Monday, June 15, 2020
11:19 PM |
The Halfway Mark
51 out of a 100. Halfway there. Whew! I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to be extra with Joops Miranda’s film meme challenge more than a month ago. I’ve been tagged before this but never bothered because the meme’s restrictions were unappealing. Only ten? I struggle with even a hundred! And no commentary? How can you convey impact without commentary! Hence, “extra.” And the commentaries have been getting longer and longer each day. But this has become an exercise of utter involvement: I actually rewatch the films first before posting, I do research, and titles have come and gone in my list with some regularity, etched in stone only when I go past them in alphabetical order. [The only film I let slip was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which I completely forgot about, although I was already deep in the L’s.] But the exercise has been good. It has given me a sense of days passing in the pandemic, and it has allowed me analysis of my own cinematic taste. And so the next time somebody asks me, “What’s your favorite movie?”—that unanswerable query—I’ll just send them this list. [This is your fault, Joops.] Labels: film, memes
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Thursday, March 17, 2016
2:55 AM |
If you were to vote by prospective First Son...
Posted this hours ago in Facebook -- and it became a runaway train. What can I say. It's a meme. And the Internet is wild. This was just a stupid thing that occurred to me and that I cobbled together in Photoshop while eating Dear Darla in Yellowcab. No attribution necessary. Go share!
Labels: humor, memes, politics
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Wednesday, December 15, 2010
10:22 AM |
Here's to Memorable Fictional Characters
I never usually respond to Facebook meme lists like this: "Fifteen ____ in Fifteen Minutes." (Fill in the blanks. Your favorite films, music, books, et cetera in the tight span of fifteen minutes.) I find this endeavor to be a perfect waste of time and energy, and I know I will not be so truthful anyway -- how do I know
for sure the films or books or music that define my life and put them down without much thinking in fifteen minutes? I always agonize even when I'm asked casually what my favorite film or book is. And yet, how come I responded so willingly to Anna's call this morning for fifteen memorable fictional characters in fifteen minutes? Perhaps because at that very moment, I was thinking of the boy Charlie from Steve Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," and marveled at how precocious and sensitive he was, how I felt for him -- how he seemed real even on the page. And so, the one below became my list. And I couldn't stop at fifteen. I had to go for an even thirty. Memorable fictional characters in films, television shows, books, comics, plays, and songs that have stayed with me, for some reason or other...
Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye"
Craig in Craig Thompson's "Blankets"
Philip Benjamin in David Leavitt's "The Lost Language of Cranes"
Giovanni in James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room"
Elliot in Steven Spielberg's "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial"
Charlie in Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"
Zach in Jonah Markowitz's "Shelter"
Doña Lupe in Nick Joaquin's "The Summer Solstice"
Setsuko in Isao Takahata's "Grave of the Fireflies"
Tom Ripley in Anthony Minghella's film of Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley"
Junior in Lino Brocka's "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang"
Steve Dunne in Cameron Crowe's "Singles"
Ariel in Ron Clements and John Musker's "The Little Mermaid"
Prof. Grady Tripp in Curtis Hanson's film of Michael Chabon's "Wonder Boys"
Tintin in Georges Rémi's "The Adventures of Tintin, Boy Reporter"
Antonio in Joselito Altarejos's "Ang Lihim ni Antonio"
Dorothy Boyd in Cameron Crowe's "Jerry Maguire"
Jacinta Cordova in Dean Francis Alfar's "Salamanca"
Justin Taylor in Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman's "Queer as Folk"
Melchior Gabor in Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's "Spring Awakening"
Regina George in Mark Waters's "Mean Girls"
Carrie Bradshaw in HBO's adaptation of Candace Bushnell's "Sex and the City"
John Keating in Peter Weir's "Dead Poets Society"
Ading in Manuel Arguilla's "Midsummer"
Kiki in Hayao Miyazaki's "Kiki's Delivery Service"
Jude in The Beatles' "Hey, Jude"
Grace Coddington in R.J. Cutler's "The September Issue"
Will Truman in David Kohan and Max Mutchnick's "Will & Grace"
Eva Peron in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's "Evita"
Francesca Johnson in Clint Eastwood's film of Robert James Waller's "The Bridges of Madison County"
Labels: books, comics, fiction, film, memes, music, television, theater
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Sunday, October 17, 2010
3:58 AM |
Nostalgia is Dead
[via
gang badoy]
Labels: cartoons, humor, life, memes, memories
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Sunday, March 15, 2009
2:35 PM |
The Butterfly Awards
Zarah Gagatiga of
School Librarian in Action sent me a blog award known as the Butterfly Award. Now here are, in random order, 25 cool Filipino blogs I know and visit a lot. (The original number was ten, but I'm feeling generous today.)
01. Frank Cimatu's
Pine for Pine02. Charles Tan's
The Bibliophile Stalker03. Kenneth Yu's
Philippine Genre Stories04. Veronica Montes's
Nesting Ground05. Adam David's
An Exercise in Youthful Blasphemy06. _____'s
MisterHubs07. Gibbs Cadiz's
Airs in G08. Jessica Zafra's
Jessica Rules the Universe09. Wanggo Gallaga's
Reverb10. Jun Lana's
Kuwan11. Marguerite de Leon's
The Girl in the Dirty Shirt12. Gerry Alanguilan's
Komikero13. Andrew Drilon's
Komikid14. Francis Cruz's
Lessons From the School of Inattention15. Rain Baguio's
The Red Horse Gallops16. Bryan Gorrell's
Pure Advocacy (formerly the infamous The Not-so-Talented Delfin 'DJ' Montano blog)17. Russ Ligtas's
ReadRuss18. _____'s
The Bakla Review19. Ari Ngaseo's
Pu-pu Platter20. John Bengan's
Your Headphones21. Teng Mangansakan III's
Funktional Schizophrenic22. Boy du Jour's
Confessions of a Good, Dirty Boy23. Cecile Van Straten's
Chuvaness24. Wilfredo Pascual's
Secret Gospels, Sacred Sites25. Marne Kilates'
All Our Nameable DaysSome personal criteria came into play, and like Zarah, I kinda chose blogs because of things such as posting activity vs. dormancy; content; relevance; impact made in the blogosphere; and design and navigation. And, for the sake of spreading the good word for not-so-well-known blogs, I have not included some favorite blogging giants such as
Notes From the Peanut Gallery,
Manila Gay Guy,
Manuel L. Quezon III, and
{caffeine_sparks}.
This is a meme award and the rules for passing it on are:
1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded you.
3. Award up to ten other blogs.
4. Add links to those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message for your awardees on their blogs.
But because I'm a meme killer, the bloggers noted here really don't have to do anything. But spread the blog love, if you want.
Labels: blogging, memes
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Friday, August 24, 2007
11:37 AM |
Nine Random Things
I was tagged by Kokak, who demands immediate answer, so here goes eight (plus one) random things about me...
1.I hate to email. Or write letters in general. Writing one takes so much out of me, because a simple letter often becomes an epic missive I never get to finish at all. Somebody once said, "Keep it simple." God, I do try. But I never seem to get anywhere. I always feel guilty when I dash off something like, "Hey, thanks for the email. I'm great!
Ikaw? Musta?" Yay of all yays. But for the most part, I think my resistance to emailing has something to do with the fact that I write to make stories -- and so when I write anything else, I fear that I am wasting words on something other than fiction.
2.I am the worst hypochondriac I know. And nobody actually knows this. Right now, I'm scared I'm dying of cancer. I've been through a whole gamut of diseases, and this is the disease du jour. What's worse? I'm scared of hospitals.
3.I believe I am the laziest person in the whole wide world. Some people say, "But you're such a workaholic." Trust me, it's to compensate for the guilt, which may or may not be imagined. I think I've been compensating since that day in grade school, a long time ago, when I felt too sick to scrub the floor with your standard issue coconut husk -- and one of my classmates started taunting me with
"Si Ian, tapulan... Si Ian, tapulan..." I still remembering the embarrassment I felt.
4.I eat in a certain fashion that borders the eccentric. I don't mix food, the way Mark does. I eat various dishes in an orderly manner, never mixing sequences, never experimenting. (Appetizer, soup, first course, second course, dessert... And never in any other order.) I do not like sauces and condiments. I want my food ... virginal.
5.I drink three cups of coffee before I go to sleep.
6.I become relaxed in two ways: (a) a good massage, and (b) a day in a bookstore. The smell of new books is orgasmic.
7.I loathe Friendster accounts that automatically play emo music. Or whatever music, even. The loud ones usually scare the hell out of me.
Jeez, it may be
your personal page, but God, don't you know that that kind of madness always drives people away from viewing your page? But what's worse: Friendster accounts that play two or three different tunes all at the same time.
8.I finish most things in the nick of time -- but I always deliver quality. I think.
9.I hate memes. So I'm tagging nobody. And everybody.
Labels: life, memes
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Monday, May 28, 2007
7:29 PM |
Weird Things
[Because
Mark tagged me.]
Each player of this game starts with six weird things about him or herself. People who get tagged need to write a blog post of their own, as well as state the rule clearly. In the end, you need to tag six people as well and list their names. Remind them that they've been tagged!I have eight.
1. I clean at night. I do all my sweeping, mopping, and rearranging at night, usually starting around 8 o'clock, with Discovery Travel and Living Channel on. There's usually coffee on standby, and then I go about things slowly. It's a ritual. I usually finish around four o'clock dawn. It's a therapy.
2. I need absolute silence when I write. The slightest sound -- television, music, etc. -- makes me lose all my concentration, and I get frustrated. I have a silent grudge against those who don't get this at all.
3. I fear snakes, even the ones in books. A month ago, a teeny, teeny snake -- the size of a small earthworm -- got inside my pad, and I went nuts, even when I was smashing it with the hammer. I still have this memory from childhood: I was reading a book about nature and stuff, and when I turned the next page, there was this huge picture of a snake baring its fangs. I jumped up screaming, and my brothers just laughed at me. Then again, I have a fear of height, too. Every time I'm in a very high place, especially when I'm on a walkway, I get this strange urge to just jump.
4. I watch movies in the middle row, in the middle seat, in the middle section. Always.
5. I graduated cum laude in college, but I hate studying. Especially when all you're required to do is memorize stuff. I never studied in college. I hated memorizing. When I was studying Physical Therapy, I made it as far as third year, but I couldn't take going about things via rote memory anymore. My epiphany came when I went on my first hospital duty. With my smock and my black bag, I visited my first patient, and then told myself:
This is not what I see my life to be. I must have stood on that hospital corridor for hours, grappling with a decision I knew I had to make. The next day, I told the Director I was quitting P.T. for good. This was in the middle of the term, mind you. I didn't study anymore, and when I took exams, I relied on plain "eeny-miny-moo" to get through the multiple choice tests. It was liberating.
6. I believe in doing everything and anything at least once. I'm already 31.
7. I am incredibly naive. You have no idea how naive I can be. My friends laugh at me sometimes because sometimes I just don't have a clue about what's going on. And sometimes people do get to use me (without me knowing what's going on) because I'm too trusting. But when I do wise up, there's no stopping how angry I can be.
8. There is a kinky side of me that I cannot divulge, because it will freak everyone out. It's so kinky it's unbelievable. Silence is the only recourse.
I'm tagging: no one. I'm a meme killer.
Labels: life, memes
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Saturday, February 10, 2007
11:35 AM |
Meme for Page 123
[
tagged by
gibbs]
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Mark the fifth sentence. Pick up the next three sentences and post. (In other words, post sentence nos. 6-8 on page 123.)
4. Acknowledge the book and the author.
5. Tag 3 people in turn.
Gibbs, the first book I grabbed had no page 123, but here's the second one...
It's Jan (formerly James) Morris's acclaimed autobiography of gender reassignment,
Conundrum: An Extraordinary Narrative of Transsexualism, which
Cecilia Hoffman gave me a few nights ago because I'm always interested in reading about ... the weirdest things.
In this passage from page 123, Morris recounts her children's gradual acceptance of her new gender, confronting the necessary dilemma of having a father one day, and then a mother the next:
Helped along the way by sensitive teachers, they seemed to escape the miseries of school taunting, and the more feminine I became, the closer to my own reality, the closer I felt to them too. There was no moment of instant trauma in our relationship, no matter when, standing before them as a man one day, I reappeared suddenly as a woman. The process was infinitely slow and subtle, and through it all anyway, as I hope they sensed, I remained the same affectionate self.
It's a delightful, and sensitive read.
Mark read it in half a day.
[tagging
dean,
ned,
kokak, and
zarah]
Labels: books, memes, writers
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Saturday, March 18, 2006
Ask me a question about one of or each of the following...
1. Friends
2. Sex
3. Movies
4. Drugs
5. Love
6. Other (open-ended)
... no matter how rude, sexual, or confidential ...
just ask it. Then post this in your journal and see what questions you get asked.
(
But if you want to know the scandalous answers, you really should get a
livejournal account first. And attempt to be friends with me. And be able to get inside my locked entry.
Ehe.)
[meme (slightly changed) swiped from
moki]
Labels: life, memes
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Saturday, June 18, 2005
I have been tagged by
Jimmy who lives in the limbo of secret blogs. The question:
what relaxes me?The physical. A foot tickle: this brings me to instant heaven, approximating the best of sexual adventures.
Brewed coffee.
A good massage: done right with the softest of hands, this makes me float.
A rigorous work out: the feel of sweat and the adrenaline rush give a certain lightness to how I think.
An unexpectedly wild orgasm: this does not need further explaining.
A thirty-minute nap: glorious, glorious siesta. The Spanish have it right.
A prolonged, soulful kiss: that breathing in of pheromones and the taste of somebody's luscious lips...
Hot black tea on a slow afternoon: just the right amount of caffeine to pass the day away.
Pinot noir swirling and tangoing with my tongue.
Dancing the night away. A long hug from
Bubu.
The mental. Putting the last period on a
story.
A good collection of short stories.
Calvin and Hobbes.
A novel that meanders beautifully. Something by
Milan Kundera,
Susan Sontag,
David Lodge, and
David Leavitt. Barber's
Adagio for strings, Op. 11. A
good children's book. Pachelbel's
Canon.
Puccini. The stories of
Kit Kwe,
Chari Lucero,
Susan Lara,
Maria LM Fres-Felix, and
Vicente Groyon III.
Bolipata. 80's
Madonna on mad days. A good
coffee book. A
design challenge in Adobe Pagemaker and Photoshop. Poems by
Naya Valdellon. Reruns of
Sex and the City. A good
laugh.
Spongebob Squarepants.
Drawing.
The spiritual. Like James's,
praying.
Friends.
Candles.
Lamplight.
An intelligent feel-good movie like
Under the Tuscan Sun.
Stargazing.
Francois.
Meditating in the early morning before the rat race of the day.
Waking up before the birds do. A painting by
Jutsze Pamate.
Siquijor in the summer.
Casaroro Falls.
Spying on dolphins off Bais. A
cock crowing in some quiet countryside. The feel of the
wind against my face. The music of the
surf on the beach. Listening to
angels singing in a darkened auditorium.
Sunday lunches with Mother.
A day on the beach with my older brothers.
I'm tagging the following people:
Dinah Baseleres,
Ted Regencia,
Kokak Levis,
Veronica Montes,
Naya Valdellon,
Ginny Mata,
Resty Odon,
Gelo Suarez,
Wanggo Gallaga,
Dean Alfar,
Gabby Lee, and
Bubu. Because I really want to know what makes you tick. Go, guys.
Labels: life, memes
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Thursday, June 02, 2005
8:17 PM |
From Cassidy the Lemur
So here's an interesting survey.
1. Reply with your name in the comment box and I will write something I like about you.
2. I will then tell what song/movie/icon reminds me of you.
3. If I were to apply an o'clock to you, it would be...
4. I will try to name a single word that best describes you.
5. I'll tell you the most memorable moment I've had with you.
6. I will tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll then tell you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. Put this in your journal.
Ginny did me:
What she likes about me. You make people feel special. You appreciate beauty in all its forms, and you are open to the universe in every possible way.
(Aww, that's sweet!)What song/movie/icon I remind her of me. David Cassidy.
(This David Cassidy? Is there a resemblance?)
If she were to apply an o'clock to me, it would be... Midnight.
(Dark, man.)A single word that best describes me. Inspiring.
(Oh?)For her, the most memorable moment she has had with me was... In the prison cell in O.K. Pensione, on our last night, when you were trying to convince me to go out with the rest of the group. I was lying stomach down on the bed, flipping through your photos of us, while you kept brushing the hair out of my eyes.
(I did?)The animal I remind her of. A lemur.
(This animal? Are my eyes really that big?)
Something she has always wondered about me... If you had a chance to migrate the country permanently, would you?
(In a second. I never belonged here in the Philippines. Only Dumaguete feels remotely like home, and barely. I think I'll live in Seattle for the rest of my life. I love the rain in Seattle.)Now, let's try to do
you.
Labels: memes
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