Friday, July 24, 2015
11:25 PM |
The Details of La Bella
I had no plans today to go to La Bella, the new Italian pasta and pizza joint that just soft-opened a few weeks ago across Bethel Guest House along Avenida de Rizal. I was waiting for its grand opening in August. But I was following my feet today, and my feet decided I had to try out -- even for a bit --- what La Bella was promising Dumaguete City, culinary-wise. Turns out, the new restaurant is the brain child of a member of the Lhuillier family, and it is quite ravishing in its tasteful use of interior design -- a mix of Balinese, Italian, Greek, and Chinese -- which perhaps gives a nod to its menu's eclectic feel. It is still decidedly Italian, of course -- but I have a feeling this is going to be more of a fusion establishment in the days to come. In the meantime, I was the quirkiness of its decor, which struck me at once to be quite sumptuous and yet personal. It is a far-cry from the often lazy design restaurants in Dumaguete are plagued with...
I haven't tried out the rest of the menu yet, but for this brief visit, I had the Greek coffee, the gnocchi, and the smores pizza. A review is most definitely forthcoming...
Labels: cebu, design, dumaguete, food, italian cuisine, negros, restaurants
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Wednesday, July 22, 2015
8:06 PM |
Visual Artist Rianne Dawn Salvarita Wishes to Provoke
Sex in art is not an uncommon thing. Neither is provocation. But there's something almost disturbing and enormously interesting about the latest works, in water-colour of Dumaguete-based Bacolod artist Rianne Dawn Salvarita. "I call this series
Mechaniaco, a sensual surreal series. From words mechanical, maniac, mania to coffee, sex, and crazy mechanics."
And all of that shows: all of those words distilled to a series of disembodied sexual automatons in depictions that serve to delight and to perturb. And the water-colour frenzy paints them in delightful tones that subvert the sexual violence inherent in them.
What's the reason behind this series? What's the underlying philosophy behind this? "I've been thinking of the underlying possibilities of manipulating various objects related to human sensuality and taste," Salvarita says. "The human form, I think, also mimics mechanical objects, may it be for practical or aesthetic use. The human form is reduced, deconstructed to serve as the flatform of sacred vessels in the form of practical objects such as coffee plunger, and bird houses, that symbolize purity, beauty, innocence."
Rianne is selling these works for P2,000 each, with three pieces for P5,000 only. You may contact him in
Facebook.
Rianne Dawn Salvarita, 35, earned his bachelor in fine arts, major in painting,
from La Consolacion College in 2001. His works delve in modernism, surrealism, and the sensual, and primarily use the media of oil on canvas, watercolor, and mixed media. His solo exhibition include
De Pictura at the Negros Museum, Bacolod City in 2002, and
Metafisical Sandwich, also at the Negros Museum in 2004.
Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, feminism, painting, people, sex
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Monday, July 13, 2015
11:49 AM |
The Most Beloved Filipino Gardener in San Francisco
By Wilfredo Pascual
GUEST BLOGGER
Yesterday Jack and I spent the entire afternoon in the wildest, most enchanting garden in the city. Not too many people know about this whimsical wonderland that often gets listed among the city's top hidden gems. This precious secret is tucked in a residential neighborhood between Interstate 280 and the elevated BART tracks.
In the garden we saw an elephant, a tiger, giant lizards and other strange creatures hidden in a carpet of wild flowers. We climbed hidden trails and saw a red-faced giant reading the book of knowledge under a tree, mermaids and acrobats amidst blazing trumpet vines and white lilies. If you look closer, you'll see hundreds of faces along the trails and on tree trunks overgrown with vines. There are towers, Native American totem poles, a tribute to 9/11, and a man riding a bicycle in midair. I heard others saw John Lennon and Herb Caen in the garden. I believe I saw Jose Rizal, the Philippines' national hero and a Filipina wearing a
terno.
This was the work of an immigrant, Mang Demi. He said he wanted to make something beautiful out of darkness. He felt that it was his duty. He learned how to garden back home and took a few art classes when he took industrial art courses. Mang Demi was once asked about the sculptures. “These are not mine," he said. "Whatever this creative ability it is that has been given to me, it’s not mine to claim for myself, but to use for the good of all.”
Born in the Philippines, Demetrio Bracero arrived in the United States in the seventies. In 1986, he got hired as a gardener for the city and was assigned to clean up a park. When Demi first arrived in the area assigned to him, there was a lot of gang and criminal activity in the park. Little by little, the old man singlehandedly cleaned up the place. One day after a storm, he saw a fallen log and decided to carve it. He continued tending the garden and every time he would see a fallen log he would carve a sculpture and leave it there. He did this for twenty years until he retired in 2008. And then the garden fell into neglect.
Last year, when the park reopened after renovations that cost 9 million dollars, they found a total of 376 sculptures hidden in the park. The neighborhood and city agencies decided to preserve Demetrio Bacero's work.
These are some of the pictures I took.
© Wilfredo PascualLabels: art and culture, gardens, immigrants, san francisco, sculpture
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Sunday, July 12, 2015
12:54 AM |
The One About a Film That Breaks Your Heart Very Nicely
The most wonderful thing about Dan Villegas'
The Breakup Playlist (2015) is not the scintillating script, the assured pace and sense of structure in the narrative, the deft editing, the spot-on casting and the bravura performances, or the fluid cinematography, which should already make this a small phenomenon in a commercial cinema culture where money, and not craft, is the primary consideration. It’s not even the earnestness of its rose-colored love letter to OPM that gives the film an extra kick of wonder. It is that Mr. Villegas, fresh from the indie success of
English Only, Please (2014), has apparently been courted by the soul-sucking temptations of mainstream filmmaking — in this case, the double whammy of Star Cinema and Viva Films — and did not lose his soul. So many of our best filmmakers have not been so lucky: with promising filmography behind them, they proceed to embrace the beast, perhaps hoping to tame it, but come away from the encounter having been regurgitated into hacks. Let’s not name names.
It seemed like Mr. Villegas took the gloss and polish that a bigger budget promised, and gave us a film that not only satisfied our romantic yearnings for films of this ilk, but also something that did not patronise. StarCinema, of course, has been the favourite whipping pole by many because, all too often, it has made a factory of films that merely pandered to the commonest taste in local cinema-going. But I agree with the notion that when a giant like this commercial entity does something right, it certainly deserves an applause. The films they’ve made that turned out right —
Pare Ko, Radio Romance, Bata Bata Paano Ka Ginawa, Sana Maulit Muli, Kailangan Kita, Nine Mornings, One More Chance, My Big Love, Here Comes the Bride, Inside Job — have become such a rarity, that I am ready to celebrate their dipping their toes into occasional brilliance.
And
The Breakup Playlist is brilliant. In every scene that unfolds in his new film — apparently already a killer at the box office — you can see every single effort Mr. Villegas (also acting as his own cinematographer) has done in the name of making a good film. He has the eye, and the taste, for it. Consider the meticulous attention he gives the colour that shades his characters’ faces. Consider the dexterity with which he handles the tricky nature of flashbacks. And even in scenes that are not perfectly staged — like the final streetside confrontation between the warring protagonists — he provides an emotional coda that seem calculated to both wring our hearts as well as surprise us. That same streetside scene I’ve mentioned ends with Piolo Pascual’s Gino left bereft on the sidewalk in a teary breakdown that startles with such truthfulness, you had to agree: “Papa P. still has it. In spades.”
For it is also truly an actor’s showcase. And in this one, we see both Mr. Pascual and Ms. Sarah Geronimo taking stock of familiar roles in a romantic drama but pushing them even more towards a rare balance of cutesy and grit. (Apparently that’s possible.) What is the story? Trixie, a greenhorn singer/composer played by Ms. Geronimo, catches the roving eye of Mr. Pascual’s Gino, a fast-rising musician eager to break the mold of being a phenomenon of so-called pogi rock. She wants to be a lawyer to please her parents, he wants her to be his co-lead singer in Pencil Grip, the new band he is putting together. The dynamics of that tension and ultimate decision/plot point, even as played out with Mr. Dennis Padilla and Ms. Rio Locsin who play Ms. Geronimo’s disapproving parents, gently brings in a very common dilemma among many Filipino families that echoes an old line from a classic Paz Marquez Benitez story: “Did you ever have to choose between something you wanted and something you needed to do?” That I cite a literary source to bolster one of the themes of this film is indicative of its intelligence in following through many of its themes: the pursuit of passion, the fulfilment of your family’s hopes, the fact that the beginnings of love is deaf and agrees to everything. That last note should remind us that beyond the familial dramas and the musical mix that
Breakup embraces in its narrative, the film is foremost a love story. More than that, it is the full examination of a love affair, from its kilig beginnings (that inspired courtship scene in the CD shop…) to its heartbreaking end (that stinging argument in the car…). Both Mr. Pascual and Ms. Geronimo prove equal to the demands of that arc, and bring in a fierceness to their roles that should also remind us that movies like this — because they are perceived to be lightweight — need very strong actors to anchor and provide the necessary gravity to the formulaic sentimentality. I don’t want to be reminded again of Angelica Panganiban’s antics in Antoinette Jadaone’s
That Thing Called Tadhana, where her bizarre choices sank an otherwise perfectly fine film. Ms. Jadaone, perhaps the fastest rising screenwriter working in Philippine cinema today, also wrote
The Breakup Playlist and
English Only, Please.
She deserves kudos and mention for the sound structure she has made of this story, and for the intelligence and dexterity with which she has done her appropriations of cultural milestones in romantic cinema. She has taken the musicality and the unfulfilled promise of Quark Henares’
Rakenrol (2012), mixed it with the jealous subterfuge of George Cukor’s
A Star is Born (1954), and leavened the entire enterprise with nods to Stephen Frears'
High Fidelity (2000) for the conceit of lists, Richard Curtis'
Love, Actually (2003) for the idea of signs as love confession, and Giuseppe Tornatore's
Cinema Paradiso (1988) for the knowledge of alchemy that comes with the final grand gesture — and out comes a fully realised and still very original Filipino love story for our times. One that makes us believe in falling in love and forgiveness once again. One that makes us thirsty for the OPM of yore. One that makes us realize a local film can indeed capture a part of the Filipino zeitgeist, and do it extremely well.
Labels: film, love, philippine cinema, review
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Saturday, July 11, 2015
4:23 PM |
Midnight in a University Town
Photos © Dennis FutalanLabels: classroom, college, dumaguete, fast-food, food, life, school, students, study
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Friday, July 10, 2015
1:17 AM |
Get a Copy of Rogue Magazine's 8th Anniversary Issue! I Have a Story There.
The July 2015 issue of
Rogue Magazine is coming out this weekend, with a flash fiction piece I've written commissioned by them for the start of their Election 2016 coverage, "The Republic of 2022: Grace Poe, Mar Roxas, Jejomar Binay, and Rodrigo Duterte in a Dystopian Future." (Sounds ominous and interesting.)
Articles include "The Unraveling of Isabelle Daza," "The Promiscuous Lives of the Last Playboys: An Unauthorized Portfolio," "The Mystery of the Pink Panthers & the $20 Million Cannes Jewel Heist," "The Secret History of Social Climbing in the Philippines," "Kicking & Scheming: An Exclusive with FIFA's Embattled President Sepp Blatter," "How to Build a Billion-peso Election War Chest," "The Roumeliotes Affair of Imelda Marcos," plus Helmut Newton's Lost Polaroids, Harper Lee on her controversial
To Kill a Mockingbird sequel,
Go Set a Watchman, and more in the magazine's 8th Anniversary Issue, a special collector's edition. Actress Isabelle Daza, photographed by Mark Nicdao, is on the cover.
Labels: fiction, flash fiction, life, magazines, politics
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Wednesday, July 08, 2015
10:58 PM |
The Blind and the One-Armed Peanut Vendors
They sold peanuts in separate pockets of the City—the one-armed man in a spot along Avenida Alfonso Trese, near the corner bakery that used to be a magnificent video store; the blind man near the entrance of the university library, before he was told to keep a more discreet spot behind it, along a curved path between buildings that not many students took. The one-armed peanut man had a capacious operation: his wheeled stall had a roof and had space for a small stove, over which he had a variety of helpers cook the peanuts for him,
adobo-style, one batch spiced with chili, and the other plain and seasoned with rock salt. He stood beside the stall like a quiet god, his white wifebeater revealing a surprising physique that said this must have been quite a sporty man in his youth—his shoulders were broad, his biceps were bulging, his pectorals were toned. But he certainly looked his age—perhaps nearing sixty—and his eyes were rheumy and gray from cataracts. And then there was his right hand, which ended in a stump right above where his elbows would have been. Which made you wonder: what happened to it? was it lost in a fight? did a crocodile eat it? did it get mangled in the teeth of some infernal machine? He never spoke, and he never entertained any of his customers. He’d just stand there on the same spot near his stall every single day, owning his quiet with gravity, and perhaps gazing at the world passing by him and beholding everything in a haze of white, like life itself in its blurry unfolding. The blind peanut man, on the other hand, had become an icon for generations and generations of college students, selling
adobo-style peanuts by the pack, and sometimes peanuts fried and speckled with white sugar. On his little foldable clapboard, beside which he sat on a stool and kept his watch, he sold other things, too, like candy. And because he was blind, he trusted us with the money we gave him for our purchases, as well as the change we’d take from his tiny coffers. We often wondered who among us cheated him—but who would dare steal from a blind man? His unseeing eyes turned to us, he seemed to say,
God is watching. Sometimes, in our puerile days, we’d crack a bad joke that went this way: “Did you know that Manong Peanut has a son at the University of the Philippines?” “Really?” “Yes. He’s selling peanuts there, too.” And we laughed ourselves silly—until we’d finally learn there was actually a son, and he was our P.E. teacher. Later, some of us would come to know how this man actually was in unguarded moments. He’d know, somehow, if you were crying from a failed exam, or perplexed by a broken heart—and he’d say, “Okay
ra na, ‘day. This, too, shall pass.” And we’d then cringe from all the memories of the times we had dared laugh at him, this supposedly sorry sight of a man without vision selling peanuts. We were the blind ones, until we learned to see life was something ultimately like this: it’s a quiet spot in an unbusy walkway, and there we make do with what we have despite everything, and yet we rise above it when we learn to give—like unassuming packets of peanuts—a whole lot kindness parceled out in small gestures that meant, for some of us, the world. He died last week.
[Photo of Manong Job Lacson by Dennis Futalan]Labels: dumaguete, people
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3:22 PM |
Higher Education
Prof. Gloria Macabagting was very good at paraphrasing. Once her graduate class settled down, she’d tell everyone to gather near her around the small conference table, and to bring out their copies of their assigned reading for that session. Then she’d proceed to read every single line written in the photocopied handout, stopping every three sentences or so to paraphrase what she had read so far in the name of explication; and then paraphrase the same passage once more, but in a different way; and finally—to make sure everyone was on the same page as her in their quest for a deep, profound knowledge of their area of specialization—would paraphrase the same passage one last time, like so:
Henny Penny is a hen.
It is said that Henny Penny is a female chicken.
The fowl that is Henny Penny is the female variety of the chicken class.
End of discussion.
Labels: education, fiction, flash fiction, satire
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I was amused by
this listicle ranking the sexiest male tennis players in history. It objectifies men, yes, but I like to echo Chris Pratt's
take on male objectification: “I think it’s appalling that for a long time only women were objectified, but I think if we really want to advocate for equality, it’s important to even things out,” the
Guardians of the Galaxy and
Jurassic World actor once said, suggesting that we should, “not objectify women less, but objectify men just as often as we objectify women.” Well, then, point taken.
But I've always been fascinated by the sheer number of hot male tennis players playing the circuit. When I was a younger man, I called it for Pete Sampras (sadly unrepresented in this list, although his arch-rival Andre Agassi makes the cut). When Sampras was a fast-rising star in the world of professional tennis, I followed him not for this prowess in his sport, but to stare into his dreamy eyes, or to imagine my hand going through his curls. (Hahaha.) I was so smitten, I even wrote an entire story about it titled "Pete Sampras's Neck," which took him as a metaphor for unexpressed homoerotic fantasy.
Here's a passage from that story where I aimed to present the whole of tennis-playing as a virtual metaphor for sex:
For a long time, I played tennis because he played tennis. I had Marat Safin’s eyes, he once said, and he had Pete Sampras’s neck, I said in return—that was our secret, intimate joke. On many weekend afternoons, the court beside the Capitol building, or sometimes the one adjacent the Silliman University gymnasium, was our world, and the tennis balls passing between us, flying off our rackets, bouncing across the net, were our private language.
He would do the serve with a slight grin, enough to taunt me, and I would sometimes surprise him with a powerful volley to his right—his weak side, and I’d laugh at the comic effect of him scrambling to deflect the blow. Most of the time, it would be a game of equals: we knew each of our moves too intimately. Before dusk would settle, we were off to his apartment to shower.
I had not felt the gentle roughness of a tennis ball for a very long time.
Tennis was a battleground for us—and it was also a kind of foreplay. Suddenly, I found myself gripping the steering wheel of the car as one strong memory came through like remembered sunshine.
There was this one caloric day on some friend’s private clay court—they were off to France that summer, and we had access to their backyard, a word that could not contain the vastness of everything: beside the court, there was also a swimming pool, and a garden. But we were mostly interested in the clay court, for some reason.
I could not forget this. I remembered Ronaldo’s tan glistening in the sun that day; it was bronze against the tennis white of his shorts. He was otherwise naked, and in that, I envied Ronaldo’s cocksure confidence. I was on the other side of the net, waiting to receive serve, and I saw Ronaldo’s eyes flashing a challenge, a quick grin spreading across his lips.
“Service!” he shouted.
I saw the ball shooting over the net, and I scrambled for it, right in the corner’s edge—but I got there. Soon I returned the serve, and Ronaldo now placed his return in the opposite corner. I ran again and hit the ball high, my leg muscles straining.
We both bulged with promise.
Ronaldo took his time and waited for the ball to come down. Then he swung. The ball screamed over the net and bounced high and out of my reach. I looked over at Ronaldo with a glare, and he smiled.
“That’s one-love,” I remembered Ronaldo calling out, his voice sweet and mocking.
I thought then: Now he has had it. I felt myself flush—and oddly, I felt myself getting hard.
“Service!” The ball came and Ronaldo returned it swiftly. I thought, Was Ronaldo getting cocky? I had placed it well.
But Ronaldo missed the return, and I gloated.
“One all!”
Ronaldo got the ball, dribbled it with his racket, and then yelled out, “Service!”
The ball flew and hit the net, and then rolled over.
“Net ball!”
Once more, Ronaldo tried. The ball flew over and headed right for me. I quickly scrambled to get out of the way, successfully backhanding it. Ronaldo grimaced as he reached for the ball’s return, but he missed.
“One-15.”
Ronaldo let it fly, right past my head.
“Shit!”
“15-all.”
Ronaldo served again. I returned it—straining as the racket sliced through the air. Ronaldo volleyed and the ball flew back towards me. I missed.
“30-15.”
This was it. Match point. Ronaldo’s confidence grew, I could see that. I saw a bulge growing in his shorts. His bright whites showed the outline of an expanding cock, its head peeking ever so slightly out the leg of his tennis shorts. He seemed to anticipate more than the win, and I smiled knowingly. I pretended not to look too worried—my tight shorts were expanding as well, and I felt my own cock pushing against the fabric of my shorts.
Tension mounted, and soon we were both dripping with sweat. In my eyes, Ronaldo glistened.
“Service!”
The ball shot over the net. I grunted as I returned it. Ronaldo shot it back over. I raced to it and got it back on Ronaldo’s side. He tapped it softly with his racket, and the ball inched over the net. I reached for it hard, and popped it right up, but Ronaldo moved in for the kill and slammed his racket down over the net as the ball hit my side of the court, bouncing high and then was soon out of reach.
“Shit! Shit! Shit! Why can’t I beat you?” I gasped for air.
“Because I’ve had more practice,” he shouted back, and then he ran towards me. Ronaldo bent over the net, and then kissed me on the lips.
“Where shall we do it?” he asked coyly.
I remembered saying: “Let’s go home.”
Yep, tennis is sexy.
"Pete Sampras's Neck" was first published in the Philippines Free Press Magazine
in 25 March 2000. It is included in the collection Beautiful Accidents: Stories
, published by the University of the Philippines Press in 2011. It was shortlisted for Best Book of Fiction in the 2012 National Book Awards. It is available in Kindle over at Amazon.Labels: fiction, male objectification, philippine literature, sex, tennis, things that caught my eye, writers
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10:17 AM |
Call Them Out on It
"[We are] still drenched in cultural homophobia, so that ordinary people who individually like the gay people around them, are often homophobic, and oppose gay marriage for homophobic reasons. This doesn’t mean that those people aren’t very likely nice, pleasant people in a multitude of ways, who would happily sit down with their gay friends and neighbors. But they are homophobic, and when they act on their homophobia in the public space so as to try to limit the rights of gay people, it is perfectly fair game to call them out on it. Saying that someone is homophobic is not necessarily to imply that they individually hate and fear gay people. It is to imply that they are prejudiced (whether because of principle, culture, or active detestation) against gay people in ways that lead them passively or actively to oppose gay people participating fully, with full rights, in public and private life."
~
Henry Farrell,
Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University
[
Full article here]
Labels: gay marriage, homophobia, issues, queer, quotes
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Monday, July 06, 2015
8:06 PM |
Food for Thought
There are reasons why I prefer cafes as places to go to for work.
Yes, I'm one of those people -- and our tribe is increasing. There's coffee readily available, for one thing, and there's reliable wifi. And sometimes, you just want to avoid certain people to keep yourself productive.
But I keep changing my "offices" as a matter of changing taste and circumstances. And right now, the best places for me are these two I've been wanting to keep to myself for sometime now -- but I think it's time to share.
I love the ease of
THE ROLLIN' PIN along Katada Street beside Opeñas. It's not fancy but I like the quiet. The pastries are good, but most of all, I'm constantly craving for their Mediterranean Chicken, a concoction with pesto with the chicken meat somehow tenderised and fried with knowledge of culinary alchemy.
Then there's
THE VENUE in Tubod, ostensibly a place for grilled
inasal chicken, but really a place where you get the best wraps this side of town made by a bunch of Persians. (My favourite to go with my order of Pecho Pak is the Belliso Barbecue Wrap. It also comes in
sisig.) I go there for quiet afternoons where I can truly find myself focused on writing.
People used to drop by certain places in Dumaguete to make sure they can see me. I've since eluded the usual places, but now I guess you know where to find me.
Labels: cafes, dumaguete, food, life, restaurants, work
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Friday, July 03, 2015
It is 2018, and it is the second year of the Great Purge. Sebastian hurries down Hibbard Avenue in the dusk, head down low, careful not to cover the Rainbow Badge on his shirt like he and other people like him have been instructed to do. From somewhere, he hears the tolling of the bells. Real news is scarce these days. All the television channels are showing reruns of old episodes of The 700 Club. But the rumours. There are always rumours. People whisper about the concentration camp being built up north, near Canlaon. "People like you will be herded away soon," someone hissed to him earlier that day. Sebastian trembles. He wonders which among his so-called friends -- or even his family -- will be the ones to call the religious police on him. It doesn't really matter. All he can do now is wait. Under his breath, he curses ever so gently: "Love wins." #SpeculativeFictionForTheseTimes
I was chatting with someone a few days ago because I was hoping to enlighten him about the institutional abuses gay men and women have endured over the years, and to illustrate the point, I sent him a photo of gay men about to be hanged in Iran for being gay. "But that's not a Christian country," he replied. I should have sent him this picture: Germany in the Second World War, a "Christian" country, and the men with the pink triangles in concentration camps -- a story about the Holocaust you don't hear too often. It can happen again.
Labels: fiction, history, issues, nazi germany, pink triangle, queer, religion, speculative fiction, world war II
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