A Few Fab Faces

I just spent the last four days writing a rambling screed against gay culture and community (whatever that is) and I have decided  not to publish it.  Nobody really wants to see that shizz, and they certainly don't care about my opinion. 

Instead, here are some gorgeous faces,  and a pair of bonus legs.

Fever!

What does a person do with his or herself when they are on a two week vacation with no money, and crippling pain?  If that person is me,  that person watches hours and hours of Korean Drama.  I promise you that no one is paying me to say this,  but I think the best place on the internet for K-Pop, K-Drama,  and international TV in general (they have a large Latino section, currently featuring the huge hit from Spain, Red Eagle)  is Drama Fever.  It's not just a great place to watch your Dramas, they have blogs, polls, contests, recaps, and they make it easy to keep track of your favorite shows and your favorite stars. They also have a Roku app so you can stream directly to your TV, and an iOS app which I use with Apple TV to stream to my big screen TV.  Basically, Drama Fever is awesome. You can choose between a free and a premium version, both great, but the premium version, which eliminates ads and gives you earlier access to new episodes is well worth the price.  And I repeat, I am getting nothing in return for this endorsement, so don't even.

So, this is my Holy Trinity of K Drama, at the moment:

Lee Jong Suk, who I featured a few weeks ago, is the beautiful beanpole star of I Hear Your Voice,  or I Can Hear Your Voice, depending on the translator.  I Hear Your Voice came to a very satisfying conclusion last week,  and one of the highlights of my awful vacation was lying on my bed of pain and sobbing through the last two episodes.  I admit it,  I'm a crier.   Next I'll be watching him in last year's School 2013.  He's got several upcoming projects,  including a film called No Breathing, which is about competitive swimming.  Which means swim suits.  Just saying.

In case I didn't mention it, the entire cast of I Hear Your Voice is excellent, and I mean right down to the smallest role, but especially Lee Bo Young as the heroine, and Yoon Sang Hyun as the second lead, who was completely deserving but not fated to get the girl.

Lee Min Ho is easily the least boyish of my fave trio,  but what a gorgeous, gorgeous man.  I first encountered him in Boys Over Flowers,  which was the first  K-Drama that made me lose my mind.  The  thing about his role in Boys Over Flowers is that in the beginning he was such a jerk that even though my brain told me that he was the one who would eventually get the girl, I couldn't quite piece together how he would ever convince me that it wasn't an outrage.   I wasn't quite prepared for his skills, his ability to be haughty and confused and manly and child-like and love-struck and a d-bag and a sweetheart all at the same time.  I suggest you follow up Boys Over Flowers with the action drama City Hunter. 

Yoo Ah In is my latest crush, and you know he's got to have something special going for him because he's the only reason that I have been sitting through episode after episode of the abysmal Fashion King.  Fashion King seems to be a perfect example of how to get everything wrong, and it all starts with the characters,  not one of whom is likable.   I take that back.  Yoo Ah In is likeable simply by the force of his own will.  He's supposed to be a lovable rogue type, but even though you can't miss that he is imposing considerable charm on the character, you realize that the character is just awful.  It doesn't help that the heroine is  a complete dish rag, never standing up for herself in a meaningful way, and crying in almost every scene.  I don't care what happens to her, I just want her to go away. I refuse to even type the actress's name.

It turns out that pretty much everybody hates Fashion King.  It was a ratings failure in Korea and the finale elicited howls of outrage from the few fans the show had left by the time it aired. Why am I watching it, then? Well, in the first episode, Yoo Ah In took off his clothes three times.  In each of the following three episodes he got nekkid at least once and often several times.   It was a bait and switch though. Ever since the fourth episode he has remained stubbornly clothed.  Grrrrr. I keep thinking the clothes have to come off again sometime, right? 

In Which I Interview Myself

Q: What the hell, Vera! Where have you been? You said you'd be blogging more regularly.

A: Yes, that is true, but then things happened.

Q: Things?

A: Yes. Several things, actually.  All at once.

Q:  What kind of things?

A:  Let's start with identity theft.

Q: You stole some one's identity?

A: No.  I wish.

Q: Someone stole your identity?

A: Yes. They got access to my debit card number and cleaned all the money out of my account.

Q:  That must suck.  Did you get it resolved?

A: If by "resolved" you mean did I get my money back, the answer is no.

Q:  Too bad.

A: You're telling me.

Q:  So,  what else happened?

A: Well, there was another rather large financial reversal that I was not expecting and which couldn't have come at a worse time, but I'm not giving details about that.

Q: OK.

A: And there was the thing with my inherited cat.

Q: You have a cat?

A: Believe me, I never thought I'd live to see the day.

Q: Is the cat all right?

A: The cat is fine.  Now ask me about my six year old nephew, who the cat bit.

Q:  What about him?

A: He had to spend a night in the hospital on an antibiotic drip.

Q: Oh dear.

A: And speaking of hospitals...

Q: Uh oh.

A:  Did I mention that I was on a two-week vacation?

Q: No.

A:  I was. I didn't have big plans, but I had plans, none of which came to fruition.

Q: Because of the money?

A: Partially.  But mostly because of my  little medical emergency.

Q:  What?

A:  On the second night of my vacation I woke up in excruciating pain. My ankle was all swollen and throbbing.  It took me five minutes to hobble to the bathroom. It was awful.  I took to the internet and the closest thing I could guess was that I was suffering from gout.

Q: Was it gout?

A:  No.  It had some symptoms of gout, but not others.  For instance, I found that I could walk around better if I had a shoe on.  And it wasn't painful to the touch, but more of a deep ache.

Q:  What did you do?

A: After a week of suffering I went to an urgent care doctor.  He looked it over, didn't think it was gout, or a break, or a sprain, or an infection. He advised staying off it, putting ice on it, elevating it, and making an appointment with  my primary care doctor. 

Q:  Did you do that?

A: I did as much as I could for a person who lives alone.

Q: And did your ankle get better?

A: No, actually, my ankle got worse, and also my whole leg started swelling up,  right up to the knee. 

Q:  That doesn't sound good.

A: It wasn't. 

Q: What happened then?

A:  I went to my primary care doctor and he looked at my leg and said that it looked like I had a blood clot in my leg and I had to get to the hospital right that minute. Which is what I did.

Q:  That sounds scary. 

A:  It was.

Q:  What happened when you got to the hospital?

A:  They sent me to radiology and did an ultra-sound on my leg, which, by the way, is a very pleasant procedure.  It was like getting a hot oil message on my leg. 

Q: Oooh, nice.  And did they find a blood clot?  

A: No, they found  a Baker's Cyst.

Q:  What's that?

A: Well, the way I understand it...  well, here's what it says on Wikipedia: "A Baker's cyst, also known as a popliteal cyst, is a benign swelling of the semimembranous or more rarely some other synovial bursa found behind the knee joint. It is named after the surgeon who first described it, William Morrant Baker (1838–1896). This is not a "true" cyst, as an open communication with the synovial sac is often maintained."

Q:  Huh?

A: It means that unbeknownst to me,  I have advance arthritis in my right knee, much worse than is common in a person of my age,  and this Baker's cyst is trying to protect my knee.  But it got too big and it was causing fluid to drain into my leg and foot, which caused the swelling and pain.

Q:  Did they drain the cyst?

A: No, they treated the knee by shooting it full of  steroids.  That should reduce the swelling and I should be able to go back to just having an arthritic knee, which honestly never bothered me before.

Q:  Is it working? 

A: Some of the swelling is going down, but I still have a lot of pain, especially in my foot. I'm walking with crutches.

Q:  It sounds like you didn't  have a very nice vacation.

A: It had its brighter moments, but you are correct,  I would not want to relive that three weeks.

Q: And what did you learn from it?

A:  You mean besides what a Baker's cyst is?  I learned that there are a lot of wonderful, kind, and caring people out there who were willing to bend over backwards to help me in a time of crisis, and I wasn't really prepared for that.  I am a person who finds it hard to ask for help, and there were a lot of people who offered help before I had a chance to ask for it.  That makes me feel a lot better about the world. 

Q: Aaawww!

A: Shut up.

Q: Vera?

A: Yes?

Q: You know, we don't really come here to listen to you whine on and on about the drama in your life.  We come here to see pictures of hot shirtless boys.  Can you do us all a favor?  

A: Post a picture of a cute guy?

Q: Yes.

A: OK.  Will this do?

Q:  Yeah, I guess so.

A:  OK, then.

Q: OK.