One of my favorite people is Alex Kang. You may know him as the extra sleepy boy from my Facebook photo galleries. He has also been the podcasting voice of UC Merced; bartender par excellence for many a boozy college kid party; UC Merced alumnus;  webmaster extraordinaire; graphics designer of some renown; and a generally over-confident, frustrating, cocky, humble, charming, over-enthusiastic, hard-working, dedicated, inspiring, mockable, loveable, smackable young man. He is awesome, and at the same time completely jacked up in ways that only authentically good people can be. Anywho-I am enamored. He is one of those UC Merced student denizens, like mrngoitall, wizputer, ihsu, azncowcompactor, acauroroa, brydeezy, efferman, dsantiago, crispy, yaasha, lulu, and kimmy, who make what we do at UC Merced seem worthwhile. When I get down about what a mess UC Merced is and what a colossal life draining pit of deepest darkest hell it can be I draw strength and hope and cheer from these wonderful students and alumni who are why we do what we do and why we continue to work to be what we can be.  ANYWAY.

I had the great pleasure of having dinner and a movie over at the golfball pad the other night. Akang lives in one of those overbuilt under-occupied housing developments that litter Merced. Sad, incomplete developments of mini-mcmansions crunched up tightly to each other full of opportunistic carpetbagging absent landlords and overreaching hopeful economic victims. 3600 sq feet of now student housing next to empty lots with frayed copper cables and haphazardly capped plumbing pipes overgrown with shaggy weeds and not recently roto-tilled soil. If there is a ground zero of the economic morass of 2008 it is Merced. Greed and opportunity mixed together with the most atavistic new frontier american dream impulses – put it in the oven and you get these bridgeview, belleview ranch, fairstone, breachweather, hideous grasping ambitious soulsucking enclaves of mortgage hell. But that isn’t really the point here. We had Korean barbecue (really marinated slices of beef shortribs)—the recipe itself a rich  story of first generation Korean Immigrants seeking the American dream in a central valley restaurant experience that became a painful lesson in ambition unfulfilled. Eating that tender, flavorful beef prepared by this wonderful young man, so stricken with internalized oppression, such a product of what America is and so rightly proud of his family and accomplishments yet at the same time so deeply embarrassed by his origins and so unconsciously shaped by what he is, what he is expected to be, what he thinks he is versus what he really he is versus what he wishes people to see him as versus the culture/history/society that shapes him – well, it was a seminal meal. These slices of beef, prepared by this wonderful young man, from flesh soaked in a marinade created by his hardworking mother from a secret recipe much loved, so respected that it was the foundation for a restaurant that embodied the upwardly mobile hopes of this Korean immigrant, well educated, hard working, stiff-necked, proud, prideful, over-confident, wonderfully accomplished family – it was like taking in life and hope and desire and dreams.  It was taking in the hopes unfulfilled, the dreams deferred, the anger distilled. These slightly cold plates of sauteed beef, accompanied with white rice and steamed carrots and celery, an ascetic meal that was a history and a culture and family and an individual and a promise and a frustration and a failure on a smoked glass table haphazardly positioned next to an oversized over-pillowed sectional broken apart for comfort not function. We sat and ate, I brought  a bourgeoisie loaf of tiny wheat bread paired with creamy brie and an herbed sundried tomato goatcheese log. Pomegranate juice and water, Ketel one vodka and cointreau left untouched although chilled in the civilized manner deep in the freezer. We sat on stiff backed chairs in front of the overly large oldschool tube tv, left for the rental occupants by the absentee landlord. We sat and shared a meal of who we are and chose from a selection of DVD’s – a blockbuster, indie art house films, a bold thriller, foreign cinema –Hong Kong, Japan, Korea – brought by the pretentious cinephile to enlighten and entertain and impress and maybe even shame this wonderful young man. Of course it was the blockbuster the young man selected, a movie that in the not-seeing was a story of a burgeoning friendship and a test and a challenge and an obstacle overcome. A movie that was finally seen and enjoyed…some men just want to see the world burn and sometimes we say one thing and mean another, feel one thing and hide it, tamp it down, suppress it, and then let it burn. Ah well. The meal was one of hope and anger and family and love and hope and hurt and yearning and life. It was all this and more and all this and less. Awkwardly comfortable and suspiciously familiar. I had a wonderful time.

Also, Golfball pulled a package of eggs from this fridge, in this house he occupied late in the game, joined midstream, a house occupied by acquaintances, now left empty but for the wonderful young man. This package of eggs – with an expiry date of impossibility. The year imprinted on the edge of the styrofoam carton – October 25 1951. These farmfresh! double AA eggs, expired in 1951 – the same year Seoul was lost in Korea, the beginning of the stalemate that led to the the end of the conflict. the year of the Chinese  entry and major offensives, it was Heartbreak Ridge and Bloody Ridge and the October testing of nuclear weapons in Operation Hudson Harbor, the beginning of the end. 1951. The conflict that led to the immigrants, the conflict that led to this wonderful young man being here in this place at this time. The eggs nestled in their styrofoam carton, the eggs with the impossible expiration date of 1951, the remaining eggs, the wonderful young man tossed the carton into the stainless steel trash can. 1951? Surely they were beyond their useful life. What was cracked open in 1951 echoing now – even if the echo was unnoticed at the time. I had a wonderful time.