September 2002 Archives

I went and bought some books yesterday to send home to The Boy via my mom, who flew back to Manila early this afternoon after our surprisingly teary parting at JFK. My hands down favorite of the books I got is Daniel Clowes' Twentieth Century Eightball, a collection of some of his early work^*. If you're a fan and you don't already have it—what's wrong with you? Pick it up, you're sure to like it. If you haven't had the good fortune of reading Clowes before, it's a good introduction to both his visual style and his sense of humor and is less depressing (and so probably less intimidating) than his more recent very successful work.

I think the best piece in the bunch by far was "Art School Confidential," which really cracked my inner misanthrope up because so many of the awful characters Clowes enumerates and mocks in it actually did turn up rather regularly while I was in college, even though I wasn't getting a BFA. Other favorites: "Little Enid," "The Truth," "I Hate You Deeply," "Why I Hate Christians," "A Message To The People of The Future," and "Give It Up." But really, it's all good, so go get it if you can—I recommend Twentieth Century Eightball even to those of you who aren't or have never really been into comics and guarantee you will at the very least get some great laughs out of it.

^*For those of you who don't know him or can't place his name: Clowes is the writer/artist behind Ghost World, which was turned into one of last year's best movies starring Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi. If you haven't seen it yet, get the DVD—the music video of "Jaan Pehechaan Ho" from the 60s Bollywood film "Gumnaam" alone is well worth your money!

Speaking of Groo, Dark Horse started shipping the Groo PVC set last week!

Hopefully it'll pop up at Forbidden Planet soon (which is just a five minute walk from NYU!) so I won't have to special order it.

I had to leave my favorite lunchbox in Manila because I didn't have much space in my suitcases and was afraid it would get ruined, so now I've been looking through Lunchboxes.com for a suitable replacement (at least until The Boy can get around to packing my lunchbox in bubble wrap and shipping it here along with some of my books and clothes).

These are my favorite of what they've got in stock, from most to least favored: Futurama, Nightmare Before Christmas, The X-Files (I'd like this more if it were just the tasty Agent Scully on there!), The Transformers and Batman.

This article on Fernando Poe Jr's possible entry into Philippine politics made me queasy, except for the following sentence, so tragic and telling I couldn't help but laugh:

Enrile stressed that no issue can be raised against the actor except his lack of political experience.

The next sentence was just plain silly:

However, this is not a deterrent for the actor to become a good leader since he is a highly respected personality in the movie industry, the former senator said.

Ugh.

If only FPJ cared about the country as much as Dolphy, whom I respect because although he's been asked to run for office many times, he's always declined, saying "Mananalo nga ako, e pagkatapos anong gagawin ko?" (I'll win of course, but then what?)

"In the time it takes the average person to read this story, 40 Asians will die of AIDS."

Overheard this afternoon while waiting to cross the street:

Man: You don't think she's sufficiently emotionally mature yet?
Woman: (shakes her head)
Man: Ah, you never will anyway, you're a mother.

At this point I'm thinking, well, he's right, all mothers are like this. And then I heard:

Man: Well... So how old is she, 36? 38?
Woman: 42.

And my jaw dropped open, making it hard for me to pretend I wasn't eavesdropping, and so I crossed the street.

Imagine my surprise when I walked into my classroom this morning—and no, my being up before lunch wasn't the surprise, smart alecks—to find the following list on the white board left over from the previous class:

Blogosphere

1. extend from existing
2. indiv -> group
3. testing + feedback IN system

The class is Group Think: Theory in Practice, taught by Steven Johnson (whom some of you might know from FEED and Plastic) and Eric Liftin. According to the syllabus, the topics for discussion include Paul Busch, Matt Haughey and Meg Hourihan's We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs, David Weinberger's Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web, Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Movable Type, Live Journal, Google, Amazon and wikis. Neat.

I am so going to sign up for this class next semester (and not just because it'll finally enable me to justify buying all of the reading material (which I want anyway) as an academic expense).

Best Presidential Photo Op EVER.

No thanks to Ms Gaw and Graham, I'm already hopelessly addicted to Game Neverending—and it's not even out of alpha testing! Woe is me. This thing is absolute crack.

Poptart voiced by John's falsetto is so much funnier than a short conversation with any delicious pastry has a right to be.

This is too damn weird to be true (but then again we're talking about the Philippines, the land in which stories that would be considered magic realism in other countries are accepted as nonfiction):

According to previously secret Filipino military files shown to the Wall Street Journal, Abu Sabaya - a leading member of the Abu Sayyaf rebel network linked to bin Laden - was initially located by signals from his satellite telephone.

But the joint US-Filipino intelligence team needed to know if he was still holding his latest hostages, two American missionaries, Martin and Gracia Burnham, and a local woman, Deborah Yap. [ ... ]

Philippines [sic ] Marines intelligence officers had penetrated the courier network which kept Sabaya supplied with pizzas, soft drinks and burgers from a fast food chain.

An American unmanned aerial drone followed the thermal image of a delivery of hot pizzas as they were carried by boat from the harbour of Zamboanga to the small coastal village of Sibuco, near Sabaya's base.

Colonel Juancho Sabban, who led the search, said: "We had to make sure the pizza was hot. Otherwise, we would have lost the trail."

[ via New World Disorder ]

I don't expect everyone to love or even like my dog anywhere near as much as I do, but each time my apartment bid gets rejected because "they don't like pets" I always wonder what sort of horrible person actively hates animals. And now I know.

As Anil said: "fuck you, you old crotchety bastard"

I was dizzy from low blood pressure before I went to sleep last night and now, a whole eleven hours later, I'm still feeling like crap and so I missed my first class.

It's times like these that make me hope Leslie's finally willing to share the secret of the $15 place now that she's a New Yorker no longer.

This is long overdue, but: best of luck in San Francisco, Ms Hoopla!

Okay, so admittedly it ranks rather low on the content meter, but I dare you to load waynebrady.com and not laugh at that fantastic graphic.

Did You Know?

The Three Stooges tried to make a production deal with et al that would've had The Three Stooges starring in a series of movies to be shot in the Philippines.

Sounds like total invention on my part, I know, but I can't make this shit up.

[ sort of via News from ME ]

"Martial law was really bad. Really bad for the country. No matter how they were able to justify it in terms of saving the nation, in hindsight, the country wasn't really going to break down. It was a way for the people who were in power then to stay in power. Obviously at the time it happened, I wasn't thinking this way. But looking back 30 years, I think it was the wrong thing to do. Did I speak out against it? No, never dared."

I'd give you three shots at guessing who said that, but you'd probably get them all wrong anyway, so: Jackie Ponce Enrile, the son of JPE himself.

I find it very interesting though that he can come to these conclusions (and talk about them in public—good for him, by the way) but not find it possible to hold his father accountable for his actions during martial law, saying "smart as he is, he's very impressionable, almost naive." Um. Sure fine whatever.

I understand that few people are willing to seriously diss their parents in public—at least not in the Philippines and especially for politicians—but come on. What can be honestly explained away as being sheltered at twelve comes off as awfully disengenious at 44.

He goes on to say this later on in the interview:

"I blame for the vacuum of leadership this country is suffering from now. Even if the communist insurgency was gaining ground at that time, if that was what the country wanted, why deprive the country of it? When will we start accepting the fact that we have the power and the right to self-determination?"

Good point and good question piggybacking on the end of it, although the (rather, my) answer to the latter isn't nice at all. Like the rest of humanity, we're never going to start accepting the power of self-determination because we don't want to accept the responsibility that comes along with it—it's easier to blame everyone else for what goes wrong in the country and in our own lives. Blame the selfish politicians that most of us voted for mainly because they can literally sing and dance well! Blame the corrupt government employees even as we bribe them to process our papers faster or not take our licenses away! Blame the rich and big business while voting for actors and marginalizing the left (and I don't mean Joma) in particular and activists in general as KSP nutcases! Whatever.

(And then there's that other way of shirking self-determination which, unfortunately enough, is highly compatible with the first: God has given me a shitty life for a reason and it is my responsibility to accept it. Husband beats you and your kids? Stick it out! Three children you can't or won't send to school? Why, have some more! They'll go to heaven eventually as long as they accept Christ and anyway contraception is so much more immoral than not being able to feed, clothe or house your children. Whatever.)

As if I didn't already hate him enough for being immensely talented, Kevin Fanning went and sent me this "really creepy photo of michael jackson."

How the fuck am I supposed to get any sleep tonight?

Damn you, Fanning! Damn you!

Dear PDI,

It was very nice to see a tribute to Ma'am E in your pages the other day, but not so nice to see my photo of her a) used without my permission and b) unattributed. It's not that I wouldn't have let you use it—of course I would've, I loved the lady dearly—but I find the swiping of my photo at best rude, and at worst highly unprofessional. Is this something you do often?

Lia

I've seen the photo (thanks to BDF) and really, I think the people making a big deal about it are either being OA¹ or are KSP², or both. It's annoying in a cutesy way, and that's kind of the point—to make us see the President as someone with a sense of humor who can have fun every once in a while, instead of being deadly serious all the time.

I mean, I generally like the guy, but when Satur Ocampo said "This manifests the PR-orientedness of this administration," I couldn't help laughing. Of course they have to be PR-oriented, they're freaking politicians—and in a country where most of the voting public is swayed by lame song and dance numbers, no less. Anyone who wants to get anything done in the Philippines has to be somewhat PR-oriented, and his Bayan Muna party is hardly an exception.

¹OA = over-acting
²KSP = kulang sa pansin, starved for attention

Condoms are becoming harder to get than ever in the Philippines and Pinky Serafica of Women's Feature Service Philippines on why that is:

The Catholic Church is going underground. This pretty much sums up Strategy 2002 of silence and stealth that followed decades of fire-and-brimstone trained on anything that smacked of "family planning."

Now, women's groups say that condoms are missing from convenience stores and that some "pro-life" local government units have advised barangay health centers to turn down women asking for pills and reproductive health services, and worse, conservatism is creeping in national governance—all done quietly until one day we will wake up to ask, "where have all the condoms gone?"

I've never had any problems asking for condoms, but then that's me and I'm weird—I know some lower-income ladies who know about reproductive health and rights and where to go to get contraceptives and check-ups for free, but are just too shy to go, and from their stories about friends and relatives they're hardly in the minority. One woman got pregnant unexpectedly in her late forties and didn't go to see a doctor at all until she gave birth because she was afraid "they'd think she was horny for having sex with her husband when she was so old." I mean, WTF.

While I do have problems with the Catholic church in the Philippines being so arch-conservative and teaching its faithful to be so sex-negative, it's still something I can live with because people have a choice to stay in the church and follow its teachings, the flip side being that they can always leave if they feel it isn't right for them. What drives me batty is when old men who have never had sex and old ladies who have never enjoyed sex think they have the right to make decisions for everyone in the damn country, including those of us who aren't Catholic and don't fall under their jurisdiction. If you have a problem with premarital sex and contraception, fine, then tell your flock not to do the first and to do the second. Trying to remove my rights to contraception because you're so insecure that your people aren't following instructions isn't cool, and neither is making such a big fuss over contraception while never bothering to make a serious stand against other important things that affect women, like spousal abuse and marital rape.

Get Your War On continues, 80s style!

[ via Eschaton ]

There's a nice piece by Jonathan Best about Lille's dad Santi Bose in the latest Sunday Inquirer Magazine, and also interviews with some of the first prize winners of the 52nd Palanca Awards.

Professor Emeritus Nieves Epistola, one of my most favorite people in the universe, passed away on Tuesday.

It was so awful to get Mila Laurel's sms (forwarded by The Boy) that said wala ng pulso (no more pulse) that I almost cried before I'd even scrolled down to the end of the message. Her death came as a shock to everyone, including her husband—I'm not even sure if she knew she had leukemia, or if getting sick was a surprise to her too. S.V.'s been ill the past year so so we always thought he would go first and I think he thought he would too, what with him always making macabre jokes about practicing to lie in state every time I came to visit and caught him in bed. I don't know what he's going to do without her and I can't imagine that he does either.

I'm luckier than most people who loved Mrs E because at least I got to say a proper goodbye the last time I saw her, just last week. I knew I was leaving for New York in a few days and that at 76 she might not be around when I move back home in two or three years so I made sure to see her before I left, but I didn't really think she wasn't going to make it. I miss her so much already.

Thanks for all the comments and emails, everyone. I checked in with my department and international student adviser this morning, and am off to see if I can get my NYU id now in about five minutes; I'm actually typing at a terminal in the suggestively-named (to me anyway) Chef Ho Dumpling House on La Guardia Place, which is where I just had myself a very tasty lunch.

What I forgot to say yesterday: Jarvis refused to pee from when we left our house in Makati up till we got out of JFK.

As soon as we got to the taxi queue I let him out of his bag and he walked to the nearest post and let out a seriously long stream of the most frighteningly yellow piss I've ever seen, and a lady and her friends standing a few feet away started clapping for him.

That's over 24 hours, folks—a heck of a long time to hold it in, but he did it. I'm so impressed.

P.S. The quickest way to get in touch with me is through sms, which works even better now than it did in Manila, surprisingly enough. Or maybe not so surprising when you consider that not many people here send text messages—I've been here two and a half days and I have yet to see any thumbs flying over a keypad!

We got in to New York yesterday just after lunch, no problems on either flight (Manila -> Narita, Narita -> JFK) or at the airport. The Customs inspector spent all of ten seconds looking at Jarvis's travel papers and his head sticking out of his travel bag before waving us through, and then we were off and out.

Right now I'm at the huge easyEverything right off Times Square, just to read and send some email, and of course to blog. What does it say about me that my first errand (after walking my dog a few times and going to the grocery, of course) is getting online?

In case you've been wondering which side I'm on when it comes to MMDA head Bayani Fernando's campaign against sidewalk vendors, I'm with Neal H. Cruz:

It is surprising how supposedly educated people still equate the campaign to rid the sidewalks of all obstructions, including sidewalk vendors, as a war between the rich and the poor. Why are the vendors being driven away while the cars of the rich continue to occupy the sidewalks? asked one letter writer. If the vendors cannot sell their wares on the sidewalks, how can they earn a living? asked another.

The trouble with these bleeding hearts is that they think with their hearts, not with their brains. Nobody is stopping the vendors from selling their wares to earn a livelihood, but they should do it where it is allowed--in the markets. The sidewalks are for pedestrians and the streets are for vehicles, not for vendors. The markets are for the vendors.

In other words, if it's illegal they shouldn't be doing it -- especially since there are plenty of vendors who are selling inside the markets and in designated areas and are making their living while obeying the law. Sidewalk vendors don't just break the law, they're stealing from legitimate market vendors (who have licenses from City Hall and are safer to buy from anyway because you can run after them if anything's amiss), forcing pedestrians to walk on the street where they then occupy lanes that should be used by cars and so cause traffic all while they're in danger of getting run over, and encouraging corruption by bribing policemen and municipal officials to look the other way.

I guess what I'm saying is we can complain all we want about the tong culture and how the rule of law can be a joke in this country, but we have to start somewhere if we want to fix things. Enforcing the law when it comes to something that every single one of us sees each day when we leave our homes is a pretty damn good way to begin.

I hate quizzes at least as much as the next person, probably more, but I couldn't resist this one because a) I watch the show and b) I was dead sure which character the quiz was going to tell me I was most like. I was right:

You're smart, witty, trustworthy, level-headed and industrious.

You value your independance above all else. Success is very important to you. You give the impression that you may be a little jaded, but you still harbour school- fantasies of finding someone who'll make you giggle and blush.

You can also be almost irrationally compulsive at times and are excessively cynical. Structure, order and schedual are very important to you. You have no tolerance for the majority of men these days. You find their behaviour completely unfathomable, and feel that if a man's over thirty and single, there's something wrong with him. It's Darwinian. They're being weeded out from propagating the species.

It's all me except for the last three sentences. Man, I really hate these things.

[ damn you, Pop Culture Junk Mail! ]

So what am I doing online when I'm just eight hours away from moving to New York?

Thinking about why I'm not pissed off at my mom, her boss or The Big Boss for delaying my departure yet again for one more day, is what I'm doing. This is the nth (and last) time over the past three weeks that my flight's been moved back at the last minute because of a meeting, and yet I can't find it in myself to be anything more than annoyed at the inconvenience of it.

It's weird, but although I've always felt like I come second in my mother's list of priorities, I've never really felt too bad about it. Maybe if she was in another line of work I'd resent all the time she spends working in and out of the office, out of town and in other countries, and during time that should probably be mother-daughter quality time, but it just wouldn't feel right to demand more of her attention just because I'm feeling needy when I know every meeting she attends and every minute she's on the phone might be a deal that creates jobs for maybe hundreds or thousands of people who might not otherwise be able to feed their families and send their children to school. How could I possibly get mad or jealous of her time when I have so much and she makes things happen for people who have nothing? I can't.

Not that she never believes me on the rare occasions that I say it, especially because we're not very close and don't always get along, but I love my mom -- more than that, I'm happy to say I respect her and am proud of who she is and what she does, and what she's made of herself.

But nobody tell her I said that, okay? All that said, I don't want to give her a reason to rationalize another potential work-related flight delay! Cross your damn fingers and your damn toes.

The good:
"The impeachment complaint against Elections Commissioner Luzviminda Tancangco passed its first test Wednesday, with the House committee on justice deeming it sufficient in form."

The bad:
"Camps cleaned for show say deportees"

The motherfucking ugly:
"The Philippine fact-finding mission has found a Filipino woman, who fell victim to sexual abuse, at a refugee camp in Tawau, Malaysia, where seven policemen had reportedly turned detained Filipino women into sex slaves before deporting them. Another Filipino deportee, a 13-year-old , was earlier reported to have been abused by Malaysian jail guards."

If only the good news made up in part for the bad. Not to say Tancangco's impeachment wouldn't make me very happy, because it really truly would, but.

I mentioned my great affection for the WINS cable channel's cult tv show "Oh! Tokyo" over a year ago. Well, those of you who are long-time fans of the show and its regular host Ellen already know that WINS has finally gotten around to shooting and airing a new set of episodes -- "Oh! Tokyo II," which is almost as good as the original content-wise (i.e. choice of featured locations) but still beats the pants off its predecessor, mainly because now Ellen is the only host.

No more long-haired chubby with an annoying high squeaky voice in a lame bargain basement toy store! No more curly-haired lady with a low voice who tours you around Tokyu Hands talking like fucking filofaxes and DIY wooden bookshelves are the latest greatest inventions from Japan! It's all Ellen, all the time. Which is as it should be.

But I digress. The main reason I'm writing about "Oh! Tokyo II" is to point out that those of you with Windows Media Player can now watch nine episodes online, at your leisure. Oh happy day!

New at the Mirror Project: 1, 2, 3.

So I finally let The Boy drag me to "Jologs" yesterday. He liked it enough the first time he saw it to want to spend an hour and a half of the very little time we have left together watching it again; I sat through it and I wish we'd spent the hour and a half at home watching GMA's telenovelas instead.

For what seems like the first time in my life, I'm in complete agreement with Oscar Jerome: "Jologs" sucks.

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if you didn't get the feeling while watching the movie that the writer and the director aren't stupid; that unlike most Filipino writers, directors, producers and actors, they probably know what irony means and how it works. The problem isn't that "Jologs" has most every single cliché in Philippine cinema¹, it's that it doesn't bother to rework or reinvent any of them. The only thing new about "Jologs" really is that now we're ripping off art films like "Magnolia" instead of a Hollywood blockbuster or classic like we usually do².

It didn't exactly help either that most of the characters were very very broad caricatures you couldn't bring yourself to care about (except maybe John Prats's would-be robber and Jodie Sta. Maria's ultra-religious virgin thinking about doing the nasty) and that just about half the cast can't fucking act to fucking save their fucking lives. For example, the offensively stereotypical tranny prostitute and Bisaya promdi played by Baron Geisler and Diether Ocampo respectively were undoubtedly more painful to watch than they would've been had the roles gone to actual actors. Geisler's hysterical bakla isn't just the latest cardboard cut-out in the long line of hysterical bakla cardboad cut-outs in our movies, he's spectacularly ugly and graceless in drag. And not only can't Ocampo even manage to pronounce words with a passable Bisaya accent (assuming you think you can live in Manila for a few years and still a) have a super thick accent and b) not start to codeswitch and use certain Tagalog words instead of their Cebuano or Ilonggo equivalents when talking to Manileños, which I know isn't true), he can't even get the particular rhythym and tones of the Bisaya right. I was beginning to wonder what the hell Ocampo was getting paid for and then the scene where he and Michelle Bayle are in bed sleeping in their came on screen and I remembered: he's a piece of meat.

And then we have Assunta de Rossi, apparently out to prove once and for all that her younger sister Alessandra isn't just the smarter de Rossi sister, she's also the one with all the talent. As The Boy pointed out, the funniest thing about "Jologs" is that you have Assunta de Rossi, who is definitely a jolog despite her Italian passport, playing a jolog and not doing it well.

Ugh.

So don't let your significant other/parent/sibling/friend/classmate beg/plead/bribe/blackmail you all they want, just DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE. Don't make the mistake I made: DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE.

¹Except the ubiquitous pointless song and dance number at the beach or in Baguio, but then again there's an unbelievably shitty music video after where the movie should really have ended had the people behind it not been so interested in being pa-cute, so.
²Like, say, the Aga Muhlach-Dayanara "Former Miss Universe/Former Mrs Marc Anthony" Torres flick "Basta't Kasama Kita", which is basically "Roman Holiday" without charm, intelligence and the dramatic backdrop of Rome. For shame.

So I'm supposed to be leaving for New York in eight hours, but.

This afternoon my mom's boss called to say we HAVE to meet and talk tomorrow, no ifs or buts, you have to stay in town for at least another day.

This is the third time this has happened! And now we're booked to leave on Friday and I'm sure to miss my very first class, which is on Thursday, and probably the one on Friday as well because of exhaustion. I think you'll agree this is far from the most auspicious of beginnings.

Sure, I've got more time to spend with The Boy, to say goodbye to friends I won't see for at least a year, and to finally get around to packing my things, but now I'm so tense about school that my skin's broken out for literally the first time in years. Cue major flashback to my pre-teen self having my miserable first encounter with my twin teen curses: dysmenorrhea and bad skin.

The last thing I need to worry about before moving to another country alone to start school is my skin so naturally now I'm totally obsessing about it (instead of packing, among other things). I'm eleven all over again except this time I'm actually following my dermatologist's advice and using all the medicine she's given me, instead of adding it to the giant stash of unused stuff in the back of my closet my mom doesn't know about and thus can't go ballistic over.

"You think putting an image of a jeepney or a coconut tree makes your site Pinoy? Think again, flip!"

Yet another reason why Bosing Rome is my Filipino web idol.

No, not that kind of idol...

Long time readers will remember April's acceptance letter; well, after a insane amount of snags getting my I-20 form and my visa, and booking flights, I should be leaving for New York this Tuesday.

Of course, I've already missed the orientations for new international students, new students at Tisch and new ITP students, and I did my registration online after an expensive trans-Pacific phone advising session, but the good news is that my program's throwing a "Welcome and Welcome Back Party" I'll be able to attend. That is, if I'm still capable of walking at 4 p.m. on Tuesday -- I'll be arriving in New York just seven hours after leaving Manila, thanks to the wonder of time travel that is the International Date Line.

Anyway, those of you who live in New York, I'd really appreciate your recommendations on these three things: a good veterinarian in Manhattan, a cellular service provider (I have an excellent triband phone already; my basic requirements are a decent local call plan, text messaging and rational international long distance rates) and a broadband ISP. Comments or through email, whichever you're most comfortable with.