young adult fiction

Barry: Alam mo yung pains of being pure at heart?

Me: Ano yan, band?
Barry: No, yan ang current emotions ko.

That's how I found out, just recently, about the pretty cool, My Bloody Valentine-influenced, earnestly-named, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart.

POBPAH for short.

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I saw Greg Mottola's Adventureland last night. I wanted to see it for four reasons. One, it's set in a theme park, and theme parks really look great in mixed lighting. Two, it's a period piece! Set in my home decade, the 80's. Three, Yo La Tengo features prominently in the soundtrack, a soundtrack with a lot of 80's stuff that you didn't get from The Wedding Singer. Like Rock Me Amadeus. And four, it's written and directed by the guy who did Superbad.

Like Superbad, Adventureland is a coming-of-age flick (oh, reason number five) wherein characters navigate the choppy waters of post-adolescent life, wherein money and dreams, and sex and love, as always, weigh heavily on everyone's hearts.

I like how there is this whole bunch of actors who are providing an alternative honest and great performances to the well-chiseled bodies and botoxed faces of Hollywood. We've got that guy who played the older brother in The Squid And The Whale. We've got that girl who played Jodie Foster's daughter in Panic Room (and, hmm, Bella in Twilight). We've got that guy and girl from SNL, and this other guy from Party Down. And we've got, well, Ryan Reynolds in just about everything now.

Anyway, Adventureland is showing only in Ayala Cinemas and probably won't last more than a week. See it now.

Finally finished Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It took me two months. I read a third of it and I brought it the US, reading some on the plane. I got back, barely making it through half. Now, three weeks later, I'm done.

It's dense, filled with history, and all these meandering technical treatises on phreaking, Fruit Loops and physiological reactions to love. Half the the time, I barely understood what was going on. Towards the very end, in the last 50 pages or so of this 1000-page novel, it all comes together. It seems like a very abrupt way to end it all but it's all good. In fact, I love this book.

It's about a bunch of characters, in different timelines, who get involved in codebreaking, building a data haven in some Asian technology utopia, and looking for tons of gold (more precisely, the fabled Yamashita treasue, so the book scores for painting our country in hilarious light). While they're at it, they wage an intelligence and misinformation war, build the computer, find out about family, and fall in love. How awesome is that? It's like Vonnegut meets Clancy.

Inevitably, it's a book by a geek, about geeks, for geeks. But I suspect that anyone who wants to know more and experience more will enjoy it. After all, as Stephenson would say, we are all geeks now.

Tokyo Camera Style

You know how serious photographers scoff at questions about cameras? And how they like giving obtuse answers like, "painters never get asked what brushes they use!" Yeah, but I bet those painters actually have an opinion about their brushes. And also, how much are you willing to bet that a huge percentage of photographers, including all those serious ones, are geeks. People just want to know. The tool matters.

Anyway, I forget who tweeted this, but check out Tokyo Camera Style by John Sepal, I think. I love it.

it's cool to love your family

photo by Marlon

Just had some sort of cousin's reunion here at the house. Everyone's left and I'm staying up to digest all the food I ate. In the absence of parents, uncles and aunts, we made do with spaghetti, KFC, and pizza from Shakey's. Also ice cream and cake from the party last weekend. By the way, our average age is around thirty.

We got together because Al, his wife, Val, and brand new kid, Nila are here from New Jersey. Carlo and Yang are visiting from Dubai. We're all so grown up. Marlon and Rocky brought Liam, my brother's tornado of a godson. Marianne is marrying Robby (not to be confused with cousin Robby) in a couple of months. Yesterday we were building obstacle courses and making a haunted house from of Al's room. Then we'd experiment with the chemistry kit, disappointed that we couldn't make anything explode. We'd run around the neighborhood in a pack and pick from the aratilis tree.

Like I said, we left the parents out, did our own thing, and consequently, ate junk. Fun. But I noticed that Al and Carlo started to sound like their dad, Tito Bobby. And Marianne had her Tita Irene moments. And it wouldn't be totally outside the realm of possibility if I was talking like my dad, Robert, and that Gino was channeling our mom, Anne.

We're starting to be uncool, and I'm down with that.

Lots of stuff happening but I seriously can't bring myself to write about anything. I will force random content upon this blog.


My brother and his best bud, Marco, where production designers for the Cinemalaya 2009 entry, "Ang Panggagahasa Kay Fe (The Rapture of Fe)." We attended the premiere last night and I found myself actually liking the movie. I usually feel that one has to go through a gamut of heavy-handed, irony and humor deficient films to find gems (like Maximo, Jay and Endo) in Cinemalaya. But Fe was good. More than trying to be socially relevant, political or, god forbid, art, Fe was just an story told well.

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Finally got my film back from my US trip. It gave me an attack of self-doubt. Seriously. I've been doing this for long and I should be better. I should be constantly good, scratch that, I should be great.

But I'm not and I'm working on it.

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I turned thirty some days ago. I was toying with the idea of writing a list of thirty things. Like things I want to do, or things I know, or things about myself. But, god, can you imagine what a pompous ass I'd be?

I do know that I want to do more things that mean a lot to me this year. I'm saying I'm committing time, the most precious thing I've got, to making things that mean a lot to me. Hopefully it will have value for others too.

Also, I'm the luckiest sonovabitch in the world. In the stare down between the abyss and me, I'm holding my own. And it's because I've managed, by some fucking miracle of life, by some mystery of the universe, to surround myself with the awesomest people on earth. Even my dad says so. After my dinner last Sunday, he texted saying that he had a good time, and that my friends were all good people (natch!). That he could imagine me growing old with them and that it all reflects on how I've lived my life.

I like how he didn't care if I made any money or not. In my dad's eyes, I'm big time because of my friendships. Gee, Pa, I am only my father's son.

Anyway, I spent three continuous days last weekend just enjoying my friends and family and it was the best three days in a very good year so far. A very good year in an incredible life. Thanks Universe.

Nguan's Coney Island

Found Nguan's work via Feature Shoot and I'm liking his Coney Island series a lot.

to scale

I have friends who've gotten married and moved to the 'burbs. Which, in my personal opinion, means that they've moved to anywhere past Magallanes. In the map, where they live, it would say, Here there be tollgates. But it's a nice place, the one they've got. A late century bungalow with a huge empty lot adjacent to it that also belongs them. Before they planted... crops in that empty lot, it was the scene of a fictional body dumping that the wife told to the husband over SMS to freak him out. You know, for kicks. Fun couple, these two.

Anyway, they've been nesting, doing a bit of organizing, changing the layout of their living room. I want to be in that stage in my life too. Where I have my own largeish space that I can fix up or organize. Actually, better yet, I want to literally build my own house. Well, maybe not literally. I mean, how does one mix and pour cement. But I want to be very involved in building my house.

I was thinking about that while sitting in Starbucks, reading a book (Cryptonomicon, still), waiting for my lunch companion to make it. I was thinking if I could actually learn woodworking, build my own crossbeams and pillars out of good wood, to make a nice, high ceiling. And I said to myself that, yes, yes I can!

Only to realize quickly that patience and precision aren't my strong suits, and I'd probably go nuts trying to cut lumber into equal pieces, and sanding them all. I think my experience with building scale models as a kid should serve as a reminder. I didn't apply glue in the right amounts, and I didn't want to wait for the paint to dry to apply the second coat. From opening the box to holding a 1:24 Nissan NSX in my hands, I wanted to spend only an hour making it, tops.

It was only natural that I always ended up with motley painted cars with doors that wouldn't open, planes with wings that fell off, and WWII battleships already in post-Pearl Harbor state. So I'm really reconsidering literally building my own house, but I still want to be at that stage in my life.

Remember that crazy MGMT video for Kids? The one with a freaked out kid surround by monsters that scare even me (easy task, actually)? The one I posted above? Anyway, one of my favorite blogs, We Love You So interviews the director Ray Tintori. I like director/photographer interviews, so enjoy it here.

Also, I haven't been writing much, I know. I've been thoroughly enjoying being home. I know I've only been away for some three weeks but it's like I've gone nutty. I drive myself and I look for things that have changed. A lot have apparently.

Yet in the face of little upheavals I am, surprisingly, optimistic. Weird, really. Maybe because despite everything else, it's good to be home and be among you all again.

I've been home for a couple of days now, feeling groggy in the afternoon and waking up at 4AM. I've been spending my period of self-quarantine doing stuff I shouldn't do. Like going to the mall and having my trousers altered. Or having lunch out with my dad and brother. I also had a pre-prod meeting for work that starts next week. And last night, my brother and I had friends over for beer and chips.

I have many pending tasks though. I have a pile of receipts to record. I also need to find a new accountant. I also have to renew my business license. I need to have checks picked up (a good thing). And I have a lot of film and images from the trip to process, archive and/or send out. I also have to deal with the backlogged task of sending my short film out. Not to mention a pile of unread books to go through in the spare time.

I might also need a haircut. But anyway all these are jarring and comforting reminders that I am, indeed, home.