have to do this for the next two months. No wonder they don’t look forward to vacation.

Every SINGLE second of these students lives are managed. From the second they wake up, to the minute they go to sleep, they are driven to compete with each other, and with everyone else that is trying to do better on testing in their schools.

These students are simply lucky compared to others, as their parents make money off the same system that drives their lives. Their father is a math teacher who benefits from parents that spend excessive amounts of money on education. Their mother is English obsessed, and will take them to other countries to practice English for months at a time.

Because they are wealthy enough to go to good schools and travel abroad, they will have enough experience to get a good job and perpetuate this system on their own children. Each future generation will have more drive, more motivation, and harder competition. This is a bleak future.

Tags: future, children, education, Korea, christmas

Today was a sort of tough day for some of my classes. They had finished their books, and some of them had finished testing, but we still needed to spend a class together doing something. I decided to make it a winter holiday themed class.

The first activity I did with them was to write “2008 Promises”. I call the activity this because they don’t know the word “Resolution”. I introduced the idea, and then had them write what they promised to do next year. Except for some weird boys that promised to kill and eat people next year (Cannibalism is a edgy joke for a 3rd grader) my students all had great resolutions. “I will study harder” was the most popular.

The next activity we had was to take a themed set of words, for example “Hot Chocolate” or “Christmas Tree”, and see how many other words you could make from it. The interesting part was adding a list of clues at the bottom of the paper. These worked like a crossword but the solution was always made with words that came from the phrase the students had to work with.

In the upper level classes, the students not only got to answer these hints, but they also made their own hints to stump the class. For the phrase “Christmas Tree” I personally came up with forty hints for different words. (I built the activity from this document.)

The best was when I would make a hint and students would find a solution I hadn’t even intended. For example, for my hint “a delicious snack”, I was thinking the word “tart”, when one of my students answered “Ice Cream”! That’s awesome!

Tags: games, teaching, review, fun, themed work

You live in a place for years, only to find out something new and surprising about it from time to time. Looking at movies at CineCine, we found a movie we wanted to see playing at “Daejeon Art Cinema”. What the hell? Daejeon has an indie movie cinema? Where would this be?

Looking up the web page for the info on the Daejeon Art Cinema, 대전 아트시네마 PHONE (042-472-1138) it was in a neighborhood I used to work in! It turns out that place closed a few years ago, and they had moved downtown. They are next to Daehoun Book Store (but on the third floor) in Unhaengdon. As you walk from the main downtown strip (Jungangro Station), towards the Daejeon Train Station, it’s on your right. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never find it. The place is small, with just a single screen. The neighborhood had a few porno theaters. I wonder if this used to be such a place before it got converted to something better.

This is a true sort of indie movie house. They have film festivals! Actual indie movies showing all day! Non-crap movies that are actually interesting to watch! We saw a charming little movie called “Once” that was never going to be shown on a big screen anywhere in Korea. The soundtrack is incredible. It’s by The Frames.

I was really happy to discovery a place to see movies not available anywhere else. The place might be small, and the the screen might be tiny, but I’ll probably be catching a few more movies there in the future.

Tags: indie, movie, daejeon, theater, downtown

Today is my last day to prepare my students for their upcoming examinations. Christmas Eve, and my students are expected to study? Not likely. I prepared a review paper with twenty questions likely to appear on their tests, and we spent time answering each of them.

They have all the questions for the examination, so all they have to do now is memorize the answers and be able to choose them out of a series of multiple choice questions. It might happen that all the students get good grades to give their parents. I certainly hope that’s the case at least.

After we finished our review, I handed out forms for holiday cards. There were trees, snowmen, and stockings with presents. The students then had to write letters to their families, or Santa, about the holidays.

The number one requested gift that students wanted to spell was “Nintendo DS”. Awesome. However, some of the students tried to tell me that Yoshi Island DS wasn’t a good choice for a game, and that New Super Mario Brothers was the only good game someone should want. What a weird argument. I can remember three years ago when no one in Korea knew a single Mario game at all. Now I’ve got kids thinking they know more about Mario franchise games than I do. (Both of those games are fantastic. They don’t know what they are talking about.)

When students would inquire as to what the school was giving out as a gift, the secretary said she was giving out “Free Hugs.” Awesome. I happened to find the cane pole that fell behind the computer in the teacher’s room. This is for the “bad” students that need to be intimidated into studying. The students thought I was offering a “free beating” when they saw me with it. This is the only day in WEEKS where no students came into the teacher’s room, so perhaps I should keep with it.

Tags: christmas, school, homework, free hugs, free beatings, cards, study, tests

My wife and I, being near social shut ins for no particular reason but laziness, were excited to be invited to a Christmas party at a friend’s house. The invite said to bring some food, as well as a gift. We split up the tasks. I handled the food, she took care of the gift.

Her gift was unique. My wife went and made a ridiculously awesome traditional Korean paper art box. She’s been taking classes on how to make these unique Korean items. I hadn’t seen the fruits of her long work at her class until she came home to lacquer it. There was a lot of work put into our gift.

There wasn’t a lot of work put into our side dish. I got information from the host that no one had mentioned any sort of salad was being brought. Salad I can handle. I hopped over the local E-Mart, grabbed some fixings, and came back to the apartment to get chopping. We even bottled up some dressing for the trip. Just in case the salad didn’t go over well, I brought some Jägermeister. If their throats were burning from alcohol, no one could complain about the salad.

We arrived in the first “wave” of people. When we got to the apartment, there was a turkey the size of a large beach ball stuffed on the table. There were cookies, bottles of wine, and lots of other side dishes. I had brought the only salad. We set our gift under the tree and got to socializing. We we ate later on, I had double servings of turkey and home made mashed potatoes. My salad didn’t last long enough to make it to my second course, so it was a success too. I had to loosen the belt, so it was a delicious meal.

There was a “Korean” room where spouses and Korean coworkers hung out, and a “foreigner” room with all of us loud mouths shouting and getting a good bit of drinking going. I’ve met some of these people multiple times, but most of them work together. One of the people joked that our host was a “Korean Lifer”, as in, he’d been here so long he didn’t remember customs from back home. In a twist of fate it turned out I’ve been in Korea longer than any foreigner invited at the party, even longer than the host. C’est La Vie.

The main event of the evening was the gift exchange. Every gift giver got a number to pick a gift. If you went first, you got first choice. If you went second, you could steal the first person’s gift, or pick one from under the tree. If you got your gift stolen, your second gift you chose was “safe” and couldn’t be taken by anyone.

We went third, and picked the heaviest box. We got a set of Christmas dishes. There were 20 people behind us, and we thought we’d lose our gift for sure. Of course, most of the people were not “lifers” like we were, so perhaps they had less use for some matching sets of dishes. We also got some home made hot chocolate powder. I was positive we were going to lose our gift, but we luckily held on the entire game.

When the host saw someone pick up our gift, he told everyone, “She makes such awesome stuff. She made a watch for my wife’s wedding present. Really, that’ll be a good one.” My wife had a huge smile on her face. As it turns out, my wife’s present was fought over and stolen once. The person that ended up with it was very happy and was in awe she had made it entirely out of paper.

The next game was different. There were two extremely over wrapped presents. Packing tape, lots of wrapping, MORE wrapping tape. It was completely over the top. Anyway, people had to throw dice, and when someone got doubles, they had to swipe a gift and begin unwrapping it. The next person to roll doubles took the gift from them and began to unwrap it. The person holding the gift at the end got to keep it.

The game started out strange, with more than 10 dice being rolled without a single set of doubles. Then all hell broke loose. Someone next to me rolled the first set of doubles and grabbed a gift. They were struggling like hell to get the wrapping off when the dice came to me. I rolled two fives, and snatched the gift from her. She had the top unwrapped, but the long slim body remained wrapped in thick layers. Using my feet and arms, like a monkey peeling a banana, I got the rest of the wrapping off in a few seconds.

VICTORY! It was a plastic mixing tumbler with Kahlua filled chocolate treats inside. I passed around the chocolate to everyone in the room. They seemed surprised I’d share my present. Perhaps that’s the “Korean manners” I learned being a lifer.

There was also a “mingle” game where people asked people questions to find out what Christmas themed item was written on a Post-it note attached to their back. I have played this exact same game with students, but we had no theme and everyone tried to cheat. This was more fun. I was a Christmas cookie, my wife was Christmas Carols.

Some Canadians brought Christmas “poppers”, which aren’t really as scary as the name implied. A small, wrapped gift that “popped” lamely when you pulled it apart. We also went on the roof of the building and shot off fireworks. Several apartments nearby had lights flash on, and people watching from their verandas. We even got a few drunks walking home to stop and watch for a bit. No one called the police either. Wonderful.

We got a ride home from a Korean lady my wife befriended at the party. She’s now a job contact, which seemed to be the entire reason the Korean “room” existed. Everyone was networking to find classes and jobs around town. Even on Christmas they didn’t stop talking about getting more money. Yikes.

Anyway, it was a wonderful time, and the best Christmas since I hung out with my parents after my wedding.

Tags: christmas, party, foreigners, lifer, games, fun

It comes to no surprise to people that know me that I’ve taken an interest in what the cast and crew of the cult hit show Mystery Science Theater 3000 have been up to since the show has stopped being produced.

Mike and the “Scifi” era cast of puppeteers are involved with Rifftrax. Rifftrax is brilliant. It works like a bonus track to a DVD that you put on an mp3 player. You hit “play” at the same time, and then pause the track if it gets out of sync. It’s low tech, but it works surprisingly well. I’ve downloaded multiple movie riffs from this service. It’s cheap, fast, and often hilarious.

The downside of the Rifftrax method of heckling movies is that acquiring the movie and playing them is separate from the riffing experience. You can buy the movies at their site, but nothing connects the two to keep them in sync. If you have the movies on hand, or can rent them, this works perfectly however.

The Film Crew is a sort of “professional comedic commentary”. They are the same guys doing Rifftrax, but their commentaries are added to movies on commercially released DVDs of old movies. They have short skits and whatnot. This is basically a way of repackaging an old movie one more time. I haven’t heard much about this as a method of releasing DVDs or continuing the idea of MST3k.

The newcomer to the post-MST3k era is Cinematic Titanic. Basically anyone that isn’t involved in the Rifftrax is now part of Cinematic Titanic. This is more of the old Comedy Channel and even KTMA crew, although Mary Jo Pehl has worked with both era crews, and has even been featured on a rifftrax of Glitter.

Cinematic Titanic’s take on the riffing process is a little different. Rather than treading the same ground that Rifftrax does by hitting the current crop of bad movies in any rental store, they’ve purchased the rights to a bad film. They have live studio riffing sessions in front of a green screen, and superimpose themselves in front of the film, much like on the original MST3k program.

This means that while you get a terrible movie being heckled by old school MST3k pros, they are distributing it as a DVD unto itself, not as a small audio file you listen to in addition to the DVD. You buy the DVD, which has the movie, as well as their commentary track imposed on top of it.

This is a much more expensive endeavor. They have to film actors on a set, do post production, and all sorts of other things Rifftrax doesn’t have to do. They also have to find and purchase terrible movies and own the rights to distribute those movies. Rumors have linked George Lucas as to have put up some cash for this, and the people at ILM have had their own private viewings of this process.

The first movie for Cinematic Titanic looks extremely bad and befitting the name. I can already see how licensing the movies will cause nightmares for this service. Their first movie was originally titled “Brain of Blood”, but had to be renamed “The Oozing Skull” to satisfy the owner.

Also, while Cinematic Titanic currently owns DVD distribution rights, they don’t own “Burn to DVD” download rights. This was one of their promises at the beginning to distinguish them from Rifftrax. They were supposed to allow anyone to download the video, burn it to DVD themselves, and be able to watch it at home without ever needing to go through the process of physically shipping a DVD anywhere.

Not only that, but due to the high demand of this first DVD, the online service that lets you purchase the movie is back ordered. The service they are using is requesting people wait up to 10 days for them to burn enough copies to get them sent to everyone. Way to miss the point of digital distribution entirely.

Not only that, but the service isn’t even available in Korea according to their website. I hope this means they are only not shipping physical DVDS out of the country. If this means I’m not going to be able to purchase a digital copy, I’ll just give up on the idea of Cinematic Titanic entirely.

I hope in a few months I’ll be able to watch a movie that should already be available, but isn’t due to technical limitations and distribution rights. Cinematic Titanic is great in theory, but in practice has yet to deliver any laughs to me.

Tags: MST3k, Cinematic Titanic, Film Crew, Rifftrax