I wanna live inside a movie theater

At least for a few days until I finish everything that's showing, in time for the Oscars. Passed by Greenbelt yesterday and discovered that Lost in Translation is showing already, along with Something's Gotta Give. There's also In America and 21 Grams, and I'm afraid I have a huge film backlog I can't catch up with.

Sigh.

Am still tired from walking around yesterday with my aunt and uncle, and we spent a monstrous hour last night crossing and uncrossing our legs inside a cab that was caught in the middle of a horrible traffic in c5 on our way to Eastwood. If I were them, I wouldn't want to live there. Our cabbie used to be a trucker in Greece, and he told stories of how old lolas would get off the buses and stand by the roadside and pee standing up. No need for fuschia pink urinals. How weird is that?

Kaboom

I've been found out.

I realized it's really very difficult to maintain your credibility as a supposed figure of authority slash vessel of wisdom and knowledge, which is really the last thing I wanted to be. (Eew.)

My late, not-so-great comments system died out on me so I put in something new.

I need coffee. My resolve to drink only tea is facing a mighty challenge.

Nerve's The Breakup Issue hits you in the face (more like in the gut, really) with all the ensuing rage, the snot dripping, chest thumping, knife-wielding, I-wanna-jump-over-the-MRT-railings-but-I'm-afraid-of-ending-up-like-minced-meat proclamations that comes with that time honored tradition of, well, breaking up. There's an article about break up movies, and the only films I could relate to are Annie Hall and High Fidelity. I want to watch those two movies again, not that I'm in break up mode, but it's because it's still a kind of loss only without the death scene. It might induce moping, which I'm not very keen of doing right now, only because there are tons of things to do, and I might be better off watching really stupid movies or gushy ones. The antidote might be here already, because I just got the European DVD version of Amelie Poulain, but damn what I've give to have a functioning player right now. And this is going to sound really cheesy, but I wanted to say, "Hey Woody Allen, save me."

Bright Lights, Back Aches

My back still aches from yesterday's monumental effort of trying to clean my room. It looks halfway decent now, and I still maintain that I can live with my own filth--which is mostly paper and dust anyway--literally parts of me floating around. But I digress..

So I rearranged my books and I found out that I had two copies of Sam Shepard's Fool For Love. I got one from Goodwill during a sale, and another from Booksale which was still wrapped in plastic. Exact same thing. Oh I also have two copies of Jacob I Have Loved, but they have different covers so it's really a different book. And also two copies of The Bell Jar, but that was from my sophomoric Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton and Dylan Thomas phase.


I finished Bright Lights, Big City last night. One herculenean effort. I read a quarter of it while commuting last week. Then after dinner I sat my arse down and leafed through. This is what a dead pc monitor can do for you... I'm not too happy with it. I guess I was expecting a lot since this was a first novel from a top gun 80s writer. I found the first two chapters powerful. Young man finds himself in the streets at 6am, after rounds of partying with the Bolivian Marching Band. Cool. Then in the last chapters, when they suddenly pull out the trick--that this is not actually about mourning the loss of a beautiful wife and their dreamy relationship, that it's all about coming to terms with his mother's death, bah! Yes, the scent of bread. Yes, the wife as mummy replacement. Yes, daredeviltry with furry animals. The premise somehow reminds me of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. You know, all that yearning. But somehow I feel shortchanged. I think I'll start reading In Cold Blood, before I begin to think that all decades have their staple, requisite supply of bored young men and women going off on some city trek searching for meaning in an otherwise meaningless existence in the absurd universe.

Annie is an alien

from some distant planet. That's where she must have gotten her panty-flashing skills. Anyhow, my mother sent my brother to wake me up in time for Shaider, among other things. Yesterday's episode was "Tatlong Misteryosang Babae," wherein teenage girls, sirenas from the planet Marina, come to earth after Lay-Ar has captured their planet. They're the last of their kind, and Lay-Ar wants to get rid of them. This is the second consecutive episode that involves some sort of intergalactic conquests, and all those who have been Lay-Ar-ed somehow land in continental Tokyo. It's all so Smallville to me.

This blog is not your personal automatic library.

Hay naku. Some people would go as far as pestering blog people to do their homework for them. Spam n'yo nga ang girl na ititch. Kainez cia. Just scan through the comments.

I realize that I've been posting nothing but Shaider episodes in the last few weeks. But feh, I'll try coming up with other things soon. In the meantime, please check out Butas na Chucks' photos of the Once and Future First Lady of the Philippines.

And I'm just wondering out loud: Why isn't there much hoopla about this year's Pelikula at Lipunan Film Fest? Why is everyone lining up for Mulan Milan, filling up all those Glorietta/Greenbelt theaters so much that I have no recourse but to watch Magic Kitchen instead? Not that I'm sorry though.

Jimmy and Cristina were lovers.

My God, how they could love.
Swore to be true to each other.
True as the stars up above. **

In the Shaider universe, that is. Jimmy was an astronaut sent to the moon for an experiement, and their shuttle exploded and he was presumed dead. Until he was found 20 years later, still as young and vibrant, presumably stuck in a time-space warp. He was sent back to Japan, and he proceeded to look for Cristina, the love of his life, who had unfortunately passed away the month before. But he didn't know that, and when he saw this young girl who eeriely looked like his beloved Cristina, he started going after her. Young girl was actually Cristina's niece. Lay-Ar's footsies also started going after Jimmy, because he could dissolve himself into little atoms and then reconverge. This mutation would help them create a powerful monster who could finally beat Shaider.

There you go folks, Shaider as a Shake, Rattle, and Roll crossed with the X-Men crossed with Dante's Inferno episode. How retro-chic and po-mo, don't you think?

Shamelessly swiped from Frankie & Johnny, natch.

Shaider No. 5

Last Sunday in the Pulis Pangkalawakan universe, Lay-Ar got his hands on athletes desperate to win in the Olympics. I can't remember the exact title but it was something like "Ang Masilaw sa Karangalan" or something like that. This Lay-Ar guy knows his stuff. He picks on all of humanity's weaknesses, and the seven deadly sins. I just don't know why his bid for world domination didn't really kick off, since he pretty much knows his target.

Anyhow. I've been having a pretty bad week. The flu and the lunar cycle got me, so I'm staying in.

There's a naked man outside my window.

Really. It was like Death in the Form of an Ugly Naked Guy, with Wings. (With apologies to mr. psychicpants.)

At exactly 6pm tonight, I opened the door to my office after my very last class for the day. I had just come from a talk with some students who had to consult whether they should drop or still take up the make up midterm exams. A solid half hour of explaining blah blah. I was already tired by then.

So I decided to go back to my office. It was already dark. I push open my door and look up to face the window. There in the courtyard, smack in the middle of the usually dead uninhabited courtyard, was a path lit by candles on both sides. The path was strewn with red and white rose petals. I walk closer to the window to inspect what was up, and at that exact same moment, I saw a guy drop his pants and step out of them. He was naked except for fairy wings. Or they must have been angel wings, but I couldn't really tell. He started reciting some verse which I couldn't really understand. My mind was just screaming, "Omg! There's a naked guy outside my window!"

I started texting this other teacher batchmate. Within minutes, batchmate barged inside my office. "Where?! Where is he?" I motion to the window and Naked Angel was still there declaiming. What was he doing? We asked ourselves if the theater production had started, but no, no, it couldn't be that.

Naked Angel disappears from our view. A while later, while teacher batchmate and I stood dazed outside my door, Theater Professor approached us to apologize.

"I didn't know he was going to do that. We're doing scene interpretations, and the kid was supposed to do Hamlet. He didn't indicate in the class notes that he was going to be naked," he said in between much headshaking. "Were you offended?"

It was our turn to shake our heads.

"We were, uhm, more stunned actually," I said.

"That's the wrong way to do Hamlet, really." Convinced that we were really just stunned, he sauntered away. Once alone, we started giggling. Unexpected benefits of a late night checking papers. Hehehe.

Shaider # 4

This Sunday's episode is "Katalinuhang Huwad." Since Lay-ar failed in his attempts to kidnap and brainwash the little geniuses of the world, he decided to go for the underperforming kids. Parents are usually impressed with high grades and want their kids to do well enough to get into the most elite universities and would do anything for their kids to get in. The Hairspray Girls go around Tokyo peddling a "robot" who would then take the image of the child, and then systematically take his/her place. The robot scores "100" in exams, would do chores without complaints--the perfect, filial child. All praises for this subservient robot. Of course, the real kid would get jealous, but it'll be too late for him. Unless, of course, Shaider saves him.

Post-it, found inside an old notebook

I don't particularly remember the instances of why I wrote it down, but this is what it tells me:

My advice to anyone who wants to find himself is this: Stay right where you are, because if you don't, you're in danger of losing yourself forever. --Jostein Gaarder, The Solitaire Mystery.

I'm supposing it's from my Philo I phase and the semesters immediately after. But somehow, it resonates to me soundly right now. I didn't stay where I was. I moved. I was thinking maybe that's the coward's way out. The dilemma now is whether to stay put or go back to where I was. Decisions, decisions, indeed.