MOONCALF-ISH?
What have I learned from Korean drama? Some King's English!

While watching Muhyul, (at right) via dramafever.com (highly recommended), I have been enjoying subtitles that are by and large grammatically excellent, well punctuated, and I can only hope, more or less accurate. The subtitling team actually takes credit for its work. (The Written in the Heavens Subbing Squad, aka WITHS2). But there is a curious tendency, like in the King James Bible, written the way it is to emphasize antiquity, to employ terms that I'm not sure even Shakespeare ever penned. Certainly nothing I've ever used, lyrical epithets, some of which you may recognize, but others which sent me to my OED. I hope to work some of these into corporate memos and telephone conversations:

• you anserine...innoxious ...undextrous... dullards
• you miserable begonians
• you yeasty slattern
• those facile runagates
• you inutile (not a word I can find, but perhaps a pesky Taoist)
• you fatuitous man
• he's a pertinacious specimen
• you ruthful nimwit
• you wretched dotard
• he's a felonious scapegrace
• those comiserable rapscallions

All of these are usually repsonses to questions like:

What is this audacious pertness? Why did you beguile me with such:

• mendacious trifle
• dastardly prodigality
• heedless nimiety
• shady celerity
• uncanny diabliery

At which point a warning may be issued that someone will "cark himself "(or perhaps, "cark you!"), asking forgivenss of his "peccancy," excusing himself to "micturate" while "perlustrating the intelligence." (I think this might mean taking a piss while considering the state secrets he has been entrusted with and possibly divulged.)

In light of such "ludicrous jabberwocky," due to a "fruit of my misreckoning," a battle fails despite someone having sent "oodles of troops." (Though that last one must have come during a quick ramen lunch away from the Oxford Korean-English Dictionary of Archaicisms.)

But my favorite phrase is "you harebrained mooncalf" which I have been employing recently as an acronym, HBMC.

Which is what I was wondering if I was, hoping not, when I noticed on my very cool iPad app called Luan, which puts the phases of the moon at one's fingertips, that today --my birthday (or as a spiritually inclined friend put it, the anniversary of my incarnation) --is the last waning crescent moon, which precedes the dark moon of Saturday, and the new moon on Sunday. I wasn't sure what a dark moon was but according to Wikipedia it is "the moon during that time that it is invisible against the backdrop of the sun in the sky. The duration of a dark moon is between 1.5 and 3.5 days, depending on the orientation of the Earth and Sun.

"In astronomicial usage, the new moon occurs in the middle of this period, when the moon and sun are in conjunction. This definition has entered popular usage, so that calendars will typically indicate the date of the 'new moon' rather than the 'dark moon.' However, originally 'new moon' referred to the crescent on the first night it is visible, one or two days after conjunction. Maritime records from the nineteenth century distinguish the dark moon (no moon) from the new moon (young crescent)."

The darkmoon, also called the dead moon (kinda creepy following my birthday) is regarded as preparation for the new beginning that begins with the new crescent.

So, I'm wondering if I'm just a harebranined mooncalf for paying any attention to this, or is it kind of cool. Old age is new age?

Speaking of Muhyul, (Jumong/Haesin Redux) it's everything I hoped for. Lots of Song Il-guk, on a horse, shooting arrows, gazing into his doomed lover's eyes, mowing down everyone with a sword. Well, if this gets me going, I guess I'm not THAT old.



Jumong & Haesin (Muhyul above)

GREAT SUBTITLES OF ASIA

As I have mentioned before, one of the delights of foreign films can be the subtitles.

Here's a clip from Song Il-Guk's drama, The Kingdom of the Winds, the one where he plays his own grandson (i.e., Jumong's grandson); the great subtitle is at 15 seconds in.

Now I know how to say "Arrrrggggghhhh" in Korean. Otherwise I would never have understood this scene!

And above, at right, like grandfather, like grandson.

BAEK-LOGGED
Rushed to work yesterday but still found time to stop along the freeway and smell this rainbow. I thought I took this photo this morning, but as "faint ink is better than the best memory," my journal verifies it was yesterday. But the feeling remained today, when I also rushed extra early to work to meet an important deadline.

Which I did, and so felt justified to take a longer lunch to run in to Chinatown to pick up a movie my vendor called me about earlier this week, the prequel to Donnie Yen's Ip Man series. I also wanted to buy a nice lei for a coworker who is moving on, so I captured two birds in one cage. The lei vendor gave me a handful of fragrant white ginger flowers as she was packing the lei. "It's hot today, these will make you feel cool." I love Hawaii.

At the video store the vendor's aunty brought out a bag with my name on it. The Ip Man movie was there but also several other series and films she knew I would like. Little notes were affixed to the items: "Really Good, Hard to Find." "Ching Dynasty, Kung Fu."

"Got any Korean drama," I asked. She pointed to a couple of big boxes along the wall. Ah, the new drug of choice. How could I resist "Damo," the undercover lady detective of 17th century Korea with "dazzling special effects, breathtaking cinematography and mystical martial arts scenes." The Mma Ramotswe of Silla.

"I spent the summer with Jumong and Emperor of the Sea," I told aunty, who then plucked "The Divine Hero: A Man Called God" from a shelf. "You'll want this!" she grinned. Song Il-Guk as a contemporary Korean Central Intelligence agent. I prefer the historical stuff, but this was partly filmed in Hawaii, perhaps why it is readily available. No swords, horses or ponytails here, but who could resist the "new body" of SIG, looking like James Bond meets Tony Jaa.

So my new haul, with a huge "baek-log" of Korean drama, complicated my decision to invest time in Condor Hero or even House, M.D. Season 6. I wanted to kick back with something short and sweet, after the rushed deadlines and exhaustion of the job that allows me to buy all this stuff. So I avoided the decision making and popped the Netflix movie of the moment in my laptop DVD drive, Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. I've enjoyed Holmes done by Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett....and there have been so many others. Robert Downey Jr. brings a nice credibility to the character in an interesting rendition.

I didn't know that Holmes (from whom the House, M.D. character is derivative) was a martial artist. Downey opens with a scene that is as interesting as any Chinese kung fu duel. I asked the Wizard, a serious Sherlock Holmes scholar, if he really was a boxer. "Sherlock Holmes was EVERYTHING," he said. I later interrupted him to share a choice piece of dialogue: Holmes says to Watson, "Your gift of silence is what makes you an invaluable companion." The Wizard just gave me a dour "duh" kind of look.

I was dreading coming back home tonight, despite the morning rainbow, because the tree trimmers were scheduled to be at it again. The butchery wasn't as bad as I expected, and we are far from Sherlock Holmes's industrial revolution London where there was, at least in this movie, a serious lack of anything green, like a tree. It almost seemed black and white, a set full of chains and machines and slaughterhouses, a dark occult plot and serious sewage. But, a great script, good acting, and more action and special effects than Basil or Jeremy brought to the table. I've recommended it to the Wizard, not a big movie buff. But he doesn't want to talk about it. He can take his time. The Netflix mailing is hardly urgent, and I've got plenty of other stuff to entertain me.

BRUSH AS MIGHTY AS A SWORD
These Korean sa geuk (historical) dramas are completely surprising to me. I thought it was all about swordplay, until in Episode 8, I think, of Emperor of the Sea, the female protagonist, perhaps the first woman I can really identify with, overcomes her odds by deftly wielding a wolf brush.

A dethroned noblewoman raised by a Dragon Lady to become a profitable courtesan to some other Korean nobleman, she decides she doesn't want to marry some rich guy, but really wants to run her own business. To earn her MBA she is lucky to be taken under the wing of the merchant/pirate, played by Jumong's ultra-attractive Song Il-Guk, who is in love with her, the third part of the requisite K-D love triangle. (Never mind that the man she loves is literally slaving to build some extension to the Great Wall off in some desert province of China.) But to earn her business credentials she must pass a test: she must sell five rolls of silk to a nobleperson, apparently not an easy task in 8th century Korea. But she prevails like Melanie Griffith in "Working Girl," with a head for business and a bod for sin, not that K-D ever really shows any of that.

She arrives at her client's palace with her rolls of plain white silk and is quickly rejected by her potential customer who is busy making landscape paintings.

"But I don't want to sell you this silk for clothes," the literate and art-savvy woman says, observing the wall scrolls on display. "I see you like the landscape painting of Wang Wei...it looks so much better on silk than paper." She is invited to demonstrate her own awesome brush skills on the silk, makes the crucial sale, and earns the respect of the pirate as well as her Madam who appoints her, basically, as CFO for her trade enterprise. I should note she was also skilled in manipulating spreadsheets and creating relational databases that no one had ever thought of before to forecast and plan their business conquests.

I was delighted by this scene. I saw some paintings in the style of the 8th century poet, Wang Wei, in Shanghai on my recent trip (only derivative copies exist). I have actually attempted a couple like this, at right, myself, although not on silk. Korea and China must have been differentiated in the Tang Dynasty mostly by the Yellow Sea, the art and culture are so similar, like medieval France and Italy. The scenes in the marketplace of the K-D actually feature fake 3-color-glaze Tang Dynasty horses and other objets d'art that look lots more Chinese than Korean, not that I could tell the difference anyway.

But the best part was the skill exercised in using a paint brush to win over a difficult client/adversary. You never know what gong fu (skill) is going to get you ahead. And as much as I would really like to study tai chi chuan with Vincent Zhao and swordplay with Song Il-Guk, I think the most interesting skill I may be learning recently is my Chinese brush painting practice with my teacher. The brush may indeed be as mighty as the sword.

SEA OR TEA?

The thing about addiction is, I guess, there's a point where you find you just want more, want it again, can't get enough.

So last night, when my latest swordplay acquisition arrived in the mail, it didn't take me long to get hooked. The Korean TV drama from 2004 , Emperor of the Sea, also stars the highly addictive Song Il-Guk, this time in a role that promises to be less benevolent and magnanimous than his performance as Jumong. But already, the first three episodes, where he has

yet to appear, have set up the background, two young kids, ( SIG as an already accomplished pirate, and his protege and rival, a gladiator-to-be), and the inevitable tragic love triangle (two sides of which shown here.) It's Pirates of the Yellow Sea, with a Korean playing Johnny Depp, without the childish Disney-esque wit. It's bloody serious, and based on some real history.

In the tortured English of the DVD description,"Drama 'Emperor of the Sea' will show historical figure Jang Bo-go's growth, the emerging as Emperor of the Sea and love, and add artificial figures madam Jami and Jeong-hwa to add more spices." The historical Jang Bo-go is not Song Il-Guk's role: the former Jumong is an "artificial figure" and pretty spicy really.

Also in the mail was something from my Amazon wish list, Condor Hero, based on a Louis Cha novel. Hard to choose. I have a sort of warm feeling about Louis Cha, pen-named Jin Yong, a highly popular wuxia novelist from Hong Kong, shown at left, drinking Longjin (Dragon Well) tea in Hangzhou. When I saw this photo at the tea plantation we visited in May (where other notables were also memorialized sampling the famous cha, including Zhou Enlai and Li Peng, I think) I felt a connection while developing a bit of an addiction to the qing ming-picked green tea. I really want to make a joke about doing the "cha cha." But it's not coming to me.

Probably some pesky Freudian among my readers will wonder, "What's with this old woman and her preoccupation with Asian swordplay?" (Let's not go there.) In any case, Emperor of the Sea opens with a flashback, not on the sea, but in the desert, in scenes reminiscent of Tsui Hark's Seven Swords TV Drama (also based on a wuxia novel, not written by Mr. Cha). Song Il-Guk is the most attractive man to sit on a horse in the middle of the desert, even in Emperor of the Sea, since Richard Boone as Paladin (not quite have sword will travel). And SIG gives serious competition to my other obsession, Vincent Zhao, who also looks damn good on horseback, although his specialty is serious kicking martial arts, not really archery and swordplay; not sure this clip shows him on a horse, but it is romantic.

Some time-manager among my readers will also wonder, "Where does she find the hours to watch these long extravagant soap operas?" In my defense, I would point out that I never watch real commercial television; this is intimate engagement with DVDs on my laptop, fortune cookie-style, in bed. And I do read, quite a lot really (you can review my reading list on the Yang Side), usually in the morning, unless I'm writing. This video entertainment is a night-time (down, silly Freudian) thing and serves to populate my dreams with things far more interesting than the spreadsheets and proposals which occupy me during my day job. Who wants to dream in Excel anyway?

JUMONG and SOCCER
It's like the end of an era! Finished the 81-episode (the same number of verses in the Tao Te Ching) Korean historical epic Jumong last night and feel like I ought to have a post-season party. Bring on the kim chee and Korean BBQ hot wings!

I noticed that in June 22, 2006, just four weeks into its first TV run in Korea, Jumong achieved a 30% rating share, even during the FIFA World Cup. So history repeats itself (which may be one of the themes of the drama). In my house, just four years later, it got a 100% rating share, totally eclipsing the World Cup, which I never would have paid any attention to anyway. (Soccer, right?)

If I want to see hordes of buff men running around a field trying to score points for their team (and who doesn't?), I kinda prefer the beautifully costumed swordsmen, archers and horsemen with flying hair and topknots to the athletes dressed like toddlers kicking a ball around a stadium. (Although I do notice that guy to the left has a pretty nice ponytail.) To say nothing of the drama's political intrigue and suspense of kingdoms rising and falling, uniting and splitting, and romance with strong women contributing in their own way. Of course, I guess soccer fans find all this in the World Cup, too. (Those romantic Beckhams!)

Yes, history repeating itself...Jumong's extremely popular Song Il Gook/Guk/Kook (above, right) plays his character's own grandson in the drama that picks up more or less where Jumong left off. Maybe I'll catch it during the next World Cup.

I'M MY OWN GRANDPA

In the meantime, it's time to read a book.