Top Pinoy Alt.media Acts (The Clean Version)

The Top 10 Pinoy alt.media acts:

1) YouTube Cebu Inmates Thriller. The 1,500 orange-clad members of the Cebu Penitentiary landed 5^th in Neatorama’s top viral videos. Its video garnered 10.5 hits as of January 2008. The UN Human Rights Commission will be including the video among President Arroyo's HR violations.

2) Fourteen-year-old Charice Pempengco only placed third in ABS-CBN’s Little Big Star when she was seven but this did not deter her from singing. Her video from Dreamgirls (And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going) early last year earned her an invitation to sing in teenybop shows in South Korea. Her stint was posted in the Internet and she was invited in the Ellen Degeneres Show last November 28. A Swedish music label also asked her to record a few songs.

3) A supposedly racial slur against Filipino doctors earned an online petition against Desperate Housewives. Angry words were exchanged and in the end, the Fil-Am community got what they wanted: more jobs for them on TV. As of writing, there were 1.8 million who signed their posting, some still pathetically angry three months after the whole thing fizzled.

4) The Indie film never had it good. Kudos to Jim Libiran’s “Tribu,” Bong Ramos’ “Hwa-Ang,” Brilliante Mendoza’s “Kaleldo,” Jeffrey Jeturian’s “Kubrador” and Aureaus Solito and Raya Martin.

5) The Filipina Writing Searchword Project was initiated so that when you type in “Filipina” in major search engines you will get more positive impressions of Filipinas. Not sex or dating prospects. About fifty bloggers participated and The Funniest Filipina Vloggers, Ako si Pina.. At ito ang aking kuwento... and Superiority of Women in the Philippine Society received the grand prizes of $100. Not a typo. And don't give me jokes about Filipinas being cheap. I will strangle you.

6) Citizen blogging came to the fore during the Glorietta blast and the Manila Pen standoff with thousands of Filipino bloggers posting their YouTube and reactions and even theories on the incidents. One even came out with a site where you can send virtual flowers to those who died in Glorietta.

7) Lagalag Project. Willi Pascual wrote: “Eight months ago, I went to the Napa Valley post office to mail two Moleskine notebooks. On its first pages are my photos and stories -- the rest of the pages were blank. The notebooks were passed on among Filipinos around the world, all coming from different walks of life. They wrote their stories and shared their images on its pages. They have never met each other, but through the notebooks they have shared one amazing journey, one that is homeward bound.
The two notebooks are now in the Philippines.Twenty different ways on how Filipinos see the world. Twenty photos. Twenty stories. One destination. Your doorstep.”

8) The Singaporeans knew about the power of Pinoy texting that they created a glitch so that all those millions of texts from the Philippines would not make it on time to make Philippine Idol Mau Marcelo as the Asian Idol. Yes, a Singaporean dork won.

9) Inday jokes about a Filipina maid who speaks English circuitously became a running text joke. People didn’t know this was started by the telcom sweatshops but who cares? It made fun of conos, call center agents and Sen. Miriam Santiago.

10) Alt.media icons Quentin Tarantino, David Byrne (Talking Heads), Neil Gaiman and Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung came to visit. But then so did the Paul Williams, John Ford Coley, what’s left of The Associations and America and Matt Monroe Jr. Yes, Junior!!!