Bender died this weekend. I'm not certain about this, but it's the only legitimate excuse for him not sleeping on my couch. We were supposed to meet up with this Korean girl my friend Elliot from home knew from work. This was Friday night. I was pretty excited because it was Club Night and as everyone knows, I'm a huge clubber. Club Night it once a month in Hongdae, downtown where, um, all the clubs are located. It costs 15 bucks to get into a bunch of clubs and you get a free drink. Bender never made it because he was "sick". I get to the subway station at 11 and this girl, Lizzy, is already at a club. I give her a call, say I'm at the station, I need directions to the club. "Can't you just ask someone?" she says. Ok, sure. Only problem is I couldn't really hear her on the phone, she said she was at Club M?. I think there's a bunch of clubs that begin with M down there so I'm already off to a great start. I finally found a couple guys who spoke English who directed me to M2 and it then took me a good 20 minutes to get there. I'm standing outside and give Lizzy a call again, "Hey I'm outside M2, is this the right place?" "Noo, it's M-something inaudible." "Ok, I really can't hear you." At this point, I'm pretty sure she hung up on me. I send her a text message asking for the location. No response. So things were going splendidly. It's now 12:30am. The subway is closed, I'm a $20 cab ride from home and I'm by myself. So I did the obvious thing: I bought a bottle of soju and a can of pepsi from the convenience store and drank it out front. Now it's legal to walk around with alcohol in Seoul, but I learned that standing outside the mini-mart at midnight pounding a bottle of soju is not normal behavior. Everyone who walked by was laughing at me. This stopped bothering me after a few minutes, mainly because I put a dent in the soju. When I finished being weird, I walked into the nearest club. And then I danced until 5:30 a.m. I knew I was there too long when the same songs had been played three times already. Oh, I also met a German guy who makes Bender look like Gary Coleman. He was 6-7 and he could have palmed my entire body.

Last night I continued my explore Seoul on my own weekend. I went to the DragonBar around the block, where they were having a second anniversary party. Five seconds after I walked in, I was deep in conversation with three Koreans about how great video games are. In many ways, walking into parties or bars here reminds me of college. In college, everyone looked because I was that obnoxious newspaper guy who wrote about bodily functions. Here, they look because of my skin color. And just as it was in college, I have a love-hate attitude to the attention. Sometimes I revel in it and other times, I just want to be part of the crowd. Anyway, this DragonBar is like many of the bars here. It's not a normal come in order a drink and sit down kind of place. It's more of a freak show with bottles being thrown everywhere, fireworks (sparklers) being passed around, fire coming out of glasses. It's all good, except for when the bartenders are putting on this show for a half hour and it's next to impossible to get a drink. At some point during this mayhem last night, one of the bartenders put this blue drink in front of me and then everyone in the bar started looking at me and clapping. Some dude with a microphone said something about taking the drink as shot and then I'd get a prize or something. Even though the guy who had made the drink had definitely put the lemon that was now in the drink in his mouth, I couldn't turn down the challenge. So I pounded the thing, but someone said I didn't it Korean style, so I didn't get a prize, oh well. One of the Korean guys I met there kept asking me if I wanted to have a threesome. That was strange. Eventually I went to another bar with an American guy I had also met at Dragon. He came to Korea on vacation to visit his Japanese girlfriend. But when he got here, he found out she had a new job: prostitute.

(Photos- top- the bartenders at Dragon and a shot from Club Night)