SQUATTERPUNK'D

I've never been to a place like this. I've never had any reason to be. I've never had any reason not to be either. But as much as the samaritan impulses that drive my aunt and her friends to do this thing fulltime for life secretly fascinate me, I fess up that it's not just as in me. Sad,that.

I think last Saturday was the farthest I could go - - - navigating through the tangles of scrapyard architecture , under a cruel summer and the seemingly neverending roar of airplane turbines, shooting documentary footage for her NGO for no money , with my new favorite ragtag posse of filmmaking misfits. I felt a bit removed at first going in - - -and it bothered me a bit. The filmmaker subduing the samaritan and breaking all the misery down down into shots, angles, textures, artifice.

This was just one pocket of Paranaque slumworld and it was vast. Half the slum used to be a resort, gone to seed after urban planning buried the sea. You could tell if you look closely. The swimming pool turned trashpit. The three storey cottages turned mass housing. The hordes of the unwashed on permanent vacation. This was one of two zones. Uptown, if you will. The other zone was shanties upon shanties with mostly dwarf high ceilings and floors made of formica and walls made of tarp sardined against one another. Roomy enough to sleep in. And to fuck - - -there were kids everywhere. Fat, cute, kids that somehow deepened the lingering disconnect. Or maybe not. The NGO is called Feed the Children. And that is literally what they do. With rice and lentils mostly. But also with livelihood programs, with schoolbooks, with meds. The fat,cute kids could be their job getting done.And my lack of empathy could be out of my expecting to be hit by waves of despair. And there wasn't any. Not today. The place was a din of pure happy and oddly serene, shot through with a calm that was not just sobering but enviable.

I'd been punk'd,man. Squatterpunk'd.

The feeling stuck with me. These tiny lives magnifiying how petty my troubles were. And this sense that all my petty troubles would dissipate if I had their lack of fuss and clutter. But some of it begins to wear off a little soon as we wrap. Even before dinner and drinks arrive back at the studio, I'm breaking everything down into shots, angles, textures, artifice. The twinge of envy's still there,sure. I think that'll set up camp for a bit. But I don't think I'll ever have their lack of fuss and clutter. And I can't live like that. I'd be a hyopocrite if I said I could. It's a bad way to live - - - and these people knew it ,despite having made peace with their lot. They were acting on an out. And all I'm thinking is that what we did would somehow help. I genuinely want it to. And I genuinely hope so. No put-on there. But noble and wondrous as it is to say my day of slumming was somehow gas to my samaritan impulses . . . it really wasn't. And I'm afraid this pro bono documentary is not the least I can do. It's the most.

WE HAVE SUFFERED FOR OUR ART . . .NOW IT"S YOUR TURN

Words and pictures from the front. Them! - - -in fragments. Egobath in progress, stay clear if that makes you iffy.

You can see this version of the invite plastered onthe West Gallery website. None of us made it but wheoever did, I bow at your feet. It's funfuckingtastic.

Obviously stage-directed pensive pose hours before the beer arrived. That's me looking at my own work. Vanity of vanities. From top to bottom - - - You, Me,A History In Rust and The Silences Between Us and Our Plans, Collapsing.

Half of the posse of "gadflies and frauds and stragglers and misfits."

Three of my favorite pieces, from up going down- - - Omar's Ba-doom!, Ronald's Spider Constellation and my favorite of all,Felix's Fahrenheit 451. Exceedingly partial to the installations this year - - -not uploaded are Amy's Ransom Notes and Jay's El Mariachi. Pareho ding wasak!

Oh, a raggedy and jerry-built closing is this close to happening on April 25. Last chance to see all this claptrap and pigment. Rumors persist of copious amounts of beer at zero per bottle.

You will not be there, most likely. . . but man, wouldn't it be a right old blast if you were. For fucking once.

I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT I WAS DOING BUT I'M GLAD THAT IT'S DONE

The house came freighted with rumors of phantoms.

As it should. You could tell that just from the aura that rose off it - - -misbegotten, yearning, bereft. If it wasn't haunted, it ought to be. I felt it calling to me for months every time I passed by: film meee, film meee, film meee. Brilliant, then. The accidental trapping of a ghost on tape would really make the piece sing. I did feel a prickle of chill run up my spine,despite the homicidal midmorning scorch,seconds after crossing the overgrown lawn into the shadowy porch. But that was as far as I got. Jitters, little else. Piece happened, though. Praise the Lord.

The short - - -A Ghost In Progress - - -was one of the many darlings conceived for the show that I possessed neither the nerve nor heart to kill,supersizing ,as it has, into that crucial last step you either take or untake before the bungee jump. Making or unmaking it would determine if my year was going to be a slog of AVPs or the first glimmers of an ouevre. It would paint a more heroic picture of me if I said that, despite resources running to a panicky low,I was all ironclad resolve and faith without waver, but I was marinating in my own juices of anxiety and worry the two weeks leading up to shoot day. Serendipities did pull a photofinish. Cosmic timing,if you will. But I'd rather not indulge such flapdoodle seeing how serendipity and cosmic timing amounted to so much bullshit in '07. Some legwork, a dose of luck, the grace of true friends - - - let's leave it at that and pardon the cynicism.

It's a work in progress, title's not just quasi-poetic,it's qualitative. Mild pangs to re-edit, re-do sound design, re-post are set off with each re-watch. But not being quite there yet makes it perfect for serving my intents for the show. My struggle with last year's Destroy All Monsters! was to overthrow this encrypted resistance to let the work dip below the surface, scars of agency tenure where everything was/is just a story, just a movie, just a painting, just a commercial. Fuck saying something. Fuck attempting commentary or metaphor or poetry. Fuck discourse. Fuck being a pretentious twat and loosen the fuck up. Flippant,noncommittal, removed - - -me as agency creative. The stakes were negligible anyway, with spots. Fuck up and you're immunized from ridicule by pinning blame on your idiot clients or leaving the idiot work off your reel , but bag a trophy and your ego hogs bathing in all that baskable glory. Either way, you get paid copious wads of liquidity. Win-win.

But what if you're not? I had a six month headstart for Them! But I only started to paint March. I got tangled up overthinking in the first five. Then the dismantling of many things gave me something to say. I could peg that for you but without guaranteeing any degree of consensual accuracy. Besides, I abhor the vainglory in any kind of writing about your own work. But no one's forcing me to do this, so guilty as charged and my apologies for wanking. Still, what did Bradbury say? "I didn't know what I was doing but I'm glad that it's done."

Mismosis.

The work - - -so-called "sad paintings" included - - - is not about regret,not necessarily. More the obsolescence of the unforgiven, more the desolation of the unrescued, more the pathos of the unwhole. But I don't know. Maybe you'll get it, maybe you won't. Those were my intents,at least. I've had this melancholy bad for years and I've been too much of a wimp to wear it on my sleeve. I had a less petrified economy then and that buys you so much off-the-rack denial . It's when you don't have the paycheques to buy a new PSP or a new MacBook or a new action figure or a new phone to stopgap the void and brainwash yourself into thinking nothing is off that you turn to your work and the first thing it forces you to do is not stopgap the void but confront it, wrestle with it, pin it to the mat if you can, right before it strips you naked , makes you see-through and wideopen - - - this time with no idiot clients to blame, no leaving idiot work off the reel ,no trophies to bag either. No immunity, no ego bath. An artist friend tells me that without any issues to resolve, they're just pretty pictures or just well-lit shots or just words strung together. Competent, on-strat, OK. And it shouldn't be. As an "artist" who's not quite there yet coming from an adversary persuasion that incalcates the overriding need to have as little to say as possible and always on the surface prefarably in the headline , all this is zero footprint to me. And melodramatic as it is to say it's an exorcism , that's what it sort of has been.

But asked for qualifiers at the opening, here's what I say: "My work is dishonest. A con." The work of a fraud. Think about it. Marginal painter, rookie filmmaker, writer nobody reads. No clique and no crowd and not much pull despite free beer. Fraud,then. Self-effacing aside, no other descriptor rings as inevitably. It's a thankless, sometimes unrewarding endeavor. The writing, the painting, the filmmaking. But it helps center me a little. More now that it's stopped being just an excuse to throw a party for friends. More now that it's gotten personal - - -A Ghost In Progress is really "about" how memories are ghosts and how we are all houses freighted with phantoms or how I am a house frieghted with phantoms but it also isn't and I should probably stop there. More now that it's becoming all about the process, the work - - -which,in and of itself, is cathartic and, really, fun.

A filmmaker friend drops a pinch of sage wisdom in my beer the other night and says finding my voice is king and you only find that by doing it over and over. He's talking about the filmmaking. I heed it,of course, and conversely strap one more target for heckle around my neck. Voice won't buy me that new iPod Video, not like doing spots would, the Greek chorus of obscenely upwardly mobile agency creatives in my head screams. Just as poetry,metaphor, discourse, commentary, meaning - - and really, this crap called art, won't. But maybe my being alright with that means that I've at last,for better or worse, broken through to the other side. More to life than a new iPod Video anyway, least that's what I'm trying to browbeat myself into believing.

Of course,Them! could just be my latest off-the-rack denial. And I might be hipdeep in spots all year long and buying a new iPod Video before it's done. You can't tell sometimes. With frauds.

WORMS (BORED, SO I SHUFFLE)

Hey ,kids,look!

An iPod Meme!

Here's the instructions:
1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each question.
3. Use the song title as the answer to the question


1. What Does This Year Have In Store For Me?
The Best Dies, Raveonettes

2. What Does My Love Life Look Like?
Ex, Chilli Tees

3. What Do I Say When Life Gets Hard?
Cynical Girl, Marshall Crenshaw

4. What Do I Think Of When I Get Up In The Morning?
Sunspots, No Age

5. What Song Will I Dance To At My Wedding?
Mouth Almighty , Elvis Costello

6. What Do You Want As A Career?
SRO, Imago

7. Your Favorite Saying?
Will You Please Be There?, Reindeer Section

8. Favorite Place?
Bottom of the Bottle, Jon Auer

9. What Do You Think of Your Parents?
My Iron Lung, Radiohead

10. Where Would You Go On A First Date?
In Need of a Miracle, New Radicals

11. Drug of Choice?
Melt My Heart To Stone, adele

12. Describe Yourself.
Boy Void, No Age

13. The Song That Will Be Played At Your Funeral?
Off Work, Thurston Moore

14. What's Your Pornstar Name?
Leyendecker, Battles

15. What is Your State of Mind Like At The Moment?
Veteran's Day Poppy, Captain Beefheart

16. How Will I Die?
Monster Love, Goldfrapp

17. The Song You'll Put As The Subject?
Worms, Yeasayer

2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 ,strangely enough, make sense. 9 and 16,though,are so spot-on,it's uncanny.

THEM!, ANNOTATED

There, in the cheesily bombastic guts of the disaster movie, is a zeitgeist exorcising its anxieties. JG Ballard, he was one of the few who saw it first. The Unconscious, he said, will always expose itself. And all that manmade cataclysm is just that - - -paranoid night-thoughts in spillover.

What concerns these twelve expanded from the previous seven- - - Ronald Achacoso, Alex Aguilar, Daphne Aguilar, Amy Aragon, Felix Bacolor, Dodo Dayao, Romeo Lee, Omar Taleon, Jay Ticar, Raul Rodriguez, Anthony Vergeire and Cris Villanueva - - -is more than the disaster movie’s perverse fascination with making a spectacle of things falling apart. 2007’s Destroy All Monsters, for all its bullish and reckless and pure and devoted acts of fetishistic valorizing of the low pop gunk that was their consensual mothers’ milk, was also an exalting of the possibility that all these tropes - - -B movies and videogames and comicbooks – - - were conduits to deeper sensitivities and processes. Parsing the encoded kitsch has become the default process.

Ballard, in a string of extrapolative, and really, quite beautiful disaster sci-fic novels in the 60s,almost singlehandedly made catastrophe and aftermath emotive, intimate, personal, ecstatic. And it’s the myriad permutations and ramifications of the disaster movie these twelve want to decode - - - malfunction, heartbreak, extinction, disruption, misrule, anarchy, rot, decline, doom. Them! is a poeticizing of all the emotional and metaphorical and philosophical and physical wreckage and detritus that accumulates when things fall apart - - -catastrophe and aftermath made emotive, intimate, ecstatic, personal.

Them! was the seminal 1954 B movie with its gigantic monstrous ants and visceral crackle hardwired with eco-phobias about dancing with atomic devils. You could trace ground zero of the modern-day disaster movie to these anxious, jittery 50s-bred radioactive monster movies. But the appropriation has an underlayer for the way the word comes freighted with a sense of exclusion,connoting something collective and ominous yet removed and other. There’s always been, to varying degrees, an outsider element to these twelve, separately coming as they do from divergent tendencies, opponent cliques, outlaw disciplines. Gadflies and frauds and conmen and stragglers and misfits. They are wreckage and detritus, too.

And this is their annihilation and renewal cycle - - -patterns of injury infused with terrible beauty, bags of defunct currency embodying near-futile hope, discarded toys metamorphosed , dystopian repressions,abandoned houses sublet to lost loves, fossils of faded youth exhumed yet again,metaphors and signifiers of obsolescence.There is a miasma of anarchy and breakdown. But not nihilism. Rather a fierce and wayward beauty tempered by a sense of grace.

Them! is ultimately a valentine. To both the melancholy of destruction and the hope of rescue.

AFTERMATH

So it came and went.

The turnout was . . .well, like any other opening I’ve been to this year so far, except that none of those were mine because this only happens once a year for me. Light to moderate in traffic terms. Fun, nonetheless, and the drinks were forever verging on extinction.

My perpetual thanks to the same gaggle of old faces who came last year and again made the time to come, and the new ones as well, but most specially those who came despite the most unthinkable of adversities. I won't name names but you know who you are. Means a lot to me more than any string of words can ever say.

You can now count on me to be there for all of your gigs from now on.

Now I go to sleep

The show runs for a month. I give guided tours if I'm up. End of useless information.

THE HERMITS

Body cooperates enough - - - no pains though the cakes of flab put up a half-hearted resistance against doing anything remotely kinetic but I fight back - - -so I drag myself out of the recesses of my cave to drop by my aunt's wake a few weeks back with my entire immediate clan.

Back in the days of the ad gulag, I'd semi-fake immense fatigue just to ward off my Dad when he would bother me with overtures of conversation after a long day at the office. But I've since begun to understand why he was so gung-ho for talk,even as the hours slid past holy. His world had been in continual shrinkage since retiring, a house all to himself spent in an infinite stretch of waiting for company. Interfacing with anyone had become so slippery and fleeting, it took on the hit of a drug high when he would engage in it.

I was thick in the painting then but cave life can get lonely specially when you actually are and I needed something to buffer the anxiety I felt knowing what kind of void awaited after the opening, somehow temper the overwhelm of gray in my near-future. Familial imperatives notwithstanding, I went more out of a desire to engage in any kind of human contact. Cabin fever had me cruising for interface.

My aunts' younger sisters were there. One of them needs looking after from time to time - - -long story - - -and the other never married so that she could. Not twins but spiritually joined at the hip. Funny and bubbly like a stand-up act and exuding not naivete but more a kind of benign emotional purity, as if lacking even the animal impulse to think ill. That night they spoke of things they remembered from back when we were kids. They're smalltown folk. And these two, theirs has become a hermetic existense inside a bubble of their own making. I've forgotten half of these things but not them. These memories were like heirlooms to them, fondled in their heads like they would precious trinkets or old photographs, remembered with the icky affection of parents effusing about their newborns .

One of them hugged me - - -she hugged every one of us really - - - and it threw me. I couldn't help feel her genuine, irrevocable delight that I came. What threw me more, though,was how it also felt like a fraternal handshake. She was a hermit like me - - - high on interface. We are family and family would always be there for family - - -but up until that point, I had come out of a selfish impetus , a sense of obligation. She couldn't tell and the hug was the hug of someone who simply could not contain their gratitude. It was sobering and touching.

Nobody simply can be bothered anymore. Hell, I couldn't be bothered to listen to one of my friends as much as he wanted to. He ended up hanging himself. It gives me a chill that sometimes I don't blame him, that sometimes what he did made some measure of sense to me. Your world turns claustrophobic and miniaturized and it can be quite the trick to tough out when company's become such a rare, exorbitant commodity and you're strapped to even bargain. Your mind starts thinking funny - - - like mulling over a return to the 9 to 5 grind, just to rub up to live flesh on a regular basis. Or make peace with the walls closing in. Solitude has its perks, sure, but the bootleg DVDs will run out and you can only beat off so much in a day. My aunts,at least, had each other. And I guess that night at the wake, they also had us.

My mom tells them before we go that we would always be just a phone call away. My mom, you could count on her for being there for you anytime you needed her. And I decide that they could count on me,too, that I would always be just a phone call away from them - - - or for anyone who needs me. God knows these days, very few ever are.

THEN WE CAME TO THE ENDS

Touch on death and you either come off maudlin or unfathomable or tactless or some curious mixture of all three.

But there's been dying going on around me the last few weeks so incessant it's almost contrived and a bitch to shrug off as happenstance, which it is but which it doesn't feel like- - -three friends' parents, an ex-classmate's brother, an ex-coworker's wife. One after another, like semiautomatic rounds, two of them younger than me.

My body revolted against me recently, lower back giving out, exiling me to bed where every move would detonate a mushroom cloud of hurt. So I could only go to one wake, my HS art sensei - - - one of three men who taught me everything I knew artwise done in before his time by heartbreak, the weight of the world, his own frail body revolting against him.

I was among kind, old strangers singing songs in that small bright nook of the vast, otherwise darkened church. There's been a gray cloud inside my head the last few weeks, not entirely because of but exacerbated no doubt by the speed at which people were going - - -this numbing sense of anticlimax, bland at best, joyless at worst. Sitting there as the wall of hymn swirled around me like an undertow , I was secretly wishing for a hoary cliche to play out, secretly wishing for the tides of gospel to chase the clouds away, secretly wishing for some uplift.

And getting zip.

Not out of there being none but more out of . . .out of what? Being on another spiritual frequency? A seeming apathy to grace? Emotional anesthesia?

Those are kinds of dying, too, aren't they? And not likely to part any gray clouds.

Guess I bite it this round.



A week later and a few days after the back repaired itself, we find out that one of our own - - -a not-so-distant aunt - - -had a tumor the size of a Titleist in her head. Today, it got the better of her.

The hits keep on fucking coming, don't they?


Quit already.

THEM!

Prone to shifting shape still - - - or maybe not, I'm a little fond of this one already - - -but this draft's as spot-on a sum-up as you'll get.





Match 25's the Tuesday after Easter,people. And you all will be there.

Free food, free beer, free art and the jams will run long and sweet and knock your socks off. What's your excuse?

More later.

HEY 19

Ah,yes. Ms.Adele. Cute, sweet, not yet 20.

She will steal your heart - - -most likely with the prettified heartbreak of the little number that put a trophy on her mantle.


" . . .should I give up
or should I keep on chasing pavements
even if it leads nowhere . . ."



A medicine for melancholy. Play and palpitate, lovefools.

2541

Head's been looping it ruthless these days , that Grant Hart chestnut Marshall Crenshaw did a rejig of that went like this - - -

" . . .you put our names on the mailbox
and I put everything else in the past
it was the first place we had to ourselves
I didn't know it would be the last . . ."

- - -occuring to me that even if that place we had to ourselves was never geographic nor architectural that it still feels like an eviction.

Blame the overplaying of hands , blame the malfunctioning of codebreakers , blame that girl thing. I licked the signals and it had a specific tang - - - but my tastebuds are not what they were. Mea fucking culpa.

The willful, melodramatic severance does make some sense, give it that. But it's a lapsing into the cliche you've battled and thwarted all these years - - - can you get any more banal? Falling out sucks eggs.

". . .well things are so much different now
I'd say the situation's reversed
and it'll probably not be the last time
I'll have to be out by the first . . ."

But all you emotional transients should torrent this motherfucker already
- - -as you should anything by Grant or Crenshaw or better yet, shell out your hard-earneds, conversion rates have never been sweeter.

2541 - - -it's your cathartic must.

THE BRINK'S JOB

It is a kind of brinkmanship. Brinkmanship, Palahniuk-defined.

Or maybe just a glorified cocktail of procrastination, overthinking and resident sloth plus the brain-sucking rent-payers that chewed up my time and nibble at it still. And really, for me, the ideas that speak tongues rarely come before the last minute when there isn't enough time to pull all of them off.

Darlings have been killed - - or at least put off for another time - - -but there's finally black yellow pigment under my nails and my cave smells like turpentine.

We are off, then. Painting. Scriptwriting. Planning that installation piece. But mostly painting. At fucking last.

Bomb shelter caveman days are here again. Praise the Lord.

See y'all in a month, give or take.

SOMETHING FOR THE LONGING

Today - - -a day that makes many see red for the imagined vacuums it sharpens into relief and the way it petrifies your wallet like an EF5 tornado if you don't have a vacuum to sharpen into relief- - - was all about the ecstasies of possibility. Of falling slowly.

It began with a sprig of plant life pitched someone's way - - -old habits dying hard - - - and ended with a run-in with that someone decrypted as a tiny burst of serendipity- - -old habits dying even harder.

Nothing much, really, it turns out, and afterwards, it was back to regular chase and evade programming.

But the contours were lovable for what its worth, terminated the day on a nosebleed of colors.



So it went.



Meantime, lovenerds - - - five for the date movie junkie you secretly harbor and nurse. Give to the flitty and the tatty of your mushy self and dig in. All musts, alphabetized.

1. Chungking Express (Wongkarwai)
2. Comrades Almost A Love Story (Peter Chan)
3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
4. Love Letter (Shunji Iwai)
5. Once (John Carney)

OBIT

A swatch of much resonance, from Nicole Krauss' The History of Love.

"He fell in love. It was his life."

Word.

OC

Taken from Jonathan Carroll's blog.

"The only thing that matters is the thing you can't stop thinking about."

Mismosis.

ALMA MATTERS

5. . .6. . .7. . . 8 . . .

Last night. UP at 100. Campuswide hoedown.

And it was all back to Aling Babes down at the old FA walk, site of first loves and long goodbyes and bad drugs and massive revelry, bearing witness again to the comings and goings of the Viscomm/Studio dinosaurs in full party armor. The gadflies and the stragglers, the colossal youth and the cavemen, the slackers and the go-betweens. Steely Dan cranked. Liquor ban lifted. Liquor van raided. Name your blessed poison,ya lush. I'll take cigarillos and low calorie beer, thank you very much, but where the hell did this glass of bourbon come from? Fuck it, then. Wasted before 8. On another planet by midnight. Amnesia by 3. Everything spins all night long. There's a mardi gras in my head. The asphalt sighs. Dazed and confused. Holy shit. Never ever ever drink on an empty stomach. The word of God no less.

Hazy frieze of catch-ups, half-remembered, non-sticky. Too many, too few. Should've talked more, danced around less. Should've come while the sun was still up. Should've would've could've. So many friends, so little time. Send your miseries on holiday. Swig nostalgia like a tonic. 17 has turned 35 - - - and I'm surprised that we're still living. John Cougar is a god for 4 minutes 49 seconds. Then Radiohead and Reivers and Ron Sexsmith come on, mixing endorphin and melancholy. Cherrybomb of memories. Emotional speedball. Beer pa, please. And the sky turns a soup of colors.

There's a riot going on. Party hearty , motherfuckers, and have it large! Rakenrol!

Sabay sabay!


"I am. . .I am . . . I am Superman . . .and I can do anything!"

More!

THE BENDS: DECOMPRESSING 2007

Hey kids look!

A 2007 Meme!

1. What Did You Do In 2007 That You'd Never Done Before ?
No bungee jumping off skyscrapers, no shark wrestling, no body modifications. As you were, you big ape. But here, try some astronaut food
- - - you never will again. But my first glass of mojitos by the bay will not be my last and next time can it not be with a guy? Wouldn't mind going out to the laots of Navotas again , too, and go postal on the sumptuous bounty of that tahong farm. My mother made the frontpage of a daily, does that count? And. . . oh, yeah, a very close, very good friend of mine hung himself. Let's try and not do that last one again anytime soon, shall we?

2. Did You Keep Your New Years' Resolutions. And Will You Make More For Next Year?
Resolutions are wack. And most of the ones that matter take years of follow-through to mean anything so more of the same for me - - - eat less fowl, ban procrastination, walk a few more tightropes, drink moderately, update like I’m getting paid, work work work. Also, see about a girl. Falls under work, too.

3. Did Anyone Close To You Give Birth?
Boss of the Ex - - -not close. Sister-in-Law of the Ex - - -closer. Longtime friend of the Ex- - -closest.

4. Did Anyone Close To You Die?
Oh fuck man, yes. Days will never be painted this black.

5. What Countries Did You Visit?
Zip.

6. What Would You Like To Have In 2008 That You Lacked In 2007?
A curse lifted. A change in the weather. A Japanese visa. A grant. A script filmed. A destiny fulfilled. And a wife. The last two could be the same thing.

7. What Date(s) From 2007 Will Remain Etched Upon Your Memory, And Why?
January 25 - - -Destroy All Monsters! February 19 - - - monster art, low-end kebab, flat fishballs, old school,old friend. May 24 - - -charges reversed, verdict in limbo, game afoot. August 5- - - suicide is painless, not this one. August 8 to 16 - - -Cinemanila. September 22/ 23 - - -obsolete punks, young idols, old flame. October 21 - - -new divas, bitch fairies, dream girl.
December 23 - - -hungover pasta , barrio lass, my Everest to climb, God give me strength. December 25 - - -a Christmas to bottle.

8. What Was Your Biggest Achievement This Year?
Getting by. Oh, and landing someone's Dislikes list on Friendster.

9. What Was Your Biggest Failure?
Letting someone down. Letting myself down. Not listening enough.

10. Did You Suffer Illness or Injury?
Nothing you can't pin blame on age.

11. What Was The Best Thing You Bought?
No tengo dinero.

12. Whose Behavior Merited Celebration?
Friends. Old,new,missing, hiding.

13. Whose Behavior Made You Appalled And Depressed?
No one. No point. Except DJs. Hang the DJs.

14. Where Did Most of Your Money Go?
Debts.

15. What Did You Get Really, Really, Really Excited About?
Destroy All Monsters!

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's Falling Slowly and Imago's Sundo and Rihanna's Umbrella. Also - - - Lucky Soul's Add Your Light To Mine, Of Montreal's Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse, Kelly Clarkson's Never Again and Cherry Ghost's People Help The People.

17. Compared To This Time Last Year, You Are:
Exactly the same - - -foiled again, about to paint, cancer-free, in the mood for love, seeing about a girl. Oh, wait - - -fatter. Much fatter.

18. What Do You Wish You'd Done More Of?
Stuntliving. Cardio. Rome. Sleep. Water.

19. What Do You Wish You'd Done Less Of?
Playsafing. Chips. The boardung that was Heroes Season 2. Sleep. Beer.

20. How Did You Spend Christmas?
In the thick din of the clan at peak reunion volume. Warms the heart, blowtorches the ear.

22. Did You Fall In Love In 2007?
Never stopped,apparently.

23. How Many One Night Stands?
Zip . . .sigh.

24. What Was Your Favorite TV Program?
The Wire - - -the hype spoke with tongues of gold, children. The best show on TV indeed. Also, Battlestar Galactica. Also, Beck Mongolian Chop Squad. Also, Lost. Also, Mad Men. Also, Doctor Who. Also,Boston Legal.

25. Do You Hate Anyone Now That You Didn't Hate This Time Last Year?
Nope. Why for?

26. What Was The Best Book You Read?
Rob Sheffield's Love Is a Mixtape, Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You and Jonathan Lethem's You Don't Love Me Yet.

27. What Was Your Greatest Musical Discovery?
Burial, Battles, Bembol Rockers, Lucky Soul.

28. What Did You Want And Get?
A what if? answered. Forgiveness.

29. What Did You Want And Not Get?
True love. Forgiveness.

30. What Was Your Favourite Film This Year?
Rico's Altar, Raya Martin's Autohystoria, David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises,Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Ploy, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century, John 's Voices and David Fincher's Zodiac, but there's more. Much, much more. List with annotations forthcoming - - -and I promise not to wait until August before uploading it. July,possibly.

31. What Did You Do On Your Birthday? And How Old Were You?
Marathon bacchanalia the night before then a rendezvous at Serendra that swung from Elliott Yamin to sitting on a bench and looking up at a sky fat with clouds and no stars but the effect was the stickily romantic same - - -all while nursing a hangover that felt like someone looped a grenade blast through an amplifier inside my skull. Possibly the best date I've had. Beats the one where I had to lug a brand-new TV up two flights of stairs. Or the one where I got up at 6 to spend the day in the swelter of the beeline at NSO. Only by hairs,though. How old? Fucking 18 and invincible for a day.

32.What One Thing Would Have Made Your Year Immeasurably Satisfying?
Finding what I've been looking for.

33. How Would You Describe Your Personal Fashion Concept In 2005?
Mild entropy. Bomb shelter casual. Homelessexual. Ragamuffin du jour.

34. What Kept You Sane?
The fumes.

35. Which Celebrity/Public Figure Did You Fancy The Most?
Corrine Bailey Rae. Toni Gonzaga. Jennifer Connelly. Naomi Watts.

36. What Political Issue Stirred You The Most?
Feh.

37. Who Did You Miss?
See #4.

38. Who Was The Best New Person You Met?
Quentin Tarantino, possibly. Lav Diaz. Rico J - - -almost.

39. Tell Us A Valuable Life Lesson You Learned In 2007:
Uncool is the new cool.

40. Quote Song Lyric That Sum Up The Year:
Dinosaur poetry for the year of the fruitless search. You go, Dave! "I'm looking to the sky to save me , looking for a sign of life ,looking for something to help me burn out bright, I'm looking for complication, looking cause I'm tired of lying(trying),make my way back home when I learn to fly" (Learning to Fly, Foo Fighters)

AND TODAY,HEAVEN WAS A PLACE ON EARTH SOMEWHERE IN MY ZIP CODE

Christmas makes legit all the warm and fuzzy mush you try to avoid slipping into the rest of the year.

The holidays are all about where you are, what you’re doing, who you’re with.

Today, I woke up at home with my hangover from four consecutive days of bacchanalian all-nighters with art friends and ad friends and film friends and high school friends respectively, all but evaporated and everything old feeling new again.

Soaking in the yearly familial mawk that has been dress-rehearsed into rigamarole,I got so unexpectedly giddy from the fumes of love and bliss that I even lifted my self-imposed liquor ban for the benefit of my sturdy, working class uncles. Where I used to hover diplomatically, I was now genuinely immersed. Feeling it. The comfort of the clan. Baby, do you know what that's worth ?

Hasn't been this way for me for years.

And there's really no new and tangible anything to account for the change-up. No angst detox, no about-facing cynicism, no positivity windfall, nothing, still the same jaded gorilla. Except maybe a return to the kind of emotional infancy (clarity?) that makes apocalypses out of an unreturned text and turn emoticons into wild hope in a bottle.

Later, when the noise had died down, I was on the phone for five too-short minutes talking to someone I’ve decided I'd sell my junky soul to the godhead for, sealing the day like a five minute emoticon.

Could be the spirit of the season getting to me, could be an overload of cute from all those babies running around the house, could be much ado over nothing, could be a parade doomed to be rained on soon, could be chemical but . . .Merry Christmas, anyway.

Day's been flawless and I wish the same on y'all.

MUNCHIES FOR ZEROGRAV

A fragment close to my heart from the new Jonathan Lethem piece You Don't Love Me Yet. Nickable title, too.


"I don't think it counted for that much one way or the other. We were only one another's astronaut food."

"What's astronaut food?"

"You know, stuff in little packets that you keep lying around on the shelf. Everyone has some lying around.The people you imagine you might be with but you know you never really will be. The people who if you're in a couple but you're a little bored or restless you meet them for coffee a lot and the other half of your couple isn't really thrilled about it.Or if you're single, they're the people you're keeping on a mental list just so you don't feel like there aren't any possibilities. Friends who are almost more than friends but really, they're just friends. Astronaut food, bomb-shelter provisions. If you were ever going to have anything with them it would have happened already. Sometimes you even fall into bed with them, but it doesn't count for much. It's always a mistake to try to get nourishment out of that stuff. But not a big mistake. That's the beautiful part, how the stakes are so low."

"Only if everyone agrees that they're mutual astronaut food."

"Oh, absolutely. You can screw up your astronaut food a million ways. Even just letting them know. Though they sense it at a certain level, nobody wants to be told. The worst is when someone falls in love and then gets all self righteous about breaking up with their astronaut food, as if there's anything to break up about."


Groceries stock real astronaut food in Japan - - - not that this surprises me. My aunt got me three packs yesterday. Today,I had freeze-dried ice cream sandwich with my sunny sides and wake-up caffeine. Some bizarre.

Breakfast of champions if you're freefallin'.

Either my aunt knows more about where my head's at these days than she lets on or she really has the godhead's mobile on her speed-dial and is right now snickering a good one with the universe.

FOREVER I WILL EAT BEAN

Today it hits me that I actually could eat nothing but ginisang mongo and pineapple juice (Del Monte, no else) for the rest of my life and be unrepentantly happy. No hyperbole, no melodrama, no kidding.

How astringently low maintenance.

And how sad.