…and she hanged herself from the highest ceiling where no one, nothing can touch her feet. Her toes gracefully float in the silent air. Her blood would empty out to pallidness. But her memory remains sealed in the haunting face of tragedy and happiness.

I'm posting another <s> related entry again. I'm still not over the whole hype about their comeback after 2 years of overplaying their 4th release. And mind you, their 10th year surprise for their fans is not a disappointment although based on my initial review, I still prefer the previous record.

Okay, cut it. I'm definitely liking it one step at a time. This weekend provided me with the much awaited free time to closely listen to the record the 2nd time around. And I have wonderfully fallen in love with more tracks. 'Rambol' which is their bigger crowd anthem lectures on showing love and peace despite the glare of the rock music and the fueled hunger to...be plainly wild. 'Candelaria' is an ode to a probable band's stronghold in the province of Quezon. 'Primera' is the band's gear towards the dichotomy of waiting and pushing through. 'Fluxxe' gives me this unbelievable growing energy to paradoxically let myself fall into the trance of dance music. And 'Her Favorite Band' is simply my favorite song as it informs fans of what each member uniquely does:

          Mike's seafood from Davao
          Myrene's iPod Sennheissers
          Mong's skating along Katipunan
          Diego's scooter inside his car
          Raims beach plan with the Kerplunk peeps

See? It did not even take a week before I figured out the underlying beauty of the record. More time, I guess, before this can surpass Five on the Floor. The latter remains such a gem for me.

There have been a lot of albums that I bought that I failed to sensitively, objectively and critically review.

It's probably the work schedule or I guess, I'm just again and again, innately lazy. :D

1. Plane Divides The Sky: Panic in The Skies
2. Plane Divides The Sky: The Campaign To Capture
3. Marty McFly: Marty McFly
4. Led Zeppelin: Mothership
5. Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
6. Dicta License: Paghilom
7. Kjwan: Kjwan
8. Kjwan: 2StepMarv
9. Smashing Pumpkins: Zeitgeist
10. Sandwich: <s> Marks the Spot
11. The Pin-up Girls: A Take on the Weakened Sky
12. Radioactive Sago Project: Urban Gulaman
13. Radioactive Sago Project: T**ng*na mo ang daming nagugutom sa mundo, Fashionista ka pa rin
14. Giniling Festival: Giniling Festival
15. Daydream Cycle: Underwater Kite
16. Muse: Black Holes and Revelations
17. Typecast: Typecast
18. Typecast: Every Moss and Cobweb
19. Urbandub: Southern Lights
20.

... and a whole lotta more (still dustin' my shelves)

Yep! I finally have <s>'s new album!!!

Joy, joy, joy!!!

Cambio's new video is uber-cool. 'Pasaway', their second release off Cambiomatic, defines and underlines the band's great range of musical cohorts that verify them as a supergroup. The video is actually a simple lip-syncing of different vocalists in differents bands which is not that unique as of the moment for a lot of music videos have showcased this technique and concept in the past. But Cambio surpasses them all, with their claim of musical connection as each band and respective vocalist did their rendition of the act.

Thanks to Buddy Zabala, who recently joined The Dawn, they have made Jett Pangan sing. And I might add, I just love Mong's dance steps (the-guitar-release-hands up-waist-sways-klnd-of-move).

Pasaway features friendly performances from different bands with their respective point of connections: Sugarfree (Ebe), The Dawn (Buddy), Pedicab (Raims and Diego M), Duster (Kris), and Sandwich (Raims).

There is no greater setting and settling than to be in the middle. It is safe. Or is it safe? Everyday, I've struggled with flashes of callousness in my mind. I open the tube, and I see the glitter and glamour of life. I read a book, and I unconsciously dig my fingernails on my tender and quite skin. The geographical likeness of that of the middle is no longer receptive of the vertical rays of the sun.

For one, I abhor the sun. I hate it. I hate the light. I hate the sunlight and the spotlight. I cower at its grandiose challenge for my eyes to open wide.

But this point in my life persists to control the middle.

I do not even have the courage to run.

Two weeks ago, one of my students got into a quite mystifying accident in his very own abode. It happened in their garage. His right knee was pinned to the wall when his Dad parked their car. It was not intentional of course, lest they have a bizarre familial snag that I am not aware of. Good thing, his folks are both doctors that the surgery and hospitalization came in quick and handy. Actually it's more of the wonder of how he ran into a dreadful accident when he should be safe at home.

Safety is overrated at home.

Then I came to think about myself. Will there be a time tantamount to this? Will a tragedy occur when I feel complacent and safe and sound? No matter how protective we can all be, no matter how extensively we pride ourselves on being cautious and vigilant, there will always be a force eager to harm us.

The moment we set our eyes, our foot,  our body and soul in the world, we will continually become naked to it. The World is our biggest and most powerful enemy. Its cleverness never recedes. It will always think of immense ways to deceive us into its trap. It will always lure us to harm. No matter what gear we have. No matter how inactive we can be.

We are all living in nakedness. There is no shelter we can run to. The best thing we can do is to close our eyes and sleep.

I refused to have ketchup while hurriedly gobbling up my fries knowing that the slicing, slitting, butchering, flesh-cutting scenes would ensue.

Yep, that's my Johnny Depp, playing Mr. Sweeney Todd (Benjamin Barker), who returned to his wintry, stoic-looking but profoundly disturbed image through the help of favorite director Tim Burton who has been very fond of casting him in his tremendously arousing trademark films such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sleepy Hollow, The Corpse Bride and my ever favorite, Edward Scissorhands. As expected, his gothic and dirty representation of London was superb.


I'm not going to do spoilers in here. And this is not really a fancy review. It's more of how I took the visually stunning scenes with my friend last Friday. And mind you, now I realize how it was granted with an R-18. And I think my friend and I made a pact not to eat meat again. Good thing to embark on an always forgotten diet journey.

Regarding the film, I pretty much don't have anything to say since I haven't seen the musical play myself. Because of the horrid bloodshed, I have overlooked the beauty of the film. Only when I got home, and realized that some of the songs were, indeed, retained in my memory, I then came to a decision that it was not bad after all. It was disturbing but gratifying all the same. I'm looking forward to watch it the second time around as a matter of fact.

I love Johnny Depp in the film. I guess there isn't any movie wherein I did not enjoy his performance. He got me in Edward Scissorhands. Who wouldn't fall for that scissor-happy icy strange figure? On the other, another outstanding cast was Helena Bonham Carter who provided some of the comical reliefs in the musical film. I was never fond of her not until she played Bellatrix LeStrange in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

However, the awful part of the film are the awful singers: Alan Rickman (another Potter cast) and Jayne Wisener who played Johanna Barker. While she was singing, my friend and I gave mutual looks despite the darkness of the theatre and I jokingly said, "I think we are already watching Alvin and the Chipmunks".


But all in all, the musical score is great as it is, perhaps in the real musical play. The soundtrack are all pre-arranged by the adaptation of Stephen Sondheim. My favorite was the Epiphany song of Mr. Depp (which he sang with all his heart and laryngeal might) with the lines:

                         I will have vengeance
                         I will have salvation

He surely deserved the Golden Globe for it. Now, I'm in a great, great quandary. I'm really equally torn with who's the sexiest and most attractive of them all. Who among Ichabod Crane, Edward Scissorhands, Jack Sparrow, Sweeney Todd and Willy Wonka? Here I go again, my twisted brain, my twisted taste. :D

I have 3 planners this year: 2 were unsolicited gifts and the other one, is the famous and much-anticipated Starbucks Planner that almost all coffee drinkers have. The funny thing is, I hardly drink coffee and yet, I was so determined to have it last month. The funnier part was a student of mine asked me yesterday if I have the said planner that he was showing off to his classmates. Of course, with all honesty, I said yes. Then he gave a retort that almost made me pee in my pants, oops, I mean, dress (since I wore a dress yesterday), "Yeah, everybody goes to Starbucks. It's a sin not to go to Starbucks." I really felt such an idiotic poser at the very moment. Come to think of it, only coffee drinkers are given the chance to be organized. Haha.

But then again, I got the planner because of the help of these coffee drinkers. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be able to get it. When I calculated my expenses for the planner, I just bought 3 cups of coffee. The rest is out of sheer pity for me. Heehee.

Okay, now that I have it in my hands, I wonder what is going to happen. Will it be life changing? How special is this planner? Can it lessen laziness or add a spark of optimism in me? If I really wanted to get my act together this year, would it hurt to use simple planners such as those my relatives give because they are overflowing with freebies from their respective offices? And I might forget, Jollibee offered a planner for less than a hundred bucks.

I really have no idea why it should be through coffee.

I was very much curious about the new shopping mall near our village that I was eager to listen to experiential narratives of close friends about it. They said it was so small and suffocating, you can memorize all the stalls in an instant and there's no way one would get lost even if left wandering with a blindfold.

One of my close friends mentioned seeing the exit right after you've entered. This is how small it is: there is safety and relief from knowing you can get out despite newness, despite strangeness.

Now, I'm beginning to look back, look into myself for a reason why there was this gush of pain, as if I was stung by this circling cruelty in the world at this moment. The year is about to end. The time exits. People move on. There will be change— enormous change. Its enormity cannot be measured by any measuring device. It cannot even be described by the most powerful and profound word in any dictionary. All I know is this knowledge and anticipation of change suddenly, mysteriously, and clearly saddens me.

Why can't this bag of emotions be brought in and brought out that easily? Just like the smallness of the new mall: seeing the exit right after you've entered. There is no maze in amazement. How come I can't be familiar with life's stalls in an instant? After all, it is my 24th year to celebrate Christmas and New Year, whether I like it or not. It is another calendar: same months, numbers and days but always, always a maze.