zergs and protoss and terrans, oh my!

dear friends. there is something you may not know about korea, something you may find surprising. for some of you, this very thing may well make you (you know who you are) want to drop everything to move here in search of fame and fortune.

you see, in korea, you can get paid to play video games.

you can get paid lots of money.

you can become a nationally recognized celebrity worthy of photo spreads in Tiger Beat-esque publications for being a video game superstar, like the studly and possibly still pre-pubescent “bisu.”

all you have to do is be really, really exceptionally good at starcraft, a game everyone and their brother thought was awesome… in 1998.

curious as to what a show-down between the best of the best in korea’s unofficial national past-time, e-sports, looked like, i headed to the 2009-2010 starcraft league final this weekend.

this was the set-up of the stage: each guy in his own soundproof space capsule, fingers tapping faster than the eye could see (that about 374 apm for you nerds out there).

among the thousands in attendance, there was agony…

depression…

suspense…

and abject despair.

the wi-fi provider Alleh-sponsored rolsters cleaned up nicely.

hip! hip! hooray!

gwangali beach was littered with streamers and broken dreams.

in other news, my pal alex brown has been in the icu since thursday morning. i made a call from this pay phone daily after visiting him. think nice things for him, as he feels pretty icky. though he did describe some pretty funky sounding delusions, they’d probably only be fun to have if not in morphine-level pain.

on the way to the hospital, i bought some corn on the cob so disgusting, it made me want to destroy all the rest of the corn in the world so as to prevent anyone from ever replicating it. instead, i put it on my front teeth and made funny faces on the train.