All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
For fans of DJ Format and his work with Abdominal, here’s another fun video, this one featuring Canadian emcee D-Sisive:My colleague tells me that the speech Ambassador Kim delivered on April 7 was featured on one of the lead stories on that evening’s newscast from KBS, the leading Korean network. You can see the video here. (Click on either “300K” or “56K.” Might only work with Internet Explorer.) The quote from the speech is at about 0:48.
For the full speech, click here (RealPlayer required) and skip forward to 1:09:28 and hang on for just over 16 minutes of thrills, chills and awkward mispronunciations.
A couple of new speeches are up, including Ambassador Kim Sam-hoon’s statement in the General Assembly on UN reform, which actually stirred up some press coverage, at least in Korea (see articles in the Chosun Ilbo and Korea Times).
From an entirely vain and mercenary point of view, I’m pleased that words I wrote and edited have landed in the papers. This fight over Security Council reform will only get louder and nastier, so this may not be the last time, either.
Amazon’s new (or at least new to me) restaurant listings aren’t quite as important in the grand scheme of things as 24-hour food delivery, but they do have one amazing feature: you can actually look at the menus.
How cool is that? Instead of relying on vague listings that tell you only the sort of cuisine and that the restaurant is “moderate to expensive,” you can now go online and find out whether a given restaurant actually serves anything you want to eat at a price you’re willing to pay.
Among my duties here at the Mission is the composition of notes verbales, which are unsigned letters from one diplomatic mission or government to another. The actual content can usually be summed up in a sentence or two, but the note verbale is a peculiarly formal document, and I have to admit that I’ve developed a certain fondness for its elaborate charms.
A typical note verbal goes something like this:
The Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations presents its compliments to the Permanent Mission of the [Country] to the United Nations and has the honour to inform the latter that [something or other, usually involving mutual support in elections to various UN bodies].
The Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations avails itself of this opportunity to renew to the Permanent Mission of the Republic of [Country] to the United Nations the assurances of its highest consideration.
5 April 2005
New York
Note that the date and the “honour” are British. Note also that this lovey-dovey boilerplate gets sent back and forth between countries that don’t like each other much — although I have yet to send one to North Korea. But that, I suppose, is much of the point of the UN: it’s a place where all the different countries get their officials together to practice speaking to each other in a dignified manner. How effective this is at preventing conflict, I have no idea, but it’s kind of fun to write.
So how do you say “Wojtyla” anyway?
For those of us who get most of our news from textual sources rather than TV and radio, pronunciation can be a problem. How to name-drop people like Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono or Cardinal Francis Arinze at parties?
Okay, so maybe you don’t go to the sorts of parties where this comes up. But in case you do, you’ll be glad to know about the Voice of America Pronunciation Guide (click on the short list to get the latest newsy names). Here’s a good example:
Karol Wojtyla (RealPlayer required)
The guide does tends toward the pedantic: the proper Russian pronunciation of “Mikhail Gorbachev” may be mihk-hah-EEL gahr-bah-CHAH-F (RealPlayer required), but unless you’re actually Russian, you’ll sound like a dork if you say it that way. Still, it’s a handy little tool, and where else can you go to find out how to say Tadeusz Mazowiecki?
According to this AP article (sent to me by Daniel Kleinfeld), a health insurer in West Virginia is running a study of Dance Dance Revolution as a weight-loss tool for obese kids. They also quote a P.E. teacher who says that DDR attracts kids who don’t like most other sports.
And the revolution rolls on …
Yesterday, Jenny and I went to the Asian Art Fair at the Seventh Regiment Armory at Park Avenue and 67th Street. The centerpiece of New York’s Asia Week (click on the link, then scroll down for an excellent slide show), the fair gathers some of the world’s leading dealers of Asian art, and it was fascinating to see these rare, privately held works, and to hear them discussed in a way that is totally different from what you overhear in museum shows. Instead of academic talk about origins and expression, there was much back-and-forth about provenance, price (people batted six- and seven-figure numbers about) and the thrill of the chase.
We were lucky enough to get our admission free simply by joining a tour offered by the Korea Society, which essentially consisted of visits to the three booths focusing on Korean art. It occurred to us that, at least for Americans, Jenny and I are pretty knowledgeable about Korean art: we’ve been to the major museums in Seoul and Kyeongju, to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and to the Metropolitan’s scant collection. The only major repository of Korean art that we haven’t visited is Japan. But there is relatively little surviving Korean art anywhere, and until recently, no Western museums focused much attention on Korean art. As such, many of the best objects remain in private collections.
Each of the three exhibitors offered unique pieces. Probably the most surprising was a small Koryo celadon sculpture of a monk (pictured above). Celadon sculptures are extremely unusual, and the material is of course prone to damage, so a complete, unbroken sculpture in celadon is almost miraculous. Another exhibitor had in her collection a number of high-quality paintings, including a beautiful portrait of a Joseon-era military official from the 18th century. The collection in any one of these three small booths beats the entire Metropolitan collection of Korean art (although the Met does boast some very old bronze pieces).
Other amazing works in the show included John Eskenazi’s superb collection of Gandharan and South Asian art, including Buddhist sculptures from the third through fifth centuries that clearly showed the Greek provenance of the classical image of the Buddha in lotus position with top-knot. There were also spectacular Japanese artifacts and a stunning array of Tang-period and earlier Chinese sculpture.
If you’re interested in Asian art and have a chance to go to the fair this year, do. If you can’t make it, plan to go next year.
Casual fans of Fiona Apple may wonder where she’s disappeared to. The last record, When the Pawn …, came out in 1999, and since then, there’s been, well, not a whole lot.
It turns out that there is, in fact, a new Fiona Apple album. It’s essentially finished and has been for some time, but Sony has decided that it doesn’t have commercial appeal ? there’s no single ? so they’re sitting on it.
But it turns out Fiona’s fan base is stronger and more loyal than perhaps Sony expected. There’s an online Free Fiona campaign, but more importantly, the album has been leaked, and now you can hear it for yourself: