Maynila: Kissing Capital

I got this piece of news via e-mail. It might be a piece of publicity stunt for a toothpaste brand and a mayor running for reelection, but what the hell. Here it is:

Close Up and the City of Manila is trying to beat the world record set by Chile on the most number of people simultaneously kissing!

It will happen on the 13th of February. The entire length of Roxas Boulevard would be closed to vehicles. The Boardwalk will be divided into several "gimik areas" that play a specific kind of music. There will be orchestra music by the Manila Philharmonic, house, and r&b by DJ Steve Mills, a rock band area, etc.

Then at the stroke of midnight, people may start kissing each other.

To get in, you must first register at the Close Up website or you can go there directly. But don't forget to bring a Close-up proof of purchase.

The above e-mail has been forwarded to me by a friend who got it from a mailing list for gay people. So obviously the concern was: Will gay people be allowed to participate? But then again, with this sort of publicity stunt, I'm expecting some strict and hideously conservative people to object at the "eradication of our morals."

Ho-hum. At least it's gonna be one exciting Friday the 13th, yeah? If we beat Chile, then I can say that I live in the world's kissing capital. Or that I hold the Guinness Book of Record in kissing. Nifty, huh? nyahaha.

Okraying Ladies

Because I might forget and this is just too funny and weird, at least for me: Miriam Defensor Santiago is guesting on a television sitcom. She's appearing with Hilda Koronel on "All Together Now" tomorrow night, Monday, 26 January. Based on the teasers, they're doing a spoof on Crying Ladies. I don't know why they chose Miriam Santiago. Does she relate with the Rhodora Rivera character--a second great trying hard faded politician, er, artista? But it sure is interesting.

Armchair sports

From the New York Times. Google bombing as an extreme sport for those who have the time. Hm, I wonder what'll happen if we google bomb this to the ship+of+fools?It's not that far fetched anyway. Or maybe I should just bomb my own. Like say, "kantogirlblues: more useful everyday." Hehe. :)

The Sundance film festival also saw the premiere of the much awaited Gael Garcia Bernal starrer "Motorcycle Diaries," a travelogue/film memoir about the early days of Che Gueverra. Walter Salles of "Central Station" directs the film, which has been criticized as not being political enough and for seeming like a less saucy version of "Y Tu Mama Tambien." Well, as long as it has Gael Garcia Bernal, I'll watch it and maybe learn something about the manwhose visage is on countless red t-shirts nowadays.

Also debuting at the Sundance is a documentary about Imelda Marcos and her shoes. But I'm disappointed because even if the article's title mentions the film("From Imelda Marcos's Flats to the Golden Arches"), I gain nothing about it from the two lines it merits, thus: "The filmmaker Ramona Diaz spent five years making a documentary about Imelda Marcos that went beyond the shoes. Mrs. Marcos did not attend the festival but participated in the documentary." That's all there is. I don't even have an idea who this Ramona Diaz is.

There's also a documentary on how going on a Mc Diet can have really dire effects on your health. "Super Size Me" follows the travails of a guy who tried eating nothing but Mc Donald's for a month, and three weeks into the experiment, he gets diagnosed for liver disease. That's what we get for super sizing everything.

Scorpio Nights and other consumer updates etc.

I finished reading Kathryn Harrison's "The Kiss," and it depressed the hell out of me. It's a personal narrative of a daughter who had an affair with her long absent father--not exactly coffee table reading, but I finally managed to wade through it.

There's a particular scene there where the mother brought her daughter to the gynecologist to have her fitted for a diaphragm. She wanted to protect her daughter from the "evils of college life." Sounds fine, except that the girl was technically a virgin and should the doctor do that, he would have to deflower her with clinical instruments. But the mother was still insistent and the daughter had to endure all of that. I say, no bleeding way! I mean, what a way to go, right? Pardon the pun and all.

I'm now reading Douglas Coupland's Life After God. I'm just about halfway into the fourth story.

In other worlds, Astrid informed me earlier in the week that the original Scorpio Nights is now available in VCDS in your friendly neighborhood Astrovision. I searched for it last Wednesday at the Glorietta branch and in the other video stores there but they didn't have it. The following day, I went to SM Manila with my brother and found a copy there. A Pinoy cinema gem for Php150. Not bad at all.

I didn't get to watch the video until Saturday though. I realized that the actor I thought to be Orestes Ojeda all my life had to be some other character actor, because the sekyu in the film was definitely not him.

If I'm not mistaken, I think Scorpio Nights has been declared one of the best Pinoy films ever, but it's also been banned because of its many many graphic sex scenes. But it does make a point: what good is it to see many shots of nudity when the object of fantasy lies very very still and apparently doesn't care much for the sex? I felt bothered watching those scenes, which was probably the point of it all: Just how much mechanical sex on screen can you take? Will you even try to get off at something like that?

The movie is set in one of those dilapidated bahay na bato in old Manila, populated with the great unwashed. All the characters in the film are -er beauties: driver, worker, peeper, whatever. Save for this preppie guy who is kind of tisoy and very preppy, they're all greasy and just hang around in their short denim cutoffs, playing basketball or making tsismis and fantasizing about the sekyu's wife. One of the -er guys, a young "Engineer Feati" Danny, fancies the wife. He conveniently lives in the apartment directly above Mr. and Mrs. Sekyu's. There are holes on the floor from which he gets very good views of what goes on in there. He knows the routine so much that when he got the chance, he entered the apartment and mimicked Mr. Sekyu's act and got to sleep with the wife, who sleeps with no underwear for the easy access and just pulls down her nightgown when everything is over. And she doesn't even open her eyes, not once.

It's really freaky to watch it. It has Freud written all over it. And the most popular stills from that film as represented in film books and in all subsequent film homages is that of Danny's eyes peeping into the hole. It's not long before his penchant for peeping turns into a yearning for some, uh, interactive gaming. Both voyeur and bored wife get drawn into mad, animal sex complete with rain effects, meowing cats and transparent raincoats. I pity the cats.

In the film, there's this guy with the guitar who was constantly singing. At one point, he was singing that "Lay-la-lay-lay-la-lay-lay-la-lay psssh!" and then everyone does the sound effects. It was really funny.

My only beef about the video is that it is too scratchy in parts, especially in the beginning where the film stock could have been exposed to the elements and all. But still a very good buy. At least it didn't end up as torotot.

The Requisite Shaider Sunday Update

I woke up this morning just in time for Shaider. So this week's episode is called "Susi ng Kinubukasan," in which Puma Lay-Ar came up with the plan to kidnap kids with genius level test scores and then train them for the next ten years. When they come back, they will rule the world in various pursuits--school, sports, politics, culture, you name it.

I vaguely remember watching this episode, except that I tend to confuse it with another that involves feeding little kids with food laced with something so that they'd fall under Puma Lay-Ar's spell. I think it also had something to do with training kids early for world domination.

Come to think of it, this Puma Lay-Ar dude is scary. He's right on the money in terms of coming up with plans on how to take over the world. Media, kids with high IQs, music. Plus the scoring, particularly the Fushigi theme, really reminds you of cults and it makes you want to raise your hands and sway.

Also, this morning was an Annie episode. I just wish that those women villains would do something more substantial, and Yda would utter more than just "Time space warp, ngayon din!"

My brothers and I were laughing over how the low budget strains were so obvious. The way they superimpose the monster and the stock footage of the blasts and shots of Shaider on his Blue Hawk and how the "disco room" in the time space warp zone is a staple. But all in all, great cheesy fun.

Revolt from Desktop

Why is it that on the weekend that I decide to NOT bring home any work, the multitudes will decide to bombard me with requests to post the poems for the midterm set?Of course I don't have the poems with me. I don't have the books with me at home. And of course, I just had to give them the poems which aren't easily searchable over the internet. Maybe I should have just given them "Revolt from Hymen," or "Soledad" or one of those uber mushy Manalang Gloria poems. But gah, it had to be about the mistress and the old maid. Oh well.

Update: Well, internet still saves my weekend. Hurray for this Infocus article on Angela Manalang Gloria. Yey!

Finding Lino

Somebody's proposed graduate school thesis is to put together a web archive of Lino Brocka's early films. (Look for the blog's Nov 28 entry.) Must be a good idea before everything gets burned for an ounce of silver or before they all become torotot. Whoever owns the blog must be interested in film and a huge dose of musicals. Hm. Might be of interest to someone I know.

Know what, second GREAT or not, I think this was a productive Sunday. Yeah. Good noh?

Now if only I didn't have that lost Saturday. Hm..

Cry me some more



Mark Meily, director of Crying Ladies, studied film in France. But he also says that doing commercials is the best film school one could ever have. In preparation for the film, he prepared story boards and had a powerpoint presentation of fictionalized bios for the characters, complete with eneagrams. Hm.

Okay, here's some more crying stalking: in inq, an interview, and an article in Variety.

Second great trying hard film reviews

Second GREAT, my foot. I mean, hello. Second GREAT?! If I didn't know my Sharon Cuneta movies, I would have let it pass. Now if only the reviews weren't single spaced and with passable grammar. Person seemed to dashed off the words, printed it without benefit of editing and submitted it haphazardly.

This is one of those moments when you just want to scream and squish them. Die puny grammar, die!

PS. Just to put things into context: A kid in one of my classes submitted a review of Gagamboy. Her argument was, the film was a poor simulation of Spiderman. Therefore it was a second great trying hard copycat. My objection stems from the misuse of a Sharon Cuneta-Cherie Gil quote. Now if the student actually meant that there was a "first great copycat" of Spiderman, then I might let it pass. So I wonder which film was the first great copy. Hm.