On Egg Nog, Beer, and Charlie Brown

The day after Thanksgiving officially marks the beginning of the Christmas season for most Americans (though a quick stroll through a shopping mall would have you believe that the kickoff happens sometime closer to Halloween). This is also the day that I officially allow myself to begin to listen to Christmas music and indulge in any kitschy holiday films or TV specials I happen to enjoy. Granted, I used to watch the Rudolf Christmas Special in the middle of July back in the simpler times of my youth, but I'm older now, more prone to cynicism and apathy. Thus, I have to set strict guidelines for myself.

The Christmas season, in many ways, operates much like a Microbrewery. There are a whole list of traditions, foods, beverages, decorations, songs, movies, etc. that are only supposed to surface during the months of November and December. Egg Nog is a great example of this. Kudos to the dairy companies of America for strictly adhering to the unwritten code of Egg Nog consumption. Though almost nothing is sacred in this modern, drug-crazed and porn-soaked era of ours, at least companies such as Hood and Garelick farms still know the value of tradition and understand that Egg Nog is only to be consumed during a specific time of the year. Imagine...Egg Nog in August. All decency would be lost. Children would be impregnating their parents. John Madden would travel by airplane. The Drew Carey Show would be back on the air. Total Chaos.

However, I digress. Back to the Microbrew analogy. Imagine that your favorite beer is a Long Trail Harvest, a delicious amber ale that goes down smooth during those crisp autumn days in Vermont. This particular beer is only available during the months of August through December or January, depending on when the final batch is gone. Now, bottled beer is still drinkable for at least six months. So if this happens to be you favorite beer, you could easily buy a case or two, store it in your closet, and break it out in May to the envy of all your friends. 

The problem with this hypothetical scenario is that there is something inherently special about seasonal beer. That moment when Harvest Ale first hits the shelves at your local liquor store is a magical time. That first sip is not only delicious, but also telling. When those hops tango with your taste buds for the first time in nine months, you know that summer is ending, the leaves are about to change, and the days are getting shorter. The fact that a beer can have that effect is one thing that makes seasonal brew such a great part of beer culture. Drinking a Harvest Ale in June would, quite simply, ruin that effect. When the beer hit the shelves that following August, it would cease to be anything but a good-tasting beer. Your taste buds would still be happy but there would be no sense of seasonal romanticism, which I imagine is a terrible loss.

Like Long Trail Harvest, Christmas, and the endless amount of baggage that comes with it, should only be enjoyed during a specific time each year. Some may believe that time begins in November. Others, like me, may choose to partake once Thanksgiving is over. That's freedom...that's America. Anybody who puts up decorations or dusts off the Bing Crosby records before November however, should be publicly ridiculed. 

So, as another Christmas season begins, and one that will no doubt prove to be the strangest in my short history on this planet, I look forward to enjoying those personal traditions I hold close to my heart. Will they have Egg Nog in Seoul? Maybe. Will I get to kiss a pretty Korean girl under the mistletoe? Probably not. Will I stroll through Myong-dong, enjoying the lights with the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas streaming through my headphones? Most definitely.

808s and Heartbreak: My $.02

It's 1:09 am on a Sunday. There are clothes hung up all around me, drying after a long overdue wash. There are seven empty cans of Coke Zero and four empty bottles of Powerade Mountain Blast within my range of vision. The highway that I often look at out my window is surprisingly empty. More importantly, I just gave my third and final listen to Kanye West's fourth and most recent LP, 808s and Heartbreak.

About three months ago, I read an article on pitchforkmedia.com mentioning that Kanye West was planning on releasing a new album in which he was going to sing, not rap, using only Auto-Tune. Needless to say, I was curious. Soon after, Kanye released "Love Lockdown," the first single from the album, and my curiosity quickly turned into disappointment. I disliked the song immediately, and realized that this album was going to be very, very different from anything else in Kanye's catalogue. 

Despite my opinion of "Love Lockdown" I still approached my first listen of 808s and Heartbreak with optimism and a clear mind. After struggling through the first six and a half songs, I had to turn it off. The only song I remotely enjoyed was Paranoid, and I couldn't decide if I legitimately liked it or if it was just good in comparison to the rest of the awful mess of songs. Now, after finishing the album and going through it two more times, I decided that the answer fell somewhere in the middle. 

Regardless the album's content however, I have to give Kanye credit for making an album that is so drastically different from the rest of his music. This may not be his "Bringing It All Back Home" or "Kid A," but at least it shows Kanye's fearless approach to record-making and ability to completely change up his style. I think Rolling Stone hit it right on the money when they called 808s and Heartbreak "Kanye's Noble Failure." The album is indeed a failure, but you have to respect an artist who truly does not cater to the critics, or the even the fans. 

I may never listen to 808s and Heartbreaks again, but I'll still line up to pick up his next album, no matter what that may be.

Which do you prefer?

This week I am teaching a lesson to my grade 2 classes (High School juniors) about preferences - asking others about their preferences and explaining the reasons behind your own. In the beginning of the class, I explain different ways to ask about preferences and the ways that you would answer someone who asked you about your own preferences. Some of the vocabulary includes "Which do you prefer, ... or ...?" and "I prefer ... because ... is more..." Obviously, this is simple stuff, but the students are always much more animated and interested when they understand the concepts easily. 

The highlight of the lesson comes at the end, when I ask the students to create their own preference question and survey the class. We use the outline "Which/Who do you prefer, A or B?" and the students have to insert their own objects into A and B. One interesting aspect about this lesson was that in every class without fail, a student would create the question "Who do you prefer, Mom or Dad?" In a school that is about 80% male, almost every student chose Mom. Can anyone say, "Oedipus?"

I was pleasantly surprised at how much the students enjoyed this activity, since I generally have to bribe them with candy to do anything that involves getting out of their chairs. Here are some of the most amusing survey questions that the students came up with:

Girlfriend or Pizza? (winner: pizza)

Sexy Girl or Pretty Girl (winner: sexy girl)

Money or Family (winner: family...by one vote)

Dogs or Cats (winner: dogs because "dogs are more delicious"....seriously)

Cooper or Homeroom teacher (winner: Cooper, by unanimous decision...yes!)

Crime & Punishment

I try and refrain from plugging or even discussing books in general, as it usually turns into a literary biggest dick competition, but I feel compelled to at least write something about this book.

Yesterday I finished Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The book itself has one of those ominous titles, like Tolstoy's War & Peace or Dickens' Bleak House, that suggests a story that almost has to be dry, long and incredibly dull. Despite the title or Dostoyevsky's reputation for heavy philosophical undertones, Crime & Punishment is actually (and surprisingly) a thrilling page-turner. 

I won't go into plot details or my personal interpretation of the novel because nobody really cares what I think. However, I will say that if any novel under the category of "Classic" seems daunting to you, or even boring, consider reading Crime & Punishment. While it isn't 'light' by any means, the novel is one of the most accessible classics hat I have read in a while. It is also one of the most incredibly well-written and beautifully told stories I have ever read, with a truly memorable and unique protagonist. 

"Where was it I read about a man sentenced to death, who, one hour before his execution, says or thinks that if he had to live on some high rock, on a cliff, on a ledge so narrow that there was only room enough for him to stand there, and if there were bottomless chasms all around, the ocean, eternal darkness, eternal solitude, and eternal gales, and if he had to spend all his life on that square yard of space - a thousand years, an eternity - he'd rather live like that than die at once! Oh, only to live, live, live! Live under any circumstances - only to live! How true it is! Good Lord, how true it is!"

Meteor Caught on Video

While driving through Edmonton last Thursday evening, a police officer happened to catch a falling meteor on his dash cam. Maybe it's because I have always been a closet space nerd, but I got chills down my spine when I first saw this video today. Just watch how the meteor makes the sky light up as it burns up. BADASS.

First snow in Seoul

Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to look out of the window in the Teacher's Office to find that it was snowing outside. It should also be noted that I happened to be listening to lame Christmas music on youtube at the same time. The first snow of the season always puts me in a good mood. There is a certain smell to snow, and a certain calm feeling that comes with a snow flurry that I'm reminded of every year. Luckily, it was no different in Seoul.

Here are some pictures I took:

My Life as a Game Show Host

As previously mentioned, I spend most of my class time playing games or making my students participate in various amusing and somewhat simple activities. Since I had to conduct performance exams last week, and final exams are coming up in a few weeks, I decided that this is a good a time as any to introduce the students of Seoul Robotics High School to the magical world of Jeopardy.

My version ended up as sort of a poor man's Jeopardy only because I try and keep things as simple as possible with my students. So there was no Double Jeopardy or Final Jeopardy or mid-game contestant intros or Trebeck one-liners. Plus, the questions were actual questions, not answers. I did feel the need to add a final Jeopardy round, but then it got too confusing when I tried to explain the concept of a wager. Thus, Final Jeopardy didn't last very long. Essentially, my version of Jeopardy consisted of seven categories with five questions in each one, ranging from 100-500 points each. The categories were America, Capitol Cities, Sports, Spelling, Puzzle, Music, and ?????. The students got really excited about the random category. After I would draw the question marks on the board, the students would all go, "OOOO, WHAT IS THIS?" I would always respond the same way, with an obnoxious shoulder shrug. Then I would get something along the lines of, "OO COOPAH, YOU A TRICKY TRICKY MAN." 

One of the things that really amazes me about my students is the intensity with which they compete for one small piece of candy. All I have to do is say, "Oh yea, and the winning team gets candy" and the place goes absolutely wild. The best part is, I never have to police the classroom. Students will gladly rat on each other if they see the slightest sign of cheating. They also enjoy swearing at each other, screaming, slapping, and falling out of their chairs when they get a wrong answer.

The best part of playing Jeopardy all week has to be the answers that I got from some of these kids. One of the questions was "What is the largest state in America?" Most of the answers I got were either California or New York, mostly because these are the only states that the students could think of on the spot. However, I was really happy when one student shot up from his desk, hand in the air, and shouting, "ME ME I KNOW I KNOW." Based on his reaction, I assumed he had the right answer. So I point to him and he replies "LAS VEGAS" with absolute confidence.

A few weeks ago I was surfing this ESL teacher's forum to try and get some ideas for a class I was teaching on tenses. The only good piece of advice I found was from a guy who suggested that, whenever you play a game involving teams, always allow the students to come up with their own team name, as opposed to just saying "team 1, team 2, team 3, etc.." So I decided to give this a shot and it ended up being very amusing. A lot of my students, especially the younger ones, are shy and/or apathetic. So when I say, "Ok, each team come up with your own name...in English," they often just sit there, staring at me blankly. I quickly put an end to this by deciding that any team that did not create their own name would get a name chosen by me. As soon as I began to write "The Pretty Flowers" or "Team Ajumma (Korean grandmother)" on the board, they changed their tune very quickly.

Some of my favorite names:

Team Spam

The Piccolos

Michael Jackson

Genius Monkey

Team Uhh

Sex Machines (not accepted)

Sexy Team (revised name of the Sex Machines)

Terminator

Cooper Team

Not surprisingly, Jeopardy was a great success, despite the lack of educational value.