Phil Needs an Eraserhead Statue

Wait. Not this Phil. And I said, Eraserhead not Eraserheads. See here

Star Wars Was This Gay

Other rediscovered Star Wars photos here

My Cat

This is my cat after he learned that Gloria chose Carlo J. Caparas as National Artist. He vowed not to get off the water. He looks like Cecil Guidote pa naman.

The World Reacts to the Last (?) SONA

Music of the World

Listen to City FM for the music in all the top cities of the world

Five Pinoys in Asia Man Prize

The 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize - Longlist Announced

Hong Kong, 24 July 2009 – The Administrative Committee for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize has today

announced the longlist of works for this prize:

Gopilal Acharya, With a Stone in My Heart

Omair Ahmad, Jimmy the Terrorist

Siddharth Chowdhury, Day Scholar

Kishwar Desai, Witness the Night

Samuel Ferrer, The Last Gods of Indochine

Eric Gamalinda, The Descartes Highlands

Ram Govardhan, Rough with the Smooth

Kanishka Gupta, History of Hate

Kameroon Rasheed Ismeer, Memoirs of a Terrorist

Ratika Kapur, Overwinter

Mariam Karim, The Bereavement of Agnes Desmoulins

Sriram Karri, The Autobiography of a Mad Nation

Nitasha Kaul, Residue

R. Zamora Linmark, Leche

Mario I. Miclat, Secrets of the Eighteen Mansions

Clarissa V. Militante, Different Countries

Varuna Mohite, Omigod

Dipika Mukherjee, Thunder Demons

Hena Pillai, Blackland

Roan Ching-Yueh, Lin Xiu-Tzi and her Family

Edgar Calabia Samar, Eight Muses of the Fall

K. Srilata, Table for Four

Su Tong, The Redemption Boat

Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, Shadow of the Red Star

This longlist of 24 unpublished works of Asian fiction in English will be reviewed and evaluated by the 2009 Man

Asian Literary Prize judges, who will announce a shortlist of works in October 2009. The winner will be announced

on Monday, 16 November at an awards ceremony in Hong Kong.

comics

all from Wulffmorgenthaler, the craziest daily comics from the Nords

John and Tom

You like them? You need these.

Star Wars: The Roots and Luke Skywalker: The Roots of Hate

This site tells you the subtle and not so subtle similarities between Star Wars and the Dune, that 1963 book that is a must-read for all you there. There is Princess Leia and Princess Alia. Maybe, consciously or not, Spielberg and Lucas borrowed from Frank Herbert's tome? You be the judge.
And then you must have watched Jake Lloyd's intervirew about how his childhood was ruined by Star Wars. Hmmm so was Mark Hamill's life

1659

During that year, Joan Blaeu already completed what was then the most complete world map. The surprising thing with this map is that the Philippines is there, pictured fairly accurately, considering the limits of geography at that time

Alternative Universe: The Pinoy Batman and the Russian Harry Potters

This is how Filipinos assay Batman. Forgot the neurosis and the hate. It's all sing and dance.


Also look at this link about the Harry Potter clones in Russia. Porry Gatter and the Stoned Philosopher? Harry Pothead!

Kinky Stephen King

My datebook this year is by Stephen King. It's not as creepy as I thought but you can't really be smug about the King. Well, it has the much-anthologized "How To Write" and the Fact or Fiction which is weird (the guy who run over him later died alone and found by the same policeman who helped King).

But what freaks me out is that the datebook has a "How to" on bondage. Yes, the bondage of Betty Page and kinbaku of Japanese. Who would expect?

The Life of Brian

Hey THE BLOG is still alive. And fighting. Good to know.

Woodstock Stuck

Remember the Woodstock album cover with the couple huddled in a bedcover? Symbol of free love, right? Oh man! Turns out they are still together. Read

Michael's Bubbles

What do Michael's pets reveal about him and what of the private zoos of Chavit, Vicsyd, Mayor Fernandez of Dagupan and other dictators? It started 2,000 years ago with the despots of Alexandria or even earlier.

On a personal note, this article however ended with:

Given his wealth and power, owning a chimpanzee might have been just about the most unsurprising thing Michael Jackson ever did. How much more weird would it have been to see the man who once dangled his baby over a balcony railing walk through an airport with a Golden Retriever? If he bought a $1 hermit crab at the beach, wouldn't we wonder why? and so on

Last week, during the rains I was walking to our gate when I was also met by a hermit crab. A hermit crab in Baguio? I took it home and it's still there

60

Things to do to shorten your life. From Esquire

Hey, Fripinos!

Sesame's 40 Years

and because we grew up on the Muppets of Sesame St., here's SS 101, literally

The 101 Muppets of Sesame St.

So happy Super Grover is on top

Time Can Be a Villain. MJ Imagined and Not

This was how Ebony Magazine imagined 2000 version of MJ in 1985:


This was the MJ in 2000:









And then two years ago, Ebony came out with this controversial cover of the real (Oh so surreal) MJ:

Was The Moon Landing 40 Years Ago Faked?

Either that or catz rule

Borges and His Iranian Dream

A DREAM

by Jorge Luis BorgesJULY 6, 2009

In a deserted place in Iran there is a not very tall stone tower that has neither door nor window. In the only room (with a dirt floor and shaped like a circle) there is a wooden table and a bench. In that circular cell, a man who looks like me is writing in letters I cannot understand a long poem about a man who in another circular cell is writing a poem about a man who in another circular cell . . . The process never ends and no one will be able to read what the prisoners write.

(Translated, from the Spanish, by Suzanne Jill Levine.)

The New Yorker saw it fit to reprint this Borges poem in the light of what's happening there.

Monday Night in PCED

artist and patron

Arao and moon

ZOTO

The houses here are floating on styropor covers and boxes. If there is a demolition here, they simply float away.

C3 Bridge

ONE HUNDRED FAMILIES LIVE UNDER THIS BRIDGE

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Rameer

We consider ourselves lucky in a weird way. During our Iloilo trip, we met Tiny. In our Zamboanga trip, we met Rameer Tawasil. Rameer is a Tausug painter born in Jolo during the siege. His huge painting on that should be the Guernica of Mindanao. His paintings can be described as as colorful the vinta but he chose them (as well as his images) deliberately and there are memorious stories behind them which you can relate to if you know your Mindanao history. Here are some of his works for the Ina/Ani. Here is his note on the Yellow Violinist:

A woman playing her violin as part of her other profession. In a traditional tausug wedding, women musicians (3 ensembles) are being hired to entertain the groom and the bride during their celebration from early afternoon till the early morning. I called them "timeless musicians."

Rishab

Here are Rishab's works. Tadang!

Joseph Firmesa

During the Iloilo leg of our Sine Indie caravan, we met an unassuming artist named Joseph Firmeza. His lolo was a classmate (Joseph is still in his 30s, I think) of Jose Rizal and owned the first car in Iloilo City which he promptly drove into the river. Another of our anti-tourist guide, he told us about the historical sites in the city which were destroyed in the name of development and restoration. His first paintings, he said, were castigated because they were so cute. So he rebelled and enmeshed himself in the German expressionists like Lucian Freud and Beerbohm. Include Francis Bacon and other screaming rebel artists. Add a dash of Ilonggo irony and you have Tiny Firmesa. Here are his powerful and unflinching works to be included in the INA/ANI exhibit.