Manila - The Gates of Hell

Manila the Gates of Hell. From Mr. Lagasca's Facebook page.

I don’t like Dan Brown’s books. I once made the unwise decision of reading one. It left me feeling as if I had lost parts of my brain and my intelligence had been stolen. His writing style is bloated and repetitive and his logic is flawed. I vowed never to read any of his novels again for fear I would lose my ability to construct even simple sentences.

Recently however, despite my resolve to stay away from Brown’s mental junk food, I felt I had to read two pages of his new book, Inferno. If you haven’t heard the news yet, the current uproar among some residents of Manila is “sponsored” by Brown.

In Inferno, he described Manila as having,

“…six-hour traffic jams, suffocating pollution and a horrifying sex trade…”

He then placed his female protagonist in the midst of it all,

“All around her the wails of crying babies and the stench of human excrement hung in the air. I’ve run through the gates of hell.”

Tolentino's letter to Dan Brown

Naturally, it was only a matter of time before the Filipinos’ inability to take anything negative kicked in. Sure enough, no less than MMDA chief Francis Tolentino expressed in a letter to Brown that he was “greatly disappointed”, arguing that Manila was instead “an entry to heaven”.

I find both Brown’s and Tolentino’s metaphors faulty.

A gate is simply an entry way. If conditions are already awful at the gate, everything must be worse inside. In Manila, what can possibly be worse than what he described? Oh, I know. Perhaps being stuck in a car stuck in traffic with five people farting simultaneously is worse? How about the punishment of life imprisonment in Bilibid with mandatory eight-hour daily readings of Brown’s books?

Obviously though, Tolentino’s impression of Manila is more skewed. He needs his eyes, ears and nose checked. He must have lost his senses due to frequent exposure to the streets of Manila. If we were to redefine heaven according to Tolentino, it would be a lot like hell, only better perhaps because our twisted understanding of what is heavenly includes seeing a lot of people going to church and thinking reproductive health is sinful.

I’d like to think Manila is neither heaven nor hell. To me, it’s just the armpits of despair, needing truckloads of deodorant and political will to sanitize.

Regardless of what anyone thinks though, what’s more important is what we realize. Unless we see Manila for what it truly is, there’s no fixing it.

Standard Songs in Unstandard Times - Mark Bautista's The Sound of Love

Standard songs are defined as masterpieces that are so popular, they have endured through time. Hereabouts though, the term conjures images of pomade, high waist pants, rheumatism, drunken grandfathers and retirement homes. There is no question that standard songs have some socio-cultural value, but hey, it’s not my fault that in my circle, people think it’s just a synonym for old.

When I heard that a local artist released an album of standards, I fell into contemplating the mysteries of the cosmos. Shouldn’t this artist with an old spirit have been born seven decades earlier?

Mark Bautista isn’t your tottering grandfather’s dentures dependent best friend. At thirty, he’s at the prime of his youth and in the age of YouTube where some of the more popular fare include an impertinent man who dances like a horse, a possessed diva who keeps on forgetting to wear pants and a misguided young boy who repeats four lines of lyrics indefinitely as if he’d forgotten the rest of the lyrics of his hit song, shouldn’t Mark be pandering to the desires of the masses?

But therein lies his appeal. I’m going to buy his album and it’ll be among the few oddities in my otherwise angst-ridden music collection because I like supporting artists who have the courage to take the risk to stay true to their spirit regardless of what the times say they should do.

Of course, that’s not the only reason I’m buying The Sound of Love. Mark’s ethereal voice is the perfect cure for all sorts of mental maladies such as, but not limited to, seeing dead people, hearing voices and imagining being stuck forever in the pits of workstation (a.k.a. cubicle) hell.

Mark’s voice is better than Prozac, Valium and San Miguel Beer.

Album song list:

1. When I Fall in Love
2. Strangers in the Night
3. Kailangan Kita
4. All the Way
5. Love Without Time
6. Bato sa Buhangin
7. Love Story
8. That’s All
9. Till
10. What a Wonderful World

Elections 2013 Senatorial Candidates - Easy on Substance, Heavy on Fluff

Political ads are like cotton candy, sweet, colorful fluff with very little substance and nutritional value. Sadly, for time poor virtual workers like me, that, and the candidates’ ability to dance like uncoordinated quadruped sticks during sorties are almost all the criteria I have to pick who to vote.

Think about it. If voters didn’t take the extra time to research, what they’d know of each candidate based on TV ads and bits and pieces of sensationalized news isn’t very encouraging.

facebook.com/jackenrile

1. Jack Enrile

Son of incumbent senator Juan Ponce “I’ve-been-ambushed” Enrile, Jack now also goes by the nickname “I’ve-been-ambushed-too-really”. Like father like son.

Notwithstanding the bullet holes, what really stands out with Jack is his campaign slogan. Translated in English: Cheap food. Lots of food. I want you to have food. I wonder if his copywriter was experiencing extreme hunger pangs when he wrote this.

twitter.com/jvejercito

2. JV Ejercito

What’s with the sign JV? His logo of three extended fingers that accompanies the slogan “Like Ko Yan” (I like that) looks a lot like arthritic claws and nothing like a Like sign. Its mysterious significance is something even Sherlock Holmes will probably never fathom.

twitter.com/nancybinay

3. Nancy Binay

The vice president’s daughter’s work experience can be summarized in a phrase - personal assistant to her father. Oh and she knows how to feed poor kids too. Nuff said.

cynthiavillar.com.ph

4. Cynthia Villar

Villar’s PR team churned out excellent campaign ads that connected with me despite Villar’s dispassionate speech about her passion in life, but in one fell swoop, she nearly demolished her team’s efforts by belittling the nursing profession. She implied it was alright for substandard nursing schools to continue operating because, “Nurses… don’t need to finish BS Nursing. These nurses want to become room nurses… They don’t need to be that good.”

Her PR team should have been part of the audience when she said this on national television. They could have made Villar read their lips for the right thing to say.

teddycasino.org

5. Teddy Casino

He used to be known as the outspoken activist and champion of the marginalized. Since his senate bid started however, I seem to associate him more with jogging in the rain. A little hair flip and he’d qualify to audition for the senior edition of Boys Over Flowers. Honestly though, his wet look is mildly unsettling. He looks more like a sick puppy than Lee Min-ho. 

jambymadrigal.com

6. Jamby Madrigal

She says she’s the champion of the poor too and is anti corruption but having been born with multiple silver spoons, she has no sob stories to tell. To make up for that, her ad shows her standing wet after having been hosed by a water canon during a protest against then President Arroyo. Her wet look actually looks better than Teddy’s.

twitter.com/Aksyon_Gordon

7. Richard Gordon

This guy’s got more going for him because of the work he’s done for Subic and the Red Cross but really, do we need another wet senatorial candidate picture? Really, what is it with senatorial candidates and the wet look? There must be a study somewhere proving that voters are more likely to vote for the wettest of them all.

kokopimentel.org

8. Koko Pimentel

So far as I’ve seen, all this fellow Cagayanon has is his father’s name and the story of how he got cheated out of a senate seat in the 2007 elections. He uses a zombie pig (scarier than Kris Aquino on a tantrum) in his TV ad and asks us voters to use our coconuts. Hmmm. Okay, I’m voting for Zubiri.

twitter.com/EdwardHagedorn

9. Edward Hagedorn 

Hagedorn has an impressive track record as the mayor of Puerto Princesa and is largely responsible for making the city known globally for its cleanliness, orderliness and eco tourism. With all that he has to boast about though, all I’ve seen so far are images of him on motorcades surrounded by beautiful girls, like some sort of playboy Captain Planet.

 This list is incomplete because my tolerance for inanity has limits. Let’s just hope these candidates perform better in office than they do in campaign ads and events.

Senator Chiz Escudero and Grace Poe in Cagayan de Oro

The elections are upon us. Who are you gonna call? By all means call the Ghostbusters and maybe some exorcists. Politicians have once again become possessed by such powerful spirits that they have begun dancing out of step and singing out of tune in campaign sorties.

I'd like to believe Filipino voters are intelligent enough to deserve more than the sing and dance routine and the flatulent rhetoric. That's why I appreciate candidates like Senator Escudero and Grace Poe who sat down with the Cagayan de Oro new and traditional media to answer questions. While I do not wholly agree with everything they said, their press conference beats having to document proof of candidates' lack of talent in the performing arts.

The encounter was not without its entertainment value. Escudero and Poe brought with them a treasure trove of intriguing bits from the capital, the senate and the campaign trail. Watch all 21 clips from the playlist above and you'll find out:

• Why Jack's beans grow faster and better than Philippine rice
• Whatever happened to UNA
• Why their faces are plastered in all the wrong places
• Why Poe isn't using her neighbor's name
• What Da King's daughter can and will do as a senator
• What Escudero thinks is better than singing and dancing
• Why Escudero will make one hot vampire er... I meant... what he thinks about being listed among the (un)dead (Team Patay)

Let it be known that I do not exclusively endorse these two candidates. I'll shoot any candidate('s video) if he wants to sit down for a chat with the local media too.

The Comfort of Classical Music

My brother and sister are classically trained musicians. I grew up in a house where I spent weekends curled up on a couch constipated over Dostoyevsky and Chekov as I listened to my sister shake the ear wax out of our neighbors with relentless strains of Tchaikovsky and Chopin. When she left, my brother took up the viola and resumed the neighbors’ mandatory classical music education. Even when I wasn’t at home, I heard them play when I hung out at their music schools or attended their performances.

My distress was understandable then when I moved to Cagayan de Oro nearly a decade ago and discovered the absence of my usual auditory comforts. There were no public performances of classical music then. There was only the perennial videoke.

The videoke, by the way, is an excellent machine when in the hands of superb vocalists like my father-in-law. It becomes a tool of torment however, when entrusted to screaming banshees intent on letting us personally inspect their tonsils while singing in keys that have yet to be identified. I would vote for any senatorial candidate who promises to draft a law making prolonged singing by people without talent a crime.

The classical concert scene eventually crept into Cagayan de Oro with the inauguration of the Rodelsa Hall in 2005. The problem is that it costs an arm, a leg and some internal organs to get tickets to a show.

I had to crack open a piggy bank to get tickets and clothes to watch the Cebu Philharmonic Orchestra, the UUU Orchestra (Japan) and Rudolf Pelaez Golez perform at the Rodelsa Hall last Saturday. I had to watch. Some of the musicians were members of the same orchestra my brother played in before he left Cebu.

More than the music (which was superb), what I was after was the comfort of memories, of my lazy days on a couch listening to the work of musicians who suffered from depression while reading depressing literature. Strangely, I count those as happy times.

I wonder if the music meant anything to the rest of the audience. Except for the infernal sound of Cherry Mobile in between pieces, the audience was incredibly polite and gave the performers a standing ovation. But were they being more than polite?

When more pressing concerns such as hunger, poverty and security have been significantly addressed, my hope for Cagayanons is that we’ll find meaning in classical music if only because its true value lies in its ability to comfort, elevate and liberate the human mind and spirit.