perchance to dream

the other day, my dream was in english. also, it was an episode of walking dead. some of the characters from the show were there. some were my real-life relatives. and they were speaking english. it ended with rick grimes turning into a zombie himself. then his head grew really huge and he started eating everything up a la langoliers.

i dream of having a dream with subtitles someday

a sticky situation

lately, traversing the information superhighway has been a bumpy ride. our dsl at home has long been disconnected (4k bucks reactivates it, which i'm actually contemplating on). my sister's myfi is luck-based. and the wifi in my dad's office is no faster than dial-up. seriously, all it needs is the modem sound and im back in '90s.

and so halfway through no-shave november, i decided to get globe's superstick. after several trips to the local mall, i got the sleek gizmo the other day. but i didn't get to use it until today because of the sim activation period of 24-48 hours. and when i did finally get to use it, the laptop i was using (my dad's) shut off by itself. turns out, the power adaptor went kaput. so i went out and bought a new one. and when i did finally get to use the darn superstick, the connection kept breaking that i couldn't even finish a speed test.

do you know when it finally worked glitch-free? when i was dressed for work and about to leave. with less than half an hour to enjoy the fruits of my labor, i watched my downloads disappear from the queue. the speed wasnt as high as advertised but it was fast enough, faster than that time when it was raining hard and flooding everywhere and the bandwidth gods gave me magic internet for a day.

hopefuly globe holds their end of the bargain and keep it up. else, this thing is getting shoved up someone's pooper.

uno dos stress

in the movies, when someone wakes up from a nightmare's climax, they usually bolt up in bed screaming. never happened to me. usually i stay in the dream to find out what happens next but sometimes it would be so scary i'd have to wake myself up. and it's not even like when it's an extreme close-up of the eyes and they suddenly open up accompanied by a sound effect. nope, i simply slowly open my eyes.

anyways, when i woke up today, i didn't want to go to work. not that i hate my job (excluding that one guy, i love it). it's just that lately i've been feeling so stressed. sporadic headaches, abnormal crankiness, irritable bowel syndrome, and tired feeling even after enough sleep. i contemplated texting my team leader about not coming in. instead, i put on my glasses, got up and dragged myself to the bathroom. it used to be so easy use the big invisible book of excuses and skip work. but things have changed and i now earn the dough for my family. so yeah, screw my shitty sick shtick. off to the beehive i go.

but seriously, this stress thing is getting way worse than i can handle. so much that as a person who hates depending on medicine and doctors, im actually open to the idea of taking vitamins.

(the text above was typed on the blog post date but i was too stressed out that i never finished it. so now i am.)

as always, time with my beautiful family cured me. i remember a few weeks ago, jeean and iaine came to manila for my youngest sister's graduation lunch. when i came home from work that morning, i opened the door to a very happy iaine running towards me saying poppa. and that was it. that was all i needed. i had to man up and survive the stress week, go home and find solace in the sweet loving limbs of my wonderful wife and disarmingly cute daughter.

monochrome optique

my ludovico project is near culmination. i actually feared i'd fail to hit the target what with the scarce personal free time of a working family man. i managed to finish the movies during bathroom breaks, idle time at work and several moments pre and post sleep. right now, the focus is on black and white movies, squeezing in one or two colored ones. if you're bored, interested, or insane and want to check my progress, you can flutter by my twitter by stabbing the chocobo on the right with your mouse pointer.

anyways, i bet this one's never crossed your mind: when people do countdowns, say 1-5, why do they always count like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 1/2, 4 3/4, 5? why not 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 1/3, 4 2/3, 4 3/4, 5?! why do they always skip 2/3?

i seriously think that a law against giving atm cards and driving licenses to idiots should be passed. what a quick cash withdrawal and diaper purchase turned into an expletive-laden test of patience due to these intelligence-deprived creatures. these imbeciles have some sort of belief that they're special and important and so they make you waste your time waiting for them as they struggle to accomplish a supposedly simple task. typical atm routine of a moron: insert card, check balance, get card, look at receipt, decide on amount to withdraw, insert card again, take a while to figure it how much to withdraw, time runs out, get card, look at receipt again, insert card again, withdraw cash, get card, look at new receipt, decide to withdraw again, insert card, withdraw cash, get card, look at receipt and for some apparent reason these motherfuckers have exclusive knowledge of, they complete disergard the long queue of irate people behind them and insert the atm card for the last time to check the balance again! somebody please murder these people.

p.s. yes. random shit again. but this relaxes my earlobes.
p.p.s. hmm i guess hard work does pay off sometimes. i hope this goes on so i wouldn't have to leave this country and my family.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER by jaiskizzy

gist: after many failed attempts to join the military, steve rogers' patriotic persistence and self-less valor make him the perfect candidate for the super soldier program. from scrawny to brawny, he becomes captain america, the country's bellwether against the nazis. mighty shield in hand and the howling commands right behind him, the star spangled man takes on the menace known as the hydra, led by the crimson craniumed agent schmidt. all together now: america, fuck yeah!

reaction: does anyone else rememer the old captain america cartoon with the stiff movements and the very catchy theme? how about the low-budget captain america movie in the '90s? beyond those two and a few comic issues, i really didnt know much about the guy with the capital a on his forehead. wasnt really into the character, probably because im pinoy. so, when the news of this movie being made broke out, other than solidifying the possibility of an avengers movie, i didn't know what to expect. will it be a great comic book movie in line with its marvel predecessors? will it be an indiana jonesy adventure flick? will it be chock full of action but story anemic or vice versa? will i stop asking questions and get on with the review?

it's really good. it's one of the best comic book movies ever made, with just the right amount of pulp and camp, action with impact, and a story that's rich and compelling. joe johnston directed the rocketeer, which was awesome, and he was able to infuse into captain america the positives that made rocketter one of my favorite guilty pleasure films. much like the super serum, he took the thin pages of the comic book and injected it with his vision and made it come to pulsating life on film. i love that he took time with the origin section to really capture the essence of steve rogers' character and give meaning to his every move as the blue boy scout. a satisfying spectacle from start to finish.

i admit, i wasn't initially convinced chris evans would fit the role. he's the guy who wore the whipped cream bikini in one movie and played human torch in the other, hard to take him seriously. but i guess i underestimated his acting skills because the dude delivered. with the help of seamless cgi tinkering, he embodied both versions of steve rogers to a tee. i cant even imagine now what the movie would have been like if will smith had been cast. also worth mentioning were the performances of tommy lee jones and hugo weaving.

speaking of mr. weaving, red skull was just superb. apart from the other obvious uses, the visual effects on the villain was amazing. the texture, contours, the lip movement, menacingly creepy but glues your eyes to the screen.  also, this is one of those films where you wonder if anything was left to gather dust in the cutting room floor at all because the narrative was smooth and fluid, with beat-perfect transitions between scenes instead of a firm chapter-based structure. heck, even the montages gelled well with the finely-tuned story progression.

marvel has done it once again. captain america is a testament that respect for the source material and the audience are the main components to a successful comic book adaptation. your move, dc.

good: the adaptation, pulp, chris evans

bad: peggy carter

ugly: hugo weaving

verdict: 9 vials of super serum

fucky barnes.

climbing mount molehill

day three of my battle with general sniffles and his mucous army and i decide to pick up my imaginary pencil and make the blinking cursor vomit words into a blog post. with the digital dust and web cobwebs cleared, i type the first thing that comes into my mind:

i hate the duke of bloomberg.

don't want to talk about that so let's move on to the second thing that enters the thought theater:

"practice makes perfect. nobody's perfect. so why practice?"

contrary to what you might be thinking, i do not approve this piece of flawed logic. i have seen and heard it countless times and frankly my dear, i think it's a crock of bull. the first time i encountered it was in grade school, read it off a pocketbook of jokes because that was the stuff i was into during those years, along with burning paper edges and discovering porn. back then, my young smoke-filled and porn-baptized brain believe it was brilliant. it was right. it was three puzzle pieces perfectly connecting. and then i grew up and realized i've been misled, round the same time i found out santa claus didn't actually exist.

anyway, i hated it when the gears clicked and rang "bullshit" and i hated it even more when it got passed around through text messages. (and may the flying spaghetti monster have mercy on the soul of any person who deems it proper to use as a facebook status today) but the instance i hated it the most was when a local movie used it in the main character's speech because the writers couldn't come up with their own and simply hoped someone who had lived under a rock would at least giggle at it. but the movie's facepalm-worthiness did not end there. i did not watch the darn thing, so how did i know that the quote was in it? because they had the gall to put it in the trailer. yes, they honestly believed that the most effective way to sell the comedy movie to the public was to use an overused quote that wasn't even funny.

so what makes this logic wrong? the fact that it assumes that the things described as perfect in the first two sentences are the same. let's look at the second one first. nobody is perfect. what this simply implies it that no "person" is perfect. now, to the first sentence. practice makes perfect. what do you practice? singing, dancing, murdering, etc. with enough time and effort, you can perfect the singing or dancing of a particular song. sure, the perfection is subjective to the viewer or listener but that song was made in a particular way and that by achieving the same level of performance the song was meant for is considerable as perfect. so practicing can in fact help perfect a certain "action".

so sentences one and two don't really connect as perfectly as i had once thought. both are true but do not contradict one another because they do not pertain to the same thing. practice makes perfect because you can keep practicing until you perfect an "action" but no one can't practice being a "person" because that's just who you are. so even though nobody is perfect, it has no relation to the question practicing because you still have to practice to be perfect at something.

yes, this is me overthinking the mundane. and yes, this was a long and pointless exercise, apart from the idea that i needed to update this decaying blog. so,  thank you for wasting your time with me.


p.s. most trailers of pinoy movies are badly edited. especially comedies, where they pack all the jokes they have in them. i admit to have watched these kind of movies before but when i did, i definitely did not laugh at the jokes previously showcased in the trailer. a large majority of the moviegoers did, however, and i was like, wasn't that in the trailer that was on tv every fucking hour?!
p.p.s. my blog has risen from the dead. it is now a zombie blog. or a zomblog.

every saturday i have home planet sickness

most of my dreams are weird. me flying is a common thing, even when im quite sure it's against the sandman's predetermined script. i once had a dream where the world was ending and the only way to stop it was to speak a word written on a cave wall. i have since forgotten what that word was so sorry, world. another unforgettable dream i had was what i called the loop where i kept waking up into a dream (predating inception by more than a decade), the scariest nightmare i've ever had.

anyways, the one i had last is right up that alley. in the dream i slept and dreamed another dream that was somehow connected to the first layer dream, and i was discussing it with someone i cant remember who. but the one thing that latched on to my consciousness was what was written on the shirt i was wearing which i saw when i faced a mirror (which is weird in itself because even though i was facing a mirror, the words weren't backwards):

EVERY SATURDAY I HAVE HOME PLANET SICKNESS

to me, it's a year's worth of wtf. i'll never know how my brain came up with that or where it picked that up. first thing i did when i opened my eyes was get up, of course, and then turn on my father's laptop, sit on the swivel chair, click the chrome shortcut and search the exact sentence in google. zilcho. so i sought refuge in reddit and asked for help. first reply i got was the most obvious explanation: you're an alien. well, im not. some said it could be a mnemonic thing like every good boy does fine. some said, in support of the alien theory, that saturday means saturn's day, and so i have home planet sickness on that particular day because my home planet is saturn. some said it's the result of my brain just putting a bunch of subconscious data together, which i already know.

overly long sigh. i guess i'll never get a definite answer to this riddle because i think that would mean trying to make sense of the mysterious ways the brain works. i just thought maybe it was something that already existed and my mind just plagiarized it. i'll be content with knowing it was an original subconscious creation.

p.s. what im quite sure of is im gonna have that printed on a shirt. yeah.

a thousand words

i'm not a photographer nor am i an expert in photography. im not even sure if they're the same thing. but i do know shit from gold. also, i hate trends. so when this picture-taking trend exploded, i saw shit everywhere. suddenly, every person with a dslr hanging from their neck is a photographer. suddenly, they're watermarking their snapshots and offering their services online. it's like these people bought a sword from the store and started calling themselves warriors. well, money can buy happiness but it can't buy talent.

sure there are workshops and trainings out there, but those can only do so much. oftentimes, these gatherings produce only by-the-book photographers who can't think beyond what they've learned. as i've said before, true talent is inborn and it can't be replicated by wannabes.

so what do these incompetent buffoons do? they turn to photoshop. what their photos lack, photoshop provides. didn't have proper lighting? tweaking curves and levels will do the trick. boring background? add some royalty free clouds. lines on subject's face? airbrush that crap out. airburshing gets the most abuse as some magazines have covers sporting mannequins. what is wrong with these people? great photographers plan and prepare for their shots. they don't just push the shutter button and let photoshop handle the rest. a little color correction and editing some unwanted stuff is okay. but beyond that is a subtraction to the photographer's credit.

i knew someone who photoshops every picture taken and actually proud of it. they'd add grunge effects, filters, textures and the like just to make the photo "better". they'd take a picture and then make it black and white in photoshop. why not shoot it in black and white in the first place? what's the dslr for then? it's acceptable to do all of these digital manipulations on a photo from a point-and-click digicam. a dslr is expensive for a reason: there are things you can achieve with it that you cannnot with a digicam and you should spend time to learn them instead of depending on software to cheat and fool your fans/clients.

so to anyone who owns a dslr, print this and stick it right below the viewfinder: great photographers don't rely on photoshop.



p.s. there are only 373 words on this post.
p.p.s. christopher lao: if you are so goddamn smart as your allies say you are, you should have admitted your mistake of turning your car into a buoy instead of being a total douchebag idiot and blaming others for not telling you what's already obvious. fuck you.

year two

for two years, you have endured my existence and forgave my shortcomings. i am a slob, a deviant and an occasional asshole, but you've put up with me every time. a medal forged from a meteor won't even suffice to represent how awesome you are. i love you, m'lady. for everything you've been/done/given to me, thinks.

the tranquil monarch

when i was young,the only thing i knew about papang was that he was rich. he was like a beardless santa claus to us. on the rare occasions he would visit, my siblings, cousins and i would line upon his arrival, one hand ready for the mano, the other palm upward for the legal tender. on our birthdays, he'd come and bring the best gifts. these appearances became fewer as we grew up until the tables were reversed and we visited him instead. and we realized that he was not ours alone. he was zeus, who had many wives and fathered many children, who in turn gave him other grandchildren. however, we didn't feel different about him for we had nothing but respect for him.

being a man of a few words, he did not force it upon us; it was automatic. being with him was like being with a king. you had to be at your best behavior. even the drunkards and boors knew courtesy in his presence. part of it as, i guess, his lotharian legacy. but im pretty sure it was primarily because, at his age, he was still hard at work. instead of reading newspapers on a rocking chair, he went to his office and did paperwork and managed his business. (once, i was going home on a holiday and he was in his office signing papers.) and he'd been doing this his whole adult life. he was a self-made man and i admired him for it. he was my don corleone.

that's why it tore my heart to pieces when i found out he had passes away. it was too sudden. i did not know that visiting him in the hospital was the last time i'd see him breathing. he'd been sick before but he recovered from it quickly. some people say that it was his time. i& disagree. it was not his time. i just had lunch with him about a month ago and he was in a great health. on the day he was admitted to makati med, he was still giving detailed orders to my father regarding the business. it was not his time to go. death miscalculated.

when my wife told me on the phone, the tears just burst. i really had no inkling that he wouldn't survive. had i known when i was in the icu room, i could have at least said thank you to him for everything we owe him. which is a lot.

papang always insisted that i was smart. everytime my name would pop up in a conversation, he'd comment how smart i was. i was a very intelligent kid, but he kept this up even when i dropped out of college and basically messed up my life. now that i've pulled myself together with my own family and a stable job, i thought i was on my way to live up to what he'd been bragging about. it's too sad that he'll never get to see me prove worthy of the surname and make him completely proud of me as his first grandchild. it's even sadder that he'll never get to know his great granddaughter better, and vice versa.

wherever he is now, he's probably with mamang and getting the biggest ear-pinching of his life, but happy nonetheless, because the greatest advantage of having many families is the vast amount of genuine love we collectively give him back. rest in peace, papang.

p.s. of course, my grandchildren shall call me papang.

cornholio

holy tp for my bunghole, batman! beavis and butt-head have returned! yes! three exclamation points!!!





i remember first day in college and some guy was having us go around the school and do get-to-know-each-other-better stuff, one question everyone had to answer was: what's your favorite tv show? 90% of my classmates said friends. when it was my turn, i said "beavis and butt-head" and they all laughed like i was joking. and so i was like "duh, it's like the best fucking thing to ever go through cathode ray tube. for your insolence, i should all scoop your eyes out with a spoon and wear em like a monk's bead necklace!" in my head. (and that, my friends, is your pre-facebook years useless memory story for today.)

anyways, ive been a big fan of the deviant duo ever since i saw their first short "frog baseball" on liquid television. cant wait for october and find out which music videos they'll critique.

p.s. another one who needs to come back: migraine boy.

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON by jaiskizzy

gist: after saving the world twice from decepticons, life seems to be back to normal for sam "ladiesman217" witwicky with a new out-of-his-league girlfriend and a struggle to find a job. meanwhile, the autobots have been doing some freelance asskickin and on one of their 'con hunts, they uncover a government secret that would make conspiracy junkies crap bricks: the old space race was caused by a cybertronian ship that crashed on the moon. earth is once again the ring for an all-out robot royal rumble that will finally determine the fate of mankind and the franchise's fourth film.

reaction: the needs of many outweight the needs of a few and the many disappointed geeks who watched revenge of the fallen needed a better movie, myself included. part two wasn't a piece of crap but it was near the raped-my-childhood level, particularly with the devastator bullshit. so explosions expert, michael bay, was given a chance to close the trilogy and redeem himself. end result: although this threequel is far from the excellence of the first, it definitely makes the second one forgivable.

michael bay is the go-to guy when you want to blow stuff up in movies. he has mastered the art of mayhem. every action sequence with the bots was pitch perfect. i couldnt imagine how he sets these up. you see a decepticon flipping cars over and a car that transforms then reverts to car mode and you believe it because it looks real. that alone is a testament to michael bay's distinct destruction direction. sure, he needs to do a lot of homework plot-wise but lots of other directors have that covered. only a completely misguided moron would come into a michael bay film and expect the profound and the pathos of kubrickian scale. the same idiot would easily get bored at the non-action parts. it's mike's weakness, yes, but these scenes are there for a reason. one is so that you could catch your breath. they dont require you to cerebrate, you just have to pay the same attention you gave the pyrotechniques and listen. (and if you did, you'd actually have known what a certain character was going to do long before) i really think there should be a sign outside to leave your elitist snob hat or the adhd cap of your inner child at the entrance and enjoy the mecha porn.

in the first two films, sam is thrust into the fray mostly because he cant opt out. here, with the world oblivious to his heroics, he involves himself by his choosing, making the character more mature, and i believe shia did really well portraying that. backing him up are some new faces, great actors in silly roles. malkovich as a crazy boss and mcdormand as a quirky government agent. but i liked the addition of tudyk the best. dutch needs a movie of his own. and so we arrive at the meat of the matter, the switcheroo issue that everyon's fussing about more than the film itself. am i alone in liking carly better than mikaela? megan fox has the two-movie, fantard-following edge, she's sex appeal in the flesh but she cant act to save her life. rosie huntington-whiteley, although nowhere near oscar material, had greater range as a first-time actress. also she had something megan fox doesnt: charm. and that british accent easily disqualifies her as a skank. case in point: in part one, the first time sam's parents sees mikaela, she just stands there, exuding the trophy-gf vibe to stress how lucky sam got. here, everytime sam introduces carly to anyone, she's so bubbly and affable. bottom line: cameron diaz clone > ms. stubby thumbs.

other things i liked were how real world events were incorporated into the mythos, the flying squirrel scene, and the comic relief. and i'll say as little as i can about the cgi cast to avoid spoilers. it's still good to hear peter cullen voicing optimus prime. it was cool to hear leonard nimoy as sentinel prime who looks just like him. liked the new ferrari autobot but not the wreckers. was still hoping to see starscream (my fave) as the scheming sycophant but alas he's underused yet again. still no sign of the dinobots or unicron. and when optimus prime said they had a ship that can take them to the moon, i thought sky lynx? omega supreme?!? but nah. it was astrotrain. (just kidding) also, absence of gestalts was a big minus.

anyways, transformers: dark of the moon was not the best way to end the trilogy (kinda abrupt) but it's entertainingly satisfying. the long queue an hour before screening, the applause when the credits roll and the growing profit from ticket sales mean only one thing: even if there's a decepticon that transforms into a toilet and rosie huntington-whiteley sits on it for two hours, people will come to watch. actually, that's a good idea if you think about it.


the good: the bots, the mayhem, the new chick
the bad: lack of strong story and character development
the ugly: john malkovich
the verdict: 8 energon detectors



sentinel grime

GREEN LANTERN by jaiskizzy

gist: van wilder is a cocky cockpit jockey who becomes the first human member of a space police force called the green lantern corps. he is given a power ring which, through his will and imagination, he can use to make constructs in his fight against evil. with the moled gossip girl in tow, he must prove his mettle by defeating the hydrocephalic hector hammond and ginormous being of fear known as parallax. all together now: in brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. wish i may wishi might have this wish i wish tonight!

reaction:after the success of iron man, and most recently thor, it was no surprise that dc would expedite the adaptation of their titles. however, instead of following batman's triumph with a better superman reboot or a wonder woman film, they chose to imitate their marvelous rival and decided to introduce a second-tier character to the theater patrons. i have no deep knowledge of the green lantern stories, but i knew the basics. it obviously had a more of a sci-fi lean than fantasy, and so i, and much of the moviegoers, expected a visually appealing, story-rich space opera. however, with the opening backstory narration failing to hook the audience, this movie was ripe for nitpicking from the get-go.

the keyword for this movie is convenience. the script was written in such the way that nearly every scene that moves the plot forward seemed convenient. with lots of telescopes in the world, i cant believe nobody saw abin-sur's ship enter the earth's atmosphere. he crashed on a beach and surprisingly, there was no one there. and when hal jordan was whisked away by the green orb thing, he was standing in an empty street. i could go on but that would be practically retelling the whole movie. this lazy script was also peppered with cheesy lines and im not buying the excuse that it was intentional, for humor, campiness, not taking itself seriously. ryan reynolds sure seemed serious when he said "he was afraid" like a little boy in a bad coming-of-age b-movie. but i'll get to the acting in a sec.

i dont know what happened but this surely wasn't martin campbell's cup of tea. his direction had a lot of misfires and there were many poorly executed scenes. some were just downright funny even though they were meant for laughs (parallax's end of the street attack). also i dont understand how green lantern can fly from earth to oa and back repeatedly and parallax's trip takes three-quarters of the film's run time. also there's suddenly a big event gathering the main human characters where some shit happens so that green lantern can showcase his power publicly for the first time. and then there's that mid-credits scene that in the context of the movie doesn't make any sense at all. put there solely for the purpose of teasing a sequel without providing proper character development for the involved party. i mean, green lantern's weakness against the color yellow wasn't even explored at all...

the film had its merits but they were few. the cgi was nice, but not wow-factor impressive. i liked the second skin suits that channeled an automan vibe with the animated chest logo. i liked how the suit was a construct, and therefore had to be cgi, and the cumbersome putting on of normal clothes in contrast with the insta-costume was a good touch. there's little bits of positives here and there (like the star sapphire nod) but the only other pluses worth mentioning are the performances of sinestro and hector hammond. the supposed eyecandy blake lively was pretty much useless other than being the love story foil, which felt forced. as for hal jordan, it's hard to look at ryan reynolds and not giggle at his attempt to win an oscar. he's convincing when he's being arrogant, but beyond that, the guy from buried was nowhere to be found.

anyways, i guess this has pulled back the possibility of a justice league movie a dozen notches. a haphazard amalgam of what worked from previous comicbook films, this green lantern's light is pretty dim.


good: hammond, sinestro, suit
bad: script and direction
ugly: hammond
verdict: 6 power rings



the grim lantern.

it's not always rainbows and butterflies

here's a rundown of stuff that happened recently. why? because i own this blog and i could put pictures of booger sculptures if i wanted to. also, any incoherence will be deliberate. anyways, grab a sandwich. this might take a while. (the reading of the post, not the booger sculptures)

burn baby burn
i realized that the creation story regarding a god making humans out of clay and cooking them in an oven is probably true because the only explanation for this ridiculously hot summer is that we are being reheated. last monday, i woke up with itchy arms. i had rashes near my elbows. as far as i know, i have no allergies. what's weirder was that the rashes suddenly disappeared and migrated to my buttcheeks, then to my thighs. as a believer of mind over body, i endure the itch til the next day, which i did not know was scheduled as worst heartburn day. ive had mild gerd attacks for years that went away upon burps. this last one proved strong for not only did it repel my eructative abilities but rendered different pills useless. when eating became painful, i gave up. i took time off work and spent three days in a hospital, nursed by my wife and roused from sleep by nurses. on my last day there, they knocked me out with anesthesia and alien probed my insides. (looked like i swallowed a tiny wolverine on berserker barage) before that, my wife kept asking me if i was afraid. actually i was looking forward to it. i wanted to know what i would see during loss of consciousness. so when i was in the operating room and they were about to press a chlorofor-filled hanky on my face, i was like, this is it, im going to find out what coma patients dream of. which was nothing. something that tasted like piss was sprayed into my mouth and my eyes closed to blink, and then i opened them again and i was somewhere else. i had teleported to a garage. diagnosis: gastritis, esophagitis, hiatal hernia and urticaria. chocolates, spicy food, juices, softdrinks, beer and a bunch of others are categorized as should be consumed. went home almost immediately after the procedure and awaited the excuse for the botched rapture that some moron predicted and so many morons believed. there should be a rule that anyone who makes a prediction that doesn't happen gets pooped on by all skeptics. and anyone who believed the bullshit licks the poop off.

sweet child o' ours
there's so much to be said about our daughter, and yet none of it wont be enough. iaine is such a beautiful little girl. she's always smiling, always happy and it's infectious. she makes us all laugh with her tricks and random quirks. like when we were on the bed and i saw her clamp her lips shut as if she had eaten something. i grabbed her and tried to fish it out with my index finger but couldnt because iaine wouldnt open her mouth. so i told her to say "aah" and she just gave me the funniest half-opened mouth face. i just lost my wits there and found out that there really wasn't anything in there. i got pwned by my own daughter. the only time she starts a hissy fit is when her slumber's cut short. but even that doesnt last long. she'll be clingy and frowny for a while but then revert to good mood real quick. as with all kids, she'll blow a fuse when you take away from her something she wants but it won't last long or develop into an all-out hellspawned tantrum. i want to teach her early on that you can't always have everything you want. but what iaine is really, really good at is being sweet. this is the greatest reward of parenthood, of having a job, of giving love. i work my arse off to take the pig meat home. i try to get as much sleep as i can on weekeneds but can't because sometimes iaine would half-wake up in the middle of night and id have to give her milk to keep her calm. that and all of the many, many ordeals a new parent had to go through, reduced to microscopic size when compared to the overpowering warmth of iaine's sweetness, which i don't even know if she understands or not. the other day, she woke me up with a kiss on the cheek and then proceeded to do the same to her mother. and yesterday, my wife and i had a small argument downstairs and weren't in speaking terms when we lied on the bed upstairs. iaine was trying to get some sleep and probably noticed the silence so she took my hand then took her mother's hand and put them on top of each other. cue minitears. chibihime patched things up for us. on a totally unrelated note, how did abs-cbn get a way with titling their new series after the famous rock band? (answer: by using the same power of unoriginality that allowed gma7 to rip off yo gabba gabba)

marooned (and how was the sandwich btw?)
first foreign artist's concert i ever watched was vanilla ice in araneta coliseum when i was in grade school. second was bon jovi in rizal memorial sports complex in high school. and third was linkin park in ccp open grounds a few years ago. capping off my very long weekend is the much-anticipated maroon 5 concert, which i had filed a leave and bought tickets for about one month prior. this was primarily for my beloved love because even though im working 5 days a week and we have a child to take care of, i still wanted us to be able to spend time together like before we got married. of course, with the aforementioned factors and time constraints, we dont get to do it as much. a movie here, a dinner there. so i thought the maroon 5 show was a great rare moment date for us. plus it's actually her first concert experience. so we put off watching house episodes on bed and queued up with the marooners (i dont know if they're actually called that), bronze tickets in hand. we found a nice spot and camped there. when the lights went out and the drums pounded out, the awesome soundtrip began. the band sounds exactly the same live, which is always nice. jeean spent the whole hour and a half of pop rock music perched on the rails. inside the smx convention center, i noted three types of maroon 5 fans. the chill ones who went there for the music (where we belong); the uptights, who were there because they can afford a handful of vip tickets but dont really know the band so they just sit in their chairs waiting for freebies to be thrown their way; and the fantards who know every single word of every song and who'd sacrifice their vocal chords just to scream the name of the vocalist who cant even hear them. i admit, i merely downloaded the maroon 5 tracks but i really believe that the best way to support a band you like is to watch their concerts. and to jeean: "back and forth we sway like branches in a storm, change the weather still together when it ends." i love you very much. looking forward to more adventures our copycats will try to imitate but fail at miserably.

usually i'd type out a couple of sentences to signal the end of the blog post and wrap things up but


p.s. on the bus ride to manila, there was a family of four in front of me and when the bus conductor handed them their tickets, two of which were discounted, the father asked the conductor how much all of it was. the conductor said later because he had other people to attend to. to the model father of two, use your brain, asswipe.

THOR by jaiskizzy

gist: on the day of his kinging, thor is instead punished by his father, odin, for his arrogance by stripping him of his god mojo and banishing him to midgard, as surreptitiously orchestrated by his envious stepbro, loki. with the black swan on his side, the asgardian douchebag must endure an earthbound lesson on humility to regain his powers by proving he is worthy to stand once again as thor, the god of thunder! (violently shakes a piece of sheet metal)

reaction: ever since marvel meddled in the filmifying of their comic book properties, output quality has considerably increased. a big slice of this improvement is the fact that the movies had been made-to-measure to please both comic book fans and non-fans alike. a great example is iron man, a relatively second-tier character in the marvel universe. after the two box office hits, his cosplay presence was cemented. hot on his jetboot heels, aiming for the same is thor, an even more obscure marvel character, virtually unknown to non-readers, especially when compared to the superhero triumvirate of superman, batman and spider-man. and pun intended, thor hit the nail on the head. (loki facepalm)

i thought kenneth branagh was an odd choice to direct but i stand corrected because loveless delivered the goose, especially in the non-earth scenes where the language is in shakespearean. when the first set and costume photos came out, they gave a campy vibe and the geek consesus was this would be the tensies flash gordon. but by odin's beard, we were proven wrong when it all hit the silverscreen in ethereal 3d. kenny has done a wonderful job of turning a mythical realm into a beautiful place in space and making its existence believable. plus, i absolutely must praise his theater-ish framing and blocking, and how thor arrived god-sized and gradually turned to human height as the story progressed. it is also worth pointing out that jokes were sparse and that thor's terrestrial descent did not call for a learning-the-earthly-ways comedic montage. 

i genuflect in thought at the mortal named chris hemsworth. this guy came from nowhere and just ninja smokebombed his way into popularity. he embodied thor pretty well, perfecting that smug smile and asgardese. i also have high praise for the guy who played loki, who amazingly looked so much like loki. that was some great schemer/faux innocence/unhinged outburst acting. the portman as jane foster was kind of meh but better her than some bimbo actress who wouldnt have been convincing in a high iq role. it was also great to see kakihara as hogun but i dont think he fit the role. i think oh-dae su would have made a better hogun. and then there's kat dennings whose comic relief role was immaterial. darcy who? there wasnt even a darcy in the comics. i wonder who she  to have herself squeezed into this movie. seriously, her addition was a subtraction.

so yeah, marvel has proven once again that you can make a damn good comic book film. you just have to have the right people, a compelling story and respect for the source material. sure, ticket sales dont necessarily mean great movie, but comic adaptations are always on a hit or miss case. and considering that the vast majority of moviegoers arent fans of the inked pencils and the onomatopoeia, thor is a thunderous triumph. can't wait for the avengers movie! joss whedon make it awesome! 

good: hemsworth, hiddleston, branagh
bad: throwaway characters, single location
ugly: them frost giants
verdict: 8 broken mugs


assguardian.

player select

on a gaming news blog, a socially important question was asked: what's your dream game? this i pondered over a teetering stack of cases of bottled anger for grammatically challenged company speakers suffering from dysarthria who should not be given the task of divulging vital information and insult my intelligence. my answer after this part where i pressed enter.

the world has ended and you are the last person alive. but unlike i am legend, there are no vampires fighting over a piece of your precious flesh. you are simply alone and free to do anything. and i mean, anything. everything works, there's enough water supply and electricity to last your singular needs for years. you can go anywhere. and i mean, anywhere. take a car and drive to the next city. locked doors can be kicked open or broken through with an axe. low fences do not constrain you to a certain path. you eventually end up on a skyscraper rooftop and fall and at this point you realize why you're the only one alive and why there is no life meter: you are immortal.

and then the mystery gradually unfolds. there is no specific location or action for the story to progress. you're out for food and you catch a glimpse of a moving shadow. you chase it but it's gone. clues pop up where you are, not where you have to be. the clues point to a place where there's a machine that will allow you to create one companion. the possibilities are endless. you can make a person of the opposite sex, an animal, a robot, anything. whatever you create, it will do your bidding.

later on, you'll find your companion dead, evidently murdered. you return to the machine to create a new one but the machine has been destroyed. and then from far, far away, a beam of light shoots up in the sky and when you follow its direction, you find out it is coming from an island which you must get to...



p.s. i dream of a future where there are no loading screens.
p.p.s. i left out the ending on purpose in case a game studio decides to purchase the idea. but i do have an ending in mind. you're god and its creation 2.0 and you're doing it as a human and erased your knowledge of goddom and... oh shit.

my better half is best

i am blessed to have a spouse whose external beauty is only surpassed by her internal resplendence. i plucked her from the flower garden and planted her in nibelheim. she now has surrendered herself to the hivemind.

she has temporarily rainchecked her nightingaling for the sake of our beautiful offspring's growth and has taken on the mantle of a freelance creative desginer. my swan wife weaves her clients' dreams into printer-bound realities. her husband is so proud of her inimitable talents and grateful for her pecuniary assistance. the stork had chosen wisely.

gianina, my wonder woman, the universe envies the expanse of my love for you.

SUCKER PUNCH by jaiskizzy

gist: violet baudelaire is sent to a mental institution for poor marksmanship. there, she dreamweaves being in a brothel where clothes-deprived girls dance to survive. (why she chose that particular fantasy, i'll never know) in this imaginary realm, she concocts the idea to escape as per a wise man's instructions in another world she had imagined while dancing. inception much? with the help of four other girls, baby doll gyrates her virginal hips for attention in the first layer pseudoworld and goes kick-ass mode in the second layer pseudoworld to obtain the five items essential to their freedom.

reaction: first, a quickie on the sucker punch hate brigade. most of the criticism seems to stems from the fact that something else was expected from the film. some wanted packed action and were put off by the ponder-prompting metaplot. some demanded taut storytelling and were bitchslapped by all the armed fighting. why oh why do these people enter the movie theater to look at a painting? yes, you paid good money to be entertained but it doesn't mean you're just going to passively sit there and wait for whatever it is you want to see or hear and curse the movie to tartarus if you don't.

anyways, sucker punch is basically alice in wonderland gangbanged by 300. girls in an imagined setting doing unreal feats. but underneath all the fist and bullet trading is a story that, although simple enough to catch, requires a deeper train of thought for proper comprehension. but even then you'd still have doubts for certain aspects point elsewhere. that feeling where you need to debate what the movie's about or to recall details that one could have missed, let's call it the "afterview". and smart moviegoers who absorbed at least the bits and pieces of the film's true meaning will be engaged in further discussions due to a lingering afterview.

the pussy parade is led by emily browning. she's lookin all grown up here. i really didnt think she'd work, never having seen her in any role like this but she played the innocent girl with a badass slut inside real well. she also smoothly flew through the fight scenes. this is her show of course but it would have been greater if the same amount of screen time was relegated to her mysteriously enthralling dance routine, which was limited to the lame sway intro. as for the deuteragonist damsels, they did their parts okay but a teeny bit more characterization would have made the turncoating valid. plus in movies like this, you really don't for high-grade acting so vanessa hudgen's wallslide crying was weird.


there are a number of action set pieces that bend reality, all awesomely executed, but my favorite is the first one with the giant shoguns. it's a great way to immerse the audience to baby doll's dance-triggered world (where they all defy gravity but land the exact same way). there's a scene in the dressing room where the girls are talking and the camera makes an impossible one-take shot. this i think encapsulates how zack snyder uses the advancements in cgi to put a skew on traditional filmmaking. the action scenes, the color correction, the shots, nearly everything he has done here is abusing the technology. years ago, none of it could be done in the same magnitude. sure, with avatar and a gazillion cgi cartoons, the envelope has been pushed a lot but snyder has distinct style that reroutes where all those rendered pixels can go. and with sucker punch, the clunks of cgi physics (especially with real human character interaction), wirework and slow-mo/fast-mos are gone, leaving a nigh-perfect jaw-detaching eyecandy overdose.

i like how sucker punch is both a fanservice to guys and a girl power push for girls. i like how the main characters are girls in whorific costumes but sensually downplayed with no ass shots or in your face boobs, integral to most action flicks. it's not a great movie but it's really not as bad as some consider. i am definitely on board for the zack snyder superman.



good: action sequences, the visuals, the "afterview"
bad: little character development, studio cuts
ugly: vanessa hudgens
verdict: 8 lobotomy needles



sweet pee/baby dull.

shiny graves for frozen slaves

save your brain cells. title's nonsense generated online. so let's cut the crap, slice the shit, fillet the feces and dice the doodie and get the turdball rolling for my random stuff commentary enumerated in japanese.

ichi: watched sucker punch with my sweet pea babydoll yesterday (and in the process of piecemealing a review) and there was a bunch of bozos bitchslapped to stultiloquence by the real-to-imaginary world switch. i hate these kind of people. why do they question the movie the moment they see something they cant comprehend? cant they automatically conclude that it may possibly be explained in subsequent scenes or at the end? or even if it's never explained, cant these morons just shut the hell up and watch the damn movie? i mean, seriously, i hope there was a way to keep these idiots from getting inside the theater, or at least the ones im in. (they can do all the shit as much as they want in theaters showing pinoy flicks) i dont see movies theatricaly that much but almost every time i do, there'll be these imbeciles ruining the whole experience for me. i hate all of these people who want the entire movie plot spoonfed to them 100% clear, who watch but dont see and hear but don't listen, who want all movies tailor-made to their satisfaction. they're like wet ugly baby birds in a nest chirping with their beaks open and the mother bird has to chew and spit their worms for them. they shouldn't be sold tickets to films that are beyond their mental capacity and, accordingly, shouldn't be allowed to rant about it in their reviews. if you're one of them, fuck you.

ni: the director of sucker punch, zack snyder, will also direct the new superman reboot and nearly every week a new cast member is announced. joining henry cavill (supes/clarky), kevin costner (jonathan kent) and diane lane (martha kent) is amy adams as lois lane. i like the first three, but amy adams as lois lane just ruffle my feathers, if you catch my drift. sure it's a smart decision to cast an oscar nominated actress in a role integral to the story but i strongly believe miss adams aint right for the part. lois lane is supposed to be tough, a woman with an attitude. she's this daring reporter who's not afraid to stick her nose where she shouldn't, just to get the scoop. that's why she's always getting herself into situations where superman's presence is required. so it is only makes sense to get an actress who looks the part in one look. margot kidder did well in the old movies and that chick from smallville was just awesome. but amy adams doesn't look tough. even if she had fangs. this lois lane looks like she'll need superman's help because she's stupid and weak. i'll trust your decision, snyder-man, but i really think queen gorgo, carla gugino and olivia wilde are better choices. 

san: after over a year of invisibility, ping "i have no balls" lacson has resurfaced, answering questions from the media insisting he did no wrong. except that hiding from justice is wrong. when you're a former cop and now a senator whom people voted to uphold the law, being a fugitive when you're accused of murder is very, very wrong. the issue here isn't his guilt or innocence or whether the prosecutors are after him. the issue here is that ping lacson is a coward. he's telling every filpino out there, especially the criminals-to-be, that hiding from the law is okay. he said he hid because he's innocent. but that's his word. even if there is no evidence against you and they're just ganging up on you to get you behind bars, isn't facing your accusers the manly way of dealing with this problem? is hiding really the way to prove your innocence? bullshit. who the fuck elected for this guy? so the thing is if someone decides to kill another one, he could simply say he's innocent, go into hiding and wait it all out? what a way to show the country what a law-abiding citizen you are, lacson. and you even had the gall to compare yourself to a prisoner? prisoners dont get to eat what they want, they dont sleep on comfortable beds, they dont get to chat with their families or surf the internet to pass time, they don't get to travel from country to country, and you have the nerve to align yourself with them? you bastard. i think the only thing that you and the prisoners have in common is getting your ass pounded because that's probably the only thing that got you through this "ordeal" of yours. fuck you. (and to those journalists who interviewed him but did not have the guts to ask the right questions, fuck you too.)

SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR by jaiskizzy

gist: i am honestly lost for words. nothing can be said enough to summarize this movie, yet on the other hand, a one-sentence description of any scene may be too much. this is one of those films best viewed with virgin eyes.

reaction: holymotherfuckinshitballs. what did i just watch? roy andersson's sånger från andra våningen (or songs from the second floor, to the non-swedish readers) is definitely one of the weirdest films i have ever seen. and i love every odd frame of it. it starts with a guy talking to another guy who is inside a tanning bed and its just gets weirder and weirder from there. all scenes are shot static (except for one, if i remember correctly) framed in a way that the main focus is on the particular characters central to the sequence at hand but with room for extras and events in the background or on the sides to memontarily capture your attention. there is one where in there's a long road in the background and as the scene progresses, you realize that there are people who have been actually walking along that road beginning from horizon cut-off at the very start of the scene towards character situated at the sequence focal point. weird, eh? but something even weirder happens right after. yes, i am a junkie getting ultra high on weirness overdose.

funny is the other simple word i can associate with this complex peculiarity. everything is done seriously and nearly every scene is glum, but there'll be lines of dialogue, actions and little things that made me laugh, kind of like the way you laugh when you're outside and you see something bad happen to someone and you're not supposed to laugh but you cant help it (schadenfreude). it's exactly that. not corny or forced or inserted for a longer run time. this is a level of funny no pinoy slapstick comedy movie could ever attain. and beyond the absurdist comedy is the profound way the scenes meld together. there's a scene that didn't seem to make any sense and then later on, it a connecting scene reveals that the previous one was actually a rehearsal. mental drop kick!

this movie is proof that creativity has no bounds. you can always do something new and different. only people who arent born creative, who have no self-developed vision would say otherwise and insist imitation. i dont know who this roy andersson guy is but he just blipped in my directorial radar. he's on an entirely different plateau, a place i wanna stand on the precipice of and jump off one day.


good: the weirdness, the funniness, the progression of scenes
bad: lack of backstories
ugly: lasse's wife. half-naked. ugh.
verdict: 10 jesus-swinging-on-one-nail crucifixes


thongs from the second drawer.

hair spew: the mane issue

every weekend i'd be home with my smiling scion of sweetness and my sweet spouse of smiles and there'd always be a moment where the latter would take notice of my hair and ask me to have it cut. and every time that happens, i always tell her i'd do it only when everyone ceases forcing me to suffer another monumental trimming of my life. and every time i say that, she points out that i'm just saying that and that i have actually no plans of getting a haircut.

partially, she is correct but from my standpoint of view, that's something you do not plan. right now, yes, i do not want to lose my locks. but that fateful time will arrive (maybe tomorrow, i don't know) that i'll wake up and the first thing in my head as agreed upon by all of my mental entities will be to get a haircut. and then i'll probably google the hairstyle i'll want to have, which of course, ought to be something i've never had before.

but let's cue the flashback blur effect and siphon some background on the topic at hand. (this might be long so if you're busy, uninterested or on the verge of death and would rather read something more thought-provoking, you are permitted to leave as the two previous paragraphs seem enough to fulfill the primary objective of this post)

when i was a kid, i had moptop beatles hair, probably because my dad was a big fab four fan. when i started going to school, it was trimmed in such a way that it looked like a bowl was placed on top of my head and the barber made cuts straight along the rim. i rocked those rulered bangs for many years with occasional gel-enabled rizalian pompadour days. as puberty took over, i gradually lost my maternal dependence and began to loathe my hair. i developed a habit of jerking my head upwards to get strands off my face. i had to carry a comb around in my pocket but for some inexplicable reason, i kept losing that beige-colored toothed piece of plastic.

and then came high school, which meant four years of bad hair days. looking back, i still cannot comprehend why we had to have haircuts with such specific dimensions, three fingers from the ear and two from the eyebrow, if im correct. for all of my adult life i have never been in any job or situation where that haircut was required. anyways, a centimeter longer and an administrator would chop a chunk off forcing you to have an even stupider haircut than the infamous keempee look. skinheadedness was frowned upon back then and i never intended to go bald because i was so skinny then and wore glasses half of high school that i thought i'd look like gandhi. i also got tired of buying new combs so around third year, i decided i wasn't going to be a slave to grooming. i stopped combing my hair. of course, i'd use my hand to run through it when needed but i eschewed combs completely.

college onward, i took the haircut liberty to new verticals. i wore caps in class. i got spikes. undercut? sure. one day i'd be long-haired and then the next day, everything's suddnely mowed down to baldness (i got sick the first time). i even had my hair dyed red and got called rodman or moffat by strangers. i had it braided but never got the chance to get dreads. i did all of these things to my hair just because i wanted to. never due to fads.

but of all the hair metamorphoses i went through, i felt most comfortable wearing my hair long. not because i like rock music. (the top two questions i always get asked because of my hair: are you in a band? do you have a lighter?) i just like it this way. when i was younger and making comic strips on old notebooks instead of playing outside, i created my imaginary adult persona and he had ponytailed long-hair all the time so i guess having hair like this was one of my childhood dreams. (that guy was also very muscular and always had a lit cigarette on his lips -- staples of a boy's concept of coolness, i think -- but i never had either ever) ive stuck to using a specific brand of shampoo believing it helps in the faster growth of my already fast-growing hair. i'd avoid shaving facial hair for a couple of months and people would start calling me jesus.

so yeah, this is the definitive jai hairdo. how long it will get depends on the time i get the urge to see the mirror image of scissors murdering my scalp grass or if circumstances call for it (like when i got married), whichever comes first.

what it all comes down to is this: people think men look better with short hair not because it's the truth but because that's they been programmed to believe. so, as with most things, no one should force anything upon anybody just because it's dictated by the norm. hair length shouldn't be an issue. that's the long and the short of it.


p.s. i just got promoted recently, which means my hard work paid off, which mean my salary will increase (by how much, i dont know) which does not mean im coming to work with a new haircut. hah!
p.p.s. im halfway watching the kids are all right and already there've been two scenes involving gay porn. wtf. i dont know if i should go on, afraid there'll be more. i want to vomit. and watch five hours of real 100% straight made-for-real-men porn just to unsee that crap.

THE GREEN HORNET by jaiskizzy

 gist: that guy who knocked up that bitch from grey's anatomy is so rich, he had lypoed all his fat off and is banging chicks on the hoods of luxury cars. and then his dad dies and he befriends a guy who looks like harold from harold and kumar who has ass-kicking listed in his resume. the two become overnight lawbreaking superheroes and soon are windborne dust in the eyes of the media-fed public and of disco santa claus, chudnofsky. and then an environmentalist kermit the frog wearing a la salle jacket starts telling green jokes, you know, just to make the whole thing greener.

reaction: i saw a couple of tv episodes and that scene in the bruce lee biopic where jason scott lee slides down a pole instead of using the stairs. also read a couple of issues of the kevin smith-penned comic. that's the range of knowledge i have about the green hornet. and im pretty sure most of the people who saw this movie know even less. so i find it annoying when they just flat-out say they didnt like the movie, them who were probably expecting something in the vein of nolan's batman and raimi's spider-man. there is so much to appreciate in the green hornet that i doubt they even noticed. one perfect example of this is during most of the mumblecore scenes, i was the only one laughing my balls out. there were some pretty funny lines that im sure didn't even reach their earlobes because, as with the average moviegoer these days, they weren't paying attention and were waiting for the next visual stimulus. these pinoyflick junkies and their longing for the loveteam's big kissing scene, the big drama slap-arama or the squeezed in joke stolen from current memes should not be even watching a film directed by michel gondry.

had i not shown my wife michel gondry's unique style, she probably wouldn't like the movie as she did. michel gondry is in a totally different directorial dimension and few really get his brilliance. with katovision, he showed the audience what most action movies eschew: how the asskicking is planned. you've seen action scenes where the protagonist takes down a whole gang of thugs seemingly impromptu, but of course, everything was rehearsed. kato lets us see how he processes the situation before taking action, hence katovision. and it is a-fuckin-mazing. wished gondry had used more of that multiplying background effect, just to give this new generation kato his own style. i was also blown way by the multiply splitscreen sequence. that thing is probably how you'll see your entire life flash before your eyes when you're about to die.

seth rogen's script is very seth rogenish. i understand the hate because he's a comedian and fat but you've got to give the guy some credit. his screenplay is peppered with funny stuff that are actually funny, and except for that one slapsticky bit in the end, none of them felt forced. his britt reid is a complete departure from the original, which fine because a serious millionaire playboy masquerading as a crimefighter is just another batman. as for jay chou, now, you know someone's a star when he's the sidekick but you know him more than the actor he's sidekicking for. im referring to bruce lee of course. he left a legacy that i strongly believe nobody will be able to equal. so it's only proper not to expect that much from jay chou. he struggled with english but he's okay as kato. but i really think it would have been a totally different movie if stephen chow had been kato. and then there's waltz who was great as the villain but was really sort of the same as hans landa. at least his character didnt need an origin story, where he's the product of something the hero did. he's already the bad guy, it's already his turf, and green hornet just basically shits in his kitchen. and finally, cameron diaz is not the cameron diaz we all salivated over for licking jim carrey's ear in the mask. wtf happened there? i dont know but edward furlong surely looks homeless.

conclusion: the best thing i could think of to defend my stance on this movie is this: round the interwebs some time ago was a faux trailer answerng the question what if wes anderson directed spider-man? dry humor, eccentric characters, indie rock music and the futura font. weird execution, totally different from what you'd expect but goshdarnit i would watch it and pretty sure would love it. green hornet is exactly that.

good: gondryisms, bruce lee homages, black beauty

bad: too much comedy.

ugly: cameron diaz. whose salad did she toss to land this gig?

verdict: 9 one-inch punches.

the grim horny.

what's your sign? dead end.

librans have been described as bastions of balance, appreciators of aesthetics, champions and of charm. and, as someone born on september 26, i believed that that's who i was for years. not that i strongly adhered to that belief. (there are facets to my being that cannot be specified) it's more like, yeah, i'm like exactly that but not everyone with the same sign as mine could possibly be like that, right? (proven by a few librans ive encountered who have never known fairness) in relation with my previous post, im pretty sure i was born this way and merely connected some personality traits associated with libra, and definitely never reformatted myself just to fit the zodiac template.

so anyways, news has spread like spam mail about the revamped horoscopic dodecahedron. astrologers were like, hey, palmreader, wassup? nothing much, balltoucher. just bored and out of generic horoscope ideas. don't worry, dude, i got just the thing. it's 2011, so let's shake things up a bit and add another zodiac sign for lols. that's awesome! let's pick ophiuchus and squeeze him between scorpio and sagittarius. why that one? because i said so, bitch! now go and buy me pizzz. my ass is itchy.

to sum the poorly written astrologers' conversation, yes, because of some constellation readjustment, they added a new zodiac, ophiuchus, meaning there are now 13 signs. despite my triskaidekaphilia, my sign is now supposedly virgo, which just doesn't make sense. but the idiocy does not end there. astronomers have "confirmed" this clustercrap and gave a correction of epic fail proportions: it's been that way for years. in other words, those newspaper and tv horoscopes you've been basing your daily lives on have been false as your grandparents' pearly whites.


screw this zodiac shit. from now on im just a guy who stands for balance, appreciates beauty and possesses ridiculous amounts of charm.

and likes pizza.




p.s. today's realization: it's fiesta downtown and the jeepneys have been rerouted. and guess what, captain obvious? zero traffic jams.

rollerskating octopus, exit stage left

while eating chickenjoy for lunch and hopping channels for good tv background noise, i came upon a zombie movie where a couple of doctors were explaining zombification to a soldier so i was like, yes gore! exploding heads, spurting blood and falling entrails, the perfect audiovisual complement to my meal. then one of the soldiers stumbled into a strip club.

and i immediately thought of a particular local talent show where an actress supposedly won by poledancing. when people had talked about her performance some time ago, i didn't react because, i guess, i just didn't gave a shit about it that day. but today, with the image of that actress accepting her prize for slithering around a vertical rod (even though i didnt actually watch it) projected in my cranial wall, i was like, wait a minute, mcfly, pole-effing-dancing?! that's one of the most useless talents ever, if it's even correct to consider it a talent. commence defensive argument:

i've always believed that talent is something that you're born with, that it's already part of your dna configuration the moment you're conceived. and talent being innate, it should be something you can do without using special objects or equipment or anything else. you can do it anytime, anywhere with near-zero preparation. anything that requires external aids and can be learned is not a talent but a skill. like in rpg games, you learn skills. for example, magic isn't talent. anybody can do it with the proper training and props. when you were born, you did not have genes that give you super card-shuffling ability. now, singing is a talent. and by singing i mean great vocal prowess and not ear-damaging wailing of people whose ears are already too damaged to hear how bad they sound. that is not singing.

my wife is an amazing singer. and because that is her inborn talent, she can sing on the spot because that beautiful voice of hers came part of the package when the stork delivered her to her parents. (which makes me hate my voice even more) dancers can show their moves without music. a couple of steps and you'd already know if one is a good dancer because that unfakeable sense of motion was built-in when they passed the assembly line in the baby factory. i considered writing as my talent but since that needs pen and paper (or keyboard), ive realized my real talent is storytelling. i can spend hours and hours blabbering about my ideas.

so, whether it's in the office, out on the street or a kid's party, my wife, some dancer and i can show everyone our talents. a poledancer cannot. and, of course, should not.

p.s. it's too early to determine iaine's true talent, but for now, her talent is being extremely cute.

p.p.s. although... a poledancer can do routines on a streetsign. but that's just stupid.

there are b-sides to every story

years ago, round the time when i only had one sibling, my father worked overseas. he'd mail us pictures of himself standing alone in the middle of the desert or sitting in his room, wearing a keffiyeh and sporting a badass beard and my mom would send him photographs of us with notes written on the back. and then, sometimes we'd be gathered in the living room, hunched over this silver casette player making voice recordings. though i have no distinct recollection of what childish crap i yapped about to my far-flung father (probably how we missed him, my shoe size and some toy i wanted to have), i do remember a particular portion of those recordings, the recurrent theme song of my parents that concluded our voice tapes:

 

anyways, to compare, if in the future i leave my family to work abroad, there'll be no hardcopy photos in the mail with scribbles in the back, we got facebook. and jeean wont have to subdue a hyperactive iaine just to record her wishlist, we got skype. still, the mere thought living several time zones apart from my two beloveds is an immediate ticket to boohooville. acclimating to different area codes was hard but i managed it because there's text and that comforting knowledge of being able to scurry home in a dozen jiffies. to actually spend a year or two in another country without getting to hug my wife or play with my daughter is gonna be quite an ordeal. i extremely hope that it never comes to that.

p.s. as of this typing, hitgirl is still battling cold and fever. give the cute little baby girl a break, will ya?

p.p.s. and my best friend, jeean, is dueling with stress. cut the gorgeous sexy woman some slack, will ya?