the masochist.

Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest.
Do you still want to a writer--and if so, why?
Bennett Cerf, publisher/co-founder of Random House

Even at the worst of times, when nothing goes right, when the prose is clumsy and the ideas feel stale, at least we're doing something that we genuinely love.
There's no other reason to work this hard, except that love.
Melissa Scott, Sci-fi/Fantasy writer


My tummy hurts, and it's not just because of the usual Angel-every-after-thirty-minutes-pangs-of-hunger (TM).

I just made a checklist of things to do (write) towards August (aka Finals, Death Month) and I suddenly get the urge to throw up, shrivel up (my brain, at least) and keel over.

Consequently, even if grad school work is upto my eyeballs, I don't seem to have it in me to pick a bone/rant about how slave driver-y my profs are. (And no, it's not because Sir G can read this at any given time either.) Like the job I have that doesn't really pay well, I really, actually, definitely like my courses; even the coursework (readings, writings, reportings, more writings) shoveled over our near-dead personas every week. (Masochist nga eh!)

The only problem, really, is time.

(And yeah, the fact that I am a pathetic human being that lacks the ability to create shadow clones and the facility to grow three extra brains to handle all the thinking needed in the next few days weeks.)

I just wish I had more time in a week to alternate betweek work-work, school-work and re/writing-work. Things would definitely be a lot more enjoyable and a lot less stressful that way. :(

Imma turn in now. It's really hard to do anything when a toothpick is the only thing that can keep your eyes open for more than thirty seconds.

one more reason to passionately dislike stephanie meyer

SM said, "Let there be Twilight!"

And there was Mary Sue Bella and Gary Stu Edward.

And then there came the hordes of adolescent girls.

There came Robert Pattinson in pastywhite!foundation--

And there were hordes of adolescent girls with banshee screams and raging hormones.

Elsewhere,

There had been the (almost) Great Book Blockade of 2009 that began from a brilliantly corrupt Customs official who wanted to cash in on the Twilight book importations that were coming in by shiploads.

And then there was the release of these.

And now, there's this:

Harlequin takes aim at teen readers with new imprint

"The 60-year-old publisher of classic bodice-rippers is rolling out its newest imprint: Harlequin Teen.

"These books specifically focus on teen protagonists, which is not something Harlequin has done a whole lot of," says the publisher's Natashya Wilson.

Add Harlequin to the list of publishers that have fallen hard for teen readers, thanks to the seismic sales of Stephenie Meyer's teen vampire series Twilight.
"These will be titles specifically developed for readers of Twilight," says Wilson..."

Sample title slated for 2010?

• Intertwined by Gina Showalter, Aug. 25. The book stars a teenage boy who has four souls living inside him and who is irresistibly drawn to a vampire princess.

Copycat, much?

Start rearing a whole generation of rabid, hormone-driven fangirls, why don't we?

Full article here. Eat your heart out.

Thanks to good ol' DOB for the heads up.

Advice: Stephen King

Everything You Need To Know About Writing Successfully
Full article here.


1. Be talented

This, of course, is the killer. What is talent? I can hear someone shouting, and here we are, ready to get into a discussion right up there with "what is the meaning of life?" for weighty pronouncements and total uselessness. For the purposes of the beginning writer, talent may as well be defined as eventual success - publication and money. If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.

Now some of you are really hollering. Some of you are calling me one crass money-fixated creep. And some of you are calling me bad names. Are you calling Harold Robbins talented? someone in one of the Great English Departments of America is screeching. V.C. Andrews? Theodore Dreiser? Or what about you, you dyslexic moron?

Nonsense. Worse than nonsense, off the subject. We're not talking about good or bad here. I'm interested in telling you how to get your stuff published, not in critical judgments of who's good or bad. As a rule the critical judgments come after the check's been spent, anyway. I have my own opinions, but most times I keep them to myself. People who are published steadily and are paid for what they are writing may be either saints or trollops, but they are clearly reaching a great many someones who want what they have. Ergo, they are communicating. Ergo, they are talented. The biggest part of writing successfully is being talented, and in the context of marketing, the only bad writer is one who doesn't get paid. If you're not talented, you won't succeed. And if you're not succeeding, you should know when to quit.

When is that? I don't know. It's different for each writer. Not after six rejection slips, certainly, nor after sixty. But after six hundred? Maybe. After six thousand? My friend, after six thousand pinks, it's time you tried painting or computer programming.

Further, almost every aspiring writer knows when he is getting warmer - you start getting little jotted notes on your rejection slips, or personal letters . . . maybe a commiserating phone call. It's lonely out there in the cold, but there are encouraging voices ... unless there is nothing in your words which warrants encouragement. I think you owe it to yourself to skip as much of the self-illusion as possible. If your eyes are open, you'll know which way to go ... or when to turn back.


2. Be neat.

Type. Double-space. Use a nice heavy white paper, never that erasable onion-skin stuff. If you've marked up your manuscript a lot, do another draft.


3. Be self-critical.

If you haven't marked up your manuscript a lot, you did a lazy job. Only God gets things right the first time. Don't be a slob.


4. Remove every extraneous word.

You want to get up on a soapbox and preach? Fine. Get one and try your local park. You want to write for money? Get to the point. And if you remove all the excess garbage and discover you can't find the point, tear up what you wrote and start all over again . . . or try something new.


5. Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft.

You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. You think you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right - and breaking your train of thought and the writer's trance in the bargain - or just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere? And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and you find you don't have it in your head, why not write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it ... but later. When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.


6. Know the markets.

Only a dimwit would send a story about giant vampire bats surrounding a high school to McCall's. Only a dimwit would send a tender story about a mother and daughter making up their differences on Christmas Eve to Playboy ... but people do it all the time. I'm not exaggerating; I have seen such stories in the slush piles of the actual magazines. If you write a good story, why send it out in an ignorant fashion? Would you send your kid out in a snowstorm dressed in Bermuda shorts and a tank top? If you like science fiction, read the magazines. If you want to write confession stories, read the magazines. And so on. It isn't just a matter of knowing what's right for the present story; you can begin to catch on, after awhile, to overall rhythms, editorial likes and dislikes, a magazine's entire slant. Sometimes your reading can influence the next story, and create a sale.


7. Write to entertain.

Does this mean you can't write "serious fiction"? It does not. Somewhere along the line pernicious critics have invested the American reading and writing public with the idea that entertaining fiction and serious ideas do not overlap. This would have surprised Charles Dickens, not to mention Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Bernard Malamud, and hundreds of others. But your serious ideas must always serve your story, not the other way around. I repeat: if you want to preach, get a soapbox.


8. Ask yourself frequently, "Am I having fun?"

The answer needn't always be yes. But if it's always no, it's time for a new project or a new career.


9. How to evaluate criticism

Show your piece to a number of people - ten, let us say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and nod a lot. Then review what was said very carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet of your story - a plot twist that doesn't work, a character who rings false, stilted narrative, or half a dozen other possibles - change that facet. It doesn't matter if you really liked that twist of that character; if a lot of people are telling you something is wrong with you piece, it is. If seven or eight of them are hitting on that same thing, I'd still suggest changing it. But if everyone - or even most everyone - is criticizing something different, you can safely disregard what all of them say.


10. Observe all rules for proper submission.

Return postage, self-addressed envelope, all of that.


11. An agent? Forget it. For now.

Agents get 10% of monies earned by their clients. 10% of nothing is nothing. Agents also have to pay the rent. Beginning writers do not contribute to that or any other necessity of life. Flog your stories around yourself. If you've done a novel, send around query letters to publishers, one by one, and follow up with sample chapters and/or the manuscript complete. And remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents.


12. If it's bad, kill it.

When it comes to people, mercy killing is against the law. When it comes to fiction, it is the law.

Advice: Kurt Vonnegut

EIGHT RULES FOR WRITING FICTION
Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999)

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.


HOW TO WRITE WITH STYLE

1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean
7. Pity the readers

Full article here.

pogmolodon

Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute.
Or you might not write the paragraph at all.
Franklin P. Adams, Half a Loaf, 1927

I already have the story in my head. I already have it played out. All I have to do is write it, and yet I seem to have lost the ability to. Puwede bang mamamatay na lang?

Pag inuntog ko ba ang ulo ko sa pader, madidislodge yung words na kelangan ko para maipakita sa papel kung ano yung nangyayari sa utak ko?

Nakakainis. Gusto ko ng maisulat 'to para tapos na.

~

I think I know what the problem is. N's pointed it out to me before. Mashado daw akong conscious magsulat. IMO naman, mashado akong takot sa kung ano'ng kalalabasan nya at ano'ng icocomment ng mga taong titingin kaya nde ko masimulan yung dapat kong tapusin.

Sana puwedeng i-turn off by will yung inner critic ko habang di ko pa nabubuo yung kuwento sa papel. Shut up muna sha, mamya na lang pag nagrerevise nako. Mas kailangan ko sha doon. :(

wish granted.

A writer never has a vacation.
For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.
Eugène Ionesco, Romanian-French dramatist and playwright

The grad school profs are having a meeting on Saturday, so us MFA kiddies don't have classes. w00t!

Time to cook up something nice for the Muse of Poetry this weekend. *rubs hands evilly* I swear. It's ironic that I can't write that one genre that made me fall in love with the art in the first place.

And FINALLY enought ime to get cracking on those journal discourses and creative essays (emphasis on the 'ssss') and revise the flash fiction Sir G gave back last week.

Which means STILL no HP6 for me over the weekend.

Gah.

the beginning of the end

The way you define yourself as a writer is that
you write every time you have a free minute.
If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.
John Irving, US novelist (1942 - present)

It was fourth-grade English class. Our homework was to write a poem about anything, and with much amusement, I started writing my very first piece of poetry.

I don’t have the poem now, which is unfortunate, but if I remember right, I think the poem was about birds and trees and friendship, or something. I remember it had rhymes in it, and I remember deciding then that the only thing that can rhyme with love is above. Unless, of course, I manage to factor in a dove into the next line.

Anyway, like most (productive) things nine-year olds do, it was praised by my teacher. Not really sure if it was more for the effort or if my English teacher really found anything spectacular in it, but like any nine-year old kid who had been praised in class, I decided this was something I must be good at, and therefore must do a lot.

(I guess I should also mention that back then, I part-timed as poster girl for child psychology-based teaching methods.)

Fourteen years later, here I am; leading a double – no, quadruple – life as a Band-Aide to a rising indie funk-rock band, an all-around Creative Entity in an events and advertising agency, a not-so-very-likely (enterprise-less) entrepreneur, and most importantly, a MFA Student struggling to become a Writer.

There’s a full-blown essay on the raison d’être behind my jumping into very costly grad school; but I think for the purpose of this introduction, it would be enough to say that while I believe writing is something that I need to do for the rest of my life, I am still, at the very core, a creature of utmost indolence and therefore need something to push me into writing, writing and writing some more.

And as if weekly writing exercises and reading assignments for class aren’t enough to get me into the habit, I present to you my newest time-squeezing torture device.

This blog.

I’m betting that the content is going to be mostly drabblish, but hopefully, once in a blue moon, I’d get to write some real insightful pieces about writing, being a writer (or trying to be) and all other what-nots related to it.

I'm also keeping my fingers crossed that the Gods of Laziness give this one to me.

If not forever, at least for as long as I can finally laugh in the face of writer’s block and the big ol’ P word.

Wish me luck!

See, Fallen, dear. This is why Revenge is bad.

In watching that horror horrible movie House of the Dead, my friends and I learned that we can get out of the cinema with our sanity intact and movie ticket cost reimbursed within the first ten minutes of the film.

In Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen, the first explosion came SIX minutes into the film. Maybe that should have clued me in?

Needless to say, what everyone with half a mind said was true. It WAS an orgy of robots, explosions, and exploding robots. I told R I was coming in there for the effects, and on that level, I didn't feel disappointed AT ALL. The effects were nice, like J (plus everyone and their mother) said. But like the saying goes, too much of one thing is bad. In this case, very bad.

Mr. Michael Bay, sir. There's such a thing as overkill, y'know? Well, okay. Either you knew it and that was the whole point of this sequel, or you didn't and you just went overoverboard. Any which way, I can say without doubt in your mind that what you said in that interview was true. You DID enjoy making this movie. You delved into your fetish for blowing things up SO MUCH that you forgot how to tell a proper story.


Anyway, before anything else, lemme get fangirlism outta way:
- John Turturro = Stellar. I love you always.
- Shia = Brilliant. Really. I just hope he finds himself a Coppola/Scorsese/Burtonesque director. (Read: Run away from The Bay, kid. RUN AWAY.)
- Bumblebee is the coolest Autobot on Earth. I'm sure he'd make a great fillet-o-fish. Or rellenong bangus, at that.
- Tyrese is hot.
- Josh Duhamel is hotter.
- Optimus is HOTness ROBOFIED.


And finally, Angel's list of things to get revenge on:
(If there's a pun somewhere there, it's intended, yes.)

Also - { SPOILER ALERT! }

- The bad guys outnumbered the good guys by a MILE. It was kinda understandable though, this being a movie about the bad guys getting revenge and all. But glossing over the good guys like that? Yurusenai. I didn't even catch the name of that Corvette! That's my car!

- WHERE WAS ARCEE?! I've been expecting some hardcore female Autobot action and WTF happens? What? That's right. Nothing. With a capital N. Apparently, she was supposed to be a three-in-one deal; prolly why the rider holograms all looked alike. An attempt at the Maiden-Mother-Crone archetype? Wow. Someone ought to win a teddy bear for that.

- Was Michael Bay channeling Chekhov with all those anti-climactic funny inserts or have I had too much Fiction class? Hmm. Probably not. Because if he did, the way Megan Fox impossible-to-be-true body was slathered all over the motorcycle in the beginning should have had her riding Arcee towards the end.

- Circly-round shots are dizzying. Especially when the moment you're circling and trying to preserve is along the lines of Megan and Shia all kissy-kissy and cheesy-cheesy with lines like "I adore you. That's the same as the other word." John Lloyd called. He wants his line back. Also - barf bag, please?

- Where are the Autobots? What? Aren't those guys Decepticons?

- Oooh, me boss pala si Megatron? Ay, wait. Basag na pala sha. Sus. Fine. Tara, uwian na.

- Jetfire would be how a fanboy would look like if he were a robot and he got old. I knew the moment Optimus died that someone was gonna have to sacrifice a life. But it just HAD to be the fanboy, hadn't it?

- Megatron (matapos i-talk-to-the-hand at isnabin ni Optimus): "WAH STARSCREAM! UWI NA TAYO! Me Part 3 pa naman eh!"

- On that note, Starscream should get the Dakilang Julalay Award of The Year. Bagong bayani ng mga inalisputang robots yan.

- The epic-est fail of all "epic" battles: Optimus vs. The Fallen. It's like the story of my lovelife too: It was over before it even started.

- Also, Sam's death and resurrection with the Prime brothers? I can't decide whether it's simple deus ex machina or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows meets Dumbledore in the afterlife.

- Sooooo, yeah. Where was I? Right. Questions. Where did that chihuahua-acting Decepticon go right before they hung out the Pyramids? And Sam's roomie - Whasisname - where'd he go after S7 guy (Turturro) went all hero-ey? Answer me those, and I'll tell you why Sam continued dragging Mikaela across the desert while he had Bumblebee drive his parents off to safety.

Answer: It's so the 14-year-old boys can FINALLY see how her boobs jiggle as she runs off in slow-effin-motion.

Gah.

I shouldn't even say this anymore, but since Pointing Out the Obvious is Aki's Useless Skill #57, I'll go ahead and say it anyway.

Sequel sucked. I liked the first one better; Megan was definitely hotter there.

2010 Hollywood and Beyond

Are they running out of creative juices out there in Hollywood or have they just realized now what us geeks have known all these time?

(Y'know, that Japanese anime pwns Hollywood any time. Oh, and yeah. That us otakus are also shameless cash cows. >_>)

There's been a growing trend of Hollywood-produced anime-to-movie live actions in the recent years, have you guys noticed? There's been Speed Racer last year, Dragonball this year and oh, wait what's that? Akira, Avatar (The Last Airbender), Eva (Neon Genesis Evangelion), Full Metal Panic and ohholyshit, Keanu Reeves as SPIKE fuggin' SPIEGEL in a Cowboy Bebop adaptation?

Wait. Lemme calm myself.

...

Is it just me or does Hollywood seem to have mistakenly equated stoic with easy cool?

Because really, Spike Spiegel is in a league light years far from the likes of Neo, Constantine and - Heaven curse yer Mother Planet - Klaatu.

Guh.

Calm down, otaku. Just because Speed Racer and Dragonball sucked balls blue doesn't mean that everything else that follows will suck just the same.

So. Two sides fighting here. There's disgust, and then there's hope. I wanna go hope - primarily because I'm optimistic that way; but also because sci-fi westerns with a jazzy foundation couldn't be THAT hard to adapt to real-life-flesh-blood-tears right? Serenity/Firefly went along fine and Aeon Flux was par excellence, after all; so it should be easy NOT to mess up Bebop (of all things, gawd), right?

*breathe*

Right.

Anyway, if all else fails, there's always this:



Straight out of an effin' storybook. Tim Burton, I will SO have your babies.

And more importantly, this:

*froths at the mouth*

I wish all Hollywood directors were as visionary as this guy. In his hands, I will gladly commit any anime's spirit. Seriously.

Then again, come to think of it, where would all the fun in bashing subpars go, right?



*More wonderfully wonderful Alice in Wonderland stills here.

The MFA application essay

For me, writing is an affliction. A terrible, terrible affliction.

This essay, for instance, had been torturous to write. In my desire to write The Great Graduate School Application Essay that will give me the 101% chance of getting into the Creative Writing program, I had spent one too many long-suffering nights bleeding over the keyboard for the words that would best describe my dreams, my goals and my ambitions to the Graduate Admissions Powers-That-Be. Unfortunately, the keys that I had been hitting for the most part had been the DEL and backspace keys.

You’d ask, what’s the big deal, right? It's a fairly simple task. There're five questions. I have five answers. This should be a breeze.

Right. But, no. Not really.

Because how exactly am I going to impress upon the Powers-That-Be that learning, training, immersing in Creative Writing is something that I have absolutely wanted since I was nine years-old? That childhood fairy tales, speculative fiction and surrealistic novels are no longer enough to satiate my hunger for bizarre realms and so I need to be able to create something more? Something of my own?

I want to explore this world a different way. I want to give an alternate view of how things began, how things will end and what happens in between. I want to be able to weave Eastern and Western mythologies together – not to make things all the same, but to show how differentiations like that are better off like many rivers flowing into one sea, instead of being two lakes closed off to one another.

I want my universe, my characters and the stories that go with them to be immortalized through writing. They've all been hanging around me too long and I need to get them out of my system and move on. Properly. Otherwise, they'd just keep coming back to haunt me endlessly.

I'm not aiming to be a famous writer. Fame would be a likely by-product of worldwide readership but it's not my ultimate goal. I just want to inspire as many readers as possible to make them move an inch at the very least, or just have something in their heads click. I want them to have "Hmm..." and "AHA!" moments reading the books I will write in the next five, or ten, or for as long as I can still type or hold a pen between my fingers.

You can say that it's my own way of changing the world, one reader at a time.

I'd say it's just my way of putting Philippine Literature into the limelight, and in a permanent spot on the map of World Literature.

Some romanticized person might probably even hazard saying it's the grand entrance of Philippine Literature in the world scene.

I... wouldn't know what to say.

I just want to write, write, and be read by as many people as possible. I want to bring pride to the country and to my fellow Filipino writers; and writing is the only way that would make it possible.

And I think, I don't know how else to stress that.

I suppose we could put it this way: If say, for example, I did not believe that writing is what I have been called to do for the rest of my life, I would have spent the many painful nights of essay-writing partying out or sleeping in. I couldn’t have cared less for the constant mockery of the blinking cursor on a pristine document, because in place of my word processor would have been a DOTA window. Or Youtube. Or Facebook. Or something. Anything.

But with this essay and the rest of the happy application family in your hands right now, maybe I can now officially consider myself a masochist.

Or just extremely ambitious and persistent.

Your call.

.....

The guide questions for the essay can be found here.

28: Ode to Misery

Her name was Fiona, and she was the most popular girl in school.

The first day she set foot on campus, every single person - girl or boy - fell in love with her.

On the second day, everyone's grades reached an all-time high.

On the third day, everyone wanted to always be around her.

On the fourth day, everyone missed her when she didn't come to class.

On the fifth day, everyone went all out looking for her - in every nearby house, mall, arcade, nook and cranny.

On the sixth day, everyone called the open-book exam difficult.

On the seventh, everyone hated Fiona.

The following week, she came back. She had gotten thin and bedraggled - so unlike the girl they had first met.

But no one noticed. They were too busy hating her to care.

Saddened, Fiona left and transferred to another school.

29: I Hate Vegetables

Teary-eyed. That was how I was when Andi left.

I didn't cry because I swore not to, and I didn't ask her to stay because I knew she didn't want to.

What else could I do but to shove everything down my throat and clamp my mouth shut so I don't throw it all up on her feet?

It was like back when I was being taught to eat my vegetables - broccoli, for one. My mother, who had gotten exasperated over my staunch refusal to open my mouth wide and let the choo-choo train or the whee-whee airplane in, forced-open my jaw and packed the stems of smooshy, furry green things in. The WHOLE plate of it. Which was a LOT.

I was going to throw it all up after, but she kept her hands around my face, keeping my mouth shut and forcing me to get it ALL down.

I remember the tears that welled up in my eyes.

I wanted to get it all OUT, not IN. But my mother had other ideas.

When she finally let go, I wailed like the three-year old that I was. Something I want to do so badly right now.

Then again, I'm no three-year old anymore. And emotions - I just found out now - are easier to get down than those hell-sent broccoli ever were.

This actually brings me back to that inane cliche of a quote I read at a stationery once - When you love someone, set them free. If you're really meant to be, you'll still get back together in the end.

I used to think it was a silly quote, but right now - when all that's left of Andi is our photo sticker stuck at the back of my cellphone - that ridiculous saying is the only thing I can grasp onto for hope.

A ceaseless hope that I know is just stupid and illogical, but nevertheless continues to exist - and I cringe at this - in my heart.

Fuck love for making me this cheesy.

And fuck that guy for whisking her away to Never Never Land where all things are warm and fuzzy and cute and... normal.

"You'll always be my bestfriend," She said with a smile as she waved and boarded the train.

The hellspawn Bestfriend Card. Couldn't blame her though. I used it a hundred times before too. Why I have a lot of male friends, no one really thought so hard to figure out.

If I told her I loved her more than just a friend, she would have laughed out loud, I'm sure. Would've told me, "Of course! We're like sisters, right?"

Stupid broccoli. Why won't it just stay in my stomach? Where it's safe. Where I'm safe. Where we're safe.

I watch nth train come into the station today; the way I've been doing these past few weeks. And as the doors slide open, I scan each and every alighting passenger's face with bated breath; hoping against hope that it's her, all smiles and ready to jump at me with a hug, screeching in her high-pitched voice, "I changed my mind! Fuck that guy, I'm staying here with you!"

Ah, a girl could dream.

I shove my hands into my pockets and try to ignore the coldness of the air creeping into every inch of my being.

I turn my back from the now-closing up train and join the horde that just got out. I really don't mind the pushing and shoving.

After all, this is the closest thing I have to not feeling alone.

30: My Sun

"He's coming."

The raspy whisper held such fear in it that Alden froze in his place.

Everything had been such a blur. Looking back, his memory could only provide him with hazy bits and pieces of the beginning - the raspy-voiced woman pulling him by the hand, the dark figure advancing towards them from behind, the bruising force by which the woman shoved him with, and the stuffy heat of the closet.

"WHERE IS HE?!"

He remembered hugging his knees inside the closet.

"I don't know."

"I SAW HIM! WHERE DID YOU HIDE HIM?"

"If I knew," The woman began, strength slowly rising from her quivering voice, "Do you really think I'd tell you where he is?"

There was a strained pause...

...and then a loud, resounding slap.

He remembered trying to fit his little head into the cracks of his tightly conjoined knees and shivering uncontrollably as he vainly tried to drown out the sounds of violence with his voiceless crying.

"TELL ME WHERE HE IS!" Slap, slap, slap. And then POUND. "TELL ME!"

Mouth thankfully pressed on his legs stifled the scared sob, and the gift of memory chose to remember only what was necessary.

He remembered her whimpering, sobbing... but not wailing.

There had been wailing, but it had not been hers. That much he knew.

He remembered slick liquid finding its way inside his little sanctuary, but he didn't realize then what, or whose it was.

The door of the closet burst open, and for the first time, he remembered seeing the light of day.

Alden raised his hand to shield his eyes from the searing sun rays and kneeled down to the headstone on the grassy mound. Lovingly, he brushed the stray grass the wind had blown in, and read the inscription for the nth time in fifteen years.

For the life you gave and let live.

He patted the headstone for the last time and lay down the bouquet of sunflowers.

He stood up and walked away; with a sad smile and a silent thanks to the woman who had once saved his life.

There's an Eheads fan in all of us.

Warning: Really, really long. And drabblish. I'm an extremely affected fan, what can I say?

One word. Overwhelming.

With all the words I have learned in this life, I can't begin to express the feeling that came over me when the first two percussion notes for Alapaap pealed across the venue, and the four of them appeared onstage.

I seriously wanted to cry.

Out of sheer joy, excitement or whatever. It was really just... overwhelming.

Towards Ligaya
All roads lead to The Fort that night. Traffic slowed down on the way there, but it was bearable. (I only racked up P120 cabfare+tip coming in from Mandaluyong.) The venue was packed to the last square inch, the air was humid and the clusters of clouds loomed overhead, threatening to rain on this once-in-a-lifetime parade. The stage was set too low for everyone (even us at the VIP area) to be able to see the quartet properly. The ginormous video walls did help, but much as they did it defeated the purpose of seeing all four of them together live.

Then again, the fact that this was THE Eraserheads Reunion Concert, and it was music the Eraserheads were loved, adored, worshipped for, everything else was negligible when the first few notes of Alapaap cut through the thick air, and the lights came to life to reveal The Four in all their shining glory.

They didn't really shine-shine, but everyone screamed so loud that they might as well have.

Ely was old-school preppied up in white long-sleeved shirt, white vest and blue tie. Buddy a tad japorms in his red shirt and white jacket (which he peeled off during the third song) combo. Markus was in casual disarray as always) in a red checkered shirt and worn-out jeans. And Rayms... was so dressed down he looked as if he simply got out of bed, put on the nearest available clothing and walked off to the venue. Oh, and right. The eyeliner. (Oh, hail Raymond M.: Rock Lord of All-That-Is-Emo.) He made up for it with his charged-up performance though, so t'was all good.


The First (and Last) Set
The beginning of it all was so magical that it didn't even seem real until they appeared and played onstage.

I kept track of the songs and number of songs... until the fourth. After the fourth, I just let myself get intoxicated with their songs. I can still remember the songs they performed, not in order, and may be missing a song or two:

Alapaap - There were fireworks. Literally and figuratively.
Sembreak - With which Rayms stood up and raised his arms at the crowd. Nubi tells me that he did so because it was him who composed the song.
Hey Jay
Fruitcake - Ely went, "Merry Christmas" prior to the first note, and I just knew. He sang the first line, and let the crowd sing the next lines. Everyone sang along, but most people stumbled with "There's some brandy and star margarine to make it right." part. At this point, Ely began to supply the lyrics.
Kaliwete
Ligaya
Shake Yer Head
Toyang - With the intro "This song... is all about love.", the crowd already went wild. Ely played with the lyrics, "They tried to tells us we're too old / Too old to really be bold." To which the crowd hooted at.
Kailan - I imagined if there were lovers (There were A LOT.) in the crowd at this moment, they would have started slow-dancing.
With A Smile - The song I screamed the loudest for. Favoritest song! I really liked the Southborder version, but nothing - and I mean NOTHING - really beats the original. And LIVE at that.
Kasama Mo Naman Ako
Huwag Mo Na Itanong

I was only in grade school when they rose to stardom, so I really still wasn't the sort of stalkish fan that I am now with the JRock artists I adore. But right then, at that moment when Buddy waved and bowed to the crowd, Markus standing and nodding nonchalantly, Ely and Rayms raising their hands at the millions of us there... It was really an image, a moment, a feeling - an experience - that I will remember for the rest of my life.

Seriously surreal.


The Experience
I've heard their music in my playlist for close to a thousand times before, and a couple hundred more in my elementary years, and cliche as it sounds: nothing REALLY beats hearing it live. Especially after what seemed like an eternity. And most especially for the first time.

I had screamed then, until there was that pesky ringing on my forehead. I waved my hands along with the rest of the adrenaline-high crowd, and bopped my head and the rest of my body to the beat of their music.

Never mind the cute guys that were right beside me at that time, nor the celebrities that were at the same area as I was. When the lights shone on them, every single one of us cared for nothing more than the four of them, and the music that connected the four of them together.

I said that if Ely (or anyone of them) had expressed their intention to run at the 2010 presidential elections at that very moment, he would've won in a landslide.

The band was as cool as ever. Buddy plucked at his guitar ever so casually, as though it was the easiest thing to do in the world. Markus seemed so detached from the fame apparent in the millions of people packed before them. Rayms seemed to have just rolled out of bed and into the venue to play... like a madman.

Only on this night did I come to understand what Sharif meant with good drum-playing. Rayms hit every note HARD, never missed a bit even if often stood up to get the crowd going. Something I think he had to do either because there *was* a lack of interaction, or because old frontman habits are hard to break. Or both. It wasn't distracting though, nor did it take the spotlight from Ely. In my opinion, at least. I actually found it amusing, and representative of how they have grown as people, musicians and performers.

The surreality of it all, however, crash-landed to reality when, after the 20-minute intermission, the band came out sans Ely, and instead with a girl.


Tragedy Strikes
When this gets posted, we would all have known who the girl was and what had happened next.

And by that time, all the miniscule things that seemed wrong and/or pretty trivial at the moment they happened all formed and fit into one big, dark picture.

Ely had come out wearing sunglasses, and I personally thought it was a rockstar-in-concert thing. (I distinctly remembered Ebe in similar fashion when he performed in my Dagupan event at 12 in the morning.) He shook them off (as in SHOOK them of) around about the fifth song; revealing his tired, joyless eyes.

Everyone had also wondered why Ely wasn't interacting with the crowd as frontmen are expected to do. He also wasn't interacting with the rest of the band; something that prompted the crowd to chant "Group hug, group hug!" over and over again. There was also noticeable cracking in his voice whenever he sang, and that frozen smile he gave us in the middle of his performance.

I figured he really didn't want to be there at the moment, but never really thought of why.

Shame on me and the rest of the fan populace that night who momentarily forgot the fact that his mom had just passed away a couple days back, and that despite this and the history of heart failure looming over his head like the clouds in that night's sky; he still chose to push through with the concert to do what he had been doing since the beginning: make everyone happy.

Ely was rushed to the hospital, and his bandmates, his sister, the promotors and the millions of fans gathered there that night bowed their hands in silent prayer, wishing for his speedy recovery.

Buddy continued on apologizing and wishing everyone a safe drive home. I heard him, but I didn't see him 'coz my eyes were pinned on Raymond. Right after they had come out onstage and Buddy introduced themselves (to which the crowd laughed at), Rayms had chosen to sit at the drumset platform corner, with his face buried onto the palm of his hand.

If it were in disbelief, sorrow or regret, I really couldn't tell.


Exodus Home
The VO soon ordered everyone to leave the venue, and when we walked out of the place, we chanced upon the members of Cueshe and Ebe of Sugarfree with his girlfriend leaving along with us. Earlier that evening, the camera had spotted Jay of Kamikazee, and scattered around us in the VIP area then were the likes of Ramon Bautista, Janus del Prado, Earl Ignacio and Yeng Constantino.

It's rather amusing to think that all it takes to even the ground for the likes of celebrities, rockstars, socialites, working people and the common emo tao is the reunion of this quartet and their music.

On the way home, I thought that what had just happened was prolly a nudge from the cosmos for them to go that way and take a cue from Filipino movies.

Tragedy always brings broken people together, remember?

And so hopefully, this would be the best time for the four of them to REALLY reunite, and get back together as the friends they had started out as.

Our fingers will remain crossed for that.

The Eraserheads Reunion Concert conspiracy churee

I'M GOING TO THE E-HEADS CONCERT!

Haha. Wala lang. Nagyayabang lang. :P

Natuwa naman ako at makaka-experience na ako ng BIG concert in front of the stage for the FIRST time! Haha. I LOVE YOU MEL! As IN. Mahal na kita foreveeeeer. <3

I actually still don't feel as giddy and/or excited as I should be, just... mayabang. Haha. At least aminado. XD Seriously though, maybe it's 'coz I'm groggy pa/na, or simply because my anti-uso blood has kicked in a few days back despite the sheer kaastigan of the event.

Or maybe I just got carried away with Raymond (Marasigan)'s words from when the whole hullabaloo started. The Eraserheads was just a college band for him; it wasn't their 'true' music. They were a college band who just couldn't stop rising to fame. Napa-"Ay." naman ako dun. Na-sad na din kase hindi na talaga sila nagkaayos-ayos even after aallll this time. (Apektado?! Haha.) Sayang naman din kase. Kahit na ba 'college band' lang sila noon, I think they made better songs and music than the so-called hardcore rock bands of today. Tsaka 'yung samahan nilang yun noon, tapos the fact na they won't even be jamming like old times (on their own accord) anytime soon.

I guess being in the company of Flicker Fusion has made me a lot more sympathetic to a few more band-related stuff than just music and, well, lyrics.

Anyway, while on the topic of eHeads. The conspiracy bug bit me yesterday, and seeing as I was still recovering from the last bug that bit me (the lazy bug), I'm posting this now.

Kase di ba, Sony-BMG took over the concert stuff after Philip Morris (PM) dropped their sponsorship? I was thinking, what if that was the plan from the very beginning? As in:

Philip/Marlboro came out and announced to the world that they're getting the boys together again for one BIG concert in the name of fandom. They say it's free, but it's by invitation so head over to the red nation site to sign-up.

Now, while they're collecting hits at the Marlboro site, the anti-smoking peeps start throwing stones at them and causing their own ruckus. PM denies allegations that they're advertising against the law, because, really. They're just sponsoring an event. I mean, they're right. Where's the advertising there?

*rolleyes*

Anyway. Should we seriously believe that the PM people didn't know the law, and the semantics thereof? They couldn't have been *that* stupid, could they? Unless they really had balls the size of China, they should've known (and cared) that there was no way in hell they would be cut slack for what they were planning to accomplish.

My personal conspiracy theory is that: PM had struck a deal with Sony-BMG from the very beginning. PM came out first so everyone would look at them and recognize them as an almost-Messiah for being able to bridge humongous gaps in the much-revered disbanded quartet. While Sony-BMG waited in the shadows for the signal to come out and save the day.

What's in it for them?

Publicity. For both parties.

I mean, bad publicity *is* still publicity. And PM's got a LOT of that now, yes? Even The Savior, Sony-BMG.

The cost of that rumored 10M/band member talent fee (amounting to a whooping 40M?!) could've been split between the two parties, and their plan of action to recover the lost gold would have been what's happening now.

Charge 1-2K for every hungry fan who wants a piece of their idol.

(Coz seriously. Kung gusto nyo magpasaya lang talaga ng fans, kelangan ba talagang ganun kamahal? Eh ni hindi nga din yan fundraiser eh, di ba?)

HOWEVER.

One reason why this churee CAN'T work is in one person. Rayms Marasigan.

Based on the emails he sent to the Sandwich mailing list, he seems too transparent a person, and too respectful of his fans to be engaged in deceptive activities as this.

BUT

What if the band wasn't in on it either?

What do you think?

Might it be plausible? Or have I just been reading too many Ninoy Aquino conspiracy featurettes from INQ.net? *snickers* Lemme know.

Also, for more eHeads-related snippets, head on over to The Merryland. Kasama 'ko sa list na yan! Ahaha. Thanks ulet, Mel~

In the meantime, I shall go back dealing with my own two-faced Hydra here at the office. I promise to write about the concert (and whatever bonding that may happen with officemates) when I get back from THE event.

Haha.

Wanted: Storytellers

Strong on visual effects, weak on story.

Wanted is an almost-two-hour movie about a loserly guy who finds out one day that he, apparently, hails from a long line of uber-cool (and cold-blooded) assassins. He is taken under the wing of his recently-assassinated, previously-unknown father's friends, and is then tasked with avenging his father's untimely death and the betrayal made upon The Fraternity. As he is geared up for the final battle, he is shown the inner workings of the secret group formed by Weavers, and discovers how this group acts as agents of Fate. In the end, he comes face-to-face with the assassin; whose dying breath causes the life that he has finally learned to embrace to, once again, unravel like torn silk before his very eyes.

In the world of myths, this is an ugly duckling story made cool, contemporary and testosterone-loaded with lots of guns, bruised-and-bloodied faces, guns, and more guns. (The highest point the protagonist (James McAvoy) needs to reach, after all, is to be able to curve a bullet around an obstacle to hit the target spot-on.)

While the movie started off with a visual feast and adrenaline-pumping stunts, it failed to maintain that amount of excitement and energy to the very end.

It *is* remniscient of The Matrix and Fight Club; but more of the former than the latter, since this was less mindfuck, more visual grandiosity.

Not that this one's effects would give The Matrix a run for its multi-million money, but it did a good job in making James McAvoy look cool in a shooting spree, and Angelina Jolie become the Goddess of All-That-is-Cool-and-Spiffy in her crazy-hot-chick-driving-the-speeding-red-car moment. (Then again, saying that 'Angelina Jolie is cool' is a redundancy.)

The movie started to become dragging towards the middle, making it the epitome of anti-climactic. Think racecar zooming off at incredulously high-speed only to end up crawling to the finish line with a coughing engine.

Unfortunately, at the same point where the movie is supposed to be shining its brightest did it begin its downward spiral to obscurity.

The ridiculously befuddled ending makes you think that the filmmakers expended all their creative energy to keep their viewers' attention during the first 15 minutes of the film, and then either got too confident that they've manage to fully entrance the audience or ran out of enough mojo to keep the action coming.

I wish they spent more time on establishing characters and forming an actual plot than in stitching together montages of training, assassinations and the like.

The actors were so-so in this. Don't expect any Oscar nominations headed your way, kiddies. James McAvoy either looked stressed or full of teenage angst. Angelina Jolie was of her usual stoicism, peppered with coyness and some cream-puffish-mushy personality. Morgan Freeman was, well, Morgan Freeman.

The only utterly brilliant aspect in all this that I cannot find fault in was the editing. With the story freely moving from the present to the past in pseudo-montages, it didn't become a confusing jumble of images and events. Instead, it provided the audience with a sort of stream-of-consciousness viewing experience wherein the audience was seeing/experiencing/re-experiencing whatever it is that is running through his head during these moments.

In conclusion, I would recommend this movie to people into mouth-agaping stunts and effects and/or Angelina Jolie. But if you want to be over-the-top wowed-out, then this movie is not for you.

sweep me off my feet, why don't you?

THE DARK KNIGHT IS AWE.FRIGGIN.INSPIRING.

I was thinking of criteria by which I could judge the films I'll be reviewing in the future, and even though I've managed to think stuff up, using them for TDK might come out farce-ish.

Coz, really. The Dark Knight is THE BEST film to come out (so far) this year.

As in.

Do you feel me frothing at the mouth? Because, really. I am.

To save your monitors from getting flooded with my gushiness, I'll just list down my notes in parts:


The Villain
The Joker was disturbia personified. Heath Ledger was PERFECT for the role. How sad is it that he had to pass away so soon? No more sequels for his freakishly sane Joker, THAT sad! His performance was nothing short of phenomenal. It was so far-off from Jack Nicholson's version, that the earlier version, despite its merits, pales in comparison.

Heath Ledger's The Joker isn't your garden-variety demented villain because he's simply not demented. He's a genius who reads a lot of Thomas Hobbes/Xun Zi/Freud, and his apparent dementia is really just a nasty side-effect of his starkly different worldview and opinion of mankind.

He's not someone you should pity or hate. He's actually someone to admire and look up to. In a somewhat sick and twisted way.

I love the person who provided for the The Joker's new-and-improved personality, and Heath Ledger for doing an unparalleled job in breathing life into the character. It's really unfortunate that he had to exchange *his* life for The Joker's.


The Hero
Christian Bale as The Batman managed to stand up to Heath Ledger's stellar performance. He put up a very, very good fight on two levels: as the hero of the story and as the actor playing the title role. He managed to steal his equal share of the limelight even if the movie started with Heath/The Joker. The Batman's deep, gruffy voice was something that the other Batmans didn't have. It was unsettling at first, but it grows on you, so that was fine.

Also notable here is this Batman is one of the most humanified. I haven't seen Batman Begins (I know, I suck. Not a fan of Katie Holmes kase eh.) so I'm not sure how it compares, but from the ones I've seen before (Val Kilmer's, Michael Keaton's and George Clooney's) his is the least stiff. It might have something to do with the fact that his Bruce Wayne is also the most human. (Gotta credit the well-developed plot and great characterization.) This Bruce Wayne wasn't just all angst and snobby riches; he actually has a pretty wide array of emotions: jealousy, envy, kindness, generosity, helplessness and all other stuff from the spectrum of feelings. There was Bruce Wayne's characteristic dry wit and maangas persona, but his humanity shone through very clearly.

[On a more girly note, Christian Bale is one of the hottest Batmans EVER. Even without tons of fanservice moments (i.e. moments of half-nakedness), Christian Bale was oooooozeeeeng with sexiness. Haha.]


Others
Harvey Dent/Harvey Two-Face to me as a viewer was a sad happening, but as a writer/filmmaker, was a giddy development. This is where that wonderfully-run plot comes in to receive its trophy.

Alfred took his share of the limelight, and shone not just as the perennial sidekick, but as one very talented and experienced PERSON.

Lucius Fox was as maangas as you could imagine Morgan Freeman becoming. Problem is that I kept forgetting who he was in the movie, and kept thinking of him as Morgan Freeman. (There was a point where Bruce Wayne mentioned Lucius, and I was like, "Who? Oh. Morgan Freeman.") It's not really good if you see the actor instead of the part he's playing. I'm beginning to think that he's getting typecast unto these sorts of caretaker-ish roles. This is remniscient of that part he played in 1408, albeit less scare-inducing.


Technicals
Visual effects were THE BOMB. I was literally clapping joyfully at every carchase, building explosion and gun firing. Especially astig moments for the next Batman movies to top are:

*The kidnap of Lao in Hongkong (Love that return-to-airplane move!)
*The transfer of Harvey Dent to County Jail (I clapped when he flew out with a trike.)
*The tracking room/monitors
*The final showdown of Batman and The Joker

I should also say that my hat's off to whoever is in the idea pool who thought of Lucius Fox's designs and The Joker's explosive schemes.


Plot Runs
The movie ran for about 2 hours and a half. On paper, it might seem very LOTR-ish long, but really. The two hours were well worth it. If you're depressed, stressed or just simply bored, this is one of the best escape movies out right now. I was so into it that I didn't even call out what had happened to Commissioner Gordon (How could I have NOT seen THAT coming?!), and the two hours were more than enough to establish the relationships among all the characters, do some foreshadowings (A lot, actually. Anton Chekov would be so proud.) and provide basis for all other events that would follow. Script wasn't really riveting, but it fit just right. I ended up liking that "You either become the hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." line in-movie even if it seemed really long and awkward in the trailer. The best script came at the end, when Gordon was explaining what Batman is to Gotham. It came out so nicely that I cried at the end of the movie because of it. (Such a girl.)

Sooo there. Gushing over. Do I re

Save Now

ally still need to make a wrap-up? I'll just end up being redundant here. Anyway.

Go pick your ass up and watch The Dark Knight. I promise to give you a refund if you leave the theater disappointed after.

Yes. It's THAT good.

Vignette#1

"'Ma, hindi dapat mamatay si Manong."

I opened my eyes, turned to the direction of the voice, and found a little girl. She was probably around six or seven years old with smooth, dark skin, long hair, and pretty little lips that always seemed to be pouting. She looked up at a woman who was the spitting image of herself, only older, and frowned.

A look of worry crossed the older woman's face, as if unsure how to respond to the girl's last statement.

I stood up, watched as the older woman kneeled down to the girl's eye level, smoothed the girl's hair, and heaved a deep breath as she opened her mouth to explain.

An explanation I didn't get to hear because of a group of youngsters that brushed past me.

I turned to the direction they were heading - behind me, and studied their pretty faces from afar. I know I've seen them somewhere before even if I couldn't place them at the moment. Artistas, probably? I thought to myself. They look harried, worried - one of them was even close to tears - as they walked briskly along the white halls, and met with another cluster of people at the end of it. A man wearing a white lab coat - a doctor, obviously - was speaking before the cluster, and everyone in the cluster was listening to him in rapt attention.

Interest piqued, I sauntered over to the cluster. Surely, they won't mind, or even notice, an usi like myself, hovering nearby, hoping to catch some juicy chismis.

"We tried. For 45 minutes."

And the rest was drowned by hiccupping and sobbing. I saw one of the older guys - the one with salt-and-pepper hair - clench his fist, even as his face remained impassive. I felt sad for him, knowing somehow, that it were the poker-faced people who felt the most heart-wrenching emotions.

If only I were one of the people in that cluster, it would have been him I hugged first. If I knew him better, I'd say that in the cluster, he was the person most burdened.

...if I knew him.

I blinked. Something had caught my eye, and I rubbed at it furiously. I heard the doctor excusing himself from the (drama) sadness, and brushed past me, leaving a trail of cold wind in his wake.

I looked up, and saw the cluster huddling even tighter and tighter. Salt-and-pepper guy unclenched his fist and pushed the door that was right behind where the doctor once was. The door slammed right back into place, almost as if it were angry itself.

I glanced at the cluster of people that he had left, at the door that was still slightly swiveling back and forth, back at the group, and then at the door that was now slowly quieting down.

I shrugged to myself, and decided to take full advantage of my being an usi and followed salt-and-pepper guy into the room.

The little girl had prepared me for it, of course. I knew someone had died. But who Manong was...

One of the nurses was holding a white sheet by its edges and pulling it up and over the body that lay there. Salt-and-pepper guy motioned for the nurse to stop, and she set the sheet down and excused herself from the room. Like the doctor, she brushed past me and left a trail of cold wind in her wake.

But, unlike the doctor, she had given me the benefit of a hasty glance.

Salt-and-pepper guy was blocking my view of the dead person's face, and for all the usi in me, I didn't think it proper to intrude his space during his moment of grief.

Especially now that I could see his shoulders visibly shaking.

And then I heard the door slam shut behind me.

Someone had entered.

"Fancy seeing you here."

I ignored the speaker, thinking that the statement was for the salt-and-pepper guy.

The speaker cleared his throat.

Salt-and-pepper guy didn't even seem to hear it, so I turned around to see who it was.

"Hi."

It was young man, his face unlined, his smile reaching only until his cheeks because his eyes were the saddest pair I've ever laid *my* eyes on.

Like the earlier group that had brushed past me, it felt like I knew who he was.

Something deep, deep inside me knew who he was.

"Hello."

It was like meeting an old friend after a very, very long time of not seeing each other.

"You were talking to me?"

He nodded.

"Oh."

Though, like an old friend you've just seen again, you can't be sure that he really is *your* old friend...

He reached out his hand. "We need to go now."

...until of course, he introduces himself.

I glanced at his outstretched hand,

And paused.

He must have noticed the hesitation. "I never get why you people want to hang around watching all these happening. Actually, I never get it why you people have to go on like this."

"...what?"

"Crying."

"Oh." I tried to process what he was getting at. "It's only natural, I guess."

"I don't think you people really understand what 'natural' is."

"...well."

I didn't know what to say.

"You can't stay here, y'know." He continued. "It's not... natural."

I sighed.

"Let's go."

"Now?"

He nodded, and I sighed again.

I took his hand, and he lead me towards the door.

He pushed the door open, and for the last time, I closed my eyes.

Freud Rocks

He stands there, smiling from under his umbrella, as though unwary of the sky weeping from above him.

He beckons, and you contemplate whether you should join him, or stay under the fast-disappearing safety that the store awning is providing you.

No contest, really.

You convince yourself (in under three seconds) that this is the fastest way to get home in this sordid weather.

You step out of your not-very-shielding-shelter, into a puddle (The streets are quickly disappearing under sewer water.), and then finally, under the protection of his umbrella. He laughs at you for getting queasy over walking in sewer water, and you say your thanks. Part in sarcasm, part in gratitude. Thank God he thinks the queasiness is because of the rat-pissed water.

And now the challenge begins.

How do you actually navigate through the flooded streets under one, small umbrella without maintaining a *friendly* distance?

You don't.

Gathering all your Freudian defense mechanisms to the surface (with Repression and Rationalization leading the pack), you let yourself wade closer to him. Close to the point where one of your hands is resting on the messenger bag slung behind him, and your shoulder is touching his left arm. So close that even if he shifted hands in holding his umbrella, part of your upper body is still very, very close to his.

You draw your breath.

(And you're glad the thunderstorm manages to mask the sound.)

He suggests you hold the umbrella. And you do.

He says he'll just let you have it, and he'll just walk with his jacket hood on.

You refuse, and insist on holding the umbrella up for the both of you. You tell him you refuse to get guilted over him getting sick.

He obliges. A tad reluctantly, you note.

But he obliges, and the two of you are huddled under one umbrella, so you really can’t complain.

(You could imagine your Freudian defense mechanisms having a party inside you. With Repression and Rationalization hosting it.)

A few steps and a couple of curses dedicated to haphazard drivers, the two of you reach the other side of the street.

He puts his arm around you, and your heart... miraculously stays still.

(How wonderful that your Freudian defense mechanisms remain sober despite their party.)

You tell yourself his hand is there just so he could lead you away from cracks, potholes and the like.

And he does that exactly.

(Repression and Rationalization do excellent work, really.)

He removes his arm the moment the two of you get over the obstacle course that is the sidewalk, and you start wondering why - as cliché fiction goes - your heart didn't skip a beat.

Then comes the epiphany. You aren't in a fairy tale, and he isn't The Prince.

(Or at least, that's what the pack leaders tell you to believe.)

You wonder what his girlfriend would say to this.

Then again, his girlfriend never seemed to be the jealous type. At least, not in the three times that you've actually crossed paths with her.

He tells you trivial stuff as you walk through Underwater Streets. You nod in all the right places, encouraging him to talk. He does. He's just so easy to read sometimes. He continues with his mini-stories, and you continue with your mini-reactions.

And then he says, I had you hold the umbrella 'coz you'd get drenched more if I held it for both of us.

And you wish you could feel a lot more than you're feeling now.

Why can't you ever just enjoy the moment when you're *in* the moment? Why must you always feel... nothing?

You're pretty sure you'll feel everything only after the moment has passed, and all your Freudian defense mechanisms have gone to bed.

Which is the worst, really. Having to deal with all that in one instant.

You reach the end of the street, under yet another store awning. He stops to take his umbrella from you, pauses to assess your situation, and then smiles.

You'll be okay here, won't you? He asks.

You smile your best smile, and nod.

You really can't have him stay, anyway.

He nods back, and walks off to the train station. You purposefully look the other way.

He's not yours to have to stay.

racing OUT.

Speed Racer is a live action movie trying to pass itself off as an anime.

Granted, that the basis for the movie IS a 60's anime. But couldn't the Wachowski Brothers handled it a lot more along the lines of say, The Matrix? (They used 'the makers of The Matrix Trilogy' as a marketing tool, anyway. They could've at least lived up to it.)

Not to say that Speed Racer is a bad watch, but it wasn't awfully good either. If you go in there expecting to be wowed by effects, mise-en-scene, or God forbid adrenalin-pumping car chases, then you're pretty much in for disappointment.

If, however, you just want to see real people (like Rain *squee*) roleplaying anime characters, then you're pretty much set.

Unfortunately, I went in there with the first mindset, and so the rest is history.

...

Well, okay. A bit more detail then.

Production design was a cross between Dr. Seuss' The Grinch and Spy Kids in 3D. Colors were exaggerated to the point that you'd think pastels were banned in their world, and primary colors were oh-so-in. The houses in the neighborhood looked like cutouts, and the cars looked cartoony when taken out of the race circuits and into the streets. The Royalton lab looked painstakingly like it was a wing in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

90% of it was shot in chroma. Chroma keying was nothing out of the ordinary for the Wachowskis - clean, fuzz-free an' all that. The chroma shots had the Wachowski stamp on it; one of the few that actually had it. Scenes in montages (which composed like, 50% of the movie) weaved into each other beautifully. The rate of change in scenes per frame sometimes got a tad overwhelming, but it was still a pretty good attempt at something cool and innovative. (I haven't seen anything like it before.)

The race circuit scenes was also handled well enough, though it was nothing extraordinary. Having been shot on chroma, and looking obviously CG'd, there wasn't much to be exhilirated from.

Gotta give them credit for trying to stay loyal to the genre of anime though.

I do wish they took a page out of Quentin Tarantino's book and transmuted the anime version the way Kill Bill was done. Or a page out of their own, and created something close to their crowning glory, The Matrix. (Oh, wait. There *was* a Matrix moment there - in one of the fight scenes where everyone was frozen in the air for a couple of beats while the camera dollied around them. Hello, bullet speed. I wish it wasn't just *that* that they took from earlier work.) Or, at least had the race circuit scenes similar (in concept) to the way the Initial D live action was done.

Then again, this is a PG movie. It's supposed to be for kids. (Christina Ricci, poster girl of Eternal Childism, is there, for crying out loud.) Maybe the only reason why I'm not awed by it is because *I'm* not part of their target audience.

(Actually, the movie's target audience is also a bit confusing. Sure, it's for kids. Sure, it has morals. But Christina Ricci in plunging necklines and short leather skirts, getting all sexually wound up, and a kid upping his middle finger at a grown adult? Mixed signals, baby.)

Hmmm. Yeah.

I just hope Dragon Ball's live action (with Buffy's Spike as Piccolo?!) turns out better.