cheaper safer healthier bras please.
and cheaper, less painful breast exams (please naman, no more scary and expensive old school mammograms)!
here’s my friend Anina, with what is fit for the Breast Cancer Awareness Month that is October.
cheaper safer healthier bras please.
and cheaper, less painful breast exams (please naman, no more scary and expensive old school mammograms)!
here’s my friend Anina, with what is fit for the Breast Cancer Awareness Month that is October.
It is rare to meet a woman you would trust with your life, but here was Cheche Lazaro, telling me about why she was retiring, what it is she’s most proud of, and where she will go from here—it was difficult not to be overwhelmed. After all, Cheche’s Probe Productions has so many awards tucked under its belt, and even more achievements that are invisible and non-material.
One such intangible honor is this: for my generation (I was born in the ‘70s), The Probe Team was a crucial touchstone for journalism, known for going the extra mile, crossing that roaring river, and taking a free fall off of a cliff—all for the possibility of a story, something the Philippines has always had in abundance, with too few tellers to tell them. Journalism was (and in some ways still is) a battlefield, fraught with danger and opponents, with the possibility of things exploding just under one’s feet an ever-present companion. As a truthsayer, Cheche Lazaro has been a hero in this field for a long time, so her retirement in many ways marks the end of an era.
a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, October 26 2009.
Kawayan de Guia is clear about his art. It’s his way of talking to the world, engaging it in dialogue, transcending its limits. It’s his upbringing, his lifeblood, his provincial context that is Baguio. It’s his grounding in history, his way of telling stories, his political stance.
Speaking this concretely and categorically about his art, Kawayan just might be the more uncompromising of our contemporary young artists. To explain one’s art may after all be seen as violent to one’s works, if not the end to one’s career: isn’t the appeal of art precisely its lack of clear reason?
But Kawayan tells it otherwise. The human condition is central to his work, cutting across the tragic and comic towards the boastful, highlighting the notions of progress and development as falsities, bringing to the fore the need to see a bigger picture. To Kawayan, the structures that abound in our world are but perspectives that need to be broken down into pieces, if only to take discussions to another place, that’s anywhere but here. (more…)
a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Arts and Books section, October 26 2009.
She was obviously overwhelmed silly by the fact that she was chosen as one of ten most exciting young artists. Which is no surprise really. Dina Gadia is the youngest of the group at 23, and just might have more going for her other than her age: she has a clear sense of what it is that interests her, where her art must lie, and what it is she can do without – or must necessarily rebel against. (more…)
a version of this was published in The Philippine Daily Inquirer on 13 April 2009.
Over lunch, the foursome more famous as the AngFourgettables talks about their nickname, Charice Pempengco, Arnel Pineda, the all-OPM concert month, and everything else in between.
They haven’t disbanded, if that’s what you’re thinking. In fact they insist on two things here: one, that all they’ve done is lie low as a group which allowed their individual careers to flourish, and two, that they’d really rather be called Ang4. Please drop the “gettables” and use the number four, if only to make them sound younger. (more…)