Bombet's Someday

oz someday, someone's gonna love me 
The way, i wanted you to need me 
Someday, someone's gonna take your place 
One day I'll forget about you 
You'll see, i won't even miss you 
Someday, someday

Never As Good As The First Time

Saw the American version of "Skins" tonight on MTV, and...why do they do this? This british show was a favorite of mine, and the American version's pilot episode is an almost verbatim copy of the British pilot episode. I think that will be their biggest mistake. People, like myself, who love the British version will think this is just a poor copy - these characters are forever etched in mind.  I think it would have been more interesting if they "adapted" it more than copied it - made it more relatable to American audiences, for example. I personally don't think the average American - Middle America, if you will - will understand the machinations of the British working class, so why even bother? And compared to MTV's other hit, "Jersey Shore," these Skins kids are just too .... boring. I don't know if I will remember or be inclined to watch the next episodes. 


Speaking of television, I am watching the first season of "Hot in Cleveland," and it's just...bad. It has a great cast: Wendy Malick, Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeds, Betty White! But the writing is so sub-par and even though I loved the "innocence" of the multi-camera sitcom set-up, I can't help but feel it's a little dated. I love classic and vintage like the rest of us, but dated, I don't know if I can do. 

"It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know."

- Henry David Thoreau

Clogged

I took a shower yesterday and all of a sudden the water won't come down. I don't know why, but it just got clogged. So there's the whole drama about getting Drano and pumping and as of right now, it seems we won't need a plumber, but that could very well change by tomorrow morning. I don't want to know. So I spend tonight watching The Golden Globes and I am crying at everything: Chris Colfer and Annette Benning's speeches, for example. Even when they showed Michele Williams I was tearing up. What the fuck is wrong with me?

"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."

- Buddha,

My Stuffed Gorilla

This is a huge stuffed gorilla. Tim gave it to me Christmas 1997. He said he searched high and low looking for a gift for me when he saw this at FAO Schwarz and thought it would be the perfect Christmas gift for me. I have kept it all this time, and today I let go and gave it to my niece/goddaughter. I told her, "Take care of him."  It is one of the casualties of the move - no sense of shipping it half way across the country. Maybe in a way, it is a way of letting go of my first real love. Sweet Dream, my dear. 

From The Outside Looking In

Actresses who write : that's a different subgenre. Joan Collins, Paris Hilton, one of those girls from The Hills. I am sure there are many more. Now you can add Courtney-Thorne Smith to that list. This book was released in 2007, and I have had this ARC since around that time. I remember getting it at the dollar carts in The Strand.  I also remember starting to read this book and here we are, almost four years later and I finally finished it. Believe you me, I have tried numerous times just throwing it away, but the anal retentive in me just wants to finish it. Plus, I always keep on hearing Maya Angelou telling people "just read" when one is tempted to abando a book. "Outside In" is about an actress who is on a nighttime soap. So in my mind this character is Courtney herself, and the show is Melrose Place. I think when she was promoting this book she was talking about how a lot of actresses starve themselves for the camera. That would have been a more interesting topic to read about than this book about an insecure actress. What we get is a badly-written (like grammatically bad)  run-of-the mill chick lit. Kate, the character, is just so pathetic and dumb that you wonder how she became as successful as she was in the book. I can not remember how many times I rolled my eyes, and I just wanted to smack her. This went on and on up to about 80% of the book that I kept on asking myself - is this going to end? Why would you want to spend your time with such a sad sack?  I always say that I always take something, a little something from a book I read and the only thing I could think of here is I wanted to explore more the life of Vivian Leigh because they kept on talking about how she had a dramatic life.  Besides that, there's not much to take from this book. 

Up Up And Awake

I am still awake, and my sleeping patterns are again messed up. Whenever I tell people about my insomnia, they always ask me "Are you up thinking?" and sometimes I have to ask myself if I am, but really...no. I just have this habit now of napping in the early evening, around 6 pm and this totally screws up my sleeping habits.  So I am up, and believe me, I try hard to be asleep, and do every trick in the book. I should really go and take some melatonin but I keep on forgetting. And I know that the last thing I should be doing is being on the computer but what can I do? My black and blue bruise still hurts when you press it, but why do I press it if I know it will just instill more pain? These are all the burning questions in my mind right now, at 3:48 a.m. 

"If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing."

- Marc Chagal

Stalkerazzi

I was looking at the NCl website (not to bead a dead horse, I know) and I clicked on a couple of itineraries because I was researching something for Jeff. Imagine my surprise the next day when I  got a call from a sales representative from them saying "I see that you were on the website checking..." and my first impression was that I felt that I was violated. So now people are looking at what and where I was going on their sites? Kind of stalker-ish, no? Jeff explained to me that it has become normal practice now for a lot of merchants. I have noticed that I have gotten emails from Amazon sometimes that started "since you checked out so and so, we think you will like..." but I think that's even a little different since most times I welcome the suggestion, and they only do it via email. To get a direct solicitation phone call was something totally different. That being said,  I think their strategy worked ! This really piqued my interest with a specific sailing that Jeff and I had in mind, and the offering is pretty good: pretty reasonable price point, a major upgrade, and the destination can't be beat. I am torn beween being horrified and thankful. This just goes to show how marketing techniques have changed in the Internet age.

I don't know why, but I am seriously craving spaghetti with meatballs.

I Dream Of Camille

I woke up this evening from a nap, and I had the most bizarre dream, and it involved Camille Grammer. The details have become sketchy since, but I swear she was in my dreams. Or should I call it nightmare. Of course, I woke up twenty minutes before this week's episode of RWOBH, where she talks about her breakup with Kelsey. It's all just so weird and bizarre. Pipo and I agree that she is fascinating and prefer her over Kyle. 


And I shipped - well, ground-shipped - the first box today. It was sort of a struggle rolling it with my cart through the snow, but I persevered, and I am ok. At one point, I tripped with it, and the metal cart hit my shin, but I recovered. Now I see that there is a big black and blue bruise on my knee. I mistakenly pressed it, and it was painful!

"Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning."

- Joseph Campbell

Eloquence

1. Not to sound too much like a nelly, but I thought the President's speech was eloquent, and he tapped into the nation's psyche, my psyche, and touched me.  When he introduced the gay intern hero, I just about burst into a crying mess. I have soured on Obama lately, and I was never really a huge fan to begin with, but he was at his best tonight. Now if only Palin would just go far, far away, then we will all be fine. 


2. Now that I am ticketed to go to LAS on the 24th, it is looking like I will be there again on President's Day Weekend. My brother pays $50 per pet for shelter when they are away, and for three days it will cost him $300.00, which is below the plane fare he would pay if I would go down there. He asked me if I was comfortable doing it, and I feel kinda funny being all alone in the house with just the dogs. He says, though that there is a Town Square about five minutes away, and I could go there to pass time. It is supposedly a huge mall, with movie theaters, restaurants, and a pretty popular one too, apparently. 

"You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore."

- Christopher Columbus

Bottoms Up!

I have had this book, "Tush" for a while now, but for some reason or another, I have not read it.  I remember getting it for very cheap, like a dollar or even less. When I was looking for books to read for my book challenge, I pulled this out. It is almost ironic that I finished it today, as I look at out the window and I see snow. Why? Because "Tush" is a summer gay novel, set in one of the gayest of gay summer meccas: Provincetown, Massachusetts. And it started out to be quite fun, too. A gay astrologer uses wit and charm to "lure" guys with nice butts - that's his fetish. It was amusing to see him all kinds of tricks so he could feel the asses of these men. But then at one point, it turned really creepy. He lures a date to Provincetown, and then he gets creepy. He starts stalking a local guy and uses all kinds of maneuvers after he gets rejected by all the men he meets. It was at this point that I started to dislike the character. Maybe when I was younger, I would have tolerated a lot of the crap he was pulling. But as I read it now, I just started to feel angry at him. A lot of his shenanigans were foolish - changing people's pills, drugging his exes, burning a house - that I stopped rooting for him. As a matter of fact, almost all the characters are pretty despicable in character that when good things started happening to them (in spite of their evil deeds) I started to roll my eyes. There are good things about the book - this was written in 1996, so a lto of the P-Town references are familiar, from the bars to the hotels. I discovered that the cemetery on Bradford Street apparently has one of the nicest views in the city, and now I can't wait to check that out when we get back there. The book was not a 100% loss. 


BC/3

Restoration

The quality of customer service has really deteriorated. I called NCl today to inquire about my cousins' reservations for their Med Cruise for early Summer. Among other thing, I asked the representative, Sergio, what the price point differences would be if, say, they upgraded to a mini suite. Then all of a sudden, our call got disconnected. Fine, okay, I assume it's an accident, and I call back. The next representative looks up the reservation again, and all of a sudden she tells me that the room is now in a "back balcony," and I tell her it was never here, even quoting the category and room number where they were in. Apparently, Sergio, in a most bewildering act, changed the reservations when he was researching different quotes, and pressed "Save" in error, and of course, the old room is now gone. I got livid at them - first of all, who is he to change the reservation? I, myself, do not even have authorization to make changes in it since it is not even mine. They were apologetic and explained to me they are "working on it." I told them that is not unacceptable. I told them I would accept nothing less than having them put the reservation back in the same room where they were. After I got put on hold, they were able to "restore" the reservation. But, really, why do people have to endure something like this? Oh, and since today is a "snow day" (thirteen inches dumped overnight) the jury is still out on whether the post office will decide if they will deliver mail. Whatever happened to "Neither snow nor sleet.." Never mind. 

Our stories arise from our hearts and out souls.
In this sense, telling our stories
becomes a sacred gesture opening a clear way
to that deep, ecstatic center
where we are most uniquely our selves,
individual and unique, and yet are ourselves,
joined together at the heart.

~ Susan Wittig Albert

There Are No Signs

I packed my first box today. It was a 16 x 16 x 16, and I started filling it with mostly clothes - summer clothes which I probably won't be wearing until after April. It was a ritual of sorts, the packing, and I think I needed to do it more for the mind rather than the practicality of it. Because once I have it in my mind that I have started, I will get more focused on it. This will be a tough next couple of months. And I will make my first trip there on January 24th, for a week, where I will have to make he first of the preliminary preparations. 


And five years ago today, I met Jimmy. I don't remember the boy, or the feeling anymore. But when I woke up this morning and started flipping channels, I accidentally ran upon the final scene of "Prime," and I asked myself if it was some kind of sign. It's all just a coincidence, I finally realized. There are no signs. 


I am glad that "The Good Wife" was back tonight, and with a great episode to boot. I love the way that the show is both intelligent and emotional, because most shows I love are either one or the other.  

All you really need is love,
but a little chocolate now and then
doesn't hurt.

~ Charles Schulz

The Only Mom

My cousin Wennie told me she was getting a little depressed and she asked me to accompany her watching a movie - "Ang Tanging Ina Mo (Last Na To)" - because she said she wanted to see something funny. I made an internal grunt, since I have never been a fan of this series, but I wanted to be a good cousin so I went anyway. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I really have not seen any of the earlier movies, and hoped the plot points would not rely on them.


Well, this movie won "Best Picture" at the recently concluded Metro Manila Film Festival, and I shudder to think that the quality of the family movies have sunk this low. It's a holiday movie, for sure, but the director has substituted quantity for quality in this movie. He has thrown everything in it, kitchen sink and all. For me, it is one big hot mess. But, it wasn't that bad of an experience. A lot of the topical jokes fly over me, and let's just be frank about it, I am not really the target market for this movie, because I am not a fan of Ai Ai De Las Alas. If this movie is truly the best they coud offer, then shame on you, Philippines. 


Ms. De Las Alas, as a comedienne, employs a style that for me is so exhausting. She tries hard, really really hard, to deliver what she needs to. Almost all of the time it goes to overkill. I don't think she has ever heard the word "subtle" in her life. Her screams have more decibles,  her outstretched arms cross channels, her mouth as big as its ocean. It takes every inch of my energy, and by the time the movie is over, I felt like I needed two days of sleep. It doesn't help that the movie is framed by a reed thin plot line that can barely hold one of her teeth. Honestly, I should give them props for daring to make a movie out of the hodge podge of scenes they shot - it literally looks like they shot all of it in a day. As her side kick, Eugene Domingo is a more intelligent actress, and steals some scenes from Ms. De Las Alas, but they come few and far between. I truly hope this is really the last of the series, but then again, I don't give a fuck. 

A Space Of Silence

Let's observe a space of silence for those who perished in Tucson, Arizona

Cusp

I am at the cusp of some major decisions that will probably affect the rest of my life and I am strangely calm about it. Maybe because, as Jeff puts it, "it's a no-brainer," and Jeff is as smart and practical as they come.  I didn't even know that the USPS delivers on Sundays, but apparently they do, for I got a package today from Pipo of some cute things. He sent me the Ateneo 85 Reunion T-shirt that he got for me during the Homecoming, and he sent me also this cute mirror with LED lights that just screams "Superstar!" when you look at yourself in it. It is so very "me" and I thank you again, Pipo for the wonderful gifts.  And tonight's episode of "Brothers & Sisters" was particularly good, and I think they are back on their stride. Plus, it looks like we are getting another major snowstorm Tuesday night, and with it goes more inconvenience.  But things always work out for the best. They truly always do, if you have faith.