here comes the bride (PAK!)

On Magnetic Hill in Rizal ALONG RIZAL HIGHWAY (LOL sorry, I only noticed this on the second go.. YES I WATCHED IT TWICE, BAKET? /edit), an accident occurs involving five vehicles just in time for a solar eclipse. As a result, five people suddenly find themselves in other bodies -- the bride, the ninang, the yaya, the lolo and the gay beautician image stylist. And I thought Freaky Friday was amusing.

Oh my God Chris Martinez. Yes, the writing is splendid, the dialogue is witty, and the story is engaging. I mean, SOLAR ECLIPSE! Jesus. Must have been fun trying to brainstorm on this one and arguing re where to put the lolo's soul for maximum effect and what to put inside Angelica Panganiban's body LOL.

But more than the writing, the acting is FANTASTIC. I mean, you can't pull off a body switch comedy with mediocre actors. Angelica Panganiban was awesome (PAKKKKK!) as the now-hysterical bride, and John Lapus was... well, you have to watch it to be properly scarred by everything, is all I'm saying.

Suffice it to say we'll be quoting from this one from now until FOREVER (like Kimmy Dora - Do you work here?) and planning about body switches with friends while waiting for the next solar eclipse.

Bravo, you guys. Run, don't walk. RUN. *PAKKKKKK!*

chloe

Catherine's (Julianne Moore) husband David (Liam Neeson) misses a flight home and her surprise birthday party for him falls apart. The following morning she spies a suspicious picture in his phone and it is here that things start crumbling. It's a marriage overtaken by responsibilities, a connection worn thin. Catherine, a successful gynecologist, is still pretty despite the lines on her face when she smiles, and yet she is often overlooked by her husband, a charming professor, a classical music expert. They have a son, a music major named Michael, aloof and secretive like most boys his age, and between a son that wants to have nothing to do with her and a husband who doesn't see her, Catherine feels so alone.

From her office window once she sees a girl escorting a man out of a building. She is young and blonde and from afar Catherine can see how pretty she is, and how the guy she's with is perhaps David's age. The girl can't be older than Catherine's son. She's wondering if men of a certain age prefers girls of a certain age; younger, definitely, than she now is. The thought fills her with a sort of dread.

The first time Catherine runs into Chloe, it's in a restaurant restroom. Catherine locks herself in a cubicle and hears sniffling from the adjacent space. There's a muffled voice of a girl crying, and after a while, Catherine's handing the girl a handful of tissues through the space between them by their feet. The shot of their stilettos and the music and Chloe's red painted fingernails wrapping around Catherine's pale hand make for very tense viewing and nothing's even happening. Or at least, none yet.

Outside by the mirror, Catherine is fixing her hair. Chloe comes out, thanks her. She pulls out a dainty hair clip and tells Catherine she must have dropped it. Catherine says it isn't hers, and Chloe says, Take it anyway. Catherine turns around and smiles. Chloe looks back -- her eyes wide, honest, fascinated; her lips full and parted. Chloe says, I want you to have it. Catherine considers for a moment before telling her she has to get back to her husband. Chloe stares at Catherine reflection on the mirror as she walks away, says nothing.

I try to chalk it up to overreading subtext -- I'm always overreading subtext because I enjoy it. Put two attractive girls in a room and somehow I can manage to read subtext into it 80 percent of the time. But this -- Amanda Seyfried as Chloe, for all the sexual tension that oozes out of her in this first scene wtih Julianne Moore as Catherine -- it is not subtext at all, is it?

[MASSIVE SPOILERS YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED BUT GOD IT'S SEXY I CAN'T HELP MYSELF.]

the fiction class

The Fiction Class (Susan Breen)

So Arabella Hicks teaches a writing class on Wednesdays, which is also the day she visits her mother at the nursing home. Her class is a curious mix of interesting people, including a 53-year-old man named Chuck, who is also Arabella's love interest. But this is not completely a love story, more than it is a story about a daughter trying to come to grips with the fact that her mother's about to die.

Will you learn a lot about writing, per se? Well, Breen does provide useful advice about voice and dialogue and developing character and finding the proper motivation to write -- a good deal of the story is set in the classroom, after all -- but not in the magnitude that Anne Lamott does in "Bird by Bird" or the way Stephen King does in "On Writing" but then again she's juggling a love story with Chuck, her mother Vera's own story, and their story as mother-daughter which is particularly affecting, and the book's only about 300 pages long, so you get the picture.

Breen's language is deceptively simple. Deceptive, yes, because at some point she throws in something like, "She feels like a fist unclenching," and I am left staring at those six words for a very, very long time.

Things that have broken my heart in this: Arabella's love-hate-love relationship with her mother Vera, the moment Arabella learns the entire truth about her father's death, and the last few scenes. It was ill-advised for me to have read and finished this in public - at Conti's Greenbelt and then at Coffee Bean - because I would have loved to cry over some parts at great length in the privacy of my own home (in better days, the yearning would have been to read this with alcohol, but yeah. Good times, good times) but in all I am glad to have finished it finally.

One thing that did not work for me though: I wanted desperately to fall in love with this guy Chuck - this older man who is suave and gentle, etc etc but I don't know. I wanted to see what it was that Arabella found so seductive but I just... pfft. He lacked something, he didn't tug at my heart strings despite the fact that I think he was a rather good guy - clean-smelling, good-looking, dashing, well-off, accomplished, can cook, domestic etc etc, but I don't know what it is about him that in the end did not win me over at all. *shrug* He read like a dream guy - I guess that's what didn't work for me. Too perfect. And it's not even because I'm not into boys - I remember liking Henry in The Time Traveler's Wife, after all, and Murakami's male leads, though I may not like them all, at the very least, they affect me. Not Chuck. I needed more tension, I guess? Maybe it felt a bit too rushed to be believable? IDK.

[cut for excessive mother rantage]

quiet nights, quiet stars

Seriously, when I woke up yesterday I had no idea Club 8 was in the country for a concert. I read a tweet, a couple of updates on Facebook, and then I got a call from Andrea asking me if I'd like to go. I was like, Wow, spontaneous concerts? I'm in!

Went there with Andrea's officemate Poxy and met up with other familiar faces Mela and Lia and her sister and Archie from college. It was in the SMX Convention Center. Our tickets were worth P1,300 (Thanks love <3) and the experience was AWESOME. (It was also NONSMOKING! A NONSMOKING CONCERT! AWESOME!) Front acts were good (Gentle Isolation, Camerawalls, Your Imaginary Friends) Plus Club 8 stayed to sign autographs at the end of it. AUTOGRAPHS, you guys. I got to shake Karolina's hand. Swedish girls = HOTTTTT. <3

Now that we've had Club 8, can we now also have Broken Social Scene, Stars, Bloc Party, Imogen Heap, Florence and the Machine -- the works? Please? Heh. I have rediscovered that part of me that likes concerts.

Speaking of concerts. I feel like I'll regret having to miss Dashboard Confessional's concert at the end of the month -- I have a feeling it'd be the sort of concert I can actually SING TO, Jesus, why do people schedule concerts on a THURSDAY? IN TRINOMA? Ang layooo, meng.

*

On other news, last weekend was actually eventful, but with the election on Monday I forgot to mention that we went to a watercolor workshop last Saturday with Kora Albano at the UP College of Fine Arts. Look mommy, look at what I did!

This exercise was called the flat wash. Hehe. I felt so accomplished. Afterwards we had lunch at Chocolate Kiss and then I had to go to work and she had to enroll in Alliance for French lessons.

Then on Sunday I went home for a family lunch for Mother's Day. I was in my parents' house for more or less five hours. Talk about a quickie. Anyway, that was the Sunday before the elections, and mostly we talked about who to vote for, etc.

So. Post concert we had breakfast this morning at Salcedo Market with Poxy. I love Salcedo Market on Saturdays. The food is awesome and Andrea gets to meet some nice French guys selling French food with whom she can practice her French phrases with heheeh.

Basically, I am happy to report there are now other things going on in my life. The other day, I was thinking about how the elections had felt so heavy just sitting there on my chest, and I told myself how I'd never let anything consume me so entirely again because it was so exhausting, LOL. But then again, in hindsight, I'd always let the things I love consume me, so.

So. In conclusion: I love what I do. It's five years later, and I still do. :)

mundane

With the elections out of the way, can we now talk about mundane things, like love and pasts and the fantastic way things manage to resolve themselves with time?

We can? Okay.

*

It's a well-known fact that my ex-girlfriend and I are now on civil, speaking terms, though I still haven't seen her since 2007, and that's just fine. And wow, the fact that I feel like I can call her solidly the ex-girlfriend, that I can now say that without fear of reprisal or reprimand -- it's fantastic. I wonder if people wonder about that girl I can't stop writing about c.2003-2006, and well, here's the situation update for you since I've stopped talking about her entirely for the better part of the past four years.

The other night, we were texting briefly about something work-related which turned into a briefer exchange of pleasantries; she asked how Andrea and I were doing, I said we were doing fine (32 months on the 22nd, I said), and I asked back if it were true that she and her boyfriend (edit: whom I had just friended on Facebook somewhere, LOL) were getting married, and she said I was the fifth person in the span of a week to have asked.

I said, you don't post photos like those on Facebook and not court questions about engagement at the very least. She said, Ah you saw? I did the photoshop on that. And I said, Well, a photoshop expert now, aren't we? For a brief moment I was tempted to go the way of Remember that time I used to try to teach you how to work the thing -- but I didn't, because I didn't feel it was called for.

She said she looked at photos of Andrea and I (presumably on Facebook); she said we looked so happy, so good together. She said she's glad I'm happy now, and I said, I'm happy you are, too.

And then she asked, Hey if the rumor of you and I together in college would spread among our batchmates, would it be okay? Because I'm okay with that already. We happened, there's nothing wrong with that, yeah?

I said, not unkindly, I remember between the two of us, you were the one uncomfortable with people knowing. I said I was okay with that, and that I've long made my peace with that part of our lives, and that I was happy she was at peace with it as well.

She said sorry she was so unfair. I said, it's all right, let's just keep the good things in our heads, and do away with the bad ones. I said, It was a different life, no?

A different life. Funny how five years ago, fresh out of college and at the edge of the real world, it was entirely unimaginable, having this conversation, much less going without this person for years. I remember feeling horribly flayed just having to look at their photos together, I remember having to remove her from social networks (at the time, it was Friendster) just to do away with the pictures. I wrote a lot of angry things, I regret some of them actually, and I marked a certain day on the calendar with a sort of grief reserved for mourning could-have-beens.

And then.

And then I fell in love again. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT! What were the chances I'd amble into a new life that would eventually open me up to entirely new things, experiences and opportunities, right? Back in college, a young girl like me -- like me, who liked other girls and not boys -- I was alone and without a community. I didn't know there were other girls who liked other girls -- well, I mean, of course I ~knew, but I didn't know where they were, or if they'd like me at all. This was why I was horribly attached to her - I had erroneously thought she was the last girl, the only girl who would ~see me, and like what she saw. If I am ever going to be glad about anything I was wrong about after all, it would be that.

If I were to pinpoint the exact moment I felt my heart starting up again in a way I thought it would never feel again -- when was it exactly? Perhaps that night in Timog then, in April? I mean, you all know how this part of the story goes, right? I knew Andrea was into girls, I knew she had a girlfriend for a time, and I think that time I saw her dancing to reggae in some street party she had one, too, though it was a different girl.

And then, while I wasn't looking, I found myself in love. Silly organ called the heart. That time we were doing the midterm elections, though relatively the work stress was a bit less by virtue of being younger and still having mid-level management above you. Heh. We had massive losses/resignations, I was out all the time drinking and smoking, then Andrea and I started going out in group dates, and then in book store dates with just the two of us, and then we were texting at regular intervals, and then she was all I ever wrote about.

And then I moved out of the flat I shared with my sister in Quezon City and into a flat of my own in Makati, and then bam, I found myself in a relationship. And then Andrea moved in and three years and one election more later, here we still are, waking up next to each other every single day, and how does this happen, really? How does one go from making all those horrible, misguided decisions to having this life where I don't smoke anymore, or drink so much?

How does one get so lucky?

Well. I don't know. What I do know is that from feeling absolutely shit - you know, times when there are, say, days that you find yourself alone sitting on the floor of your apartment, drinking lukewarm Red Horse out of a bottle while smoking and it's only 4 p.m.? - Life has a way of looking up again. Well, it doesn't happen exactly in the span of a few days, or a few weeks; sometimes it takes more than a couple of months, but the fact is, life takes care of itself as long as we don't do anything to fuck it up while it's on its way to recovery. It's a fun fact, that.

Meanwhile, while waiting I was listening to sad music and writing sad things with empty rooms and ghosts, and watching sad movies and getting drunk all the time and wearing my lung lining thin with nicotine and going home late so I'd be so weary by the time I hit the bed I won't have time to think about how alone I felt. It was a crazy life, and fun as it was, I don't think I could afford that lifestyle again. Hehe.

And then you're all right again. How does that happen, right? For a moment you're just living one day after the other, and then somewhere along the way you find something to look forward to. It just happens, it's insane, and when you pause to look back, you're now standing five years away from something you thought you'd never live through.

How does that happen, right? :) Well, I'm done analyzing the Universe's ways, so yeah, you win this round Universe. Fair and square.