Oktoberfest 2008

6-September-2008
02:34:11

The view from our office in the 16th floor is relatively good. Wynsum building is one of the tallest buildings in the Ortigas area and is practically located in the middle of the business center overlooking most of the place. From our wing, you can see an unobstructed view of SM Megamall, the SAN MIGUEL fortress and part of the small watering holes within El Pueblo.

Of the three, the San Miguel compound has got to be the most arresting. Not only does it have the biggest compound in the area, but the building that looms within that enclosure has the strangest, most original architecture and appearance I have ever clapped my eyes on. The first time I saw it from an elevated vantage point, images of Incan/Mayan pyramids immediately came to mind. It's shaped like a pyramid all right, only slightly modified for practical purposes with a flat plane at the top that serves as a helipad. In short, it was a structure unlike any building found within the vicinity, or in Metro Manila for that matter. I guess its arresting appearance (for me, at least.) turned it into a kind of reference point for me whenever I'm in Ortigas.

A few days ago I noticed the roads surrounding the San Miguel compound were being lined with galvanized iron sheets that would serve as a perimeter boundary for an apparently early celebration of their much-anticipated Oktoberfest. I heard they were planning to make it in the Guinness Book world records to do the LONGEST BAR in the world. A little online investigation revealed these facts: The bar is 600 meters long with 200 bars stretching from San Miguel Avenue to St. Francis in Mandaluyong. The current title-holder is Taiwan at 240 meters.

A normal person would've been probably delighted at this recent development but I found myself indifferent towards it. Even annoyed, to be blunt. The first time I saw those iron sheets I knew I'm going to encounter a lot of inconvenience. I immediately asked around the office what it was for, as that location is very important for me because the FX PUVs I take when I go home from work are usually parked in Julia Vargas, a major street. If not, I have to walk all the way to Shaw Boulevard to take a jeep. It's not the long walk I have to do that I’m complaining about, in fact I welcome the exercise as a good diversion for my sedentary lifestyle, but the hazards in the Shaw-Crossing area is not something to be joked about, especially at night---the time I get off work. And I was right. As I got off earlier tonight, not an FX was in sight. I walked towards Shaw while Third Eye Blind, the guest band, worked the crowd into a frenzy. They were playing something I'm not familiar with (Semi-charmed life and How's it gonna be are about it.) and I couldn't care less. I was busy observing the cartoon characters littering the streets.

Why is it that when an event like this---be it Oktoberfest or Fete de La Musique---is launched, some people, especially the punk-punkans and goth-gothans as I call them, feel the compelling urge to parade the streets in droves with their most ridiculous outfits looking very badass and totally moronic, cause trouble, preen and heckle, and SIT. Not just sit, but sit far away from the main event and observe people like coked-out visitors from outer space visiting an alien outpost. And it's not like there's a shortage of space near the event; that at least I can understand. But...why bother?

I remembered when Fete De La Musique was held in Ortigas a few years ago, I observed several groups of young people all dressed in black (rakista daw sila e.) chasing each other with the intent to use each other’s heads as makeshift snare drums. For what? Angasan. That term is so deadly. And stupid. Many a frat/gang war erupted to apocalyptic proportions because of that and the very fragile macho ego of the average pinoy macho man. Everyone wants to be acknowledged for their so-called bravery and alpha male standing within the group. Now put that into perspective with a group of stupid young people who extol the virtues of sex, drugs and rock and roll and you'd have a bomb waiting to explode. Events with a combination of alcohol and bands with guitars---never mind if they’re playing Beach Boys tunes---attract these dregs like flies on shit. But the hilarious part is when they do show up, music is a distant second to strutting and loitering the streets like peacocks and were-bitches in heat.

What a crazy way to close a day.

Indie indie-han

Main Entry: in·die Pronunciation: \ˈin-dē\ Function: noun Etymology: by shortening alteration from independent Date: 1928

1: one that is independent; especially : an unaffiliated record or motion-picture production company

2: something (as a record or film) produced by an indie— indie adjective

-Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary

Indie.

That word is supposed to send chills down the spine of an average person with an average college education as some sort of paragon for artistic excellence and boldness to do everything outside the box and pursuing your own vision. or "eccentric art", if some of the pseudo-art expert professors I had way back in college would say. Therefore it's more artistic and "deep" because the artist's vision was rejected by the ignorant businessmen who dictate popular tastes to the ignorant masses, be it via the assembly-line products of MTV or Hollywood. Yet the artist went on and adapted the DIY punk aesthetic championed most by indie-music lovers and musicians to reach a core audience and give the finger to the big establishments and their roster of popular acts, now equated to a McDonald's value meal in terms of nutritional value and shelf life. Admirable and brilliant. Or is it?

I was first introduced to the term way back in school. I probably came across it from a music publication I was reading and heard about it later from a few hip kids who listened to obscure bands i can't even remember. I believe it's a relatively new term considering Rolling Stone magazine even called the genre "college music" several years ago and "underground" and/or "independents" before the indie chic happened. But what is indie anyway?

The Pin-up Girls, a Pinoy band led by Ang TV alumnus Mondo Castro had been a good example of an independent band who followed the DIY principle from its inception up to the recording of their debut alum Hello Pain. With no record label to carry them, they held a series of garage shows and loaned the amount for the recording expenses. In an interview from PULP magazine bassist Jeng Tan griped about the snobbery of some die hard members (fans and musicians) of the Pinoy indie scene regarding the band and its accomplishments. Perhaps it's because of Castro's exposure via Ang TV or the band's influences of British musicians like Echo And The Bunnymen and The Stone Roses who are hardly worthy of being called indie due to their popularity in the 80s. Or maybe the indie scene just plain hates them. Perhaps they don't dress, act and like what's supposed to be acceptable in the circle.

Boston-based The Pixies

And here lies the biggest hypocrisy in this genre or movement or whatever: the people like you when you are still in the starving artist stage and condemn you as a sellout the moment you sold three albums and two new people show up for your gigs. Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, himself a target of the uber-cool indie gang had this to say in an early interview: "The criticisms often come from people who hide behind the veneer of persona or coolness or an aesthetic of indieness."

The thing I've noticed about indie music is that it brings some of the most pathetic dweebs and snide assholes of the world together. Like a clan of hyenas you'd often see these (often) bespectacled and lanky dorks rave about some band playing half-assed imitations of Monkees songs in some ratty basement and giggle like little girls about how cool they are for discovering something not known by the braindead masses. Quark Henares---son of NU107 head Atom Henares and celebrity doctor Vicky Belo--- though hardly qualifying as lanky and bespectacled, proudly wears his indie-cred up his sleeve as if it gives instant kiss-ass points due to him for his crap movies and equally abominable indie bands. This David Lynch groupie also takes pride in his liking for new indie bands in the US whose names you can't even remember 5 seconds after he said it. If i can recall correctly, he had a radio show in NU that featured some of the indie musicians he loves. The more weird-sounding, the better. The more off-putting to the general audience, the better. That means he (and some of his sycophantic acolytes) got something the general audience didn't. Ladies and gents, music is now relegated as a tool for MENSA membership.

You'd also often hear these people mouthing off words of adoration for Boston-based The Pixies and Stephen Malkmus's Pavement and Sleater-Kinney every now and then. You stumble into a place with this crowd and say you like listening to, for example, Green Day and chances are you'd get a dismissive wave or a mocking laugh that clearly says you're stupid for liking what you like. And you'd probably get a diatribe on why Green Day doesn't deserve its success because these 3 no-talent "punks" just stole the style of some obscure, struggling new york garage band who are supposedly much better. But then you'd wonder why this obscure band didn't have the sense to bring their music out of the "garage" to get noticed in the first place? I don't know. maybe they're just afraid of being persecuted as sell-outs.

This group takes pride in appreciating anything not popular just to prove that they're not victims of the herd mentality. You'd hear someone raving about something called "Thee Michelle Gun Elephant" or listening to atonal singing and assorted pitches created by a chainsaw in a recording but hey, it's indie. So it has got to be good right? If you don't get it in all its indie glory, then you're a moron. It's as simple as that. You don't like it and it's indie? You are a pathetic philistine. How dare you pick Guns 'N Roses over this avant-garde piece of work?!

Hasn't it crossed these people's minds that the reason why the majority of the things they listen to are "indie" and are still stuck in obscurity is because these artists are actually, well, bad? Just because a major record label rejects you doesn't automatically mean they can't see the Mozart in you. On the contrary, it's more likely that they spotted your potential to be a Salieri more than anything else. This genre has now become the refuge for sub-par musicians to feel good about themselves because now they have the backing of neurotic, snobby music geeks who automatically gobble anything just because the term "indie"is attached to it. In a way, their behavior is not dissimilar to those mainstream "MTV" audience they enjoy mocking.

This gives a bad name to real, independent artists with real talent to boot.

"Indie" is similar to porno, only designed for a worse kind of jerk-off practice: pseudo-intellectual arrogance.

Pride

ThePhilippines Through the Eyes of a Foreigner

By Barth Suretsky

Atin Ito Philippine NewsFeature April 2007

My decision to move to Manila was not a precipitous one. I used to work in New York as an outside agent of Philippines Air Line, and have been coming to the Philippines since August, 1982. I was so impressed with the country, and with the interesting people I met, some of whom have become very close friends to this day, that I asked for and was granted a year's sabbatical from my teaching job in order to live in the Philippines I arrived here on August 21, 1983, several hours after Ninoy Aquino was shot, and remained here until June of 1984. During that year I visited many parts of the country, from as far north as Laoag to as far south as Zamboanga, and including Palawan. I became deeply immersed in the history and culture of the archipelago, and an avid collector of tribal antiquities from both northern Luzon and Mindanao. In subsequent years I visited the Philippines in 1985, 1987, and 1991, before deciding to move here permanently in 1998. I love this country, but not uncritically, and that is the purpose of this article. First, however, I will say that I would not consider living anywhere else in Asia, no matter how attractive certain aspects of other neighboring countries may be. To begin with, and this is most important, with all its faults, the Philippines is still a democracy, more so than any other nation in Southeast Asia . Despite gross corruption, the legal system generally works, and if ever confronted with having to employ it, I would feel much more safe trusting the courts here than in any other place in the surrounding countries. The press here is unquestionably the most unfettered and freewheeling in Asia , and I do not believe that is hyperbole in any way! And if any one thing can be used as a yardstick to measure the extent of the democratic process in any given country in the world, it is the extent to which the press is free. Nevertheless, the Philippines is a flawed democracy, and the flaws are deeply rooted in the Philippine psyche. I will elaborate. The basic problem seems to me, after many years of observation, to be national inferiority complex, a disturbing lack of pride in being Filipino. Toward the end of April I spent eight days in Vietnam , visiting Hanoi , Hue, and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). I am certainly no expert on Vietnam , but what I saw could not be denied : I saw a country ravaged as no other country has been in this century by thirty years of continuous and incredibly barbaric warfare. When the Vietnam War ended in April, 1975, the country was totally devastated. Yet in the past 25 years the nation has healed and rebuilt itself almost miraculously! The countryside has been replanted and reforested. Hanoi and HCMC have been beautifully restored. The opera house in Hanoi is a splendid restoration of the original, modeled after the Opera in Paris, and the gorgeous Second Empire Theatre, on the main square of HCMC is as it was when built by the French a century ago. The streets are tree-lined, clean, and conducive for strolling. Cafes in the French style proliferate on the wide boulevards of HCMC. I am not praising the government of Vietnam, which still has a long way to travel on the road to democracy, but I do praise, and praise unstintingly, the pride of the Vietnamese people. It is due to this pride in being Vietnamese that has enabled its citizenry to undertake the mi racle of restoration that I describe above.When I returned to Manila, I became so depressed that I was actually physically ill for days thereafter. Why? Well, let's go back to a period when the Philippines resembled the Vietnam of 1975. It was 1945, the end of World War II, and Manila, as well as many other cities, lay in ruins. As a matter of fact, it may not be generally known , but Manila was the second most destroyed city in the entire war; only Warsaw was more demolished. But to compare Manila in 1970, twenty five years after the end of the war, with HCMC, 25 years after the end of its war, is a sad exercise indeed. Far from restoring the city to its former glory, by 1970 Manila was well on its way to being the most tawdry city in Southeast Asia. And since that time the situation has deteriorated alarmingly. We have a city full of street people, beggars, and squatters. We have a city that floods sections whenever there is a rainstorm, and that loses electricity with every clap of thunder. We have a city full of potholes, and on these unrepaired roads we have traffic situation second to none in the the world for sheer unmanageability. We have rude drivers, taxis that routinely refuse to take passengers because of "many traffic!" The roads are also cursed with pollution spewing buses in disreputable states of repair, and that ultimate anachronism, the jeepney! We have an educational system that allows children to attend schools without desks or books to accommodate them. Teachers, even college professors, are paid salaries so disgracefully low that it's a wonder that anyone would want to go into the teaching profession in the first place. We have a war in Mindanao that nobody seems to have a clue how to settle. The only policy to deal with the war seems to be to react to what happens daily, with no long range plan whatever. I could go on and on, but it is an endeavor so filled with futility that it hurts me to go on. It hurts me because, in spite of everything, I love the Philippines Maybe it will sound simplistic, but to go back to what I said above, it is my unshakable belief that the fundamental thing wrong with this country is a lack of pride in being Filipino.A friend once remarked to me, laconically : "All Filipinos want to be something else. The poor ones want to be American, and the rich ones all want to be Spaniards. Nobody wants to be Filipino." That statement would appear to be a rather simplistic one, and perhaps it is. However, I know one Filipino who refuses to enter a theater until the national anthem has stopped being played because he doesn't want to honor his own country, and I know another one who thinks that history stopped dead in 1898 when the Spaniards departed. While it is certainly true that these represent extreme examples of national denial, the truth is not a pretty picture. Filipinos tend to worship, almost slavishly, everything foreign. If it comes from Italy or France it has to be better than anything made here. If the idea is American or German it has to be superior to anything that Filipinos can think up for themselves. Foreigners are looked up to and idolized. Foreig ners can go anywhere without question. In my own personal experience, I remember attending recently an affair at a major museum here. I had forgotten to bring my invitation. But while Filipinos entering the museum were checked for invitations, I was simply waived through. This sort of thing happens so often here that it's just accepted as routine. All of these things, the illogical respect given to foreigners simply because they are not Filipinos, the distrust and even disrespect shown to any homegrown merchandise, the neglect of anything Philippine, the rudeness of taxi drivers, the ill manners shown by many Filipinos are all symptomatic of a lack of self love, of respect for and love of the country in which they were born, and worst of all, a static mind-set in regard to finding ways to improve the situation. Most Filipinos, when confronted with evidence of governmental corruption, political chicanery, or gross exploitation on the part of the business community, simply shrug their shoulders, mutter "bahala na," and let it go at that. It is an oversimplification to say this, but it is not without a grain of truth to say that Filipinos feel downtrodden because they allow themselves to feel downtrodden. No pride.One of the most egregious examples of this lack of pride, this uncaring attitude to their own past, is the wretched state of surviving architectural landmarks in Manila and elsewhere. During the American period, many beautiful and imposing buildings were built, in what we now call the "art deco" style (although incidentally, that was not contemporary term; it was coined only in the 1960s). These were beautiful edifices, mostly erected during, or just before, the Commonwealth period. Three, which are still standing, are the Jai Alai Building, the Metropolitan Theater, and the Rizal Stadium. Fortunately, due to the truly noble efforts of my friend John Silva, the Jai Alai Building will now be saved. But unless something is done to the most beautiful and original of these three masterpieces of pre-war Philippine architecture, the Metropolitan Theater, it will disintegrate. The Rizal Stadium is in equally wretched shape. When the wreckers' ball destroyed Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, and New York City's most magnificent building, Pennsylvania Station, both in 1963, Ada Louise Huxtable, then the architectural critic of The New York Times, wrote: "A disposable culture loses the right to call itself a civilization at all !" How right she was! (Fortunately, the destruction of Pennsylvania Station proved to the sacrificial catalyst that resulted in the creation of New York's Landmark Commission. Would there be such a commission created for Manila ... ?) Are there historical reasons for this lack of national pride ? We can say that until the arrival of the Spaniards there was no sense of a unified archipelago constituted as one country. True. We can also say that the high cultures of the nations in the region seemed, unfortunately, to have bypassed the Philippines ; there are no Angkors, no Ayuttayas, no Borodudurs. True. Centuries of contact with the high cultur es of the Khmers and the Chinese, had, except for the proliferation of Song dynasty pottery found throughout the archipelago, no noticeable effect. True. But all that aside, what was here ? To begin with, the ancient rice terraces, now threatened with disintegration, incidentally, was an incredible feat of engineering for so-called "primitive" people. As a matter of fact, when I first saw them in 1984, I was almost as awe-stricken was I was when I first laid eyes on the astonishing Inca city of Machu Picchu , high in the Peruvian Andes. The degree of artistry exhibited by the various tribes of the Cordillera of Luzon is testimony to a rema rkable culture, second to none in the Southeast Asian region. As for Mindanao, at the other end of the archipelago, an equally high degree of artistry has been manifest for centuries in woodcarving, weaving and metalwork. However, the most shocking aspect of this lack of national pride, even identity, endemic in the average Filipino, is the appalling ignorance of the history of the archipelago since unified by Spain and named Filipinas. The remarkable stories concerning the courageous repulsion of Dutch and British invaders from the 16th through the 18th centuries, even the origins of the Independence of the late 19th century, are hardly known by the average Filipino in any meaningful way. And thanks to fifty years of American brainwashing, it is few and far between the number of Filipinos who really know -- or even care -- about the duplicity employed by the Americans and Spaniards to sell out and make meaningless the very independent state that Aguilnaldo declared on June 12, 1898. A people without a sense of history is a people doomed to be unaware of their own identity. It is sad to say, but true, that the vast majority of Filipinos fall into this category. Without a sense of who you are how can you possibly take any pride in who you are? These are not oversimplifications . On the contrary, these are the root problems of the Philippine inferiority complex referred to above. Until the Filipinos take pride in being Filipino these ills of the soul will never be cured. If what I have written here can help, even in the smallest way, to make the Filipino aware of just who he is, who he was, and who he can be, I will be one happy expat indeed !

Filter

Rumor has it that Tom Cruise is shooting a sequel to his 1986 hit TOP GUN. So what is it this time? Maverick trading insults with Iceman inside a convalescent home when they suddenly get called into action because the younger aces aren't as brilliant as they are? I can just see it: Some hotshot new pilot dependent on too much gadgets and high-tech methods will get to see how it's done the “analog way” by real pilots who only had his instincts, dogfighting skills, and cunning "back in the day" to get him out of tight situations. Wait a few more years and you'll see in the later Matrix movies on how a somewhat resurrected Neo schools new chosen ones on how to fight the Version 1.0 way. Indiana Jones wasn't bad, though.

The Dark Knight

The thing about Christopher Nolan’s Batman is that it doesn’t resort to cheap gimmicks and the obligatory cuteness factor general audiences relish with glee (see: Tobey Maguire doing his Saturday Night Fever impression in Spiderman 3) with the intent to make the character more palatable to the masses. Compared to the, say, more popular Iron Man movie a few months back, The Dark Knight is uncompromising in its tone as its main protagonist is in his own moral stance against overwhelming forces that aims to subjugate him to their will. 

As artistic and visionary as it is for its genre, it won’t become too popular. Make no mistake: it is the masterpiece critics say it to be. With complex characters and excellent story and performances (I take back my initial dislike on Heath Ledger’s casting---the guy is THE JOKER), the movie is tailor-made for reference books that filmmaking students a hundred years from now will be studying. And the film was often compared to excellent crime epics like Michael Mann’s HEAT and the crime epic to end all crime epics: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 2. Great films, but only to the people who actually watch movies and not the average person looking for an eye candy to kill the time or take his date on a make-out session. 

Not that it’s the average moviegoer’s fault for disliking it. Nor am I insinuating that I’m somewhat better because I see things the snotty critics and the geek-boy comic book aficionados have. I perfectly understand the sentiment of the person I overheard going out the theater blurting out : “BORING.” Or the countless ‘film aficionados’ who dismissed it as too self-indulgent, whatever that means. They were looking for that formulaic BANG and never got it. Anyway I’m not going to expound more on this at the risk of sounding too much like the ‘aficionados’ who amuse me to high heavens. Go watch it, anyway. You’ll probably like it.

Or not.

The films of Christopher Nolan

One more week.


further viewing:


Memento
Insomnia
Batman Begins
The Prestige

Pink ribbon scars, that never forget

Summer 1993, in dreams…

It's always around April, mid-afternoon, somewhere around 4 or 5. The time of the day when everything's in golden hues and the landscape is colored brown filled with occasional patches of green and the royal blue sky is clear and slowly giving in to dusk’s red light. The streets are filled with young mothers, nannies and little kids, engaged in their own animated games and conversations. Among them is your sister who just started her academic life as a kindergarten student, playing with her friends Mandie and Honey. 


You’re inside the house listening all day to the radio. Enjoying alternative tunes and feeling like a real sophisticated adult for appreciating something that’s supposed to be an ‘alternative’ to the ‘stupid’ posturing of pop, not knowing it’s the same movement perpetuated by the very same entities who gave you the pop music you abhor with passion. 


You wander outside and go west towards the direction of the huge water tank, and the breeze is cool and dusty and smells of dried grass, hay, an unknown but familiar sweet-smelling blossom, and the slightest hint of dried cow dung. 


Walking past the Ematas and the Eusebios, you find yourself at the end of the cement road in the middle of a large field that used to have been rice paddies up until the late 80s but are now just barren soil used to grow assorted crops like squash, watermelons and a wide variety of weeds. 


You take a deep breath as you stare at the setting sun just beyond the huge tank looming in the opposite side. 


A sense of tranquility flows over you and a feeling of relief that you survived the first year of high school with just a few bumps and bruises. You go over your game plan for the next school year to show everyone how serious you really are with studying. And you're filled with intense pride at the thought of what you can accomplish in the coming years while in school. 


Until your little sister suddenly yells from afar to break you out of an almost drunken stupor; ordered no doubt by your mother to have you summoned for a little housework. You sigh and use your walking stick to poke a paleolithic-looking creature resting in the crevice of a large cement drainage. It won't budge. 


You glance at the receding rays of the sun one last time and head home.