Yeah yeah yeah I know that my blog has become a sad and dusty old place, a forgotten corner of the internet where, at one time, not totally tiny groups of people used to gather at a time. I could say it's because I've been finishing up a book and that's been requiring the bulk of my attention. I could say that, but if I did, I'd be a lying bag of ( Read more... )

Well, it's official, at least on paper: I finally signed a publishing contract to put out the book I've been chipping away at for the past year. If I haven't been posting here too much of late, well, you know why ( Read more... )

The heat is here and it’s real. It’s an ominous, oppressive sauna outside, steaming your flesh and slapping you down. I’m almost always out of Korea in early August, so I’ve forgotten just how goddamn hot it can be. We’re talking Mississippi, Burma... Sierra Leone. Just the slightest exertion causes my shirt to become soaked with perspiration ( Read more... )

Comedian Doug Stanhope proves once again that he's just as good as a writer as comic in a invective-filled diatribe on standup comedy "classes" and "workshops." Spot on and hilarious, as always.

I know that I am officially back in Korea because once again I am shitting red.  Thankfully, this isn't the result of some unwanted blood in the mix, but rather a by-product of the gochu-jang (red pepper paste) that is liberally slathered upon a good deal of the dishes served up here on The Peninsula.  I've plunged straight into the healthy joy of ( Read more... )

Here I am, at the end of an epic month, sipping from a bloody mary at the "Cascade's" in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport... The effects of the vodka from the first drink are setting in, warming my spine and calming my nerves, sliding me into the inevitability of sitting in a metal tube for 12 and then 2 hours whilst breathing in the farts ( Read more... )

Here I am in Seattle, at the end of a one month jaunt in America. It's been a time, jumping back and forth between Olympia and Seattle and other points in between, eating, drinking, camping, fishing and commiserating with friends and family. I have one more day before I slink back on the plane to the humid, garlic and anchovy reeking environs of ( Read more... )

The cemetery was peaceful - but that's what people always say about cemeteries, don't they? They're always carrying on about how "peaceful" they are. I can't say that they're really wrong. Except for a couple of maintenance guys, there was no one really there. Bunches of flowers gave a break of color between the green of the grass and the grey ( Read more... )

The Koreans were full of piss, vinegar, and elan - at least those off the pitch, crowding the bbq pork joints that make up much of the Kyungsung University area here in our fair city of Busan. They wore the requisite red; the pretty girls were out in mass, sporting lit-up devil's horns and short shorts (oh my). The Korean fans were pumped up, ( Read more... )

Last Sunday I found myself inexplicably sitting at the bar of The Crown, feeling poisoned and seeing the world through cotton ball eyes. Big Kiwi Sean sat next to me grumbling about the universe, as he's apt to do, being the grumpiest 32-year-old going on 70 that I've ever met. The world is like sandpaper to his nutsack - everything save rugby, ( Read more... )