my life as a groupie

because. sir danny started this online campaign. and i had a sudden urge to write about college. and i really love this badge designed by ate kate. so.

i have two maskom stories here. or narratives. story seems a little restricted. they're about my life as a groupie. groupie as defined by penny lane in almost famous, that should be clear.

the first one is about the struggle for the favorable regard of the professor luis teodoro. the overused phrase "reputation precedes him" would always have a place in the lexicon because there's no other way of saying it. the mind has to discover the subtleties but language unfortunately has its limits. there. reputation: übermensch. and i learned that several days before i actually met him.

he gives me a 3 in the first class assignment. better than 4.5 or, well, 8 (either i saw a paper with this grade in it or this is the most vivid dream i had ever) but definitely not acceptable. the opinion article fared better, but the sem ended with a 2 on my class card. the struggle begins. i enrolled in another class under the professor teodoro (trust me, the the is not so korni when you're a student slash groupie) and when he quoted albert camus i made sure i submitted a paper with some reference to the absurd. i did my internship in a community newspaper. to be different (at least that's my story).

and then. opinion writing class. the professor in his usual lecture mode, the subject is capital punishment. he remembers an essay by albert camus. he looks at me and asks, "you know reflections on the guillotine, mr soriano?" yeah i died.

the second story is about the other celebrity (as we've already used the word groupie, whose meaning we defined earlier), yvonne chua. she gives fifty assignments every meeting, they say, and thirty of those get a 4; the remaining ten maybe a 2.75. i'm exaggerating. it's not really fifty, maybe forty or something. ok, it stops there.

oh, i loved the assignments by the way. in a weird way, i did. i almost cried (almost because i don't want to say i did cry) when the storm milenyo damaged power lines and caused a blackout and my laptop's battery was empty and there's not an open internet café near my house. i can't remember how i finished everything but i did.

it doesn't end there. she picks my thesis proposal one semester later, she is to be my thesis adviser. friends flooded my phone with text messages that range from genuine concern to more creative crap like pag pumasa ka maganda nga thesis mo pero wala ka nang kamay. the appendages would change. again i can't remember how i finished everything but i did: 1.25.

these are trivial stories, this is a trivial entry. but that is the point. i'm not in the position to be preaching about what i learned (learned seriously) because ironically one of the things i learned in cmc is that the application of learning is more important than learning itself. i graduated just last year. i've no right to be talking about the purpose of life or the meaning of my past experiences. i'm still trying to figure that out. so i take refuge in nostalgia. but that nostalgia, i'm sure, helps me figure things out.

ps. my favorite luis teodoro joke is this: "i saw a sign that says, 'keep this door close'...and your enemies closer." i never believed i lost weight until professor chua told me in one thesis consultation session: "just pull a chair. we'll talk in my office (she shares it with professor simbulan). you're slim naman e."

lesson from hannibal

i have a fascination with reflexivity. without it there'd be no musicals, adaptation would be all about flowers, postmodernism would never be possible. of course i'm writing this at three in the morning; i didn't do much at work today but still, this hour has some logic-twisting crap so maybe i'm wrong. about reflexivity.

here's the point: sylar telling claire "that's disgusting" is the funniest heroes line ever. and it's not even morbidly funny, i laughed because: 1. the question was unexpected and absurd, therefore funny, and 2. the answer was either supersmart or superoutofcontext, which made it, well, funny. no more f word from me. reflexivity's the point.

so sylar and peter and nathan are brothers (in a beauty contest nathan would win, at least for now). angela petrelli's really some woman. what happened to west? is that it? gone forever? ali larter has the coolest power (three am, three am). ando's going to kill hiro in the future. mohinder? hank mccoy?

by the way is it really called reflexivity? or does that word mean something else? now i'm confused.

research

found another lee pace fan yey! i thought miray was just a fan of pushing daisies but when she expressed her fear of watching soldier's girl i had my epiphany.

see it's not sexism or anything, i totally get it: here's an incredibly talented and tall (those are the only adjectives i'm letting myself write but believe me i have like a thousand in my head right now; and tall's very important) juilliard alumnus who's so perfect you don't want to see him kiss another man onscreen. that's not sexist, i'm just a bad writer and summarizer.

miray also says there may be a future pushing daisies episode where some electric law goes wrong, crippling ned's power for a day. and without those powers...

found this site earlier. bookmarked.

death stars

pushing daisies has the most amazing premise ever: a boy discovers he can bring the dead back to life by touching them. but because that alone will not make a television series, or a good story, that ability has to come with a drawback. when someone who's supposed to be dead remains alive for more than a minute, somebody else dies. balance, really. the one who dies takes the place of the one who lived. or something more profound than that. also, when he touches the undead again, they die. forever. maybe that's not the most amazing premise you've heard (ever) but i liked the pilot so there.

ned (who i have a crush on, the old one, not the kid) falls in love with his neighbor, chuck, but when ned's mother dies and he revives her, the one who dies after a minute was chuck's father. can't wait for future complications that would result from that incident. so ned goes to sleep, and when his mom kisses him goodnight he loses a parent too, like chuck. they kiss at the funeral and they don't see each other again.

our boy becomes a piemaker. he helps emerson cod, a detective solve cases. it's simple, what he does. he asks dead people who killed them. ned's quite philosophical. he doesn't like calling them dead people. or zombies. when they're alive, they're alive. then chuck's murdered. he touches her cheek and cannot touch her again. he doesn't want head dead. isn't that the saddest thing in the world. the three start solving cases together.

other than, well, everything i'd just written, pushing daisies also looks like a tim burton film. tim burton directs monk. maybe that's better; not saying the show's creators are imitating something, or that it's derivative, no. yo make things simpler, i'll say i love this show. i'm watching another episode after this entry's published.

queerness and the literary imagination

a screaming instant message informed me five hours ago that the ninth project runway ep's already in the shares. so even if it's two in the morning now i'm staying at the office. i need to watch this. and of course macky's still editing/writing the web threat spotlight article so i have to be here.

kenley's really a bitch! she must not win! she continues doing that thing she does when heidi tells her something (she blames her model for not having breasts!). she does the same thing to nina (garthia) too. korto's still among the high scorers but again she does not win the challenge. she's an aquarian! well, kenley too. i hate her! i want to rip that fake flower in her hair and make her eat it.

the other highlights: daniel (vosovic, not season five daniel who thought drag meant lady) and robert (from first season who alanah believes joined only so he could have more dates) and wesley (eliminated very early in the season, sad). all in this episode.

the first year is the..

i didn't know samantha who? was so funny until i, well, until i watched it. logic, jake. you're being stupid again. i guess i thought it was one of those shows that were there because heroes only takes an hour and even if you add all the shows you liked it wouldn't fill an entire day. this is the writing equivalent of rambling. it is rambling.

anyway, show's really funny. i guess i've always been a fan of christina applegate. one episode is about sam getting a boob job, or wanting to, before the accident and the amnesia thing. is that some sort of sign? is she ok now?

i need the ninth project runway episode! tin, eric, and i decided we're korto fans: those oversized sleeves are just fab! she should've won the drag queens challenge because that design was really amazing even though the model was, yeah, and tin hates joe, but who's complaining: she's won something and she's always in the top two or three.

we hate kenley because you're supposed to hate anyone who does that to heidi klum. i don't get it, the pinoy project runway's so gay (as if the original's butch, but still). i guess it's the imitation that makes it, erm, second rate. ok that made sense. it's kind of fun though but only because i was judging the show itself. i'm really sleepy. i've no right to judge what's too gay and what's fun tv.

it's september 17! this same date last year was my first day here in trend micro. quitting the first job after working there for only more than a month was really scary, but now that i've been here for a year i think i've no reason to worry. at least when it comes to patience or whatever. work quality, there's your problem.

chekhov's gun

serena. five years! now serena williams is number one again. she may never win the serena slam in the next few years, but she did once. and her victories now are more than reminders of past glory. she's still here! ana, maria, jelena, please learn from this legend. please earn that number one ranking. ana ivanovic won the french open and became world number one so she's better than the two. she's prettier too.

the power shots! that jump! i've never seen serena so happy. this is why you have tennis idols. this is why you believe in them and admire them and hate them when they lose but continue loving them anyway. tennis requires that you see the bigger story even if it never happens. it is about greatness and destiny: everything is significant.

roger. critics write about him like he's the worst tennis player ever. well here's the big fuck you. roger federer beat andy murray 6-2, 7-5, 6-2, claiming his fifth consecutive us open title. bill tilden was the last man to accomplish that. no one in the open era did. slam number thirteen. but who's counting.

was that anna wintour in roger's guest box? hmm.

improviser

our drama teacher glenn was in othello, so jeni, carlo, and i watched the play. still haven't slept by the way, well i did, i had like two hours of sleep before going to school, but six hours of sitting and listening and talking, really, even if i slept the whole day before that i'd still be tired and stressed and yawning. that was a weird sentence; no jake it doesn't look great. or right. the point was free tickets, we watched.

iago's one of my favorite characters ever. ok, that was pretentious. really. anyway what's fantastic about the iago we saw earlier was the beyond-evil thing going on there, i guess you can call that charm, or humor, which makes him scarier. that's close to the ideal iago, i think. or at least my idea of iago. there was no attempt to try to explain his actions, even the added final scene (iago kisses the dead othello) was a little, mysterious i think. don't listen to those gay stories they tell you. monsters should not be explained.

poor othello. critics always say othello is othello's tragedy but iago's play. i don't know why i wrote that. what if hamlet and iago were in a single play, what would happen?

event-ness and nostalgia

until alanah called at around three it was an ordinary saturday. i was in school, worrying about the report i never prepared for. how do you summarize new criticism in a three-page three-level outline? which books, essays, sample works do you read? it does not end there; there's russian formalism, structuralism, semiotics, and marxism. all the digressions! so anyway around three alanah calls and tells me she has tickets to the eraserheads reunion concert.

i'm not a big fan of eheads because i'm terribly uncool. i know most of their songs because these guys are, well, they're like the beatles, i mean, you don't have to be a fan really. shows one how great they were. still, this one is so huge it shouldn't be missed, so i said i'll go.

there was some hesitation after because it was already seven and we were still at the village. but we arrived twenty or so minutes before the countdown began. alanah even brought her laptop and that wireless internet thing so she could participate in her class chat activity while in the cab.

perhaps you've heard about this before but despite the heat, the not-so-good acoustics, the possible rain, there was an almost magical thing in the place. when they sang alapaap it was worth everything we paid for. then there was the twenty minute-break. it felt too long. while waiting we started entertaining ourselves.

magkano ibabayad mo para maging ikaw yung babaeng sumasayaw dun sa video kanina?
pano kaya kung may koreans pa rin kahit dito, no?
pano kaya kumanta si nicole?

and then something amazing happened. when the announcement was made that the concert had ended thirty or forty minutes ago, everyone just left the place. when the organizer asked for a moment of silence, there was an actual moment of silence. i should've been a fan. i wish i were cool. photos here.

the other major event of the evening was musicguy. two years since that afternoon in the college of music caf and more than a year after the revelation of the name. but i'm not counting. nostalgia is so fun!