The Natural Phenomenon of Madness

Posted on June 19, 2011 by Yoshke in Friends, Movies |

I remember back in college I was a Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival volunteer. I was part of the group of volunteers who organized the many events and gatherings leading to the launch of the film fest as an usher, editor, and more. After graduation, I had been completely out of the film loop as I turned into a corporate slave. Sad to say that the last time I saw a Cinemalaya film was when I was still a volunteer. I had not seen that many independent films since then. Shame on me, indeed.

I guess much of the reason I had not seen any indie film in a while was because I felt frustrated. After all, I loved filmmaking but it had been years since the last time I was a part of it.

This time is different, though. This year, I am going to see Cinemalaya films with a brand new attitude. I am ecstatic that many of my friends back in college are now part of Cinemalaya not as volunteers but as participants, as filmmakers. That makes Cinemalaya this year a lot more exciting for me.

One of the films participating in this year’s NETPAC is The Natural Phenomenon of Madness, directed by my Parmesan friend Charliebebs Gohetia, or simply Bebs. (Check out the reason why I call him Parmesan friend here.) And of course, I shall be watching his film FIRST. The Natural Phenomenon of Madness tells a story that is not just interesting but completely mind-blowing.

Two years after she was raped, a woman agrees to meet with her rapist in the beautiful ruins of Intramuros. As they have the same blood type, her rapist asks her to donate blood for his operation claiming this will lengthen his life and will give him ample time to seek redemption. The woman refuses to do so as she rediscovers she is still a victim of unrequited love towards her rapist.

Told in two separate perspectives, the story revolves around how the woman and man pick the pieces of their broken lives after the rape, meeting every so often at places that remind them of their past. They are confronted by the fact that they are both victims of each other: THE WOMAN struggles with loving no one but the man; THE MAN, struggles with his guilt knowing he can’t love the woman the way she wants him to.

If you’re going to watch Cinemalaya films, please support this film and put it on your list. Here’s the screening schedule of this film: July 21 CCP Little Theater 9pm & July 23 Greenbelt 3, Cinema 5 9pm

The Natural Phenomenon of Madness stars Jess Mendoza, Opaline Santos, Ces Aldaba, Regina Valenzuela, Patrick Esteban, Kimmy Buquia, Anthony Sarabia Torres, Xian Khou, Rjames Villaran. Directed by the one, the only (char) Charliebebs Gohetia!

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What Goes Around Comes a-Round

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Yoshke in Blurts, Rants, Vanities |

And I have come ’round. Like, really round.

Last weekend, I was in Cebu for the fifth time. While preparing for this trip, I checked out photos from my very first time in Cebu in 2009. And so, to see just how much I have changed and how “round” I have grown over the past two years, I decided to wear the same shirt and planned to have a pic taken at the same spot.

And the result?

I remember a conversation with a friend.

Friend: Kung ikaw ay alak, ano ka?
Yoshke: Ginebra. Bilog na bilog.

WAAAAAAAAAAH!!! I WANT MY MOMMY!!!!!!! Viewed 4110 times by 1207 visitors this month

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ABS-CBN’s New Lupang Hinirang Video | Where is Negros?

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Yoshke in Rants, Reviews, TV |

This morning, ABS-CBN launched their new Lupang Hinirang video. As usual, Kapamilya stars participated in this effort. The video was produced by Star Cinema.

To be honest, I love it. I’m not sure whether I love it better than the previous version but this one was well-shot, well-executed. I also liked that it’s short and simple.

The only comment I have is this: On the map of the Philippines shown at the end, where the hell is the Negros Island? I’m sure it was just an oversight but I hope that they fix it asap. After all, Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental are major players in Philippine history.

Anyway, here’s the full video. Lookie here. No Negros on the map.

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Akala Mo Lang Wala Nang SLUMBOOK, Pero Meron, Meron, MERON!

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Yoshke in Friends, Humor |

Once upon a time, I had a witty friend who had a witty idea. Her name was Tonet. “Yoshke, I have a brilliant concept for a business,” Tonet exclaimed.

“Ano na namang kagagahan ‘yan?” I asked, knowing her history of kagagahan.

“Let’s create a witty planner that will rival that of Starbucks,” my witty friend explained. “We will sell copies of it. It will be epic!”

“Haynaku friend, I’m so busy with my full-time job. I don’t know where to find time to create a witty planner with you,” said I, who was trying to prove my buzzkill reputation right.

We parted ways and she never brought it up again.

Months had passed when I received a message from her, asking me to blog about the planner she published with a new partner. “Wow, you pushed through with it. Congrats! Send me photos of its pages and if I found them hilarious, I’d blog about it.”

It was hilarious. I blogged about it. Others blogged about it. Needless to say, with the content of the planner, there was no way it would flop. Mainstream media picked it up while a cult following was brewing underground. Soon, my witty friends who created the planner called themselves Witty Will Save the World. I was so proud of them.

After the “I was supposed to get that Coffeehouse Planner but I got fat and broke on my 10th frappe” 2010 Planner, they released these two:

The “Akala Mo Lang Wala Nang Slumbook pero Meron Meron Meron” slumbook
The “Relaks Ka Lang Puso Lang Yan, Malayo sa Bituka” 2011 Planner

And now, after the success of their first slumbook, they are reprinting the “Akala Mo Lang Wala Nang Slumbook pero Meron Meron Meron” slumbook with added features. (When I say features, I mean kagagahan, haha.)

And in the spirit of friendship and fulfilling promises, I’m blogging about it. Oh, I take that back. The truth is, I’m promoting it not because of the friendship and the people behind it but because of the product. It is a real gem, a true treasure, a genuine jewel, and I’m running out of synonyms. It is epic. No, it is E-fawking-P-I-C.

So what is in the slumbook? Well, it has everything you expect in a slumbook and everything you don’t expect in a slumbook. You think I’m confusing you? I won’t do that! I love you coz you’re reading this blog. But I’ll just stop blabbing and let these photos do the talking.

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Resentment Grows Heavier

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Yoshke in Health, Rants, Vanities |

Dang it.

When I was in college, every time I stepped on the weighing scale, I’d pray, “Dear God, sana tumaba-taba naman ako kahit konti.”

Now, every time I do that I say, “OH GOD, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!”

Dang it! #MustLoseWeight Viewed 4523 times by 1199 visitors this month

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College Friends Bring On the Crazy!

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Yoshke in Conversations, Friends, Humor |

I clearly remember how my friend Dohna attempted to start singing Tina Arena’s Burn with “Do you wanna be a fo…” and tried to get away with it by claiming she was about to say “forest,” not “foet.” And how she shared some words of wisdom, telling me that “sometimes we have to eat our friends in order to live and because they eat us too.“

Well, Dohna is a college friend. And she’s not alone. There are a lot of people like her where she came from. Many of my college friends are hilariously epic.

College friends at Anawangin Cove

Meet Icang

Icang is your girl-next-door type, who just seems lost sometimes. Oh, make that most of the time. She’s the type who reacts to what my other friends and I are talking about just when we have completely moved on to the next topic. She’s adorable like that. No, really, she’s one of my favorite people in the world.

It had been years since I last saw her when we met at Greenbelt last week. I was still single when we last had a conversation and she had a boyfriend then. When we met again, we switched shoes. She was now single and I, happily committed. I was so excited to tell her how happy I was with my current relationship. “We’ve been together for over 2 years,” I said proudly as if saying there’s no way we would break up! “Two years, Icang, 2 years!”

She tapped my shoulder, smiled, gave me a look that I did not know what to make out of, and said “Good for you.” In my head, I was like What the eff was that?

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Farewell, Friendster

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Yoshke in Emo, Friends, University, Vanities, Web |

I’m so tempted to ask Friendster “What took you so long?”

Friendster has become irrelevant for many people and many of us expected it was only a matter of time before they announce to wipe out user content posted on their site.

Well, the day has come.

A part of me is mourning. Although I have not logged into my Friendster account since, like, forever, I still like the idea of having my profile out there for my old friends to see. I can say that Friendster was the first full-blown social networking site that I joined. I was a college sophomore then, the latter months of 2003.

Looking at my Friendster profile, I realized just how much I had changed. My Friendster profile is like a portrait of the old me, with testimonials reinforcing that image. It contains my previous dream of becoming a diplomat, my past ambition to become a filmmaker, and my obsession with fire. (Of course, it wasn’t an exactly accurate portrait. Coz if it were, I would’ve found the words ass, bitch, damn you, pathetic loser, wuss, lunatic all over my testimonials section. LOL.)

Speaking of testimonials, I’m saving the ego-boosting vanity posts (aka testimonials) here on my blog. And my reaction today as I backread. And just a heads up, every time you see the words kind, mabait, cool, note that it’s sarcastic. Hahaha.

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Sometimes We Burn to Live

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Yoshke in Emo, Family, Personal Life |

Whenever I meet people for the first time, it always happens.

When they start their sentence with “I hope you don’t mind me asking but,” I know they are going to ask about what happened to my left arm. Most of my online friends are not aware that I have a huge third-degree burn covering my left arm almost entirely. I usually wear a coat but whenever I ditch long-sleeved clothes, this prominent scar is hard to miss. It always steals the spotlight.

“I got it when I was four,” is what I usually respond with. I was a sheltered kid. When I was little, my mother would never let me step out of our property. I could never cross our fences and I was happily satisfied playing within the confines of our home and backyard.

One morning, my mum was working and my dad was away for a chore when a cousin Joj came over to play with me. We were both four and he was my constant playmate. Although his parents let him come over to our house, my parents would not allow me to return the favor. That morn, he talked me into doing the great escape. We left our home and walked a great distance to a crowded neighborhood in our village.

It had been an hour and I was having the time of my life, playing with kids in that neighborhood. Taguan. Tumbang-preso. Sikyo. Habulan taya. It was my morning of freedom. My mother wouldn’t know anyway, I thought. A few minutes before lunch, the kids and I decided to play one more game. The game was called Pandakekok. It was a game invented by these kids, based on a popular TV show at the time starring Keempee de Leon and Nino Muhlach. The mechanics of the game were simple. It’s pretty much like your ordinary habulan except when the taya catches you as he shouts “pandakekok,” you sit down like a frog until another player touches you again and then you become human again and start running.

Near our playing area was a deep pit where dried leaves and plastic garbage were being burned. The taya caught me near that pit and so I sat next to it. My cousin Joj saw that I had been turned into a frog so he ran towards me and tapped me so I could run again. The tap was a little too hard, it was more like a push. I was unable to keep my balance and fell right into the fiery pit. The pit was deep and I couldn’t climb out of it.

The next thing I knew, I was lying there, burning. I remember thinking that I should protect my back so I lay on my left side, making the fire devour my left arm and the melting plastic trash stick to it. To say it was painful was an understatement. I couldn’t get up. I don’t know how much time had passed until one of the residents there, Kuya Jim, jumped into the hole, picked me up and rushed me to the hospital 20 minutes away.

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The Giant Disco Ball

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Yoshke in Family, Mysteries, Oddities |

I’ve shared this experience with only a few close friends because I was afraid other people would think I was either a liar or a lunatic. But I swear to God this is true and this happened.

My mother’s eyes were glued to Charito Solis in the original Mula sa Puso teleserye when I left the house. It was around 7pm and I was waiting for my cousin Joj to meet me in front of our house for our nighty jogging. I was 11.

It had been our habit to go out and jog along the road, passing three barangays, go back to where we started and then run another lap. We were both in grade school and our parents were lenient to us as long as we tell them where we were going. We had been jogging every night for weeks that time but that night was different. A strange encounter would put an end to this habit.

Growing up in Batangas, I had an awesome childhood. Although not exactly remote, our barrio was not technologically advanced. The only metropolitan influence that anyone would find in that period was a Jollibee store, the only food franchise we had that time. For the kids my age, running kites, hunting spiders and stealing fruits from neighbors were our idea of adventure.

That night, we were already on our second lap when our jogging started becoming brisk walking. We were on the side of the road that cut across sugar cane fields. The evening was generally ordinary. It wasn’t dark; thanks to the lamp posts. Aside from an eatery, there were no houses along the road in the area; the nearest could be about tens of meters from it.

My cousin Joj and I decided to sit on some boulders nearby and rest. We weren’t afraid because there were big trucks carrying hundreds of sugar canes that pass by every now and then. Besides, there was an eatery some ten meters away. We sat and talked about so many things — our favorite anime shows, his classroom crush, his mother being strict at times.

Suddenly, it happened. We thought the light from the lamp post had turned red and green and had started to dance randomly. When we looked up to check the light, our jaws almost hit the floor. Several meters from the ground was a big, luminous ball. It was glowing and it just floated up there, not directly above us but it was close.

This is a screen cap from the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Horrible remake but this ball look like the one I saw when I was a child. Except it was much, much smaller and it was green and red.

The sphere was unlike anything I had seen before and unlike anything I would see in the years to come. It was big, maybe as big as a studio apartment or a bedroom or maybe smaller. Yes it was big but too small to be an alien spaceship based on the usual representations.

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Two Salesladies

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Yoshke in Conversations, Humor |

Coming from a meeting in Ortigas, I dropped by SM Megamall to buy a laptop bag. It was around 10:30 am and there were not so many people at Cyberzone. I entered a store and I was the only customer at the time. I was sharing the room with one saleslady who was busy at the counter.

After finally choosing the bag I wanted to purchase, I approached the saleslady and gave her the item. And then something weird happened. She looked at me from head to toe and then stared for a few seconds. It wasn’t condescending. The stare screamed of frustration, of remorse. I was wearing black denim pants, a T-shirt covered with a black coat and leather pants. She wasn’t saying anything so I broke the silence, “Miss, kunin ko na ‘to.”

She took the item and began preparing the paper bag. Then she spoke.

Saleslady: Sir, ilang taon na po kayo?
Yoshke: 24. Malapit nang mag-25.
Saleslady: Ano pong trabaho n’yo, sir?
Yoshke: Sa Marketing ako. Bakit?
Saleslady: Wala lang, sir. Alam n’yo sir, magka-edad lang tayo. Gusto ko rin po mag-marketing dati. Nung high-school ako, gusto ko yung ganyan. Marketing, advertising. Ganun.
Yoshke: San ka nag-college?
Saleslady: Naku, wag nyo na alamin, sir. Hindi rin naman ako nakatapos. Pero matalino daw ako, sir. Nasa top ako ng high school.
Yoshke: O, ano nangyari?

She paused. I swear there were some tears building up in her eyes.

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I blog for myself. This is a personal online journal of a nobody. Every person has a story. Every place brings back a memory. Every object triggers an emotion or a thought. What I blog about are these ordinary, average, little things, little happenings, little lives around me. But I have always believed that the universe is fueled by things common and little. And I hope that this blog, no matter how personal, would somehow touch, move, or inspire others the way they inspired me to blog. Even just a single person. Even just a little.

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