Busan Blues

This past weekend I went to Busan, the second largest city in Korea in search of fun and adventure. I was fortunate enough to be accompanied by Rachel and my swell new friends, Jason & Oakley.

We took the bullet train from downtown Seoul to Busan. We caught the equivalent of the red eye as we departed from Seoul on one of the last trains. Departure 9:40, arrival 12:30. Spirits and expectations were high. We had heard that the train was equipped with a snack cart that sells beer, but an hour and a half into the trip, there was no such thing in site. The anxiety of catching a glimpse of the snack lady started to give way to disappointment as it appeared the mythical cart would never appear. Finally, the cart appeared sparkling with beer. The weekend was off to a good start. Fearing that the cart would continue to be as elusive as it had for the first stretch of the trip, I quickly ordered three beers. After a quick glimpse of what appeared to be a mixture of surprise and disapproval, the pro handed me my beers. I drank those and then had two more.

Looking real self satisfied after my 5th beer

Posin' in the photo zone

This is Oakley. He rules. He also has an inexplicably strong dislike for having his photo taken. He probably hates that this is on the internet for all to admire, but fuck it. He'll get over it.

Jason and I engaged in my signature move: Back 2 Back shredding. I can't recollect exactly what song this shredding was accompanied by, but I do remember that Night Train and Dancing in the Streets were in the mix. The rokes joint was a pretty shady little affair. The jams were only 10 bones for the hour, but you had to order a big ol' plate of food and some of their shitty expensive drinks. Not to one to be had, I managed to sneak a bottle of Johnny Walker Black in the old trousers.

After the rokes we took in Busan's natural beauty at the beach. There is absolutely no fucking smoking there. You can however, drink as much as you like, which is exactly what we did.

I buy American.

This was the juncture in the evening where I became hell bent on taking a picture of myself totally horizontal in the air. I'm not really too sure what all went down here, but it looks like I blew it.

I think this was about as close as we got to capturing my ambitions. While I don't think I managed to accomplish my goal during this shot, I do fairly accurately recall damn near getting the wind knocked out of me. Bummer.

It was a pretty excellent evening.

The next day I think we all felt a little of kilter. These feelings of intense mediocrity were combated with an assault of abalone porridge and coin operated bumper cars.

Going dumb on an intergalactic spacecraft. No big deal.

The Three Amigos.

Rachel calls this our band shot, although I remember it more as the self timer shot that I farted during. Jason thought it was pretty funny.

We met up with some folks that Oakley had met via Last Fm. They all turned out to be very hospitable folks with excellent taste in music and culture. The young lady on the far right of the photo is an assistant director who was scouting locations for a film to be shot in Busan this December. She was a real nice gal.

This is Dan. There was some major name redundancy happening at this party. Two Daniels, Two Jason's, Two Rachels, & and a man that went by the name of Oak to compliment our Oakley.

This is Rachel with the other Rachel. They were both wasted at this point, no question. The other Rachel gave us a nice little chap book she had made along with some of her friends in Busan. It's called The Hotdog Catalog. If you'd like to contribute email her at: wilma.henn@gmail.com

Jason- A fine Knoxvillian and friend.

This is the other Jason. Apparently he lived in Portland for a pretty long stretch just before he left for Korea. He was a man of polite manners and discerning taste. We talked a great deal about westerns, portland, and rock & roll. Trifecta.

This is Oak and David. Oak is a big fan of online networking and music. David is a big fan of getting wasted and dancing like Mary Poppins all over the god damn place.

This is Kong. I thought he was handsome.

The man front and center is Matt Jones. He used to work at Ecstatic Peace and was in a band called Baby Jesus Burnout. One of the former drummers for Sebadoh was in it. You can listen to them at MySpace if you are so inclined. I liked Mr. Jones. He was a very affable man with good conversational skills. We're still in touch.

Oh here's a good Matt Jones story. About 5 minutes into meeting Oak and Matt a discussion arose regarding Matt's likeness to various celebrities. It was debated as to whether he resembled Phillip Seymour Hoffman or Brad Pitt. I don't really see either one too intensely, but go figure.

I bought 6 shitty roman candles for 5 bucks. It was too much damn trouble to light the things with all the wind and such, so I more or less lost interest after two of them. After I had grown tired of the candles, I took a little dip the Pacific and strangely found myself taking loads of pictures with similarly minded Koreans. Those pics are currently MIA, but hopefully, i'll wrangle some of those up in the near future.

Busan was fun.