podspin 08/31

playlist

I Wanna Save You, Something Corporate
World Wide Suicide, Pearl Jam
Do You Want Me, Salt-N-Pepa
Talking In Your Sleep, The Romantics
Heaven Only Knows, Swing Out Sister
Fast Car, Tracy Chapman
In The Waiting, Zero 7
Aria, Delerium (feat. Medieval Babes)
Career Opportunities, The Clash
Sahara, Bond
Deadbeat Club, B-52s
Never Gonna Come Back Down [Single Edit], BT
Auf Achse, Franz Ferdinand
What U Gon' Do, Li'l Jon & The East Side Boyz (feat. Lil Scrappy)
Master of Puppets (live with SFO Royal Philharmonic), Metallica
Devil's Nightmare, Oxide & Neutrino
Pineapple Face (Pickering & Park Remix), Revenge
Jazzanova / Fedime's Flight, Thievery Corporation
Do It To Me, Usher
Crash, Gwen Stefani
My Favorite Game, The Cardigans
New Direction, Echo & the Bunnymen
Jeopardy, Greg Kihn Band
The Prisoner, Howard Jones
Senorita, Justin Timberlake
Meltdown, Missy Elliott
Operate, Peaches
Trust, Prince
Rock DJ, Robbie Williams
Whenever I Say Your Name, Sting (feat. Mary J. Blige)

lyon king

i first traveled abroad at age 23. then my sis beat me when she visited me here in new york at age 20. now my brother beat me as well at age 22! man, kids these days ...!

just kidding. when my brother finally got the call to fly on a business trip, i was so happy for him. i had to write him a lot of reminders, trying to be the big brother that i haven't been for awhile. i hope he even read my email - i mean i really held back on the fussiness part.

he was being sent by his company to Lyon, France. and one of the things i told him was to visit the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière. well, what do you know, the son of a gun did so.





the dude also went to Amsterdam, and it seems like he was there the same time my pal jego was cruising for chicks thereabouts. here he is in Schiphol Airport (where they sent back a plane because some passengers were behaving suspiciously).


after lyon, he (my brother) is going to swing by bangkok (hopefully not the phatpong district).

yo, get home safe, bro!

office space

prior to their Emmy win last night for outstanding comedy series, i managed to set up a marathon viewing of the past 2 seasons of The Office. being a fan of the Ricky Gervais original, i blew off the American version when it came out last year, fearing a repeat of the 2003 NBC remake disaster that was Coupling (another outstanding British comedy featuring Jack Davenport - 'Commodore James Norrington' to you Pirates of the Carribean fans).

a funny thing happened during the marathon.

actually ... funny happened.



i am now a fan of the American Office.

i've always watched out for Steve Carell, circa Anchorman and last year's solo flight, The 40 Year Old Virgin. with the upcoming Evan Almighty (sequel to Bruce Almighty), Carell's fast becoming the new Ferrell (as in Will). it definitely was a stroke of genius, casting him as the Boss from Hell, Michael Scott. Carell makes the original David Brent character totally his own. and how. i mean, i just wanna kill the guy whenever he comes up with another idiotic idea or a retarded scheme just to save his ass.

close behind my hit list would be Rainn Wilson, a very normal family man in real life, i'm told, but is a totally self-absorbed deluded jackass when playing assistant-to-the-regional-manager Dwight Schrute, a totally self-absorbed deluded jackass.



straight up, those two actors already did their jobs, and did it well, stroking that murderous rage in me. if i could stop laughing first.

if i had a complaint with the original Office, it would be Gervais' (or BBC's) decision to only release 6 episodes a season. is that how its done in the UK? 6?!? that's not gonna fly here, where everything is done supersized and the lucky TV series get recycled in syndication. nope, my marathon consisted of 28 episodes bookending two weekends. the first season was a tentative one, only with 6 (mostly a rehash of the original Office threads), but good audience buzz allowed NBC to risk making a full 22-episode slate, a risk that paid off handsomely at the Emmy derby.

and for good measure. the writers, having the main core of characters already set up for them, expanded the stage and mined a lot of stories that connected well with American audiences. i don't think they watered down the material, as purists might think. for me, if it works, it works.

and boy it does. i couldn't find a weak episode, or at least one that didn't stir something out of me - mostly mirth. a sampler would be Jim's (John Krasinski) constant search for jokes to play on Dwight (like putting all his desk stuff inside the vendo machine), Michael mistaking the turban-wearing IT guy for a terrorist, the Halloween episode with Dwight dressed as a Sith having a testy exchange with Michael's twin head, the tightwad Angela (Angela Kinsey) looking down on all women expressing themselves but secretly knocking boots with Dwight, Michael singelhandedly destroying their warehouse ... and the look on the office temp Ryan's (episode writer BJ Novak) face as he was being berated by Stanley (Leslie Baker), after he thought Ryan was trying to pick up his teenage daughter - it was actually the other way around ... priceless.


there's a slight twinge of regret that i didn't follow the series right out of the gate, but the beauty of today's technology is you can catch up if you spare the time. yeah, your pals will just roll your eyes and think you're so yesterday, but who cares? march to your own drum, which also makes the characters in The Office so rich and normal and crazy.


the soul of good comedy (as opposed to Jackass-level comedy) is still heart. and in The Office, the writers go pulling your heartstrings with the will-they-or-won't-they routine with Pam (Jenna Fischer) and Jim (same situation as the original series' Tim and Dawn characters). Pam has been engaged to warehouse guy Roy for 3 years and would be going for a 4th if he hadn't finally popped the question. the problem is, she's also enamored of Jim, who's just her perfect best friend and logically, her perfect soul mate. the worst thing is, he feels the same way. they're perfect together. but life never is.

it was definitely gracious of the American team to have Gervais himself on hand during the Emmys and thanked him profusely. i thank him too, for allowing this one to be remade for US audiences. next stop, Extras.

of course, just like everyone else, i am on the edge of my seat wondering what will happen to the star-crossed lovers, who endured a whole season of flirting and yearning and unspoken words and hidden feelings and ended with this cliffhanger:


season 3 begins on Sept. 21 ... only less than a month to go!!!


yes, i know i used the title of one of the best comedy movies ever for this post. but hey, its fitting, you Lumbergh.

heard

and i can still hear the train. aaargh. (ok, that would save my life but still ...)

(Can't You) Trip Like I Do, The Crystal Method
(Hey You) What's that Sound, Les Rhythmes Digitales
1 Thing, Amerie (feat. Eve)
Guilt is a Useless Emotion, New Order
Mediate, INXS
If Everybody Looked The Same, Groove Armada
If I Had No Loot, Tony! Toni! Toné!
(Goin') Wild For You Baby, Karrin Allyson
J.A.R. (Jason Andrew Relva), Green Day
I Touch Myself, The Divinyls
The Turnpike Down, Lemonheads
Citadel, Anna Nalick
Gone, Kanye West (feat. Consequence & Cam'Ron)
Outrageous, Britney Spears
Witch in the Ditch, Erasure
When You Really Love Someone, Alicia Keys
Wasted Time, The Eagles
Train Of Thought (Remix), A-Ha
Supermoves, Overseer
Love Is A Stranger, Eurythmics
Latin Girls, Black Eyed Peas
In Public, Kelis (feat. Nas)
Don't Ask Me Why, Billy Joel
Cosi Ti Amo, The Dining Rooms
Beautiful Life, Ace of Base
Age Of Loneliness, Enigma
Love Junkie, Angie Stone
Rain in the Summertime, The Alarm
Nobody Knows, Pink
The Space Between, Dave Matthews Band

the notebook

after a month of waiting, The Office finally replaced my aging 5-year Compaq EVO ... with a Lenovo R60 (The ThinkPad Formerly Known as IBMs). of course, the 80 Gb was instantly halved during file transfer.

best feature so far: fingerprint reader. yes, you have to pry this laptop from my cold dead fingers. and then chop off my cold, dead index finger.


2nd best solution: try to find any object i may have held. if you can get a print off that, you can use it to make a wax imprint or something.

wait, why the hell am i giving you advice about this?

jacks galore - a 3rd USB port, finally a FireWire port (though a 4-pin one), the usual RJ-45/11, LCD adapter, audio/mic and dual PCMCIA card slots.


didn't get a DVD burner (but thats ok), the 2 USBs (one already defaults to a mouse - i prefer that to the Touchpad), and yeah - an S-Video Out (too bad my TV is old school).


wide keyboard; you can practically fit your head on it - when you nod off


love that 1400x1050 res (same with my personal ThinkPad but this screen is bigger)


cons: heavier, bulkier
pros: fingerprint reader, faster performance (1.83Ghz but souped up to 1.5 Gb RAM), huge screen

at first glance, Lenovo seems to be worthy to carry the ThinkPad legacy. i don't know why anyone even bothers with Dell. HP/Compaq? ehh. Sony VAIO? you gotta be kidding.

a plan

one of the things i'd like to inflict on the worlddo is to have my own internet radio and play my collection 24/7. yeah i mean, i can do that, right?

The Living Daylights, A-Ha
Please (You Got That ...), INXS
You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk, Pet Shop Boys
Pleasure (acoustic), The Railway Children
We Be Burnin' (Legalize It), Sean Paul
Atom Bomb, Fluke
Fly on the Windscreen (DJ Jynx´s Dark Fluid Mix), Depeche Mode
Speedfreak, Koma + Bones / The Crystal Method
I'm A Slave 4 U, Britney Spears
Nympho, Armand Van Helden (feat. Virgin Killer)
Strawberry Bounce, Janet Jackson
German Girl, Lotus Eaters
She Will Be Loved, Maroon 5
The Way You Move, Outkast (feat. Sleepy Brown)
Don't Cha, The Pussycat Dolls
Himala, Rivermaya
The End Is The Beginning Is The End, Smashing Pumpkins
The Don of Dons (Put de Ting Pon Dem), Supercat (feat Jadakiss)
April in Paris, Thelonious Monk
Original Of The Species, U2
Whirlpool Heart, The Wild Swans

soap opera

despite taking the #1 spot for last weekend's movies, the slithering SOAP (Snakes on a Plane, for laymen) only banked $15M to barely beat Talladega Nights (another on the to-watch list). does this mean internet hype is as bad as trailer saturation to make a potential hit movie earn less than expected? SOAP neither had TV trailers nor the usual advanced screenings for critics. but the internet hype generated over the last few months was tsunami-c.



anyway, it was good enough with the hype, and notwithstanding the fact that it may have given terrorists another option to make our life miserable, it was quite a guilty pleasure to wish some nasty annoying people to be victimized by the CGI reptiles. you will have to suspend your disbelief in bursts, but it will be quite a ride anyway.

in other news, you know that this movie is exactly a template for real life, as suspected JonBenet killer John Mark Karr arrived safely today in L.A. (in business class though) from Bangkok. what they didn't tell us, was that "other interested parties" didn't want Karr to be blabbing his head off and getting into a media circus. so they set some snakes loose in that flight - but too bad, a Samuel Jackson-like character saved the day.

the house of m

my biological mom passed away when i was 9. my dad remarried soon enough, and for most of my life, i have called and considered his wife as "mom". born to a large family, it was quite controversial then that she married someone 20 years older (ah, you know how family is). if anything, that event made me a big brother - i had actually a sister and brother to call my own. that, i think, was the first time i had responsibility thrust onto me. and on through my early adult life, i've always had it with me; not always an easy thing to bear, but it certainly helped shaped me as to who i am. for this, i will always be grateful to her.

just like i gave a nod to my dad during his birthday, here's my version of props to my mom too.

Hardy Boy
having to "woo" a stepchild to build a future harmonious relationship, my parents went for the jugular - what would a 10 year old boy like me be interested in? Hardy Boys mystery books (i can hear the catcalls of "dork!!" somewhere out there). i used to read/collect the entire series, and at 25 pesos a pop, they weren't cheap back then. she probably was wondering how many books it would take to get 'my blessing' for their wedding. of course, i repaid those books by pouting thru the whole ceremony. if you look at all their wedding albums, yep, there's me, ornery like an old man, seemingly on a corner of every photo. sorry about that, mom.


Its a Bird, Its a Plane ... Its ... Spare Parts!
she will always remember this, and will never let me live it down. i had this model kit of a fighter jet, and as a young boy, you really don't have a lot of patience or dexterity, and even building one can be an achievement of sorts. there it was, on the top of my study table, poised to take to the skies ...

... until it came crashing down to the floor, a bunch of disconnected parts. yeah, my mom was cleaning furniture and the plane got knocked off its perch.

the conspiracy theory here is this was during her second pregnancy and i was the object of her period of 'paglilihi' - which can be somewhat described as the collection of cravings, fetishes and unreasonable wants during a woman's pregnancy. she wanted to beat my skinny ass, and she took that out on the plane instead. she promised the crying boy that she would replace the model plane, but she never did.

to this day, we look back fondly at this and share a good laugh.


Now You See It, Now You DOST
now this is one for the books. trying for a chance at a highly-coveted Department of Science and Technology scholarship through college (yes, to help my parents, but more for the prestige, hahahaha), i took the qualifying exams during the final year of my high school. needless to say, i was one of the two who earned it from my school. comes the hard part of the interview, traveling to the big city to meet the DOST people, who'll ultimately have the final say. my mom and i were nervous, because scholarships are more likely granted to poor but deserving kids, and while i may be deserving, we certainly didn't qualify for the poverty level. my dad was more confident, noting that 'they'll give it based on merit rather than income tax return statements'. my mom purposedly dressed down for the occasion (not that she always dresses up), just not to attract any attention to lifestyle and the like. and during the interview portion, i think she made a run for Best Actress. or Best Supporting Actress. she practically made me look like i wear hand-me downs, eat only one square meal a day (that might be lunch), but i had some brains that might make me a valuable contributor to Philippine society and an asset to the country.

next thing i knew, we were sending a telegram to my dad (yes, Virginia, there wasn't any email in those days): Tuition Problem Solved STOP Dont Sell The Carabao STOP. am kidding, but yeah, we sent a telegram that saved my dad a few years of college tuition (which he also construed to mean, not to send me lunch money as well). to his credit, he accurately predicted the outcome.

and my mom also made sure i still got lunch money somehow.


Have License, Will Drive
after obtaining a driver's license after college (yes, underhandedly ...), i never got around to using it until she made me. we used to have an old beat-up Toyota Tamaraw (which broke down on us more times than i can remember). i could drive around our town but never went on a long drive taking the highways. i was scared shitless. until one day she got me out of the house, told me to start the rickety vehicle and just drive. before i knew it, i crossed the provincial border, made it to Cabagan, a town fairly famous for its vamped-up pancit, and officially became the family driver (when my dad can't make it).

never drove in Manila, but that wasn't by choice. and no regrets.


Hard Knock Life, Vol. 1
after she left the bank she worked with for a good 10 years, my mom kind of drifted in terms of her career in the ensuing years. i can barely remember the various entrepreneurial ventures my parents indulged in, during the last few years of my college tenure. what i do remember is her selling insurance, and opening a shoe store near my sibs' school. selling shoes is no picnic. i've accompanied her on debt-collection trips due to people's bouncing checks that left us empty-handed. as for the insurance thing, she had the unfortunate experience of being scammed by her colleague in the trade. i wish life for her turned out to be better, but wishful thinking doesn't really get us anywhere. by all those sacrifices, my sibs can never say they went hungry during the lean years.


The IT Job
i mentioned before that my dad found the newspaper ad that led me to my first job in a software company, but it was my mom who provided the support for me to even march up there and take the interview. she was mistaken as an applicant too. but i think she was more excited for me than i was, when i got the job (that paid P6,500 monthly, before taxes - $1650 annually for conversion-happy readers). i will always remember my starting salary, if only because her being there for me. that foot in the door led me to many fruitful years in this company (which i am still with). aside from that, office birthdays were usually a grand affair - and my mom always made sure i brought different stuff (puto biñan, anyone?) from the usual, when it was my turn to feed the hyenas. i wonder how many of my officemates/ex-officemates remember those times.


Hard Knock Life, Vol. 2
with my sibs hitting high school and their college years on the distant-yet-incoming horizon, and career/earning opportunities not too bountiful in our town, my mom had to make the painful decision of leaving them behind with my dad, and take a gamble and find a job in the big city, along with me. it was a start-from-scratch thing - we didn't have our own place (our current abode in Muntinlupa was still a chunk of concrete amidst the tall grass), we barely made ends meet, given our starting level salaries. her first job was at a credit company in Robinson's Galleria, where to save on money, she mostly went to the same place in the foodcourt all the time, because they had the cheapest combo meals. i remember we were staying in this small ... let's just call it a room ... in Cubao... that had rats at night and the haughty landlord thought we were scamming him out of thousands of pesos if we were late with the rent. i mean, that just sucks. the best memory i had of that place was we got a big milkfish from the nearby Murphy market and had a nice inihaw na bangus for dinner. yes, mom, i remember that. we didn't have any chairs or a real table but we had bangus.


Laba, Kula, Plantsa, repeat
too often, we take our youth for granted, yearning to live free from the shadows of our parents, and explore the great unknown without their guiding hand. for myself, i had my share of rebelling and sojourns into mischief and mayhem, although if i look back at it now, it still seemed as if i can't compare it to any of the experiences of young people (that i know of and read about). your early 20s is typically spent having fun, hanging out with friends, consume amounts of alcohol, score with the opposite sex as often as you can - this is an offshoot of you ostensibly having a job to pay for your extracurricular expenses. but mostly i seem to remember doing laundry.

in the spirit of tough times back then (don't worry, there are still tough times to this day), i would feel somewhat guilty if i didn't help her out in the household chores. yes, we had our little washing machine, but my mom's old school, in terms of handwashing what needs to be handwashed. and there's the ironing thereafter. i learned the rudiments of ironing clothes from her. made it handy here in America, given that most Westerners don't seem to mind wearing rumpled clothing. and whenever i move to a new place in the last 7 years (be it a hotel or an apartment), one of the first things i check out, and have to have, is an ironing board. yes, that's my mom working through me.


Pride Chicken
it is with great pride that i hold my mom with high esteem in her steering clear of let's say, ... the instinct to accept easy money as it may appear in our lives. despite the aforementioned case with the DOST (hah! government bureaucrats pocket a lot more than they shelled out for my college education), we as a family, are not flush with liquidity and assets, and this can get so frustrating at times. but despite the options to ... live the easy life with wealth that can never be hard-earned, or to even say morally obtained, my mom avoided this trap, even living from paycheck to paycheck, and with the ever-present debts - i would know, because we did it together. oftentimes, i wish she doesn't have to go through that, that at her age, i wish i could do more to let her live a bit more comfortably, and not worry about daily expenses. no such luck yet, but our favorite phrase is "God will provide." so far, it gets us by.


Weight For Me
no, i am not talking about someone's body mass and the gravitational force acting upon it. i am touching upon the burdens of everyday life, and also the not-so-everyday. since my dad had a stroke last year, it has reset the status quo and it has been up to my mom to care for him, at the same time juggling her career, two young adult children starting up the ladder of life, and two households. she has superbly managed to somehow fill my dad's shoes in running his school, and some of his ability to schmooze with relatives on my dad's side. considering that she encountered some frowns and skepticism as to her sudden role as the new wife and a stepmother - and with this latest colorful event in our lives - i would like to think she's proving them all wrong and doing it with flying colors.


happy golden birthday, mom! God will provide!

what if?

yeah, what if ...?

maybe we would have sunk back to trad pols and corruption. he could have been assassinated while in office. there could have been civil war.

but maybe that should have been the way to rock us out of our lazy asses and really care for our country.

instead, 4 presidents later ... we haven't moved beyond 1986.

also instead, we got this:



yes, hug each other. that's gonna restore our national dignity and pride.

sandaan? sa hinaharap!

rejoice, kids!

clarity

i'm back to using my iPod's default white earphones, owing to the fact that my Shure earphones had wire damage. don't get me wrong - they gave me the best sound for 2 years; its my fault that i didn't take care of the cables when not in use. now i miss it a lot, because i can hear the inferior quality of the iPod earphones. i have to turn up the volume just to hear anything (or was i deaf already), which further risks my hearing. Shure definitely cancels noise, and even the roaring approach of a subway train doesn't prevent me from grooving to the Crystal Method, or hearing what Colin Cowherd was ranting about.

replacement Shures: $100. maybe next month.

playlist:
Keep The Faith, Bon Jovi
Somewhere in The World There's A Cowboy Smiling, Blue Zoo
Fuego, Bond
Zombie, The Cranberries
Bound Too Long, The Crystal Method
#1 Crush (Porn Remix), Garbage
Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!), Garbage
Why Do You Love Me, Garbage
Wild Horses, Gino Vannelli
Black Sweat, Prince
The Passenger, Siouxsie And The Banshees
Lush Life, Sugababes
Let's Go Forward, Terence Trent D'Arby
Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me, U2
The Promise, When In Rome
Trust Me, Voice of the Beehive
Juicebox, The Strokes
Let Her Go, Strawberry Switchblade
Rikki Don't Lose That Number, Steely Dan
A Love Bizarre, Sheila E.
Pon De Replay (Full Phatt Remix), Rihanna
One Vision, Queen
Sexual Thing, Poison
Home and Dry [Blank and Jones Remix], Pet Shop Boys
Want You Bad, The Offspring
Broken Promise, New Order
H. W. C., Liz Phair
Around the Way Girl, LL Cool J
Low Tide of the Night, Everything But the Girl
Bedroom Toys, Duran Duran
It's All Been Done, Barenaked Ladies
Smooth Criminal, Alien Ant Farm
Mr. Man, Alicia Keys

buccaneer

Secrets of Pirate Bay - an informative article from Wired Magazine.

So far, i still use a couple more sites other than Pirate Bay. while the party's still rocking.... :-)

pet sounds

since i cant play DJ with my iPod on the subway (tried it a few times but still inconvenient as well as risky), i just make a preset music playlist. listening to podcasts most of the time (ESPN and the always-engaging Filmspotting), its always a treat to switch to music. current playlist looks like this:

Would You...?, Touch & Go
One More Night, Phil COllins
The Lazarus Heart, Sting
Butterfly Caught, Massive Attack
Never Let Me Down Again (live), Depeche Mode
Mr. Malcontent, Lloyd Cole and The Commotions
Crack Music, Kanye West (feat. The Game)
Not Ready To Make Nice, Dixie Chicks
I'm Not The Man I Used to Be, Fine Young Cannibals
Robot, The Futureheads
Vapor Trail, The Crystal Method
Firestarter (instrumental), Prodigy
Once In A Lifetime, Texas
Breathe (2 AM), Anna Nalick
Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First), John Mellencamp
Spy in The House of Love, Was (Not Was)
King of Snake, Underworld
New Jack Theme, Living Colour
Giant Steps, John Coltrane
New, No Doubt
Right To Be Wrong, Joss Stone
Tic-Tac-Toe, Kyper
Open Your Heart, Madonna
Penny Lover, Lionel Richie
Club Foot, Kasabian
Cold Hard Bitch, Jet
While We're In Love, Ivy
Deep and Wide and Tall, Aztec Camera
African and White (live), China Crisis
Love You Down, INOJ

this is better than putting your iPod on shuffle. also, not to dis other 'Podders, but having a huge amount of space allows me to put in a lot more, thus making for varied musical fare anytime.

new downloaded'appropriated' stuff for the 'Pod:


A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, Panic! at the Disco
with such song titles like The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage and Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off, it takes a few replays to get into this alternative pop gang. but with I Write Sins, Not Tragedies getting positive coverage and MTV video nominations, they are if nothing else, an interesting listen.



Highway Companion, Tom Petty
highway companion, indeed. just when i was ready to hop on the hog and go driving, Petty cranks down the tempo on some of these road trip babies. oh well, maybe he wasn't being literal. life itself, is a highway, after all.



A Girl Like Me, Rihanna
despite a tendency to dismiss the next product of the R&B teen sensation factory, you can't help but notice a select few like Rihanna. with other influences like soca, dancehall and reggae, this Barbadan enthralls as good as any ear candy. easy favorites are Pon De Replay, S.O.S and Unfaithful.



Broken Boy Soldiers, The Raconteurs
never got Jack Black,.. i mean, Jack White or the White Stripes, despite his current status as a hip rock star. i think i own an album or two but never got around to listening to it. as the Raconteurs, White gathered a few friends and issued a collection of 60's-tinged psychedelic pop songs that ostensibly comes from a 'supergroup' though White is the only bona fide star in it. still takes more than a couple of spins to get it down though. maybe i need some weed.



In My Mind, Pharell
after engineering a lot of hits for R&B and pop superstars as an über-producer, the esteemed Mr. Williams finally comes out with his own album. truth be told, i like it better when he delves more into smooth "Frontin'"-territory ("Young Girl/I Really Like You", "Take It Off", "Stay With Me") rather than the pure hip hop/rap stuff.



Loose, Nelly Furtado
she's like a bird and she's free. sporting a new look, attitude and sound (courtesy of hip hop producer Timbaland), this isn't the folky-pop Nelly of 5 years ago. and with the way "Promiscuous" is burning everyone up right now, that should still be good news for her.



Under The Iron Sea, Keane
if you have already overdosed on Coldplay, this band is not for you. especially since they love the piano and don't have guitars in any of their recordings and repertoire. going past their controversial one-upmanship incidents with other bands and musicians (Oasis, James Blunt, the Darkness), Keane's slow numbers can become tedious and if they ask me, they should go more along the vein of "Is It Any Wonder". but what the heck do i know? i'm just not into dark and heavy stuff. at least not Keane's.



Why Try Harder? Greatest Hits, FatBoy Slim
the cover itself should already convince you to get this album. or ask someone to give it to you. like me. and if you don't know who the hell FatBoy Slim is, run for your life because i'm gonna hunt you down like the dog you are.



Stranger Things, Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians
even mellow rockers mellow, as i can see Edie reuniting with the Bohemians and make music that would be relevant to them, after the years have gone by. i always have their debut album as my frame of reference and their high watermark, so i wouldn't peg this reunion as something that would make me forget Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars. there's still enough playful campfire music ("Long Lost Friend", "Stranger Things", "No Dinero") to go around and enjoy Edie's warblings.



DP, Daniel Powter
at first, i thought i was gonna be hearing some kind of emo crap. no fear, its just another Canadian singer/songwriter trying to get you to listen to his stories. to his credit, Powter isn't boring ... he just needs to work on his falsetto. gems include "Bad Day" and "Song 6", adding himself to the list of interesting purveyors of adult pop.



Corinne Bailey Rae, Corinne Bailey Rae
magical, magical, magical. "Like A Star" is already more than worth the price of admission. 'nuff said.



Infected, The The
a great find during Virgin Megastore's current 80s sale (yes, Virginia, i still buy CDs). for $9 i found the best The The album i ever owned. obviously the tape's been played to shreds back home, and re-releasing it in CD and getting it at a lower cost to boot - no second thoughts. singer/songwriter Matt Johnson's political and emotional ramblings wrapped in danceable art-rock slap you hard until you can't ignore him. me, i learned that lesson back in 1989.



Baby, The Stars Shine Bright, Everything But The Girl
finally - my long-lost EBTG album has returned to me. the other great find in the aforementioned Virgin Mega sale, listening to Ben and Tracey's take on orchestral pop music again brough back memories of late high school/early college life. my tape wasn't even of the higher-quality BASF kind, which means after some months or so, hiss creeps in the sound. despite the CD going the way of the dodo soon, i'm still grateful i still found a CD copy of this. and if you aren't familiar what songs are in this album, i have 3 words for you - "Cross My Heart".

which brings us now to the pop diva face off.

Gwen Stefani's off raising a baby, Madonna has been swallowed by Kabbalah, and Britney continues her makeover as white trash mom. who wants to rule the scene? well, we have a couple of contenders here: the emerging Pink and the comebacking Xtina.



Aguilera still has the pipes despite the long layoff. her comeback album, as the title suggests, is chockful of nods and tributes to musical styles of the past (won't be hard to imagine her diva-ing it up in a smoky jazz lounge, or in a Broadway cabaret line). this is okay, except she went a bit overboard with the volume of material - its as if she's apologizing for taking off to get married and all, and serves us up a double disc. that's stretching it for me, as much as i appreciate her superior voice over most of her peers.

and then we have Pink, who had this album out for more than a couple of months now. like Xtina, Pink wants to remind everybody that she'll still around, and she's left her teen pop peers behind as well. i'm more partial to her at this point, showing off several shades of her pop singer craftsmansip and her opinions on issues of the day - she even writes (with the Indigo Girls, for good measure) a personal letter to Bush. but i like her better when she rocks out like in "Stupid Girls", "Who Knew", the title track and her Peaches impersonation "U + Ur Hand". with this album, Pink demostrates her capability for versatality and longevity that very few even grasp.

Verdict: Pink wins by a couple of highlighted hairs.

a janitor gets to eat too, right?

that's it. i'm officially applying at Google.

*lol*

peace off

your move, Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, Iran and all of you who don't have anything constructive to do with your lives except start conflicts*.

* and don't be a fucking wiseass and tell me the conflict has already begun way back; we're talking about your little adventure more than a month ago. Israel wasn't doing anything until you kidnapped their soldiers, morons.

have flight, will bomb

and here we go again ... !


no word yet as to the ethnicity of those arrested in London involved in the alleged plot. but i can bet that they're neither Icelanders, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans or Filipinos.

n'labo

ok, this will work even for those Taglish-speaking losers, but what happens if ... the guard disappears somewhere and a vagrant who doesnt understand English and doesn't know what the hell's going on wanders by?

(thats a recent pic of the area near the magnificent, expected-to-blow, Mt Mayon in the Philippines)


its just like putting stoplights with a "Hinto" sign to stop people from crossing, and "Go" for the opposite. Eh??

i swear, nakakaloka!

if you can't beat it ...

... resist, and resist mightily. the heat, that is.

entering the third day of this sweltering heatwave on the East Coast, i barely made it through the night again. not being able to afford an A/C in my Brooklyn hovel, for financial and practical reasons, i really have to make do with my electric fan on max all night.

what else to do to cool off? although this is the hottest its been in the city in years, i've learned a few things here and there, so i have a routine down pat. drink, drink, and drink. cold water has never been better. waking up at 2 AM to take a cold shower is not unusual anymore. i also put a little pail of water beside the bed with a soft towel, to dab myself at night when i get too wasted and sleepy to stagger over to the bathroom. in the mornings, i make sure everything i need to bring to work is ready before taking a shower, so when i get out i waste little time in getting dressed and picking up my backpack. when i leave my building, my body's still a bit drenched.

the subway is a bit of a pickle. you have to have great timing sometimes, because trains may not always be waiting in the station. like today, the train was just leaving when i got to my station, so i had to wait a few more minutes for the next one to arrive. subway stations are not airconditioned - shame on you, money-grubbing maniacs of the MTA - so they mimic the conditions outside. i always feel like a pizza in an oven during the worst of the hot months. you can feel the sweat running down your back, brow and neck in buckets, and you just wish the next train was there right NOW! the MTA even springs a joke on you when the first subway car you rush into has no airconditioning, and the doors close before you can switch to another car. nooooooooooo!

i guess am still lucky because i only have to wake up early (or thereabouts) and just make it to the office as soon as i can (i bring lunch so i don't have to go out there - wait, where the hell is my lunch today?! damn!). 164 people died in California, and the West Coasters always boast about the nice weather over there (no shoveling of snow from the sidewalks during the bitter winter season). CNN reports that a Boston zoo feeds the lions frozen blood, and thats kinda like humans having italian ices (kidding). and who can forget the recent Queens blackout, of which to this day they're still getting outages. the other night, i thought my neighborhood would have one too, because the lights suddenly started dimming and the fan seemed to slow down. that's the supply trying to keep up with the demand. just when i thought i left the blackouts behind ...

at least, this is supposedly the last day of this heatwave, and temperatures should cool down by tomorrow. by february, we'll be bitching about the freezing weather.

in other good news, the weather had no effect at all on FedEx, as they delivered my sibs' gifts today, just a couple of days after i ordered it online. wow. my sibs will be smiling soon enough. this should probably excuse me from posting a blog extolling my affection for them. nyhahahaha.

cuba goody?

what? did their country just return to democracy? so what if Fidel stepped down? if i were a Cuban, i'd wait awhile before shaking my body and doing the conga beat.

note: if indeed Raul Castro relaxes the rules and made peace with the United States, will we see a return of Elian Gonzales (who might turn out to play beisbol for the NY Yankees in 2013)?

looking back, looking in

for the first time ever, a federal court posts exhibits for a criminal case, online.

almost 5 years later, has justice been achieved?