Comedy & Korean Cuisine: Adventures in California

This post will be a short mish-mash of updates. Maybe I ought to come up with a title for posts like this. "What's Up With Christina?" Gotta work on that...

If you follow me on Twitter, you might know that I spent this past weekend in California. My sister wanted to visit Stanford & UC Berkeley, and I was dragged along.

The campuses of both San Jose-area colleges were beautiful, and the weather was great. Our hotel was very cool (with East Asian decoration), and though I missed visiting the pumpkin patch, the stay was nice.

We arrived to California Thursday evening, and woke up bright and early on Friday to visit Stanford. We spent several hours on campus, and chose to hang around the hotel rather, driving up to Berkeley on Saturday. I lay in bed and read a little of "Crossed", the second book of Ally Condie's Matched series. I'd just devoured "Matched", the series' first installment, in about two days. Unfortunately, as is the usual case with sequels, "Crossed" wasn't quite as exciting as I'd hoped. I was also iffy about the POV, which is split between two major characters.

Out of some frustration but mostly tiredness, I dropped "Crossed" to watch the vice presidential debate with my mother and sister. While watching, my mother criticized one of the nominees, and I wondered how SNL would work with the material.

This is because, lately, I've been watching more comedy. I love SNL's polticial gags, as well as Catherine Tate's Lauren Cooper sketches. (This is my favorite - it's best if you're a Doctor Who fan familiar with Tate's other LC sketches.)

I bring this up because, in the past, I don't think I gave comedy quite enough credit. Though some shows' jokes are unoriginal and occasionally perverse, there's some great material out there. I've begun to have real respect for shows like The Office, which uses understated humor based on different personalities. Comedians need to understand characters and conflict, and I think every writer could learn a thing or two from comedy. After all, humor in writing can be a very difficult thing to achieve.

Anyway. After watching the VP debate and mulling over the pros of comedy, my family headed out for dinner. My mother had done a bit of research into restaurants in the area, and right near the hotel was a heavily-recommended Korean BBQ.

Unfortunately, the place wasn't vegetarian, a fact which my mother had misunderstood. She ordered a chicken dish and my sister a broth with tofu, but I had to special order. (It can be difficult to be a vegetarian who doesn't like tofu.) I asked for a broth with dumplings - or, rather, my mother did.

While we waited, a few dishes of potatoes, rice, and noodles were set out, all surprisingly tasty. I'd only ever gone to one Korean BBQ previously, near my house, and hated it. (Maybe because the latter is owned by a Japanese family.) Then my dumplings arrived, and I tried one... and freaked out.

The dumplings' filling tasted like meat. I split open two or three dumplings, and the contents looked like meat as well. For several minutes I sat petrified, waiting for our waitress to pass by again. My mother noticed my behavior and volunteered to try the dumpling, but only vaguely said that she couldn't tell what the filling was.

I was suspicious mainly because of previous mix-ups at Asian restaurants. I knew a mix-up was possible here, too, because of my unusual order. Thankfully, it turned out the filling was only fake meat - designed to taste and look like the real thing - but I was still happy the next day to fly home, where I could stay safe heating up my own nachos in the microwave.

Thoughts on the debate? Comedy? Korean cuisine?