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The Long Road Home
Nov. 15th, 2008 05:01 pmSo another visit to Seoul and another round of talks for a Korean audience has come to a close. I'm sitting in the business class lounge waiting for my flight to Narita to board. From there I'll be transferring to a new plane and heading back to Seattle.
This time I managed to avoid too many long, uncomfortably formal banquet dinners consisting of a bewildering array of tentacle-y and fishy foods, all accompanied by lounge music sung phonetically by Koreans. This time, however, I did run into a new phenomenon: When stuck in heavy traffic (traffic is Seoul is horrible), the taxi driver subjected us to a movie. The first two times it was Saving Private Ryan--yes, it’s so relaxing to take your mind off traffic by watching brave young men torn to shreds on the beaches of Normandy—and the second was Category 7. The latter is one of those Hollywood atrocities funded by Sci-Fi Channel programmers and offset by German government subsidies. The worst part is that it is a sequel to Category 6. Yes, 16 hours of terrible made-for-TV stupidity, a sub-plot per second rate, and meteorologically challenged "science" beyond the pale of normal terrible movie-making. For the record, the Saffir-Simpson scale only goes to Category 5 because it is defined as a open bound which precludes the existence of a “Category 6” or a “Category 7”. Apparently the writer (characters by Matt Dorf!) read some stupid article in 2005 saying we should add a “Category 6” to the scale for a few specific “Super Typhoons”. Shannen Doughtery as a rocket scientist!? Randy Quaid as a crazy drunk (ok, I buy that one) with an extreme weather fetish. Tom Skerritt as a grizzled SR-71 Blackbird pilot, flying the damn thing into a storm after "loitering" for hours in the air. Um, the Blackbird is perhaps the most unstable airframe ever built without computer controlled flight surfaces. It is meant to fly on the edge-of-space and they always flew in good weather until they were above anything humans would call weather! Oh, and all the pilot acting was shot while they were in an F-15 cockpit mockup! Throw in Robert Wagner and you have yourself a full-on Hollywood work program (I'm just here to get the good insurance this year, baby!)
At least I enjoyed MSTing the thing with co-workers:
Update: Made it to Narita. Flight to SEA is on time and boards in under an hour. PS: I hate Macs. There isn't one to be found anywhere in South Korea unless it is being carried by a foreigner, but here in Japan they put them into the business class lounge. Um, hey Steve, humans can handle more than one button. Really. They can.
This time I managed to avoid too many long, uncomfortably formal banquet dinners consisting of a bewildering array of tentacle-y and fishy foods, all accompanied by lounge music sung phonetically by Koreans. This time, however, I did run into a new phenomenon: When stuck in heavy traffic (traffic is Seoul is horrible), the taxi driver subjected us to a movie. The first two times it was Saving Private Ryan--yes, it’s so relaxing to take your mind off traffic by watching brave young men torn to shreds on the beaches of Normandy—and the second was Category 7. The latter is one of those Hollywood atrocities funded by Sci-Fi Channel programmers and offset by German government subsidies. The worst part is that it is a sequel to Category 6. Yes, 16 hours of terrible made-for-TV stupidity, a sub-plot per second rate, and meteorologically challenged "science" beyond the pale of normal terrible movie-making. For the record, the Saffir-Simpson scale only goes to Category 5 because it is defined as a open bound which precludes the existence of a “Category 6” or a “Category 7”. Apparently the writer (characters by Matt Dorf!) read some stupid article in 2005 saying we should add a “Category 6” to the scale for a few specific “Super Typhoons”. Shannen Doughtery as a rocket scientist!? Randy Quaid as a crazy drunk (ok, I buy that one) with an extreme weather fetish. Tom Skerritt as a grizzled SR-71 Blackbird pilot, flying the damn thing into a storm after "loitering" for hours in the air. Um, the Blackbird is perhaps the most unstable airframe ever built without computer controlled flight surfaces. It is meant to fly on the edge-of-space and they always flew in good weather until they were above anything humans would call weather! Oh, and all the pilot acting was shot while they were in an F-15 cockpit mockup! Throw in Robert Wagner and you have yourself a full-on Hollywood work program (I'm just here to get the good insurance this year, baby!)
At least I enjoyed MSTing the thing with co-workers:
“Hey, Shannen, can you bring your own clothes for the shoot? Whatever you wear slumming around the house on a Sunday painting would be great. We spent our entire budget on Gina Gershon’s collogin injections and Randy’s booze supply. Oh, and bring your truck. We need something that looks cool.”Well, with that off my chest, it is time to head to my gate.
Update: Made it to Narita. Flight to SEA is on time and boards in under an hour. PS: I hate Macs. There isn't one to be found anywhere in South Korea unless it is being carried by a foreigner, but here in Japan they put them into the business class lounge. Um, hey Steve, humans can handle more than one button. Really. They can.
