I had to go back and look at what I wrote after K-pop boy group Shinee's Jonghyun committed suicide in December 2017 at the age of 27, and why I wrote so much when I wasn't a fan and didn't know a whole lot about him. I do remember wondering what I would feel if such a tragedy hit closer to home.

Ex-f(x) member Sulli committing suicide last week at the age of 25 was closer to home, but curiously I don't have a lot to say about it. The feelings have been very subtle, persistent, resonating, existential tailspins whenever I considered what I had read and tried to fill in the blanks. Everything was wrong and tragic about it. Everyone in and into the K-pop scene should be angry and outraged about it. Basically, she killed herself after years of enduring hateful and malicious comments on her social media when she was just being herself and expressing her views, and it affected her mental health to the extent that she finally ended her own life.

It shouldn't have happened. She wasn't predisposed to suicide. It bothers me that she's no longer here. But I don't have a whole lot to say beyond that.

Fancam from one of the last times Sulli performed with f(x) in 2014:



I admit I was disappointed when she left the group in 2014, but when she returned to music earlier this year and released a surprise three-song single, I was blown away by how good quality and what a fully-formed concept (i.e., not throwaway or half-assed cookie-cutter) it was.

current status

Alcohol: I haven't quit completely since August last year when I had that great, wonderous, earth-shaking revelation for the umpteenth time that alcohol wasn't going to kill me and it therefore served no purpose. I was drinking almost a bottle of liquor a day with some beer in the mix because beer make happy. I cut down to a bottle every three days or less plus beer still in the mix because beer. The plan was to eventually totally get off the sauce, but that didn't happen because alcoholism.

That makes me question my mindfulness practice which believes quitting completely is not only possible, but even easy when mindfully applied. On the other hand, the reduced consumption (a schedule I've been on many times before in the name of cutting back) hasn't been making me feel like crap like the bottle a day did. There just hasn't been anything compelling to make me quit completely, but like my months at a monastery, now well over a decade ago, I theoretically could stop completely if I had to and not even think about it. Same as it ever was.

Sleep: Insomnia really went away with the reduced consumption of alcohol. Coincidence? The thing is that I've been on this reduced schedule of consumption before during years I've had insomnia, so they shouldn't be related. Psychological? I still always need music on to fall asleep with a timer set to shut off. Sleep is unsettled towards the end with multiple waking in the morning, but I turn on the music and reset the timer and that gets me back to sleep. If I don't turn on music, I don't fall asleep. Average 6 hours sleep with lights out between 1:30 and 2 a.m. and getting up in the 8 o'clock hour for morning sitting.

Exercise: It was full stop on even any thought of running and cycling since August last in the same realization as stopping drinking. Why am I doing this? So much effort and maintenance required, so much pain and risk of injury, so little satisfaction as performance declines. My bike is covered with dust and cobwebs, tyres flat. I don't even want to check how the last pair of running shoes I bought are doing.

Interesting how stopping exercise and stopping drinking are totally different things. Entropy working differently in either case. Or not. I'm kidding, entropy isn't at play at all (or is it?), but I'm realizing my jokes are too abstract, obtuse or just not funny. I realize now I should've been pointing out all along when I'm joking, which is even less funnier. Yes, that was a grammar joke. Yes, that was me pointing out that it was a grammar joke. Yes, it wasn't funny initially and even less funnier pointing it out. Oy vey.

Eating: Appetite has remained completely stable since August last. Faboo. Also alcohol related? Who knows? Maybe not. Maybe it was alcohol related at that time. Which still means it was. The Korean food obsession that started last November lasted until May or June when it relented. Literally Korean food almost every day. I still go for Korean when I think about it, but I no more have to think about where was the place I went least recently to decide where to go. Aigoo.

So what have I been doing? Reading and mindfulness practice has been the all-permeating focus. But mindfulness is more of a Zen thing and I've been playing and fiddling more with Vajrayana, so I should just say practice, mindfulness being a part of it. Pushing the teachings and my understanding the best I can without a guru. No great, mind-opening, satori-like breakthrough, but that's not a focus; not something I'm striving for. More slow immersion into my understanding with tangible, experiential moments of getting things. Applying whatever whenever, focusing on energies. Everything is energy. Energy equals emcee squared (on a total aside, to date there surprisingly has been no notable rock band that has named itself E=mc², but there was a white rapper who went under the name MC Squared).

K-pop girl group obsession and immersion has remained unabated. A lot of time spent watching YouTube videos. But with YouTube videos it's not just K-pop. I watch science lectures and documentaries. There's a "World Science Festival" channel where I watch videos on cosmology and astrophysics.

I watch a channel called "Asian Boss" which features vox pop videos in various Asian countries (at least once in the U.S.) asking people on the street about various topical topics. I think they edit videos for the most intelligent responses, which is refreshing and totally opposite of U.S. talk shows where they do the vox pop thing asking simple questions, but then air the most ridiculous, stupid-sounding people.

I also pay attention to a channel called "China Uncensored", which has sarcastic "news" videos about China-related topics, mostly pointing out China's hypocrisy and unfriendly or hostile relations with other countries. The sarcasm makes the outrage palatable. I like sarcasm, in case you haven't noticed. Wait! Was that sarcasm?! Was I being sarcastic talking about sarcasm?! Good grief. I'm having a crisis of (being) meta.

Back to the South Korea fetish, I follow a few South Korean YouTube vlogs. Apparently professional vloggers. They make money off of it. It's totally voyeuristic watching these people going through certain days they decide to video and narrate. I don't know how I feel about it. It's fascinating watching slices of these people's young women's lives, but it's not prurience. True, they are attractive but that's just the dressing, the bait, the aesthetic. It's the same with K-pop. I'm sure the boy groups are putting out just as good music as girl groups if it were just about the music, but for the pop genre, my aesthetic leans towards the girls. Same with golf, mind you. You couldn't pay me to watch men's golf, but I'll watch LPGA tournaments when sports channels choose to air them (NB: they won't if there's men's or motor sports or such boring bullshit to air).

It's the lives that interest me, the living life that they are doing which I'm not. The relating with other people, the moving through their cities/lives/world, neither of which I'm doing. They are reminders of what I'm not doing, what I may have used to have done when I was younger but don't even want anymore. And there is that tension between feeling I want to be a part of something and the reality that I totally don't.

Branching out of those videos, just recently I did a brief spate of watching videos of people showing their apartments in Seoul (still the Korean fetish). Again, it's just the look at and fascination of the lives going on. All those people doing something. Is there anyone doing the worthless nothingness I'm doing?

There's a class of apartments in Seoul that I don't think we have in Taiwan called goshiwon, which are tiny, basic apartments originally meant for students cramming for national exams. Mostly foreigners and students on a budget use them now, but they remind me of my ideal when I first moved to Taiwan. I wanted to live a simple hermit-like existence, and a goshiwon would've fit the ideal perfectly.

Now I look at my apartment and all the stuff I've accumulated and this is luxury compared to tiny goshiwons. This is my karma. I haven't torn myself and my ego down enough to deserve living in a goshiwon. I probably couldn't survive a goshiwon. I'd be like, "I gotta get out of this situation", and I could because I could afford it. I live in an apartment where I had the luxury of being an insomniac and baby it. Luxury of all my perceived problems without the added stresses of the perceived inconveniences of a goshiwon.

What made me think I could be a monk? I didn't deserve it. I haven't karmically earned it. My karma is still such "bad" enough that I tend towards comfort and luxury. In another life, I could easily become the hungry ghost my mother is in this life. That's the harsh possibility. Wow, that escalated quickly.

Last and least, since last December when cable TV went down for two months (I don't know if it's related; could be), I've been spending at least two hours a day with a bass in hand, plugged into my Korg PX5D and connected to iTunes and working on ear training along with K-pop songs. Why? I don't know. I'm not trying to do anything, it's not about making music or practicing bass or being a musician or anything. It may be closure to my discarded "musician" identity. I recognize now that I was never good enough to be a musician. I'm not talented, I never learned music nor got to know it, and I certainly never practiced near enough to be a musician. And if not any sort of "formal" musician, it behooves me to admit that despite my love of music and trying to make it, I was also not passionate enough to be any sort of musician.

Maybe it's an afterglow goodbye gesture towards musicianship. Ear training is one of those things I never got and never practiced as a skill. I'm just trying to see if I can improve my ear training, and that's it. It's not going to make me a musician, it's not going to make me know music. It's just training to listen to notes and develop a sense of what intervals sound like, where to go for the next note. I daresay it hasn't been a totally hopeless endeavor. It has been evidence that if I had started ear training early enough, in my teens, I could've been OK at it. I have good sessions where my fingers find the right notes without even thinking, and bad days where I feel hopelessly tone deaf and flounder about the fretboard hitting notes only after the second or third guess.

K-pop is particularly good for this because the songs are written by professional musicians applying theory, meaning there is a structure to the progressions, unlike rock which a lot is by feel and if theory is followed it's just happenstance. The theory-following structure makes a lot of K-pop predictable (they love their circle of fifths), which is good for ear training, but the writers are interesting enough to put in lots of twists and surprises to challenge ear training.

Ah, it all comes back to me. Another YouTube channel I pay attention to is ReacttotheK, a group of classical music students who react to K-pop. I generally avoid reaction videos as pointless and varying degrees of stupid, but it was interesting listening to people who know music, who pronounce "timbre" correctly, who know the difference between a piano, horns and an elbow, and had something intelligent to say about the songs.

Hearing them use music terms I recognize but have forgotten reminded me how lacking my music education has been, including ear training. That's what inspired me when cable TV went dark to at least try to do some ear training as a last gasp of musicianhood. I can grasp ear training, whereas I couldn't get music theory even if Kim Jong Un threatened to nuke Seoul unless I mastered music theory. I would pretend to try to do it and stall as long as I could to buy time for Seoul to be evacuated.

And bam, I found the gateway video that hooked me:

Future life resonance. I've been eating Korean food almost every day since about the beginning of December. I have just about every Korean restaurant within a two miles radius mapped out in my head and continue to note and target the few that I've missed.

Truth to tell, I've never been this way about Korean food. Not like I am with Mexican or Italian. Two of the Korean restaurants were around when I first moved to this neighborhood almost 10 years ago and quite honestly I went years without going to either.

Now, I inexplicably melt at how good they all are. My knowledge and palette for Korean food isn't that sophisticated and I end up ordering the same things, but it demonstrates what I've heard from Korean food shows about local cuisines all around Korea being different. It's reflected in restaurants in Taiwan. You can order bibimbap at 12 different restaurants, and they'll all be different.

There are Korean restaurants who now recognize me as a loyal regular, coming in reliably at least every week or other, but they don't know they're just one of a veritable revolving door of Korean restaurants who all recognize me as a loyal regular. I feel like a cheap whore. Well, the opposite. I'm a cheap Korean restaurant John.

It confounds me. You eat so much of any cuisine, you're gonna get tired of it. And it's not happening with a cuisine towards which I've never shown any particular affinity. That's why I attribute it to a future life resonance. It's like "where is this coming from?".

Also since the beginning of December have been winter weather patterns; this year they've fluctuated quite a lot. When it got really cold right from the start, I feared it was going to be a long winter. Previous years' temperatures were mild until late January. But so far this season there have been very nice short stretches of warm temperatures in the 70s. Short stretches of rain, some hard, but not constant rain like in previous years. And stretches of low to mid-50s, brittle cold in a country where homes don't have heating. Very variable, not at all brutal. Yet.

Oh, you know, there may have been a trigger for the Korean food frenzy. Several months ago I watched a "behind the scenes" video of a rookie K-pop girl group and they were eating throughout it. At the very end, Lucy lifts the yellow box and I could see the name on it, Bobby Box. Just for shits and giggles, I searched it on google maps because I'm a google maps geek. I expected locations in Korea, but was surprised to get a hit in Taipei! I went there the very next day and have been going there once or twice a week since.



There's this thing in Korea called 'mukbang' (Japan too, I think, but I don't know what they call it) which are videos of people eating. They're popular because apparently it's very pleasing to watch people enjoying good food. I can't argue with that. This video qualifies as mukbang.

This is the dashcam of South Korean actor Kim Joo Hyuk in late October in the moments before he suffered some medical problem and crashed, dying later at the hospital. The full clip starts at 0:21.

After traffic goes through the intersection, pay attention to the black SUV to the right and then the black sedan that passes on the right. That's when Kim starts having (or noticing) problems and is either trying to get to the side of the road or has already started losing control of his functioning. It looks like he probably sideswipes the black sedan (not caught on the dashcam), who is probably honking like mad (no audio), alerting the SUV in front, who presumably seeing the collision in his mirror, steps on the gas and speeds away to not get involved.

As Kim's control further deteriorates, the cam shows a black sedan (presumably the one he hit) come up on the left, partially blocking Kim's car. Presumably, logically, the sedan driver only knows that he's been hit and Kim's car didn't show any sign of stopping because of the accident, and therefore he wants to prevent Kim from leaving the scene. That's when Kim loses all control of his functions and presumably his foot falls heavy on the accelerator leading him to hit the sedan again, careen towards the sidewalk and crashing. The last image before cutting off is Kim's vehicle flipping over. He had to be extracted before being sent to the hospital. From my very limited layman's experience and knowledge, I might profer he suffered either a seizure, heart attack or stroke. The autopsy was inconclusive.

What's sad and profound to me is that the dashcam includes the last things Kim Joo Hyuk saw of this world. He probably didn't wake up that morning and consider he might die that day. He may have, but I daresay most of us don't. He certainly didn't get into his car thinking he was about to die.

Everything was going normal until it wasn't. A late afternoon commute, driving from one place to another as he does every day. That's the profound part of the clip, not the accident but the normalcy leading up to it.

Death is a universal experience, but so are the moments of each of our lives leading up to dying that the dashcam so poignantly captures. And since we generally don't know when or how death comes, we don't know when those last moments of normalcy are being experienced. So breathe.

Then again, there was Elvis who died on the crapper.

EunB had expressed her dream for Ladies' Code to have a number one song. After she died, fans went on a campaign to buy a b-side track from the 'Pretty Pretty' single released last year, entitled "I'm Fine, Thank You" to try to push it to number one. They succeeded, and it hit number one on a number of South Korean charts.

In response, the group's agency compiled footage of the group, focusing on EunB and RiSe, and released a video for the song:

RiSe of Ladies' Code has also died. I noted after EunB died that there was no indication of optimism that RiSe would make it. There were reports of a marathon surgery for a head injury that had to be abandoned because of dangerously low blood pressure (emphasis: not because the surgery was completed). There were also reports that she stopped breathing three times during the surgery. None of that looked good. Even if she did survive, there may have been the possibility of brain damage. They were working on a head trauma that was obviously very, very serious.

In a way, her death is less of a shock than EunB's was, though just as tragic. I usually go to K-pop news/rumor websites late at night, but I've been checking them whenever online these past few days, awaiting news. I was half expecting this.

It was a tragic accident. It just happens. We live, so we must die, and we don't know when, we don't know how. You compound the possibilities, the ifs, and try to work out ways that the accident doesn't happen. Then I think what if it happened to a group I wasn't so into. Not so much of an impact. That's certainly a lack of equanimity.

Most outlets are embedding the promotional videos for their songs. I prefer to choose performances I've noted enough to favorite. My homage to Ladies' Code:

Debut track "Bad Girl", spring 2013:

As I mentioned, this rookie performance caught my attention and made me a fan in just a couple weeks of promotion. It's the song that hooks me. I usually don't pay attention to performances of groups I don't know, but I have the audio in the background while I do something else. This song caused me to look up and pay attention. Truth to tell, I didn't note EunB during these performances (shoulder-length orange hair). Sojung, with her clarion voice, was the focus, as well as RiSe with her couples dance that I thought was impressive while singing.

"Pretty Pretty (Yeppo Yeppo)", autumn 2013: Also displaying Sojung's strong vocals from the start, this track made me notice EunB and wonder why I didn't notice her before. RiSe and Zuny split the self-referential first verse (the lyrics were specifically written for them with RiSe calling herself by name and Zuny referring to herself as the "maknae" of the group, the youngest member, which is apparently important in Korean culture), but EunB has the whole second verse for herself.

"So Wonderful", winter 2014:
Actually, I don't have a "favorite" performance of this. They're all good. Or rather the choreography is such that it didn't matter what the cameras were doing, key choreography was almost always caught. NB: Between the end of the first chorus and the start of the second verse is a two beat silent rest that the fan chant can be heard with "Yeppo Yeppo" from their previous release.

Their final performance, "Kiss Kiss", hours before the accident. They were driving back to Seoul from this performance:

Total insomnia last night; never settled into a sleep, fading in and out, and then gave up. Then I went for a 37 mile bikeway ride, same ride as Tuesday's. Eventually riding might be affected, but not at this point. I started fading in the evening but completed the ride just fine.

So this week I had two bouts of back-end insomnia, a full night sleep that hardly made up, and then a night of total insomnia. I'm planning on riding tomorrow, too, if the weather holds.

EunB is still making me sad. A news outlet released footage of the end of her funeral. Only Ashley and Zuny were well enough to attend, but even escaping with "minor injuries", Zuny is seen in a neck brace and a broken hand.

RiSe is still unconscious after her brain surgery. Sojung had surgery on fractures to her face and reports say that she still hasn't been told about EunB for psychological reasons, which seems reasonable.

I'm glad this footage was released. Some might think it sensational and invasive of private moments, but I think it helps fans grieve with Ashley and Zuny.

It's sad, but it's still important to remember that they were rising stars with a hardcore fanbase established. They were entertainers and they were doing their best to entertain with fun, catchy songs and choreography. As sad as it is to know EunB is gone, I hope her performances won't go forgotten or unrecognized.

Life of Pi (Taiwan, 2012)

I have to say it straight out. Having just read the book recently and now seeing the film, the film is better than the book. I can't really fault the book, though, because the nature of the novel lends itself perfectly for a visual experience through film.

Many things described in the book require more imagination than I have to visualize them just reading the book. In the film, I don't have to put that effort into it and I can realize what the author was trying to describe.

It's hardly an action movie, but there is visceral motion in the story that Ang Lee makes the audience feel that couldn't be conveyed in just words in a novel, I thought. And Ang Lee's digital teams' visuals are absolutely stunning.

Finally, as I mentioned, in the book a character mentions it's a story that will "make you believe in God", and I didn't think the book delivered on that. The movie does. Perhaps not in a literal sense, but in a conceptual sense.

There's that big, albeit subtle, turn-around scene when it's like, "oh, that's what he means. Yea". I'm scientifically oriented at heart, and a running theme of this blog is to keep that orientation in check. Science is amazing in how it describes reality, but it is only amazing because it limits itself so strictly.

It doesn't investigate what it can't find evidence for. Scientific reality I accept. But I also accept a reality that science can't touch. And the question is, do you prefer a reality that is only scientifically describable, or a reality that has elements that science can't describe?

It is an intense film. I wouldn't preclude reading the book for all the detail that is fleshed out, although a lot of the stuff left out in the film was definitely not necessary in the film. I can't say if my appreciation is greater having read the book, and of course at this point I can't watch the film not having read the book.

I think I'm going to give this film 10 out of 10 tomatoes. 9 at the lowest.



Skyfall (2012, UK)

Oh, good grief, it's a James Bond film. Either you like James Bond films or you don't. They all have flaws or are hard-boiled or whatever.

Daniel Craig continues with the hard, gritty, no-nonsense James Bond that you're not necessarily supposed to like. And the franchise now is part of the 21st century action film genre where if you deliver big bangs for the buck, you've succeeded.

And that's what this film is. A visual amusement park ride of an action movie. It's hardly high cinema, has a lot of flaws, but it's a James Bond film. Nominal fresh 7 out of 10 tomatoes. It's no where near a total fail, but leaves a little to be desired.

Hm. Korean media is doing it, so why don't I? The first half of 2012 is over and my vote for the top K-pop girl group release for the first six months is going to Sistar's "Alone":


Mind you, until this song, I haven't been a huge fan of Sistar. I've recognized their quality in previous releases, but there was always some element in their songs that prevented me from being completely hooked.

I got hooked to this song from the start, starting from the minor key and the sexy groove once it kicks in, but then the verse sections are quite good and the bridge and choruses are incredible.

Sistar are kinda known for being an overtly sexy group (and they've complained about that image, but then they should tell their choreographers not to make it a requirement for them to bend over like pin-ups in every friggin' video and dance routine they do), but I think in this song, sexiness is in the songwriting. The song is inherently sexy and whatever dressing or choreography is placed on it will be sexy. And they bend over like pin-ups quite a bit.

Runners up I would give to Miss A's January release "Touch" and Wonder Girls' fun June release "Like This" (both written and produced by Park Jin Young (JYP), on whom I have a man-crush because he seems to be some kind of genius to me). "Touch" has a great groove start to finish:



"Like This" is just a fun romp with fun choreography:


As for JYP himself, aside from being the CEO of the agency to which miss A and Wonder Girls belong and a producer and songwriter, he's also an artist and he did release a song in the first half of 2012 and promote it. And I must say that as few male pop artists there are that I'm willing to watch while they wiggle their bums, JYP has the moves and charisma that make me watch in a way that only Michael Jackson has otherwise compelled me. Seriously, he may not be physically attractive, but he has serious charisma:


I'll also give a nod to SNSD's first sub-unit, the 3-member TaeTiSeo's (Taeyeon-Tiffany-Seohyun) release "Twinkle". It's great funk/soul song written by an American composer/Korean lyricist. I think I'm not giving it the credit it deserves because expectations are always high for SNSD, and so when they meet those expectations, it feels par for the course even if it's a great track. The 3 singers, I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb saying, are among the four best (along with Jessica) in SNSD.



Finally, I note the debut of rookie group Spica in the first half of 2012 because it's simply the best and most mature debut of a girl group I've seen thus far in terms of quality. As a group, they may have some of the best vocals in the industry, up there in the range of Brown Eyed Girls.

I think the idea behind the group was to have good vocals, and the main vocalist, I gather, is a professional singer who has been recording the guide vocals for producers for years (after hearing her demonstrate some songs by other groups she provided the guides for, I'm convinced the producers kept it in on many of the chorus parts of the final mixes). Also, from what I can tell, they're the only group I've seen handle harmonies live. With other groups, I've rarely been convinced harmonies were being sung live.

Paul (U.S./UK, 2011)

Caught this movie midway through on Cinemax and was immediately hooked, and fortunately it was broadcast again the next day when I watched it in full.

It's a fun sci-fi/geek romp about two nerds from England who travel to the U.S. on holiday to attend Comicon in San Diego and proceed on a geek road trip of "alien hotspots" in the American Southwest. On the way, they meet up with the title character Paul, who has escaped from Area 51 and is trying to reach a rendezvous point to be taken back to his home . . . um, planet.

It's definitely not for everyone, there's a certain British-ness to the humour, exposure to which helps get the movie. The movie might likely appeal to sci-fi geeks, and I'm not hardcore, but I have to admit it's in my background, and that certainly aided in my appreciation.

The movie is replete with sci-fi and cultural references, the geekiness of which encourages people to just go along with the ride and ignore the ridiculousness of the scenario and appreciate that it's silliness that is very well done.

In my own geekiness, I'm surprised in all the noted references online that the movie makes, I haven't found mention that Paul's healing power is taken directly from the Star Trek Original Series episode "The Empath", nor Paul's twice quoteth Pearl Jam nod, "It's evolution, baby" (one for the rockers maybe).

And to split hairs about cultural references, there's a difference between nods or homage in the script to cultural references and overt mention of cultural references that are within the context of the movie. So wearing an "Empire Strikes Back" shirt is not a cultural reference because it fits in with the character in the context of the movie. Anything at Comicon is not a cultural reference because those are what you would expect to see in the context of Comicon.

Characters quoting Han Solo or Lt. Ripley lines, or the "Star Wars" cantina music playing at the bar (online sources keep referring to that movie as "Episode IV: A New Hope", to which I say fuck that, the movie was "Star Wars". Period. And fuck George Lucas fucking with his own legacy) are cultural references because those references are outside of the context of the film. Those can be considered homage to where this film comes from.

I loved this movie, but it is for sci-fi geeks who would get the humor and have fun with the many references. I'll give it a fresh 8 out of 10 tomato rating. No higher because it's light, silly fare, but excellent and intelligent in the light, silly fare genre.

The Root of All Evil - The God Delusion

I wouldn't say the views in this documentary reflect my own, but it's worth the watch for anyone striving for a balanced interest in the human condition and the role of humanistic rationality in relation towards religion, dogmatic religion, and how its far-reaching influence has become a scourge of humankind.

Richard Dawkins is an atheist, and after watching this, I think it's fair to call him a fundamentalist atheist. His language is virulent and his attitude unforgiving and not totally unlike religious fundamentalists. Even though I generally agree with his content, I'm not really comfortable with his form.

Even fundamentalist atheism can start looking scary in this documentary.

Fundamentalism by nature breeds intolerance. Even though fundamentalist atheism is relatively benign compared to the other kinds of religious fundamentalism that plague our existences, there's still a gnawing darkness that if these views were the dominant hegemony, the intolerance would still lead to persecution and violence. That, I think, is the legacy, manifest or not, of any fundamentalism.

I'm glad that Richard Dawkins targets religion based on evidence rather than spirituality in general. If a scientific atheist attacked spirituality, he or she would be attacking something they don't know and have no evidence for or against.

Science makes no claim about understanding spirituality or defining it. Spirituality is not in the realm of scientific inquiry, therefore a scientific attack on spirituality itself would be invalid, unscientific and likely dogmatic. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, "Absence of evidence (of god) is not evidence of absence (of god)".

Religion, on the other hand, provides plenty of evidence of its nature through human behavior and history. It is a human phenomena, and is reasonably subject to a science-like analysis and scrutiny. It's not hard science; no laws can be derived from Dawkin's inquiry. But he can rationally point to characteristics and concrete results of religion, and argue against its validity or value to humanity.

And I think what he portrays has a point. Religions, or aspects of religions manipulated in an aggressive, intolerant and dogmatic way, can rain untold suffering upon innocents who the general idea of religion are meant to protect.

If you're just trying to be good and make an honest living, that's no defense against religious fervor if something you do offends their religious sensibility. ( <-- I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, -ed.)

Carl Sagan: You Are Here (Pale Blue Dot)

Carl Sagan on the opening image, taken by NASA using the Voyager probe at his request:  

The spacecraft was a long way from home. I thought it might be a good idea just after Saturn to have them take one last glance homeward. 

From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would just be a point of light, a lonely pixel, hardly distinguishable from the many other points of light Voyager would see – nearby planets, far-off suns. 

But precisely because of the obscurity of our world, thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having. It had been well-understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast encompassing cosmos. But no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

The Adjustment Bureau (2011, USA)

Guess I should write this up now after the "The Family Stone" experience. I recently watched about the last hour of it on HBO and found the concept interesting, even if the ending was predictably typical Hollywood. And as I caught the first half hour today and watched most of it to the end, I've seen the whole film.

And as a 2011 movie, I'm in danger of being up-to-date on something! Or not.

When I watched the last hour of the movie – which was the intriguing part; if I had watched from the beginning, I would have changed channels – I admitted that I do have to give Hollywood credit for stretching the imagination. Of pushing our minds into thinking about the possibilities, rather than just accept physical life and reality as it presents itself. 

After seeing the whole film and putting all the pieces together, I'm not quite so impressed, but there are things worth mentioning. 

Basically, heaven, or the heavenly realm, is portrayed as a corporate bureaucracy. God is referred to as "the chairman". Angels, members of the adjustment bureau, are heaven's acting agents on earth and they dress in suits and have wage scales and just do their jobs. Heaven itself is a corporate office building. 

On one hand, I want to say this portrayal of heaven is not very imaginative, but on the other hand I want to recognize that maybe the filmmaker is saying something about our current times. 

Heaven isn't, in fact, a corporate bureaucracy, but as corporations basically dominate everything on our planet today, it's saying this is the model we can all (sadly) relate to today. If this film was made in China a thousand years ago or during the Roman Empire, the setting would be of a different paradigm. Heavens are changing paradigms, as is any concept of "God".

Anyway, there is a God and the chairman has a plan for humankind and it's written out in magical books that all of the "angels" of the adjustment bureau have which tracks out timelines of possible events and futures. 

The adjustment bureau "angels" (and their thuggish corporate goons) influence events in the earthly realm to occur according to the plan. If an event goes off plan, they intervene to put things back on track. They're part Twilight Zone, part Men in Black, part their own thing. They don't curtail freewill, per se, but just give humans encouragement to make the right decisions. 

It all goes wrong with the two main subjects in this film, who meet and fall in love. But their love is against the plan, so the adjustment bureau sets out to correct the situation. But it's not so easy to keep soulmates apart. Because in the current version of the plan, they have separate destinies. But in previous versions of the plan, things were different, and some things aren't so easily simply erased.

There's an interesting metaphysical realm to this film whereby the adjustment bureau can transport themselves in the earthly physical realm using doorways, which to them are substrates to other disjunct places in the physical realm to help them execute their duties.

It's a play on reality and ideas of fate and destiny. Is destiny a prison that we are locked into by some universal "god", or are we really making our own decisions of where we go and how we end up?

It's not that deep, it's sophomorical, and I'd barely pass this film with a nominal fresh 6 out of 10 tomatoes. I recommend it to people who are numbed to accepting Hollywood films as entertainment. A date and then go have dessert afterwards with a discussion that doesn't touch on the movie.

The Family Stone (2005, USA)

Bleah. I create these "rotten tomato" posts not to review movies per se like I really have something to say about them, but to remind myself of what I've watched. I think the reason I didn't write up this movie before when I saw it on cable was because I turned it on halfway through.

Too bad this time, because I turned it on at the beginning, and having some vague memory of the title, having turned it on halfway through before, and having found it intriguing, I decided to watch it.

I remember the title from when the film was released. I noted the pedigree of the title and that it was riffing on Sly & the Family Stone (as well as the too-clever double-entendre of balls), and as a Hollywood film, I promptly disregarded it.

When I turned it on part way through, I remember thinking that the movie couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a melodrama or a comedy, and I'm pretty sure I didn't watch it to the very end before, because I don't remember it being a schmaltzy, tear-jerking Hollywood stinker with a ridiculous feel-good happy ending. Or I simply, and more likely, blocked it out.

But I did recognize the attraction of when I turned on to it before. There was emotion involved regarding someone dying (woohoo, good times), and it was a family holiday film, which always begs comparison to one of my all-time favorite films, a family holiday film, "Home for the Holidays".

What I had forgotten from before was my general dislike of anything Sarah Jessica Parker or Wilson brothers, Luke in this case, although I recognize the talent of Luke and Owen Wilson. They're good, I just have to be dragged to see anything they're in.

As for Sarah Jessica Parker, I just don't see the appeal. But in this movie, I do. And it has a name. Rachel McAdams, whose appearance makes Sarah Jessica Parker tolerable. Sarah Jessica Parker walks into a bar. The bartender asks, "Why the long face?". She does get credit for Matthew Broderick, though.

All in all, it was not worth watching. Great acting, Hollywood quality, but a stinker of a film with an ending that makes me wonder, "did I just watch this?". Seriously, he ended up marrying her, and she ended up with him?!! Gimme a break. Rotten 4 out of 10 tomatoes.

Lest I suggest that it was eye candy Rachel McAdams (I do think she's a good actress, not just eye candy, it's just that she needs a few more films under her belt to make that unquestionable) that prevents giving this movie a lesser rating, I should also say ... Claire Danes.


Claire Danes who was also in:

Home for the Holidays (1995, USA) 

Like I said, one of my all-time favorite movies, directed by the impressive Jodie Foster, starring one of my favorite actresses, Holly Hunter, and including Claire Danes, who amazes me no matter how small a role she takes.

The reason this is one of my favorite films of all-time is because of the progression, the pacing and the emotional pitch. The ending is also arguably feel-good, but for a completely different reason than "The Family Stone".

The feel-good tone of that film was reached by someone dying and a future that has ridiculously unlikely and forced circumstances, which apparently makes the American mainstream ooh and ah and feel really good about themselves for some reason, but makes me wretch and puke.

This film is emotionally more cathartic. It kicks cliches like how "family is all we've got" in the family stones, and states a more realistic "who are these people? where did I even come from?". Family memories, childhood memories, no matter how crappy things have become, that's where we came from, and that's what makes them treasures.

There's often nothing we can do about what we've become or the family relationships we have. But family memories are fact and they are the basis of who we are, no matter how different or divergent our lifestyles or beings become, and they will haunt. Unless you just learn to chill the fuck out.

OK, enough of this silliness, but having brought it up, might as well wrap it up. And thanks to the internet, SNSD's Letterman performance was online in hours:

Sunny looks hilarious in her opening pose while Letterman is wrapping up with Regis and Bill Murray. I have a feeling Sunny's English isn't good enough to understand anything they're saying, so she doesn't know when they're going to start.

It's an impressive performance, probably the best one I've seen, no doubt in no small part because they re-tooled the song to incorporate live drums, keyboards and a DJ (I don't know if that's a requirement for performing on Letterman, it may be. I can't think of any performance on Letterman that used playback. But since K-pop is based on playbacks, maybe this was the compromise).

The performance just feels much more visceral than their Korean TV promotions, and the added dance break in the middle also helps the energy. The live bass drum adds bottom-end oomph to make up for the lack of bass on the recording, which was my major pet peeve. And this broadcast also makes me realize how crappy the camera work is on the Korean TV shows. This is like the best I've seen for a Korean idol group. Ever.

Like I've said a hundred times already, I didn't think the song was great, but after hearing it dozens of times through their promotions, I've gotten used to it and there are some elements that are catchy.

That's not saying much though since there have been other groups with songs that I absolutely hated when they started promotions, but then by the time they ended a month or two later, I would love the song and be a fan.

And I take back what I said before, if I never came to Asia and gotten into K-pop, and if my first exposure was seeing this, I would probably have been intrigued enough to look them up. Of course, that's based on the energy and the live musicians, but the hook would've been in.

One thing I wouldn't have been doing is the K-pop geeking out thing and noticing things like how close Sunny gets to Paul Shafer's keyboard. And that melding of something that is very familiar to me from my past with something I'm currently unreasonably fanatical about is still very weird.

Follow up: Girls' Generation arriving at the Ed Sullivan Theater


I'm not sure what my point is. Maybe just, see?!, they are really popular. But, I know, big whoop. And this reception is nothing compared to what they get when they arrive at places across Asia. I'm really curious to see how the performance was received or if these fans got in.

Several months ago I gushed about K-pop girl groups' autumn comebacks, with two that were still pending, T-ara and Wonder Girls.

T-ara (whose member Hyomin was on Invincible Youth), I dunno, it's weird because I kinda get an underdog vibe from them. They're definitely a top girl group, but rarely included when mentioning the "elite" girl groups. And they should be. Despite an underdog feel to them, there's also an air of queen bees about them.

They actually had their autumn comeback in November, but they immediately followed up with a January release that they're promoting, and which I think is a better song:



Wonder Girls are the only girl group in this flurry of comebacks that wasn't represented in Invincible Youth, although technically Hyuna, now with 4minute, debuted with Wonder Girls and is on one single with them. But no, she is never associated with Wonder Girls now, not even as a "former member".

This was a much anticipated comeback because they had been out of the Korean scene for a year and a half. Their agency took a gamble to try to promote them in the U.S. and the results were mixed at best and the group underwent hardships and indignities that other Korean girl groups likely can't imagine.

SNSD are safely considered the reigning queens of K-pop girl groups, but if Wonder Girls hadn't gone overseas, I don't think they would necessarily be considered second to SNSD at this point. This comeback, I think, is very strong, and if they had stayed in Asia, it's possible their regional standing would still equal SNSD.



Wonder Girls, along with SNSD, were on the leading edge of what would grow into and come to be known as the second Hallyu wave; the second time K-pop had a surge of popularity, this time marked by international popularity thanks to the advent of YouTube in 2006.

Both Wonder Girls and SNSD debuted in 2007, before there was a wave and K-pop was just being K-pop. YouTube was instrumental in creating the wave, I think, because suddenly a much wider, international audience was getting in on it.

I don't think I really got into it until around late 2010 when Invincible Youth finally aired in Taiwan, about a year after it aired in Korea. But I had been primed for it as early as 2006 when Hyun Ae gave me a K-pop mix CD, and a lot of it was quite good.

I think the media started reporting on the Hallyu wave as a phenomena in 2009 (the year Invincible Youth started airing), and since then it has just continued to explode domestically and internationally. With so many K-pop groups debuting every season, eventually the market will get over-saturated and the quality will likely decline. Currently, no end in sight.

This autumn has been a boon for K-pop girl groups with a plethora of comebacks by top acts. In Korean entertainment, "comeback" doesn't refer to a return from some fall from grace. It just means a new song from a group that has already debuted.

They're called "idol" groups, which I think has become a palatable term because of shows like "American Idol". In Korea it just refers to pop music celebrities, and it's a term adopted from the Japanese pop music scene, "idoru", which of course is taken from "idol".

When I first heard the Japanese use of the word several decades back, I didn't like it because the idea of an "idol" or something that is idolized was an afront to respectable musicianship. An idol was something superficial and glossy; an image that could be manufactured. "Real" musicians and songwriters garnered respect.

For the Japanese, any singer or music group popular enough to appear on TV shows was considered an "idoru", including what I consider legitimate rock bands that aren't corporately manufactured, and who write their own music and play their own instruments.

In Korea, that latter group, from what I gather as an outsider, doesn't get much international exposure or attention. Music is almost all corporate and manufactured with relatively few national artists who write and create their own product. And even though that's something that generally offends me everywhere else, I've somehow accepted it in Korea.

I tell myself it's because the songwriting is good. I still think I'm a discerning listener. Otherwise, I'm not sure where my change of heart occurred. It may be midlife crisis, watching these girls half my age strut their stuff, but I insist it's not prurient interest. If the music isn't good, I'm not going to watch or follow them no matter how "sexy" they are.

And I think I've mentioned before that I still can't stand Western, Japanese or Taiwanese pop music on the basis that the songwriting is still offensively bad. I'm still not discounting the possibility of the future life resonance idea, and the fact that I've out of the blue honed in specifically to Korean music and no other, adding that music is my big love in this life, might speak to that.

So be warned, major K-pop girl group geeking out follows, stop reading if it's not a place to which you're willing to go:

So far, this autumn has seen four top acts make their comeback stages. Kara was the first, followed by Brown Eyed Girls a few weeks later, and then finally Secret and Girls' Generation (SNSD) simultaneously began their new promotions head-to-head (note my consistency: members of all four groups were on Invincible Youth).

My personal tastes rate Brown Eyed Girls' "Sixth Sense" as the best quality of these comebacks. The lead track off their album was actually a song called "Hot Shot" which I initially liked better for its Latin groove, but their main promotion was for "Sixth Sense".

Brown Eyed Girls are a bit of an anomaly in the idol scene because three of the four members are considered advanced in age at 30. Only one member is 24 (Ga-in). But they are with a smaller agency and I gather they have a lot more creative and artistic control than younger idol groups on bigger labels. I also heard that Je-a and Miryo earn copyright royalties because Je-a writes and Miryo takes credit for her own raps.

And even though their stage performances have choreography, they are recognized for their vocal talents, and the media has covered their vocal skills during this comeback, highlighted towards the end of "Sixth Sense" after Miryo's rap section when first Je-a hits a big note, followed by Ga-in and Narsha hitting high falsetto notes (I would also note the subtle background vocals during those high notes which are pretty cool, but not necessarily noticeable unless paying attention to them).

When top acts first make their comeback stages, they're usually allowed to perform two songs, one a truncated version of a second song (in this case "Hot Shot") before going into their main promotion:



Secret's "Love is Move" hooked me immediately, so I would rate it as a very close second.

I thought the only thing that would prevent it from taking number one spots on TV programs is that it was directly going against SNSD's comeback, a Daniel and Goliath battle where Secret didn't have a chance. The thing is that SNSD's comeback was supposed to come a few weeks earlier, but then they changed their plans and ended up releasing simultaneously with Secret.

I applaud Secret for not changing their plans as other groups did to avoid competition with SNSD. Secret and their management seemed confident about their product and even if they wouldn't get number ones on the TV programs, they weren't going to change their plans. That I respect.

It's just a rocking, bopping romp that's a lot of fun.



Kara made a splash with the first autumn comeback, "Step", and I rate it third best among them. The synth blare kinda put me off at first, but the track grew on me:



Finally, SNSD came out with their much-hyped comeback, but it was quite a disappointment for me, if not for SNSD fans. The song is still dominating, but to my ears it isn't great. Certainly not as catchy as their two previously promoted songs, the Japanese language Mr. Taxi and last year's Hoot.

The song was hyped as being created by Teddy Riley who was behind Michael Jackson's "Dangerous", but to me that's a big so what? and indicative of what I don't like about corporate pop music in general.

This track has some good qualities and has grown on me through the promotions, but I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to or watch this track. I'm not a big fan of the fact that there is no bass, and therefore lacks oomph.

I can't fault SNSD's execution as they present their parts and choreography professionally and flawlessly. But in the end I think the success of this track lies in the fact that it's SNSD.



Autumn comebacks are still anticipated by Wonder Girls and T-ara (another Invincible Youth member group).

I'm about halfway through watching the Invincible Youth series I mentioned. I started watching the series on Taiwan TV with Chinese subs at around episode 10 and I watched until Taiwan stopped airing it one episode after 3 of the 7 original members left (SNSD's Yuri and Sunny and 4minute's Hyuna). Their replacements were introduced in that episode.

It's really great watching the series with English subs. I remember all of the episodes, and I was pretty good at guessing what was going on, maybe I'm underestimating my ability to catch on to the Chinese subs, but there is also a lot of dialogue that I totally missed.

I remember the final episode with those three members came suddenly, and even more so because it was the second half of an episode, the first half of which was fun and games as usual. The farewell scenes aren't representative of the show, but they do capture what I think is important about human connections.

I've spent my life burning bridges and cutting connections, so it's no wonder the state of my human relations is so negative. It's no wonder that I have no human relations that are playing any role in my wanting to leave.

But that's not to say I don't value human relations and promote good relations between people. If you love someone, tell them you love them. Ozzy said that about his long-lasting marriage with Sharon. He said that he never stopped telling her he loves her and buying her little gifts and doing small things for her. The value of those little things add up to more than big gestures only once in a while.

And yes I'm admitting my human relations are negative, despite my saying that I'm trying to keep a positive spin on everything. I am trying to keep my mindset and outlook positive, or at least not down, but I have to look around me at my life's landscape, and it would be denial for me to say it's not negative.

But despite the negativity of my experience with human relations, I don't want that to be part of my karma. I don't want to be carrying that around like luggage. So again, that's why I'm watching this series through, because it's an expression of what I think is important. It's OK to want such connection. If I can keep the feelings I get out of this show, it's certainly better than what I have now.

res ipsa loquitur