The author I chose to study in AP Lit is William Shakespeare. I personally I always found him to be overrated since I was thirteen, fourteen and sixteen having been spoon fed A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo & Juliet, and Macbeth to me, both in play and the film adaptations that always followed in class. I only vaguely remember A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and that I didn’t like it; I hate Romeo & Juliet with a passion, and though I did like Macbeth quite a bit, I never cared for it nearly as much as I am supposed to.

One Shakespeare-related (sort of) piece of art that I’ve always loved is My Own Private Idaho, a screenplay loosely based on Henry IV Part 1. It’s a mind boggling film. River Phoenix’s performance is nearly flawless, with a singular bad line delivery when the older, rich lady picks him up towards the beginning. I forget what he says, but he says it unrealistically loud and deliberate for someone mumbling to himself, which I find actors do that all the time. I wish they wouldn’t. But that Phoenix more than accounts for that little peeve of mine throughout the movie especially in his haunting last laugh in the third act of the movie.

But I think the reason I enjoy this movie enough to buy a copy of it (I can’t really afford too many DVD’s) is the visual direction it takes. It often stays in one shot for extended periods of time, and takes this time to let the characters speak about the things that make them who they are without directly contributing to the story. The campfire scene gets it fame for all the right reasons, but my favorite example of this is when Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix try to start their motorcycle for a few minutes in a singular shot. The dialogue is familiar and the setting is both beautiful and significant to the characters at the same time. It shows you the action the way a viewer sees them in real life: in one perspective. A sense of reality. That’s what I, a modern reader, never could get from Shakespeare.

But I did really enjoy Hamlet. Maybe a little more so than Idaho.

This story is a couple days old, but it’s easily the most interesting story of this week for me by far.

I stayed in Bundang after school today so I could stay and enjoy some cheap Chinese food in Sunae. It was only the second week in a row I did this, but I felt the recurring event was significant enough to bestow upon those two days (and any other future occurrences that may follow) the alliterative nickname “Mandu Mondays” today at lunch. Pretty cool name I think.

Anyways, the story begins on my way home made delightful by the fact that I would be sitting on a bench as opposed  to standing on the subway the whole ride home. It was at this bench where I was periodically removing my iPod earphones to make sure Taking Tiger Mountain wasn’t audible to the rest of the bench. I really hate sitting next to people whose drum machine-synth mixes leak out their headphones. My philosophy is that assuming others share the very same pet peeves as myself puts us one step closer to Utopian territory.

Then this kid (some would say he “happens to be black“) sits down next to me in the only vacant seat available. I didn’t notice it at the time, but he was considerably younger (my estimation clocks in at around 14) and shorter than I am.

He then nearly crawls up in a ball and hunched his back over in what looked like the most uncomfortable position one could possibly resort to in order to read a wallet-sized subway map. He reads it, scratches his dreadlocks and reads it again. The distance between the map and him is intimately close. He seems to be in distress. I ask if he needs help.

“No” he replies, without any eye contact or a pause. He’s not impressed by my perfect English, nor what I thought was a completely selfless offer of help. He responds as if I questioned his intelligence by asking him if he likes Tim Allen Christmas movies in a monotone word that interrupts his map-looking-head-scratching routine for a split second. My philosophy feels more valid then it did 5 minutes before; I never did like it when strangers came up and talked to me either.

As the P.A announces the next stop, a few more seats become available. The kid next to me jumps up and starts walking away, and I think about how weird it is that he would get off here, at a one-line station, since he had spent all that time looking at his map. Instead he hurries to an empty seat on a neighboring bench, and continues to look confused. I take that as a sign that he’s trying to avoid me, as if I was only a chapter of a series of racial hate crimes that day. I immediately change my iPod album to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

I think about approaching him in a friendly way and doing a combination of apologizing and clarifying that I had not meant any sort of offense if he felt I did (still not sure how that is possible). I come to conclusion that it is the best idea for the situation, but ultimately decide against it because I just don’t have the words for that. I get home. No new Smodcast this week caps off what the worst evening I’ve had in a while.

I’ve been thinking about this for the past couple of days, and my best guess is that the kid does experience a lot of negative attitude with racial overtones being an overwhelming minority in the overwhelmingly homogeneous country of South Korea on a day to day basis. To him, racial belittlement might have been the most logical archetype to fit my asking him is he needs help. All of this must get in your head pretty bad when you’re only about 13.

Lost in translation.

I feel bad. He feels bad. Neither of us meant it on each other. It kind of sucks.

I woke up well rested this morning for the first time this week. This is for two reasons:

1. I had the easiest schedule available today and the only homework I had was to study for a Human Anatomy Quiz.

2. I didn’t study for that Human Anatomy quiz.

I woke up so early I even had breakfast, which I recently calculated was something I do about somewhere between five to ten percent of the time. The past few days haven’t been the best example of this, because I had breakfast at senior retreat as well as this morning, which causes a huge rift in the statistics of the whole thing. Time and sleep are really things cutting into my breakfast hours, but I’m really trying to do this every morning. If only they had those Cheerios Bars available somewhere around here, I would probably eat every morning because that product has all the traits of a good meal: fast, and delicious. I don’t know where I was going with that. Basically, sleeping is awesome.

When I got home, I checked out the new trailer for Kevin Smith’s next flick Zack and Miri Make a Porno. And maybe it’s just the trailer that put me in this mind, but it sort of seemed like Smith was conforming to more modern Frat Pack comedy standards. But I’m not one of those people who believe Smith should be making Jay & Silent Bob movies at the Quickstop for the rest of his life, and I do like some of the Apatow productions that the trailer reminded me of so my impression was not a bad one. It’s weird that I almost took the movie’s lack of amateurish look as a negative point (especially since Clerks 2 looked way cleaner than his older movies, and I enjoyed that too). Overall, I’m looking forward to it based on the 2 minutes of the movie that I saw.

And now I have a bunch of homework, but instead I’m just re-watching a bunch of Jim Jarmusch shorts instead for the time being.