On Women and Drugstores

So, Kathryn Bigelow has edged out ex-hubby James Cameron for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Saturday's Directors' Guild Awards. Woman has once more triumphed over man. (Evil laugh).

I don't know if you'd understand, but realizing that I'd already seen all five nominees gave me a fuzzy, giddy feeling.

I know, I know. I'm bragging. Sorry.

Anyway.

I went to the drugstore today--Watson's, to be exact, where I bought half a basket of goodies (toothpaste, conditioner, etc.) and took my sweet time scouring the make-up section for the perfect shade of brown eye-liner.

I love drugstores. I really do.

What is it with women and drugstores? Like, what is it with women and groceries? Although the two aren't as similar as one might think, in that the latter has something to do with that more quotidian, obligatory quest for the utilitarian whereas the former is more of like a leisurely stroll--shears in gloved hand, ready to nip the blooms of one's choice--along some sunlit garden where all sorts of flowers grow in abundance.


But what is it with women and bombs? That would take a separate entry to discuss, I think. In the mean time, I suggest you watch Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker." An answer should be there, somewhere.

Yup. It should be there.

Rise Up, Little Sistah...

You gotta rise up, little sister
Turn on the light
Wise up to the stories you've been told
'Cause love don't come in black or white
No no no no.
-Diane Birch, "Rise Up"-

*video from here.

Despondency always arrives unannounced.

But why does it need to come, at all, in the first place? And for no apparent reason? Or does this happen only to some people? You know, the ones with certain personality traits that make them baits for its hook, like those possessed of some, or all, kinds of neuroses, heavy to moderate angst supply, or some kind--distant relative, even--of artistic temperament, if you will.

You know how it is, when a host of negative thoughts and anxieties suddenly descend upon your hapless little brain and decide to stay for some time and you're left with the task of entertaining said host and you, frowning as you do, would be side-tracked long enough to stop and question the sense of what you are doing.

Yeah, that sort of thing.

And it's exactly the kind of thing that would make you want to turn your back on everything--up to and including what, or who, is in front of you right then--and run off to build a little cottage in some hill-surrounded clearing where all you'll have to deal with are your cat, the laundry and your adobo.

How convenient that it should come now, I mean, with J.D.'s passing away, and all. Not that they're in any way connected to each other, heavens, no. How presumptuous--and downright rude--of me if that were true, or if I allowed myself to think that that was so. So, no. The thought just crossed the writing of this post, that's all.

Oh, to be a hermit.

The thought seems tempting enough. Can't blame the fella.

The Wisdom of CoCo

All I ask of you is one thing: please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism- it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere.
Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen.

-Conan O'Brien "The Tonight Show" farewell speech-

Farewell, JD.

Jerome David Salinger, January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010:
Literary giant, Holden Caulfield's creator, recluse, icon.

Read the story here.

My dad

is really something else.

We were texting just this afternoon and I was telling him about my unusually busy (not that it's ever been not busy, just that it's been especially busy) and colorful week at work and he told me that he had just dismissed the foreman of the team of builders working on the new house because said foreman was reporting to work inebriated (which is, come to think of it, ground for termination). My dad is now acting as foreman. I have no idea what it is that a foreman does. But, there.

In my mind, I was, like, sheesh, Daddy, is there anything you can't do?

See, my dad is sort of a jack-of-all-trades, an all-around kind of guy, cosmopolitan, if you will, doing a little bit of this and that and everything else.

I remember being a first or second-grader and seeing the plan my dad had drawn of the house he was having built (which was ours). Awed, I asked him, "Daddy, did you draw this? You're goooood!" Even as a child, I was already a doting fan.

A few years back, when Friendster was still the "in" thing, I remember writing in my profile: "My dad is the one man whom I measure all other men against."

The loot: Erstwhile stage actor, Fisheries grad, one-time teacher, competent banker, talented singer/musician (he sings and plays the keyboards in his rock band and the church choir and he plays the guitar, too), architect/engineer, contractor, real estate broker, interior designer, Ping-pong champ, dancer, Art aficionado, guidance counselor, loving husband to my mom, wonderful, wonderful father to his three proud, adoring kids, and my steadfast saving grace.

Whew.

I told him, "Daddy, you are one tough act to follow."

And he is. He really is.

I don't think any other kind of worry can equal that of a mother's for her sick child.

Thank you, God, for making Kim well.

It's Twilight, That's Why

"And if, by chance, that special place that you've been dreaming of leads you to a lonely place, find your strength in love." -from "The Greatest Love Of All" written by Michael Masser and Linda Creed-

I was raised in fairy tales. From what I could remember, the people around me had always done their best to protect me. I grew up thinking the world a good place and this, perhaps, was what made me fodder for the wolves.

And when I went out on my own, I found out that people and places and things weren't at all as good as I was taught they were.

And so I broke. Into pieces. And I wished that I'd been shown the blacks and the grays as much as the pinks and the whites. I cried and mourned for the self that I saw, scattered in fragments across my eyes. I realized: They were wrong. Love was not all.

But it came to pass that what gathered me back into wholeness was the love that I knew I always had, the love I realized I had never lost, the love that the people who loved me had to show me was there, all along, so that I would find the strength to keep on wanting to be whole.

In the end, it was the belief in goodness which I thought had betrayed me that saved my life, after all.

Dad, Mom, Ma, Earl, Otom, Jackie, Kim, M -- Thank you for the love that keeps me going each day.

I'm so senti today. Been crying at the slightest provocation (like hearing "The Greatest Love Of All" after a million years).

It's twilight pa.
Hay.

From The Weekend Couch

He's a Libra

This morning, I woke up with a headache, probably because I've been sleeping piecemeal for the past two days. I should probably hydrate.

Yup, I should.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Jason Reitman's "Thank You For Smoking". This kid (he's 32) has got loads of talent! So far, he hasn't let me down, not with this one, "Juno" or "Up In The Air".

That's all I got for today. Haven't even had lunch or breakfast yet.

Will be watching "Fargo" later.

One of the Butterflies - by W. S. Merwin -

The trouble with pleasure is the timing
it can overtake me without warning
and be gone before I know it is here
it can stand facing me unrecognized
while I am remembering somewhere else
in another age or someone not seen
for years and never to be seen again
in this world and it seems that I cherish
only now a joy I was not aware of
when it was here although it remains
out of reach and will not be caught or named
or called back and if I could make it stay
as I want to it would turn to pain.

I found this poem in Jonathan Carroll's blog. Such sad lines. It's painful, the truths they carry.

Hay.
*sniff sniff*

Found:

Rickie Lee Jones: Pirates, 1981
Thanks, Mr. K!

So, Kathryn Bigelow is James Cameron's ex-wife. Interesting fact. Guess too much genius does split a unit into two.

Anyway, had an interesting conversation with a friend today, over coffee and after-work relief. Don't you feel lucky to have people to talk to, just because? I do. And this after years of self-inflicted isolation inside sturdy walls, built with much care, one gray brick after the other. What a relief it is to realize that once the teenage angst and the depression of my early twenties had crumbled down, so did those walls. Once in a while, I do find myself feeling the urge to put them back up, brick after brick--but only once in a while. And I always find myself stopping half-way. There's almost always something that distracts me.

(End of speech and cheese)

Been raving about "Avatar" this week. I'm not a fan of Sci-Fi (both film and Lit--I hated my College Sci-Fi class so much, I built walls around me the whole semester), but this movie grabbed me and grabbed me hard.

Oh, hey, I ended up circling back to James Cameron (sans Kathryn B.), after all. Completely unintentional, thank you.

Have a great afternoon ahead.

Found:

I am beginning to hate empty spaces--

--blanknesses that stretch into miles, empty silences that roll upward to crests and fall down to plateaus, ending in emptiness, always emptiness, never-ending.

...
Empty spaces are blank canvasses for what's no longer there.
And silence is an empty space.

I remember punching holes into the air

500 Days of Bummer

A lot of folks who saw "500 Days of Summer" had said it was a great movie. I had little motivation to catch it, but since its fame had spread through word-of-mouth and facebook, I thought, why the hell not.

So I gave it a try.

And I'm glad I did, not because I liked it, but because it added something to my small cache of film wisdom: mainly, it added points in my list of the ingredients of a bad movie.

In short, I was disappointed.

I think the movie had something to say, you know, all that shit about how we are all products of our upbringing and how our ideologies (which we might have carried with us for most of our lives) can be shattered by one brief, shining crash to the earth. The message being a cliche, there was more pressure on the part of the film-makers to make sure that the delivery was thorough.

As it turned out, there was a total lack of character development and the plot didn't make much for credibility. The script was, well, nondescript (beats the shit out of me why it's a front runner in the Oscars screenplay department--or so I've been told), short of like telling the viewer, hey, you're smart, you should be able to get it, we're even giving it a different spin (you know, that whole rewind/fast-forward thingie they did with the plot) and spicing it up with references to cool stuff like "The Graduate" and Dorian Gray (what was it doing there, anyway? Were we given any prior indication that Summer even read, in the first place?) and sprinkling the scenes with a good playlist (The Pixies, Regina Spektor, Carla Bruni), short of having that Tom guy say, "hey, I like cool stuff, I'm a cool guy, so you better think I'm cool and this movie, cool!"

To put it in a clam shell, this movie ends up undermining the audience's intelligence, and I hate movies that do just that.

Plus, it tries too hard to be cute, though its many attempts at cuteness--far too many, I have to say--end up streaking the place with 500 mismatched shades of mediocrity.

And that whole "Autumn" thing at the end? That was the last nail on the movie's coffin. Made me want to throw up.

Up in The Air

There are movies that make you roll over with laughter, movies that make you bawl like a baby or weep like a young boy whose heart was broken by his first love, movies that make you swear under, or over your breath.

"Up in the Air" does none of those.

What it does is leave you with that nameless emotion slowly but surely tugging at your heart and prodding you to get on your feet to look for, or go to the people you love and give them a tight hug and tell them how much you love them and appreciate their presence in your life. Yeah, that cheesy sort of thing, you might say. But cheesy is as cheesy gets because when it comes to the people we value, there can be no such thing as saying "I love you" too much because there is no telling--it'll be completely beyond us--until when anything can, and will last.

The tragedy of being human is that we do not know. So, yeah, go and give your pa a hug, your mom a peck on the cheek, your friend a slap on the back, your dog a bone.

Before the moment goes up in the air, before it's too late for regrets, before the intention to appreciate gets rendered hopeless because either you, them, or the moment, has gone away.

And away is seldom a happy place.

And, sitting there in the middle of that crowded cafe,

you are brought out of your invisible bubble and the jarring din of the people around you rushes into your quiet like a sudden stream.

Just like that.

Looking at the face of the watch resting on your left wrist, you realize it's been almost an hour since you sat down and started reading the book of poems you had impulsively bought from the nearby bookstore and you think, you wonder, what power of self-containment was it that enabled you to shut everything--the drone of voices, the sundry, small human movements, the afternoon heat, the forgotten cup of coffee, the discomfort of staying in one position for a certain length of time--out and get lost in the words, the lines, the stanzas on the pages of the book on your lap? What sort of self-centeredness? What selfishness? What apathy? What trick learned from childhood? What sorcery?

Sign of the times: letters blooming on a screen

me: can you give me a moment?
friend: A moment to what?
me: A thought just occurred to me which I think is worth typing down.
friend: Ok.

whatever happened to "worth writing down?"


William Shakespeare's handwriting

Lola Coqueta (2009)

I held the glossy in my hand and pursed my lips, thinking, wouldn't I be better off buying a book of poems, instead?

I spent the rest of the afternoon reading this:


A worthwhile read, for only PHP150. The glossy was priced the same.
I'm glad I chose to buy what I did.
=)

Keeping Up With Ebert

Reading Roger Ebert's Best Films of The Decade and seeing Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" (2009) in the list (in the number 2 spot, to be precise) recalls to my mind a conversation I recently had with my brother. He was asking me why I liked "The Hurt Locker" so much. Going into know-it-all mode, I launched into a tirade about how the movie's plot didn't really seem linear, therefore it was different and I liked things that weren't part of the bandwagon, how the focus was mainly on the character and how everything else was built around his motivations, etc. I ended my little spiel with "did you know that it was directed by a woman?" He was surprised (funny and sad that it still surprises people that women can be as good as men, if not better). But I preferred to think that what induced the reaction was the fact that the movie was really what one might call a "guy movie", but then, again, this is another problematic statement, which can be problematized in a number of ways, but which I will not launch into for fear of further digressing from the topic, which is Roger Ebert's best films of the decade.

Whew.

Okay.

So, anyway, Roger Ebert being who he is, it pleased me to note that I had seen quite a number of the films on his list, a few of which I had written about--or,at least, made some quick post--in this blog. Let's see, so Jason Reitman's "Juno" (2007) was there and so was Spike Jonze's "Adaptation" (2002). The Coen Brothers' "No Country For Old Men" (2007) got a spot. Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" (2006) made it, too.

Hmm? What was that? Oh, yeah, his top movie of the decade was Charlie Kaufman's "Synechdoche, New York" (2008) which inspired this conversation between a geek friend and I.

I should remind myself to come up with my own list. Hmm. Wheels in the mind turning...

Here's to more good films for you and me...
Cheers!

First book I'll be reading this year:

(published 1997)

Come in, 2010

I spent New Year at work, and, in that respect, at least, it was no different from last year.

Otherwise, things were better.

You know that lightness of being (which was in no way unbearable, by the way) that people have when they're happy? I felt that. The last New Year I remember feeling that way was when I was a small kid. Long time ago. You know, all wide-eyed and bright-eyed and content and excited, at the same time? It felt good to be my age and feel good and actually look forward to the coming year.

Wishing you that lightness of being, too.


Happy New Year, reader. Things will be better, you'll see.
=)