Wednesday, February 09, 2011

4:30 AM | Soulful Overkill

Christina Aguilera bungling The Star Spangled Banner in the Super Bowl is proof of what’s wrong with much of pop music today: it’s all about the riffing, and to hell with good lyrics. In The Huffington Post, John Eskow writes: “It’s called melisma — the bending of syllables for bluesy or soulful effect — and what’s especially creepy about the way it’s used now is that it perverts America’s true genius for song, as evinced by its creators in the world of gospel and R&B, like Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin. You will hear more of this tonsil-twisting insincerity — to your eternal sorrow — if you watch any episode of American Idol.” Read more here.

Now let's take a look at the more iconic take on the song from the same event: Whitney Houston's now-famous rendition...




Granted, this was pre-recorded, but listen to the possibilities when you pay respect to the song and not the riffing...

Labels: music, rants, scandal, sports, television

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Friday, October 23, 2009

5:40 AM | The Players -- A Continuation

One of the last things he said before we left Qyosko to go home at 4:30 in the morning was: "The only thing to learn from life is this -- how well you must learn to play the game. Or you will be played," then he paused. "You can never ever trust anyone, but yourself."

I thought about what he said, and I felt the dread truth of all those words finding space in the gnawing hollow suddenly inside me. You might think what he said was something quite generic, wisdom from the commonplace. But I thought of those words in the context of what had transpired in the last five hours -- the sudden confessions, the inadvertent revelations, the stories of what lies beneath all our tranquility: the drugs, the violence, the frenetic sexual musical chairs of people we know.

What he said came at the end of a very long night that started at 10 pm.

In the beginning of this night, I had thought of myself as someone who has seen and heard and done everything in Dumaguete. I had thought I was no longer capable of being shocked. I've had my days of riding the wild side, after all. And in the past six months, in pursuit of gritty research for my novel "The Players" (a reworking and expansion on a short story I once wrote for the Philippines Free Press that depicted the casual sex lives of the young and bored in Dumaguete in the 1990s), I'd been living the life to get first hand knowledge of the dark negotiations of my book's characters.

At the very end, I realized how stupidly naive I was. How blind, how I knew about nothing at all.

This night will come to haunt me as the time I've lost truly the last vestiges of innocence. And for that I am thankful.

I don't think I can divulge the details. The details are too raw, too shocking. But the night began with me receiving a note from a social networking site, asking me if I was open to do a "live sex act" in a particular establishment that will lead to ... something. That was only the start. By the time I finished the night, I saw pictures and heard stories of murders, of drugs, of casual prostitution, of sexual escapades that shocked even me.

And finally there was this one revelation that truly broke me.

How do you sleep after this?

I see the dawn breaking now. It's 5:30 AM.

I still can't sleep.

I have knowledge of the game now. I have been played.

And I could only wish I weren't so naive.

Labels: dumaguete, life, love, scandal

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Monday, June 01, 2009

9:09 AM | Sex and the Senate

By Lourd Ernest de Veyra

Manuel Quezon, Sergio Osmena, Manuel Roxas, Claro M. Recto, Eulogio Rodriguez, Lorenzo Tanada, Jose W. Diokno, Jovito Salonga, Benigno Aquino Jr. Throughout history the Philippine Senate has been the incandescent cradle of statesmen of towering intellects and oratorical intensity. Teofisto Guingona’s breathlessly elegant denunciation of Erap, “I Accuse,” was haunted by the spirit of Emile Zola. Decades earlier, Jose P. Laurel declared, “If I had to choose between my love of country and the church, my love of country comes first.”

On May 28, 2009, it’s just… “I even shouted ‘sizzling hot!’”

The Rizal Bill of 1956 drew great debates between intellectual heavyweights like Claro M. Recto and Francisco Rodrigo—both men of letters, in what was controversially viewed as conflict between the Catholic Church and the emerging nationalism. Ninoy Aquino exposed the 1968 Jabida Massacre, where the AFP exterminated at least 28 Moro recruits trained for covert military operations in Sabah.

In May 2009, Bong Revilla has the Hayden Kho-Katrina Halili sex video.

I also doubt “Ano’ng software ang ginamit mo?” would resound as one of Philippine history’s greatest speeches.

But since the Erap impeachment trial (some say as early as the 10th Congress), the Senate has stopped becoming the shining beacon of political nobility. Not since its members are voted into office not for their knowledge and virtue but through stupid jingles and celebrity endorsements. Once it was a fount of wisdom and patriotism. Now they’re just like those squirming little things you find under dead tree trunks after the rain.



This is not the first time the Senate has taken on a highly lurid controversy of absolutely zero political consequence. Remember the Brunei Beauties controversy back in the ’90s where Ruffa Gutierrez et al were summoned to an investigation? “In aid of the legislation” has become the most abused and misused phrase in modern Philippine politics. “Ano’ng software ang ginamit mo?” and “Saan mo nilagay ‘yung camera?”are not examples of questions with legislative intent either. What’s next, a bill proposing the ban of USB cables?

The 14th Congress of the Philippines has debased itself when it became the theater of a salaciously cheap psycho-sexual drama on May 28, 2009. It is bad enough that the past high-profile hearings simply went pfft. Citing the hitherto unresolved examples of ZTE, the Euro Generals, Jocjoc Bolante, the Legacy Group, by now we should have reached the conclusion that the Senate hall in the GSIS Building can serve the people better by being converted into a bowling alley.

Heading the investigation were three senators, two of whom are not known for their tact, two of whom are movie actors (one of them also not known for being a serial monogamist).

Towards Kho, Revilla was abrasive and judgmental, his thick eyebrows raised to intimidating angles. Jinggoy Estrada bullied Kho’s lawyer, Lorna Kapunan who was requesting that the hearing be made private. (In contrast, by characteristically keeping his mouth shut, Lito Lapid was a portrait of grace. But Lapid was not required in the panel. He is, after all, the so-called chairman of the Senate committee on silence.)

That the packed gallery—made up mostly of Senate employees—burst into applause when Estrada snarled “I demand the presence of Kho in this hearing!” ought to have been a clue already. All that was missing was the dancing seals, the jugglers, and the trapeze flyers, and they could start selling peanuts.

You can accuse it of anything but you can’t accuse it of not being gripping entertainment.

It has elements not even Robbie Tan and Mauro Gia Samonte would have imagined. Sex, drugs, illicit romance involving eye-pleasing celebrities, dirty accusations hurled, haughty interrogators squeezing their teary-eyed subjects for details, each one juicier than the next.

And each has no place for what is supposed to be an august body. That afternoon of May 28, 2009, Madrigal, Revilla, and Estrada—especially Estrada, for demanding a public inquiry—ceased to become honorable lawmakers. Instead they sank to the level of showbiz tabloid interviewers who merely stoked the flames of prurient interest. Where it used to be an intellectual battleground for issues that change the nation’s destiny, now it’s just a cesspool of gossip and smut. In the ’80s, Abner Afuang achieved a certain mythical status by going against a corrupt police department a la Serpico. He should not have simply poured water on Hayden’s head; he would’ve done the country a big favor by pouring gasoline and setting fire to the GSIS Building.

The bottom line is that the whole thing was an exercise in poor judgment and a total lack of propriety. In a sense, by rabidly denouncing the video in a privilege speech—Bong Revilla may have inadvertently sparked a bigger bushfire of interest in the videos, with no small help, of course, from a hyperventilating mass media. Our children’s morals and sense of values are in danger? Thanks to Revilla, your 5-year-old daughter now knows the meaning of the words “sex video” and “Ecstasy.” But that’s not before she asks you first over the breakfast table while you read the Inquirer’s front page. She is now aware that Ecstasy makes you do stupid things, like wear a bandanna and perform macho-dancer moves and mess up the lyrics to a Wham! classic.

But still, we can learn several important lessons from this whole sordid imbroglio:

• That one does not need video software to make films. Just a camera and a USB cable.
• That in a public discussion involving the subject of illicit sex, the phrase “hard drive” should be used with prudence. Lots of it. Especially by the perpetrator.
• Between an act of high-profile infidelity and a scandal video, people will forget that you’re a treacherous kabetching.
• That your humiliation simply does not end with the entire archipelago witnessing your coital habits. One day an ex-cop-turned-mayor-turned-tabloid columnist named Abner Afuang (portrated by Philip Salvador in an ’80s biopic) will walk up to your side and douse you with water. Although not quite Cherie Gil. More like those subliminally homoerotic Gatorade commercials. But a skeptical Bong Revilla will think the whole thing is scripted.
• Thirty tablets of Valium might not kill you. Unless you’re bullshitting us.
• That when the whole world seems to conspire against you, only Mother will rush to your rescue. But she will blame Lolit Solis first. And that Mother can be inexplicably creepy on national television.
• That sex video scandals have the power to thankfully eclipse news items like Dona Dionisia Pacquiao’s ballroom-dancing debut.
• If you screw up big time, blame it on drugs. If you can’t blame drugs, blame it on your bad childhood. If you can’t blame your bad childhood, well…there’s always Mom.

Artwork by Warren Espejo.

[Read Patricia Evangelista's powerful "The Morality of Sen. Bong Revilla" in today's Philippine Daily Inquirer]

Labels: politics, rants, scandal, sex, video

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Saturday, February 23, 2008

6:13 PM | Hong Kong Sex Scandal!

Of course you remember those assorted geographically-specific porn flicks -- jumpstarted by the Dumaguete Sex Scandal video -- that made the rounds of our favorite pirates' DVD hoards a while back... Apparently, the whole phenomenon has jumped the South China Sea and is now wrecking havoc in our neighbors up north. I feel completely out of the loop -- been too busy minding other things that I forgot to keep track of showbiz gossip, and I didn't even know about this until I read a news bulletin in CNN.com, of all places: Edison Chen, the wildly popular Hong Kong film star (he was in The Grudge 2 and in Infernal Affairs, in a role that Matt Damon took in Martin Scorsese's The Departed) apparently has taken 1,300 pictures of prominent Hong Kong showbiz personalities in poses of various sexual acts with him. He had his laptop repaired, and unknowingly unleashed the scandal which is now rocking (and titillating) the showbiz world of Hong Kong and Taiwan. And the photos are frankly shameless. (The Hollywood Grind blog has the updates and the full photo collection .) Although, in fairness to him, they do show him in full, umm, glory.

Poor Edison then quickly hid to escape the pressure, and has only now emerged to apologize. (The female partners -- all of them prominent showbiz personalities -- have been hit hard by the scandal. One was just handed divorce papers, and another had her engagement nullified.) Edison has since announced his semi-retirement from the entertainment industry: "I admit that most of the photos being circulated on the Internet were taken by me. But these photos are very private and have not been shown to people and are never intended to be shown to anyone.... During my time away, I have made an important decision. I will whole-heartedly fulfill all commitments that I have to date. But after that, I decided to step away from the Hong Kong entertainment industry."

Labels: film, gossip, issues, people, scandal, showbiz

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

2:49 AM | I Heart Scandals Caught on Video

Here's the scandal du jour from Hollywood, with evidence two years late. (But better late than never -- and the whole thing is still delicious anyway because it gives us a rare, raw, unedited, firsthand view of the ways of Hollywood and the conflicts of interests that always arise in collaborative art-making.) While filming 2004's I Heart Huckabees (IMDB information here), the fabulously talented Lily Tomlin breaks out her frustration over the erratic filmmaking of David O. Russell, who then throws a giant tantrum. The videos first appeared in YouTube (where else?) where they created a giant stir, then got pulled out by the poster, only to have the vacuum filled by others who made bootleg copies. Here's the first clip, and here's the second clip, and here's what people are saying in the IMDB message board. It's sad and funny all at the same time. My heart entirely goes for Lily. Russell may be a talented director (Three Kings, Flirting With Disaster, and my favorite incest movie of all time, Spanking the Monkey), but he's work ethic -- legendary for his anger management problems that included George Clooney once reportedly taking aim at him during a tussle while filming Three Kings -- is the very equivalent of hellish ineptness.

[Defamer has a good post about the whole incident, complete with excerpts from the Sharon Waxman article from The New York Times that first talked about it. It also has an interview with Tomlin who can laugh about the whole thing now. "Oh my God, the one in the car is on there too?" Tomlin asked.]

Seriously though, this should give us pause over how technology has so overtaken our lives that there really is no such thing as secrecy or privacy anymore. Hell, even the latest issue of Uno Magazine has a feature (ineptly-written) about how to deal with the increasingly instances of personal video sex scandals, with the salacious evidence posted online from lost cellphones. (It's supposed to be a "how-to" article without any "how-to's" in it. What a sad excuse for a men's magazine, all the more dead with its curious dude-speak writing style.)

How would you deal with your own video scandal?

Labels: celebrity, film, issues, scandal, web and tech

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