I was hoping to see some seals or sharks, or even a shark eating a seal but the only animal life was humans and seagulls.  I would have settled for seagulls eating humans but alas, it wasn’t to be.

A week later we tried to drive to Runyon Canyon to look at the sunset but I got lost and instead we ended up in some weird pulloff on Laurel Canyon.

I like all the mountains in Southern California.  In many ways Los Angeles is very similar to Seoul.  Maybe that’s why so many Korean people live in L.A.

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It’s perfectly valid to disagree with Secretary Rice on her policy views, but trivializing her accomplishments by dissing on her face is what I would expect of a buffoon like Don Imus.  Raise your hand if you’ve reversed a $20 million budget deficit at an elite research university.  I didn’t think so.

Now Governor Palin is being subjected to the same frat-boy treatment.  Like any troglodyte on frat row Joe Biden is talking about her appearance because that’s the easiest way to trivialize a woman’s accomplishments.  No fat chicks, right Joe?

WTF?  What do her looks have to do with anything?    It’s so trite.  So disappointing.

At first I pooh-poohed the Clinton camps claims of sexism in the DNC, but the more I think about it the more irritated I become.

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Fast forward to today. My uncle took me and my nephews out to a fancy seafood restaurant in Seoul. During grace my nephews started to whack each other in the crotch. I was all, “what are you doing that for?” And they were all, “it’s the ‘bearclaw’ technique!” I guess it’s something they learned in Taekwondo class.

Later that afternoon I was hanging around my sister’s apartment. I got up to get a drink of water when this happened:

That’s my namesake nephew applying the Bearclaw technique to his dear old uncle. The little scamp. I guess this is what is sometimes referred to as “just desserts”.

Speaking of dessert, I forgot to mention that the aforementioned fancy restaurant had freshly baked madelines in the dessert table. Madelines please me much more than Bearclaws.

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After the convenience store, I walked to this water park in the middle of downtown Seoul.  This little plaza used to be a fetid cesspool of decay.  Then the former mayor of Seoul made it into a promenade with running water and green things that aren’t algae.  The former mayor is now the president of South Korea and everyone hates him for no reason that I can fathom.

There’s a street market called Insadong with a huge building full of musical instruments.  Korean people must love to shred because there were literally hundreds of thousands of guitars. This is one shop out of maybe 500 similar shops.

Lots of downtown Seoul looks helter-skelter with new and old buildings all jumbled together.

Here’s a weird mall that’s like the Guggenheim in that you walk up a circular ramp to get to all of the stores which all seem to sell some form of worthless knick-knack.  There are a lot of tourists here.

Some parts of downtown Seoul are very modern.  Downtown is more like Vancouver than New York.

I took a cable car up to the top of Namsan mountain.  There’s an observatory there where lovers go to profess their undying love.  The intertwined-locks symbolize that nothing can ever tear the couple apart.

Seoul is a city of 11 million people - almost 50% bigger than New York City.  It’s unimaginably huge.  The observatory where I took this picture is circular and for 360 degrees it looks just like this.

I ate shortribs for dinner and I was doubled over in pain from eating too much.

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Here’s another view of the paddies. They go all the way to the little town at the base of the gigantic mountain back there.

These stairs go up to a burial site and the signpost says who’s buried up there.

Here’s where my grandparents are buried. On the back of the tombstone there are inscriptions which basically map out a geneaology of their family line. I’m on there too along with all my sisters and cousins. When nobody was looking I chiseled a big “#1″ next to my name.

Afterwards we went to lunch in this little town. We went to a restaurant that specialized in blood sausage. I really wanted to take a picture of the blood sausage but it seemed too socially transgressive to pull out my camera during a solemn occasion. Instead I wandered around and found these big-ass pots. I don’t know what they’re for.

After lunch we went to this mountain preserve-type area. I guess my grandfather was a dedicated naturalist and he locked down thousands of acres of forest land which can never be developed on. He also planted a lot of pine trees. There’s a kind of retreat center there and some walking paths.

On the way back to Seoul we got stuck in traffic and I noticed this ad on the side of a truck. I wish pumping gas made me feel this sassified!

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