Kings, Only By The Night

It's 12:51 AM. It's late and you're sitting on the curb of some rundown street. There is a man with weary eyes telling you his life story. He tells you this is the first time he will ever tell the truth. He feels like telling you the truth because really, its just after midnight, time is a sense, it feels like forever, and you and the rest of the waking world are invincible. He offers you episodes of his past between long drawn sighs and metaphorical nonsense. He apologizes for being incoherent and cliche, but to you, he makes perfect sense. You do not question and you listen totally entranced. His protest against mortality, his longing to matter, his frustration with wanting to be found, his despair to live --- you've all heard it all before, but it is his. He says he doesn't know and he wants to be. You offer no apologies nor consolation. Instead, you can only nod and smile. Hours later, the warm sun reveals itself against the backdrop of concrete giants, silently declaring that today is a promise.

This is how Only By The Night, Kings of Leon's new CD feels like. It's always like this with them. It never feels like being handed a loaded gun --- okay, a very menacing hammer ---- after each storytelling session to put the cd player out of its misery. (Because that's what I totally felt like doing after listening to all of The Script's cliche's. But that's another entry.)

OBTN is a wonder. It's melancholic and euphoric, impatient and steady. And as always, Caleb is helluva sexy.

If there was only one album you could listen to on loop for the rest of the year --- and arguably the remainder of your quarter-life existence --- this definitely has to be it. I totally would.

Sunday Afternoons

I can't believe how much of a drama queen I was in the 90's. This is Rain Maida thinking silly thoughts out loud. Superman isn't dead, silly. He's dining at the Whitehouse with Stevie Wonder.







Doesnt anybody ever know? The world is a subwaaaay. Subwaaaay. Eeeeeeey.


It's a lazy Sunday afternoon and I miss the 90's.

What's your fondest memory of the greatest decade EVER?

:P

It's Oscar!

The Oscars are fantastic this year! After a string of snore fests, this year's show is exciting, innovative and...meaningful. I almost felt empathy for Penelope Cruz as she shook and trembled while she was being honored. Then I realized, she was a celebrity and therefore LESS human. People who spend over $800 for hair cannot possibly be from our species. That said, where oh where can we sign up? I want Kate Winslet's hair.

A few surprises. The technical awards are sometimes a chore to watch that I usually take my time to pee or grab more food, but I stayed put to watch the amiable Japanese guy thank Mr. Roboto. Ben Stiller's mad-hatter crazy Joaquin Phoenix impersonation kills. I loved what they did with the technical categories, especially the writing categories. It was actually clever.

And just as I thought that the Oscars completely abandoned Hollywood's addiction to smut, they went to transcendental proportions. They actually panned multiple times to Angelina The Jolie when Jennifer Aniston was presenting onstage. Ha! It's not so serious after all. The Academy wants a catfight? Very LOW CLASS, folks! I almost felt bad for Aniston, she looked frightened, tensed on stage. She stutterred at one point and was off in her timing. Maybe because Angelina was absoltuely stunning, like Olympian goddesses were inhabiting her body at the same time, and Aniston was presenting with Jack Black, who coincidnetally represents one of Jolie's movies? I feel bad for her but they have absolutely no right to cry out oppression. The took it upon themselves by littering my gossip blog readings.

I take back what I said. I cringed twice at Hugh Jackman's musical numbers. I felt a little bad for him.

(Am still watching...

I thought I might do this; I have nothing else to do. :P)


update update

So heartbreaking. Heath shouldn't have died too soon. It's unfortunate that we dont get to see him today at the Oscars. That would've been some speech. And if Jack Nicholson were there, that would've been a riot.

Ohwell.

It's funny and wonderful at the same time, there's humanity at this year's Oscars. It seems sentimental this year. The lesser known technical people are heartwarming.

And I hate to admit this. It sounds perverted. I am totally crushing on Dev Patel! The shitz. He's a child! They keep panning to his face; this does not help.


update update

It's over; Slumdog Millionaire won! And Dev looks disorientated and adorable. I want to hug him. :P

The nicest thing about this year's show was how they managed to keep it interesting and relevant. I loved the whole Yaya sisterhood going on with the acting nominees. This reminds us that there's more to movies than Zac Efron and Miley Cyrus. That said, what were they doing at the Oscars?

Marian Rivera Is Queen Of The Underworld

I confess, I'm addicted to Ang Babae Na Hinugot Sa Aking Tadyang (gah, mouthful!). I now love, hate Marian Rivera's Proserfina! (I have to retreat to my cave and die now.)

Tadyang-tadyang as it is now known around the house is that new drama series in Philippine TV ridden with anti-heros and fantastic comedians. I dunno about you, but I'm through with all of the tired-old cliches that haunt everyone's non-cable-tv evenings to no end --- the incessant and vicious tug-of-wars between pa-martyrs and wifebeaters, the kawawa, timid young girl who triumphs after a gratuitous makeover, the obligatory background story of the protagonists meeting as kids or babies. It's too... cute. That only worked for Moses, folks. And Ally Mcbeal. It's refreshing that tadyang-tadyang doesn't carry those over.

The show is not as earth shaking as say HBO or Showtime, but THEY try. Oh, they really do. The stylized camera shots, the generous shots of Dingdong Dantes's manly-man body parts, the constant cliffhangers, and the sex -- that about makes up a third of every episode. Not that I hear anybody complaining. Save for the Neo double that is Dingdong Dantes in Homer apparel, this series shows promise. You have the ultimate anal type -- obssessive compulsive, sexually repressed, straight-laced and over-achieving, and Meridith Brooks's Bitch --loud, obnoxious, mysterious and fun. Add to the mix another over-achieving, conniving bitch, well the obligatory asshole, and you have a fun and exciting night. Unless of course, if a family drama is more up your alley, then this isn't for you.

There's one thing that bothered me for a bit though. I couldn't get it around my head though why anyone would name a character Proserfina (it's an odd name). That is, until I found out it was the equivalent Roman name for Greek goddess Persophone, wife of Hades and Queen of the Underworld. Persophone, who got kidnapped and brought to the belly of Hell to curse the lives of mortals. Persophone, who no one wanted as diety alter-ego in English class. (Everyone wanted to be Athena, Aphrodite or Artemis.Including me.) Strange and cool at the same time.

I've been told that her name has some sort of symbolism in this series. There has to be one. It would be hard to ignore if the show weren't already teeming with characters with mediterranean names. Homer, Proserfina, Helene, Hera, Athena, Cassandra, Galatea.

Galatea!

Crazy.

Then again, Galatea IS a nice name for a pet fish, wouldn't you say? Or a small furry rabbit.

Tadyang-tadyang is now making me want to read again Greek Mythology. I dunno about you, but that's GOOD tv.

Facebook Shmacebook

Do you have a facebook?

Everybody has one, so my sister tells me. Friendster is so yesterday, she says. My brother concurs on this and they both have been convincing me, without facebook commission, to get one. According to them, its a lot less messier and COOLER than Friendster. Only sooper cool people are in Facebook! A few bored evenings later, I finally got one last week. Not because I wanted to be cooler than I already am (hyukhyukhyuk) but ONLY because I wanted in in the YoVille universe! It's a tiny virtual cutesy village! I had to have my own Yoville beach house and that shiny blue thingie on my doorstep! Its a shameful habit, I know. I have a slightly severe affection to cute stuff online.

I know it was wrong. I opened a facebook account without any intention to work the social web. Gasp. I don't have any contacts there, except my brother, my sister and my sister's boyfriend to work as slaves and workers for my Yoville benefit. It's not that I have an aversion to social networking sites (I have a Multiply account, haven't I?). I'm just lazy. But I do have a Friendster account, to much prodding of college friends. They insisted I get one to monitor my transistion from eager moth to mothball. Compared to my sister's, who once had 800 friends on one occasion, my directory has a measly 70. They make up some of my closest friends and relatives. My Friendster is for people who want to get a general idea to all sorts of fun manangs do. I figured, its the least I could do to appease them. People close to me somehow out of habit console my single life with plausible deaths of an ovary or a uterus. I tell myself they love me enough to spare me from erimitical despair. Apparently, its akin to the bottomless pit! Its the sads. So people warn me and have been warning me ever since I was out of diapers that staying un-married forever is the worst decision you will ever make. That said, I haven't given some of them a link to this multiply account just yet. My potty mouth, am afraid, isn't very endearing. I don't think foul-mouthed manang runs well during reunions. That only works when you want to charm your way out of certain situations. Heh. But that's another story.





I've completely forgotten the point in this entry.

Have a nice February, folks!

Hi, Holga!

This is a bit of a disaster. I purchased a Holga 120 GN, hoping it might eliminate the slight problem I have with pinholes --- the nonexistent depth of field. My first pictures came in the mail today. I discovered that I have another problem. My Holga, it seems, has a slightly skewed viewfinder. It's completely useless. It doesn't take the right image you see through the hole. This goes against all of a Lomohead's logic, but I can't just run through the streets and shoot from the hip. I find it debilitating. But I love my Holga. Although these pictures don't seem as good, it shows what the plastic camera can do. The images produced are gritty and moody.

This year's Sinulog Grand Parade was fairly exciting: a charging horse, a full and happy snake and the city's garbage --- none of which were taken by my Holga. Those images would have been fun had I not held too much faith on my pinhole camera. The extreme light leaks ruined those good pictures.

So here they are: my first pictures in medium format.
















Holga, taken without flash, 120 film, Fuji Reala 100

More here.

Babble babble.

There's no denying, EVERYONE's a bit self-important these days. It's not an allusion to an allegory. It's a fact.

It's a bad habit no ones admits to, an addiction no one quits. Because if the world had to end tomorrow and only few had to survive, wouldn't you want to feel destined to be saved? Like the cosmos were somehow indebted to keep you alive. Like somehow you being kept alive had some necessary reaction for the protraction of life on the planet. You are the key, you are the future. Everyone wants to be The Answer. Because if you were to cease believing, how would explain the injustice that is YOUR life?

I can't remember how the rest of it goes. It must've been a nasty fight with a humanist.

Yikes, Ka-Arty Ni Tin :P

These are images from my second pinhole camera. This is what happens when you've had too much intsant mami.

These Streets

Pink

Street Smarts

Pasindi

This Is How Fat Burns

35 mm film, KODAK Solid Gold ISO 100

My Pinhole Pictures At Flickr

Gah.

I discovered lately that there is a threshold for emotional fuckery (because there is no other word for it). I thought it was just the odd weather or my preoccupation with jeepney engines but I found out today while battling the cold weather with thick coats, I can no longer hear my thoughts. It's all just white noise.

Gah, am I burning out all over again? Please tell me I'm just bored.

Rakenrol A Bye Baby

My 11 day old niece hates the Backstreet Boys. She has a thing for Death Cab For Cutie. And DCFC only. Not Kings of Leon, not even Led Zep. Not even my singing. I'm not sure if I agree. Hee.

We recently discovered during babysitting duties that the only sound that could calm an irate Caitlin was Ben Gibbard's narration on DCFC's Cath. We hit play, she instantly stops crying and goes to sleep. It's like a Christmas miracle.

I'm not sure what it does. Maybe it's similar to white noise or radio static, which babies most respond to. Whatever it is, it sure helps tone down this babysitter's paranoia. Now we play the whole thing on loop until she falls asleep. I'm not sure what that does to everyone's sanity, but we're willing to gamble with our lives.

I can't believe it. We have a baby in the house!

Love. Love.

Here's the track. Maybe you can tell me why the baby falls into hypnosis with this song. :P