Letter #133.5: The Half-Birthday Letter

Good morning, Erin.

Y’know, the half-birthday thing started out as a joke.

A common response from my mother to…well, just about anything someone says, really, but particularly when someone mentions money, is to remind people that her birthday is “coming up.” That is, that whoever is talking should take care to consider spending that money on her birthday present, because her birthday is just so close, don’t you know—regardless of whether it’s just past a day ago or Christmas is actually next on the calendar or we’re actually discussing what to do for someone else’s much more immediate birthday. She thinks it’s very funny. And/or is very serious about it. I’m never really sure which.

Point is that I did my own version of this, years ago, spending weeks and weeks reminding my family that my half-birthday was coming up and that I’d be hurt if they forgot. 

And, when my half-birthday rolled around…my mom got me a big cupcake from the bakery. 

My sister was furious. It was awesome. 

So, while birthdays can be important or busy or in some other sense weighty, whether we give them significance or those around us do, I like to think I’m the only dope running up to you and cooing about it being your half-birthday. (Or maybe I’m not. Maybe you have a dozen people calling you right this moment, all a-frenzy at thinking they’ve invented some fun inside joke for just the two of you, leaving me not merely redundant but at the bottom of a pile of redundancy.) And, of course, I would not come to you empty-handed.

That’s right, today, we’re going to talk about Reincarnation Love, a six-minute love story starring Glasses Brother and Ballerina Sister from Sweet Home! Because you wanted me to watch Youth in May, but…this was a whole lot quicker!

1. The crux of this story is that—and you can YouTube this real quick, if you haven’t seen it already—is that Glasses Brother is asked to fill in for his friend on a blind date he doesn’t want to go to. The date turns out to be with Ballerina Sister, the pretty girl he sees everywhere but has never had cause to talk to. He screws up the date, but he magically receives a magical message on his smartphone that allows him to loop back to the previous day and do it all over again. 

1A. …which means it combines a great K-drama cliche and a wonderfully ludicrous anime premise—so I was immediately on board.

1B. …despite still finding it weird that these two actors could be cast as love interests. 

1C. And, for the record, I really enjoyed it. It’s a lot of fun. (For what it is.)

2. Ballerina Sister doesn’t have much to do but be pretty, which she manages fairly easily. 

3. Glasses Brother, on the other hand, has to do all the acting—and comedic acting, to boot. And I think he pretty much nails it. He hits all the comedy beats really well, even making the flaws in the script work better than they should—and he is clearly enjoying the chance to just do something goofy. (Like, let this guy be in something absurd, people. Look at him: he loves it!)

4. I know I said it’s only six minutes long, but, even for just six minutes, it’s got a breakneck pace. Some of it is for the sake of humor, of course. But the rest has got to be a matter of production—whether they didn’t have the actors for long or had to wrap everything up at the location in one evening. It’s not strictly a criticism, but I think it’s worth noting that the whole thing is noticeably less polished than you might expect, from some imperfect (but totally functional) takes by the actors to a handful of good-enough camera setups. 

5. On their date, the couple drinks Beer brand beer, which made me laugh. 

6. Back in the “Yoojung” letter, I joked that I was going to gush my way through a discussion of all your song covers—except it’s not a joke! Ha-ha! Or, well, okay, it’s not a joke but it’s also not entirely true, I admit. But I would like to take a moment to share my top five favorite covers (coverlets?) you posted to your instagram—and remind you that I want as many of these as you can manage—from five to one:

• “Chinese Satellite”

• “Let Go”

• “ICU”

• “If We were a Movie”

• “Breathless”

7. It kind of amazes me that Glasses Brother goes back something like a dozen times before considering that the biggest contributor to his screwing up the blind date is how f***ing drunk he gets by the end of the date. By the fifth time, I’d like to think most people would wonder if maybe they should alter the “get blackout drunk” strategy. 

7A. That said, I’d like to think a lot of things. So, maybe I’m being naive. 

8. I think my favorite twist is not the reveal that the “Want a do-over?” text messages were being sent by Ballerina Sister in the hopes that he, because she likes him, will try their date yet again (...because simply asking him for a second date isn’t an option, for some reason) but, rather, that this was all just an advertisement for some energy drink or something. But the company also wanted a do-over of the ending of Youth in May. Apparently. Which kinda gives away the game about the end of Youth in May, but I guess I won’t know until I watch it. Eventually. 

And that’s Reincarnation Love. I hope you enjoyed it. 

But before we go, I do have one more thing for you Erin—because I’m sure you miss my stupid envelope flap drawings:

…as you can see, I haven’t gotten any better. But it’s the thought that counts!

(That’s you on the swing. You can tell because of the bow. Obviously.)

Anyway.

Happy half-birthday. I hope you have an awesome day. 

…and every day after.

More soon.

—Daryl