Best scenes in 500 Days of Summer (and then some)

My top 5 best scenes in 500 Days of Summer

1) Train scene

2) Split screen (expectations vs. reality)

3) “It’s love, not Santa Claus”

4) JGL dance routine to “You Make My Dreams”

5) “To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die”

6) JGL singing “Here Comes Your Man” (The Pixies)

Finally, 500 Days of Summer is being shown in local cinemas. I managed to watch it already about a month ago through torrents download–crappy quality but good enough (if you can ignore the watermarks). I’m planning to watch it on the big screen tomorrow, so in light of that here are some of the scenes I’m looking forward to watching again:

Top 5:

1) Train scene-because it reminded me of Before Sunrise. I like how this scene highlights the contradiction between the fast-paced train versus and the seemingly slow movements/human interaction inside the train.

Screen cap grabbed from Jayson Fajarda's album in facebook

2) Split screen (Expectations vs. Reality)-This scene killed me! I’m sure we’ve seen this before in other movies, but it was perfect for this movie in particular. It sealed the deal that this movie will be the formulaic indie love story movie (next to Garden State). It also revealed that the movie was indeed directed by a music video director. The entire movie actually seemed like an extended music video.

3) “It’s love, not Santa Claus” -The line that captured the personality of Tom: the hopeless romantic bordering on pathetic who believes in soulmates, true love, and perhaps even Santa Claus.

4) ”To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die”-The scene that captured the personality of Summer: kooky, weird, free-spirited girl, totally unlike Tom. A bit of a bitch in the end, if you ask me.

5) Bench scene-The part when Tom and Summer saw each other again after some time, and Summer delivered the killer line: “What I was never sure of with you.” Won’t write the whole dialogue exchange here because I don’t want to spoil the movie for you, but this was the most painful, heartbreaking, and enlightening line in the movie. Watch out for JGL’s reaction to this line, he nailed it!

Some other notable scenes:

6) JGL singing “Here Comes Your Man” (The Pixies)-Especially the part when he flipped his hair. Gad, seems like this guy is looking more and more like Heath Ledger, don’t you think?

7) But of course, that Dance scene! Because silly fun dance routines rock!

8) Tom looking at Summer who was crying after watching the final scene from The Graduate. (My friend Sarah pointed out that this is one of the most revealing scenes in the movie). This part hinted at what would eventually happen in the end given that they had different “ways of seeing” things.

If you already have the soundtrack, I think it makes more sense after you’ve seen the movie. Regina Spektor’s “Us” and The Smiths’ “Please Let Me Get What I Want” are perfect for the movie’s plot. I’m not too crazy about Zooey Deschanel’s remake of “Please Let Me Get…”, though.

A few complaints, though. I wish they dropped the precocious younger sister character and the stereotypical douchebag best friend. As my friend Jayson pointed out, Dakota Fanning is so over. And the best friend character can be annoying in some instances.

Still, all in all, this movie would be in my Top 10 films of 2009. Totally looking forward to watching this movie again, with better video and audio quality.

So what are your favorite scenes?

The year the music died

And another one bites the dust. I learned the other day that Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary died due to cancer.

Among the recent celebrity deaths, this one hit a nerve. I’ve always loved Peter, Paul and Mary, I grew up listening to their songs because my father digs folk music. It’s a well-known fact that folk music owes  a lot to PPM for popularizing Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind and The Times They are A-Changing. And who can forget If I Had Hammer, Puff the Magic Dragon, and PPM’s version of Pete Seeger’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone? I think PPM is one of the few artists/groups that continued to perform in protest gigs even after the folk period. Although the group’s political commitment is, perhaps, limited, we can never deny the impact that their songs have made throughout the years.

image from NY times

image from NY times

Mary was the coolest member of PPM (she was the group’s “sex appeal,” according to reports) , with her bob and beatnik look, and her signature fist-clenching gesture. And of course, her voice was just fabulous.

It seems that 2009 is turning out to be the year the music died (ala the day the music died), starting with the death of local artists earlier this year  (Francis M, Susan Fernandez) and of course, Michael Jackson. Heaven should be rockin’ out right now.

Rest in peace, Mary.

Imagining democracy/The Death of a Symbol

I’ve been putting off writing something about the death of Cory Aquino just because I couldn’t wrap my head around eveyrything that happened the week she died. The yellow ribbons all over the metro, the 24-hour coverage (not to mention the live streaming!), Kris Aquino, Boy Abunda, the huge wave of people at Manila Cathedral, the declarations of love, etcetera, etcetera, topped off by the phenomenal well-attended funeral march. We saw history unfurl right before our eyes (mediated by television/the internet), yet at the same time the whole thing seemed so unreal–it was like a chapter from a Garcia Marquez or Jose Saramago novel. Cory’s death and everything that ensued from her death was overwhelming, to say the least, but very, very strange, a period in this country’s history that would be good material for magical realism writers, only that this time, there would be no need to fictionalize events because the events themselves are surreal enough. It was a spectacle on two levels:  tragic, of course, because the show was caused/driven by death; comedic because of Kris Aquino’s crass yet honest wit in several interviews.

(photo grabbed from this link).

The past few months were punctuated by a series of celebrity deaths, and upon learning about those deaths, a lot of people, including me, were quick to exclaim: “I can’t believe it!” And then we tried to locate ourselves in relation to those who have died,  we tried to establish a connection with them, even the slightest connection, because we wanted to prove that we somehow knew them when they were still alive so that we had reason to mourn. When Francis M died, we wrote about out favorite Francis M songs, we declared ourselves as fans, we proclaimed our sorrow publicly. A few months later, Michael Jackson’s death generated even more intense reactions, because of course the death of the King of Pop was bigger news than the death of the Man from Manila. I myself downloaded the MJ discography that was being seeded/shared like crazy in torrent sites, and for hours on end my friends and I would talk about our favorite MJ songs. Of course, in between we also talked about the death of David Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, and Susan Fernandez.

And then Cory Aquino died.

The degree of mourning expressed, (real or imagined) depends (I suppose) on how closely we are able to locate ourselves in relation to those who died. What differentiates Cory’s death from the other “icons” who passed away recently is that she symbolized something far greater than what the others stood for, for Filipinos at least. If MJ represents music/pop, a representation people from all parts of the world attest to, Cory seems to represent something of greater value, a representation that only a particular nation can lay claim to. (As I write this I realize that that previous sentences in this paragraph would seem like a very callous/disrespectful way of putting it, an accusation that I readily agree with. But this entry from start to finish, not just one or two sentences, already exhibit a kind of detachment–which is related to one point that I’d like to raise in writing this: that we cannot really claim to be in mourning for these icons, we can never really claim that our versions of mourning are as real as the grief of those who really knew them, and so any declaration of mourning from us, the spectators of these spectacles, are mostly, if not completely, imagined).

former president cory aquino's visit to the probe office, early 2008, before she was diagnosed with colon cancer. i wore yellow to welcome the occasion.

We can never really claim grief over the death of Cory Aquino, unless we really knew her in the same way that her family or close friends did. But what we can claim, legitimately, is our grief for the death of what she symbolized. And what was/is it that Cory symbolized? Most people claim (in tribute videos, news articles, editorials, blogs, etcetera) that Cory Aquino was/is this country’s symbol of Democracy. Of course, in the past weeks we were all reminded about the crucial role that Cory played in Philippine history–she was the housewife turned President, the grieving widow turned unsuspecting yet willing heroine.

But while I agree, wholeheartedly, that Cory Aquino is indeed a symbol of democracy in this country, she is just one among the many symbols of a democracy that we, as a nation, have long fantasized about but have not  yet attained. It is perfectly all right to acknowledge Cory’s part in representing a liberal notion of democracy (read: elections, and that’s it), however it isn’t all right to claim that she “restored” Democracy, because obviously, the state of things in this country does not at all resemble what real Democracy (with a capital D) is and what it entails.

The motherly, calm, and gracious image of Cory, complete with the yellow suits and Laban sign in the air, may be one face of liberal democracy in this country. But she has several other faces that are not as pleasing. As we mourn for the death of one symbol of democracy, we also mourn for what this symbol failed to actually accomplish in her time. We mourn for farmers who died in the Mendiola massacre, we mourn for the victims of the Hacienda Luisita massacre, we mourn for the failure of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, we mourn for the fact that even though the matriarch of the Cojuangcos has passed away, the Cojuangcos remain, in reality and symbolically, one of the few families who practically own this nation. We mourn for the fact that Imelda Marcos remains free as bird, how she was continues to articulate her wish that her late husband be given a state funeral, and how her children were able to attend Cory’s funeral with ease (compared to those who had to fall in line for hours). We mourn for the fact that Cory’s death highlights this country’s continuing plight under the second woman president/second people-power “heroine,” Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. We mourn for Cory, for what she was able to stand for, and for what she was not able to stand against.

So what’s next? For the country, for the struggle for genuine democracy? When we begin to ask these questions, that’s when we realize that for democracy to exist, we need to go beyond imagining.

songs about wine, cigarettes, and coffee

“And we’ll be laughing about how we used to smoke all those stupid little cigarettes, and drink stupid wine, ’cause it’s what we needed to have a good time” (five years time, noah and the whale)

“No amount of coffee, no amount of crying, no amount of whiskey, no amount of wine, no, no, no, no, no, i gotta have you” (the weepies, i gotta have you)

top 10 songs (para kay vj rubio, 1980-2009)

top 10 songs (para kay vj)

may kanya-kanya tayong ‘moments’ kasama si vj. maaaring may naitago ka sa sulok ng iyong alaala na ngayon mo na lang hinahalungkat, parang lumang litrato na nakatabi sa drawer/kabinet, o parang nakatuping sulat na naisiksik lang pala sa isang notebook o libro. hindi madali na alalahanin ang mga akala natin ay nalimutan na, mga alaalang bigla na lang sumulpot sa pagdating ng trahedya. kanya-kanya tayo ng mga alalaa kasama si vj, kanya-kanya ring paraan ng pag-alala.

may listahan si vj ng mga piling pelikula ng pagibig sa Love in the Time of Depression, na hindi ko kayang tapatan tulad ng sinulat ni jayson. kaya listahan na lang ng mga kanta na nagpapaalala ng mga katuwaan/katangahan/kabaliwan moments kasama si vj.

1. charm attack leona naess: “Well, I’m no savior but I tried to save you”

2. lazy days, leona naess: “Wide eyed and stupid i’m waiting for the arrows of cupid”

si vj talaga ang nagpakilala sa akin kay leona naess. parang inaantok lang lagi yung boses, mga kantang may kasunod na buntong hininga sa bawat stanza. sa pagkakatanda ko, minsang napag-usapan namin si leona isang lazy sunday presswork sa kule. kung si vj ang nagpakilala kay leona, masasabi ko rin naman na si vj ang isa sa mga susing tao na nagpakilala sa akin sa kule, siya ang naging big brother namin nina floyd, jan, tetel et al. nandun siya nung una akong nakapunta sa sarah’s at sa jauros kasama ng kule pipol. kung meron ngang tinatawag na collegian “spirit”, kay vj yun mahahanap. kasi nga naman mas matanda siya sa amin at saka lagi siyang nasa opis, hehe.

3. landslide, smashing pumpkins: “Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?”

hay, si vj the romantic. may panahong on repeat ito sa computer room habang nakahiga sa mga maduduming mattress ng kule, o kaya sa rooftop, nagkukwentuhan hanggang madaling araw. actually, si vj na siguro ang maituturing na father of bohemian nights, siya naman ang pinaka la vie boheme sa atin, hindi ba? ibigay na nga natin yung award na yun sa kanya!

4. in da club, 50 cent: “We’re gonna party like it’s your birthday”

medyo nakakahiyang alalahanin ngayon, pero…nag-club kami nina vj, jan, at divine isang beses sa basement, eastwood. in da club ang sikat na kanta noon. juvenalia! pero syempre, masaya.

bukod sa eastwood, natatandaan ko rin si vj pag nasa katipunan area: sa dating puwesto ng The Strip, sa countryside, sa Shade, sa Jauros. isang beses kumain kami nina vj, bheng, at jan sa the strip, tapos hindi pa siya magaling mag-drive noon kaya hindi niya naiakyat nang maayos si vanessa (yung kotse nya) nung palabas sa parking. si manong guard pa ang nagmaneho pataas para sa kanya, hehe! pero syempre eventually naging magaling na driver si vj.

5. burnout, sugarfree: “O kay tagal din kitang minahal…”

may isang christmas party sa kule na ilang beses ito tinugtog at pinatugtog, tapos nagda-drama lang lahat ng tao. pag may party, laging nandyan si vj, syempre pa. madalas na siya ang taga-bili ng iiumin (kasi sya yung may kotse!), siya ang bartender, siya na rin ang taga-tagay.

6. wise up, aimee mann: “It’s not going to stop, ’til you wise up”

dahil si vj ang isa sa mga taong una mong tatakbuhan ‘pag may problema, kahit gaano man kababaw ang problema mong yan. nang minsang nakaranas ako ng “heartbreak,” si vj ang sumaklolo. syempre ‘pag iniisip ko na uli ngayon ang cheap lang nung problemang yun, pero ‘pag si vj ang nakinig at nagpayo sa’yo nagkakaroon ng substance ang kababawan. may famous line nga si vj noon, sabi nya: kung mga kontinente nga naghihiwalay, mga tao pa kaya? si vj lang makakapagsabi ng mga ganyang very cool metaphors.

7. lost in space, aimee mann: “lost in space, a bubble drifting…”

binaggit ni vj itong album na ito sa isang kolum, ano nga bang title nun? yung may fluffy little clouds mode. sinulat niya ito samantalang napag-usapan na noon sa kule na dapat issue-based ang mga kolum, hehehe.

8. torete, moonstar 88: “Sandali na lang, maari bang pagbigyan?”

si vj, medyo bolero din kung tutuusin. kasi sigurado ako na bukod sa’kin, sinabihan na rin nya yung ibang babae sa kule/ugat ng linyang: kung naging lalaki ako ikaw yung babaeng papakasalan ko. steer lang, pero it will make your day, syempre, lalo na pag feeling panget ka. a few years later, nalaman ko kina eleyn na sabi pala ni vj crush na crush ko siya noon. hindi kaya noh! pero syempre mahal natin si vj kahit hindi natin sya crush, mas matimbang pa yun hehe.

9. pardon me, incubus: “I’ve had enough of the world and its people’s mindless games”

si vj at ang mga philosophical existentialist moments! kultura, teorya, landi, angas. pagkatapos naman ng kabaliwan ay laging siyang nag-aayos at binabawi ang katinuan. masaya ang lahat para sa kanya, lalo na nitong huling mga buwan na nag-aayos siya ng buhay, nagpaplanong mag-aral at magsulat uli, etcetera. masaya ako na kahit papaano ay nakapagkwentuhan kami ni vj bago siya pumanaw, at yun na lang siguro ang iisipin ko sa gitna ng lahat ng ito.

10. fields of gold, sting:

“You’ll remember me when the west wind moves

Upon the fields of barley

You can tell the sun in his jealous sky

When we walked in the fields of gold”

ang laging kinakanta ni vj sa videoke. sa kanya lang talaga itong kantang ‘to, wala nang iba pang makakakanta ng fields of gold kung hindi si vj.

para sa mga mas matagal na nakasama si vj, hindi lang siguro mga top 10 lists ang maisusulat, maaring top 15, top 50, top 100. o baka hindi na magkasya sa papel/sa blog entry ang listahan ng mga alalaa. ganun kasi si vj, ganun kasi kapag nakilala mo si vj, umaapaw ang lahat lahat, ang mga salita, metapora, pagibig, alaala.

paalam at hanggang sa susunod na pagkikita, vj!

viva la vida/death and all his friends

“revolutionaries wait/ for my head on a silver plate/just a puppet on a lonely string/oh who would want to be king?”

favorites: viva la vida, violet hill, and the opening track, the title of which i can’t remember right now.

some lines in my head:
those who are dead/are not dead/they’re just living in my head

if you love me/won’t you let me know

for some reason i can’t explain/ i know st peter will call my name/ never an honest word/but that was when i ruled the world

i still think a rush of blood to the head is coldplay’s best album, but this one is catching up. viva la vida is a little more mature in terms of songwriting, and a little more “happy,” so to speak, in terms of musical arrangement. there are still some existential lyrics, but unlike previous albums, you won’t wallow in depression after listening to viva.

i stole the playlist from karl. thanks karl!

RATM reading list

i recently watched rage against the machine’s live performances on dvd and chanced upon their recommended reading list in the special sections menu selection. thanks to google, i found the list here without having to type it myself. now i’m trying to determine what kind of politics these guys from ratm support the bio on their website isn’t too helpful, but the write-up on wikipedia is quite interesting. here’s an excerpt:

Integral to their identity as a band, Rage Against the Machine voice revolutionary viewpoints highly critical of the domestic and foreign policies of the U.S. government. Throughout its existence, RATM and its individual members participated in political protests and other activism to advocate these beliefs. The band primarily saw its music as a vehicle for social activism; de la Rocha explained that “I’m interested in spreading those ideas through art, because music has the power to cross borders, to break military sieges and to establish real dialogue.”[39] Morello said of wage slavery in America:

“ America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you’ve lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn’t belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don’t care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve. ”
— Tom Morello, Guitar World

Meanwhile, detractors pointed out the tension between voicing commitment to leftist causes while being signed to Epic Records, a subsidiary of media conglomerate Sony Records. Infectious Grooves released a song called “Do What I Tell Ya!” which mocks lyrics from “Killing in the Name”, accusing the band of being hypocrites. In response to such critiques, Morello offered the rebuttal:

“ When you live in a capitalistic society, the currency of the dissemination of information goes through capitalistic channels. Would Noam Chomsky object to his works being sold at Barnes & Noble? No, because that’s where people buy their books. We’re not interested in preaching to just the converted. It’s great to play abandoned squats run by anarchists, but it’s also great to be able to reach people with a revolutionary message, people from Granada Hills to Stuttgart. ”

At the Coachella 2007 performance, De la Rocha made an impassionated speech during “Wake Up”, citing a statement by Noam Chomsky regarding the Nuremberg Trials,[41] as follows:

“ A good friend of ours once said that if the same laws were applied to U.S. presidents as were applied to the Nazis after World War II […] every single one of them, every last rich white one of them from Truman on, would have been hung to death and shot—and this current administration is no exception. They should be hung, and tried, and shot. As any war criminal should be.”

The event led to a media furor. A clip of Zack’s speech found its way to the Fox News program “Hannity & Colmes.” An on-screen headline read, “Rock group Rage Against the Machine says Bush admin should be shot.” Ann Coulter (a guest on the show) stated, “They’re losers, their fans are losers, and there’s a lot of violence coming from the left wing.”[42] On July 28th and 29th, Rage co-headlined the hip hop festival Rock the Bells. On July 28, they made a speech during Wake Up just as they had done at Coachella. During this, De La Rocha made another statement, defending the band from Fox News, who he alleged misquoted his speech at Coachella:
“ A couple of months ago, those fascist motherfuckers at the Fox News Network attempted to pin this band into a corner by suggesting that we said that the president should be assassinated. Nah, what we said was that he should be brought to trial as war criminal and hung and shot. THAT’S what we said. And we don’t back away from the position because the real assassinator is Bush and Cheney and the whole administration for the lives they have destroyed here and in Iraq. They’re the ones. And what they refused to air which was far more provocative in my mind and in the minds of my bandmates is this: this system has become so brutal and vicious and cruel that it needs to start wars and profit from the destruction around the world in order to survive as a world power. THAT’s what we said. And we refuse not to stand up, we refuse to back down from that position…”

it also says there that ratm supports the zapatista army of national liberation.

anyway, so here’s the reading list. there’s the usual anti-US readings, marx, che guevarra. there’s also some chicana feminist readings, two or three joan didion books and some works of fiction. i highlighted some of the works i’m familiar with or have read but i haven’t read most of the books in the list. the song, bombtrack, which is one of my favorites, has an anarchist slant, and there’s there’s a recommended book on “communist anarchism.”

so wadayathink?

Books Used in the fold-out of “Evil Empire”

* “International Terrorism and the CIA”
Mumia Abu-Jamal
* “Live From Death Row”
Mumia Abu-Jamal
* “Joe Hill”
Gibbs M. Smith
* “The Mau Mau War in Perspective”
Frank Furedi
* “The Aesthetic Dimension”
Herbert Marcuse
* “The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After “
Chris Harman
* “The Media Monopoly”
Ben H. Bagdikian
* “50 Ways To Fight Censorship”
Dave Marsh
* “Hegemony and Revolution: A study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political & Cultural Theory“
Walter L. Adamson
* “The Mismeasure of Man”
Stephen Gould, Che Guevera
* “A New Society: Reflections for Today’s World”
David Deutschmann, Editor
* “The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd ed.)”
Robert C. Tucker, Editor
* “What Uncle Sam Really Wants”
Noam Chomsky
* “Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation”
Jonathan Kozol
* “Marxism and the New Imperialism”
Alex Callinicos, John Rees, Chris Harman, Mike Haynes
* “Rules for Radicals”
Saul D. Alinsky
* “A People’s History of the United States”
Howard Zinn
* “The Lorax”
Dr. Seuss
* “East Los Angeles, history of a barrio”
Richard Romo
* “Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II”
William Blum
* “Race for Justice: Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Fight Against The Death Penalty”
Leonard Weinglass
* “Guerilla Warfare”
Che Guevera
* “Zapata of Mexico”
Peter E. Newell
* “Malcolm X Speaks – Selected Speeches and statements”
George Breitman
* “Marxism and the Press: Oppression of Women, Toward a Unitary Theory”
Lise Vogel
* “Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America”
Walter LaFeber
* “The Chomsky Reader”
James Peck, Editor
* “Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise 1940-1990″
Juan Gomez Quinones
* “The Wretched of the Earth”
Franz Fanon
* “What is Communist Anarchism?”
Alexander Berkman
* “Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson”
George Jackson
* “Fidel and religion: Conversations With Frei Betto”
Frei Betto
* “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave”
Frederick Douglass
* “Democracy is in the Streets”
James Miller
* “Capital, Volume One”
Karl Marx
* “The Black Panthers Speak”
Philip S. Foner, Editor
* “Keeping The Rabble in line Interviews with David Barsamian”
Noam Chomsky
* “Walden and Civil Disobedience”
Henry David Thoreau
* “Darkness at Noon”
Arthur Koester
* “The Culture of Narcissism: American Life of Diminishing Expectations”
Christopher Lasch
* “Play it as it lays”
Joan Didion
* “The State and Revolution”
V.I. Lenin
* “Soul on Ice”
Eldridge Cleaver
* “Kwame Nkrumah: The Conarky Years, His Life and Letters”
Compiled by June Milne
* “Revolutionary Suicide”
Huey P. Newton
* “The Anarchist Cookbook”
William Powell
* “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media”
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
* “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”
James Joyce
* “Another country”
James Baldwin
* “The Grapes of Wrath”
John Steinbeck
* “The Armies of the Night”
Norman Mailer
* “Invisible Man”
Ralph Ellison
* “Rebellion from the Roots: Indian uprising in Chiapas”
John Ross
* “First World Ha! Ha! Ha! – The Zapatista challenge”
Elaine Katzenberger, Editor
* “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge”
Carlos Castaneda
* “Tropic of Cancer”
Henry Miller
* “Johnny Got His Gun”
Dalton Trumbo
* “Essays in existentialism”
Jean-Paul Sartre
* “How Real is Real? Confusion, disinformation, communication”
Paul Watzlawick
* “Ghost of a Chance”
William S.Burroughs
* “Popism :The Warhol Sixties”
Andy Warhol & Pat Hackett
* “Chicana falsa and other stories of death, identity, and Oxnard”
Michele M. Serros
* “Promisory Notes: Women in the Transition to socialism”
Sonia Kruks, Ranya Rapp, Marilyn B. Young, Editors
* “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the making of a gay world”
George Chauncey
* “This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color”
Cherrie Monzaga, Gloria Anzaluda, Editors
* “Women of Color Subliminal Seduction”
Wilson Bryan Key, Editor
* “Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity”
Michael A. Messner
* “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women”
Susan Faludi
* “90 Years of Ford”
George H. Dammann
* “Illustrated History of Ford”
George H. Damman
* “The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women Movements in Global Perspective”
Amrita Basu
* “Miles, the Autobiography”
Miles Davis
* “The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade”
Judith Clavir Albert and Stewart Edward Albert
* “The Graphic Work”
M. C. Escher
* “Bob Marley Spirit Dancer”
Bruce W. Talamon
* “Dali: The Paintings “
Benedikt Taschen, Robert Taschen, Giles Neret

* “For Whom The Bell Tolls”
Ernest Hemingway
* “Eros And Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud”
Herbert Marcuse
* “Cheer Up Book for a Proud American”
Dan Valentine
* “The Way Things Aren’t”
Steve Rendall, Jim Naureckas, Jeff Cohen
* “War and an Irish Town”
Eamonn McCann
* “Moving the Center: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms”
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
* “Interview With Chairman Gonzalo”
El Diario Newspaper
* “The Dust Rose Like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu and the Sioux”
James O. Gump
* “The Last Mau Mau Field Marshalls”
David Njagi
* “God Dies By The Nile”
Naval El Saadawi
* “You Can’t Win”
Jack Black
* “Year 501: The Conquest Continues”
Noam Chomsky
* “Beyond Good and Evil”
Friedrich Nietzche
* “Deterring Democracy”
Noam Chomsky
* “Mau Mau Detainee”
Josiah Mwangi Kariuki
* “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse”
Peter Mathiessen
* “Marx’s Kapital for Beginners”
David Smith & Phil Evans
* “How the Other Half Lives”
Jacob A. Riis
* “The Weatherman”
Steve Thayer
* “U.S.A.”
John Dos Passos
* “The Naked and the Dead”
Norman Mailer
* “My Antonia”
Willa Cather
* “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State”
Friedrich Engels
* “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”
Joan Didion
* “The Gypsy’s Curse”
Harry Crews
* “Basta! Land and the Zapatista – Rebellion in Chiapas”
George A. Collier
* “The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, Resistance”
Annette James, Editor
* “SNCC The New Abolitionists”
Howard Zinn

Additional Books Not in the Picture but on the Recommended
Reading List

* “Always a Rebel: Ricardo Flores, Magon and the Mexican Revolution”
Ward S. Albro
* “Go Tell It On a Mountain”
James Baldwin
* “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
Harriet Beecher Stowe
* “Black Boy”
James Baldwin
* “Animal Farm”
George Orwell
* “Steal This Book”
Abbie Hoffman
* “The Quiet American”
Graham Greene
* “Odes To Opposites”
Pablo Neruda
* “Giovanni’s Room”
James Baldwin
* “The Confessions of Nat Turner”
William Styron
* “O Pioneers”
Willa Cather
* “The Souls of Black Folk”
W.E.B. DuBois
* “Rights of Man”
Thomas Paine
* “The Bluest Eye”
Toni Morrison
* “Salvador”
Joan Didion
* “Savage Inequalities”
Jonathan Kozol
* “Between Hell and Reason”
Albert Camus
* “Women, Race, and Class”
Angela Y. Davis
* “Song of Solomon”
Toni Morrison
* “American Slavery, American Freedom”
Edmund S. Morgan
* “America’s Reconstruction”
Eric Foner & Olivia Mahoney
* “Parting the Waters”
Taylor Branch
* “Native Son”
Richard Wright
* “Dispatches”
Michael Herr
* “Ideas & Opinions”
Albert Einstein
* “Censored: The News that Didn’t Make the Newspapers and Why”
Carl Jensen
* “The Emperor Wears No Clothes”
Jack Herer

ang OST ko

1. Open your music library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle.
3. Press play.
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing.
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button.
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool.

My results:

1. Movie Title: the employment pages-deathcab for cutie

2. Opening Credits: times like these-foo fighters

3. Waking Up: bike scene-taking back sunday

4. First Day At School: hypnotize-white stripes

5. Falling In Love: language of a kiss-indigo girls

6. Fight Song: serve yourself-john lennon

7. Breaking Up: get back-the beatles

8. Prom: you know you’re right-nirvana

9. Life: drunk kids and catholics-bright eyes

10. Mental Breakdown: lucy in the sky with diamonds-the black crowes

11. Driving: beef jerky-cibo matto

12. Flashback: prologue-eraserheads

13. Wedding: only got one: frou frou

14. Birth of Child: golden boy-rivermaya

15. Final Battle: head held high-the velvet underground

16. Death Scene: why did you stay-the pipettes

17. Funeral Song: summer’s gone-aberfeldy

in the spirit of sharing

i was devastated when multiply barred people from downloading music. but, if there’s a will, there’s a way. we shall overcome!

so here’s something i got from jeeu. spread the word. it works, i promise.

HOW TO DOWNLOAD:

1. Install Orbit (right-click and Save Link As). Orbit looks like a cross between a P2P and a torrent client, but with no adware or pop-ups of any kind.
2. Make sure that you associate Orbit with your browser before attempting to download.
3. Go to the Multiply playlist you want to download.
4. Right-click on the “Play this playlist” link and save it as an OLT file. If you are using Firefox, click Save Link As from the context menu. When the Save As dialog box appears, change the file type from M3U to All Files and append “.olt” (without the quotes; take note of the dot) to the file name.
5. Run Orbit.
6. Go to File>Import list of downloads.
7. Navigate to the folder where you saved the OLT file and open it.
8. Uncheck the tracks you DON’T want to download (just like torrents).
9. Click OK.
10. Ta-da!

bigote night

my father was feeling lonely the other night because my mother went to costa rica to work on a project (i don’t really know what kind of project, but i think it’s for USAID). true to his usual strategy, mi papa invents this errand so he can drive to quezon city and compell me to meet him at my brother’s mustache for a night of ranting over beer and folk music. i tried to explain that i had an early shoot the next day, that i shouldn’t drink or stay up late — but i knew it was hopeless to protest further, especially since my father knows how to use emotional blackmail. usually, our conversation would go something like this: he’d ask what i was doing, i’ll tell him i’m busy, he’ll say “ok…” (a loaded answer), and i’d end up feeling guilty for not being a “good” daughter. i would go meet him in some bar or cafe and listen to him rant, all the while thinking about other things that i could be doing instead of being there.

to avoid a night of talking solely about my mother, my father’s favorite topic, i decided to bring lec. coincidentally, caloy was in manila and was also available for the night. i think my father entertained them more than the singer (god, what a ratty singer–bad line-up, bad performance, he even sang the english version of freddie aguilar’s ‘anak’, a song which any true blue folky would never sing in a place like brother’s mustache. in karaoke, maybe, but in folk bars, never!)

it started with small talk: how are you kids, what do you do, bob dylan, wally gonzales, etcetera, etcetera. until my father turned on his nostalgia switch and talked about his days of being wild/his date(s)/rendezvous with the reovolution. he talked about his student days, times when he joined discussion groups and EDs with kids from the U-belt. he talked about the time he argued with an instructor while discussing US imperialism and the time he delivered copies of Ang Bayan to the cadres in pampanga.

he also talked about his friend, Gil, who joined the NPA. (trivia! my father’s name is Gil, a fact which probably contributed to his fondness of Gil the NPA). my father was already working in manila, but he would occasionally return to his home in pampanga where Gil would sometimes visit him. Gil visited my father one night during a blackout, he was with maybe 3 or 4 other revolutionary fighters. my father, the peti-b, offered hotdog franks, coffee, and beer. at first, Gil refused–but my father insisted and he finally gave in. Gil and his comrades ate a relatively good meal and swigged a few shots, something they haven’t done for a while.

but my father didn’t finish his story about Gil during bigote night, but i know how Gil’s story ends. according to my father, Gil staunchly believed in armed struggle and the revolution, and he re-affirmed this belief durg the split. later, Gil died in an encounter with the military.

my father usually talks about the revolution during instances like bigote night, always alternated with stories about folk music and my mother (but why does talk about my mother belong to the category?!). i suppose it’s because of the mood that the place creates. most of the time, my father’s stories amuse me.

sometimes, the stories annoy me, because i’ve already heard them a million times. at around 2 am, bigote night ended. i think we all got a little drunk.