Sunday Pre-Dawn Insomnia Cinema Club - The Flight of the Phoenix (1965). An absolutely brilliant piece of survival cinema. Takes its time to set everything up and then the final moments are just glorious. I give it eight German model airplane makers out of ten.
Chemo round five starts today.
Scans this week show slightly shrunken tumours and blood tests are the best they’ve been in the past two months.
On we go.
Spending my Saturday paying tribute to the twisted genius of Maurice Sendak.
I will be mostly being a wild thing, but will also take the opportunity to put Mickey in the batter.
This week I discovered the comics of Michael Deforge and I am in love. With the comics. And also my wife. And my cats. But that's beside the point.
An extraordinary artist and storyteller.
This month I have been playing the game of "buying cheap and seemingly useless things from China and then having my wife shout at me about it until she realizes that likes them".
Today's item - a stress relieving squeezable cube of cheese from which a mouse emerges and retreats into.
A win for me.
In one of those rare glorious moments throughout the year, I have emptied my email inbox.
THERE IS NOTHING! NOTHING THERE!
(Though I still have lots of work to do.)
Finally had the chance to listen to the audiobook of Yellowface by RF Kuang yesterday. Just brilliant. It feels so very possible, so very real and it is devilishly funny.
Now, can't wait to start on Babel.
Hello lovely humans!
There’s no good way to give bad news, but here it is. Euna was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer last week and yesterday began her first round of chemotherapy.
The doctor’s hope is that they can shrink the tumours enough so that they can operate and take them out.
Today I will mostly be hitting myself gently to music for money.
I never thought I’d be choreographing body percussion and then performing it for English education videos, but I guess there’s always a first time for everything.
It's quarter to three on a Sunday afternoon. A freelance writer for radio/tv calls me and breathlessly asks me to do a lecture on Korean culture for foreigners in a couple of months time.
Dear caller, Sunday afternoon is not the time to try and pressure me into a gig that you need to fill.
I am making post-birthday roast pork and potatoes and all the trimmings and I am in my happy place.
I know British food is looked down upon by many, but a roast dinner really is a plate of utter bliss.
She sees you when you’re sleeping
She knows when you’re awake
She knows if you’ve been bad or good
But chooses to wait to exact her cruel but excellently planned revenge upon you
Now that I’ve actually come to enjoy my first opera (exposure therapy during six weeks of rehearsals helped), I’m looking for advice on what to listen to next.
Any recommendations? Any ideas? Any operas to avoid?
My opera gig is over!
Glad to be able to see it through from start to finish and I think I may have Stockholm Syndrome as the three hours tonight flew by and were really enjoyable.
Does this mean I like opera now?
There are many questions to answer thanks to this experience…
The eclipse here in Korea was incredible. The sky was dark. Like completely dark. So dark that the streetlights were on. The birds weren’t even singing.
Weird man, really weird.
This weekend I discovered the films of Quentin Dupieux and I am very much in love. So far the latest (Yannick) and the earliest (Rubber). Looking forward to the others.
If you're looking for someone who likes to push the boundaries with a tongue very much in cheek, then he's worth your time.
After 24 years in Korea, today is the first day I’ve managed to buy a “western” style pear here. They don’t look pretty but they taste like the real deal. Hard to explain how emotional it is to have my favourite fruit right here in Seoul.
They were over 5,000 won a piece… BUT THEY WERE WORTH IT!
I have a day off. An actual day off. I am roasting pork. I am drinking beer. Free from all duties.
I hope to have another day off next month if I’m lucky.
For now it is the beer and short stories and the smell of the pork cooking in the oven with a cat on my lap and my wife in the other room.
