The Joy and Sadness called The Descendants: I heart George Clooney

So many films have claimed to taste the artificial nirvana called a perfect family gone awry, but nothing beats seeing George Clooney and Alexander Payne battle it out in such a simple bravado of a movie called "The Descendants." There's angst for the above 20s, unrequited love coming from the protagonist which sends everyone in the movie including the audience into a tyrannical tailspin.

My translation in words: Vivaldi's winter

Excellent. Wonderful. So it may be, perchance I'm not going to lose being Ms goody two shoes.

My favorite actor of all time: George Clooney's speech rephrased due to the request of all bashers who thought his speech was one of the ugliest of all time... For you..

We as part of an industry of making people see the play of human nature in all avenues of genres from comedy to drama,  are a little bit out of touch. In Hollywood every once in a while, it's probably a good thing. I think.  We're the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn't really popular. And we as the voice of thinkers and great solitude, you know, we bring up taboo topics, we are the ones—this great Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters.

 I'm proud to be a part of this Academy, proud to be part of this community, and proud to be out of touch. And I thank you so much for this.

It's a funny thing about winning an Academy Award, this will always be sort of synonymous with your name from here on in. It will be: Oscar winner George Clooney, Sexiest Man Alive 1997, Batman, died today in a freak accident....

Listen, I don't quite know how you compare life from art. You look at these performances this year, of these actors, and unless we all did the same role—everybody put on a bat suit, we'll all try that—unless we all did the same role, Nobody is the same.  I don't know how you compare it. They are stellar performances and wonderful work, and I'm honored, truly honored to be up here.


It's no William Faulkner but a great speech nonetheless.

The great optimism of my psyche

The destiny to redeem my single notion of love within, my hard won small victories and stone-cutting and unicorns of my dreams, and the ideals to bind my strength and wisdom, to gravitate towards good, a greater dream to end all nightmares.

Fishballs and Love

What a lovely afternoon said ! when the fishball vendor pass by our gate. A once in a blue moon rarity to eat fishball which I never experienced in my childhood nor in my St. Scholastica's Academy highschool days.


I will never forget you fishball, kikiam, and everything else banana cue.

My lovely poetic queen: Ophelia Dimalanta andher thunderstorm Read Me

whenever my voice flings arrows
your way at a fiery pace,
read, discover there is that
something in me that dies to go gentle.
for when i viciously tangle
with you trying to throw
you off course, inside, i am raring
to cover you, take you, become
all of me fire and fluid.
when i try to lord it over, empowered,
it is because inside i am already
slave groveling ready to heed your bidding,
crawling waves lapping you up
sea shore hillocks sky
all the way up, all drool and drivel.
and when i insolently seek out
pulpits to mount my gospel truths,
i am really one humped question mark
thrashing about for your steadying light.
and when i try to light you up whole,
there is really a part of your flame
i would want extinguished
to die rekindled in me alone,
and when i am wind taking roots
in your solid ground, i am roots as well
ready to take flight upon your wings.
when i prance around proud in times square.
i am child carousing in the greener
fringes of the heart’s final roosting.

read this idiolect,
read well, decode, detect,
and love me when i seem to hate.

–Ophelia Dimalanta

A song from a majestic voice Sylvia La Torre - Sa Kabukiran

When I hear this song, it makes me go back to my childhood of Bacolor. Lazy afternoons and secret adventures with my playmates going around the little farms surrounding our Barangay. Catching dragonflies, eating sugar cane, and singing Leron-leron Sinta.

Where's The Patis? A Beautiful essay by Carmen Guerrero- Nakpil

A Filipino may denationalize himself but not his stomach. He may travel over the seven seas, the five continents, the two hemispheres and lose the savor of home, forget his identity and believes himself a citizen of the world. But he remains- gastronomically, at least, always a Filipino. For, if in no other way, the Filipino loves his country with his stomach.

Travel has become the great Filipino dream. In the same way that an American dreams of becoming a millionaire or an English boy dreams of going to one of the great universities, the Filipino dreams of going abroad. His most constant vision is that of himself as a tourist.

To visit Hongkong, Tokyo and other cities of Asia, perchance or to catch  a glimpse of Rome, Paris or London or to go to America (even for only a week in a fly- specked motel in California) is the sum of all delights.

Yet having left Manila International Airport in a pink cloud of despedidas and sampaguita garlands and pabilin, the dream turns into a nightmare very quickly. But why? Because the first bastion of the Filipino spirit is the palate. And in all the palaces and fleshpots and skyscrapers of that magic world called "abroad" there is no patis to be had.

Consider the Pinoy abroad. He has discarded the barong tagalog or "polo" for a dark, sleek Western suit. He takes to the hailiments from Hongkong, Brooks Brothers or Savile Row with the greatest of ease. He has also shed the casual informality of manner that is characteristically Filipino. He gives himself the airs of a cosmopolite to the credit-card born. He is extravagantly courteous (especially in a borrowed language) and has taken to hand-kissing and to planty of American "D'you mind's?"

He hardly misses the heat, the native accents of Tagalog or Ilongo or the company of his brown- skinned cheerful compatriots. He takes, like duck to water, to the skyscrapers, the temperate climate, the strange landscape and the fabled refinements of another world. How nice, after all, to be away from good old R.P. for  a change!

But as he sits down to meal, no matter how sumptuous, his heart sinks. His stomach juices, he discovers, are much less neither as apahap nor lapu-lapu. Tournedos is meat done in barbarian way, thick and barely cooked with red juices still oozing out. The safest choice is a steak. If the Pinoy can get it well done enough and sliced thinly enough, it might remind him of tapa.

If the waiter only knew enough about Philippine cuisine, he might suggest venison which is really something like tapang usa, or escargots which the unstylish poor on Philippine beaches know as snails. Or even frog' legs which are a Pampango delight.

But this is the crux of the problem, where is the rice? A silver tray offers varieties of bread: slices of crusty French bread, soft yellow rolls, rye bread, crescents studded with sesame seeds. There are also potatoes in every conceivable manner, fried, mashed, boiled, buttered. But no rice.

The Pinoy learns that rice is considered a vegetable in Europe and America. The staff of life a vegetable!

 

 

Where is the patis?

And when it comes a special order which takes at least half an hour the grains are large, oval and foreign- looking and what's more, yellow with butter. And oh horrors!- one must shove it with a fork or pile it with one's knife on the back of another fork.

After a few days of these debacles, the Pinoy, sick with longing, decides to comb the strange city for a Chinese restaurant, the closest thing to the beloved gastronomic country. There, in the company of other Asian exiles, he will put his nose finally in a bowl of rice and find it more fragrant than an English rose garden, more exciting than a castle on the Rhine and more delicious than pink champagne.

To go with the rice there is siopao (not so rich as at Salazar), pancit guisado reeking with garlic (but never so good as any that can be had on the sidewalks of Quiapo), fried lumpia with the incorrect sauce, and even mami (but nothing like the down-town wanton)

Better than a Chinese restaurant is the kitchen of a kababayan. When in a foreign city, a Pinoy searches every busy sidewalk, theater, restaurant for the well- remembered golden features of a fellow- pinoy. But make it no mistake.