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Best Concert Ever?

Two technicians were working at a broadcast station. One had been working there for just a few years, while the other had been working there for over a decade. During a project to digitize archive video tapes, the veteran technician began to describe an amazing concert that the studio had reported on soon after he had started working there. As a musician himself, this technician had been to many, many concerts, and this had been, perhaps, the best one ever.

So the junior technician began a quest to find the archive video that would've included the news story about that concert. After some searching, he found it.

The most memorable part of the video was the very beginning. The story began by showing a completely abandoned area, and describing how the day looked completely ordinary in every way. As the story progressed, much of the focus was on interviewing one of the lesser known band members. There were maybe a few total seconds of actual concert footage, providing a glimpse of a popular song or two, but not in any way showing the size of the crowd, reactions from the crowd, or anything else that might indicate that the concert was even good, let alone the "best ever."

So if the eyewitness is to be believed, and if this was, in fact, an amazing concert, then perhaps we also could have called this article, "Worst News Story Ever."

Too Much Power

Let me begin by apologizing for not having a photo of the actual king crab legs referred to in this story. These are king crab legs, yes, but not THE king crab legs.

I would next like to mention that I don't eat crab. I can tolerate the taste in small amounts, but I'm not particularly fond of it. Furthermore, I don't like to put in the amount of effort required to, let's say, crack open a crab leg in exchange for the limited amount of meat that I get in return for that effort.

And that's what led to this story. I went with a few friends to a seafood restaurant and someone ordered a big plate of king crab legs. It looked much like this photo, except that the king crab legs were completely covered with a red sauce. And when I say completely covered, I mean completely covered.

One of my friends was struggling to crack open a particularly large king crab leg. I was asked to give it a try.

As my friend handed my the king crab leg and the tool, whatever it is called, she uttered a fateful word, "power."

Again, I don't eat crab legs. All I had to work with was a failed attempt by someone else and the word "power."

So I put the king crab leg into the tool, whatever it is called, and I squeezed.

The shell exploded all over the table, crossed the table, passed my friends on the other side of the table, and reached the wall behind them. Fortunately, no one got hurt by shell fragments. But, because of the generous coating of red sauce, the trail of destruction was highly evident.

There was red sauce on the wall. There was red sauce on clothing. And there was red sauce on faces.

It turns out I used a little too much power.

"Look! It's you!"

Before there was group Internet video calling, there was satellite television and landline speakerphones. In order to augment curricula while also saving money on teachers' salaries, high schools around the United States began having classes in which there were no actual teachers present. Instead, via satellite, one university professor would appear simultaneously in multiple classrooms. Students would watch the muted television, interact via speakerphone, and be monitored by local, salaried facilitators.

One day, while waiting for one of these virtual classes to start, I was just minding my own business. I recall looking down at my book or notebook or something, when I heard one of my fellow students exclaim, "look! It's you!" She also used my name, which is the part that got my attention.

I looked up, and I was shocked at what I saw: me!

While we were waiting for our professor, we were watching her university's student-created broadcast. If it weren't for the fact that I had never been to that university's State before, let alone to that actual university, plus I had never met the person standing next to "me" nor participated in the interview "I" was doing, I would've thought that was me.

I'm not saying that this guy simply looked remarkably like me; I'm saying that location-withheld video would've fooled my parents. That was definitely me, except for the fact that it wasn't.

If you've never seen your doppelganger, calling it surreal is an understatement.

Best Actress

And the award goes to... Keira Knightley!

(spoiler alert for the movie Begin Again)

We were watching the movie Begin Again, and in one scene Adam Levine's musician character had just returned from a trip that included recording a new love song. He began to play it for his girlfriend, Keira Knightley's character.

As we listened along with the characters, I was struck by the emotion in Keira's face. Without her character saying a word, and conveyed through her facial expression alone, I said out loud that there was no way that the song was her.

A mere moment later... slap! Right across Adam's character's face.

In a recent scene, we had been introduced to Adam's character's producers and their very attractive female assistant. It turns out that this assistant had also gone on this trip, and Adam's character cheated on his girlfriend with her.

So, as this new love song played, Keira's face showed the realization that her boyfriend was thinking of someone else. We were extremely impressed and, after the movie concluded, this was our first topic of conversation.

Imperfect Landmarks

The first time I walked down the random side streets of urban South Korea, my group realized that we needed a landmark in order to navigate back to our starting point. The sun had already set, and one landmark seemed to be the obvious choice. Nearby, we saw a church with a glowing, bright red cross on top. We assumed that we should be able to see that light from several blocks away, and therefore easily navigate backwards at the end of our evening.

It turns out, however, that churches are everywhere. And all of them have a glowing, bright red cross on top. Therefore, after walking several blocks and turning several corners, we looked around and saw multiple instances of what we had previously thought was the perfect landmark.

We were lost.

Over time I heard this exact same anecdote from multiple people, none of whom had been in my group that evening. It turns out that these glowing, bright red crosses are the imperfect landmark of choice for new arrivals. So if you travel to South Korea for the first time, my advice is to choose another landmark.

NOT made in Taiwan

An American was working in Korea. While visiting Taiwan, he went shopping for authentic Taiwanese souvenirs to give as gifts to Korean friends. Many products in America have "made in Taiwan" labels, so this should be fairly easy, right?

At the first location he noticed a display of jewelry trinkets. These would have been perfect to buy inexpensively in large numbers. As the pile of selected items grew, he finally noticed that one of them, ironically, had a "made in Korea" label. So he began checking all of the items, in fact the entire display, and every single item had a "made in Korea" label.

So, even though America has a plethora of "made in Taiwan" products, finding any such products while actually in Taiwan proved surprisingly difficult. And importing Korean products into Korea via Taiwan seemed to violate the spirit of giving Taiwanese souvenirs as gifts. It ended up taking several days, in fact, to actually buy souvenirs purportedly made in Taiwan.