Must Share This! Kapoop!

Been a little neglectful of the Tao 61s lately; busy with other venues: LinkedIn and Facebook, where there is more dialogue and immediate gratification that one is talking to someone.  I was a late adopter of these things, thought blogging was the ultimate, the best thing since Anthony Trollope's letterbox, or at least email.  But along comes "social media," the FedEx and UPS of online messaging.  Or is that Twitter? I haven't gone that route yet.

Also, been reading novels, something I haven't done for a while, and of course film and Chinese and Korean Drama.  I need to update my list of K-D and Chinese series...it overflowed my movie list.  I keep track of this mostly for myself, a weird timeline. Maybe I should track all these on Facebook.

Most interesting viewing lately was with the arrival of Spring in a Small Town in a Netflix envelope.  Didn't I already watch this?  (My timeline was useful.) But no, that was Springtime in a Small Town, a very faithful remake of the earlier 1948 movie.  Like most originals, Spring was better than the Springtime remake. A black and white film that captured the weird cultural torpor of China in 1948,  it was ignored in 1949 when the Communists came to power, which suggests that Communists have no taste.  It had no overt socio-political overtones of either persuasion, so therefore was understood as a rightist statement. Unlike its glitzier and more sensational reincarnation of 2002, it is delicate and captures a China of nearly 65 years ago in a way that is not chic or romantic.  Just real.  It feels authentic.

On the sillier side, not that Korean drama is silly, one scene in the 20-episode Iljimae, a Robin Hood story that took a while to grab me, had me belly-laughing.  The commoners are revolting against the aristocrats, who are harboring a Chinese diplomat who wantonly killed an innocent child in what was essentially a drunk driving race, albeit on horseback.  The people want an apology and are gathered to demand this in sort of an Occupy movement in the early Qing (in a Small Town). To emphasize their frustration, they begin to collect horse manure to hurl at the palace guards.  The aristocrats are fearful: they have been advised that while wet manure is just slimy and stinky, dry manure can be made to explode.  (Even in the Joseon Dynasty, common fertilizer was regarded as a terrorist tool.) 

 Kapoop!!!???

The other element of this drama, very popular when it first aired in 2008, that charmed me was the character of  a government assassin, basically a member of a death squad, who has deserted his post after being asked to wipe out a village, including a young girl.  Unlike the Chinese DUI equestrian, he can't do it and ends up adopting the girl. They become a team of con artists, he disguised as a mendicant monk who, when reciting his mantra says, "Dear Messy Buddha." Perhaps there is a Korean joke lost in subtitle translation of the usual "Amituofo".  (Among items he and his "daughter" sell are pornography and "gloves," condoms which appeal to the women whose husbands are buying the porn.) Dear Messy Buddha was a scene stealer and wholly redeemed character in the end, played by Anh Kil-Kang, who has me looking for the next drama where he appears.

Dear Messy Buddha and the Love of His Life