Becoming Bobby

One day, Justin and I talked about our future. We were concerned about who we would eventually become when we hit out 30s. Justin, by the way, is a cousin and sort of friend with whom I have nothing in common except for the fact that we share the same disdain for some relatives. In our somewhat sprawling family, he is the only one that I can talk to about how extremely messed up our relatives are. Justin and I dislike our burgis cousins who think they’re more pogi than us. We dislike our titos and titas who have so much because we on the other hand have little. We find bondage in beer and hatred, I guess you could say.

So far,  christmas has done nothing for me. It’s a concrete thing, Christmas, and it’s not supposed to do anybody any favor but I don’t like it anyway. It stopped being interesting about 3-4 years ago when soliciting money from relatives ceased to be the type of activity someone my age is supposed to do. Everything has just been terrible this year and I wish to get out of it already. It’s really been a bad life in 2009. Actually I have nothing substantial to say about me and Justin and our future-gazing moment, it just didn’t seem too bad to say that you dislike certain people in your family because who doesn’t?, instead of flat out saying life is not good now. Christmas season’s been dreadful for me because it’s in December and in December, it’s just hell at work although I’m Grateful I Have Work because it’s hard for some people who are hopelessly jobless. It’s especially tough for unskilled, untalented jobless people but persevering, complaining, untalented types have it tough too. I’m just saying. I can’t win at anything!

If we’re lucky, our pesky titos will leave us alone today and allow us the luxury of getting drunk hassle-free. If we’re lucky, they would completely ignore us or just me, and not ask questions to which answers they don’t really care to know. It’s actually amusing and sometimes fun to be interrogated and it’s really not a big deal and I’m just really filling space and creating something to complain about. I should really be making plans now because much as I despise christmas, I don’t want to fill the rest of the day thinking about things I have no control over. What to drink later and how much, these are things I have total control over. I should ditch the fuck-the-relatives act which is really a half-assed act and head to the dirtiest city in Manila and Make Plans.

Titos will parade in front of us today for our scrutinizing pleasure and displeasure and we’d see who we’d really soon become because  on previous discussions, I dreaded becoming that tito whose life I absolutely, undoubtedly mirror. I can not be this tito. Justin though, he hadn’t seemed to have any qualms about being like several of the wasted, ambiguous lifestyle-living titos because he lives differently. And I mean differently. He could one day turn out to be Mon, the married, plain-living, good-looking in his early 30s, fun, cool with the nieces Tito and be happy and contented not for sticking to the Good Life but because he got away with the cruelties of the inevitable cruelties that his previous lifestyle he’s maintained. Or we thought, he could be the drug addict tito of which we have a lot and grow up to be an… addict, although he swears he won’t do drugs, just smokes of the highest kind. Me, even if the evidence is crystal clear, will become that tito. I’m already him, in a way: won’t marry (at least not today or next year), sustained by coffee, wants little company, openly critical and hopeful. He’s not bad but I hope I become Mon instead.

Weiss Girl

Since Precious, the Mariah Carey movie that I’m dying to see is not going to be shown in Manila theaters anytime soon, and which might be shown mid-2010, by which time I would have already died from anticipation, I re-watched Wise Girls, a small movie that would have showcased a smidgen of the acting talent of the greatest diva of our time. Wise Girls tells the story of a certain New York, mob-run Italian restaurant that serves more than just pasta, it serves cocaine too. Mira Sorvino, Melora Walters and Mariah Carey who is Not Bad play the waitresses. And if you really want to know what it’s about, go to IMDB because what I aim to examine and expound on is how Mariah is not at all a terrible actress as Glitter would have you believe.

Mostly I’m more interested in the experience of seeing a movie than the movie itself and I could say without reservation that Mariah would have been spared the breakdown had this movie been shown ahead of Glitter. If something as reputedly bad as Glitter can be shown in a third world, THX-equipped cinema, months after Rotten Tomatoes and just about every web traffic-hogging blogger had already proclaimed it to be bad, then an indieish movie such as Wise Girls can too, not because we, the Philippines have truly progressed as an above average appreciators of superior films nor because our local distributors never cared much for profit, but because and only because in the year that it was shown, 2002, Mariah was as popular as ever, and any movie that has at least one recognizable name in it will be shown, no matter how marginal the movie’s following is in the States or wherever. And so Wise Girls, the would/should-be launchpad of Mariah’s film career was shown here but only in the stinky SM Manila cinema, a telling sign that we were not going to see her in anything anymore.

I’m more concerned about critics’ assessment of movies so when I watch a movie that has her in it, and there aren’t many, I Google them and forget for a minute that I’m supposed to be doing other things in my life and I make searing commentaries such as this. And rewatching Wise Girls made me conclude, wow, that she isn’t so bad an actress after all. Even though I’m predisposed to mention her real life capacity for comedy, I could say with only the slightest bit of prejudice that she has put to great advantage her great comedic timing which she is supposed to have in real life. And even without having to say everything I’ve just said, I could never see her as anything as terrible or awful, as an actress or as a human.

I’ve seen this movie in the exact number of times that the average Mariah fan is supposed to watch it, which is to say, countless times, and the scene where she walks in the middle of the restaurant, gets her ass grabbed, and delivers what could have been THE career shifting dialogue of her acting career, never fails to elicit a fawning, admiring gasp that can only come from someone who has had the nerve to bring his girlfriend to see Glitter and not be ashamed of his skin after pretty much giving away his real nature. And speaking of Glitter, is it really so awful? I think what paved the way for the tomato-throwage was that one corny scene where they were in a club and Max Beesley hands her a mic, done in a hazy, corny, slow motion effected sequence and she starts to spontaneously sing to the random beat being played. Apart from that scene, what else was so bad I just couldn’t see.

Erratic

I feel like my behavior is very erratic lately. It’s certainly erratic because I felt the need to document it right now! and I could not wait to put it somewhere, immediately after I’ve encountered the word ‘erratic’ in David Foster Wallace’s essay about tennis. The word erratic stuck and it seemed like an adequate description of my behavior lately. I’m sorry for even saying anything about what is supposed to be just a fleeting idea. I’m apologizing for it because I know that these are maybe 90% lies and because I have a knack for being hyperbolic about my self and for things and people I dislike. It would be fine if I know that I’m unrecognized but that’s not the situation, and I’ve not been successful at all at making stuff up, at least here, which would explain why I’m occassionally generous with the way I address things here, as if I’m sure that a good number of boys and girls care about the things that are addressed. And I think that what all this is, is for me to be able to say that I’m just like how David Wallace described Andre Agassi in his essay in that  my manner now and ever since, is that of the ‘slightly smug self-aware one of somebody who’s used to being looked at and automatically assumes the minute he shows up anywhere that everybody’s looking at him.’ I could be very wrong about this but also I could be very right. But it really feels like it and if it can be proven that I’m being just insufferable now, then the error of my behavior is not entirely made up or wrongly felt. But that I had to associate my self-perceived erraticness to Andre Agassi is in itself wrong and too obvious. But what I really wanted to think about is why I’ve been doing things that I’m not so sure of lately like downloading the discography of Natalie Imbruglia when I’ve never particularly cared for her back when she was still relevant. I feel like my 24 hours isn’t enough to do everything I want and think I need to do like listen to CDs I’ve downloaded that I’ll probably never listen to more than twice. I also suspect my motivation for trying so hard to finish a book which is maybe the root of all these. I think that having to prepare for dinner is a waste of time because I feel like 24 hours in a day is truly not enough. I aim to sleep as early as possible because the hundreds of pesos being deducted from payroll isn’t worth staying up late for and getting up late for and therefore being late to work for. To add weight to my erratic behavior blah blah is that right now, I’m giving too much thought about money and what I’d spend for the next time I get them again. I make a list of things and in it, there’s an item for hygiene which is expenditure for Nivea , Gillette blades, Old Spice and face towels, the only things that I could afford without feeling guilty, if that makes sense. I’m hoping for the holiday season to be over soon because I can’t forget or forgive the crook who took my wallet who may have human reasons for taking it but of which Christmas is surely one of them. I feel stupid for saying in two separate interviews, from interviewers who’d offer me the same job, that my worst criticism is that I’m Too Indecisive. In my mind, I have a perfect workaround for this impossible question but I never should have given the same answer to both of them. But I can’t decide whether it’s good that they never called back or it’s bad because it means I’ll have to complain, but just maybe, about the same set of boring things for as long as I am where I am. Since this is already too long, I think I’ve already somehow erased the memory of my previous thought which was centered on something so irrelevant. I wish some day I can convince anyone that there is a reason for this activity that I keep doing other than wanting to say things like I’m just like how so and so author described Andre Agassi in whatever essay.