Beef and Choe

The first time I heard of David Choe, it was during an interview with Howard Stern. Even back then, I recognized that he fancied himself a raconteur, a guy who made his first million off of gambling using a strict Martingale betting system in blackjack (Doubling your next bet each time you lose), then eventually made a fortune by being asked by Facebook, then a young company, to paint their head office, and in lieu of cash he asked to be paid in Facebook stocks. He makes for a good talker, but most listeners know that you can’t take whatever he’s saying as 100% truth. I’ll buy the Facebook story… the gambling story, not so much.

So when Netflix’s show Beef got viral with its success and eventually a story by David Choe regarding getting away with raping a masseuse got viral as well, I wasn’t that surprised. And just like in Howard stern with the Martingale betting system, I can’t 100% tell whether the story is true or not. What is true however is that in telling the story at the time, he was looking to regale his listeners, as a raconteur would. And if he is not guilty of sexually assaulting a masseuse and getting away with it, he is definitely guilty in taking rape lightly and trying to turn it into an entertaining yarn. Now, I’m not a prude. I do believe that you can make a joke about anything. But there was no joke in the story. No punchline. Just a, “hur hur hur, I got away with raping a masseuse, isn’t that nuts?! I’m David Choe.”

Maybe it wasn’t even played as a joke. Maybe it was more of a machismo thing. “I’m David Choe, sex monster.” Who knows? It’s just a bizarre story to tell, or more accurately, confess, and not expect any blow back.

When I was watching Beef, (spoiler alert) my wife and I both observed that all families have someone like David Choe’s character, someone who borrows money from family, ends up wasting it, then sorta disappearing or just being relegated into the outside periphery of the family. The one uncle that failed. The one uncle who went to prison and is never talked about again. The one uncle who never quite fit in and is still trying to find himself even in his forties. This was David’s character. And he played it well. Unfortunately, just like his character in the TV series, his past statements is ruining it for everyone else. People are now trying to boycott the TV series.

I watched and finished the whole series before the David Choe story went viral. I quite enjoyed it. And I actually thought that David did some decent acting amongst more seasoned peers like Steven Yeun and Ali Wong. David sells the character quite frankly, at least to me, because he talks and acts in real life like the type of person that would actually do what his character did in the show. I mean, take his own words as evidence. He gambled himself into his first million, and at one point had nothing but $500 in his pocket. Now, isn’t that the type of stuff that black sheep uncles would do? Lucky for him, it all worked out for him if the gambling story is to be believed.

Knowing that at worst he is a rapist and at the very least he’s an awful comedian with rape fantasies, would I have still enjoyed the series? Would I still recommend it to people? I would like to think that I could suspend reality a bit and indulge in the story that’s being fed to me on screen. And as for recommending the show. I would still recommend it. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and as of now, David is just guilty of having bad stories. And to boycott the series would be doing Yeun, Wong, and everyone else involved in the TV series a huge disservice. It would be letting the bad uncle, the uncle that the rest of the family would rather you not know about, take the whole family down.

Now, this is different of course with enjoying the works of people like Woody Allen or Roman Polanski. By not watching their films, you’re not buying their products, You are actually hurting them. With Beef, David is not the main character nor is he the director, writer, or one of the executive producers. He just played the bad guy, and he turned out to be a bit of an awful guy in real life. Keep on not watching Allen and Polanski films. Go ahead and watch Beef.

2019 Just Died

New Year morning, we were watching ‘New Year’s Rockin Eve’ over breakfast in Seoul and it dawned on me how truly mediocre popular music is. Well, maybe that’s a tad bit unfair. After all, ‘mediocre’ is kinda expected when ‘New Year’s Rockin Eve’ is preceded by “Ryan Seacrest.” Seriously, Post Malone? Ugh… It was so unbearable that I had to distract myself doing chores afterwards while my wife waited for BTS.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Let’s make more art in 2020. Be less depressed. Learn more. Work more. Draw more.

Boycotting Jackassery

Ad boycotts are great. Boycotts are great. Jack Schafer is wrong, dead wrong. Ad boycotts or boycotts in general are democracy in action. It’s the people telling companies exactly what they want, and the companies responding in return.

Jack Shafer writing for Politico, defends Tucker Carlson (and even previously defended Bill O’Reilly) and his right to have a platform where people are allowed to express their views freely, and argues that if advertisers were only allowed to support shows whose political views they support, then the only shows on TV would be the blandest centrist shows which cater to all demographic. Cenk Uygur  from The Young Turks doesn’t like the idea of pressuring advertisers either, saying that if a person doesn’t like a show, then just don’t watch it. Let it die a natural death.

The problem here is that toxic ideas, especially from those with a following, don’t die a natural death. Despite being deplatformed, if Alex Jones makes a controversial vile statement, his followers will still amplify it. But by the very fact that he is deplatformed, the extent and the damage he can cause is contained to a minimum. Ann Coulter doesn’t really have a regular media platform outside of her social network, but because she occasionally shows up on television, her celebrity status and her vile ideas remain. You can’t just “not watch” Ann Coulter and hope she disappears. It doesn’t work that way.

Jack Schafer and Cenk Uygur are wrong in thinking that companies, when they advertise in a show, are supporting the political message of the show. They might and they could but they don’t definitively do just by the virtue of advertising there. What they do however is enable shows to spread their message. Companies’ goals are to reach the audiences of the shows they advertise on. That is simply it. In doing so, they allow the shows to continue their programming. They want to sell things, not sell a political message or change hearts and minds. Some companies might be politically motivated, but by and large, that’s not how companies and advertising works.

Advertising keeps shows alive, and shows will remain alive as long as they have viewers and advertisers who are interested in said viewers. Tucker Carlson could turn his political show into a cooking show, but as long as viewers watch the show and support the advertisers’ products, the advertisers will continue to keep the show alive (not necessarily support the show’s views. Stop thinking this). But how do you let a show or a television station know that you are not happy with something when you don’t watch a particular show in the first place? Then you go to what you actually use or support in your real life, the advertisers. Bill O’Reilly survived years with seniors having his show on right after Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. People who are politically “woke,” are generally younger and couldn’t stand up against him and boycott his show when they don’t watch his show in the first place. And Bill’s hold with his senior audience is rock solid. So how does one act against him, go after his advertisers.

Boom. It worked.

And as much fearmongering there was about slippery slopes and threats to the free speech, Bill O’Reilly’s show has been off the air for a while now. People are still free to speak. Bill is still free to peddle his hatred on other platforms. The same goes for Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, and Gavin McInnes.

The whole free speech argument is a shell game. It is a way to distract from the vile things someone is saying in order to appeal to someone’s ego or righteousness. “Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech.” Sure. But notice how people who usually say that are hatemongers or conservative trolls? And as much as progressives will often defend the free speech rights of hatemongers when their advertisers are being threatened, it never really goes the other way around. Jamal Khashoggi’s murder was an attack on free speech and freedom of the press, and yet I don’t necessarily hear the loud voices on the right standing up for the dead journalist. What about Colin Kapaernick’s free speech? These people on the right are not playing it straight, folks. They’re simply not.

See, the right’s problem with ad boycotts and boycotts in general is that they usually don’t work when it comes to their causes. Remember the boycotts against Nike, Starbucks, NFL, Keurig, Apple, etc.? They simply don’t work. Wars against Christmas have been fought every year and there have been boycotts against companies, but yet most of these companies still stand. The right wing’s victories in these boycotts, if there even are, are often miniscule and symbolic, certainly nothing worth smashing your own Keurig coffeemaker over.

So yeah, Tucker Carlson is human garbage. It’s a shame that major networks keep giving him shows time and time again despite being human garbage. People are boycotting his advertisers right now because Tucker Carlson suggested that immigrants make the United States dirty, then later doubled down on the claim, stating that illegal immigrants produce about five pounds of garbage per person as they cross the desert. Someone tell him Americans generate an average of 4 pounds of trash per day and 1500 per year. Tucker Carlson is a white supremacist, nationalist turd. Advertisers on his show help keep his racist platform alive. Sure, they might not necessarily support his message, but they sure allow him to say them.

 

Korean Evenings

Learning Korean has been a struggle for me. First off, it’s very difficult to find time to go to class with my job. On a busy day, I work two jobs which start at 7:00 am and end at 6:00 pm. On a really busy day, my day won’t end until 8:00 pm. Squeeze making art and perhaps more side work between that, and it’s very difficult to find time to do anything at all. A lot of Korean learners find listening to K-pop or watching dramas or TV shows help, but I’m not interested in any of those. Korean television is simply not that interesting. I’m mostly isolated at work, so there’s very little interaction with Koreans during my day, so it’s very difficult to learn Korean via osmosis. So what am I to do to increase my Korean fluency beyond intermediate? Sacrifice my evenings and take Korean classes.

I decided to take classes again to force me to take learning Korean more seriously. I took Korean lessons years ago but had to quit because I got busier with work and there was a huge jump in the difficulty level in the classes. It was very discouraging. After that, I didn’t really try that hard to learn Korean. In fact, I focused my attention to studying law instead.

I figure my problem has been a lot of my attempts to learn the language has been based on my own pace. Thus, it was very easy for me to quit or decide that I have learned enough for the day. I think that’s the problem with the Duolingo and Rosetta Stone solutions. They give you too much freedom. They also don’t force you to be in a situation where you actually have to speak Korean to another person. Even basic sentences can be very intimidating when speaking to another person. That’s one of my biggest hurdles. I simply don’t spend enough time interacting with Koreans in Korean.

The classes would result in less time spent at home, but I guess it will be time well spent. In any case, I need to be out more anyway without drinking or spending too much money. This also means I won’t be working as much during the evenings. But again, if I’m not out spending money, it should theoretically cancel out not making money. Korean classes, plus listening to Korean audio lessons (less time spent on podcasts), and reviewing with apps like Duolingo and Quizlet. Here’s hoping I keep this up.

Could be Tomorrow

I’m off to Vietnam this week. I don’t know much about the country and its beautiful people, so I’ll talk about The Handmaid’s Tale instead. What a wonderful, wonderful adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s work (a Canadian treasure)! Good job, Hulu! What’s really interesting about the book and the show itself is that if there’s ever a more apt book to adapt for the times, it’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Being a work of “speculative fiction,” much like books like The Road or Blindness, it doesn’t need much fantasy in order for something to become our reality. In the case of The Handmaid’s Tale, religion and military dictatorship just needs to marry together, something which humanity has experimented with several times before.

And it’s not like we’re that far off from Ms. Atwood’s fiction. The world is becoming more and more militaristic. Many countries’ police officers are starting to look more like military forces. There’s a loud growing movement of conservatism with their adherence to religious dogma and a distrust of science and news media. And more and more, dictatorial rule seems to be coming back into fashion with many people blindly supporting strong men. Even my father pines for the days of Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law and praises the likes of Duterte. The show did a great job of incorporating current trends and technology and making it part of the narrative. It almost screams at the viewers, “this could be you! You’d better do something about it” It’s not enough that we trust our collective goodness as a society. Our hubris, our confidence that several others will do good despite of our inaction, will lead to our eventual downfall. I’d like to believe more Americans are sensible, and yet Donald Trump and his ilk run the country. I was impressed at how friendly, welcoming, and seemingly sensible everyone was the last time I visited the Philippines, but they’re the same people who would deny their neighbors are being killed for their vices, even if it happens almost every day. My workplace is surrounded by people who yearn for the days of dictatorial rule in Korea.

It is scary. It really wouldn’t take much.

 

AIDS Cures on TV

My niece colors like a serial killer.
…

I saw Bill Maher interview Dr. Samir Chachoua, the doctor who is currently treating Charlie Sheen. He’s the doctor who advised him to get off his regular meds, use a treatment that he claims cures HIV (not therapy), and apparently even injected some of Sheen’s own blood to himself in order to assuage Sheen’s fears. It is a bit concerning that Bill Maher would give the doctor a media platform when prior to the interview, Charlie Sheen said in Dr. Oz’s show that his “numbers are back up” after getting on Dr. Chachoua’s treatment. Still, the booking was not much of a surprise. Bill Maher keeps giving questionable people platforms. He once talked to Sam Wurzelbacher or “Joe the Plumber” as if he was a serious person. He also basically birthed S.E. Cupp who often comes up with the most ridiculous points on issues.

But aside from the doctor’s many dubious claims on the program (“I’ve cured entire countries!,” “Sheen is HIV negative.”), I believe there’s value in the message that we shouldn’t be complicit with the status quo. We should have healthy skepticism of what’s being told as well as keep an open ear to what’s new. Is the current HIV and AIDS treatment truly the best science has to offer? Perhaps we should be looking at other options. I haven’t done much reading regarding Dr. Chachoua’s claims. But my skepticism goes both ways, to the established science which is married with corporate interests and to the unknown Dr. Chachoua. My skepticism for the doctor comes from Sheen himself. His numbers are back up. I already fear that he’s leading Sheen down the wrong path, whether the doctor knows it or not.

The many claims Dr. Chachoua put out on Bill Maher’s show paints a great picture of possibility regarding curing AIDS and other disease, but the media tries to ridicule him and his treatment based on arthritic goats. While he may indeed be a “quack,” we should not dismiss the possibility of finding cures in the least likely of places, even arthritic goats. There is value in looking at all alternatives and not just surrendering to what the established truth is. Scientists right now are looking at sloth hair clippings for new antibiotics. However, it all must be evidence and results-based. And right now, I still haven’t looked at evidence that supports the doctor’s claims.

I guess the fear here is that this will produce another Jenny McCarthy: more “experts” that would convince people to forego proven treatments to their detriment. This is generally a symptom of the mistrust against authorities, and unfortunately in many cases, people rail against scientific authority for the wrong reasons. This is why there’s a resurgence of flat earthers and creationists along with the climate change deniers. The Charlie Sheen/Dr. Chachoua HIV thing could very well be explained as a similar reaction against established scientific authority. I am hoping it leads to more creative zeal regarding the treatment of diseases, not necessarily from Dr. Chachoua who may or may not be a “quack,” but to many people in the scientific community. I’m hoping it doesn’t result in a wave of AIDS denialism. So yeah, for now, I’m cautiously optimistic about the doctor’s appearance on Bill Maher’s show.

Legal Porn (No, not that.)

 

The New York Post prints a fair share of dumb articles, but three days ago they published a particularly dumb one which touches on something that I just recently watched, Netflix’s examination of the Steven Avery murder case, Making a Murderer. The headline goes: ‘Why Making a Murderer’ is Better than ‘Serial.’ The article, written by Sara Stewart, talks about both investigative pieces like they are entertainment, which to many they are, and she fails to recognize that it’s this same attitude towards both cases that lead to injustices. The cases began in the media, became legal porn, and many people are already too biased to hear any story that would contradict their biases.

Let me quickly counter Ms. Stewart’s five reasons and why they are at the very least moot and at the worst, serves to further harm the justice process.

1. We don’t know anything about the case (Steven Avery’s) already.
-The reason why people watch a documentary is to hopefully learn something new, not to confirm their biases. I’m hoping this was what both producers of Serial and Making a Murderer were trying to achieve. I believe most people know of Bowe Berghdal mostly through conservative talking points. This makes an examination of his case even more necessary.

2. Its (Making a Murderer’s) subject is more sympathetic.
-This is the type of laziness that leads to so much injustice. Ms. Stewart must not have heard of the Duke Lacrosse case. Rich, white students were accused of drugging and gang raping an African-American woman at a party. And from the very beginning, it was painted as an example of the excesses rich white men get away with and even as a hate crime. Nancy Grace filled hours of show condemning the accused. It was great legal porno. Unfortunately, the sympathetic victim turned out to be a liar.

Being swayed by sympathetic victims is one of the greatest traps people fall into. Ms. Stewart describes Steven Avery as being more sympathetic than Bowe Berghdal. But I would argue that it is exactly this sympathetic bias that got Steven Avery into bigger trouble. Isn’t the zeal for justice for Teresa Halbach a perfect example of the Missing White Woman Syndrome? The volunteers combing an area, the media coverage, the aggressive police action, etc.  It’s like whoever murdered Ms. Halbach took Criminology 101. She’s one of the most sympathetic victims of all.

3. Its (Making a Murderer’s) subject gives firsthand interviews.
-This is just silliness. Comparing the availability of both subjects in wildly different contexts is just dumb. I suppose Sarah Koenig could’ve just gone to Afghanistan to interview Bowe Berghdal while he escaped. Unfortunately we don’t live in such a fantastically ridiculous world.

4. There’s a wealth of archival footage available.
-Ms. Stewart seems to lament that there’s not enough footage of Bowe Berghdal as opposed to the court footage, local news, and police reports that’s available for Steve Avery’s case. I would argue that Ms. Koenig actually took some restraint in not using the wealth of material slamming Bowe Berghdal and essentially convicting him prior to being tried and his reasons for leaving examined.  But doing so would be extremely lazy and basically going through what everyone has already been exposed to. What Ms. Koenig is doing with the “unpopular” Bowe Berghdal might not be as good as “entertainment,” but entertainment is just one part of what Serial is trying to do. It is also trying to inform its audience.

5. It’s (Making a Murderer’s) literally easier to hear.
-Again with apples and oranges. One is a ten-part documentary which most people can and will binge-watch, while the other is an ongoing radio series. It’s the visual media versus the theater of the mind.

I don’t mean to write an examination of a dumb New York Post article, but my frustration from seeing the story is basically the same thing that frustrates me with many legal stories, and it’s something that I admittedly am quite guilty of as well: treating these cases like legal porn. It’s all drama. The characters are just mere characters, not real life people. People opine on whether Casey Anthony, Jodi Arias, or OJ Simpson are guilty or not, but what often gets lost are the web of people they are connected with. Steven Avery is portrayed as some sort of villain in 1985. No one would have guessed that it would later start a domino effect which lands his nephew in prison.  Bowe Berghdal is talked about simply as a deserter… but his issues regarding the military and how it treats its own troops is forgotten entirely. Lots of people become self-satisfied legal experts just watching legal drama on the sidelines, not realizing that it sometimes feeds into the injustice that is fueled by the media (Hello again, Nancy Grace).

Ms. Stewart writes as if she sees both Serial and Making a Murderer as entertainment pieces, which to most of the public they are, like numbers on a Nielsen ratings scale.  They really shouldn’t be, and we should stop talking about them as if they were. These people’s lives are not being ruined by the justice system simply for our entertainment. I would like to think there is more to them than that.

Love and Marriage and TV

Sometimes my weekends are too long. My wife gets on my nerves or I get on hers. I’m afraid my job, which often finds me not talking to another soul for eight hours, has turned me into a bit of a lonely curmudgeon. And I’m starting to get used to it. I get uncomfortable around people, and I start avoiding social settings or just give off an unfriendly vibe. And unfortunately, this preference for seclusion includes my wife after a while.

Or maybe the media and roughly fifty percent of all married couple are right. We’re not built to be with another person co close for so long… that we all end up living like roommates or worse.

Louie has a failed marriage. I just started watching “Master of None” and the first episode is about the plight of being married and having a kid. I remember back in the 90s watching a show built on the worship of one’s spouse, “Mad About You.” I had a crush on Helen Hunt at the time. And (SPOILER) the couple eventually ends up divorcing on the last season.  They stuck together for six seasons; they were “Mad” about each other, only to end up as another failed marriage statistic. One of my favorite TV characters, Frasier, divorced his wife, Lilith. I enjoyed “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and come season six, same thing, Larry David ends up getting a divorce (again SPOILER). George Costanza was in an unhappy relationship until his fiancée died in an unfortunate envelope-licking tragedy (SPOILER!!!).

And it’s not just comedy. Don Draper had a couple of divorces. Walter White was trying to put a façade of a nice family life underneath a crumbling marriage. No one gets married for love on the “Game of Thrones.”

These are just a few shows off the top of my head that I happen to enjoy.

I think if you’re a TV couple and you’re not animated, you have a great chance of ending up divorced.

I don’t know if a study has been done on the subject before. I’m sure there are more shows with divorced or couples with troubled marriages now, but I would like to see how prevalent they are compared to married couples (who continue to be married). I would even count Al Bundy’s unhappy relationship with his family as somewhat “successful” compared to other relationships on television. Granted, Al’s life appears to be a bit of a nightmare, but I believe the lesson is that he sticks with it regardless of his marriage’s many dysfunctions. I wonder because I start thinking “are there more unhappy couples on TV, or are am I somehow more inclined to watch shows with unhappy couples?”

Now, I’m not saying my relationship is on a downward spiral. It’s settled to what I assume is the average experience cohabitating with another person.  I don’t think my relationship is any better than most married couples, nor is it any worse. I guess I’m modest like that. There’s just a bit of mixed emotions whenever I turn on the television sometimes.

“These people know exactly how I feel!”

“Oh shit! I’m gonna end up just like Louie!”

Canada, I love you.

I will be visiting Canada this week. I haven’t been home for two years, so I’m quite excited about it. I say “quite” because I’ve kinda been struggling with bouts of depression lately. It’s been like this for over two weeks now and my recent birthday didn’t really help to cheer me up. Birthdays at a certain point become no longer a celebration for surviving a year on the planet, but a marker on how closer we are to death. In any case, here’s hoping that Canada puts me in a better mood.

Being in Canada means being on the move, which means being unable to update the site for a while. It’s not like anybody would miss it, but yeah, my journey back home would explain the lack of updates at the Weekly.

…

My sister’s best friend caught this on her TV a few weeks ago. It looks like my art is now gracing television sets all over my home province of Manitoba. Thank you, Shaw. As artists, we all aim to somehow contribute, no matter how small, to the zeitgeist. As an artist with no plans to have kids, my very small contributions are everything I have in terms of a legacy. Here’s hoping that someone, somewhere, will perhaps be inspired to draw and make art.

Nothing on TV

David Letterman announces that he will be retiring from the LATE SHOW with DAVID LETTERMAN on the broadcast tonight, Thursday, April 3 (11:35pm-12:37am, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Photo: Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS ©2014 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved

This hit me much like Seinfeld did on its last show. It’s just entertainment, but it breaks my heart a bit knowing that the Late show is now gone. It is a sadness not just for a show ending, but a bit of mourning since it serves as a marker for time past. We are now at an age, when the Late Show with David Letterman is no more. And to the more extreme, it is a reminder of the inevitable. Everything ends. Enjoy every sandwich.

I guess the next show’s end that would affect me as much would be Conan O’Brien’s show, that and the Howard Stern Show on satellite. Here’s hoping both shows last far long into the future.