07. 14. LUNCH

by now you should know that this is Takeshi Kaneshiro as Zhuge Liang obviously I mean come on have I been talking about anything else for the past week at all?

Early-morning showings will be the death of me. We met up to watch the movie at eight, and consequently had lunch at half past ten, which resulted in my premature enervation but more about that later. The important part is that though food may fill your stomach, it is just as important to appease your heart. Thus I conclude that what I had for lunch was the Red Cliffs movie, not, you know, what I had for lunch, which was fine, but not quite as fine as — I’ve went on enough about Takeshi Kaneshiro, so let me put a clamp on that for a moment. Now, I’m honestly aware that this isn’t actually a good movie, but I also must honestly admit that I love it. Then again I usually have such impeccable taste that I think I am allowed a guilty pleasure once in a while. Anyway, the point is, there’s this conversation between Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang; ZL is all “OMG SO WHUT IF WE BECOME ENEMIZ” and ZY is like “Psh then we kill each other I guess” and ZL is like “U HERTLES BASTRD!!!1″. I need to buy the DVD so that I can just watch that conversation over and over again. It’s because when the present is interpreted in light of the future, everything takes on a little bit more meaning. Oh, I guess it’s not super deep or anything, after all even the future-past is still the past and it’s all been written before, but guilty pleasures aren’t subject to the laws of logic. The catch here is that later, they actually do become enemies, and Zhuge Liang basically kills Zhou Yu with stress. There’s something in the way this conversation is delivered that leads me to believe that this eventuality is foreshadowed. Every single thing that ZL does, every quality and attribute of his, is ultimately just a weapon of diplomacy. If you watch the movie assuming that ZL is a superhuman genius in terms of politics, which he was, then you begin thinking that everything he does is carefully, precisely, heartlessly calculated. The way he furrows his brow and speaks like there’s too much on his mind, that’s just an illusion of credibility; his enjoyment of music and his fondness for animals are to put him in high favors; his insults are painstakingly crafted and thrown at the most precise moments; and during that conversation with Zhou Yu, it’s like everything that comes out of his mouth is said with a foreknowledge of ZY’s defeat. ZY, of course, is a very smart man in his own right but he’s a more honest sort — pretty much everyone is compared to ZL — and reading between the lines of this conversation turns the entire message over on its head. ZL is a remorseless villain, prodding ZY with hypothetical questions just to laugh quietly to himself. Ugh I love it. I want the bit in the second movie where ZL, knowing full well that the weather forecast has a southeasterly wind blowing for the next couple of days, turns the whole thing into an exhibition and is all O HAI LOOK AT MAI MAJIKUL MISTIKUL PWRZ I CAN HAS CHANG THE WIND!!1 and everyone is like FGSFDS HE HAS MAJIK PWRZ and the world is ridiculous. There is, as usual, a BUT: in the “mastermind-jackass” scenario, what throws me off about ZL’s character in the movie is his relationship with Zhao Wei’s Sun Shangxiang. Either he’s a womanizer, or he’s genuinely being nice, or he has ulterior political motives. And he knows he’s not going to get with her, so the first option is out — there’s nothing really to be gained by buttering up Sun Shangxiang, so the third option is out. Is ZL being nice, and if so, why — it’s not really a case of kindred spirits or magnanimous pity because they have pretty much nothing in common and you’d think Sun Shangxiang would know pity when she saw it. Ah well, I’m discarding options left and right but really it doesn’t amount to anything and all this is rather obvious. This is a long ramble on why I like what I like, how despicably Leo is that? One last note: the only people who rave this much about Zhuge Liang are old men who read the Three Kingdoms stories more than twenty years ago and can’t remember much from it except that Zhuge Liang puts on a fancy show for everything he does and also invents the dumpling. I think that accomplishment is confusing my view of his entire person — how can a man that invents the dumpling be anything but an embodiment of perfect good? No, ZL isn’t evil, but he is a right bastard when he has the upper hand. Which is why everyone hates him except for said old men.

[ETA] Oh, duh. Sun Shangxiang was sending ZL enemy secrets via dove mail. But that’s not really motive enough for civility, especially since all those painstakingly harvested secrets are just going to GO UP IN A BLAZING CONFLAGRATION

07. 13. DINNER

appetizer with shrimp and clam

Actually it might not be clam. It might be abalone. But it might be clam, and I’m going to say that it’s clam, because this is not really the most important part of the post. So here’s the deal; every time we can, which is probably once or twice a year at most, the old comics club from high school meet up and proceed to squander away our earnings on some ridiculously outrageous item of food we happen to be obsessed with at the time. We did it before with beef, multiple times — this time around, it was crab. To be exact, crab sashimi. This is our version of an eating disorder, we go and we stuff our faces and then we purge our purses. It’s rather edifying, honestly.

steamed eggs with crab and mushroom

By this point, we were already in tears. It was just so warm, and so soft, and why do all words used to describe food always sound so drastically perverted? I especially feel Pedobear lurking around the edges of this one. But enough about Pedobear while talking about a hulking beast of a meal.

appetizer salad with some fantastic dressing

I’m not completely certain where the crab was in this. The meat appears to be pork. Or we thought it was pork. But at any rate, it also had cherry tomatoes and walnuts and pecans and croutons and an amazing sweet-sour dressing. It is going to be increasingly more difficult to add commentary to these pictures, so forgive me if you are spared my nonsensical babble. It is better for all of us.

crab gratin

Also, this is for reference, but the restaurant we went to was called Kora, and its website can be found at koracrab.co.kr. Their site insists that it’s only three hundred meters from the exit of the subway station to the restaurant, but this is a blatant lie. We walked at least twenty minutes just to get to the intersection.

crab soup

We suspect that this misinformation is their way of separating the desirable customers from the less desirable ones. Those who belong to the restaurant most likely will come by car, and thus have no problem reaching it whatsoever. Those, on the other hand, who choose to come by subway, don’t exactly deserve to be eating there. But we made it, through the fire and the flames. Suckers.

crab sashimi

This was our raison d’etre. It was actually a different sort than we’d expected, because we were thinking of a different species of crab, but nonetheless it was really good. I’m rather a fan now. It’s far from chewy, more a gelatinous glob, but it slides off the shell amazingly and the flavor is delightfully. odd. Oh, god, did I just reference what I think I referenced?

grilled crab

My promise of staying silent for this entry has been woefully compromised. Look, here, I’ll make better on it starting now.

steamed crab

crab, sweet potato and squash tempura

crab and noodles and mushrooms oh my

This was the last course, and when we could manage to speak for the joy that clogged our throats, we were very, very, very well satisfied. There was a small plate of fruit afterwards, which was rather disappointing a dessert considering the dimensions of the meal, but we made up for it by getting a dessert of our own that we started craving in the middle of the meal. This seems to be a popular pastime; talking about things you want to eat while eating something really good. Kind of like how I love watching food-related programs during dinner.

녹차빙수: green tea shaved ice with red beans

Ugh, this was so good too. My most recent frame of reference was the piece of crap from Burger King, but independent of that, it was an excellent specimen. The almonds especially, and I liked that they didn’t have fruit, which is only truly necessary when the other ingredients aren’t pulling their weight. Which they totally were. The almonds especially. We were actually going to get drinks from a convenience store and sneak them into a movie or something, but by this time it was magically ten at night and we had to disperse for fear of not being able to take public transportation home. And so we got this out of our system for another long while. The next item of interest is, currently, ostrich meat. If we can find it here out of the zoo.