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.