Scribblings of the Metropolitician

A Sad Day Has Come

This is the last time I will post here. My time as the "Metropolitician" is up.

I've realized a lot of things over the last week or so, since falling for a certain young lady of a more conservative persuasion, who has quite literally rocked my world. I realize that a lot of the liberal ideas I had formerly and formally adhered to were largely misconstrued notions I had held, distortions of ideological ramifications that simply had no precedence in either established fact, dilapidated fiction, or even (and not either) the demonstrated dialectics of most people's dystopic desires.

In short, a new kind of love has made me into a harder, more turgid man.

No longer will I carry the torch for a a deluded liberalism, nor be the voice for lefty illiberality. What I truly hanker for is a haughty helping of a hunk of cheese that isn't defined in terms of a mere neo-Freudian kitsch, but the kind of cheese one can count on, like money in the bank; indeed, one needs sustenance so solid and reliable one can literally stick it in a pipe and smoke it.

So I can no longer continue to write here, after having fallen for someone like the one who has learned to call me "oppa." Such is an experience I never thought I could have had, either as a black man, or a Star Trek fan, and her highly-developed sense of what I have previously called here mere "fetishized femininity" has caused in me an emotional rise that is quite epic in its tense and torpedo-like tautology. Indeed, they didn't call Moby a "Dick" for nothing, as they say. Unlike the proverbial Ahab, my little lady has actually caught her whale.

When wondering why I have decided to forgo any further forays into formalism and endorse not Barack "Aladdin" Obama, but rather John McCain, the answer becomes perfectly obvious, does it not?

When you ask yourselves these questions, as you struggle for the answers, yet still can't bring yourself to face the truth, realize that Tom Cruise once said, quite poignantly, that the "truth could not be handled" and that in a similar situation, Al Pacino pointed a finger and said that the entire Supreme Court was indeed, very much "out of order."

In the same way, I was once out of love, and was so lost without her, but believe you me -- I now realize that it's hip to be square. Or did not Huey Lewis not give you that news?

So, it is with heavy hands that I make my last entry here, since the Metropolitician that was me has completely and totally ceased to be he.

For Pak Geun-hye's youngest daughter knows how to hit me where it counts, and to not just do that to me once, but likes to hit me, baby one more time, all the time, if you catch my meaning, number one Negaroni! See, I don't shrink away from saying, loudly and proudly, what needs to be said. And if you didn't get it from the passage above, you need a double dose of dis doubletalk. April mothafuckin' fool's, bitches!

Word to your mother, yo!

Violent Ice Cream

Well, not really, but it's a funny thought. Check out the antics of two Turkish guys yukking it up with the passersby and showing some serious slinging skills with this special kind of extra-sticky Korean rice cake ice cream.

Do you scream for ice cream?

"UCC Cafe"

I'm inaugurating a new kind of content here call "SeoulGlow QuickCuts." To me, these are like snapshots, except everything's moving. I think of them as slices of life, Seoul, what have you – stuff that's not quite SeoulGlow episode material, but needs to be seen/heard in motion. No real editing, intros, in-depth interviews, but just pleasant little slices of life.

I came across this place called a "UCC Club" called "Drunken Memory" in Hyehwa, where culture and the Internet come together (in the club, not Hyehwa, although maybe there's some of that going on, too). These two young folks are "UCC Stars," the latter of whom is apparently vocal group Big Mama's vocal trainer.

More on them later – I don't have links or anything, but I sure will in the future. I think both the girl is pretty good, along with the trainer guy, who seems less of a performer himself than someone who understands the theory and can technically deliver the notes, especially in this song that seems designed for a female vocalist. Remember Dream Girls? That's it.

So – a "UCC club," where you can get your drink, dance, and digital debut on, all at the same time. Seems like an interesting adaptation of "UCC" to the particulars of Korean way of socializing and showing off; perhaps offering a stage, recording equipment, and a venue where socialized drinking and acts of creating stronger group bonds – which seems to me pretty Korean style – will be a popular way to get down on video.

And perhaps you might even be "discovered." Who knows?

And another "perhaps" – as Acts of UCC™ become more bold, perhaps we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of over-sensitivity about cameras and a perceived (and overblown) sense of permanent peril to one's reputation related to the "right to one's image."

Is the age of Dog Poop Girl paranoia Hongdae Honey Horror finally coming to an end?