Chang and the Octopus

I’m not going to lie, Chang Lee scares me a little.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s a hell of a nice guy and an extremely talented Times’ photographer.

He’s won two Pulitzers, one for his work on Sept. 11 and one for his war photography in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He’s a legend. But some of his other habits are a bit legendary as well and mostly involve eating and drinking. Veterans of this blog may remember a dinner I had with him in Beijing. We sat down and he said, “Joe, I’ll order.”

“Oh crap,” I remember saying to myself.

To this day, I have no idea what I ate. Every time I asked, he just said, don’t worry, it’s good. By the time we were finished I had managed to get out of him that most of what we had came from a cow. From which parts, however, remain unknown.

This brings me to Friday morning at JFK, where he and I were headed on the same flight to Korea. I saw him after getting through security at about 9:30 am and asked him if he wanted to join me for breakfast. I had scrambled eggs. Chang had a Brooklyn Lager.

I asked what the drink of choice is in Korea. Soju. Do you drink it straight, or mix it? Chang drinks it straight when he is not having tornadoes, a combination of beer and soju. He tells me there are more than 50 ways to have tornadoes. One requires that everyone lay chop sticks just so across the top of their glass of beer and then place a shot of soju on the chop sticks. Then someone slams the table and all the shots of soju fall into the beer. If done correctly, the shot swirls inside the beer like a tornado.

A popular version these days is the Olympic Torch Tornado. I am a little unclear of the particulars, but suffice it to say that someone starts drinking the beer-soju concoction and then it gets passed along to the next person and so on. You know, just like the Olympic Torch. I don’t think germs are an issue because soju can be as much as 53 percent alcohol.

This is all just an appetizer to the story that I was dying to hear straight from Chang’s mouth. Was it urban legend? Apocryphal?

“So, Chang,” I said over my scrambled eggs. “I heard a story about you and an octopus. Is it true?” He grinned as he took a sip from his glass.

Apparently there is a growing trend among Koreans to eat octopus while the critters are still alive. Not big ones, mind you. About the size of a small fist.

That may be horrifying enough for some of us, but that ain’t the half of it. It seems it is also true that these octopus, not surprisingly, don’t always cooperate. Sometimes those little suction cups on their tentacles attach themselves to the throat on the way down. At this point, there is really just one option. As Chang tells it, you stick your hand down your throat and rip that sucker out. Apparently, it went down much easier on the second try.

On Thursday, we will have our Times meal that we traditional have the night before the opening ceremony. Someone thought it would a good idea to let Chang pick the place because he is Korean.

Oh crap!

So, with that, I would like to welcome you all to another season of Eat at Joe’s. As the subtitle says, it is “The Olympics as I see them.” That includes, but is not limited to, food, drink, the occasional trip to points unknown with a stranger from Belarus, and generally, a behind-the-scenes look at the Games.

These little stories of mine are really just jumping off points. The real fun usually happens in the comments, so please chime in often and let me know you’re out there.

I’ll do my best to keep them coming, but work and the occasional sleep get in the way. I hope not to have too much travel lag after a 14-hour flight, followed by a two-hour train ride, followed by a half hour bus ride to my Holiday Inn condo in Pyeongchang.

The view is nice. The picture above is of the ski jump, which greeted me as I checked in.

Tornadoes all around!

Chang’s gear.

Chang, holding court.

Dueling photos.