Song of the Year

Pagdating sa Naga
Dun tayo mag-beach

- Express Highway, Bloomfields

Nice song, Bloomfields.

Except, of course, for the fact that Naga is landlocked.

*facepalm*

A New Year’s Benediction

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful.

And don’t forget to make some art. Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. May your coming year be a wonderful thing in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously. I hope you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you all have people to love and to like in return.

And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now, I hope that you will be wise and that you will always be kind.

And I hope that somewhere in the next year that you will surprise yourself.

by Neil Gaiman

Wishlist

My mother-in-law is spending Thanksgiving in the good ol' US of A, and it just occured to me that I am the only one in the family who has not (yet) asked for anything for her to bring back from the land of the free and the home of the brave. I want a PS3 console, but I think that went out the window when my wife - her daughter - asked for an iPhone.

So earlier today, I came up with a list of five movies that my sister-in-law can hopefully find at Best Buy. Sometimes you get lucky and find the hardest to find films in the most unexpected of places (The Seven Samurai, Naga City) here at home, but that doesn't really happen too often.

Here is my list:

1. Animal House

One of John Belushi's best-known movies. When he was 30, this was the No. 1 movie in America. He died three years later.

2. The Paper Chase

This movie demonstrates why the man who invented the Socratic Method should be rotting in the seventh circle of hell for all eternity.

3. Dr. Strangelove

I have seen some of Kubrick's films ─ Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange ─ and this should be a good addition to the library.

4. Two of Us

This is for the Beatles fan in me. They could have screwed this story up in so many ways, but they did alright. I have seen this on VH1 a long time ago, but I wouldn't mind watching it again.

5. 61*

The original homerun race. Before ballplayers had incredibly huge heads and necks.

Happiness

Fourteen months after its publication, and two months after I discovered that this issue actually existed, it finally arrived.



Of course, not until after I tried asking Bufini and some bookstores first, looked for and found the email address of the magazine's circulation department, waited for a about a month or so for them to reply to an email, and finally, talked to a sensible guy who provided me with the manner of payment and delivery.

Never underestimate the persistence of a fanboy.

Status Report

For the past three weeks since I returned to The Seagull*, I have been able to watch:

all 9 episodes of Season 2 of White Collar
all 11 episodes of Season 1 of Covert Affairs
all 12 episodes of Season 1 of Human Target
all 12 episodes of Season 4 of Burn Notice
all 7 episodes of Season 4 of Chuck
all 4 episodes of Season 6 of Bones

Not bad for three weeks.

Most of these are series which I have been able to follow at one time or another over at Solar TV (aka RPN 9). They usually aired on Saturday evenings, quite conveniently after all those lovely Saturday mornings and afternoons spent at Diliman. I am not discounting the possibility that I may have enjoyed them only because they made me forget things that happened only a few hours earlier, if only temporarily.

What is unfortunate is that, for some stupid reason or another, after a season or two, the network stops airing these series altogether and switch to new shows (Vampire Diaries, anyone?). The fact that Solar TV is the only channel on free TV which satisfies this demand, is the only thing that is stopping me from watching Willing Willie everyday. Well, that and the fact that Georgina Wilson is not co-hosting with Papi.

Covert Affairs was recommended by RQ. I find it a somewhat cheesier version of Alias. It's OK if you can stand all those flashback scenes about the lead character's (portrayed by Piper Perabo. Yes, that Piper Perabo.) "sawing pag-ibig", as RQ put it. I decided to tolerate it anyway only because Emmanuelle Vaugier is in it.

---
* Sorry, but you have to know and see my Facebook account for details on this.

虎, 虎, . . .

. . . burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry

Sinta

Mayo noon ang buwan, at may Santacruzan.
Ikaw ang Elena, sa gabi'y siyang reyna.
Libo ang kandila; ngunit pagtingala -
tila ba himala - higit pa ang tala!

Ilaw rito't doon sa puso ko noon.
Ngunit ako'y lito, kaya't di natanto,
na lahat ng ilaw, na sa aki'y tanglaw,
ay ikaw. Ay ikaw. Ikaw.

Paglipas ng Mayo, pagsungaw ng Hunyo,
nang ika'y lumayo, ilaw ri'y naglaho
At mga kandila nangagsipagluksa
at sa pagtingala wala ni isang tala.

Dilim dito't doon, pumaligid noon,
kung kaya't natanto ng puso kong ito
na lahat ng ilaw na sa aki'y tanglaw,
ay ikaw. Ay ikaw! Ikaw.

Kung ikaw ay wala, wala rin ni tala.
Kung ika'y kapiling, kahit tala'y saling.
Sapagkat ang ilaw na sa aki'y tanglaw
ay ikaw! Ay ikaw! Ikaw!

---
"Ikaw," awit sa dulang "Sinta" ni Pagsi.

Poor Eli

Does anyone who watch Heroes here really think that Eli (and all of his copies) has a snowball's chance in hell of beating Peter and Sylar? I will be disappointed if that fight is not over in five seconds max.

It's a poem. By Robert Burns.

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."

- J.D. Salinger (1919-2010), The Catcher in the Rye

---
The Catcher in the Rye, incidentally, is the best ten peso book i ever bought from Book Sale, or anywhere else, for that matter. It was an old Bantam paperback edition with a solid maroon cover with lemon yellow type. It was borrowed and was, unfortunately, never returned.

Mellon Collie

T'was the week before christmas
And all through the town
All the people were trippin
Then somethin came down

I never knew i had it
Day after day the dullness grew
Then one day i just felt plain lazy

- Eraserheads, Mono Virus

Open Season

Look at the shoes your filling
Look at the blood we're spilling
Look at the world we're killing
The way we've always done before
Look in the doubt we've wallowed
Look at the leaders we've followed
Look at the lies we've swallowed
And I don't want to hear no more

My hands are tied
For all I've seen has changed my mind
But still the wars go on as the years go by
With no love of God or human rights
'Cause all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

- Civil War, Guns N' Roses

Haiku

Toilet Haiku #1:

Oh my toilet duck!
You color the water blue.
Add my weewee: Green.

- Gabe Mercado

Scarlett was Never This Hot in the 80s

Yo Joe!

The Final Set Outtakes

The last time I saw a clueless entertainer get booed off his ass was when Carlos Agassi tried to rap during halftime of an Ateneo-La Salle game. So, I was not really surprised when a good number of the over 100,000 people at the MOA concert grounds let MTV VJs have it. Moreso after Anne Curtis confessed to being excited to hear "Tindahan ni Aling Nene." WTF.

Posers come in all shapes and sizes. Tim Yap, the self-proclaimed eventologist, exposed himself as a total poser when Ely Buendia put him on the spot at the end of the show and he promptly showed everybody that he has absolutely no idea how to sing Toyang correctly.

In One Sky So High

Come and take a sip from the cup as the drink makes you think
Don't blink cuz you'll be taken out by the pen and ink
Superproxy, why don't you just talk to me
My rhyme be stickin to ya head like epoxy
The Mouth'll be blabbin, never be backstabbin
Hangin w/the E-heads and I'm just plain havin
FUN, no time for gats and guns,
I use my m.i.c. like a gun I get the job done
I play video games all day
Zipadee-dooda Zipadee-day Hiphop Hooray!
Menage one, Menage Trois, Menage Three
If songs were pets then I'd have a menagerie
Chimney-chimney Humpty Dumpty
Grab on the m.i.c. start gettin funky
Funky with the flavor that you savor, imitator
I'm the flavor of the hour other MC's I devour
I'll be with Raymund, Buddy, Marcus, and Ely
I'm on their case just like Petrocelli
Ultraelectromagnetic Hiphop and ya don't
Stop and ya don't quit WORD-UP!
Lap it up like a pussy sippin on milk
Rock hard to my style that's smooth as silk
Superproxy why don't ya just talk to me....tooot...static

---
+ RIP FrancisM

Heroes Super Bowl Ad

One Love

Fanboys

Pop Machine

It Never Ends

Yes. The Reunion Concert DVD will be released soon.

Yes. There will be a "Final Set."

Ligaya.