I just realized that I neglected to put this on my blog, so now the circle is complete. I must say, I love this artwork — I have a feeling Giselle Potter found a headshot of mine on the internet, which explains my long hair, but how in the world did she nail my mother’s likeness? Giselle, you are amazing.
I’m back in the Sports Illustrated Tennis Mailbag, this time with a grammatical gripe!
The text:
Dear Jon, I got a bone to pick with tennis players, especially American and British tennis players. My beef is simple: the pervasive misuse of the adjective “aggressive” in our beloved sport. You can be aggressive, but you do not play aggressive—you play aggressively! I understand if non-native speakers don’t realize the distinction (Rafa is especially fond of leaving off the -ly) but in your podcast with Jared Donaldson, he says, “play aggressive” (10:08 mark). He was talking about Rafa, so perhaps it’s contagious. Jared’s not alone—John Isner’s guilty as well. And it doesn’t help that even journalists are making this error: “Q. This match, Jelena played very aggressive.” Granted, these writers may be foreign, but still. We need to aggressively rescue this adverb from further grammatical degradation!
—Sung, Washington, N.J.
Read Jon Wertheim’s response!
After listening to the latest season of the podcast You Must Remember This, which featured Jane Fonda, my wife and I thought it would be kind of neat to go through Fonda’s filmography. We started with her first real movie role on Walk on the Wild Side and after a few more films, arrived at…
Barbarella
This is one strange film.
So strange that I had to stop.
And feel terrible…
After half an hour, I’d had enough. A sexploitation film in every way, though I think what bothered me more than anything was that Fonda seemed 100% committed to the campy role with absolute seriousness. There’s something eerie about the juxtaposition. Not recommended.
Now for the rest — I’ve been meaning to see some of these movies for quite a while; we’re talking years for all but the newest (Alien: Covenant). I had some time last week, so it was a great joy to finally catch up to them.
Event Horizon
What an engine room!
Gotta love the spike decor.
Hellraiser in space.
Not what I expected. I mean I’d heard this was a horror movie set in space, in the vein of Alien, but I did not know how much Clive Barker influence it had (he was consulted, even, during pre-production). Laurence Fishburne was so young and thin! Recommended.
Alien: Covenant
I’ve seen this before
in Star Trek’s Data and Lore
with much less drooling.
I liked Prometheus better than this one. Not a bad movie, and Michael Fassbender is wonderful as always, but sadly predictable in just about every way. My favorite moment of the film was when Amy Seimetz, who plays Faris (and wife of Danny McBride’s Tennessee), in her dash to escape the alien, bangs her shoulder against a metal box in the hallway. It seemed so utterly real, her panic. Barely recommended.
Starship Troopers
Time to kill some bugs!
Wooden acting master class.
Hooray…fascism?
Wow, is the acting bad in this film. Helmed by Paul Verhoeven, who also directed Total Recall and Basic Instinct, you’d think that he’d know how to get a half-decent performances out of his young actors, but no, the leads are uniformly terrible, even Neal Patrick Harris. I couldn’t quite figure this movie out — it’s made to resemble a propaganda film, I guess to satirize the obvious fascism/Nazism imagery, but it almost seems like it’s celebrating it? It’s weird. And really bad, and not in a good way. Not recommended.
The Thirteenth Floor
Plot is tricky, and
D’Onofrio’s amazing
as geek and barkeep.
Craig Bierko is the lead in this film, but Vincent D’Onofrio, as always, steals every scene he’s in. I think everyone who knows movies knows about D’Onofrio, but he’s one of these actors that I wish was a household name. Four actors play dual parts in this movie, but D’Onofrio is the only one who really seems like two completely different people. There’s a twist in this movie that’s quite ingenious; I wish they went even farther with it, but I’ll take what I can get. Recommended.
The kind folks at The Korean Quarterly have printed an essay of mine in their summer issue. In case you aren’t familiar with the publication, here’s a primer:
Korean Quarterly is a non-profit quarterly newspaper, written by and about the Korean American community of the Twin Cities and upper Midwest. We define this community to include first and second generation Korean Americans and their families (including non-Korean family members), adopted Koreans and their families, and bi-racial/bi-cultural Korean American people.
The Korean Quarterly staff, contributors, and advisory board consist of first, 1.5 and second generation Korean Americans, adult adopted Koreans and adoptive parents of younger adopted Koreans.
Even though they have a presence on the internet, they publish their quarterly on newsprint only. You know, newsprint — that thing that we wrapped fish in, crumpled to pack boxes, and also read occasionally.
But since we live in modern times and since you cannot actually read my essay unless you subscribe to The Korean Quarterly, here it is, from paper to smartphone to Dropbox to my website. I suggest you click on the graphic in order to read it, since the type’s gonna be too tiny to read as is.
Froggy
A reflection on one woman and her love-hate relationship with a car
[FYI, it’s about my mom and her Volkswagen Beetle]
[image]
One of my favorite sports writers out there is Jon Wertheim, the gifted tennis scribe who does it all — commentating for Tennis Channel, writing bestsellers, and posting a weekly column on SI. This week, he picked my Long-Lost Sibling (LLS) suggestion for his mailbag!
They could totally be brothers. I have a feeling Karen could also wield a hammer quite well…
A Horn and a Wing
star-crossed lovers in wartime
trying to save their child.
I don’t read comic books often, but I think it’s about time I started to, because if they are anything like Saga, I’ve been missing out big time. Saga is written by Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by Fiona Staples, and it’s been going on for years (the title of the series is very apt) — since 2012. I just caught up to the last issue, #42, and it is a humdinger. Even though this story takes place in another world, in space, the kind of stuff you’d expect from comic books, it is extremely accessible and very much a story for our times. It’s got elements of Romeo and Juliet and Star Wars, and it’s just an epic, epic story. Great characters, exciting storylines, what we love about fiction.
She drives her car as
if the road does not exist.
All for a picnic.
A single suitcase.
Pink gown, pink slippers, for night.
Then we hear the scream.
Old movies, these two. Both by Alfred Hitchcock, and both starring Grace Kelly. To Catch a Thief felt a bit more dated than Rear Window; it is definitely the lesser of the two films, though still quite entertaining, especially the scene where Kelly drives Cary Grant to a picnic lunch. Even though I’d seen parts of Rear Window before, I never actually sat down to watch the whole movie from start to finish, and I must say, I think it’s my new favorite Hitchcock (Vertigo was my previous #1). Not only are the lines hilarious (especially Thelma Ritter’s Stella but really, all the characters), the movie is really about movies — how we all are voyeurs when we watch. The script is impeccable, the balance between humor and suspense just right. Also, there are times when Grace Kelly here is so incredibly beautiful that I almost had to avert my eyes! What great casting — she had to be the perfect woman, and she delivers in form and function. This is a very difficult part for Jimmy Stewart to play, too, as he’s stuck in that wheelchair and so much of his acting is subtle expressions. There are so many scenes where he has no one to act against, just himself with his camera or his binoculars, reacting to what he sees. Rear Window is just a gem of a movie. Roger Ebert, as always, does a fantastic job of reviewing this film. Watch it, and then read him.
The lovely folks at Slice were kind enough to conduct this interview with both myself and artist Dina Brodsky. Last fall, they published our work, Desert Places, in the magazine, and now you can read it online in addition to the interview. Here’s their intro:
After all of the pieces for an issue of Slice have been edited, we send them over to our art director, Jennifer K. Beal Davis, who then strikes up a dialogue between art and prose. Jennifer and associate art director Matt Davis have a knack for selecting artwork that invites the reader to look at a story, an essay, or a poem in an unexpected way.
When writer Sung J. Woo mentioned that he’d written some stories that were inspired by Dina Brodsky’s paintings, we were immediately intrigued. What if we could capture an even more deliberate conversation between writer and artist?
We published “Desert Places,” which is posted below, in Issue 19 of Slice. What follows is an interview between Sung and Dina about their collaborative creative process.
Read on!
[link]
Check out the latest batch of my ekphrastic endeavor in Columbia Journal, the magazine published by Columbia University School of the Arts Graduate Writing program. It’s available online, three little interrelated stories inspired by the fantastic paintings of Dina Brodsky. FYI, the first ten of these flash fiction stories can be found in Juked.
Thank you, Google Alerts, for letting me know that on Monday, February 6th in San Diego, CA, Write Out Loud will be reading my short story “Paris, at Night” as part of their story concert series. You can read more about it on BroadwayWorld San Diego. Here’s the excerpt:
Paris at Night by Sung J. Woo – read by Walter Ritter
This futuristic story presents a couple about to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. She dreams of seeing Paris at night; he ponders, “What can I do to make this happen?” A surprising examination of the power of love, and the importance of memories…
And here’s a bit about the company that’s putting it on.
Write Out Loud – an organization founded in 2007 with a commitment to inspire, challenge and entertain by reading short stories aloud for a live audience – announces THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE, the fourth production in their 10th Anniversary Season. Write Out Loud Story Concerts bring literature to life – aloud – with rehearsed readings by professional actors. Each program explores specific themes by weaving a variety of stories, poems and music together into a literary tapestry. David Fenner, Jeffrey Howard Ingman, Veronica Murphy and Walter Ritter will perform. A pre-show reception starts at 6:15pm with a 7:00pm curtain.
One of the other stories that they chose is by P.G. Wodehouse, so this is quite an honor. I only wish I could be there to hear it performed.
[additional link – San Diego Reader]
Better late than never: Here’s a list of my top songs for this year, in an order that might be surprisingly mixable. These are not necessarily from 2016; I just happened to have heard them in the last twelve months.
Fronteras, by Gaby Moreno on Ilusion
Million Reasons, by Lady Gaga on Joanne
Lady Wood, by Tove Lo on Lady Wood
Move Your Body, by Sia on This Is Acting
Hold My Hand, by Jess Glynne on I Cry When I Laugh
Until the Day Dims (Heavy Hands Remix), by The Woodlands on Heavy Hands Remix
Gimmie Love, by Carly Rae Jepsen on Emotion
A Happy Place, by Katie Melua on The House
Fight Song, by Rachel Platten on Wildfire
School Friends, by Now, Now on Threads
James, by Maggie Rogers on Blood Ballet
We’ve Only Just Begun, by the Carpenters on The Essential Collection
Open, by Rhye on Woman
Hold You Tonight, by The Woodlands on Gems and Bones
Hollywood, by Grouplove on Big Mess
Almost Makes Me Wish for Rain, by Lucius on Good Grief
Still Falling for You, by Ellie Goulding on Bridget Jones’s Baby Soundtrack
Used to Love You, by Gwen Stefani on This Is What the Truth Feels Like
Mayhem, by Imelda May on Mayhem
Lone Ranger, by Rachel Platten on Wildfire
Maybe This Christmas, by Tracey Thorn on Tinsel and Lights
She’s Got You, by Rhiannon Giddens on Tomorrow Is My Turn
The highlight this year is Tove Lo’s “Lady Wood,” which has some serious sonic landscapes. Tove Lo also wrote another song here, the Ellie-Goulding-helmed “Still Falling for You.” Ms. Lo is at the top of her game.
