Bye Tita Cory!

Bullit Marquez, AP.

RIP Cory Aquino, figurehead of a revolution that toppled a dictatorship and made her our first woman president. While she missed out on carrying out a social revolution by enacting a land reform bill that helped keep her family's estate intact, and while she tried to block a Senate vote to kick out the US bases, I can't help but feel strongly about the passing of the woman who had the courage to modestly step into her dead husband's expansive shoes, face down numerous coup attempts, and restore our country's freedoms. While Ninoy said, "The Filipino is worthy dying for," Cory, always the simple and religious one, said, "Nagpapasalamat ako sa Diyos na ginawa niya akong Pilipino. Karangalan ko iyon (I thank God for making me a Filipino. It is my honor)."

Cory! Cory! Cory!

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.