My bout of revertigo

Revertigo (from Urban Dictionary): brought on by being near a person or persons from your past, revertigo is when a person begins to act how they did at the time they knew said person(s).

No one will probably read this entire post.

I’ve been meaning to write about an experience I had with an old high school classmate last Friday. It’s taken me a while to get my thoughts straight, let alone find the time to sit down and right something on a more personal level. But here I am now, on the final part of a caffeine high, listening to Nujabes’ Ristorante Mixtape Side A, and trying to act my age and not fall asleep at an early time.

I don’t want to get too into this though, just enough for me to put into words the emotions I had and have had since that terrible night, so I can bid adieu to it once and for all.

One of the few friends I’ve kept since I graduated high school in ‘06 and I enjoy unwinding on Fridays at one of the only real cafes left in town. Whereas I’ve severed ties with almost every person I was friends with in high school (for various reasons), him and I have stayed fairly close since then. Last week he texted me to inform of the arrival of a certain girl class mate, whom I just so happened to had been mad in like with during high school, and who reciprocated my feelings as well back then, to varying degrees of intensity. We had a rocky–and occasionally verbally violent–relationship as friends, though during our senior year we were quite vocal of the feelings we had for each other, knowing all too well nothing would ever come of them, mostly due to some shady ass things I did to her our sophomore and junior years. After high school, however, we both moved on, I got involved with other girls of course, particularly the one I’m with now (and have been with for almost three years). She moved out of town and got with a guy who was five years older, and who had an established enough career. Between graduation and last Friday we hadn’t as much even glimpsed a shadow of each other,  and maybe messaged each other–at most–five times through Facebook.

My friend tells me last Wednesday that she wants to see him and I that coming Friday. I have no qualms against this, of course, as I saw her as a good friend, albeit one I probably don’t know well anymore. How terribly right I was (about the not knowing her part, not the good friend one).

She became the most bitchy, irritating girl I have met, probably since middle school (which had a female population consisting ONLY of bitchy and irritating girls). The entire night was a waste of my time and precious energy, constantly trying to rebut her comments towards me without sounding defensive. From the moment she entered my friend’s car to the hasty get away I achieved much later on, I was resisting the urge to open up a box of crazy on her ass.

She wasn’t the most attractive girl in high school, at least not until the latter part of our last year, but it was well known that after she moved away she got much better looking; curves filled out, face straightened up, hair looked less crack whore-ish. Unfortunately, she kept reminding my friend and I of how “hot she’s gotten”. Understandable, considering the deep insecurities the constant teasing in high school probably gave her, but nonetheless annoying to no end. She kept referencing the high school crush I had for her back in the day, giving me the “you could have had this” attitude the entire night. Though good looking now, she was by no means the hottest girl I have seen lately, and even if she was, the constant self-made calls to her physical attributes deserved more scorn than positive attention.

(On a slight side note, at one point in the night she grabbed one of my hands and inexplicably pressed it to her boobs. What she thought either of us gained from that is still beyond me, as right before she was trying to convey to us how mature she now is, and also I’m not a 15 year old boy anymore.)

Throughout the night she was trying to convince my friend and I of how much “better” and “mature” she’d become, but all I could see was an insecure teenage girl in a decent looking 21 year old’s body. Everything she did was “so great” because it was different than what my friend and I did, though with a little questioning you could tell she was bullshitting almost everything. She proclaimed to drink all the time, but after one and a half cranberry vodkas she was already buzzing far away from us. She talked about the “sophisticated” and “amazing” films she watches now, though the most non-mainstream films she could think of were Garden State and Lost in Translation, which in fact aren’t very non-mainstream at all. She treated sex as some secret only she and her friends were in on, and disbelieved I had ever had any sexual encounter in my life (words can’t express the amount of shock/anger I had towards that, which resulted in me resisting the urge to say something back and risk sounding utterly defensive). And she never missed a moment the entire to criticize me AND my girlfriend, for no other reason than to just be a bitch.

Despite all of this, I barely said anything back to her. Even now, a week later, I still don’t know why I didn’t defend myself more adequately. I only piped up when unnecessary words were said about my girlfriend, who doesn’t know this girl from my past and doesn’t deserve anything said about her (luckily most insults were aimed at me and only splashed onto Majal a couple times). The only logical reason I can think of for this silence is I had a case of “revertigo”; I reverted back into the me I was in high school. I was an ass to her back then, yes, but deep down I [the high schooler] was always trying to get on her good side. Last week it seemed sub-consciously that may have been the case, except I had no rational reason to do so. I have no more feelings for her, at least none which would’ve resulted in anything more than a closer friendship. But now that ship’s sailed, and all I have left is this feeling that, no matter what, I will never talk to her again, hopefully never see her again, and if all else fails, I will not let her trample on me (or my friends) the way she so freely did last week. I don’t care what becomes of her and I pray that she never enters my life again.

I’m happy without her, and even more so, I’m happy with the people I call friends now. Fuck her.

This was way longer than I expected.

PORN in the Philippines

It is no secret that I enjoy porn. I don’t think porn is inherently perverted (though some of it definitely is, no doubt), and I think the moral hypocrites who deem porn as a sin/gross/disgusting/etc. are missing the human factor of nudity and sex. Maybe this thinking of mine has been shaped by Boogie Nights being exposed to me at too impressionable an age, but porn never seemed too big a deal to me. I was never ashamed of watching it, nor was I too vocal about the things I’d seen. When kids in school had a clipping from a porno mag in their backpack and showed it to the rest of us, I wasn’t impressed. A boob is a boob; a vagina is a vagina. Big whoop.

It is also no secret I enjoy reading the Inquirer’s opinion columns, though I don’t share the quasi-liberal (and more often than not straight out conservative) viewpoints of many of its columnists, including some of my favorites (Conrado de Quiros and Patricia Evangelista are the first to come to mind). Lately, though, a new face has been showing up on the site who I’ve found myself disagreeing with 100% of the time, and that is the nothing-but-trash writer Manuel F. Almario, who today wrote a column calling on the Philippines to censor internet pornography within its borders.

The column begins with Almario mentioning Google’s threat to leave China due to the country’s heavily criticized internet censorship (of which Google has also fallen under a certain degree of international disapproval). The only valid point Almario mentions in the entire column is at the beginning:

It is an accepted principle of international law that a nation is sovereign within its borders in enacting laws and regulations. It is also a recognized principle that foreigners and foreign business enterprises in a country must observe its laws and regulations.

Even this, though, is open to argument–mostly of the “You’re siding with CHINA of all places?!” type–but I’ll save that for another time. Almario goes on to mention a certain law in the Philippines that criminalizes venues which display “indecent plays, scenes, acts, or show” which “serve no other means but to satisfy the market for violence, lust, or pornography…”. These venues can range anywhere from theaters to DVD merchants, the latter being prevalent in the Philippines and somewhat infamous for having “the good stuff”, whether that stuff is a cam version of Avatar or videos of dogs fucking women, whichever floats your boat.

Almario quickly starts digging his own hole though. He says this aforementioned law should cover the internet, not that it does. His reasoning for this is that it “invades the home”, which is a common conservative attitude (that of the “victim”), and a way of thinking all too common in the Philippines, particularly amongst the religious majority.

“I don’t care if it’s allowed in the eyes of the State, Your Honor, my 13 year old  son watching a video of hardcore lesbian sex isn’t his fault, rather it’s the fault of three separate parties: 1) the internet’s, for hosting such distasteful content, 2) my computer’s, for allowing my son to watch these videos, and 3) these girls, for being so unnaturally attractive. I say we should punish these people/objects to the full extent of the law.”

Sexual curiosity is a very human thing, and something which should be embraced rather than shunned. Unfortunately, many self-proclaimed Christian countries demonize sex and the human body to the extent of taking away the rights of a person to chose what they should and shouldn’t do. Trying to force a young boy or girl to think of sex as something terrible and dirty only has adverse results (proved by the US’s statistics of pregnancies amongst 15-17 year old girls which barely budged during Bush’s push for teaching abstinence over safe-sex in American public schools).

Almario goes on to defend his fake new law, going as far as calling for corporations which allow Filipinos to access porn (such as Google and Yahoo) to be subject to punishment according to this law, which of course doesn’t exist. Almario then criticizes the Philippines’ government for not enforcing this non-law, saying it “exposes its weaknesses”. The government of that country has issues, no doubt, but allowing access to porn isn’t one of them. Almario just doesn’t like people with conflicting morals, values, or vices (to use a Filipino term). If a government is given the power to censor porn, what’s to say it can’t censor the information its citizens can obtain, or whether or not it allows public protests against the government (like the People Power Revolution which toppled Marcos’ reign of terror)? Granted, the Philippines is rife with human rights violations, having gone out of its way to stifle certain movements or ideas in the country (and yes, even censor some books and films), but to censor the internet is to censor the very symbol of free thought. What makes humans unique is our ability to think individually. This is the reason we’ve had Einsteins and Shakespeares and Kubricks in our history. Yes, this is also the reason we’ve had Hitlers and Stalins and Maos, but we wouldn’t know how crazy these people were if we didn’t have the information to teach us of their crimes.

Of course I’m not advocating for all porn to be uncensored, as child porn is high up on my no-no list. But everything else, I think, is a-okay. Not that I’d watch everything out there, but if you want to, go right ahead. I’m not gonna judge.

Manuel F. Almario will surely try to convince more people of the validity of his fake law, but as long as he keeps sitting on his throne in the sky, throwing books into fires and looking down on all us silly free-thinkers, the rest of us can just point and laugh at his stupidity.

Here’s to you, Almario.

HOLY SHIT, SKIN! (from Brillante Mendoza’s Serbis, which ironically is all about the day to day life of a family that runs an adult theater)

Voiceless

Lost my voice Friday night. The twilight of my normal voice was cool though, as it had shifted to a really low register and made me sound not unlike Chef in South Park. Now though I have this really raspy, Marge Simpson-esque thing going on that worries me for two reasons: 1) I’ll have a hell of a time at work on Tuesday if I sound like a pedophile, and 2) Majal’s birthday is Wednesday, but considering she’s in the Philippines right now and I’m not, I–being the good boyfriend–will call her on Tuesday, my time (Philippines time is 16 hours ahead of California right now). HOWEVER she’s been increasingly busy recently, and I have too, so I may call her earlier to fit both our schedules. Unfortunately I don’t know if my voice will come back any sooner.

I’m tired of being sick. I’ve been sick on/off since July, when I had a more extreme version of what I currently have right now I think. I’ve had a headache almost everyday for a while, probably caused half by a sinus infection and the other half by a pillow that prays to be replaced. Needless to say, physically I’ve been feeling mighty crappy recently.

BUT

I’ve been having a nice life recently. Stable/okay paying job, school’s started,  and my weekends have been thoroughly fun, which is a good step up from my anti-social attitude I had for the latter part of ‘09. As long as my plate is full I’ll do well in mostly everything I do. My classes aren’t particularly hard, but one of my sociology teachers is damn boring, however her redundant sentences do add some unintended entertainment to an otherwise boring teaching style (ex. “I expect you to come to class having read the reading material for the reading we will read for that day’s reading.” I am not kidding about this). I predict I will have a good semester finally, after a long string of terrible ones, and I think I deserve a break every now and then.

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Part 2 of the 09-10 television season has begun. It may not be my most noble hobby, but I do enjoy watching TV. Not just any TV show, and not even on TV per se, but I do derive some excitement out of well crafted, well acted television. Though last year’s output of good films was low, I think television had an excellent showing. I’ve already voiced my pleasure of Glee, but Modern Family (ABC) and Community (NBC) are both picking lots of steam. The former started off strong and has had consistently good writing since then, but I almost gave the slip to Community when it began, as its jokes seemed forced and unnatural, but after the five episode mark it started hitting more than missing. Jersey Shore (MTV) has also caught my attention, later than for other people, and for probably different reasons than most of its audience (it’s like watching a train you know is about to crash). House and Fringe, both on Fox, have been okay, the latest episodes of both having probably been the best of their run this season so far. How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory, both on CBS, finally started rising from their long and occasionally dull plateau (this goes double for HIMYM, which just went back to the Mother arc). That’s all the TV that’s interested me so far, aside from Sunday night Fox, which is a given. Since I’ve been so busy recently I haven’t had the time to watch these shows the night they come out, so I save them all for the weekend, along with back episodes of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

I’ve also wanted to watch some older shows that I’ve been interested in before. I’ve only seen the first two seasons of The Sopranos, and that was when they were still new too, so buying the show season-by-season seems like it’d be a worthwhile venture. Other shows’ seasons I’d like to buy are The West Wing, The X-Files, Lost, The Wire, and maybe–just maybe–Heroes. All seem enjoyable enough to buy, watch, and keep.

I also want to read lots of books. :]

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I’ve started using my Tumblr a lot more, so if you have one too you can/should follow me. The stuff I post is usually just daily fluff I’ve found, but I do enjoy the artistic porn that’s come by my dashboard, amongst other things.

Obligatory New Years Post

I planned on doing this earlier in the week– preferably before today– but shit happens.

Though technically the end of the decade of the 2000’s is this year, not last, it feels like the last ten years are already through. Not the most desirable 10 years at that, on a personal, familial, social, national, or even international level. When 2000-2001 came around I had just started middle school, and with middle school came an age of mischief, bad grades, acne, and an all around bad attitude. 2001 saw 9/11, which is no secret, and that started an international chain of unfortunate events to occur, which came down to affecting me more in the long run than maybe I even know now. Middle school came and went, with growth spurts and broken hearts and a copious amount of porn with it. High school came and went, with more broken hearts, bad grades, crashed cars, and a slightly less amount of porn than middle school had. College has come but hasn’t quite left me yet, which I have much to say about. College may have come a year later for me than for most of my classmates, but my mom brought up an interesting point last week: they may finish school before me, but when they’re looking for jobs and I’m still studying I can at least say I’ve had more life experiences than they’ve had.

Which is true.

In the past 10 years I’ve:

– been on road trips to watch little known indie films 3 hours away from where I live.

– drank chai in India.

– bought a 30,000 dollar car without the help of my parents.

– watched South Border, Urbandub, and Bamboo sing on a very hot, very rainy night in Cagayan de Oro.

– eaten food in a monastery on Lan Tau Island in Hong Kong.

– been inside the Taj Mahal.

– nearly been swindled out of my money at the Taj Mahal.

– seen the largest metal Buddha in the world (also on Lan Tau Island).

– drank more than 10 shots of 151 without having to be taken to the hospital.

– looked for wakwaks int Philippines.

– drank Red Horse from 5 in the evening to 10 in the morning in Cebu.

– met the love of my life.

– became a better gymnast than even I thought possible.

– trained in Capoeira, Muay Thai, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

– learned to play the violin and guitar better than most people I know.

– worked as a gymnastics coach, office assistant in an architecture firm, telecom operator, and job placement specialist.

– discovered Lav Diaz, Ishmael Bernal, Lino Brocka, and Brillante Mendoza.

– also discovered Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Nagisa Oshima, Masaki Kobayashi, and Akira Kurosawa.

– read books by Haruki Murakami, Don DeLillo, David Mitchell, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Steinbeck, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (to name a few).

– played all of Chopin’s ballades and the majority of his etudes on the piano.

– was part of an all male singing group.

– learned Mandarin, Cebuano, and Tagalog.

– rode on top of a jeepney in a storm on a dirt road and got caked in mud.

– fit six people on a motorcycle and road about 30 miles in a storm on a dirt road and got caked in mud.

– got stuck in Manila by myself with 40,000 pesos and had the time of my life.

– got drunk at Kaamulan.

– made some of the best friends I could have ever asked for.

To name a few.

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The word “resolution” kind of conveys the notion that the person making said resolution will fail in his attempt to see it through. So my goals for 2010 are:

– polish up my Mandarin skills.

– not neglect any of my blogs, which I have a tendency to do.

– limit my soda intake and drink more tea.

– buy those bad ass Ray-Ban Wayfarers I saw the other day in the mall.

– travel someplace, any place, that I can make a story out of.

– publish a short story in a literary journal.

– write, produce, and direct a short narrative film and a short documentary.

– start a work out program and stick with it.

– memorize one poem a week.

– read at least one book a month.

– watch less TV.

– eat less fast food.

– write a sentence everyday with a word from the Urban Dictionary one-a-day calendar Andrea gave me for Christmas.

– watch more movies worth watching.

Happy New Year sa tanan. Here’s to it being a good one.

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Also, my “best films of 2009″ list will come around on my film blog this weekend. I had a hard time sifting through 2009’s shit to find some movies I really cared about. I also watched way more old films than I did new ones, possibly because barely anything new caught my eye.  “Avatar” and “District 9″ — for instance– were decent,  but not decent enough to make my list.

Some thoughts on “Glee”

 

You think this is hard? I have hepatitis, that’s hard.

– Sue Sylvester

My favorite new series to hit TV this season has been “Glee”. I saw the pilot episode long before the first season began, and though I may have been skeptical before the show actually started, I’ve been pleased with the path it’s taken so far (11 episodes in), and the music, dancing, and dialogue have been consistently entertaining. The inside jokes are especially funny, but I fear “Glee” may go down the road “Arrested Development” went when it became too “complicated” for audiences. We’ll just have to play the waiting game and see.

Musically speaking, some episodes/songs are better than others. Most of the “Glee” cast’s voices are top notch, but I must say I’m not the biggest fan of Finn. Though the cast’s rendition of “Don’t Stop Believing” was nice, it started off a pattern of Finn always being auto-tuned. I thought the auto-tune bashing following Kanye’s last album would put a stop to the unnecessary digitizing of voices, but apparently the makers of “Glee” didn’t get the memo. But every time he sings “You’re the One That I Want” with Rachel he’s done a royal fuck up of a job, and I say that nicely. His screechy voice ruins that song, and Rachel’s pleasant– yet overly generic– voice has to make up for it. The only song so far that’s been worse than Finn’s “Grease” was Mr. Schuester trying to sing “Bust a Move” by Young MC. That was just bullshit.

The latest episode of Glee was terrific though. Aside from a few low points (a reprisal of “You’re the One That I Want”, for instance) and the club’s total lack of manners during the deaf school’s rendition of “Imagine”, every song accomplished what it set to do, and I especially loved Tina getting a much deserved solo by singing “True Colors” at the end.

The story arcs have been only so-so, though. The “Mrs. Schuester not really being preggers but instead wanting Quinn’s unborn child” story is really getting old, and Emma the guidance counselor’s unrequited love for Mr Schuester is dumb. Luckily the show hasn’t fallen to High School Musical lows yet, and let’s hope it never does. The dialogue, however, is the glue that holds everything together. From Sue’s one-liners to Emma’s not-so-subtle innuendo, the comedy in “Glee” is something quite new and refreshing, and I look forward more so to what the characters will say in each coming episode than what songs they will sing.

Though “Glee” is far from perfect, it is fun to watch. I haven’t been bored watching it so far, but sometimes I feel like the logic of the show isn’t all there with some inexplicable actions being done at times (mostly by Mr. Schuester and Finn). Though this really just is me nit-picking and doesn’t take away from the show’s overall luster. If you haven’t started watching this yet, you’re missing out.

I’ve always thought the desire to procreate was a sign of deep personal weakness. Me? Never wanted kids. Don’t have the time, don’t have the uterus.

– Sue Sylvester

WCS’ Halloween stories

I don’t believe in ghosts, demons, God, gods, or anything like that. Though I’ll spare you my thoughts on religion, I do think that any supernatural or paranormal activity is seldom what it appears to be, and that everything has an explanation in one way or another. I am — however — not arrogant enough to think that science and logic can explain everything. I’m not going to believe in anything supernatural, but I’m also not going to cross off everything as just crazy people’s jabbering or unfounded superstition.

That being said, I’ve seen and heard of some crazy shit. Since today’s Halloween, I’ll share some creepy stories from the Philippines that I’ve heard from people who supposedly witnessed them first hand. How truthful or diluted these stories are I cannot say, but they were told to me by people who honestly believed them, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. And though I said I’ve seen some crazy things, I’m not going to share any personal stories, for numerous reasons. My thoughts are still too scattered on those particular events, and probably will be as long as I live.

The school I went to in the Philippines was a terribly conservative Christian college in a rural area in central Mindanao, in the mountains and about 30-40 minutes away from the nearest city. Being a religious center for education, “Satan” always seemed to be as prevalent as “God”, and people were as willing to believe in demon possessions as they were in Noah’s flood. And that made for a very funky environment, especially considering the Filipinos’ inherent superstitious attitude,  something I learned to be widespread in all the developing countries I’ve visited yet strangely absent in the Western mainstream culture.

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About five years before I attended the school, there were accounts of mass possessions during a Week of Prayer, something the people who witnessed it back then still talk about in a quiet, solemn way. The story goes that many students would presumably get possessed in the middle of the week’s church sessions, crying out in strange voices, exhibiting a seemingly superhuman strength, and gaining the knowledge of all the sins of anyone who tried to get rid of the “demons” from these poor students, supposedly to scare anyone away from casting these harmful beings out of their host’s body. Each night’s Week of Prayer events had these possessions occur, and all the possessed students had a similar story of what happened before they got possessed, which they told after their demon had left them (none of them, though, could recall what happened during the actual possession). Though some details differed, most of the stories involved the student sitting in the church (which was a gigantic open building, with no real walls for most of it), and seeing a woman sitting outside, staring in. They recalled not being able to look away from her eyes, and as she started moving closer to them they started feeling as if they were on fire. The next thing they knew they were on the ground looking up at many terrified faces who had just cast out a demon. Altogether, about forty people were possessed during that week. Supposedly, the year after I left the school another mass possession with similar events happened during the Week of Prayer yet again, only on a slightly smaller scale.

(I heard this story from many, many people; my foster parents and their family, pastors, students from back then, and many other people told me this story. It was quite a well known and accepted occurrence, and was often used as a warning to students curious in the occult. It was even mentioned in class by professors while I was there, particularly in my Sociology/Anthropology classes.)

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Large cities in the Philippines don’t have many monsters outside of the pedophile or serial killer variety. I’ve heard of many ghost (and demon) stories from Manila and Cebu, but never of any monster monsters, at least not like you hear about in the Philippines’ countryside. In Mindanao, particularly in predominantly rural provinces like Bukidnon, wakwaks are something everyone knows about, and everyone has run into one at some point, or at least known someone that has. It’s quite common to hear someone speak of the local wakwak that once got caught in some power lines, or the wakwak that lives in a tree in the field behind so-and-so’s house that tries to eat unborn children, or of the wakwak that used to appear every now and then and just wanted to talk and get some rice. In fact, it was a well accepted fact that wakwaks used to be everywhere at my school, but recent building developments have forced them away, further into the mountains. But at night in certain areas of the school you can still occasionally hear the wakwaks wakwaking behind you. These areas were usually avoided if at all possible, but sometimes I found myself walking there at night, alone but with the feeling that someone’s watching my every move. Ironically, most of my secret nighttime smoking areas suffered from a real wakwak infestation.

I’ve come to think of the word “wakwak” as a generic term for many unexplainable, supernatural things (aswangs, gnomes, imps, vampires, ghosts, demons, etc.), though many people have told me there are some signs to look for in a person to tell if they are a wakwak. Sometimes even you or your friend my momentarily be taken over by a wakwak without knowing it, but these instances are usually accompanied by fear for your life than any actual risk.

–If a person has wings they’re probably up to no good.

–If you inexplicably taste blood in your mouth, a wakwak may be close to you.

–If you look at someone and their face is upside down and they don’t know it, they’re a wakwak.

–If you look into someone’s eyes and your reflection is inverted, that person is a wakwak.

–If you hear a wakwak’s sound (which sounds like variations of a creature saying “wak… wak” or “wak! wak!”) and it       sounds very loud and close by, the wakwak is not near you. The quieter the wakwak is the closer it is to you.

I heard another word for wakwak is “manananggal“, but those seem to be more like vampires than anything else. Because of course crazy evil fetus eating image inverting beings are more believable than vampires. But you can’t fight vampires, and I know a man that proclaims he fought a wakwak once and won.

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My last story brings us to northern Mindanao, in the city of Dipolog. My friend is convinced a dark presence has followed her through the years, just not as vividly now as when she was young. Before her house was remodeled, strange things used to happen there. A common occurrence was people who had been dead for years walking  through the house at night, oblivious to their lack of living. After the remodeling, my friend’s dark presence would pester her almost everyday, misplacing her things or just simply scaring the bejeezus out of her by getting into bed with her at night and just laying next to her. After a priest came to bless the newly remodeled house, the dark presence wouldn’t go inside anymore but still continued to be a nuisance. The thing would sit on a tree branch outside her window and constantly make the “psst!” sound to get her attention, and sometimes she’d wake up in the middle of the night to see it watching her from afar. Over the years, though, after not rewarding the presence with any attention, it just seemed to disappear. That is, until after she went to a certain college in central Mindanao. I spent some time at her house in Dipolog once and for the first few nights I had these incredibly vivid dreams of someone watching me through the window. I told her about these dreams, and she told me that everyone who spends the night in the house for the first time always get the same dreams.

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I have many, many other stories of this kind, ranging from haunted avocado trees to giant dogs to wakwaks convening to kill a child molester, or even how I’ve been told to watch out for a visit from a  gnome that’s up to no good. I have tons of these stories. I’ve already made my skepticism known, but just for tonight, I’ll suspend my disbelief, because it’s no fun if I don’t.

Have a happy Halloween.

I run the rhymez department

Despite not having done anything all week, I managed to keep to my goal of writing one film review a day. In fact, today I wrote two, and I am quite proud of that. I’m obviously not going to keep doing this, but for the time being I’m just going to revel in my slight upsurge in creativity.

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Got over being sick quicker than I thought. Still have some cold symptoms, but nothing some NyQuil at night won’t solve. Oddly, I’m always a little sad after being sick. I don’t miss the coughing and aching and runny noses at all, but I do like the attention it brings on me. I know how that sounds, trust me, but a little focus on WCS every now and then never hurt anyone.

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Medicine for Melancholy came in yesterday, and I must say I was royally thrilled about finally being able to watch it. It was in town once — many moons ago — but I missed it for some reason. I devoured that movie the moment I got it too, and I was thoroughly fulfilled after watching it. Now that I think about it, yesterday was a pretty good day overall. Nothing bad happened, my movie came in, I HAD THE BEST PIZZA EVER, and the mother brought home sugar cookies (and you know how I like my sugar cookies). Also, I enrolled for classes for next semester, which is nice just to get out of the way. I’ve had a recent influx of less-than-good/mediocre/bad days recently, so one good day really does do a big difference.

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I wonder if Rahm Emmanuel or President Obama’s advisors have ever heard of the “Streisand effect”. Don’t they understand that by bringing so much attention to Fox News, even if they’re trying to demean it, just backfires right into the hands of Rupert Murdoch (who must be loving the ratings this all brings)? This is frustrating to me, as a liberal, voter, and avid Fox News hater, to see the people in power acting like they’ve never heard of cause and effect before. To bring a cinema reference in, look what happened to Citizen Kane after William Randolph Hearst tried getting rid of it (it arguably became the greatest motion picture ever). Like I said, I hate Fox News as much as any other liberal does, but I say it’s better to just ignore them than give them a unneeded attention; their ratings were good to begin with. Fox News is just conservative propaganda, owned by a mutli-billion dollar company, and only spreads lies and half truths. Yes, MSNBC is liberal propaganda and is owned by GE, I know, but at least their fact checkers actually work. And anyhow, I’m sure there are more pressing matters the Obama White House has to worry about.

Damn Pox

Thursday I said I was sick to get out of being hassled by anyone. Thursday night I realized I had an itch in the back of my throat. I crossed that out as just something which occurs every now and then (and it does ). Friday I woke up with somewhat of a sore throat. Friday night I felt like death. Saturday I felt even worse. Sunday I woke up feeling good as new. Sunday afternoon I noticed my nose was getting congested and people started to point out that my speech has changed. “It sounds like you have a cold,” they said. I hoped I didn’t. Sunday night I started getting abnormally cold. This morning I woke up feeling like the world hates me. I’ve more or less felt terrible all day. I went to a total hipster cafe in the Tower District this afternoon with Jordan and we ended up staying there for three hours, talking about batsu game shows, this little gem (view at your own risk), and the validity of Jesus Christ and Santa Clause. I seriously thought I was doing better then, but when I got home I felt worse than I’d been Saturday. I’m medicated the fuck up right now, but that only lasts so long.

I don’t get sick often, but when I do it takes me out of the game for a while.

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Since I’ve been a lazy mofo these last few weeks (my parents would say “years”), I’ve decided there’s no better time than the present to start good blog updating habits. Thanks to my new found sickness, I foresee the next few days will have nothing productive coming out of me, so at the very least I can catch up on some blogs here and on my film blog that I’ve been meaning to write. I wrote a review on Ishmael Bernal’s wonderful City After Dark/Manila By Night today, mostly because I didn’t want to taint my first real review on that site with something as dreadful as Paranormal Activity (which I sure as hell will get to, probably tomorrow).

I sometimes think about why I even try to write film reviews. Though personally I know more about cinema as a whole than anyone I know (which isn’t saying much), I figure every film reviewer/critic on my blogroll knows at least five times more about it than I do. I guess I just wanted a place to start, assuming everyone has to start somewhere and at sometime. I don’t even think I write them at the best of my ability. In fact, I KNOW I don’t, which is why I deleted all of my afterfour reviews.  They were trash, even by my admittedly low standards, and though the internet is full of frivolous material, I didn’t feel too good when I saw that people were actually reading them.

Ironically, my first Film Revisited reviews were on Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros and City After Dark, which are rather complicated for my terribly visceral cinematic eye (something I hope will resolve itself over time). Even more ironic is that my knowledge of Philippines cinema is incredibly meager and underdeveloped, even when compared to my knowledge of European films. Despite this, I do however find a sort of intellectuality in the films of Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal, Lav Diaz, and other Filipino filmmakers whose work purposely is made with the sole of intent in sparking thought, as opposed to being just mere entertainment. Yes, any quality film has this trait, but it’s different with the work that has come from the Philippines. That doesn’t mean it’s any better than anything else, but when I see a well crafted Filipino film, I’m just hit with emotions on  so many different levels, and that’s basically the whole reason I grew to love cinema in the first place. I do wish I had a better link to Asian films in general, as where I live seems to be grossly deprived of anything but blockbuster garbage (thank god for Netflix), so for now I’m just going to have to feed off of the little morsels I do have.

It probably doesn’t help that most of the films the Philippines make are unwatchable. For every one good film from that country there are ten cookie cutter trash films that are released, and sadly those are the ones I can easily find here. It also doesn’t help that none of my friends in the Philippines know — or have heard — of Himala.

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Tomorrow’s a great day, MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY COMES OUT ON DVD.

Point Lobos

Spent Saturday at Point Lobos, which is just a little south of Carmel-by-the-Sea, near Monterey. It was a pleasant and much needed getaway, and I came back feeling better and way less stressed. It wasn’t as cold as it had been the last times I’d been there, and despite the sky being overcast, the weather was fairly pleasant.

Anyway, here are some pictures from my trip.

O Pioneers

I was simultaneously intrigued and disappointed by this Levi’s commercial directed by M. Blash. Intrigued because the whole thing’s overflowing with art and creativity; disappointed because all that talent is wasted on a minute-long ad for jeans. There’s a similar Levi’s commercial by indie-director Cary Fukunaga which maybe has a little less thought involved (5% less), but is equally intriguing.

Note: Until I get my usual computer back from the doctor I won’t be able to embed any videos. I wish I knew why.

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I feel sad that I’ve postponed getting Netflix for so long. I remember a couple of years ago I had the notion that getting movies mailed to your house, watching them, then sending them back to get more movies a couple of days later was ridiculous. But now here I am, always updating my Netflix queue. I just wish they had a better selection of Tagalog films, but then again I wish the Philippines had a better selection of Tagalog films.

Here’s my queue as it stands right now: (I try to altenate American and foreign films)

–”Victimas del Pecado”, Emilio Fernandez (1951)

–”True Romance”, Tony Scott (1993)

–”Scenes From a Marriage”, Ingmar Bergman (1973)

–”There Will Be Blood”, Paul Thomas Anderson (2007)

–”The Human Condition” part 1, Masaki Kobayashi (1959)

–”Boogie Nights”, Paul Thomas Anderson (1997)

–”The Human Condition” part 2, Masaki Kobayashi (1959)

–”Magnolia”, Paul Thomas Anderson (1999)

–”The Human Condition” part 3, Masaki Kobayashi (1959)

–”The Graduate”, Mike Nichols (1967)

–”2 or 3 Things I Know About Her”, Jean-Luc Godard (1967)

–”Russian Ark”, Aleksandr Sokurov (2002)

–”Taxi Driver”, Martin Scorsese (1976)

–”Hidden Fortress”, Akira Kurosawa (1958)

–”Scarface”, Brian De Palma (1983) *No, I have never seen it. Fancy that*

–”Manila by Night: City After Dark”, Ishmael Bernal (1980)

–”Annie Hall”, Woody Allen (1977)

–”The 400 Blows”/”Antoine and Colette”, Francois Truffaut (1959)

I also have Barry Jenkins’ “Medicine for Melancholy” saved so I can get it sent to my house when it comes out. Any suggestions for any Filipino films Netflix might have? It doesn’t have much in the way of Mario O’Hara, Lino Brocka, or Ishmael Bernal (I was lucky with “City After Dark” but I was hoping for “Himala” or “Hinugot sa Langit”, which I’ll have to find elsewhere). I’ve already received Auraeus Solito’s “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” and Quark Henares’ “Keka” from them (actually they have “Ang Pagdadalaga” streaming, which is nice), but most of what they have is in the “Captain Barbell” and “Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo” categories, and there’s no way in hell I’m watching those movies again.

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While I’m on the subject of the Philippines (and I really should have started with this), I feel like I need to spend some time talking about the terrible flooding in Manila, Quezon City, and other parts of Luzon caused by Tropical Storm Ondoy. I’ve always made it a point to spend as little time as possible in Manila, but even then it seems as all the places I’ve stayed at before are engulfed in water. Though the majority of my friends in the Philippines live in the Visayas or Mindanao, I do have one very very good friend in particular who moved to Manila only last month. I haven’t heard much from him this last week, and it’s got me worried. I hope he and his family are doing okay.

Even though Majal is far away from the major flooding and is — more or less – safe and sound, I do worry for her especially. If an Ondoy magnitude flood happened where she is, I don’t know if I would hear about it. Shit going down in Manila is one thing, but if something similar happened in Bukidnon I doubt I would ever hear of any of it on the news. Luckily she’s fine, far from any natural calamity, but I  read a report that said Cotabato, Ginoog, Iligan, and Cagayan de Oro were having some bad floods too, and I know many people in those cities.

I tried calling Majal yesterday and it took — no lie — twenty attempts before I was successful. Everytime I dialed I kept getting a message saying “We’re sorry, all lines to the country you’re dialing are busy right now. Please try again later.”. This made me depressed, as it just shows how many people across the world are affected by events in the Philippines. Granted, I was just calling to talk to my girlfriend about stuff unrelated to Manila (though naturally it did come up), but how about all the Filipinos here whom have loved ones in the flooded areas with no food, water, or electricity? Stuff like GMA SPENDING PHP800,000,000 FROM THE PHILIPPINES’ EMERGENCY FUND ON FOREIGN TRIPS AND FANCY ASS RESTAURANTS really infuriate me, especially when I read articles like this.

I’ve already donated as much as I possibly can to the Philippines National Red Cross and other organizations, and I urge anyone else out there with a heart to do the same.