This nifty little gadget with blinking green lights allows me to do all sorts of stuff, like blog in the toilet.

I guess we’ve all been loving the weather lately. On some days I get a reading of 23°, which is already aircon-like temp. And some days ago Metro Manila hit an all time low of 18.5°. Still a far cry from the 12° I experienced in Baguio, but with the strong winds, it’s enough to make me wear socks at home.

Be ready for the summer though. If the guys at PAGASA are to be believed, we will pay for the cool weather now with a specially hot summer — possibly even a legitimate heatwave. So wear all those stylish sweaters and jackets now. By April we’d all go naked.

I hope you all got fat from all the food during the holidays. As for me, I never get fat, in fact I never gain weight. It’s a curse of some kind, I think. My weight has been nailed at 120lbs all throughout college and graduate school. Until I hit the gym and I ballooned to 140lbs, but even then I had to eat six times a day to gain those pounds. Now I’m at a constant 135lbs.

New Category: Dear Diary
And what could you possibly care about my weight gaining patterns, you ask? Absolutely nothing, I suppose. And the same goes for all other aspects of my life, I presume.

For the longest time, I’ve been trying to avoid the habit of most bloggers to write about their lives all the time. So of the few entries that I have, I wrote mostly about movies, current events, music, etc. I have some opinion articles, but at least they talk about issues, and not my life.

The reason I’ve been deliberately avoiding “dear diary” type of entries is the same reason why I previously wouldn’t post an entry about my weight: Nobody gives a fuck. And that goes for most blogs by the way. Nobody gives a fuck what time you woke up this morning, or what you ate for lunch, or where you went out with your friends last night — except maybe your friends. If you write a personal entry very few people would be able to relate to it. I prefer to write entries that would amuse or infuriate both my friends and complete strangers.

But for 2009, I say fuck it. If I try to write articles for everyone all the time, I end up with an empty blog. So for this year I’m introducing a new category, aptly called “Dear Diary Bullshit”. It’s going to contain the kind of entries which I previously avoided — personal, “this-is-what-happened-to-me-today” type of entries and shit like that.

I feel like a sell-out, but what the fuck. Happy New Year!

It’s been a while since I made an entry. I’d like to say it’s because the world had been boring lately, but I’d obviously be lying. Truth is, I was lazy as fuck to write about anything.

And I still am, but I saw this movie that just totally had to be blogged, because everybody else who’ve seen it blogged about it, and I’m a conformist and I like to do what other people do. Hell, even the title of this post is the same as a gazillion others’.

Anyway, as you may have no doubt guessed, the movie is Tropic Thunder, starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr.,and it’s the craziest shit to come along in the big screen in a while.

Synopsis and shit: The most expensive war movie in Hollywood is way behind schedule in filming due to the out-of-this-world idiosyncrasies of its main cast — actors Tugg Speedman, Jeff Portnoy and Kirk Lazarus (Stiller, Black and RDJ respectively). Director Damien Cockburn, yeah COCKBURN, played by Steve Coogan, is getting desperate as bad-mouthed executive producer Les Grossman (a bald, fat and jewish Tom Cruise, in a supposedly surprise but well-publicized ‘cameo’) breathes down his neck.

With the crew pressed for time and budget, writer-author and Vietnam war veteran Sgt. Four-Leaf (Nick Nolte), who wrote the book which the movie-in-the-movie is supposed to be based, suggests that they go reality-TV mode and just throw the actors into the jungle for real and start filming.

Things get complicated when, among other things, the director dies after stepping on a landmine, and the actors are hunted down by the private army of a real-world south-east asian drug lord, who thinks the soldier-costumed actors are an elite force sent by the U.S. DEA. Meanwhile, the actors think they are still shooting a movie and it’s all part of the script.

I’ll cut the bullshit synopsis here because the movie just goes berserk from this point onwards. And I’m making it seem the movie has this nice neat plot, when it’s really just one crazy shit after another — and it’s funny as hell. The movie opens with fake trailers of previous movies of Speedman, Portnoy and Kirk Lazarus, which are actually hilarious parodies of Bruce Willis Only-ONe-Man-Can-Save-The-World action movies, Robin Williams/Eddie Murphy slapstick/extreme-costume comedies, and the uber-serious, controversial, pathetically-obvious-Oscar-bait film.

Then the film goes on to make fun of another Hollywood cliche — the epic war film. All the staples have been spoofed/referenced — Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, and according to some blogs, even Deer Hunter and We Were Soldiers. The shooting scene after the fake trailers is so full of spoofs of these classic war films that it’s impossible to get them all at first viewing. And I should to tell you that if you’re not a fan of war movies, then you won’t get the jokes at all.

If you think the main plot is crazy, all the little details and twists just make it crazier. Like the fact that Downey Jr.’s character, Lazarus, is a white Australian actor who’s playing a black character. In his character’s own words in the movie, “I’m a dude playing the dude disguised as another dude.” Or how about the little twist that Four-Leaf turns out to be no Vietnam veteran, but a Coast Guard retiree who worked at the Sanitation Department. Or how at one scene Matthew McConaughey contemplates choosing between his best friend’s life or having his own private jet.

There’s just so many things going on, that at some scenes you wonder if you’re supposed to be laughing or not, because you’re not sure if you missed a joke or a funny line. I’m definitely getting this one on original DVD for the subtitles. Some of Downey’s lines are hard to comprehend with his extreme faux-ghetto accent.

And the title of this post? Well you just gotta watch Tropic Thunder to see for yourself the orgasmically spectacular scene where that line (uttered by Downey’s character) came from. It’s so cool at least one guy from Digg called “I’m a lead farmer motherfuckaa!” the new “This is Spartaaaaa!” And I like how this website called it the film’s Crowning Moment of Awesome. Yeah. Couldn’t have said it better. I swear to god when you watch this you’re going to pray somebody asks you where your farm is.

Thursday, Aug 28, 1:00pm, inside my office at UP : I was contemplating whether I would still go to the concert, because I still didn’t know anyone who was going. I love the Eheads but I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy the concert jumping and singing along by myself. So I paid a visit to some of my co-faculty friends whose office room was right next to mine.

::knock knock::
Me: “Nood ba kayo ng E-heads?”
Ayen: “Wala kaming tickets eh? San ba bumibili?”
“Ticketworld daw eh. So meron sa SM North. Sa National.”
“Meron pa kaya?”
“Ewan ko, tawagan natin Ticketworld.”

::Five minutes later::

“Marami pa daw tickets.”
“Daan ako SM North mamayang gabi, bayaran mo na lang ako bukas.”
“Ok.”

6:45pm : Text message from Ayen: “Nakabili na ako! Buti na lang umabot ako, hanggang 7pm lang Ticketworld. Hehe.”
Reply from me: “Ok, tnx. Yey E-heads!”

And with that, I have secured my pass to the greatest concert of the decade.

Saturday, August 30, 6:00pm, in one of the numerous parking lots surrounding The Fort Open Field :

Papa: “Brake! Brake!”
Mama: “Aaaaah!”
Me: “Kita ko yon, ok!?”

I was about 2 millimeters away from hitting a Honda Civic on my left. Traffic was heavy and competition for parking was intense. And being a student driver, my parents weren’t so sure I could handle the bumper to bumper situation. They kept telling me to brake everytime the car moved. Anyway, I was able to park the car without incident, and as we walked back towards High Street Mall, we saw a car hit a parking attendant’s table as it was backing up. I turned to my dad and said: “Mas magaling pa ako dun o!”

6:30 pm, Brothers’ Burger : My friends who were coming from UP were still in transit, so I had time to have dinner with my parents at Brothers’ Burger. It was the only proper fast food nearby, the rest being mostly coffee shops. So we sat down and I just sort of went into people-watching mode, occasionally overhearing bits of conversation (no surprise that they were mostly about the E-heads).

7:30 pm :

Text from Ayen: “Andito na kami, san ka?”
My reply: “Brothers’ Burger, kumakain.”
“Andito na kami sa may entrance ng general admission, katabi ng patron.”
“Marami ata yang entrance, paikot yan. Saang side kayo relative sa stage?”
“Ah. Left side. Sa loob na lang tayo magkita.”

8:00 pm : About 200 text messages later, I was finally able to join my friends on the concert grounds. And only after going all the way back to the lower left corner of the grounds where all the Portalets were, so they could easily find me.

Concert was supposed to start at 8pm but we didn’t expect it to. So we just milled around for twenty minutes or so. I tried to look for some cold water but all they were selling were those ‘flavored water’ shit.

As I sat on the grass waiting for the concert to start, I thought of two things: 1) The grass smelled like those in Sunken Garden, and if I closed my eyes I could swear I was at the UP Fair, and 2) The stage was so fucking far away.

Having general admission tickets, I knew that the band was probably going to look like a quartet of Lego men from where we were going to stand. But what turned me off a bit was the fact that the big, tall, sound stage was located so near the actual stage, that it completely blocked the view of more than two-thirds of those in the gen ad area. Perhaps the organizers knew this so they put up a projector screen behind the sound stage, which was good, but I still wanted the option of switching my view between the screen and the actual stage. With their set-up, general admission people (yeah, we the poor people) were basically forced to watch the screens and nothing else. Honestly, I felt a little left out in the cold.

8:20 pm : A 10-minute countdown suddenly flashed on the screens, complete with ‘heartbeat’ sound effects. It was neat really. It felt like a countdown to the second coming of christ, and we were all going to get beamed up to heaven when the clock winded down. And when it finally did, we didn’t find ourselves in heaven, but close enough in Alapaap.

The rest, as they say, is history, so I need not repeat them here. Suffice to say the concert was great, everybody was singing along, and just damn happy to finally be in an Eraserheads reunion concert. Too bad it had to end the way it did, but hey, this early there are already rumors (supposedly, from Raimund himself) that this is not the last E-heads concert. So, rakenrol!

Apparently there’s been rumors going around the web for weeks now, but I was never in the loop (I’m not the “online” type of fan). So I was doubly surprised when I heard the announcement. I guess my words have prophetic power. Hmm, I think I should be a goddamn millionaire already.

Lately the favorite feautures has been on pinoys being successful somewhere abroad. Maybe it’s an indie film director garnering critical acclaim, or an inventor getting an award, or a kid winning some math contest. These are all fine and dandy, and sometimes even truly inspiring.

But the bullshit begins when, often, upon hearing the details of the news, you learn that the “pinoy” is actually a Fil-Am, or Fil-Australian, or of some other pseudo-nationality with a hyphen in the middle. Not only that, it turns out that the asshole was born and raised abroad, and have absolutely no connection to the Filipino people other than his parents. When the news feature comes to the obligatory interview, all you see is some foreigner speaking in perfect slang, claiming how proud he is of his heritage. I say eat shit and die, and please take our newspeople with you.

I suppose the purpose of featuring Filipinos making it big abroad is to inspire us and make us proud. And that’s precisely why featuring half-breeds who grew up in a different country and culture is stupid. What pride, what sense of connection, can a Filipino here possibly draw from some guy abroad who is virtually a foreigner? You didn’t feel proud when Barrack Obama won his party’s nomination for the US presidential race, did you? Glad, perhaps, if you hated that bitch Hillary, but certainly not proud. Why should you feel any different for a foreigner with a hint of pinoy blood and nothing else?

Let’s make this crystal clear. If you hear that a college friend becomes President of the Philippines, you feel happy, and most probably proud. You tell people “He was my classmate in college!” You’re glad that someone connected to you is making it big. Now what if it wasn’t a friend of yours, but instead just some guy who went to the same university as you. A little less pride, but still, you feel a connection. You know you walked thru the same halls, sat in the same classrooms, probably had the same professors, and that you share the same ‘culture’ and school pride. You can still say, “Hey, the President and I went to the same school!” Now what if, you learn that the guy didn’t really spend the entire four years of college in your school. He was just there for the first month of freshman year and then transferred to another school. Still feel proud? Still feel a connection? And what would you feel if you found your alma mater displaying a huge banner congratulating their President “alumnus”? You’d feel pretty fucking stupid I hope. And that’s exactly what our news are for having these succesful-’pinoy’-abroad features — fucking stupid.

*The title was inspired by an online acquiantance who had the idea of putting up a clothing line he would call No Hyphen. In its ads it would only feature pure Filipinos for models — no Fil-Ams or shit like that, and thus the name “no hyphen.” Funny thing was this guy was a pure American. I guessed he noticed how our modelling industry is swamped by either foreigners, or foreigners calling themselves Filipinos.

Lilipad na ako
Sabayan nyo ako
Ang sarap dito sa pupuntahan ko

Bubuhos na ang saya
Tayo na sumama ka
Ang sarap dito sa pupuntahan ko

And here’s the chorus of the Eraserhead song “Alapaap”:

Masdan mo ang aking mata, ‘di mo ba nakikita
(Ako ngayo’y/Ako’y) lumilipad at nasa (langit/alapaap) na
Gusto mo bang sumama?

Coincidence, or a deliberate throwback by Raymund Marasigan to his old band? It’s not just the chorus after all, the two songs are just eerily similar, both in lyrics, message, and the feelings that they evoke. I remember Alapaap got caught in some controversy back then for allegedly being a “drug” song; one could easily accuse “Ang Sarap Dito” of exactly the same crime. I mean, the theme song of “Coke”? How much more obvious can you get?

Well, drug songs or not, the fact that an ex-Eraserhead would be singing something so similar to one of his old bands’ hits just got me really excited, and nostalgic. Perhaps a reunion is not so far-fetched. They really should just do the damn concert for chrissake, because watching an Eraserheads reunion concert is in my list of things to do before I die. Yeah, I’m gay for the E-heads.

In my case, three years after college I’m stuck teaching in the same university where I studied, earning P12,960 a month, no flashy car, no posh condo, still living with my parents, still pinching every peso, still eating at lousy fast foods, still the same old ugly motherfucker living a stupid middle-class life. OK, so I got a master’s degree, but so what? I can’t exactly take it to the bank. In fact, it adds insult to injury. The moment I step out of the Institute of Mathematics and the University, I’m suddenly smarter than most people within a hundred mile radius, and yet I’m probably getting the lousiest paycheck.

Hell, twenty four years old and still getting nowhere. I know fraternity brothers who were vice-presidents by twenty eight. No shit. I take a long hard look at my life so far and ask, whatever the fuck happened to conquering the world? I thought that was part of the plan?

I’ve made one wrong move after another, and I swear I just made my last. Eighteen months from now I’ll be out of here, and once I’m free I will just fucking chase the money wherever the fuck it goes. I will be the greediest, most materialistic, money-centered son-of-a-bitch the world will ever see. I’ve had enough of this middle-class shit. So fuck you all. Thank you.

I will not look like this gay asshole, but I will be
just as greedy

You just gotta love the sheer awesomeness of Rambo. Chuck Norris ain’t got nothing on him. In the course of the quadrilogy Rambo managed to, among others:

1. Take out a shooter by throwing a rock at the helicopter he was in.
2. Pop a wheelie on a motocross bike. While being chased by a police car.
3. Use a shoulder-fired, bipod-equipped M60 machine gun with one hand. While standing.
4. Evade mortars like they were water balloons.
5. Blow the living shit out of a Viet Cong Camp with a bow and arrow.
6. Use an M60 machine gun with one hand, while standing, for the second time. This time while screaming and the camera closing in on the ejected shells for maximum awesomeness.
7. Single-handedly obliterate an entire Russian base in Afghanistan, heavily guarded by commandos
8. Cauterize a shrapnel wound with gunpowder.
9. Hunt down dozens of Spetsnaz commandos with the same bow and arrow he used to take out the Viet Cong Camp in number 5.
10. Defeat an attack helicopter with a tank.
11. Infiltrate a Burmese army camp with nothing but a home-made machete and the same bow and arrow he used to kill Russian commandos in number 7.
12. Turn a claymore into a nuclear bomb.
13. Murder half of the Burmese army with a mounted fifty caliber machine gun

Yeah, it’s so awesome it’s almost ridiculous, except it’s not, ‘coz it’s Rambo! Hell, Rambo is so fucked up he’ll give you “a war you won’t believe” just because you won’t let him eat in your town! Haha!

And you gotta love the movies’ intricate plot too. Except for the first, all Rambo films go (more or less):

1. Rambo is found living peacefully in Thailand.
2. Rambo is persuaded by Col. Trautman to go on a mission (except in the last film, where this role is taken over by some Jesus-freak bitch).
3. Rambo refuses .
4. Something bad happens and Rambo decides to go.
5-99. Rambo kills lots of Viet Cong/Russians/Burmese.
100. End movie.

Ok so it’s not intricate, but it does make room for all the action, which is the whole point of a Rambo film.

When war is in your blood, firing an M60 with one hand is as easy as breathing.