윤

First dream of the year, at least that I can recall, was about a missing girl whose suitors seemed to care less about her mental health and whereabouts than their own poor experiences with her: David Barreiro complained about being led on, and another character I felt was based upon the Terry Silver baddie in the latest season of Cobra Kai (whose six hours or so I binged in half that time by skipping the through the new kid’s subplot) continued to pursue revenge wearing special clue-gathering spectacles. Me, I was looking for a Lego car I had left in her place, which I eventually did inside a box or coat pocket; it wasn’t a set piece but built with standard gray and clear bricks and carried some sentimental significance.

In the other, I had been married previously, twice in fact, and never formalized our divorces, though my last wife was decent enough not to make it a big deal.

Just when I thought I was out of weekly TV to watch with the end of Inspector Koo, they pull me back in with the next season! It’s a short one, unfortunately, but then again I’m grateful they don’t drag out the painful reign of the Belter egomaniac between the larger threat beyond the gates. There’s always something, right? I’m reminded of times when this nearest of futures was uncertain, but not only do the content providers always manage to come through, somehow, more miraculously, one of their committee-driven products gets me.Novels had a satisfying finish, thanks Libby! (I’m reminded of blowing through the Ice and Fire books on the Kindle, but the OLED screen’s a vast improvement, as fond are my memories of that device. The service-free unlimited Internet was not long for this world.) Looking back at them I can see the story arcs comprising the narrative of a game it was originally intended, with the player as Holden. An MMO might have had to delve into the 30-year gap or extend the war between universes, but that ending was straight outta Final Fantasy, tentacles and all.

One of my favorite Korean words, with the more nuanced “what the fuck” meaning than is often translated. It’s what I look for, at least when really warranted in the dialogue, from creators whose ideas may not come from the same old places (like the Doom Patrol going outside the box instead of relying on Morrison—whose own early influence I miss), and for most K-content nowadays that’s the webtoon. Not that 지리산 was ever going to be Twin Peaks, and while Hellbound and Dr. Brain aren’t high art, either, they’ve got Netflix and Apple money to go crazy with. One of them just might veer off into The Wailing.

Meanwhile the WTF that Kara Wai‘s family went through in Tracey does seem to have had some effect, or I’m grasping for the kind of correlation that’ll lead me to nightcapping with hardcore gay porn, spurring a dream I was taking a sex ed class led by an Emma Stone-looking goddess who put me on the spot by getting in my face, revealing a bikini under her regalia and asking where I’d make my mounting deposit. Her left eye opened beyond its lid as if to invite the option. Below, I still told her. Fellow student Charlie Hunnam from Queer as Folk passed by afterward, removed his shirt and revealed that his went into a condom, tactic of choice by strip club goers of old. I wondered if our instructor had office hours.

I’ve been hoping the writer of Signal and Kingdom would deliver again with 지리산, but the time traveling ghost story so far has neither the pace of a Netflix season nor sufficient serial killer count; then here comes fabulous fifty-year-old Lady Vengeance 이영애 (with ten years on Sassy Girl 전지현 herself) in a take on Killing Eve that’s at least a decade too early for it to please the shippers yet does a slick job aping its style, right down to the soundtrack, with only the usual anime/webtoon trappings of K-drama holding it back. 근데 왜 나 알은척 안 하니?

Update: That was two episodes in, I still haven’t seen a more stunning moment than that one at the end of them, and with only two to go, I’m handily convinced this is my favorite series of the year. Korean one, ever, for sure, the Oldboy joke and the Chun Doo-hwan certificate framed on the wall of the old-timer sealed it.

…And no, it wasn’t another new Netflix series. After my first two hours I woke and remembered seeing George Costanza as the host of his own radio show, since that was before streaming, talking about sports in an admirably competent manner, before he and Jerry conspired to remove precious photos others had taken from them and contributed to a display: his was proof, he angrily directed at his absent parents, of his “social interaction” and Jerry’s a shot from a talk show appearance. They had been printed onto rectangular blocks and when they tried moving them, became loose and jumbled like puzzle pieces.
Nasty stuff happened in the morning stretch, when I’d find under the covers a willing lass of unremarkable topography. In spite of my ability to satisfy her no more than a surfer asleep on his board, she agreed to accompany me to another destination, with an older consort in tow; the latter seemed unvexed by my hanky-panky and when we got so far into the parking lot, still in my red plaid pajamas, to realize that I had left the car keys inside, knew it was pointless to expect me to make the return trip for them and called a rideshare for us instead.

Netflix has certainly struck gold with their Korean co-productions lately, with Kingdom (what was that last outing but another Joker), Move to Heaven and now this Parasite-cum-live-action Fall Guys, which should one-up their investment in comparatively ludicrous Alice in Borderland.Weebs claim that the concept was lifted from 神さまの言うとお, but seeing Miike’s adaptation, I realized why I let 13 years pass. Seems boredom is always the given reason for the powers that be to cycle back Adams’s course of history, but maybe we’ve reached a point in our “civilization”, too, where instead of allowing teenage superheroes overcome all the challenges it’s become more entertaining to see the players suffer and beg them for their lives—at which Koreans excel.

I was with a group of young Koreans, might as well have been a boy band, but as soon as we got off the elevator, we were beset by equally attractive K-pop starlets who split up my entourage, taking each member behind a different door—except for myself, of course. If you’re wondering when I’ll stop fitting into these exciting scenarios, I think the plummeting testosterone has long since had that effect even on my subconscious… what good will San Junipero be to the impotent? So it was up to me to retrieve everyone from these sinister sirens: I intruded upon the first of them about to consummate the seduction, and her beautiful face became an animal’s, grotesque elephantine features under the same hair. Back together, we sought an exit through the single Black-walled room that wasn’t equipped with only a White mattress like all the others and instead had several exits. Unlike my usual predicaments, however, this time I wasn’t alone with no recourse but to be frustrated by one path nowhere after another, and could direct my team to try them simultaneously, Alice in Borderland-style.

It’s good enough to stand on its own, even for viewers like me who aren’t necessarily subject to the period nostalgia (I did wear the fuck out of those pants in high school), but I can imagine the frustration if I were by these licensing blackouts imposed on Netflix. The measures are more reminiscent of “White Christmas”, aren’t they, but my mind went first, as it is prone more so than ever nowadays, to my favorite Black Mirror, which does take me back—and forward—how fulfilling would the soundtrack at San Junipero be without Amazon’s reach, or if the arcade required subscription to multiple gaming services?

Getting back to my very boring story about faucets and dishwasher. So I said to the head, I called up– great dishwasher company from Ohio that we saved, by the way. I said, what’s the problem with your dishwasher?

Well, they don’t give us any water. I mean, you know, it’d be nice to be able to get enough water. What’s the problem? We need more water. Not that much.

Like, I said, how much you need? This– would you like more? Well, I’d love more. Would you give us– well, yeah, I’ll give you more. You have so much water you don’t know what to do with it, right? So we gave them what they need. And now the dishwashers are incredible. They work beautifully.

And you go one time, and you come back, and your dishes are nice and beautiful and clean and dry. You don’t have to go 10 times. The same thing with the restrictors in the faucet. So I hate to say the three things. It’s the shower. It’s the sink. And you know the third element in the bathroom. But I don’t say it because every time I say it, they only talk about that one because it’s sort of gross to talk about, right?

So I won’t I won’t talk about the fact that people have to flush their toilet 15 times. OK? I will not talk about it. I’ll only talk about showers and– OK? But there is three things. I won’t talk about it. This way, they can’t report it.

So what happens? So what happens, I call my environmental people. Why are we doing this? Because when you wash your hands, it takes you five times longer. You know, the water’s [INAUDIBLE]. You get soap. You can’t get it off. I said, open it up. They said, what do you mean? Take the restrictors off.

People know. And if you’re out here, you’ve got to be careful, and you got to do all the things you’ve been doing anyway. Take the restrictors off. And you may leave it in certain areas where you might need it. But most of the country– big portion, it doesn’t need it.

Then on the shower, the worst. You ever get under a shower where no water comes out? And me, I want that hair to be so beautiful. [INAUDIBLE]. I want the hair to look good. I go into some of these hotels– you know, you travel. I go into these hotels, new hotels. They do a nice job. It’s not their fault. And I get in there. I say, Oh, I can look at it now. I know they– everything.

I say, Oh, here we go. Turn on the water. Drip, drip, drip, [INAUDIBLE] drip, drip. But now you go into a shower, and the water pours out. You go into a sink, and you can wash your hands very nicely. Beautiful. And the third thing to worry about, OK, we won’t talk about. Just one time. That’s all.