still thinking

von trier and genital clipping

2009-07-10T02:29:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that I haven't seen Dancer in the Dark, or Dogville, perhaps two of Lars Von Trier's famous films. Though I have The Idiots, I haven't really seen it in full, just jumping from one scene to next, most of which are graphic copulation of retards. I'm looking forward to Antichrist though. No, Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay failed to really make a hoopla over at Cannes last May, encompassed by the flesh-boring, genital-clipping, ball-crushing craziness that is Antichrist. I'd prolly jump in glee when I see it in bootleg, then people would dart fearsome stares at me when they know it's over a bootleg copy of the film. A friend of mine, who saw in Copenhagen, said that she really didn't cringe at the supposed controversial scenes. It won't be shown here, that I'm sure, or else it won't be flesh-boring, genital-clipping, ball-crushing anymore.

Got this photo via the film's site. Conjures up images from NIN's The Perfect Drug music video. Creepily good, isn't it?

Jack-o

2009-07-05T22:38:00.000-07:00

Young Michael on the cover of the recent Newsweek.

Hasn't so much devastated me, at least not having that urge to play his songs and download his videos, or worse horribly mimicking his moves and screeching falsettos. I did though, the screech, only to my colleague’s fervent request, while watching a recent spate of news via hotel cable in Pagadian. MTV has been showing his videos as well. After going back to Pagadian after a weeklong sun’s exposure courtesy of airport runways and national roads being rehabbed, we drank a couple of beers while listening to an old duo singing old songs (it’s free anyway). During the band’s break, Jacko’s old videos played incessantly. The crowd seemed to be mesmerized. I bet some of them don’t even remember where the trademark moves come from. The singing came back just in time to cut off Thriller. So we left.

bura

2009-06-23T02:50:00.000-07:00

Walking and looking for the famous Iloilo biscocho and other whatchamacallits when I was in Iloilo the other week, I saw a Villa Estrella in one of the streets. When a news came out of some similarly named estate claiming to be disparaged by the upcoming horror vehicle, I surmise it was that. I didn't even bother to take a picture because I would run the risk of posting it here and then I could be in some really big trouble. What I learned though is that while marauding in unchartered streets, you run the risk of stepping on poop. You're busy looking at everywhere.

I recently learned that Anne Curtis, my only favorite artista whom I'm crushing on for a long time, swoons over Bloc Party. You know... Bloc Party ba... I like the band, who happens to be, again, British, though not as ultimately, ultimately as Anne. It's another straw to my liking her more. Did I mention I got to meet her? She doesn't remember me of course. Back when she spent hapless, unfortunate days as a stereotyped talent in that other network. Gosh, this is senseless.

re-generate

2009-06-06T03:32:00.000-07:00

If life was only lush and smooth as any Nat King Cole song. But then it isn't and so I listen, if only to assuage whatever. Oh not really. I'm just digging this album, thanks to Mark, who I know will be a great DOP someday, or is actually on the process of becoming; Mark my words. Anyhoots, listen to The King's Re:Generations to find out why I feel joyous and coked up even though I'm in a sometimes boring workplace. Listening to tracks with masterful re-mastering of Lush Life (which I compare to woozing from a binging escapade; you can even hear the sagitsit of the vinyl on the turntable, fuckin' brilliant) and Day In Day Out. Traces of Brazilian beats overflow in most of the concoctions like The Game of Love and More and More of Your Amour. At the rate it's going, Mr. Nat over here might give Frank and Michael a run, for my abused eardrums.

boobtube boohoos

2009-06-01T02:55:00.000-07:00

What is the most schizo show on local TV today? Roughly translated, it's us two, if you get what I mean and if you watch it in the first place. Oh I do catch it sometimes, and there's no point really trying to battle it out with the rest of the household because the goddamn TV that we have is such a crap. By crap means 5 channels. I don't really know if there are a dozen of schizo shows out there on local tv but I can single out the star-studded ABS show that smacks accolade-naming right in your face if only to compensate how lame-ass the "main stars" are. One minute is like a badly drawn dramatic sketch but then you really couldn't say if it is what it depicts itself to be or maybe a fucking comedy because the joke is really on us. You thought a particular moment was great acting, like in the case of Jake, who I think does better in some scenes than Amboy Gerald who delivers his lines in spasmic gasps you think he's dying or something like a bad case of hiccups. But then who are you kidding really. It's the usual disposable junk they churn out. And of course, there's Kim Mantis whose idea of acting prowess is through crying a Ganges river of tears. But what's the point right? Who gives a damn for people who appreciate 30 Rock, because they practically have cable tv anyway, or like me who have to resort to buying bootleg. Which I think I'll have to talk about in another entry because it's really fucking hilarious I can't even begin to cite which episode.

On a sidenote, I think I just came. Shit, the day ends fantabulously at least. A friend just forwarded to me Fat Segal's full version of the Skins theme, which is already too much since I was just looking for the 26 second version of it. I'm on a unit in a friggin' net cafe because martial law has been deployed on anything related to download at the office. So I asked my friend over YM to download and email it to me. So I'm like listening to it now and having a friggin' time of my life. In Cassie's words: lovely. And she's drugged and has not eaten in three days.

I'm suppose to continue on another boobtube boo-hoo but it suddenly, wait... yes, another freak of nature, Papa P, sang the Idol song this year on ASAP. The show is kinda so-so compared to crap they put up in the other channel. Fuck, he sounds like a balloon out of helium that I can see the veins on his neck on the verge of eruption. Plus, why do they even let him sing? Even Martin wasn't any good. Proof that we should refrain from being too updated because it would just suck, and they sound like phonies singing something which they think would make them cool and hip. Again, pointless inquiry. Ladies, people, would put up with it, notwithstanding.

Should I talk about the recent AI results? Well it's not really recent but I would just like to say that I predicted Kris when he sang Ain't No Sunshine. I think that's 9 weeks before the big showdown. Like when I predicted it to be Cook when he did that awesome version of Billy Jean, that was way before the Always be my Baby craze. Again, 9 weeks before he crushed Archuleta. I dunno if that says something.

On the sublime

2009-05-13T21:33:00.000-07:00

We say we are speechless, breathless. Or, we suddenly coat our tongues with adjectives that never really surmount a beauty unfolding. Both are clichés really. But which cliché do we turn to, when we are dwarfed by awe, with something immaculate? Jeez, immaculate is an adjective.

"Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically introduces viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves. " - Alain de Botton

4th photo courtesy of The Islander

Cannes 2009

2009-04-24T05:56:00.000-07:00

Hear ye, hear ye, the official line up of Cannes 2009 is up for grabs. Loads of heavyweight shit. Pretty impressive lineup huh. Where else can you find Tarantino, Lee, Campion, Almodovar, and a familiar posse of Haneke, Loach, Noe, Lou Ye, Chan-Wook, To, Ming-liang, Coixet, Von Trier, and Alain Resnais! and Mendoza strikes yet again, whew, gosh, did I already mention the entire oeuvre? That's how promising it looks. But the unfortunate remains, I have to beg off from attending the coverage of the premiere. I know it sucks, especially if delude yourself. Ha! Anyway, the Pinoy indie scene is on a rampage. Martin and Alix also makes an appearance in Un Certain Regard and Special Screenings.

The complete line up:

Pedro Almodovar - Broken Embraces
Andrea Arnold - Fish Tank
Jacques Audiard - Un Prophete
Marco Bellocchio – Vincere
Jane Campion - Bright Star
Xavier Giannoli – A L’Origine
Isabel Coixet – Map of the Sounds of Tokyo
Michael Haneke - The White Ribbon
Ang Lee – Taking Woodstock
Ken Loach – Looking for Eric
Lou Ye - Spring Fever
Brillante Mendoza – Kinatay
Gaspar Noe – Enter The Void
Park Chan-Wook – Thirst
Alain Resnais – Les Herbes Folles
Elia Suleiman – The Time That Remains
Quentin Tarantino - Inglourious Basterds
Johnnie To – Vengeance
Tsai Ming-liang – Face
Lars Von Trier – Antichrist

The poster by the way is taken from Michaelangelo Antonioni's 1960 film L'Avventura.

Book binge.

2009-04-14T01:04:00.000-07:00

Back to the dull daily drudgery. Wait, was that an alliteration? Does that even count? Coz I'm hounded by figures of speech for weeks now. It's like guilt. Counting the official LOA yesterday and the extended 2-day stay in Manila, I was out of the office for 10 days. If my official 1 day trip had been scheduled earlier, I could have planned for a trip to the North, which I have silently longed for the past couple of years. But then, I had spent whatever was intended for that trip on my brother’s graduation, so the longed-for trip was remotely possible unless I start an early Holy Week sojourn and self-flagellation. And so I just gallivanted the polluted, labyrinthine metropolis and tripped on the MRT courtesy of the humongous ass of Mr. Ginormico. I was stuck at home during the long break and surprised myself with an unquenchable gusto for reading. Well, not that I read less, in fact, I read everyday, even managing a single or two pages of my current reading despite exhaustion or self-imposed sluggishness. But Holy Thursday, I just grabbed the remainders of a hardbound I was reading and just read like nuts. When it becomes monotonous and I feel a certain kind of stupor that can only be attributed to hours of reading, I will start on another book, then repeat the process until I end up book-hopping with Smith (Zadie), Perrotta, Niffeneger, Yates, DeLillo, Ellis. Even at the airport, while waiting on the packed flight to Davao, avoiding the unavoidable traffic that would have mounted to unbelievable proportions, I had three hours idling away with Tom Perrotta. Surprising also that I haven’t spent the time catching up on the bootleg films I’ve amassed for the previous month, which was the more likely thing I would’ve done. Along with watching tons of films, I could live on an everyday book binge. It's one of those things that I know I can do for the rest of my life, every single day, and not regret about it, if only it is possible. Well it technically you can do that, cross off every single title in the list of 1001 books to read before you die, which I found an online version of (I just dunno if it's the same one as that voluminous version I found at NBS). If only life was book-simple and as always fascinating and adventuresome as reading. But then it isn't. And so we settle for the more interesting lives of distressed men, young and old, the enchanting women, lustful and devious, the loonies, misfits of this generation and bygone eras, even hobbits, elves and giants-as if we too have lived theirs.

Death and his friends.

2009-04-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

I don't want a battle from beginning to end
I don't want a cycle of recycled revenge
I don't wanna follow death all of his friends.
-Coldplay, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, 2008

It's Easter and I'm talking about death. Christ resurrected today so I really should be talking about life or renewal, or anything like it but I'm not really capable of such. And I think I've run out of things to say about life for the moment, especially since I always equate it with suffering and perpetual struggle. Before I fell asleep last night, which was Black Saturday, this Coldplay song was the last one I heard on the mp3 player. It can be pretty vague, the meaning. But that last line may as well be fear, I dunno. Death, after all is as inescapable as life, or so the phenomenology stuff we've managed to get ourselves into in our collegiate philosophical discourses would make us believe. The first cry of the then unborn signifies the inevitability of its final breath. Death is like life's partner easily put. This month, about 5 immediate family members of my colleagues died, mostly because of some illness. Last Monday, an aunt of a friend whom I briefly met in Manila died of a chopper crash. That's too much death in a month I would say. The office ought to be blessed or exorcised with whatever demons or curse it has, again I say. Because this silly idea of a death pattern perpetrated by the Final Destination series has again to me occurred. FD was kind of influential because after seeing the first installment, morbid thoughts on ways one dies occur to me regularly. While in transit, I'll imagine a monstrous vehicular accident and bloodbath. Walking on streets, I get a feeling of worn-out sharp debris like GI sheets or metal tubes bludgeoning the unmindful passersby. And blood, blood like geysers out of decapitated limbs courtesy of The Bride. Then came the sometimes funny and insignificant ways people die at the start of every Six Feet Under episode made me feel like shit sometimes. The fascination over death turns into it being a normalcy, a kind of everyday happening, deduced into a newspaper headline or an exclusive TV report. A statistic that becomes significant over time decorated with all kinds of analyses. But how do we discount the loss, the pain, the anguish, the years? Who am I really kidding with a veneer of bravery?

Doppelgangers and lobsters

2009-03-29T07:02:00.000-07:00

Third consecutive night of staying late at the office. Sorta big thing tomorrow, by office approximations. Last night, I logged out around 230am. At midnight, I saw our guard's doppelganger. Might be my astigmatism. Second time I saw something like it though. I told my colleague before she has one and she jumped at me. Friday night I was with 2 guy colleagues here also and out of the blue I plugged in Smashing Pumpkins and crazily mimicked Billy Corgan's voice doing Butterfly With Bullet Wings. "Despite of my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage." Junee freaked out with the freakish precision. Then I did Gary V's Di Bale na Lang. Hay. Stress and the boundaries of insanity it pushes you to.

Anyway, I caught this short story by Woody Allen in The New Yorker in the light of the Madoff hullabaloo and its whirlwind of entanglements. The story is hilarious though, about fucked-up clients who ended up as lobsters to exact their revenge on the crazy sonofabitch by pincering his nose.

When at a loss for words...

2009-03-21T04:20:00.000-07:00

...give them that look on your face.

Her majesty.

2009-03-19T04:00:00.001-07:00

Munai

2009-03-17T00:25:00.000-07:00

It’s almost unlikely to hear Chris Brown or Beyonce over the vehicle radio, which was showing signs of dead air, as we inch closer to Munai in Lanao del Norte. But to think such would be succumbing to the usual backwardness and ignorance of the “central people” about Mindanao who are “too cool to care”. (May Philhealth ba kayo d’yan? Pano kayo gumigimik?)

We are “massaged” inside the vehicle by extremely rough roads. There is nothing to be seen but tall coconut trees, smoky air coming from copra burning against the morning Munai rain.

Munai is almost cloistered, so when you see bullet holes perforating the municipal hall, you can’t quite imagine that heavy gunfight last August 2008 once ruled over its relative calmness, with 23 out of its 26 barangays severely affected.

A view of Munai from the top of the municipal hall, and children.

How do you break free without breaking apart?

2009-02-24T02:04:00.000-08:00

Apparently, they have the answer. Much as I wouldn't want to talk Oscars... Ok, whatever, let me post this fantastic photo instead of one of the most indubitable tandems, real-life at that, of 2008. Vanity Fair released this, and other actor-director tandems, weeks before ceremonies, but I'm posting it now.

Due to insistent public demand, or rather, due to a demand made publicly (hi Andy, hehe), I'm posting also the Woody-Penelope photo. What conjures up your mind?

Grammehhhy.

2009-02-16T16:24:00.000-08:00

Saw the delayed telecast of the 81^st Grammys last night. Nothing really mind-blowing like in the previous years. They were good perfs though and we just might expect inter-generational numbers in the years to come. It has become quite a fad these days. This year there was Four Tops’ remaining duo Smokey Robinson and forgot-his-name with Jamie Fox and Ne-Yo, Stevie and the Jonas Bros, and Al Green, Justin and Boyz II Men. And Katy Perry comes out of ginormous banana and strut on stage with bananas on her hips. Was that a new song from U2 in the opening number? That one kicked ass. So did the perfs from Coldplay and Radiohead. I liked most though the perf of the 4 rap gods Jay-Z, Kanye, T.I. and Lil Wayne plus the mom-to-beat M.I.A. Did she give birth immediately after that? T.I. will be serving his 66-day sentence though after the Grammys, for a previous firearm-possession charge. I like that my faves of 2008 won like Adele, Estelle/Kanye’s American Boy and of course Coldplay’s Viva La Vida. Much has been said about this recent outing, or rather, much has been said about it’s being U2-ish. You can’t help it, the tracks are so anthem-ic you can’t help but… get lost… every river that you try to cross…

Anarchic.

2009-02-08T17:03:00.000-08:00

Before Dev Patel rose to fame, thanks to the now probably overhyped Slumdog Millionaire, he was in this British TV Series called Skins. And it was Danny Boyle's daughter who suggested to get Dev, because according to Danny, there weren't skinny boys in India who'd fit the character of Jamal (in Slumdog).

Watched the season 1 of Skins on youtube the other year, and it was one of those things that I forgot, and now missed watching especially because youtube streaming isn't allowed in the office. The original trailer for the series is somewhere here (in this blog) but I dunno if it still works. Skins has some major kick-ass trailers. Here's the uncut season 2 trailer with a song from Radiohead's In Rainbows album. It kind of took off from the party-mode of the previous to a more somber and sensual vibe. The season 3 trailer borders on anarchic and features a new cast.

Skins Original Uncut Trailer
Uploaded by cloud6969

The pirated DVD stalls don't have Skins, and it's not like any TV series that you can actually air on primetime here unless you subject it to heavy editing, and British shows are not really the type of shows that local TV would buy the rights to airing. It's the type of show that is potentially dangerous in Philippine setting. Moral pundits would condemn it and label it debauchery. Complete mayhem. But whatever, right?

Which way forward?

2009-02-05T22:17:00.000-08:00

The d(D)eck of the Marco Polo here in Davao was filled to the brim not just with prominence but with ideas and opinions of notable guests. I watched the taped-as-live ANC Special called Mindanao : The Way Forward along with my colleagues because Chairman was there.

Like the guests, we had midnight dinner. The production crew should have anticipated that cramming in a pool of prominent legal experts, local government officials, civil society and private sector representatives, the military, the media and noted Mindanao academicians would render a three-and-a-half hour shooting. I enjoyed Tony Velasquez though because he kept on joking. I hope they include his Facebook-Friendster joke.

From this recent update, ANC has decided to cut the special into two parts, which was originally just 90 minutes. The discussions were lively; full of insights both fresh and hackneyed (guess which belongs to which, haha). Though reading from the ANC segment outline, which constantly prods out-of-the-box insights, I guess I found them really kulang, but let’s see how it turns out.

Mindanao: The Way Forward airs tonight on ANC 730 pm and tomorrow, Saturday same time.

Beerday.

2009-01-31T21:41:00.000-08:00

Strangest birthday I think. Last Friday, I caught a last full show screening of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The story of a man who grows young as he grows old. The film, as you may know, is almost three hours long, so when the clock struck 12 and I became 25 I was still there inside the dark room with strangers. The only thing that was inside my stomach the whole time that night was popcorn and an orange juice. Though I wasn't hungry, I stopped by a semi-Chinese food chain in front of our office building and ate siomai before going home. Punctuating my midnight meal was the whir of the aircon and the chatter of the food attendants and cashier. The parking lot was empty and I can hear the faint noise of a man belting out from the nearby piano bar. A sense of eerieness befell me.

The next day I lost 1 thousand pesos. Cleaning my drawer I found it stuck between two ties. I put it inside my wallet. I went out for the thermal therapy which I have been doing for about three weeks. I bought a book and went home. When I counted my money, the 1 thousand was gone.

I had a chat with Anne Hathaway.

2009-01-30T01:59:00.000-08:00

With the shock, surprise, disappointment, or the entire opposite of all three, of whatever it is that has been caused by the recent Oscar nominations announcement, way past everybody now (or at least to those who give a shit about it), with looking forward or not as the only thing that has been left to do, here's a piece from Newsweek which I thoroughly enjoyed. It came in late though with the noms already out.

Been following the Newsweek's Oscar Roundtable for three years, and I've gotta say this was much more fun and loose and informal. And fun. They changed the entire mechanics this year and I love the cameras hovering outside the circle. I love how the actors get to talk and ask each other a lot. Their questions and the depth of their answers really speak a lot about their dedication to their craft and all that talk of creative process somehow speaks of the level of artistry and appreciation. Tell it to our actors, uh, stars, here and see if we score a grain of salt.

This year's line-up: Mickey Rourke, Brad Pitt, Frank Langella, Sally Hawkins, Anne Hathaway and Robert Downey Jr.

Also, here are video clips of interviews of critics David Denby from The New Yorker and A.O. Scott of The New York Times and their thoughts on the nominations.

Pissants

2009-01-24T20:06:00.000-08:00

I told myself not to be surprised and I think I've gotten a little over that, but I don't think I will ever get to tell myself to stop getting pissed. Following the Oscars for a few years, I have to remind myself that these are stuck-up, sore (old?) people who will vote who and what they want.

This year, despite acknowledging small triumphant wins (Hunt, Leo, Shannon and Jenkins and In Bruges), they really sucked big time when they refused to let The Dark Knight score a best picture nod. And by omitting Chris Nolan in the directors list, it was already double jeopardy. It really stinks, especially if you feel really strongly about the film. As Awards Daily guru, Sasha Stone puts it, despite how great it was, it was still about a batboy. And that sucks.

Further, Sally Hawkins, who I think delivered one of the best, most sincere and most unforgettable performances of the year in Happy Go Lucky, and who clinched a lot of Critics group accolades, got booted out. Bruce Springsteen, who wrote one of the best songs for a motion picture, for The Wrestler, which I think sorely missed out also, was snubbed. AD really got it in the gut: the trick is not minding. Here is the list of 2009 Oscar nominations.

so long, redneck.

2009-01-20T16:26:00.000-08:00

I like this photo. Obama's wax figure was inaugurated days before his official swearing in Washington D.C. at Madame Tussaud's museum in Amsterdam. Meanwhile, a transcript (with video) of Obama's inaugural speech via NYTimes. Let's digress a little shall we, but, still in keeping with the fever, here are hot and fresh news bits, straight from the pan, from America's Finest News Source, The Onion: incessant jackhammering ruining Obama's speech, a probable hidden gripe from a former Democratic contender, and Bush dying from his sleep.

Fangs, adaptations etc.

2009-01-17T20:39:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian is exasperatingly long. A month for all the 700 plus pages of a cross between The Da Vinci Code and some other vampire novel, because frankly I can't remember reading a vampire novel. Yes, even Bram Stoker's Dracula or any Anne Rice even. When vampires are brought to discussion, there's always this pervasive image of a young Kirsten Dunst pronouncing her bloodthirst ("I want some more") and her slashing of poor Lestat's throat.

The Historian has its own twists and that surge brought by the familiar search for something larger-than-life, like Dan Brown's infamous novel, but it feels more scholarly, maybe because of Kostova's background at Yale or something - even the two lead characters are academicians. You feel like reading a lengthy research paper on Vlad Dracula, who by the way, is a real medieval ruler famous for impaling people. The book is not gory though despite the notoriety of its subject matter focusing more on the search which can become tiresome at parts. The characters globe-trot to ancient European cities and Istanbul, an ingredient which could likely make film producers consider adapting it into the big screen.

Speaking of adaptations, David Fincher's visually dazzling The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, would likely go down as one of the memorable last year. I like it that this is unlike anything he's done before though it matched Zodiac's length of almost three hours. The story of course you know is based from an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, but actually, borrowing more of its premise than what actually happens in the story. I've been looking for Richard Yates' 1950s novel Revolutionary Road now that I saw Sam Mendes' version. So if anybody of you have it, I really need to read it.

Last weekend, the 20-peso booksale was back in one of the malls here. I saw Stanislaw Lem's science-fiction novel Solaris, the basis of both films of the same title by Andrei Tarkovsky and Steven Soderbergh. I saw the Russian film by Tarkovsky but not yet Soderbergh's. Also, there was Gordon (?) Williams' The Siege of Trenchers Farm which was made into a great film by Sam Peckinpah called Straw Dogs and starred a young Dustin Hoffman.

Madness, Inc.

2009-01-16T22:27:00.000-08:00

Much is being fussed over the Alabang boys case that it has now ballooned into a media frenzy with issues zigzagging here and there you feel like you're on a trip to the mountains. The only missing puzzle piece is for some opportunist to make a movie out of this, or to make it more cutesy-cutesy, spoofed by the adorable kids of Going Bulilit.

It didn't expose any social malaise, whatever the fuck you call it, because c'mon, drugs -- okay, illegit drugs -- have been snorted by kids (and I say this referring to being stuck in an adolescent nature despite age) in the 60s. Pot sessions have been conducted wherever and depressed and trouble teens have been coking themselves to kingdom come. It just that nobody really gets caught, and when there are, just little fishes in the pond. Sharks are still out there sniffing out blood. But what it does really expose though are people like Sotto who is such a laughing stock when explaining what an anti-drug czar does. When you're watching the press conference, and you think this is the guy also topbilling Iskul Bukol, you can just shake your head with such madness.

Speaking of insanity, I can't believe that Mad Men, is one of those goddamn great shows that nobody is watching, if my colleague is right in quoting an article she read. Of course that's an exaggeration, but I can't really blame the non-lovers or even haters if there are. Because Mad Men is just it. It's so goddamn mad brilliant you can't believe it's unfolding in your eyes. The womanizing, the chauvinistic banter, the endless swirling smokes, the punchlines delivered like pitches. It's stylish and intelligently written it's delicious. If you think a period film is tough, think about making a period series. Written and produced by the team that brought you The Sopranos, allow me with the cliche, but it's unlike anything you've seen. Ok, that sounded really awfully cliche. Matthew Weiner, you are the Mafia boss.

Moo-re booze

2009-01-04T02:25:00.000-08:00

What, was it like three years since graduation and my chica classmates look so hot? There's the Mutya mom who four months ago gave birth to her firstborn and no ounce of fat anywhere, the Miss Ponds and Bea-Alonzo look alike who seemed to me added little bulk but was nonetheless pretty and the erstwhile experimental lesbian who manages to look like someone from a cover of Vogue. I know I've violated my vow not to attend reunions but nevertheless, after constant prodding from another classmate, it was my text that would make everybody remember and actually go. Jeez, guys, been three years, might as well pass the organizing scepter to someone else. Gosh, we look and sound so friggin' naive back then and look at us now talking about serious shit, work, sex, blowjobs, cunnilunguses, more work, more sex, more booze, our pet projects, documentaries, acting stints, marriages, failed relationships, giving birth, losing weight, gaining weight, the hilarity of it all. 'Twas great to see you guys, and I guess see you next time, when we already know what to do and where to go after being spent and wasted.

Moo-year

2009-01-02T01:39:00.000-08:00

Feck yeah. Who would've thought, of all people, I'd outlast the tambays and tricycle drivers in our area for what will seem to be an annual new year boozefest and shameless videoke numbers. Gosh, I feel like I'm slowly becoming a voracious social drinker, if there ever is such a term. I mean some people drink daily -- a bottle of beer or two -- which is healthy I guess, and some drink perhaps every week when they go parties or bars and be tipsy and all that, but I drink only on occasion and gulp down a fucking barrel of various liquor. Is there some kind of a social alcoholism disorder shit? It makes me think of the "I have a drinking problem?" scene of the great John Malkovich in Burn After Reading. But what the hell, it was a great welcome. People went out and trooped to the streets, made noises, tricycle drivers, bicyclists, and drunkards dragging pieces of torn GI sheets, kids running amok while coins are being thrown in every direction. I am actually sensing a great vibe but much of it is uncertainty and anxiety, again, which is I think pretty normal. Shit, I really should start enjoying my friggin life, I need to plan some major changes, like really. Whatever the fuck that is.

One stupid question though, can the ox be considered a variation of a cow? And I guess yeah, Happy New Year to you, too.