Trains

Unfortunately it rained today and my supposed fill of beerhouse hits while contemplating inside a jeep has to take a backseat in favor of the relative comfort of the MRT and FX. While yesterday's pleasant travel was due largely to the heavy dose of nostalgic sentiments I had during the ride, the one I've had a few hours ago in the MRT was for the humor books. I've been meaning to write about it for sometime but never really got down to it. Apparently the MRT management upgraded its services for the relative comfort of its commuters. No, they didn't fix the perpetual escalator problem in the North Avenue station nor improved the airconditioning system of most of the trains in operation; nothing outlandish like that. Time travel will be invented before those things are fixed for good. They just launched the MRT FM radio.


When the doors opened as I was getting ready to board a blast of latin music spewed forth along with the disembarking passengers. The first thing that came to mind was Tita Luz. Now that was enough to make me laugh out loud but I bit my lip as hard as I can. I didn't want the other passengers thinking they had a dope addict in their midst. Tita Luz, bless her soul, has a penchant for old 50s latin-flavored pinoy music and Filipiniana selections whose cassette tapes I suspect she bought at Nayong Pilipino. The kind with an Amorsolo-type painting in the cover, depicting the pastoral way of life in some barrio complete with bahay kubos and baro't sayas. She used to play those nonstop in the car everytime we came to visit her. For the life of me I couldn't understand how she and my father could have polar opposite tastes when it came to music or any other art forms for that matter.

I can vividly remember the "WAN! TU! TRI! POR!" of some (probably) middle-aged male band member before seguing to a crazy polyrhythmic assault of an undeniably pinoy version of latin dance music. My parents, sister and I always have a good laugh everytime we remember that. We weren't ridiculing her taste in music, but the fact that we already heard the same songs more than fifty times since we were in her car (a cab actually, with MUY BIEN plastred at the sides of both doors) and the ridiculousness of the "WAN! TU! TRI! POR!" did it. Professional comedians say things in threes are funny. Try listening to something ridiculous more than 20 times with people who have a healthy sense of humor and you'll have a riot.

That was what I was thinking when I entered the train. And even if the humidity inside was oppressive I couldn't help but let a little chuckle out every now and then. The music, coupled with the irritated and blank expressions of the passengers created a weird sort of music video.

Crazy.

I hear the the drums echoing tonight

I took a jeep home to break the routine a little. As much as I would like to go home as fast as I possibly can most of the time, there are also instances when I find myself in the mood for a little joyride and basically just enjoying the trip. It was late in the afternoon---dusk on the way to twilight---and boomboxes inside PUVs are already playing timeless classics from the 70s and the 80s. The weather was nice, cool and pleasant and the last rays of the sun receding and giving in to shadows, and the jeep was comfortable and not too packed. Toto's "Africa" was on, as it always is during this hour on all FM stations. Of all the singles released by Toto, this song in my opinion is their best; even better than the melodramatic guilty pleasure of "I'll Be Over You". When the all-too familiar first chords of the synthesizers blared from the speakers I was instantly taken over by nostalgia.

Suddenly I was a little boy again. Barely six and torturing hapless insects by pulling out their hind legs and wings and marvelling at their complex anatomical structures and "Africa" was playing in some nearby store in the town I grew up in. It was relatively a genuine happiness specially for a child of five to be alive at that time and then---

---I was a highschool sophomore--- on the way home from the city inside a Guimbal jeep passing by Oton, on that part of the highway where there's vast empty fields on either side, full of grass and devoid of houses. One side leads to the ocean, and the other to the mountains. This is the part of the ride where one can feel heroic and serene just by staring at it and "Africa" is playing to complete the picture. Cold and bleak-sounding yet strangley comforting and pleasant and---

---I'm back at the jeep. Staring outside observing various activities people do when twilight is upon them as I passed by. All the hassles of the day and problems for the future vanishes, replaced by serenity and pleasantness.

Hope it won't rain tomorrow.

Joke's on you

Surfing the internet I came across an article about the sequel for Batman Begins. Of all the Batman treatments that have been shown--- from the hyper-campy AdamWest-television version of the 60s (Holy sardines Batman!) to the goth fairy tale tratment of Tim Burton, and its eventual degradation in the hands of Joel Schumacher (Batman Forever/Batman and Robin)---Christopher Nolan's treatment had fans who were turned off by the recent films hoping again. And casting Christian Bale in the title role was the most appropriate casting choice I have seen in the comic book movie adaptation genre in the last few years. Having seen Memento and Insomnia from Nolan, and Bale's portrayal of brooding and mentally unstable characters from Equilibrium and American Psycho respectively, I was confident this production team could pull it off. And pulled it off they did. It was like watching an excellent graphic novel that several die-hard fanboys of the comic told me they actually clapped after the screening.

The Dark Knight, the sequel, looks very promising from what I've read. We'll be introduced to The Batman's arch-nemesis The Joker. Most people are confused by this, saying The Joker died in the Tim Burton version. That's why the first film was called Batman Begins-it has no relationship whatsoever in the previous films; a sort of reset if you may. Heath Ledger would be the clown prince of crime though I would have preferred Back To The Future's Crispin Glover. He even looks like The Joker without any make-up on. I actually even signed an on-line petition so the studio would take him. But I guess an Oscar award speaks volumes. But hell, I'd even watch it if they got Vin Diesel for the part.

What I like most about Nolan's treatment of the material is that he has reverence for what the character as he is popularly known by comic-book fans; something that is also not unlike what Sam Raimi did for the SpiderMan series. The Tim Burton version was okay but the one by Joel Schumacher, specially the one with George Clooney in it practically looked so moronic that it could have been any nut in a Batsuit trading insults and trashtalk with the badguys (Batman is not particularly known for his sense of humor). With the Bale version, you'd actually believe the guy's motivation for wearing a costume and jump on rooftops at night instead of dating supermodels and driving sports cars. The sequel, in addition, has the feel and overall look of one of the best Batman graphic novels called The Killing Joke written by Watchmen and V For Vendetta's Alan Moore.

In any case, along with Spiderman, it's still the best superhero movie adaptation i have seen so far.

TOP 10

AS OF THE MOMENT:


DARK CITY

TEA (GREEN/BLACK)

THE CURE

ON WRITING/STEPHEN KING

PIRATED DVDs

NAGARAYA (BUTTER FLAVOR)

DECENT SLEEP

VERTIGO COMICS

SCARLETT JOHANSSON

SWORD AND SORCERY + SCIENCE FICTION

No space

Today? Nothing worth telling. I just felt like writing something and try to at least instill some life in this blog seeing the last entry was way back in June. And what is it now? September? Lord Almighty. I almost forgot--I'd be celebrating my second year in the company this Wednesday.

Big deal.

I've been alive for 27 years and I don't feel like celebrating it. If you think about it, birthdays aren't supposed to be celebrated or tagged as a reason for merrymaking. It should actually be a time for mourning. It only means you have just advanced another step to that inevitable destination all living things gravitate to the moment they were born. 

Beetlejuice

Reverse Psych 101

That was one hell of a company outing i attended.

This latest excursion was saddled with very high expectations as the previous year's outing was slightly disappointing. much of the complaints were centered on the unpleasant weather. And another big factor for the excitiment was the venue: Grande Island resort in the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority. The thought of spending a day in a small piece of land surrounded by the sea on a summer day conjures visions of prepubescent fantasies of the Blue Lagoon-variety, to swimming to your heart's delight under the blazing sun.

I wish I could say something witty about how the monumental disappointment of the employees threatened to bring the whole island upside down but whatever sense of humor I have left is already spent from trying not to give in to anger and just laugh at our miserable condition. anger takes too much energy and I couldn't afford to be exhausted at that time. Ironically, the purpose of the trip was to get rid of work-induced stress, But that's exactly what most of us got. It was so bad that I actually looked forward for work the coming Monday. Working never seemed so alluring and relaxing compared to that ordeal. I wonder if it was a company ploy so employees would appreciate their work more.

I had to wake up at 3 am because the departure time from Ortigas was 5 am. We left at 630 anyway. But that happens all the time. So I didn't have a problem with that. When we arrived at the island it was already raining and the wind is already picking up speed. So the upper management segregated us in different pavilions because the rooms, they said, were not ready yet. they expected us to check in at 2pm so we had to wait until they said we can go in.

I knew i should have gotten handfuls of those in-bus snacks and saved them for emergency purposes in case some catastrophe involving the food service in the island happens. poor mr. naive that I am, expected to eat lunch upon arrival. Up until lunch was served, some guys and I were still looking around the pavilion for hidden cameras as we were very sure we're being shot by Wow Mali! or some other TV show specializing on practical jokes. We were convinced this was some sort of a sick joke. It was funny alright; we were that close to eating the entire resort staff from sheer starvation.

We couldn't even drink the booze we brought along because of some stupid house rule I didn't bother to know for fear i might pick a fight with an island staff. And a brawl involving a big plate of lechon was averted; a guy almost got smacked while i was oblivious of the commotion belting out a new wave tune in the videoke. And that was about the only saving grace form the entire outing-something we could've had just by crossing the steet right across the office.

Those Rolling R's

Going to bookstores offers a different and amusing respite from my day to day routine. Specially high-end ones like Powerbooks with its browser-friendly lounges and mini coffee shops and nearby record store (Tower Records in Megamall) where most so-called bibliophiles and audiophiles swarm. Most people find the place spectacular because of the amenities and reader-friendly comfort i just mentioned, however those are not the reasons why I find the place so amusing.


My work like any regular office jobs, starts at Ten AM and I leave the office at Six Thirty. Sometimes, when my girlfriend and I decide to meet after hours I loiter around powerbooks to wait for her until 8 pm as she's in the graveyard shift for a call center in Ortigas, where I also work. So I usually spend my waiting time reading something that had its protective plastic cover torn out of it by some overeager browser---which I am also guilty of from time to time especially when it comes to comic books. 

It's usually when i'm already within a quarter of the book/magazine that I am reading when I usually hear it. Anybody would have heard it too, every time one goes there or any other bookstores in some other business center. At first it would be just some random comment about this or that book; or how this author stinks and how the other one is brilliant. Commentaries like that are often voiced out in that unmistakable burgis-just-came-back-from-d-isteyts twang with a hint of boredom as if what the speaker is voicing out is already common knowledge. You'd hear cerebral comments like: "My god! How come there's a lot of books about Hitler?! Don't the publishers know the gravity of their actions?!" to "Hillary Clinton? She's a bitch. But I like her."


Susmaryosep.


Sometimes you'd be lucky (or unlucky depending on your point of view) to catch a group of artistes sitting around a large table in the center of the store discussing art and all sorts of pseudo-intellectual masturbatory aides at the top of their lungs. They're not yelling, but they see to it that everyone gets to hear what they say. You can actually feel the self-congratulatory pat in the back everytime someone blurts out a comment or critique about a certain film/book/music. I swear, hearing those exchanges make Roger Ebert seem like an amateur. The way they voice out criticisms in their discussion you'd feel like they'd do a better job than the hapless author they choose to eviscerate in their little soiree. Oh, and the discussion is, of course, in English. with a dash of taglish every now and then for that token coño effect. Because, as you can see, intellectuals in the philippines voice out their opinions in perfect, American english. So there.


Now that's entertainment you can't buy.