bad banana with a greasy black peel

I have been looking at far too many financial statements and press releases with bleak messages that I almost forgot Christmas is just a few weeks away. I was thinking it would be nice to share a lovely secular (at least that's how it sounds to me) Christmas song to all of you. This one is from Aimee Mann's Christmas album One More Drifter in the Snow. Enjoy!


Calling on Mary
Aimee Mann

I heard the sidewalk Santa say:
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas
Salvation's coming cheap today
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas

I searched the skyline for a star
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas
And baby I wondered where you are
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas

'Cause comfort's not possible when
You look past the joy to the end

Calling on Mary is voluntary
Unless you're alone like me
If there's a star above, then it can look like love
When they light up the Christmas tree

When I was young I couldn't see
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas
All that my true love gave to me
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas

She offered sight to the blind
But I'm not the miracle kind

Calling on Mary is voluntary
Unless you're alone like me
If there's a star above, then it can look like love
When they light up the Christmas tree

And to all the lost souls down below:
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas
What's one more drifter in the snow?
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!

If there's a star above, then it can look like love
When they light up the Christmas tree
If there's a star above, then it can look like love
When they light up the Christmas tree.

on my plate

I’m currently working on the construction of the Sandcrawler—something I bought last Saturday as a necessary reward for being such a good boy. Even though I have been eyeing this set for quite some time now (mostly because it contains mini figures I didn’t have yet: C3P0, Uncle Owen and 3 Jawas), it was actually an impulse purchase which just felt so right considering the significant price markdown.

I’m making excellent progress with my project although I have to say the length of time I spend building things now is a bit longer compared to maybe 15 or 10 years ago. I think it has more to do with me liking to take my time putting things together. When I was younger I was more interested to see the final product, the fruit of my hour-long labor, and then create tableaux/scenarios that range from realistic to deranged using mini figures from other themed sets (i.e. pirates attacking spacemen or humans with monkey heads). Now I just want to spend time sorting bricks by color, by size and by intricacy, I want to flip through the building booklet or the catalogues before doing any heavy lifting, et cetera, et cetera. I want to feel like I’m deeply engaged in something.

My friend Chelot asked me a couple of questions about my LEGO habits.

“What are you going to with the set when you’re done building?”

“I’m going to dismantle it.”

“If, let’s say, we’re living together, and I messed with your...”

“Don’t you fucking dare...”

Then today she sent me a link to a website that has the illustration above. Very, very thoughtful of her, I thought. I found it hilarious when I saw it and then, after a while, I wondered if, perhaps, it might be true in my case. (Image borrowed from www.talesofmereexistence.com)

movement

Mabuhay! I abandoned the other blog because it was becoming increasingly sickening and painful to look at. I thought it would be interesting to start a new one. I can't promise better content but I think I can promise better pics. Oh, and since I like to showcase my musical taste because it's one of the very, very few things I'm proud of, there will be regular (can be daily or weekly or whatever) music video posts. That one's in honor of WOWOW's Music Chase.

This is the way...step inside...

pure craftsmanship

With nothing interesting to do on a lazy Saturday morning, I went to the museum to catch Komaneko the Curious Cat, one of the features in Cinematheque’s Animation Nation programme this year. Komaneko is a series of stop-motion animated sketches about a cat aspiring to become a stop-motion animator. She drafts storyboards, creates her cast of stuffed animals, illustrates backdrops and painstakingly captures every frame of her movie using her 8mm camera. When not busy filmmaking, she goes out with her dolls for picnic, eating donuts and drinking coffee.

After seeing all the sketches, there’s nothing else to say but “Kawaii desu!” Really, leave it to the Japanese to come up with a visual feast such as this. The detailed sets and accoutrements, the lovable characters, even the musical accompaniment, showcase nothing less than exquisite craftsmanship. I’m so glad most of the Komaneko episodes are on YouTube so I can view them in awe again and again and again and again.

Komaneko the Curious Cat is directed by Tsuneo Goda, the same guy who created Domo-kun, NHK’s strangely adorable station identity mascot.

radio, live transmission...

This afternoon I went to a screening of Anton Corbijn’s black-and-white Ian Curtis biopic Control at The Substation. I loved the movie so much that I’m thinking about watching it again tomorrow.

Conditions inside the theater seemed to turn a lot of people off but I honestly thought the place had the right ambience to complement the movie. The screening room was packed, the wooden seats were tiny, and there was no sufficient legroom for the cute Caucasians. The place was stuffy as the air-conditioning system broke down during the earlier show. Less than 30 minutes into the movie I could already smell the sweaty guys surrounding me, which actually made me miss slam-dancing in the middle of a mosh pit (something I was glad to experience during my high school years without my folks’ permission).

Excellent, excellent performance by a very intense Sam Riley (the song numbers and epileptic fits really sent chills down my spine) and the immensely talented Samantha Morton, as expected, does not disappoint as Debbie Curtis. I was grinning like the Cheshire cat during their flirtation scenes with Bryan Ferry singing “Here’s looking at you kid…” in the background. And then, of course, the “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and “Atmosphere” montages just broke my heart.

Sigh. Does anybody else out there love the band?

(I’m generally against Joy Division covers and I’m indifferent towards The Killers but apparently Corbijn said in an interview that he used their version of “Shadowplay” for the closing credits because he wanted to end the film on a positive note. Then I thought to myself, "After the countless seizures, the tumultuous relationships and the tragic suicide?" :-))

i'm a LEGO freak

Some of my aged Lego bricks will be appearing in the next issue of the non-magazine I’m working on right now. There’s an article in the line-up about focus group discussions, and I’ve been instructed to get [corny] photos from market research firms. Which is impossible because according to my market researcher friend Joni, FGDs (especially the ones about consumer trends and habits) are extremely confidential. Hence this raw image of a Lego FGD.

Suddenly I remember being so crazy about Lego when I was a kid. I spent entire days cooped up in one room, building castles and fortresses and restaurants and hospitals (now I build castles in the sky and fortresses around my heart, hahaha!), and read The Adventures of Tin Tin when I felt like taking a break. I think I may have cried over lost Lego pieces and I may have threatened to kill another kid when he stole some rare brick from me (I never should have befriended that rat).

I'll probably write more about my Lego obssession soon.

(May 2006)

psychological sparring

Maryo J. Delos Reyes’s 1981 comedy Totoo Ba Ang Tsismis? is a story about the very strange turn of events in the life of a simple but extremely headstrong nurse, Cora Afable (played impeccably by the one and only superstar Nora Aunor), when she meets a rich, spoiled brat named Gabby Araneta (Gabby Concepcion). Responsible Cora dutifully raises her middle-class matriarchal family by making rounds in a hospital’s psychiatric ward with her sexually vigorous best friend, Baby (played by Louella). Gabby, on the other hand, is a reckless, mestizo troublemaker who, in order to avoid being sent to military school, fakes an unspecified mental disorder (could be a combination of ADD and catatonia, with small traces of some sleep disorder) and is put under Cora’s care.

The responsibility is much to Cora’s chagrin, of course, because from the onset, she’s had doubts about Gabby’s in/sanity. Call it woman’s intuition—she just somehow sees through him. She launches a psychological war against her patient, and would not buy any of his pathetic antics. The battle is tricky, however, as everybody else is hostile to her observations. Gabby behaves perfectly normal when Cora is the only one around, and sustains his act only in the presence of his father (Johnny Wilson), his Spanish-speaking alta sociedad relatives, and the power-tripping head nurse (Mitch Valdez).

Gabby gives Cora a really hard time during her shift. He pretends to be catatonic and refuses to eat hospital food. During bath time, he refuses to even lift a finger, compelling poor Cora to strip his clothes for him and give him a sponge down. In one occasion, during bedtime, the head nurse walks in while he is horsing around and wrongly reprimands Cora for flirting with the sick patient.

Despite being frustrated and unhappy with being pushed around, Cora reluctantly puts up with Gabby’s whims because she’s professional. However, she assures Gabby that there will be an end to his sick modus operandi, and that she’s out to expose him.

In the following sequence Gabby sneaks out of the hospital and follows Cora on her way home. He pops out from behind a tree in the park, grabs Cora, and attempts to rape her right there and then. Unfortunately, he is not aware of Cora’s aptitude for karate, which she uses efficiently, allowing her to run and scream for help. A car pulls over and she frantically solicits for a hitch.

“Tulungan ninyo ako! May gustong mang-rape sa akin! Kilala ko ang tao na ‘yon!”

The car passengers, who look like they’re wasted from some drunken revelry, tell her, “Oh, kilala mo naman pala eh. Relax. Just enjoy it, okay?”

“Mga hayop!” Cora yells as the car careens down the highway.

At this point Cora’s suspicions about Gabby’s sanity are confirmed. With no one sympathetic to her convictions, she decides to fight fire with fire this time. Back at the hospital, she exhausts all possible means to make Gabby’s life miserable. When catatonic Gabby refuses to eat, she calls through the intercom for reinforcements, “Nurse, pakidala ang swero dito. Internal feeding ang gagawin natin sa pasyente!” When forced to bathe her difficult patient, she rubs floor brush onto Gabby’s back. When the rowdy patient refuses to sleep, she says, “Hindi ka makatulog? Kawawa naman si Gabby. Hindi bale, ako ang bahala,” and then brings out a syringe the size of an eggplant.

Naturally, a pissed Gabby checks out of the hospital the following day, his doctor totally flabbergasted at his miraculous overnight recovery. Back to his old lavish ways, he tries to go out with his other rich friends and flirt with the girls—everything to distract himself from a remote, romantic feeling for Cora that is starting to creep up. There’s just something about Cora. Is it her confidence or her stubbornness? Her principles? Whatever it is, it really turns him on. He tries to make friends with the indifferent Cora who has nothing but contempt for him, and who would rather eat rat poison than reconcile with him.

Humiliated, Gabby turns to his friend (Ricky Davao) to hatch a plan to get back at Cora. The Ricky Davao character questions Gabby’s motives, and implies that he may actually be falling in love with the feisty nurse. Gabby denies this, saying his motive is purely egotistical. They decide to kidnap Cora, take her to the friend’s Matabungkay vacation house, and just scare the hell out of her.

The plan materializes, except that they abducted Baby, Cora’s lascivious best friend and colleague, as well. At the vacation house, Baby announces, “Boys, kung balak ninyo kaming rape-in, aba’y simulan n’yo na! Marami pa kaming gagawin ni Cora!” Gabby drags Cora into the bedroom and, upon Cora’s provocation, rapes her. In the other room, Baby attempts to take advantage of Gabby’s friend.

Meanwhile, the Afable household is starting to worry about Cora’s whereabouts. Granny (Chichay), the head matriarch of the family, with mudpack on her face, asks Cora’s brother (Roderick Paulate) where his sister is. The brother, gyrating to “Rock Lobster” by The B-52’s in the living room, tries to recall the message Cora had left.

“Sabi ni ate, mag-o-overtime daw siya.”

“O, ayun naman pala. Nag-overtime lang pala si Cora.”

“Ay, hindi. Ang sabi ni ate, mag-o-overnight daw siya.”

“O, nag-overnight lang naman pala si Cora.”

“Granny, overtime ho ata ang sabi ni ate.”

“Halika dito,” Granny calls her grandson, and then smacks him in the head.

In a few moments, a weeping Cora arrives and tells her family about the rape.

“Na naman?!” Granny asks her.

“Ito, Granny, totoo na.”

The family immediately heads straight to the police station, where they file a complaint and where the police chief (Balut) interrogates Cora and insinuates about her sexual history. “Tao lang ho ako,” Cora explains, “hindi ako birhen!”

More mayhem ensues when the rape trial starts, what with the asthmatic and hearing-impaired judge, the flirtatious court official whose layers of jewelry create too much noise, and the gay prosecution lawyer who occasionally leers at the accused, among other hilarious characters. When Gabby takes the witness stand, he lies about having a romantic relationship with the now pregnant Cora. Cora vehemently objects to Gabby’s statements, “Sinungaling! Bawiin mo ang mga sinabi mo!” Her gay lawyer calms her down, “Cora, ‘wag ka ngang mag-Kramer vs. Kramer dito!”

During the course of the long trial, however, Cora starts acknowledging feelings for Gabby, perhaps something she’s been holding back for quite a long time. In one key montage, Gabby hallucinates about cavorting with Cora by the seashore while Nora Aunor sings “Ikaw Ang Kailangan Ko” in the background. The montage ends with Cora lying on her bed, smiling, and—I assume—daydreaming about the exact same thing.

During a hilarious ruckus inside the courtroom, she realizes that she’s about to give birth so everybody makes a break for the hospital. Heavy traffic causes the panicky party to board a fire engine, a risky move that easily solves their transportation problem. At the hospital, it is revealed that Cora suffered a significant loss of blood and the only one who can save her life is, in fact, Gabby. He donates his blood—his ultimate act of love—for Cora to survive the death scare. Eventually, Cora forgives him and accepts his marriage proposal.

No Mendelssohn march at the wedding, though. Instead, the entire cast retires to a disco club for the reception and starts dancing to “Cars” by Gary Numan in perfect unison. Cora, still in her frilly Rene Salud wedding gown, happily dances with her husband as the end credits roll.

(Photos taken from the terrific sari-saringsinengpinoy.blogspot.com, where other information about Totoo Ba Ang Tsismis?, as well as other Filipino movies, are available.)