Category Archive for: kalalakihan

when you’re told point blank by a foreigner, and with all honesty instead of malice, that they don’t know anything about Manila, that when he told his friends he wanted to go there they asked “Why?”, that in fact Manila is at the bottom of his list of cities to see, how do you even respond? it gets worse, too. you’re asked do you enjoy Manila? is it a safe city? the answer to the first question is easy of course.

sometimes my honesty does get the better of me. especially since i know they’d see i’m lying through my teeth otherwise.

Tatsu Nishi (Japan) covers up the iconic Merlion, making it into a hotel room.

the happy giddy context of wine in our bodies and the Merlion all covered up by a red box shall save the day: we talk about art in Manila given the art that’s here, Louie Cordero’s paean to the urban legend of videoke singing of My Way, Mark Salvatus’ interest in empty walls and capturing what’s untraceable in people. we talk about the absurdity of what they’ve seen in Manila: a Virgin Mary portrait that is actually made up of words of the Old Testament that you can only read through a magnifying glass (i want to know where that exactly is), the Socialist Bar in Manila where a naive foreigner could only walk into (no it’s not really socialist eh?).

we talk about their horror stories: of walking through the city itself of Manila, across the stretch of CCP and realizing that lamp posts slowly but surely ceased to be lit. of being told by their family and friends to keep safe by hiding their cellphones and ipods, by not wearing any jewelry at all. both of them were men who’ve gone to Manila on almost adventures. and despite the horrible hotel service at Clark Pampanga both (because now they know me, we say) are thinking of going back there and doing things differently, give it another chance.

and then faced with a man who knows nothing about the Philippines, he says. and who, in the middle of talking about Jollibee and Manny Pacquiao, Apl D Ap and carjacking (yes you fall back on all that), says excitedly: oh the au pairs! that is your contribution to the world. he then goes on to talk about his au pair who played favorites, of friends who had au pair trouble. and i could only but mention nurses and teachers, and thank the heavens for the New Yorker from Japan who had a grade three Filipino homeroom teacher, Ms. Caoili (god bless her), who was just wonderful she says.

but there is no escaping Manila and its stereotypes, especially because i could not for the life of me say they weren’t true. i couldn’t lie and say that walking through the streets of and around CCP was safe, given that still stark media memory of the bus hostage taking. i couldn’t say that if they looked at a map, they could go through the galleries and museums across Makati City, and they’d be fine: the lack of a map is contingent on the lack of order that would otherwise protect pedestrians, local and foreign after all. i couldn’t say just come — COME to Manila! it’s totally different from what you imagine.

Louie Cordero's "My We" at the Singapore Biennale 2011

because what if it’s exactly the same as, or worse than, what they imagine.

that they imagine the worst of Manila is just sad, but also it is not unexplainable. you only walk the streets of one of the safest cities like Singapore and you know that there must be something we can do about our own city. you think of Bangkok or Hanoi or Phnom Penh or New Delhi, and while it might be easy to imagine the dangers of these spaces as well, it still seems a lot safer.

or maybe its vibrant cultural images are just more concrete, more real. it seems that the dangers of a third world city (country) are balance out by a sense of its cultural vibrancy, its ability to speak of itself strongly and concretely to be about something, that something making it worthy of a visit, that something as its best cultural product and production, its best tourist attraction.

you want Manila (and the Philippines) to be a tourist destination? let’s begin by agreeing on how we’re selling it and what we’re going to say about its cultural productions. stop making it seem like the cheapest country in the world: because we know how cheap means two things.

and realize that really, being hospitable doesn’t cut it anymore. nor do our notion(s) of diversity and being free-for-all.

because Orosman at Zafira is all-original: music, lyrics, talent.

and even when Rent 2011 is obviously an American text, there is here, real Pinoy talent.

both reviews are up at gmanewsonline!

unexpected romances

I’ve been told with disdain that I have too much hope for local movies, puwede namang hintayin na lang na ipalabas saTV ang pelikula.

But it isn’t with hope that I go to the cinemas to watch Pinoy films. It is with excitement, always: I enter a cinema willing to be surprised, having as context what is usual or normal for movies on our shores. It isn’t with notion(s) of hope, as it is with a sense of how things have changed, and how there are still plenty of possibilities.

So I was willing to be surprised by My Valentine Girls (Regal Films and GMA Films), the trailer of which promised a trilogy, one that’s rarely done for romantic comedies these days, unless we count as love stories too the overdone Shake Rattle & Roll horror franchise.

The conclusions for this movie are easy, the enjoyment even more so. I chalk it up to two things: one, the limited amount of time for each episode made for storytelling that was quick, with no minute wasted on long stretches of nothing; two, creative directors are all you need, the ones who have a sense of how love stories are supposed to look, how comfortable love can be, and how sexual tension need not be about pretty boys and girls, and rarely happens in the most ideal of moments. It’s also never easy.

My only question is: who was directing the story beyond the three episodes? Richard Guttierez plays a writer with a deadline, and we are treated to his novel-in-progress by quick shifts to the three love stories within it.

the rest is here!

on an otherwise quiet Saturday, driving home from a jog in the Fort, I could only be jarred into the realization that the cities we live in survive on activities within and in and by itself. and no this doesn’t mean fiestas anymore, not in this day and age.

it seems that the city’s local beauty pageant had just been held, a tarp with the Mayor’s face actually announces the event. the Miss Mandaluyong candidates had one tarpaulin each, hung on a post each, around the City Hall Rotonda.

tarps are the new “in” thing, a way of saying: “Sikat ako, ikaw?”

on posts, alongside advertisements
ms.mandaluyong 2011!

yes, those tangled wires represent the state of electrical maintenance in this city that has a beauty pageant. but i digress.

as i turn right into Boni, it takes me a while to realize that the set of tarps that line this narrower minor street actually has a different set of women. it was also about a different pageant altogether, one that obviously wasn’t just about beauty.

 you are reading that right: Bilbiling Mandaluyong 2011. and i cannot tell you how stunned i was at the idea of a whole city having excess fat, though i imagine that is beyond what the city hall thought when they put together this pageant.

this pageant that we’ve actually seen done on TV and the movies, yes? but also in the current scheme of health consciousness and early mortality rates is just startling. the gut reaction is to think: how politically incorrect is this? the other reaction is: but who’s to say, really?

in these times when being healthy is everything and commercialized, when it necessarily sinks into a consumerist culture that’s about the brands that matter, the places to run in, the workouts to do. in these times when impossible thinness has come to be seen as normal; when all thinness requires is a lot of money to go to some slimming clinic of other of which there are plenty.

in these times when we should know better. we should know that half the time it isn’t about misrepresentation as it is about class, the other half maybe those who worry about the world less actually get it right. in these times when we should know that all the time we are all victims of the culture of beauty of any given time, and yes this includes the men, too. in these times when whitening the skin and straightening the hair, whittling the waist and trimming the thighs, and for men being buff and sleek and metrosexual, is what’s seen as normal.

maybe the ones who don’t want to take some diet pills have got it right, are actually better off, are actually on a healthier track spirit-wise.

in context, on the street.
tabi-tabi portion eh?

i’m far from calling this revolutionary of course, but i will say this: maybe it makes for the most uncanny of steps in the right — because different — direction. hopefully these ladies refused to be made into the laughingstock of the pageant, ideally they are given the same kind of courtesy and respect accorded Ms. Mandaluyong. because there is more to Bilbiling Mandaluyong than the additional weight. especially if these Bilbiling candidates prove that their intelligence is just as big, their brilliance equally overwhelming.

now, maybe i hope for too much.

babae kase!

fact: i grew up around men who, whenever there’s an accident on the road, or there’s undue traffic, would say: “Babae kase!” with a shake of the head, sometimes hands up in the air. yes, they let go of the steering wheel to show their disgust.

fact: i grew up around women who are crazy ass drivers, cousins and an aunt about whom is said: “Parang lalake ka magmaneho” complete with that head shake, by the men in our lives.

when the MMDA announced that it would propose that bus operators be required to hire women drivers, that is, ascertain that at least 50% of their bus drivers are women, the reactions, especially from women in media, were wanting. the early morning show hosts made fun of the idea — and in effect of women — saying that this would only mean people being late for work because women drive slow, saying that masyadong maingat the female driver for comfort. this was a general reaction that i now fail to remember who said what, but i do remember Shawn Yao of Sapul sa 5 saying that this reeked of sexism.

though one does wonder, is it the MMDA that’s being sexist? or is it us, all of us, who reacted to this with a shrug and a mental image of very very slow buses plying EDSA?

there was in fact, nothing sexist about the MMDA’s proposal. what was absolutely wrong was the premise for these statements by MMDA Chair Francis Tolentino. because when he said that female drivers rarely get into accidents, which female drivers was he talking about? obviously private vehicle owners, yes? and that’s us who don’t need to drive our cars for a living, who don’t ply EDSA as a matter of feeding our families at the end of the day. more than being sexist, Tolentino created a world where every woman is the same, forgetting that the women drivers he speaks of aren’t the ones who will be driving those darn buses.

those buses are the source of livelihood for driver and the conductor, who need to earn a certain amount for the bus company first before they earn their keep for the day. if that system isn’t going to change, then really, those female drivers will be as reckless on the road as their male counterparts. because they need to be, because they have no choice.

to reduce the issues of class and the systemic dysfunction of the bus industry to an issue of gender is unfair. it’s also just dumb.

and really, some common sense please: traffic and accidents on EDSA and Commonwealth are also such because while private vehicles cannot go beyond that yellow line, buses can. where lies the discipline? it is the rules, the ones that aren’t followed, that endanger lives. those rules the MMDA is responsible for, those lives they are responsible for.

‘wag niyo na kami bolahin na mas okay kami mag-drive, para kunwari magaling kayo sa trabaho niyo. though maybe the wish is for women, especially the ones who drive their own cars and are in media, to see this for what it is: a classist proposal, that they’ve reacted to in the most sexist of ways.