We’ve flipped folks throughout the city, turning them into spies—and they’re watching you.

SPY: Bartender K
OBSERVED: February 27, 6–10pm
Well, well, well, finance people, how the tables have turned. You know who you are: You come into my bar every day after work with your black AmExes and your repressed personalities, demanding drinks from the “help” standing behind the counter. You think nothing of freely sharing your confessions with each other because there’s no one around to mistakenly overhear the deep dark secrets of your lives. But I’m standing right in front of you, and I can hear you.

That’s right, buddy, I know you couldn’t care less that your potential client played soccer at Cornell, but you’re going to strategically bring it up to make him feel cool so you can “seal the deal.” And you, lady with the button-down cardigan and pearls, I heard you scoffing about your manager who didn’t know what to do with those files. You helped him, but oh, you were not happy about it. And you, Mr. I-wish-I-were-still-in-my-college-fraternity, I know all about your tee-time switcheroo last weekend. Yeah, you personally cancelled your 9am and secretly scheduled one later that day so that you wouldn’t have to play with your boss. You sneaky bastard. As for the rest of you, I’d be a bit more wary of the silent ears tuned in to your “private” conversations. And should you choose to continue to divulge your secrets, you might want to go out and get a life first so at least there’ll be something interesting to listen to for the four hours that you insist on sitting in front of me.

P.S. I also know that Black American Express cards require a minimum annual spending of $250,000. Just a suggestion: Think about throwing a couple of bucks out for a tip—might help make the minimum.

We’ve flipped folks throughout the city, turning them into spies—and they’re watching you.

SPY: Bartender W
OBSERVED: February 26, 1:15am
It’s slow. She’s already hammered. We’ve never met before.
“Just got off work. What are you up to tonight?”
“Well, as you can see,” I reply, “it’s a little slow around here.”
“Hmm,” she continues. “Let’s do a shot. When do you close?”
“Maybe in about an hour.”
Ten minutes later: “You going out after? Where do you usually go when you’re done? Oh, and let’s do another shot.”
“Maybe down to [Bar A] or [Bar B]. Depends on the time and how tired I am.”
“You want me to meet you there? You’re gonna close, right?”
“No, I’m not closing for at least an hour.”
“Oh.”
Ten minutes later: “Let’s do another shot. So, let’s meet up. Just tell me where you’re going after you close. I can meet you at [Bar A] or [Bar B].”
“Well. I’m not so certain that my girlfriend would really approve.”
“Tell you what. I’ll just wait for you at [Bar B], then. See you there.”

We’ve flipped folks throughout the city, turning them into spies—and they’re watching you.

SPY: Waiter X
OBSERVED: February 29, 8:30pm
It’s Friday night and my restaurant has entered the proverbial rush hour. We, the servers, are running around like chickens with our heads cut off. With only four tables in my section, I imagine tonight will be relatively easy for me. I approach my group of five, and that’s when things start going downhill. The older man greets me with a bellowing, “What took you so long?!? I’m out of whiskey!” The whole table shoots daggers at me with their eyes. I go and get drinks and water for everyone, allowing them time to look over the menu. While checking on my other table, the yelling begins again. “Miss, MISS!! EXCUSE ME! MISS!!!!!!!” I feel like I should be wearing a leash so they can yank to their heart’s desire.
As I proceed to take their orders, they become a five-man chorus led by mean ol’ baritone. “It says here it’s spicy, what does that mean? What is the duck ravioli? What do the scallops taste like? I want fish—why do you only have tuna and cod? I don’t like cod, but does it really taste like cod?” 
I want to tell him it tastes like mac and cheese, but I respect my tip more than that.
“Sir, of course it tastes like cod; it is cod. I recommend you get something else.” He gets the tuna.

You couldn’t ask for a better example of a lean, addictive as hell, all-action video game than God of War: Chains of Olympus, which is all the more remarkable for having been released on Sony’s handheld PSP. The graphics and controls are near-indistinguishable from those of last year’s knockout God of War II, a PlayStation 2 title that pushed the seven-year-old console to its limits and then some. Olympus soft-pedals the grim and gritty Heavy Metal take on Greek mythology that is a trademark of the franchise, but everything else that made the first two GOWs such spectacularly effective time-suckers—most notably the combination of puzzles and combat inspired by the Tomb Raider games, but far more polished and refined than any of Lara Croft’s adventures—has made the leap to the pocket-sized system with style to burn. Although the PSP has sold about half as many units in the U.S. as the Nintendo DS (which had sold around 20 million here as of December 31, versus around 10 million for the PSP), Sony’s system has always seemed to be the preferred handheld of New York subway riders, and I’d be willing to bet cash money that at least a third of the people using PSPs on public transportation this week are playing Chains of Olympus (which, lest I forget to mention it, is now available for $39.99 wherever video games are sold).

Last week’s amazing installment of The Wire (written by genius crime novelist George Pelecanos) was probably the best episode of the series’s five-season run, and with the grand finale coming up on Sunday, a lot of people have used it as an excuse to proclaim David Simon’s brainchild the greatest TV drama of all time. Last weekend, I discussed the topic with Newark Star-Ledger television critic Alan Sepinwall, a Wire man to the core, and freelance New York Times film critic/TONY contributor Matt Zoller Seitz, who considers Deadwood to be the high point of the medium. I myself am devoted to The Sopranos, and used the conversation to make a case for David Chase’s chef d’oeuvre. A transcript of the conversation can be found on Matt’s blog, The House Next Door, and fear not—while all three of us have seen The Wire’s final episode, our discussion is spoiler-free. A podcast recording of our debate can be found here (as an MP3) and here (as an MP4/AAC file—the link will expire in a few days, FYI), though it comes with a caveat: If you plan to listen with headphones, consider yourself warned re: the ambient-noise level—we were having breakfast at Joe Jr.’s in the West Village and had no choice but to sit in the booth next to the dirty-dish bin, so there’s a lot of clattering plate action going on.

We’ve flipped folks throughout the city, turning them into spies—and they’re watching you.

SPY: Bartender X
OBSERVED: February 27, 11:45pm
It’s a slow Wednesday night. I serve a vodka tonic and a vodka cranberry to the two women sitting at the bar. One’s in her early thirties, vaguely Latina looking, not much makeup. We’ll call her Sue. She’s sitting with another woman—whiter, younger, homelier—who listens intently. Let’s call her Jenny. “I used to be really into rubber,” Sue says, “and the way it feels on the skin.” Jenny giggles. Sue continues, describing a party featuring "a gimp who was kneeling and serving.” Jenny assumes this means ah, one thing, but Sue corrects her, explaining that the function of said gimp was in fact to serve drinks from his knees the entire night. “Don’t point at the gimp!” she recalls the host instructing. Sue continues, describing herself as “a former foot fetish model” who allowed men to massage her feet for money. It didn’t give her any sexual pleasure, she says, but the men liked it. “How does that have anything to do with being a model?” Jenny asks. Sue does not have an answer to that one.

We’ve flipped folks throughout the city, turning them into spies—and they’re watching you.

SPY: Boutique employee
OBSERVED: Mid-February through March 1
A well-known New Yorker comes in with friends and drops a few thou on clothes. Two days later her assistant comes in to return some of the pieces and asks for alterations on another. We accommodate her and even rush the alteration. Then, three days after the return deadline, the assistant comes in again and tries to return yet another item, saying her boss “doesn’t like it and has nothing to wear it with” (right—because she’d returned the rest of the outfit). She has obviously worn it already: The hem is coming undone and it’s stained. I explain to the assistant that I cannot accept it. She puts me on the phone with her boss, who lets loose a tirade about all her problems, and how this purchase was a lot of money, and how she didn’t even really like it—her friends talked her into it—and how she was too fat, too old, blah blah blah. I stick to store policy and refuse the return, but offer to repair the hem for her. “This isn’t good customer service,” she snaps, adding that I should never have let her buy the clothes in the first place. Then she pulls the old “Don’t you know who I am and what I do?!” line.

We’ve flipped folks throughout the city, turning them into spies—and they’re watching you.

SPY: Bartender W
OBSERVED: March 1, 2:33am

“Hey, where’s Jack been?” a woman asks midway through the night’s drinking session.
“He’s off until next week,” I answer.
“Oh, right. I think he told me he was leaving,” she says. As I clean my glassware, she describes Jack to her friend: “Big. Hits on anything that moves. Not even that hot.” She looks my way: “Am I right? Not that hot?” I reply that I can’t comment on his looks or dating habits. She continues: “He hit on me once. He hits on everybody. I don’t know why anyone falls for that crap.” I step up to the taps to serve some new customers, but I see her in my peripheral vision and catch her next comment. “Well. He damn well better call me when he gets back.”

We’ve flipped folks throughout the city, turning them into spies—and they’re watching you.

SPY: Cabbie
OBSERVED: February 23, 5:11am

I pick up a youngish couple in Murray Hill. They’re chatting as I drive them to their first stop: his apartment. Clearly they’ve been drinking, but I don’t think it’s too serious until the guy gets out, leaving me alone with the girl. As I approach the corner she’d given me, I try to get more specific instructions. When my fare doesn’t respond I peek into the backseat and discover her comatose, face plastered against the window.
What to do in such a bind? I pull over and attempted to wake up my passenger with a few stiff shakes. She groggily rears up and seems a bit freaked out by her situation. She’s too incapacitated to answer my questions (e.g., “Where do you live?”), so I fish into her purse and extract her wallet. I pay myself (with a decent tip) and pull out her driver’s license to find out where I should deposit her. Then I haul her bodily to her door.
In retrospect, I was lucky not to get a face full of Mace.

We’ve flipped folks throughout the city, turning them into spies—and they’re watching you.

SPY: Hotel employee
OBSERVED: February 29, 1:26am

A coworker happens to be out with friends in the area and stops by to use the restroom. Noticing that the night auditor is sleeping in the office with the door cracked, he devises a plan to see that it won’t happen again. He reaches over the front desk, making sure the cameras will capture him, grabs the entire cash drawer out of the desk and locks it up in the back office. He then returns to his friends to enjoy the rest of the night.
When the night auditor wakes up and notices the money’s gone, he nearly has a heart attack. Panic ensues. I play dumb and say that I’d been upstairs cleaning the lounge: Nope, didn’t see nothing.
Needless to say, management gave him a stern talking-to the next morning. The following night he showed up with Red Bulls.

Get used to the photograph of Renée Fleming that you see to the left: I’d say it’s the odds-on favorite for next year’s ubiquitous Metropolitan Opera advertisement, the one you’ll be seeing on subway stops, vacant lots and city buses the way Natalie Dessay (as Lucia) was splashed all over town this year. The image is a teaser for Fleming’s appearance in Jules Massenet’s Thaïs, one of six new productions the Met will be presenting during its 2008–2009 season, which was announced late this afternoon at a press conference in the Met’s List Hall.

You’ll be hearing a lot about the upcoming season, which was announced with an air of bonhomie that has become typical of the Peter Gelb era at the Met. But the moment that will likely generate the most gossip came during the question-and-answer session that followed the formal presentation. Veteran critic John Simon began by praising Gelb as someone who has done more for opera during the last two years than many people achieve in a lifetime.

"One mark of genius is the ability to learn from one’s mistakes," Simon continued. "Do you plan on learning from your two most egregious mistakes, namely Mary Zimmerman and John Doyle?" The shock that rippled around the hall after Simon’s remark was magnified by the look on the face of Zimmerman, who had presented her vision of next season’s La Sonnambula only moments before.

Of course, the very fact that Zimmerman had talked about a new Sonnambula, in which Natalie Dessay will still be playing the lead role of Anina, was newsworthy, given the lackluster reception of the director’s Lucia this season—we include ourselves among the unconvinced, but note that the show was apparently a box-office success—and the dissatisfied performers (including Dessay), whose comments circulated on blogs and in the mainstream press. Gelb noted that Zimmerman’s Sonnambula will be very different from her Lucia, and Zimmerman described a scenario in which the opera will be staged as a rehearsal of a production of La Sonnambula that gradually morphs into something else, noting a similarity between the process of taking on a dramatic role and dreaming. "When Anina wakes up, she’s in Switzerland!" Zimmerman said.

Of the six new productions to be presented next season, Gelb inherited four and inserted two. In addition to Sonnambula (for which Gelb engaged Zimmerman), the Met will present the previously mentioned Thaïs; Puccini’s La Rondine, now a starring vehicle for soprano Angela Gheorghiu; and Verdi’s Il Trovatore—"a work that has a notorious record at the Met," Gelb said, "as those of you snickering know"—which will star Salvatore Licitra and provide the house debut of inventive director David McVicar.

New to the Met are John Adams’s Dr. Atomic, with Gerald Finley reprising his role as Dr. Robert Oppenheimer in a new production by Penny Woolcock, and a Robert Lepage staging of Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust starring Marcello Giordani. Woolcock, a first-time opera director, has previously worked with Adams on the revised film version of his second opera, The Death of Klinghoffer. Illustrations of wide, flat-panel sets and massive blocks of cubicles accompanied her talk. Richard Paul Fink and Eric Owens are featured as Edward Teller and General Leslie Groves, respectively; mezzo Sasha Cooke, an extremely promising young company member, takes the role of Kitty Oppenheimer. Alan Gilbert, music director designate of the New York Philharmonic, will conduct the run.

Lepage, who will be designing the Met’s next Ring cycle, was commissioned by Gelb to create his Damnation for the Saito Kinen Festival. Gelb later arranged to purchase the sets from the Paris Opera, and Lepage was said to be extensively reworking them.

The reason that the Met is presenting only six new productions, rather than the seven previously stated as Gelb’s annual goal, is that the Otto Schenk Ring cycle will be brought out for its farewell run from March to May 2009, with the director returning to supervise its farewell voyage. Gelb noted that this was part of a new initiative that will see the director who created a Met production returning to direct its revivals whenever possible.

Other announced highlights of the season ahead include an Opening Night Gala on September 22, in which Renée Fleming will be featured in an act apiece from Capriccio, La Traviata and Manon, and a March 15 gala that will mark both the Met’s 125th anniversary and Plácido Domingo’s 40th year with the company. For the occasion, Julian Crouch and Phelim McDermott will supervise projected re-creations of historic sets such as Marc Chagall’s 1967 Magic Flute, 1903’s premiere of Parsifal, 1910’s world premiere of La Fanciulla del West, the Met’s opening-night Faust from 1883 and more. In addition, the first anniversary of Luciano Pavarotti’s death will be marked by a September 18 preseason performance of Verdi’s Requiem, for which 3,000 free tickets will be distributed.

Daniel Barenboim will make his Met debut with Tristan und Isolde in November, and on December 14 he will present the first piano recital on the Met stage since Vladimir Horowitz’s historic concerts in the 1980s. Seiji Ozawa returns for the first time since 1992 for The Queen of Spades. The highly touted young Finnish conductor Mikko Franck makes his debut with Salome. Louis Langrée returns for a run of Don Giovanni. Notable for his absence will be Valery Gergiev, whose tenure as principal guest conductor ends this year; he will be back as of the 2009–2010 season, and no replacement has been named for his former role.

There’s plenty of noteworthy casting to be discussed, as the opera blogs are no doubt doing right this minute. On the plus side, Stephanie Blythe will be featured in the Mark Morris production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice opposite the fabulous Daniele de Niese, and Karita Mattila sings her first Met Tatiana in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. As previously rumored, Diana Damrau will be taking over the early-season Lucia performances that Anna Netrebko will be missing due to maternity leave. Less thrilling was the announcement that Rossini’s La Cenerentola will be revived as a vehicle for elegant eyeful Elina Garanca, as opposed to the utterly charming Joyce DiDonato, absent this season.

Last but not least, Gelb announced two forthcoming works of note: Adams’s Nixon in China for the 2010–2011 season, directed by Peter Sellars in his Met debut, and Thomas Adès’s The Tempest in 2012–2013.

We’ve flipped folks throughout the city, turning them into spies—and they’re watching you.

SPY: Bartender K
OBSERVED: February 28, 7:16pm

A certain dashing Irish film star (starts with a C, ends with an olin Farrell) comes in and sits smack in the center of the bar. He’s shorter than I’d imagined—though let’s face it, pretty much every celebrity is a midget—and is very nice when he orders a Corona, pays in cash and gives me a $2 tip. About halfway through his beer, he starts to glance around with a confused look on his face. He seems to be wondering why no one has asked for an autograph—and why no one seems to care that he’s there. I’m tempted to start a witty conversation, but I get nervous and instead ask if he wants another beer. He declines, and stares at me for a minute as if expecting me to ask him if he was Colin Farrell. Then he finishes his beer and leaves. Poor thing. He should have known the finance people at this bar wouldn’t go see something arty like In Bruges.

Nora Ephron’s forthcoming movie, Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, is due to start filming on the streets of New York March 17. It’s a culinary film (unsurprising, given Ephron’s obsession with food; remember Heartburn?), about a woman in a cramped apartment in Queens who decides to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s (see above) classic cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julie Powell and Ephron cowrote the screenplay based on Powell’s blog, with Ephron helming her first film since 2005’s Bewitched. (Ephron’s got another directorial project in the pipeline: Flipped, based on Wendelin Van Draanen’s YA novel of the same name.)

According to Grant Wilfley, a casting agency in Chelsea, extras are needed for several scenes: If you look like Streep or Adams, you can apply to be a photo double or stand-in. If you have professional culinary-art experience, you might even end up as one of their hand doubles. They’re also looking for “French- and European-looking people for a scene set in Paris.” Wear your best Gucci sunglasses and blackest beret.

It’s more fun to be an extra in New York than in Boston, it seems. The same agency is looking for people to fill the screen of Martin Scorsese’s latest DiCaprio vehicle, Ashcliffe (a.k.a. Shutter Island), due for release next year. Here’s what they need: “mental patients, including interesting, quirky or unusual character faces; the malnourished and emaciated concentration camp prisoners, many of whom will have their heads shaved.” There’s never been a better time to look French.

Grant Wilfley casting: jandj@gwcnyc.com or boston@gwcnyc.com

Variety reported recently that Tyler Perry’s signature character, Madea, will soon have her own animated series. Will the trash-talking gal be as wise as this portly young fellow?

WFMU can always be counted on to plan some pretty darn awesome events for its annual fund-raising drive, and this year has been no exception. On Sunday, Yo La Tengo dropped by for its annual night of playing lives covers of classics (and not-so-classics—"Jesse’s Girl"? Really?), as they’re requested by listeners. It all led up to the big finale—a gigantic medley that included tunes by the Big Bopper, the Carpenters and the Starland Vocal Band (yep, "Afternoon Delight"), among others.

But if that spiffy annual occurrence isn’t reason enough to kick a few bucks to the station, perhaps this will entice you: Tonight, the trio of Ted Leo, Ben Gibbard and Patton Oswalt will be in the studio from 8 to 11pm (for Tom Scharpling’s show), to perform live and do their part to collect pledges. And if it’s anything like Leo’s 2007 fund-raiser appearance (in which he duetted with Laura Cantrell and Scharpling himself, and covered the Jam), it promises to be an amazing performance.

The fund-raiser happens only once a year, and donations not only help the station maintain the consistently quirky and interesting programming that we know and love, but will also help out with its expansion plans for 2008. In an ever-more homogenized radio scene (hi, ClearChannel!), free-form stations like WFMU are absolutely vital. And really, where else will you get to hear Ted Leo sing "You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore"? That’s what we thought.

Why strain to come up with something witty when the direct approach remains so effective?

Oh, Deanna!

The big show—indie rock’s Grammys, Emmys and Golden Turkey Awards rolled into one—goes down this Thursday at Terminal 5 and it’s been sold out since before you were born; the lineup includes Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dizzee Rascal, St. Vincent and others, so whadja expect? However, two lucky respondents will win a pair of tickets each. Just go here and perform the simplest of tasks to enter.

In addition to double-barreled strollers and rabid real-estate agents, Park Slopers will now have to keep an eye out for runaway sex toys. Babeland—the venereally venerated purveyor of such devices as the Kegelcisor, the Nubby G and, of course, the Rabbit—has announced it’s opening its first Brooklyn location, on Bergen Street between Flatbush and Fifth Avenues. Since the proposed site is just down the street from a Gymboree, some of the neighborhood’s less adventurers natives aren’t thrilled. The way we see it, the more sex toys people use, the fewer babies they end up making.

Long before bashing the mass media’s influence on modern politics became a proper blood sport, A Face in the Crowd, Elia Kazan’s 1957 drama about a good ol’ boy raconteur, warned of what might happen if the wrong person figured out the airwaves could produce something between fame and fascism. After watching how TV had turned Senator Joe McCarthy into a household name—and then brought about his downfall—Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg realized that the medium wasn’t just the message but also a potential enobler of megalomania. (The fact that both men named names during the televised HUAC trials, thus contributing to McCarthy’s ascent, only makes their critique that much more complex.) The duo then created one of the movies’ most memorable populist demagogues, a folksy drifter named Lonesome Rhodes played by Andy Griffith…an actor best known today for his iconic role on a popular TV show. Hello, irony, my old friend.

For anyone who still thinks of Griffith as Mayberry’s kindly sheriff, i.e., most of us, the first appearance of Rhodes is a bit of a shock: huddled on a small-town prison’s floor, snarling and lashing out like an animal after being awakened from a bender. It’s also a glimpse of what lurks behind the permanent aw-shucks mask that Rhodes affixes to his maw after smitten Patricia Neal grooms him as regional radio personality and he graduates to national celebrity as the host of a television show called Crackerbarrel. (Imagine a cross between The O’Reilly Factor and Hee-Haw.) Rhodes first uses his growing popularity to pitch a vitamin pill to his adoring public; then he graduates to shilling for politicians, and that’s when the film starts to show you just how power hungry this "innocent" hick really is.

Like a number of satires in the 1950s, A Face in the Crowd is a little too barnside-broad for its own good; the supporting characters are mostly Madison Avenue stereotypes, while Walter Matthau’s sardonic, cynical scribe is the kind of white-knight wet dream that the era’s  screenwriters loved to construct as a professional avatar. But the movie couldn’t have been more prescient, and seen today, Kazan’s parable resembles a camera-eyed Cassandra who eerily predicted our post-Limbaugh, post–Fox News age. As if seeing the this indictment on a big screen weren’t catnip enough, both Schulberg and Neal will be in attendance at Film Forum’s screening, sharing anecdotes and discussing the movie with author Foster Hirsch.

A Face in the Crowd screens Wed 5 at 7pm at Film Forum (209 W Houston St). $10.50.

Boy, do we here in TONY Clubs section headquarters hate it when we find out about things too late to list them. It makes our blood boil and our temples throb. So we’ll rely on the magic of the blogosphere to help to spread the word that Frankie Knuckles (right)—a.k.a. the Godfather of House, a.k.a. the guy who, from his perch in the DJ booth at Chicago’s Warehouse in the ’80s, helped to birth a new musical form—is spinning tonight. The only downside is that he’s playing at the velvet-rope/bottle-service boîte Pink Elephant. (Do people who go to those kinds of clubs even like house music?) Nonetheless, Knuckles is always worth catching, just to be in the same room as a living slab of dance-music history if nothing else.

It seemed as if we’d only just arrived in Pyongyang when suddenly it was time to pack our bags, scarf down one more lavish breakfast banquet, haggle over last-minute charges at the hotel and hit the road. Before we went to the airport, however, there were still a few bits of business to take care of. One group of musicians and entourage headed over to Kim Il-Sung’s birthplace, Mangyongdae, for a visit to the School Children’s Palace, where bright-eyed, eager youngsters major in sports, music and proper political thought.

A second group went to the small but stately Moranbong Theater for another musical close encounter. Four members of the New York Philharmonic—violinists Glenn Dicterow and Lisa Kim, violist Cynthia Phelps and cellist Carter Brey—teamed with four players from the DPRK State Symphony Orchestra in a polished, elegant performance of Mendelssohn’s Octet and another brief piece, Serenity, written by Farah Taslima, a 12-year-old student  in the Phil’s Very Young Composers program, presented as a gift to honor North Korea’s children.

Afterward, Lorin Maazel conducted the entire DPRK orchestra, a fine-sounding group, in a rehearsal of Wagner’s Der Meistersinger Prelude and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture. If the ensemble sounded especially good in the Tchaikovsky, there’s a reason: Russian music is in its blood. Wagner, not especially prominent in North Korea (purportedly due to his music’s posthumous association with the Nazis), took a little more work. Still, this was a surprisingly good group, and if its planned tour of England in September comes off, it’s going to generate press for more than just novelty value.

Then we all hit the tarmac, took one last look back at the smiling visage of the Eternal President and grabbed our seats for the short flight to Seoul (where I’m typing this on Wednesday night). Even the weather contributed to the overall sense of wonder at what had just been achieved: Where it had been snowy and overcast on the day of our arrival, we soared away into a clear, sunny sky, with excellent visibility for as far as the eye could see. If indeed a veil had been lifted, it was slow in descending once more. There was something poetic about it.

Which brings us to Seoul, where the Phil concludes its tour with an afternoon matinee on Thursday. The streets were bustling with nightlife and young adults out to make the scene. I settled into my hotel room, wandered around for a while, grabbed some excellent tteokbokki (rice dumplings in spicy sauce), sundae (pig-intestine sausage stuffed with bean curd and potato noodles) and a hotteok (like a jelly doughnut stuffed with gooey cinnamon) from the pojangmachas that lined Jongno 2-ga, and tried to readjust to living in a free society. Talk about strange coincidences: When I got back to the hotel room, MASH was playing on a Korean movie channel.