Every time I pass EDSA from my house, on the way to watch a movie over at Trinoma, I see this very annoying ad from Giordano:

Look familiar to you?

It’s one thing to rip off designs. People do it all the time. I’m not saying it’s right, just that it’s a fact of life. This is why laws to protect artists and their “intellectual property” have been made. This is why “copyright” exists. I really have no doubt in my mind that it is nearly 100% impossible to get rid of copycats. But to lift a design almost directly from a “non-profit movement” is really frakking heinous.

I have no idea if this design was copied from To Write Love On Her Arms with their permission or not, but either way, this just really pisses me off.

How absurd is the moment of the realization of the impending doom that is college graduation? Very, I say. The image of a toga and a cap and being done with schooling forever just does not compute in my puny, pea-sized brain. More so if that image happens to be of me. That is just such a crazy, foreign concept that I can’t wrap my brains around. That, and the six-month-or-so long “weekend” between the point of graduation and the point of employment.

But anyway. Before I break my brain, let me digress, or just post about something tangentially related to this: graduation picture day. In other words, I just had mine taken today. Yay? Sure. Here are some photos:

me + isabel

paulina. guuurl, why are you so pretty all the time?

jamie (& her awesome falsies) + rhein as russell from up!

jamie with rhein’s balloons. spot the ‘badges’ on the table. :)

Speaking of balloons. They were filled with helium, by the way. We all know what that means:

So, I went as Max Fischer. I am living now in the constant fear of making a guest appearance on Tenenbaum Fail. This fear is not a joke. It is real. Don’t you dare submit my picture, blog reader. :(

More pictures under the ‘cut’.
Continue reading senior syndrome: graduation picture day….

So, in case you did not notice, Nothing Spaces was down for a week. Pretty timely, too, since I was looking forward to updating about my Phenomenal! Week! But yeah, so it goes. My brother talked to the host, though, so things are well for now.

Since I’d been itching to update but couldn’t, I made a vlog (lest things turn irrelevant, as they are wont to do). Yes, I went there. Here it is!

HAHA. Say hello to my stupid face for five and a half minutes. Wow, aren’t I wordy?

(P.S. I’d been ‘vlogging’ for a while in 2007, I think, then stopped because some people I knew in real life found it and it was way awkward. And also, I’m not really very funny, so I ran out of material right away. Ho hum.)

Double P.S.: I got an account over at DailyBooth. Here is my last picture:

Let me know in the comments if you have one! :)

photo by the wonderful regina belmonte

I’m the one person in the world who is probably the least likely to be interested in sports of any kind. Mostly because I am not good at any of them. (My favorite P.E. class in college was PE 101, which was basically a lecture class on health and the human body.) And it’s not just sports. I basically suck at everything that concerns any sort of physicality and/or coordination.¹

And so, I find my great (and I do mean great) investment in Ateneo basketball games (and only Ateneo basketball games) curious.

I know it’s not because of the personal opinion that Ateneo! Is! The! Best! for two reasons: a) I’d been supporting the Ateneo Blue Eagles since I was a high school freshman at an all-girls private school so the “school spirit” really came from nowhere; Ateneo wasn’t even my first choice, and b) I hated being Atenean, until about the second semester of second year when I experienced a complete turn-around, out of nowhere, and suddenly realized that I did love — yes, love! — bleeding blue.

It’s definitely not about the sport because I don’t know the rules completely, I don’t know all the terms. Sometimes, I cheer by mistake because I misread the ref’s calls. I have no idea what a turnover is, what the difference between all those fouls are, how many minutes each quarter starts with, and I could go on about the things I don’t know about basketball, but I will spare you.

It’s not about the grace of the game, or winning them — school spirit or no school spirit.

I think the reason why I am so deeply invested in the Ateneo games is because I deeply believe in the Ateneo way. In Magis, in being a man for others, in doing things for the greater glory of God. Watching Ateneo games, regardless of the outcome, makes me witness such an admirable display of perseverance, where there is always something more to want and to aspire to.

They almost always feel like that last scene from The Two Towers, where Frodo is about to quit, but Sam won’t let him. “There’s some good in the world, and it’s worth fighting for.” In other words, it’s not over, until it’s over. Personally, it has rarely ever been about winning so I could gloat about my school’s victory, or about using basketball stats to prove which school is better.

I love the games because every time Ateneo wins, it always feels to me as though the good guys win, and it always feels stellar to be a part of that. It’s like being in a family. Watching Ateneo win is exhilirating. Watching Ateneo lose is disappointing, but in a strange way, comforting, because there is always that knowledge that what we did was try, try, try, and no one can fault anyone for losing after all that trying.

This sounds like sentimental claptrap, because it is sentimental. It’s sentimental because I am not really, in the strictest sense, a basketball fan. A main reason why I enjoy watching games because I enjoy seeing the players do better. Even if we’ve never spoken to each other, or if some of them seem like douches (haha) in real life, during an Ateneo game, they feel like family, and it feels great seeing them just really try to be better.

Regina wrote that there is nothing in the world like an Ateneo-La Salle game, and I really and willfully concede to this observation. There’s nothing like an Ateneo-La Salle game because there is probably no other tandem in the world that fights as fervently in what they believe in. Eric Salamat in a Guidon article: “Actually every La Salle-Ateneo game, yung fire ng mga players talagang gusto nilang durugin yung isa’t isa para ipakita talaga yung school pride.” I’m not really in an I-want-to-crush-people-from-the-other-school mood and never really have been, but Eric is right, because what I basically really want to say, and what I’ve been trying to say for the past few hundred words can be summed up in four:

And that is precisely why, to borrow from the NBA, “I love this game!²”

———
¹ New Family Joke: They said that the only exercise I get in is via my flailing about whenever Ateneo scores or misses a shot.
² But only if Ateneo is playing.

My first encounter with John Hughes was in the third grade, when I was confined in the hospital for contracting something called “acute viral infection” (I’m still not sure what it is). Sixteen Candles was on HBO and my life changed forever. What followed next was a frantic search for it on video. My uncle runs a video rental and up until this day, a small part of me still hasn’t forgiven him for not having a copy of this, dare I say, classic.
 

Samantha Baker is, perhaps, the first person who I wanted to be like. Or the first character who seemed to feel like I felt. As Farmer Ted put it, “Not many girls in contemporary American society would give their underwear to help a geek like me.” She is awesome. For a while, I even wanted to be referred to by my second first name, ‘Samantha.’ (Also, Jake Ryan, duh. Of course, I related to her. Never mind that I was barely 10 years old and hooked to an IV bag.)

But to digress from my digression, the movie was nowhere to be found. What I did run into was a VCD copy of Pretty in Pink, which in my Hughes-Ringwald-deprived state, was good enough for me. I watched it, liked it (although, obviously not as much as my first John Hughes love), even though it made it glaringly clear that I do not have a Duckie or a Blane.

In my quest to find a copy of this elusive video, I made friends with The Breakfast Club and, through my Tita Tine, who lives in New Jersey, I also made friends with Ferris Bueller. The age of the VHS tape came and went, and by the time I did finally get a copy of Sixteen Candles, tapes were obsolete, and so were the references. And yet.

Hey, John Cusack. You don’t know it yet, but you are going to make
a million girls fall in love with you. Just you wait and see.

The thing of it is that John Hughes is legendary because, underneath the (sometimes corny) rhyming (“He’s as drunk as a skunk!”), the cheeseball sound effects and the funny eighties slang, he knew where it counted in high school, no matter what era. The tragedy of forgotten birthdays, the thrill of skipping class, the wonder of that first kiss. He knew why, no matter what happens, the principal is always The Enemy, that the best friend doesn’t always get the girl (and that it’s OK), how love and friendship can be infuriating (and that it’s OK, too). He knew the truth, that: “We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that’s all.” He got it — that it’s OK to be different, that we never really know a person until we know a person, that it is not possible from embarrassment, even though it feels like it is, that everyone gets a happy ending (in the form of Jake Ryan or otherwise) and most importantly, that rock and roll is here to stay.

He knew where it counted, knew that we knew, too. And this is why, in the midst of all the deaths in the world in the past few months, John Hughes’ is probably the one that breaks my heart the most.

I miss John Hughes. I miss high school. I miss being sixteen.

You, yes, you.

To ease you through the mourning and the grieving, Twitter’s on a roll with John Hughes quotes.

“Life moves pretty fast.
If you don’t stop and look around once in a while,
you could miss it.”

 

Rest in Peace, Mr. Hughes.
Thank you for everything.

Part One of my Three-Part Exhibit Backlog Bonanza features the Romulo Olazo 40-Year Retrospect put up by the Ayala Museum. You will be either pleased or disappointed at the scarcity of pictures of the works themselves. “What are you posting, then?” you ask. Pictures of our faces, obviously. More importantly, pictures of myself with personal heroes. These will be after the cut, because I am not as shameless as people probably think.

Here, however, are pictures of the works that I was able to actually take.

Romulo Olazo is widely known for his Diaphanous series, pictured above. Throughout his career, he has produced thousands of these works, although he has also curiously kept a healthy variation. In other words, despite the almost staggering number, it really doesn’t get old.

Here’s a close-up of one of the works.

A larger one mounted on the third floor gallery, I think.

Some works in a smaller section of the main gallery, with a bunch of people.

I do love his use of color. (He also makes fantastic nudes.)

… and the absence of it.

The series of his outlined versions of his Diaphanous series is called Permutations.
Here is a piece from said series. Plus, my parents.

I saw a philosophy professor whose class I wanted to take!
Here is Dr. Garcia (he pretty much loves art), asking for Mr. Olazo’s autograph.

Obviously, we asked for a picture. Kuya, Mang Ola, ma maman et moi!
He reminds me of a walrus.

Goo goo g’joob! :D

And because I can, here is a picture of me with Arturo Luz,
who is one of my favorite artists/personal heroes:

He is giving me a half-hug! :D If you do not know him, which by the way,
you should, he made one of the murals in CCP, and the pretty sculpture outside the Ayala Museum, against which Pau and I took pictures last year, because we are cool:

And, as promised, the rest of the action is under the cut.
So, clicket-y if you want to see. If not, then uh, go away.
Continue reading Part I of my Exhibit Backlog Bonanza: Romulo Olazo!…