9/01/2004
Your boob tube is showing
Caught the last stunt of Fear Factor 2nd Chance over at AXN. I miss this show.
What had my attention was this survey that they show before tv commercials. Saw the “what Filipinos fear the most” and this is what came out: heights was the most dreaded with 23 percent, next were roaches, then came spiders at eight percent. Down below is ‘others’ with a high 53 percent.
All the while, I thought we are a people that fear nothing. We stare fear right in the eye. We should be the global endorser of No Fear apparel or something. We have survived countless revolutions and skirmishes, two World Wars, tons of natural disasters, and numerous other crises.
We are a resilient race. The term “The things that don’t kill you would make you stronger” surely applies to us.
Sarcastically, I didn’t know that ‘others’ could cause fright to a big majority of the population (or in this case, the survey respondents). “There is a fear called ‘others’?” Kathy once inquired. My friends and I respond with a hearty laugh.
Oh, they must be referring to a fear of others, as in other people. Or maybe Filipinos cringe at watching the Nicole Kidman-starring The Others one way or another (either because they are afraid with a horror flick or are just nauseated with watching a bad movie). Yes, I’m just playing with the words.
Then again, what we Filipinos are afraid of just unmentionable. We are beyond bugs. We eat them for breakfast. The stunts in Fear Factor pale in comparison to what we endure everyday that is called rush hour traffic in Epifanio delos Santos Avenue. What and where is the rush when no one could since all of the vehicles are stuck in the middle of the highway?
As I said what terrorizes us are unmentionable. Like the Philippine president. Or the numerous taxes the current administration would want to impose. Fuck global warming when majority of our populace couldn’t even eat a proper meal three times a day.
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Your friendly neighborhood Spider-man(?)
Is this a big grammatical error or Stan Lee dabbling in poetry? Must ask comicheads… and fast!
The reason I stopped myself from asking this loudly after watching Spidey 2 was that Matt corrected me and said, “Isn’t it your friendly neighborhood superhero Spiderman?”
Now it’s confirmed. Watching Spidey 1 over at HBO last night, I saw him drop a note in a lady’s bag after uh… bagging the thief. The note said the subtitle above, sans the question mark and the parentheses.
Note to self: Must check if brother has a DVD copy of the series. Must see them back to back for continuity and coherence. It’s the obsessive compulsive in me looking for errors and whatnot.
To compare, the first installment had a better script while the sequel had a more engaging story. What the part two lacks in depth, it makes up in magnitude. More superhero and comic book references, more cheesy one-liners, smoother computer graphics, more explosions, more fights, more drama, more everything, including continuity errors.
Such is Hollywood’s penchant for extremes. There is no middle ground. Either you are the hero or the antagonist. That’s why Spider-man 2 was less human, but, has more empathy since the excess emotion would just drag you along.
-----
Zilch, nada, zero.
Thus ends our Olympic campaign. Seems that nobody watches the closing ceremonies (neither would I) because NBN shifted back to normal programming the moment all the games ended.
Read Monday’s paper. Found out that Donald Geisler and Antoinette Rivero were this close ( ) in winning at least a medal. The matches I saw Sunday early morning (that’s Saturday midnight, right?) were already the semifinals. One more win and they were assured of a bronze medal.
Nevertheless, close enough and almost does not count. For the second straight Summer Olympics, we end up without a podium finish. We should start questioning our country’s general sports program. Why are we so focused on basketball when we don’t send a cage team in the Olympics in the first place?
For starters, Eritrea, a flood-torn country in Mars, has one medal. A nation like ours that make headlines with our chaotic national elections, Angelo dela Cruz, Alex Pagulayan, Manny Pacquiao, and our relentless overuse of SMS could not even have an athlete march in the awarding ceremonies and have a medal hang on his or her neck.
-----
Chess in pool
Speaking of “The Lion”, saw him square up with Efren “Bata” Reyes in On-Cue 3 in that Ka-barkada station. Witnessing the bigwigs play, as my friend Xyldrae described it, is like watching chess on the pool table with the safety plays administered by the cue artists and them being able to strategically place the balls with every shot.
Ahead 3-1, Pagulayan missed an ill-placed nine ball to let Reyes catch up. In another rack, “The Magician” was again doing his usual tricks when he bounced the object ball in one corner and pocketed it at the other side that awed the crowd to further wrest the momentum away from the newly-crowned world champion.
In another sequence, Pagulayan thinly hit the object ball as the cue ball went straight to the pocket, much to his dismay. When Reyes is on the groove, not even a faulty cue stick could stop his winning run.
And this guy’s already 50 years old.
-----
TAR 5 ninth leg updates and John Doe interrupted
This Ka-barkada station has becoming inconsistent (what do you expect from Ateneans?). They were showing in ads that they would start The Amazing Race on 9:45am. Confident that I wouldn't miss anything, I lounged in my room first before coming down to open the tv.
Guess what I saw by 9:45 am... the friggin' "Detour" task where they were asked to push a taxi into a garage!
Good thing Brandon and Nicole are still in the race. Damm twins.
My day isn't even through. For some strange reason, Star World bypassed John Doe for the tacky Prince Charles' Party at the Park.
They do really have the knack of me abhoring that station. And the fact that I miss their Star Movies Mandarin.
What had my attention was this survey that they show before tv commercials. Saw the “what Filipinos fear the most” and this is what came out: heights was the most dreaded with 23 percent, next were roaches, then came spiders at eight percent. Down below is ‘others’ with a high 53 percent.
All the while, I thought we are a people that fear nothing. We stare fear right in the eye. We should be the global endorser of No Fear apparel or something. We have survived countless revolutions and skirmishes, two World Wars, tons of natural disasters, and numerous other crises.
We are a resilient race. The term “The things that don’t kill you would make you stronger” surely applies to us.
Sarcastically, I didn’t know that ‘others’ could cause fright to a big majority of the population (or in this case, the survey respondents). “There is a fear called ‘others’?” Kathy once inquired. My friends and I respond with a hearty laugh.
Oh, they must be referring to a fear of others, as in other people. Or maybe Filipinos cringe at watching the Nicole Kidman-starring The Others one way or another (either because they are afraid with a horror flick or are just nauseated with watching a bad movie). Yes, I’m just playing with the words.
Then again, what we Filipinos are afraid of just unmentionable. We are beyond bugs. We eat them for breakfast. The stunts in Fear Factor pale in comparison to what we endure everyday that is called rush hour traffic in Epifanio delos Santos Avenue. What and where is the rush when no one could since all of the vehicles are stuck in the middle of the highway?
As I said what terrorizes us are unmentionable. Like the Philippine president. Or the numerous taxes the current administration would want to impose. Fuck global warming when majority of our populace couldn’t even eat a proper meal three times a day.
-----
Your friendly neighborhood Spider-man(?)
Is this a big grammatical error or Stan Lee dabbling in poetry? Must ask comicheads… and fast!
The reason I stopped myself from asking this loudly after watching Spidey 2 was that Matt corrected me and said, “Isn’t it your friendly neighborhood superhero Spiderman?”
Now it’s confirmed. Watching Spidey 1 over at HBO last night, I saw him drop a note in a lady’s bag after uh… bagging the thief. The note said the subtitle above, sans the question mark and the parentheses.
Note to self: Must check if brother has a DVD copy of the series. Must see them back to back for continuity and coherence. It’s the obsessive compulsive in me looking for errors and whatnot.
To compare, the first installment had a better script while the sequel had a more engaging story. What the part two lacks in depth, it makes up in magnitude. More superhero and comic book references, more cheesy one-liners, smoother computer graphics, more explosions, more fights, more drama, more everything, including continuity errors.
Such is Hollywood’s penchant for extremes. There is no middle ground. Either you are the hero or the antagonist. That’s why Spider-man 2 was less human, but, has more empathy since the excess emotion would just drag you along.
-----
Zilch, nada, zero.
Thus ends our Olympic campaign. Seems that nobody watches the closing ceremonies (neither would I) because NBN shifted back to normal programming the moment all the games ended.
Read Monday’s paper. Found out that Donald Geisler and Antoinette Rivero were this close ( ) in winning at least a medal. The matches I saw Sunday early morning (that’s Saturday midnight, right?) were already the semifinals. One more win and they were assured of a bronze medal.
Nevertheless, close enough and almost does not count. For the second straight Summer Olympics, we end up without a podium finish. We should start questioning our country’s general sports program. Why are we so focused on basketball when we don’t send a cage team in the Olympics in the first place?
For starters, Eritrea, a flood-torn country in Mars, has one medal. A nation like ours that make headlines with our chaotic national elections, Angelo dela Cruz, Alex Pagulayan, Manny Pacquiao, and our relentless overuse of SMS could not even have an athlete march in the awarding ceremonies and have a medal hang on his or her neck.
-----
Chess in pool
Speaking of “The Lion”, saw him square up with Efren “Bata” Reyes in On-Cue 3 in that Ka-barkada station. Witnessing the bigwigs play, as my friend Xyldrae described it, is like watching chess on the pool table with the safety plays administered by the cue artists and them being able to strategically place the balls with every shot.
Ahead 3-1, Pagulayan missed an ill-placed nine ball to let Reyes catch up. In another rack, “The Magician” was again doing his usual tricks when he bounced the object ball in one corner and pocketed it at the other side that awed the crowd to further wrest the momentum away from the newly-crowned world champion.
In another sequence, Pagulayan thinly hit the object ball as the cue ball went straight to the pocket, much to his dismay. When Reyes is on the groove, not even a faulty cue stick could stop his winning run.
And this guy’s already 50 years old.
-----
TAR 5 ninth leg updates and John Doe interrupted
This Ka-barkada station has becoming inconsistent (what do you expect from Ateneans?). They were showing in ads that they would start The Amazing Race on 9:45am. Confident that I wouldn't miss anything, I lounged in my room first before coming down to open the tv.
Guess what I saw by 9:45 am... the friggin' "Detour" task where they were asked to push a taxi into a garage!
Good thing Brandon and Nicole are still in the race. Damm twins.
My day isn't even through. For some strange reason, Star World bypassed John Doe for the tacky Prince Charles' Party at the Park.
They do really have the knack of me abhoring that station. And the fact that I miss their Star Movies Mandarin.
// posted by Unknown @ 18:01 
