January 30, 2006
不用電視的除夕團圓夜~Old style home entertainment?!
My Lunar New Year celebration at home in Taipei this year was most pleasant, not only because Poncho came home with me, my brother showed up, but also it was a reunion without TV!
My brother came home just when I was doing the dishes in the kitchen while murmuring to Mother about his show or no-show. Then when I stepped out of the kitchen I noticed he has gotten a completely new look since the last time I saw him (which has been at least a couple of months). He's wearing his hair long again. His new glasses call up the urbane image of the Korean prince of specs--BYJ--especially wit those wide metallic sides. The red and white stripe cotton shirt over the forever jeans is a standard deviation from the t-shirt over jeans style.
"You've turned into some kind of metrosexual?"
I know he knows what I was saying. After all, this is the brother who told me to go buy a copy of Junie (a Japanese girl's fashion magazine) when I was like 12.
As soon as he sat down to eat, Father seized the opportunity to take a violin lesson from my brother.
"Look, it's really hard to even get 5 minutes with you all-year-round. Let me play a few songs so you could give me some pointers."
In 10 seconds, gone is the old man in a winter cap, scarf, and a coat. Mr. Roger Sr. stands upright in the living room next to the dining table with a violin and a bow. He started playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," and then 望春風.
My brother started shoving food into his mouth, but he got up busily to correct my dad's posture, adjust the shoulder rest, and voice out the rhythm. When Mother asked Father to let my brother finish his dinner first, Father found an opportunity to play "whatever" to their heart's desire--亂拉.
"See, he is fooling around like a kid now. Kids love to fool around when the teacher is not lookin'. Whenever I want them to start practicing, I just start the metronome. That's what you need, dad."
My brother has some very young students of violin. He started learning when he was 3.
"How come my playing sounds so different from the CD?"
I wasn't sure what Father meant by it, but my brother seemed to know.
"I can get you a background music tape."
Father looked content, and continued to fiddle and fiddle with his violin.
...繼續閱讀
January 28, 2006
January 26, 2006
李小龍之東亞吸星大法
I used to blame my lack of sensitivity for the Korean Wave to the absence of a star map in my head. I think I was right. People respond to people (so yes in terms of academic practices it's probably okay to not cite someone you don't like. Yet most of the time academics are communicating with the dead, thus keeping this very unadult-like behavior at bay). When all the hit shows have become classics (even a 10-year-old classic like Long Vacation), what remains living (like us ordinary folks) are the stars. So in the spirit of a Chinese expression from kung-fu novel, I will say don't ever estimate the power of stars
(別小看 吸 星 大 法 啊)!
A few days ago, after watching the Korean film, Once Upon a Time in High School, I was able to add Kwon Sang Woo to my rudimentary knowledge of Korean pop stars. The film can probably have a tag line that goes something like "How to survive 1970s Korean high school without using one's brain." It is full of macho bodies, language, and macho air. I don't know who froom Battle Royale would survive when they meet these Bruce Lee wannabes (literally).
Is there anyone who is not part of the food chain? Senior over junior, repeater over classmates, strong over weak, rich and powerful over the statusless, father over son, warped out teachers over students, militarized men over the pre-service boys. Playing a transfer student who had the ability and motivation to do well at first, Kwan quickly gets busy with a non-stop search and occupation of the right "place" in the volatile class order. Eventually, Kwan even takes out the senior class kingpin with his Nanchaku (雙節棍) in a spectacular roof garden fight.
Okay, as a near middle-age woman who always managed to sleep through the loudest and most bloodthirsty sequences in an action or kungfu film (which would automatically disqualifies me from analyzing this genre), Kwan's establishment of himself as the new baaaaadasss motherfucker woke me up.
...繼續閱讀
![[Syndicate this site]](http://pics.yamedia.tw/images/rss2.gif "Syndicate RSS feed")
![[Syndicate this site]](http://pics.yamedia.tw/images/atom.gif "Syndicate ATOM feed")
