20 June 2010, 5:16pm

Listening to John Mayer's "Daughters" and crying my heart out.  Fortunately, my cousin is sleeping and our two other flatmates are out. Don't worry, I'm perfectly fine. It's just that today is Father's Day, and it seems like a good day as any to think about how I've come to terms with the bitterness I carried for years against my father. I've gotten over a lot of things a long time ago, but thinking about the years I spent being angry with him makes my heart ache because those are years that I'd never get back. He has his faults, my father, but he's a good man. He's a good father. I'd like to say more but my vision is seriously blurred with tears and my nose is running, and I'd really like to take some time to think about why I'm crying over a John Mayer song of all things.

i get home quite late from work every night, so most of the time i just want to wolf down whatever there is for dinner, shower, gossip, then sleep.

however, i cannot shake off my Tayong Dalawa fixation.

naturally i am pissed that abs-cbn is once again screwing around with the viewers by putting the damn show on the 10:40pm slot (tfc time), which means that its the last teleserye on the primetime bida list, which means that you would have to sludge through all of the teleseryes before it, including the irritating luto-lutuan series starring angel locsin, diether, and sam milby, na i swear wala man lang kahit isang teaspoon ng on-cam chemistry! (but that's another story for another day).

anyway, since the idea of sleeping early is pretty much fucked when i wait up for Tayong Dalawa (which finishes way past 11pm), i just end up whiling away the unsleepable hours trolling around the internet, or worse, midnight munching.

this evening, however, midnight munching was not an option as i went out for dinner with cousinlove and as usual gorged on junk food. so when we got home, all there was to do was watch Tayong Dalawa (at 11-effing-pm), and all of a sudden the barrage of reasons why i have been getting tired of the show lately hit me:

1. ever since audrey and jr (at bakit ko ba sila tinatawag sa pangalan nila na para bang nag-eexist talaga sila??) got together, they just have to spout off the series' title in their dialogue every.fucking.episode. i know, i understand, the show is about the two of you, but please:

exhibit a:

jr: pakiramdam ko lahat kaaway ko.. mag-isa ko laban sa mundo!

audrey: mag-isa? akala ko ba... tayong dalawa?

exhibit b:

jr: walang makakapaghiwalay sa atin audrey..

audrey: oo jr... tayong dalawa.

exhibit c:

jr: hindi ako papayag na may makasira sa ating dalawa!

audrey: kasi tayong dalawa?

jr: you got it bitch.. tayong dalawa!

2. everything is david the senior's fault. fucked around behind his wife's back, got some other woman pregnant, married the other woman in a fake but nonetheless legitimized wedding (yes i know how it sounds, but if you are as much of a bakya-pinoy-movies-teleserye junkie as i am, you can accept all batshit twists as normal), then left everyone to sort through his mess. everyone's life in the series is pretty much fucked because of him, and nobody's mad at him. he's the real antagonist.. and they bring flowers to his grave. everyone should just get together and plan their revenge on him.. but he's dead. so what is the point in all of this? nothing, really, but hey we love our drama so bring it on bitches!

3. apparently, ramon and greta are now invisible. they sneak up on people who are in the middle of arguments, eavesdrop, smile evilly at each other, and no one is aware that they are around, even when they're about five feet away from where the said arguing people are standing.

on a personal note, though, i wouldn't really mind having coco martin sneak up on me. you know. well.

4. angela's character is.. well, useless. sometimes she has lines just for the sake of having lines, and for tonight's episode, her main role was to hug marlene. and pat audrey's shoulder. and look sympathetic. and am i the only one annoyed at jodi sta. maria being made to play the role of some haggy aunt when she can do so much better?

5. i heart cherry pie but i am tired of three-minute, extreme close-ups of her crying. i can't really remember when i last saw an episode that didn't feature her crying.

6. leo is dead. he's been dead for quite some time now, and i would have stopped watching (maybe) had it not been for the idea that nico would get more exposure as the baril-barilan sindikato king. no such luck. currently waiting for the next series in need of a genuinely scary  rapist/psychopath because no one does it better than baron geisler babe.

7. dave is way better than jr and he should have been the star.  or maybe its just me. i tend to space out whenever they do jake cuenca close ups, particularly the yummy yummy lips, so i really have no idea how he is as an actor, his lips are all i can see.

kidding aside, i think he has improved a lot, and i loved him during his semi-baliw, post-prisoner-of-war mode; however, he could have played the role of a tree stump and he still would have been better than jr.

8. did i mention that i can't stand jr?

9. audrey is not human. she is some sort of insanely-advanced robot acting as an actress who is acting as kim chiu acting as audrey. she smiles when she's happy. she cries when she's sad. she shouts when she's mad. and all through this she looks and sounds exactly the same, except that the chip programmed in her awesomely high-tech system prompts her to excrete tears and adjust the volume of her voice when the situation calls for it. i believe that i might be the first to crack this theory, thank you, you can all sit down now.

10. stanley and lola's chinese accent bugs the shit out of me. it takes them twice the time that it should to speak their lines. hell, you can take a shower in the time that it takes them to get through a scene. and really, do you know any filipino-chinese who actually speaks that way?

11. enough with the damned hardware store already!

12. baby robert is so irrelevant. at bakit ko ba siya tinatawag na baby robert na para bang nag-eexist talaga siya??

13. i hate product-endorsement insertions! i hate it in movies, i hate it in teleseryes, i hate it simply when its anywhere it shouldn't be, so audrey, stop 'strategically' posing in front of racks of sanitary napkins or whipping out your cosmetics before delivering your lines!

wait. you're a robot. why am i talking to you.

14. dave and jr are twins. all the things i've mentioned so far are bearable, but this final twist is so disappointing that i couldn't eat dinner for two weeks (i wish). that they were brothers was pretty obvious even before the series began; you could gather that much from the trailers. but no, that just isn't enough drama-rama; they're twins, so its heartache all around for everyone (see item#5), even for ula.

in our beloved teleseryes, it is pretty much given that there will always be someone adopted, someone poor but belongs to a rich family and vice versa, people who do not know that they are siblings, and a dozen other cliches, but the root of all problems is often the swapped/stolen baby syndrome. knowing all these, it shouldn't be surprising that dave and jr are twins.. but its so damn disappointing. i don't know, maybe its because i haven't really liked a teleserye in a long time (last one was with scarlet de la rhea, of course!), but i kind of set a higher bar for it compared to stuff which caters to the lowest denominator. mostly its because of the performance of certain actors: agot, cherry pie, helen, and gina. i find them really, really fabulous. in fact, lola getz can run for president and i'll support her, as long as she hires inggrid as her fashion consultant. ang fierce fierce ni inggrid!

i know, you're probably thinking, ang dami kong reklamo edi wag na lang ako manood. but this, exactly, is the charm of pinoy teleseryes; you may be overwhelmingly annoyed or find the whole story stupid, but the fascination never, ever dies. so you wait for those plotline revelations, the slaps and hair-pulling, the hearthrob close-ups, the snappy comebacks,

and worse, you stay up until 4:00am writing crap like this.

i get home quite late from work every night, so most of the time i just want to wolf down whatever there is for dinner, shower, gossip, then sleep.

however, i cannot shake off my Tayong Dalawa fixation...

kung may napapala talaga kayo sa pakikielam niyo samin ni Onic kaya ayaw niyong tigilan, edi sige.

sabi nga ni regina george sa walang kamatayang 'mean girls':

you can walk home, bitches.

i am done with all of you and your fucking friendships

Francis M. died this afternoon and i am sad. he was such a huge part of growing up in the 90s, and he always seemed like this genuinely nice person. plus i am bakya to the nth power, hence my love for the comedy film 'Mama's Boys', which he starred in.

i got the news from my sorority sister and i couldn't believe it at first; i knew he was diagnosed with leukemia last year, but i was under the impression that they caught it at the early stages and that he was already recovering. it came as such a surprise, i actually thought that it might be one of those made-up gossip about someone's death that just quickly circulates. however, my sis said that it was announced on eat bulaga just over an hour ago... and i checked ms. chuvaness' blog (she's a friend of francis m's wife) and she has just posted the news.

its true. ang sad talaga. i feel bad for his wife and all his children, di ba may mga super young kids pa siya. imagine missing out on raising your kids, and missing out on having a good father. hay.

rest in peace

i'm not a fan of hers but this is sad. you just do not beat up a woman, period. if she gets back together with chris brown after this, she's so gonna lose the respect of millions of women everywhere. when it comes to matters of violence and abuse within relationships, i subscribe to only one principle: if he hits you, hit him back, then leave.

when i was around 6 or 7, our family went to this park/playground of sorts where for the first time, i saw a play tunnel. i don't really know what its called up to now (if its a playground tunnel or play tunnel or park tunnel or who the fuck cares) but it looks like this:

(i know, the tunnel in the photo looks a lot like an enormous piece of shit) but you get the idea. the one at the playground wasn't made of concrete, though. it was made of what looked like huge red drums assembled to looke like a tunnel, only it was really, really thick and sturdy, and snaked all the way across the lawn.

have you ever been through one of those things? its funny, i don't remember exactly where we went then. what i do remember is getting inside the tunnel on all fours and attempting to crawl all the way to the end. at first it was fun and exciting, but after a few minutes when the novelty has worn off, you realize that (a.) it is getting a bit dark inside, (b.) you have no idea what you might encounter in the middle, and (c.) it really is an effing long trip to the other end, and it is tiring and scary.

pretty much like life, isn't it?

i remember trying to wriggle out of the gaps between the drums, but they were too small and you couldn't really budge the heavy things. the only option was to crawl all the way to the other end, or to declare defeat and crawl back to where you began.

its amazing how something that happened more than ten years ago should be so symbolic or applicable to how i find my life today. making my way through the middle of the tunnel where it is at its darkest, the idea of crawling back to safety is sometimes unbearably appealing. it is now a choice between trudging through the dark to get to the other side and going back to where i was to avoid facing the uncertainties before me.

that day, in the park, i crawled back.

today, i realized, i never again will.

apparently, the forces that be are now conducting random drug tests at schools in the philippines, following the highly publicized case of the so-called alabang boys and the subsequent but not very surprising junking of charges against them after who knows how much shitload of money passed from pocket to pocket in the beloved government agencies concerned.

just a few notes; am i the only one who finds it absolutely ridiculous that the government is now wasting its time and our money on conducting drug tests in schools, and high schools at that? on tonight's news we were regaled with a giggling 14-year old girl's account of her first drug test experience. i am not discounting the possibility that we do have high school students who are taking drugs. however, of what use would it be for the government to identify them? do they then press charges against them? get them kicked out of school? send them to rehab? juvenile jail? is it not within a family's sphere of responsibility to ensure that their kids aren't turning into junkies? why is it that we have money to spend on implementing these abysmally idiotic drug tests but not for cracking down on the the suppliers, manufacturers, and big time dealers?

oh i forgot. rich people are immune to our laws, our government officials are not immune to taking bribes, and we, as a nation, are now immune to surprise (but not to irritation and frustration) when we hear of the latest in corruption and all around debauchery starring our government.

several weeks ago, a la salle student was arrested after he was caught trying to sneak in a little baggie of marijuana inside the infamous Embassy club. and i'm like, who gives a shit? the unfortunate loser probably does, since he is now being used as a poster boy for the police force's "Hello We Are Doing Something, See We Have Arrested a Druggie" campaign. uh, congratulations officers, the Embassy has been rumored to be a yuppie drug den since time immemorial, and you managed to catch a single pothead. out of probably hundreds who have done drugs in that place before, and the thousands doing drugs elsewhere. you also managed to confiscate a cute baggie of marijuana, out of the tons of bales of tiongke being planted, harvested, and sold elsewhere while you wait outside Embassy for a scapegoat.

speaking of which, where is that student now? probably bailed out (and now forgotten) after his arrest has been used as proof of action on our police and drug enforcement agency's side. at the rate these people are going, how long do you expect would it take to round up even  a tenth of the drug users in the philippines? especially when there are users in all demographics? and more importantly, what is even the use?

these drug tests and club stake outs for druggies are presumaby the result of the alabang boys' arrest, because its a wake up call that more young people are being exposed to drugs. news flash assholes! young people have been doing drugs for years, pills, valiums, ecstacy, that ketamine thing, marijuana, rugby and cough syrup for the less fortunate, and they will dabble with shabu in the future if they have enough money and not enough guidance. a lot of them will turn into the criminals we hear about nightly, the ones who steal and kill to sustain their drug habit. there are thousands of schools and millions of students, and if you're planning on putting all of them through your random drug testing, most of them would have graduated before you're done with half of the population. and they will continue doing drugs if that is what they wish to do with their lives.

the point is you don't deal with this drug crisis by trying to randomly pick out users. you may indeed save lives by correcting them, but what about the million others you fail to reach out to because your plan is simply inefficient? you don't weed out drug users by arresting them, you weed out drug users by weeding out drugs. sadly, this is the focal point that you people avoid because you can't accomplish it, because corruption is embedded in our system and the biggest drug lords in the country probably get as much protection as the Pope. so now, in an effort to show the people that action is being taken against the problem, you are embarking on this pointless mission of carrying out drug tests on high school students.

this kind of stunt does not only divert attention from the real problem, it also contributes to a bigger crisis that we face as a nation: apathy. continue pulling stunts like these and you exasperate an already exasperated population, and we cease to care or even be bothered because we have gotten so used to having a rotten system and a convoluted idea of justice. we may rant and vent and write blogs like this but somewhere in the back of our minds we are this close to not giving a damn because we have given up all hopes of ever witnessing change. bogged down in this mentality, we move on to our personal struggles thinking that there's nothing we can really do, and the cycle continues. we are tired.

for the most part, i find fear factor to be an utterly useless show that has no real value and will not have viewers at all if it didn't feature big-breasted contestants in bikinis every once in a while. so when abs-cbn bought a franchise that we're supposed to like because its hosted by ryan agoncillo and is set in argentina, i couldn't really give a fuck less except that i can't wait for it to finish every night because it comes before eva fonda on tfc's schedule.

so early this week i was preparing a very late dinner after another day of doing overtime when pinoy fear factor came on. my hunger died a silent and painful death when the contestants were tasked to eat a variety of lovely creatures such as cockroaches, rats, worms, and scorpions.

is it just me, or is this not utter stupidity? no, i am not putting down the contestants or belittling their efforts by saying that the stunts are utterly stupid. the physical challenges are fine, but what about the gross-out fests? what purpose do they serve? yeah you can say that it proves how gutsy they are, or that it's a test on survival and who can out-play the rest, but the thing is it's completely pointless. eating rats and cockroaches will not prove how manly you are or how ballsy you are for a girl. it will not make you a better person. it will not prove anything except that you need the money, or fame, or both.

what really pissed me off was the part where this contestant was tasked to eat a couple of rats. boiled, from what it looked like. if that wasn't sickening enough, you have ryan agoncillo 'encouraging' him by saying, "kaya mo yan, para sa dalawang milyon at para sa mga anak mo!" never in my life have i ever felt such a desire to step inside the tv set and kick him in the balls while saying, "easy for you to say, asshole! you don't have to eat rats in full view of the nation to have a shot at a better life for your family. no, you don't have to eat rats, period."

after eating the boiled rats, the guy started crying, saying that he did it for his kids. then they showed shots of his two small children, thin and dirty, at their house in tondo. this was the part that i absolutely couldn't stand. why exploit their situation in life? are you trying to justify that its okay to make a man do all sorts of shameful stuff because you're actually helping him? no, it doesn't show how brave he is or how much he loves his kids. it shows how thoughtless the perpetrators of this program are by showcasing the man's desperation and trying to use it as an emotional angle for the program. yeah, poor man with two kids, just another tool to make the audience go awww.  

maybe it would be a different story if the contestants were all rich and are just doing it for the heck of it or to become famous; then it would just be stupid and maybe in certain instances, even funny. but when you have contestants who are poor and you subject them to the humiliation of eating rats on national tv while flashing footages of their destitute homes and dirty kids, it is not funny. it is fucking demeaning. you wanna help their families? then give them jobs, douchebags! granted, its not exactly your responsibility to do that, so how about this:  if you can't help them in a way that doesn't require them to strip themselves of all dignity, then don't capitalize on their desperation to jack up your ratings.

obviously, the bottom line is that this show is a quest for money. the contestants may or may not be victims, depending on the circumstances under which they were enticed to join the dastardly show. there was probably a point when they could have said no, but hell, when you're there and you need the money, what do you do? i'm not saying that the participants are entirely blameless. its just that i find it sickening how the show plays on people's misery, and how they are being exploited for such selfish reasons. you can argue all you want that pinoy fear factor is about resilience, about strength, about survival, la dee dah, go ahead; if that is indeed the case, then let it be a battle solely between the contestants. don't bring their families into it, don't flash naked, dirty children on tv while their father weeps after swallowing a couple of rats.  

it is not admirable. it is not noble. it is not inspiring. it doesn't prove anything except that there is no limit to the depths of degradation people will endure for a little luck in life. what's even more fucked-up is that this depth of degradation in which they were pawned to sink in, it was dug by people who by all means had the best comforts in life.

can you smell the stench of exploitation while you support this show?

just got back from an inuman-turned-roadtrip-to-tagaytay and i'm zonked

lazy saturday afternoon watching game k n b with the brothers, the cast of 'my girl' as contestants; when asked what her role was in the series, nina, some ex-housemate or another, answered:

"i play a love triangle with the characters of kim chiu and gerald anderson"

ano daw teh? is it just me o may mali talaga? how exactly do you play a love triangle? ito ba ay isang karakter na pwede mo gampanan mag-isa? o ito ba ay isang instrumento? in fairness ginemba naman ni atey ang game kaya mukhang smart naman sya ha.