Note to the woman I walked by yesterday, who was wearing long black leather shorts, gray stockings, and calf-length black leather boots: for the love of all things holy, please go home and burn your outfit. Thank you.

I stayed up, completely accidentally, until 5:30 am yesterday (today?), watching TV. This apartment has cable, which has tripled the number of channels on the idiot box, including a couple English language movie channels. Shows viewed (roughly from 10 pm to 5 am):

1. Alien 3. I had never seen it, despite really adoring the first two (they were just about the only two that showed up on both John's and my favorite film lists). Man, I can't believe they killed Hicks. Michael Biehn was so pretty in Aliens. For Newt I shed no tears, though. And overall, Alien 3 so did not need to get made.

2. Dirty Dancing. Ah yes, the ultimate girl-growing-up movie, and a college era favorite. When Patrick "She's Like the Wind" Swayze growls, "Nobody puts Baby in the corner," don't you just want to DIE???? Okay, not really. But the movie's a sentimental favorite. On this viewing, I was surprised to find that I liked Baby's mother best of all. I know, she barely even has a presence in the movie, but in the last scene, when she and her husband are watching Baby dance with Patrick Swayze Like the Wind, she leans over and says "I think she gets it from me" with the perfect balance of ditz and seriousness.

3. Justine. Apparently a soft porn TV show about a privileged blonde high school girl named Justine who gets into a series of mishaps around the world that require her to take off her clothes and from which she needs to be saved by her studly English teacher, who sports the world's worst English accent EVER (and that includes Kevin Costner's "accent" in Robin Hood). The acting is really terrible, in a really funny way, and the show reminds me a little of Pamela Anderson's late night TV vehicle VIP, which stopped just short of being soft porn, and featured similiarly, uh ... talent-challenged actors. Hey, I liked VIP. I'm not ashamed to say it. Not ashamed, you hear me? Not ashamed!

4. Aaaaand, speaking of Kevin Costner, The Postman, which, if it didn't feel the need to drag out each scene into super-melodramatic spectacles worthy of Titanic, would have been an okay movie. What can I say, I have a weakness for Kevin Costner Movies. I even liked Waterworld. And I've seen Tin Cup. Though not in a theatre. The Postman is based on a David Brin book that contains a far, far weirder ending than the movie. I won the book in some writing contest years ago, and loaned it to RG, who loaned it to Tricia Reixach, who never gave it back. It's like the Chris Isaac tape I loaned in junior high to a friend who insisted she gave it back to me, but I don't remember that and to this day think she in fact did NOT give it back. Rachel Rosensweig, you owe me a copy of Heart Shaped World!

Lest you think I am all bitterness and bad taste in movies, I finished today a collection of short stories by Alice Munro (thank you again, M. le Roi). I'd been reading a story a night, but finished up the last three in a blaze of impatience tonight. Reading adult literature for the first time in ages and viewing an old favorite like Dirty Dancing makes me feel not old, but merely older. Possibly wiser too. And glad of it. Though at the same time, saddened.

Yesterday, I went to an excellent lecture on religion in Korea that cleared up a lot of questions I've asked over the past year about why Christianity "took" so well here and why the hell Koreans act the way they do. (Respectively: a vaccuum left by the rejection of Buddhism by the Neo-Confucian founders of the Joseon dynasty, plus a post-Korean War nationalistic move toward western values after the Japanese colonization period; and Confucianism, Confucianism, Confucianism.) Makes me want to go to grad school. I freakin' love learning. Love. It. Maybe I should go get a degree in East Asian Studies. Or Religious Studies. ARGH. WHY CAN'T I DECIDE WHAT TO DO?!?!?!?

Sorry.

Dr. Gil, who is a Protestant, said that he didn't find much of the spirit of Jesus in Korean Protestantism. I think he might have written the article I read a few months ago about Korean religion, because just as in the article, he mentioned the "this-worldliness" of Korean religion, both Christianity and Buddhism. Which is to say, the point that some very big Christian leaders here make is that if you're Christian and try to lead a Christian life, you'll be rewarded in this life with success in the business place, happiness at home, bright kids who get accepted into the best colleges, and a nice home and car. Same with Buddhists. A practical goal with little to do with either Jesus' or Buddha's messages.

The lecturer said that Buddhism and Christianity were, to him, the most radical of religions in their origin, both led by men who challenged the values and precepts of this world, and proposed an entirely new take on existence; namely, seeking otherworldly peace from hatred, avarice, desire and ignorance in nirvana/the Kingdom of God.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a coworker who will be attending a seminary in Philly next year, in order to become a minister. I said that Buddhism and Christianity, as well as all the other major religions, shared some basic similarities. His response was that he didn't see how that could be, since "they are so different that if one is right, then the other must be wrong." Sigh.