I love it when I get to drop Marx Brothers references in my blog post titles, but this one is especially apt. I just came off the perfect weekend in Seoul, and it wasn't even a holiday. Yet.
Here's what happened on Saturday, . First, Miss H and I went on our first double-date. It was one of my best buds from Sejong University, whom I'll call Sam, and his girlfriend JB. We went to Seoul Racecourse Park and bet on the ponies:
I even included a video for you schmucks, 'cause I think that highly of you: this is the final stretch of the 7th heat:
I was slightly disappointed. This was my first horse race, but even though I'd known in advance that they only ever made one lap of the track, it still went by too quickly and ended too abruptly. On the other hand, the palpable excitement we felt when the racers rounded the final curve and went flat-out on the home stretch, with the Koreans yelling and stomping all around us, and their cheers and shouts gradually building to an inhuman roar, was something to experience.
Then we went to our favorite Uzbek restaurant in Seoul (yes, we have one): the Fortune Café. Left to right: lagman (lamb and noodle soup); shiz-biz (bits of mutton and onion over French fries); and manti (enormous meaty dumplings, boiled or steamed); and there were at least five varieties of Baltika beer to go with it. (No. 7 is my usual favorite.) A steady stream of Russian pop music videos on the TV set guaranteed that we were never at a loss for something to listen to when conversation waned.
The Fortune Café is in Dongdaemun, which is sort of the Russian district of Seoul. So we also stopped by one of the many tiny Russian markets in the vicinity. We walk into the first one and see this:
Holy cow, ain't nobody got a selection of vodka like that around here. I nabbed some Parliament-brand vodka and a bottle of Napoleon brandy (French stuff; I've heard it's excellent). Score!
Then we walked back outside into the dying evening light. And lo and behold, what did we see but a grand parade! It was the Lotus Day Parade, an early celebration of Buddha's Birthday, which would be coming the next weekend. Take a look! It was an amazing spectacle.
Each group of people represented a different Buddhist temple in the vicinity of Seoul, and each had different flags and lanterns of all shapes and hues. And it wasn't just Koreans, either: the Chinese and Tibetan diaspora were out in force as well, with the flags of their nations and their own brand of Buddhism on display.
After the temple-goers passed in review, we moseyed down the road in the direction of the Dongdaemun gate, viewing the floats and moving sculptures people had fabricated for the occasion. The elephant dipped its head...
...and the lotus flower opened and shut, giving birth to Siddhartha over and over again.
When we'd finished viewing the parade, we slid down an alley to a tent city filled with cheap merchandise and street food.
This is a mixture of noodles, onions, cabbage, spicy red sauce, and sundae (noodles wrapped in the lining of pig intestines, a Korean favorite). It was surprisingly good. We got ripped off, though; these two plates and the four cans of warm beer cost us 40,000 won, or roughly $36.
And then it was time for the evening's crowning glory: a gem of a place I had no idea existed anywhere in Seoul. It's called an LP bar:
This one was called the Sam Cooke, after the American soul singer. It's near Hyehwa Station, north of Dongdaemun, near Seoul University. These LP bars are the bee's knees. Sam Cooke was no exception. It was quite dark (as you can see from the photos) and the decor was eclectic: photos of the Beatles on the walls, cubist paintings behind the booths, an image of Che Guevara by the door. We walked in, sat down, and looked around. The shelves behind the bar were filled with vinyl records. There were two turntables on the counter just going like the clappers, and sound—a sound I'd not heard played in public for 15 months—was blasting out of the speakers.
Classic rock.
No joke! These LP bars sprang up back in the 1960s when Park Chung-hee outlawed listening to Western music. Enterprising bar owners sneaked onto American army bases and bought LPs off the G.I.s, secreting them in their establishments and playing them after dark for willing patrons. Now these LP bars are old and scuffed, just like the records they play, but they survive as novelties, places where oldsters can go to feel nostalgic and young 'uns can go to feel hip. And that's surely what we felt as we scribbled arcane requests on slips of paper, giving them to the barman up front. Our eyes widened and our souls soared as we heard the familiar tunes piping out of the speakers a few minutes later. It was downright psychadelic to sit there sipping beer in a dark wooden bar while the Doors' "The End" oozed serenely out of the speaker grilles. And that was just Saturday. On Sunday, our old friend Joanna, Miss H and I went to Myeong-dong to go shooting (in and out, no pictures), had some delectable Italian food and then went down to Gwacheon to hit up Seoul Zoo. Another full, lovely day in the third-largest city in the world!
I'll just leave you with this bear to keep you company until my next adventure-filled post.
September 25 was my 23rd birthday. Seeing as how I am back in Apple Valley, where I once lived for seven years and attended high school (among other things), I was in a unique position. Many of my old high school chums were back in town, either living with their parents, too, or working, or attending Victor Valley College. Not only that, but September 25 fell on a Friday. Not only that, but my parents would also be out of town that weekend, in Wyoming, signing over the Cheyenne house to the buyers.
So, naturally, I decided to throw a party. I put the word out on Facebook, a dozen people signed up to come, and before you knew it the 25th had rolled around. And it was a fun party.
No, more fun than that...
Okay, now we're getting there...
Perfect.
I'd been dismissed on Thursday (see a small dose of the real world). Nevertheless I had set my teeth and created a master to-do list that evening, including the comestibles I needed to buy, the cleaning I had to do, the unrelated errands I had to run, and so forth.
Let's take a look at the liquor-and-snack page:
BOOZE
One liter gold tequila
Two 750-ml bottles of sparkling wine
Four 750-ml bottles of Sauternes
Two 24-packs of beer
COMESTIBLES
One bottle of lemon juice
Two or three 12-packs of soda
Three bottles of assorted fruit juice
Several different bags of chips
Several bags of Chex mix
Some jars of peanuts
One honeydew melon
Broccoli florets
Carrot sticks
Cherry tomatoes
Celery
Ranch dip [I meant to write "dressing"]
Tortillas
Microwaveable chicken fingers or cheese sticks
Pizza Rolls
Three cans of dog food
One block of ice
Paper cups
Impressive, isn't it? Just to clear the air, the dog food was, indeed, for the dogs. We were running low, so I thought I'd just grab some while I was out. With the exception of the beer, all the of the booze (and the honeydew melon) was intended for the punch I was going to make: Frank Davis punch, as borrowed from The Bartender's Bible.
And so I sallied forth boldly on Friday morning, shaking off whatever self-esteem issues were still lingering about after Thursday's events, to buy up these materials.
It took two and a half hours. True, I had to stop and buy some hoses for my car (see how to register a car in Southern California), but that was still the longest food-shopping trip I've been on in a while. I managed to procure all the ingredients at WinCo except for the block of ice. I was originally going to buy a head of broccoli and make the florets myself, but I saw an inexpensive bag of pre-cut ones already on the shelf in the produce section. I had to double back once because I forgot the honeydew melon, but apart from that my progress through the store was chronological and orderly. I shouldn't have gotten paper cups (or plates, or napkins) because we'd just had a rather large get-together at our house (see Swedish farriers and so on) and there was a stockpile of artificial dinnerware heaped in our pantry already. WinCo didn't have Sauternes in the strictest sense of the word, so I substituted white zinfandel instead. The beer was a monstrous success. I got three twelve-packs of Widmer's Drifter Pale Ale, Newcastle Brown Ale, and St. Pauli Girl, respectively. I couldn't find a block of ice to save my soul, not even at Rite-Aid. Oh well. For better of for worse, I acquired the ingredients, completed my errands, and got home without losing anything (either my groceries or my marbles).
Then came the cleaning. I managed to avoid tying a handkerchief around my head, but it was a close thing. I vacuumed the whole house, hard floors and everything; swept the front and back porches, and the garage; cleaned the bathroom (yuck); spot-mopped things like the kitchen counter and the bathroom scale; cleared all the zombies out of the attic (just joking); and picked up all the dog poop in the backyard. Then I sat myself down and waited. I decided I wasn't going to set out a whole bunch of snacks before the party began; I wasn't expecting an enormous influx of guests right off the bat. Whoever came first would come first and then I'd start preparing munchies (and punch...uh, punchies). I turned on the Yankees/Red Sox game and settled in for the guests to arrive.
About 5:00 I got a call from Chris, class of '06 (two behind me); I'd asked him an hour earlier to bring me a bag of ice. He called up and said he had, so would it be okay if he could come out an hour early? I said fine, I was just sitting around. A ridiculously short time later, Chris pulled up. (He has a tomato-red 2004 Ford Mustang, and drives it as such; he told me he was doing 40 mph up the dirt roads to my house.) We secured the ice in the freezer, poured some into the cooler to chill the faux-Sauternes and the bubbly, and then Chris suddenly gave me my presents.
And what presents! I'd dropped a little hint on Facebook earlier in the week, suggesting that I was low on particular varieties of liquor. Little did I guess how zealously my guests would take it to heart. Chris had brought me not one, but two bottles: Stolichnaya and some 15-year-old Glenfiddich. Real Russian vodka and some single-malt Scotch which I'd always wanted to sample. Needless to say, I grabbed his head and gave the man a big ol' kiss right on the forehead. And then I went ahead and made us both some kamikazes. Two ounces of Stolichnaya and a little sweetened lime juice, drunk in one go. It was tricky (Stolichnaya's got a little bite to it) but fun. Then I poured Chris a beer and we chatted for a while. I set out the grapes, some chips, and some Chex mix.
Before long, Crystal called in and said she was on her way, and which road should she turn down again? I filled her in, and she showed up quickly. From her small white car, she unloaded her baby son, Andrew; a backpack filled with toys and diapers; some oranges that had been injected with tequila; and half a bottle of Jose Cuervo Black Medallion.
This was going to be good.
Andrew was a marvelous little chap, and was so throughout the whole party. Our rambunctious talk didn't faze him. He didn't cry, he just looked around at us all with an adorable, bemused expression on his face. Crystal kept a close and loving eye on him, and didn't drink hardly a drop. (All of our designated drivers, Crystal, John and Amanda, did splendid work and demonstrated exemplary restraint: all were stone-sober when they arrived, stone-sober while they partied, and stone-sober when they left.) Little Andrew conked out about midnight and slept right through our Apples to Apples game, except when I was stupid and loud.
The tequila-laced oranges were good; I couldn't really taste the booze in them but there might have been a hint of it lurking just underneath the citrus flavor.
I haven't sampled the Jose Cuervo yet. That comes tomorrow.
After Crystal arrived, I set out some peanuts and some watermelon. I was working off the theory of graduated snack increase.
Crystal, Chris and I stood around and chatted for another hour and half until about 7:20, when the rest of the party began to trickle in. John and Basel were first, and after I greeted them at the door, beer in hand, they unloaded their generosity upon me: bottles of Grey Goose vodka and Speyburn 10-year-old Scotch, plus a couple of cigars, Cohiba and Ashton respectively. The words "yippee" and "Jumpin' Jehoshaphat YEEHAW" were running through my head at this point. John and Basel got settled in, and I washed the veggies, sliced some celery and set out the vegetable platter (with ranch dip). I also toasted up some Pizza Rolls. The five of us stood around and gabbed about things like deadly weaponry, the state of our alma mater, and politics while we drank beer. It was about this point that I switched off the baseball game (which had since ended, and turned into Spider-man) and put on the music, a nice little selection ranging from AC/DC to James Brown. People seemed to enjoy it.
And then the girls arrived. Beth, Amanda and Virginia pulled up to the front of the house. It was dark by this time, so as soon as John and Basel spotted headlights on the road they leaped out of the front door and into the shadowy recesses of the shrubs. Crystal edged left, out of the harsh yellow glare thrown by the porch light. Chris and I were left to stand on the stoop, already half-drunk, and wonder innocently where the rest of the guests had got to, speculating loudly on the identities of the three girls who had just arrived. Amanda, Beth and Virginia were escorted inside, Basel and John and Crystal monitoring their every move like hungry tigers, and then the party really began. We made the punch (a messy process indeed, especially without a melon baller), I mixed up cocktails for everybody, refilled the Pizza Roll dish almost constantly, and kept up what intelligible conversation I could under the hectic circumstances. Virginia presented me with a giant two-liter bottle of Smirnoff, while Beth and Amanda had chipped in for some Admiral Nelson's Spiced Rum and Wild Turkey, respectively. That's not to mention the wonderfully thoughtful cards that they got me, which lent to my heart that abnormally pleasant fuzzy feeling.
Jeez, could this birthday possibly get any better?
It did. Once we'd all had a few drinks of the punch (and some cocktails: screwdriver, Mozart, tiger juice, etc.), we sat down to play Apples to Apples. For those poor suckers out there in the audience who don't know what that is, here's the skinny. There are several varieties, but the one played most often goes like this: you put a "green apple card" down in the middle of the table (floor, car hood, stripper's stomach, as the case may be). Each player is dealt seven "red apple cards." Each of the green cards has an adjective on it. It could be anything: cute, dangerous, frustrating, pretty, fuzzy, morbid, exemplary, extraordinary...while each of the red cards has a noun or a noun phrase on it. Rolling the car, elephants, Liberace, guns, hippies, the 1970s, Richard M. Nixon, Indiana Jones, all of those and more. Each player puts down the red card (face-down) that they think matches the green card best. Say, if the green card was "adventurous" then a player might put down "Indiana Jones." Another player might put down "the 1960s," and so on. The dealer judges these cards, saying them aloud and laying them down on the table for extra hilarity. (For even more hilarity, players can put down the card they think least approximates the meaning of the adjective; i.e. the proper noun "Richard M. Nixon" being matched with the adjective "trustworthy.") Whoever put down the red card which the dealer selects as the best match gets to keep the matching green card, and scores a point. First person to a certain number of points wins.
Man, this game is always fun, and always hilarious. Seeing the words people put down to match up with certain adjectives (particularly when they don't have a very good hand) is a gut-busting experience.
And so we played until late into the night, Andrew curled up on the couch, all of us sitting around the coffee table (in the armchairs I had huffed and puffed to get out of the back bedrooms into the living room), laughing and joking and insulting one another, occasionally getting up to go to the bathroom or make another cocktail. All too soon, at about 1:30, John, Basel, Amanda, Beth and Virginia headed home, either because they had work in the morning or had to get back down the hill. I thanked them again profusely and saw them out, mentally praying that the horrendously bumpy dirt roads wouldn't defeat them on their way out. Chris, Crystal and I lingered a little longer, but soon Crystal was packing up the baby things and departing with much cheer (not before she masterfully and selflessly cleaned up the kitchen and front room; I hardly had to do anything the next morning). Chris and I were rather soused, so I insisted Chris stay the night and prepared a bed for him. We both fell asleep almost immediately and snored until about 9 a.m. the next morning.
We rolled out of bed, popped a couple of ibuprofen, drank some fruit juice, and ate some fried eggs and ham. Then Chris climbed into his hot rod and headed off into the hot morning sunshine.
And the party was over. (Only in a nice way, not like in The Shining.)
Echoing George Harrison, I would just like to say "Thanks for the pepperoni": pepperoni here meaning booze, thoughtful birthday cards, booze, cigars, booze, good times, booze, kind words, booze, and more booze. Thanks, guys. You made my century.
