Fanboy Unbound

Disclaimer: You will probably be annoyed by this post if: a) you think that 1337 is a number b) you had a girlfriend or boyfriend in high school, or c) you have ever confused Star Wars and Star Trek.

Last weekend I went to the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational 2007. No, that shouldn't mean anything to you. Basically it was a big thing thrown by Blizzard, a video game company, in Seoul's Olympic Stadium and surrounding buildings. That might give you some idea of how big it was. My rough guess is that there were at least 5,000 people there (see the pictures for yourself, courtesy of Seattle Matt). Blizzard is the maker of what at this moment is probably the most popular video game on the planet: World of Warcraft (8.5m people play $15USD per month to play it). I never began playing this game for fear that it would cause me to flunk out of university. After all, Blizzard's 1998 game Starcraft almost prevented me from graduating from high school. OK, that's an exaggeration, but it could have if I had been required to do any kind of work in high school. Anyway, the event had 4 or 5 K-pop performances, lots of convention booth games and stuff, really long line-ups, a 30ish-piece symphony playing video game music, plus Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft and Starcraft tournaments.

Now, you might be curious as to why a game released almost 10 years ago is still being played competitively in Korea? You might also be asking yourself why video games are played competitively. If so, please refer to the disclaimer above. Right, so, Starcraft in Korea is a violently popular cultural phenomenon, which is saying something because games in general are much more popular here than in North America. I could write more about that, but I think I have an example that will sufficiently convey this point. I used to work with a Korean woman named Cathy. She claimed to play a dancing game, Audition Online, until all hours of the night. There is nothing unusual about that, except for the fact that she used real money to buy special clothes for her online character. Lots of money, from what she said. And I don't know that these clothes even made her character any better; they were just special because few of the other people--people she will never meet face-to-face--would have them. Go figure. You might not be surprised to learn that Cathy has since been fired. Poor Cathy, how will she pay for new virtual clothes?

Back to the insanity that is the specific focus of this post. It has many times been said that Starcraft is basically the national sport of Korea. One of the best Starcraft players has reported making $200,000USD in one year, from tournament prizes and sponsorship--really. There are multiple channels in Korea devoted to showing replays of top-level games--no, really. South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun has reportedly challenged Kim Jong-il to a game of Starcraft decide the border issue between their two states--OK, I made that one up. Anyway, it's insanely and inexplicably popular here, which is neat because, as the greatest RTS game ever, it is my favourite game of all time. Yes, I did just say greatest ever (something I never say), so I will qualify it (something I always do). Starcraft is the greatest RTS game ever, based on sales, longevity, and critical concensus, which, as rough objective indexes, are things anyone has the prerogative to ignore since art is, finally, a subjective experience.

Now, none of this would have been very exceptional, except that, appropriately, Blizzard's main reason for throwing this shindig was the announcement, after 9 years, of Starcraft 2. (Whoa, that was some weird comma-abuse, oh well.) Now, I'm not into video games as much as I was before, say, I met Roxanne. So I wasn't ecstatically excited about this, but, according to what TV tells me, being among the first people in the world to see something on TV is great. So, huzzah!

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Children of the Polo

The other day I noticed that 4 out of 8 of the 5-year-olds in my class were wearing shirts or dresses with a little horse rider on the front. I looked at one of the tags, and apparently that diminutive poloist is the emblem for Ralph Lauren Polo. Although somehow strange, this is probably harmless since I don't think the kids really have any idea what clothes they are wearing, except for Lisa who wears her favourite pink flowered dress 4 days a week. Still, 5 is a bit young to begin indoctrination into the cult of materialism, which is much more evident here than in Prince George. Also, kids shouldn't be swinging mallets on horseback.

Having rich kids as students is nice, however, on Teachers' Day, which was today. We got swag. Swag was gotten by us. Some of said swag was semi-expensive. Also, cake and donuts, many donuts. It was kind of like Christmas, except I didn't know it was coming. Most of the stuff I'll never use, but I'm 1/4 Scottish, so I love free stuff on principle.

Last Sunday I went to the National Museum of Korea. The nice thing about giant cities in Asia is that they have kick-ass subway systems. It's neat to know that there is more stuff than you could ever possibly visit within 30 minutes of your house. The museum is apparently the 6th largest in the world by floorspace, which is an inaccurate indicator, but never mind that. It was OK. It took me 3 hours to walk through. The space and the building were interesting architecturally, and there was a neato Pagoda Garden with 1000-year-old pagodas, but it was no Met.

On Thursday we are taking a fieldtrip to "American City," which is one of several recreations of smalltown U.S.A. that have been built so that people can go there and practice English in an "authentic" setting. It is even stocked with live, breathing white people. These same people I will heckle vociferously because their job is being a phony version of themselves. That's not fair. I do that everyday and no one pays me anything.

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Much has been afoot at school lately. We have had a singing contest, a field trip to a zoo/botanical garden and today it was children's day, so we had a "snack party" (ain't no party like a snack party cuz a snack part don't stop). The field trip was to Seoul Grand Park. We were a convoy of four Kia Preggio minivans (Preggio = baby = family = minivan, presumably). I made all of my 8 kids wear their seat belts even though, for some unknown but stupid reason, that isn't the normal thing to do. On the subject of traffic safety: no one wears bike helmets here, not on scooters, pedal bikes or motorbikes. I don't get it. Your skulls are important, people. Anyway, the park was pretty legit. It was all botanical and whatnot. The kids' moms packed gigantic lunches, like, 2 for each kid, so I ate a lot. We saw sleeping lions, giraffes and flamingos--neato! Everything went fine until the end when a small gaggle of kids decided to take off and run down the long paved pathway. Naturally, Alex fell on his face. Crying ensued. There may be no crying in baseball, but there is definitely crying in kindergarten.

The singing contest was similar in that it went perfectly except for the pee. My class sang "I'm a little teapot." I added a bunch of superfluous actions. We were very short and stout. We won, naturally, because we are the best. Well, OK, not really. It was probably more because of the sympathy vote. Lingy, the first the she did when we got up on stage (in front of 35 or so people) was pee. It wasn't very much, and another teacher ran up and pulled her shirt down over her pants, tragedy averted. We won skipping ropes, which several kids promptly traded for farm-themed erasers with posable limbs. I didn't actually get either prize, but I did win the teacher of the month bonus, which is only awarded every three months, so I guess it's more like: teacher of the last three months, or something. Anyway, it was supposed to be 200,000 Won, ($250), but that changed into a department store gift certificate for the same amount, and then it was split between me and Matt, since we both won, apparently. Still, I was happy. It was my goal to win that since it's a vaguely objective indication that I'm doing a good job. I know I am anyway, but think of all the farm animal-themed erasers I can buy now.

Oh yeah, and I went to Spiderman 3 last night, Thursday, May 3rd. For some reason it opened earlier in Korea, so, umm, neener. Sam Raimi did well. Topher Grace was funny, Thomas Hayden-Church was well-cast, and there were a bunch of neat cameos. I liked it because it didn't take itself too seriously, yet it wasn't merely gratuitous either. Venom was pretty bad-ass. Favourite line (Topher Grace): "What the hell?!" Anyway, I think Spiderman has definitely established itself as the best of the recent Marvel/DC movie franchises. By the way, Kryce, Kirsten Dunst is the greatest actor who has ever lived.

I don't feel very bad about the Canucks, surprisingly. Luongo had an amazing playoffs: 72 saves in his first game, and .966 in his last game, for example. The Canucks' future is bright because of him, so that's good. The last goal was soft, but it wasn't the reason the Canucks lost the series. The reason was that they didn't score. The Canucks had a really good and scrappy team, and they went pretty far and could pretty easily have stretched this series to 6 or 7 games. However, Anaheim had a more complete team--i.e., one with an offense--and they deserved to win the series. I don't really get how a single team can have 2 of the 4 best defensemen in the league, in the salary cap era, yet Anaheim does. I wish Matt Cooke had played. He's really the heart and soul (or an even better cliche) of the forwards. Plus he probably would have speared Rob Niedermayer or something, which would have been funny.

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