where's the salt?

I woke up this morning with our kitchen gone.

A few months ago I chanced upon a print-out of a short letter inserted between the pages of a home decorating magazine. It was from my Dear Mother addressed to the editor, requesting that our kitchen be chosen for a remodeling project that the magazine was sponsoring. Recently, the magazine staff came over and decided to renovate our small kitchen and feature it in the succeeding issue. The key here is: full sponsorship. Yea! There’s going to be a new stove, newly furbished kitchen cabinets, tiled counters, newly tiled floors, painted kitchen walls, and re-upholstered dining chairs. Cool! Tyler Florence would look good in this kitchen.

In the meantime, it’s day two of renovation and I can’t find the salt. I’m guessing it ran away with the pepper shaker.

catatonic dancing

Went clubbing over the weekend at eastwood, libis, that great yonder I haven’t seen in a couple of years and was surprised to see some call centers fully erected and the midnight tiangge gone (yes, there used to be one -- it was that long ago).

After giving in to my donuts craving, (PMS—dang!), my friends and I went to this disco-bar-whatever called blue onion and was quite surprised at the clubbing culture this side of the city. First, you had to pick your drink at the “mini-bar” right at the doorstep before you’re granted entry. I’m not sure if this is common protocol among other bars, I am not well-schooled at the bar-hopping scene since the coffee culture was aggressively introduced in manila. Then you pay (quite awkwardly right there at the doorstep) in cash (there’s no cover charge, just order at least one drink). Then have yourself frisked by security before you’re good to go.

Inside, it was seemingly confusing whether the place was a bar or a disco or a sit-down pulutan posh place. The interior was nice, but, eff it, where is the dance floor? For a place that mixed live music and played it raucously loud to carry a conversation, there’s not much to do but nurse your drink, be bored by watching other people be equally bored to death, be an anti-social and tinker with your cell phone (practically every table had at least one person doing this), watch HBO on mounted tv sets (that night it was the 90s witch teen drama “the craft”) or simply dance on your seat. That loud music was such a waste, knowing typical pinoy culture these people were just too self-conscious to get up and dance (myself included), save for a group of ladies who were brazenly shaking their booties. I realize this ain’t Havana (no, not in cuba, Antonio. havana in malate – tee hee) where everybody boldly danced without a care in the world (myself included).

About half-way into my drink, a group of young boys and girls came in and took a table near the back of the room. Somebody please update me – what is the legal age these days – fourteen??!! Egad, I could swear these kids could well be my kids from teenage pregnancy. Where are their parents and who’s paying for their drinks, aber?

No matter. I may have been the oldest female at that bar that night but it’s nice to know some things didn’t really change much. At the ladies’ room, there would always be one or two girls who will be perpetually worshipping themselves in the mirror and give you the eye that would say “I’m pur’tier than you!” And there would always be another one who would never be able to hold her drink and throw up at the other cubicle or on the sink. And it wasn’t me. Hah! Cool, I downed my vodka ice without tipping over or pulling someone’s hair. There is justice in this world: alcohol tolerance is directly proportional to age.

By midnight, my friends and I made a toast to our beloved friend Pete who passed away last year and whose birth date incidentally fell on that early Sunday morning.

warping the visual and auditory appetites

Picture yourself in a sea of sweaty bodies under flashes of neon lights while a black-and-white reel playing in the background is silenced by the thump of electronica beats. But look again: you’re strapped dumb on a theater seat, the film is projected on a widescreen, and that ubiquitous music that does tricks to your heartbeat is being played live. This ain’t no clubbing experience; this is the new age screening of a classic silent movie.

“Metropolis,” in the eyes of director Fritz Lang, is a warped view of what would be in the year 2026 where the dichotomy of the Thinkers and the Workers is widely wedged. Feder, the proverbial autocrat’s son, having seen the injustice imposed on the labor force, joins the mob uprising. Thanks in part to Feder’s illusory lover Maria, the mob destroys “the machine,” the central nervous system of the city’s inner workings and the source of oppression for the angry underworld. “Death to the machines!” is a constant outcry in the film, reflecting the simmering sentiments of the masses during the industrial revolution and what director Lang would have perceived when he made the futuristic film in 1927, an inevitable revolt a century later.

The film runs barely an hour but is long enough to warp your visual sense of a narrative, particularly the actors’ exaggerated facial twitches, absurd dream sequences, choreographed mob scenes, and Lang’s vision of a prototype robot. These visual elements lend credence to an entertaining and disparate filmic experience to audiences whose palates have been conditioned to a formulaic narrative that is Hollywood today. While Metropolis’ underlying theme may be speculated as the precursor to present-day futuristic films -- the silent film practically screams (pardon the pun) “rise against the machines!” which sounds oddly familiar – the story construction remains intact and the flow is unperturbed. This makes Metropolis as Fritz Lang’s most celebrated work since he started his film career in Germany in 1919 and moved on to make more notable films in France and later in the US.

What makes the silent film a more compelling experience is the accompaniment of live music while it is being screened. Obviously this method was previously never intended (nor thought of) to enhance the viewing pleasure, but at this multi-sensory day and age, the collaboration works effectively and makes scenes more impressive. The music, a very ironic electronica sound, complements the highs and lows of the film, strengthens the movements of the characters, punctuates the emotions of the scenes, and heightens the overall atmosphere of the story. This isn’t plain music plugged in, popped up and left to play while the film runs. It is a well-thought arrangement that follows the ambiance of every scene where well-synchronized sounds interplay to enhance various shots. Amidst the techno-beats, feel the slicing of the sickle in the hands of a skeleton in one of Feder’s dreams, or hear the haunting echo of Maria’s taunting as she led the mob to revolt.

The cleverly contrived musical piece that accompanies the entire length of the film is courtesy of the group Rubber Inc. Its musical genre snugly fits into the clubbing scene but its repertoire has been lent more often to high art pursuits including those for Ballet Philippines and Cultural Center of the Philippines. This is the second time that Rubber Inc. was commissioned to do the accompaniment for Metropolis, the first being the previous year’s silent films screening. The group’s musical playground is a smorgasbord of electronics that goes beyond a mere turntable. For Metropolis’ electronica accompaniment, Rubber Inc. tinkers with gadgets including a sampler, effects, keyboard, laptop, mixer, guitar, and a turntable. The architects of the musical ingenuity include Blums Borres on guitars, Caliph8 on the turntable and sampler-beats, Malek Lopez on keyboards and as conductor, and Mark Laccay is sound engineer.

If you want to catch the experience, more of Fritz Lang’s silent films will be screened all Thursdays of August, accompanied by other notable musical artists, the finale of which is “Destiny” (1921) with renowned artist Cynthia Alexander (August 25).

eat this

along with the amazon jungle and the marching of the penguins, above specimen must be one of the most beautiful creations ever whisked in God's kitchen. got the photos from a forwarded email, claiming that the nameless dude holds the Best Looking Guy in the World title. this holy hotness, they say, is in india. once my feet land on curry country, lagot ka.

the gloved one and then some

had dinner with friends at café breton (great crepes, but annoyingly disgruntled waitresses – sorry ladies, no smile, no tip) – and heard about this spam going around about The Gloved One (recently acquitted Michael Jackson to you) that the King of Pop has been dead for 20 years and the mutated version we have been seeing henceforth is an impersonator who was actually responsible for killing the real McCoy. Strange, but possible, considering he didn’t release another album after his series of Grammy slams in the 80s, save for a double CD that came out in the 90s which was more of a compilation. I mean, consider this, for the duly gullible (I’m holding off guffaws now), it’s possible, because of one: physical appearances. ENOUGH SAID. Two: physical appearances. Three: physical appearances. I mean, who remembers his physical evolution after Thriller? Then again, I could swear by the life of my cellphone battery, that he and only he could do The Moonwalk like that when he flew to Manila to perform years ago.

One of my friends said it could well be a ploy from the Jackson camp to fend off further child molestation charges. Smart, eh? Now the harassed would only have to deal with Willy Wonka, you know, that loner of a weird man running the Chocolate Factory. Consider the similarities: both have ashen faces, prone to cloth themselves lavishly, both are unmarried and reside in a dreamy wonderland, both don’t quite know how to behave themselves properly around children, and both are fictitious characters. Hah!















on the same note, I came across a new book called “Love and Death” where the authors suppose that the apparent suicide of legendary grunge hero Kurt Cobain of the Nirvana fame, was actually pre-meditated murder and that previously “forensically impossible” evidence has cropped up, pinning Cobain’s widow, effervescent and perpetually stoned and on bail Courtney Love, as the pre-nup hungry mastermind. I am not completely buying this story yet (I didn’t buy the book, either) until this piece of item fights for air space in the news.

And I can’t believe that Magic Johnson is still alive, after being diagnosed as HIV-positive more than 10 years ago (left photo taken from Wikkipedia). I remember this quite well, since back in college (yep, that long ago) several classmates and I put up an exhibit to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS around the campus. I borrowed my brother’s poster of Magic Johnson caught in his famous slam dunk pose and used it in the exhibit. Next day, the poster was gone. My brother was pissed. More than ten years later, Johnson is still in the pink of health. Imagine the unfathomable gap between this African-American who could very well afford cocktail drugs and extend his life, and the thousands of native Africans from Zimbabwe to Mali dying every hour of AIDS, practically wiping out an entire generation where young children (at least those who are HIV-negative) are left to the care of grandparents, if at all. Imagine the irony.