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in November 2010, i blogged about Lucio Tan getting away with the plan to lay off regular Philippine Airline workers in favor of outsourcing services, with the Department of Labor and Employment siding with him. now, almost a year since, PNoy proves himself an Hacienda Luisita heir, and actually says the PALEA workers who are on strike might be held liable for economic sabotage. the President is saying that these regular employees who have served PAL — and therefore the public… Continue reading »
we don’t. but let me give you some proof. Enjoy Division is a group exhibit not just with a wonderful title, but which had a curatorial note by Antares Gomez Bartolome that the Light&Space Contemporary gallery decided to put down. the said note was critical of Malaysian curator Adeline Ooi’s assessment of Philippine contemporary art which looked down on us, i.e., “We already know you were conquered by the Spanish, sold to the Americans, raped by the Japanese and totally fucked… Continue reading »
on August 11 the presscon of the group Palayain Ang Sining became interesting to me for many reasons, least of all what was being said. and no, this wasn’t a measure of who was speaking, or what was being said, but the kind of room it became, filled with media as it was. and no, pinky webb wasn’t even there. neither was karen davila. but there were men with huge versions of their penises, este, long hard lenses. and they weren’t… Continue reading »
let me skip the fact that this artwork is old, i.e., this is the nth version of it that’s been exhibited. let me not do a review of the whole exhibit Kulo here, as i hope to still be able to do that with more time in my hands. in fact, this i feel is more urgent. elsewhere i praise pinky webb. since two days ago, i have completely changed my mind about her. by this fact: upon a complaint, and… Continue reading »
I’ve got faith in Soxy Topacio. Always have. Especially after that wonderful comedy that was Ded Na Si Lolo (2009) that could only rock the world of anyone who follows local movies – local comedies in particular. Topacio brilliantly captured the tragicomedy that is death and the family in a lower class setting without making it seem like a judgment, or an apologia for that matter. Ah, but maybe that was a movie that was by most counts about being an indie,… Continue reading »
been living under a rock, or just in the midst of book production and thesis writing, that i only realized people were finally angry with Bench for their darn sexy ads when the Philippine Volcanoes’ images (the National Rugby Team for you) were removed from the Guadalupe northbound stretch of billboards. Now know that on this stretch I have seen too much of Kris Aquino, strangely photoshopped Calayan beauty clients, and recently fully-clad Bench boys doing pretend-dancing, that when i… Continue reading »
We say it often, and truth to tell in these shores it is true: many of our less talented singers have albums, and many of our more talented musicians are without jobs. But what of the non-singer, someone who doesn’t sing at all, gathering a strong enough following for her CDs that she’s now on her fifth (count that!) solo album—and yes, that’s not counting the one she did with her son, and another about the rosary. Welcome the celebrity CD! At… Continue reading »
1. possible precursor: this pre-nuptial photo shoot of rockstar Jay Contreras and Sarah Abad, in a provincial cemetery. it isn’t the cemetery of heroes and had no crosses, but it sure seems like the peg for the irreverence in the current more controversial pre-nup shoot of Ruskin and Priscilla at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. so no, Priscilla and Ruskin weren’t quite “breaking conventions in pre-nup shoots here.” they were in fact doing a copy of a photoshoot that happened… Continue reading »
the breakdown and aftermath of the Rafael Santos debacle is interesting to me mostly for what’s still unsaid. 1. the fact of Santos’ class, and i use that word not just to point to his lack of social skills (for goodness why would he think a joke like that funny?) and bad manners (he was asked about actors he himself worked with for his film, yes?), but also his social class. that humor, if we’d like to call it that, is… Continue reading »
which is to ask: how good does it feel, really, now that Willing Willie has been suspended for a month, and now that the MTRCB has tasked itself to do the strangest of things: that is, watch every darn episode there is for possible “di kaaya-ayang” moments, for immediate sanctioning or approval of the next day’s show. it’s good ol’ Pinoy pag-initan natin ang show. the question of course is: wala bang ibang pangangailangan ang kultura MTRCB? if you were… Continue reading »
very few things survive the stretch of Bonifacio High Street, save for tents selling real estate. after all there’s “public art” here, ones that don’t change and are mostly closely guarded: a two dimensional mickey mouse here, an unconventional slide there, an inverted fountain further down. in this context, art of any form, installations of any other kind, would just seem out of place. but the way of the cross as reconsidered and reconfigured by Church Simplified succeeds in this space,… Continue reading »
because this is what happened when Krip Yuson apologized for his act of plagiarism: he opened a can of worms about writing in this country, about the hubris of the editor, about the question of writer versus editor, etc. etc. and you know I’m all for letting it all hang out, but given the gravity of an awarded Filipino writer plagiarizing, it just seems like the wrong time for invoking other worms. Worm #1: Yuson talks about being the editor… Continue reading »
because I can already hear Willie Revillame’s defense, against all the anger directed at him given this video of the little boy contestant who danced, and did so ala macho dancer on Willing Willie. I can hear him invoking the fact that he did not teach the boy to dance that way, that even he didn’t expect that kind of dancing, which is obvious in that viral video, too. I can hear him saying it’s the parents’ responsibility, that the parents themselves… Continue reading »
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.… Continue reading »
1. let me begin with this: 2. how is it that this is NOT the We Are Not Aimless exhibit? nope, none of those paintings are part of it, not that gallery set-up, nothing. how does this even make sense? 3. i was at your gallery for close to an hour, even used the comfort room while there, and three of your gallery people saw me. NONE of them told me i was looking at the wrong exhibit, or the right exhibit… Continue reading »
The rewriting of fairy and folk tales into more politically correct versions is an old task, one that’s been done by the best fictionists (think Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber 1979) and poets (think Anne Sexton’s Transformations 1971), one that’s been analyzed by every kind of feminist there is. We all generally agree: tales are archetypal stories that limit what we can be. Stereotyping is the basic accusation against these stories we’ve grown up on; current cultural theory tells us… Continue reading »
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… Continue reading »