Three Series

Homeland

Described by the (the New Yorker or New York Magazine, I forget) as "24 for adults." Clare Danes may have described the Philippines as a country of cockoroaches but she sure does well as a paranoid, looney CIA agent. I forgive her. This one may really show who the real enemies are.

Suits

Don Draper has Doogie Howser as his sidecick. They all work in Ally Mcbeal's office. Another response to all the mud slinging against lawyers, or an attempt to show that not all of them are sharks in suits.

Boardwalk Empire (Season 2)

Shows about prohibition are always perfect with beer. The challenge of writers and producers is that audiences can predict plots. This season makes sacrifices to keep us surprised. It kills its own main characters, or commits transgressions against itself - that in the end seem not only believable, but logical.

Mario O'Hara has the Last Clap

We saw Mario O'Hara in Tanghalang Pilipino's The Whore of Ohio and Orpheus Descending. On front row seats, his voice was booming with cuss words. His saliva rainbowed with the halogen lights. He fleshed out his characters and they became larger than life. That's how I remember him. Mario O'Hara succumbed to complications of lukemia and passed away week ago.

I start to discover who he really was. How grand he is in real life as a film maker, actor and director who evaded fame and wrapped himself in a truly humble mystique. He won awards that he didn't accept himself, and opened the gates for Filipinos to the Cannes Film Festival. More importantly, he was a genuine advocate of social change and uncompromised, uncommercialized art while remaining among the ranks of artists/directors/filmmakers recognized only by a more enlightened, more tasteful few, myself excluded.

In the same way he declined interviews and accepting awards, maybe he would have frowned upon it now. How all the phonies, hipsters, and all the people like me who never really knew him would sympathize and pay him tribute.

But he has to understand, we are bound to give him this honor.

Days after his death, and I've been thirsting for information on what he was like in real life. I searh the net, and the accolades kept on running but never got anything he said himself. It is as though in real life, he is as plain or as unrecognized as all of us.

I wish he was on stage again, and I can be that usher who walks to him to give him flowers after curtain call. How I wish, I could recognize.

Gushing

I've unmounted the Kuya O.'s old bicycle from its rack in the garage. I cleaned it up, sprayed WD40 in the chains and re-inflated the tires. It's not so old anymore. My motivation came from reading David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries. Aside from the bike, and a perspective of a world through a bicycle, I got another golden nugget out of this book.



We've heard it positioned differently in more elaborate philosophies. Coming out of a book about cycling, this is even more beautiful. "The world isn't logical, it's a song."

I look at how the most important things in my world work right now. We are raising a little one. We look at serveral methodical ways of tracking his progress. Many of them are precise, and it drives away the precariousness of not knowing. We feel better about knowing how many words he should be able to say at age 2o months.

There is only so much in knowing. So we listen to this song. Our song now forms its own sentences: "Carry me, daddy" and "Can I dede, mummy?" It hums on to so many things that are bizarre, imprecise and abstract. At the same time, it starts building on so much grace and responds to your love and understanding. He hold your hand while walking, he leands on your shoulder while he reads or watches videos on an iPhone. He can now put his own choice of DVDs in the tray. He's figured out that iPhone from the slide to unlock a few months back, to playing with his own apps. He wouldn't take off his Spiderman costume. The song makes us gush.

He is moving on to Two now. Terrible Two, they call it. We couldn't be more excited. We're about to re-title this song. Terrible or not, I think it's going to be a Terrific Two.




Happy Second Birthday, I. Love from Mum and Dad.

The Sanitized Farm Experience

Listing the reasons of why and how we love her is an infinite enumeration. So among the list of an endless many, we dwell on some specificity. For one, the little one and I love D. for coming up with ideas for our weekend trips. We all love staying at home too, but she must have known that the little one needs to smell the grass, stare at open spaces, hear the sounds the world makes.

This weekend, we found ourselves at the "Balik Bukid" Country Fair at the Sta. Elena Fun Farm in Cabuyao. Sta. Elena is a gated community which is more of an estate, golf and country club over a farm. It also houses the Acacia school. We still dream about enrolling our little one in the that Waldorf school.

D. writes, We had a terrific time and I can tell from the face of the little one he found the whole place A.W.E.S.O.M.E. He laughed really loudly when we took him near the carabao resting beneath the tree but was really quiet when we rode the carabao-driven cart that took us around the farm. We decided to hang around the Kids' Playground where he enjoyed sitting on the swing, jumping on the trampoline, and balancing on the bamboo bars.

We chased chickens and geese, heard the cows moo out loud, and heard good music from the guest world/folk group who played. We were with M & L and their little one P. We all had time to lie in the grass. The farm folks let you use abaca mats for free. M. had a few cold cans of San Miguel Premium. I knew I can always count on him. Out there in the grass, thirsty from chasing little ones, it's a sweet quench.

We all had a genuine, wholesome-is-awesome time.


And you notice so many beautiful contrasts in the place, beginning with a farm within an golf and country club estate. We were trying to coin the term for it, and it gave the upper-class hippie feel. The folks who welcomed you at the registration site had the local bourgeoisie accent, or something that sounds like it. It's still summer, so some of the ladies who bought and sold products still had beach tans on mestiza skin. A foreigner who reeked of alcohol was drinking the organic beer they sold. This farm crowd and the owners/sellers at the fair had their own soapy-clean smell blended with the pervading smell of horse manure and cow dung. The wash areas will have flower or tea-scented soaps as well as newly-opened bars of white Safeguard.

The watermelon ice-drops we tried must've had a hint of mint and herbs and if that parch in your throat were a bull's eye, the ice drop hits it right on the spot.

Ultimately, the farm couldn't hold without a Starbucks. So there was a little Starbucks booth and people lined up. A real farm would barely have a real toilet, but this one had cleanest, nicest-smelling portalets we've ever used. We called it a sanitized farm experience. Except for the reasonably-priced food, we didn't even have to pay for anything.

It was also a quick, pleasurable drive and with no traffic. Playlists on queue, we cruised the Sky Way between 80-100 km/h and while driving requires concentration I thought a lot about how the little would remember how we drove as a family. We were home in a little over half-an hour. A 12km per liter fuel-efficient car like ours probably got us back and forth in less than 500 pesos. The toll fees would cost more than the gas.

With all the running around all day, the little one was already asleep in the car. D. & I have a dinner of soup and chicken wings with a few beers when we arrive home. We were tired. We describe "tired" uniquely, how this tired didn't make us distressed, but delighted. It left us eager, eager to live, as though we held the key to unscrew all these ironies.

Granular

Mactan, Cebu 2012

"Whoever designed this resort must have been obsessive-compulsive." D. says. It's as though they clean the sand to the last granule. Everywhere you looked, it was manicured and landscaped to perfection. It was as if all that you thought of doing or needing was thought-of for you. You can golfcar your way from the lobby to your villa. There are scheduled rides going to the city. There's a playground and day-care center for children. There's a fully-equipped gym. We kept asking if the tasteful furningshings were by Kenneth Cobunpue. You can have a massage by the beachfront, or at the quiet-zone zen-inspired spa. You can have them call a cab, or fetch you the paper. There are four restaurants within the resort. Like most of the places here, it had it's own private beach. The staff greeted you at every opportunity. The long infinity pool got our little I. to a repeated chant, pleading in his tiny voice: swim, swim, swim!

I. on the outdoor playground in front of the day care

Where our feet were at their best

On the redundance of listening to Urbandub while on a treadmill in Cebu.

Some of it came sincerely, and all of it of course, for the fee. There is a certain unnatural element in tailored places. It is not what it really is, but what it wants to become, or how it imagines itself. Well, we were no longer backpacking on unhinhabited islands. Once in a while we didn't want to worry about chores or have any cares for the day except to immerse into more of the pleasure.

Beer was at a golden 120 per bottle. Wine and cocktails ranged from 300-400 per glass. So we got drunk during happy hour, when you buy one and get one. It was right on time for the sunet. The outdoor bar called Azure played the classic chillout music that warped me into exactly what I needed to hear. I figured someone else still has a copy of the Salinas Sessions. We lounged under huge white sunbrellas, our three bodies splayed and spread out on plush daybeds that fit two 2 or more. The baybeds came with a view of the changing colors of sunset transforming into a skyful of stars. The side table had our beers, and his sippy cup.




Pizza always tastes better by the beach. We had vegetables and feta cheese with more beer. Tipsy enough before the prices go back up to regular hours, we head back to the garden villa. The little one swims some more in the bath tub. There's a already a 40-inch TV in the room, and another flat TV in the bathroom.




Lights out at 8pm. We talk a little bit about our adevntures in tents, sleeping bags, or the time we actually slept in the sand, by the beach from a few summers before. Tonight, the three of us sleep on what feels like 1,000-thread fabric against our burnt skin.

Bourdain Says So

It was happy hour, and we were having mojitos with a serving of sunset. The little one was busy playing with the sand. We've only been eating resort food, and the angus beef burgers and vegetarian pizzas we've ordered had their flair. But we were in Cebu, and it would be a sin not to eat lechon.



We take a cab out of the resort, to the Zubuchon in Mactan.

It triggers an association of a first discovery, like the first time you tasted candy. The pleasure of eating lechon skin is like that, except that it's not just sweet. It's steamy, crunchy, salty, and seeped in roasted fat.

We only went out of the resort once, and it was to eat lechon. Zubuchon distinguishes itself as a healthy lechon, or organic lechon and I have another oxymoron. The pig is fed only with organic food, was probably free to roam, with no MSG used in the preparations.

Organic or not, gobblig a half-kilo along with a few bottles of Pale Pilsen made the back of my neck stiffen a little bit. I felt my eyes chink, suggesting a cholesterol high. The taste consumes you completely, and you know you are somewhere else, but you belong. That's how, and where, lechon Cebu takes you.