< showbiz and society 101 >

   There are some people who don't like Sandara Park, and to be honest, I'm one of them.  But for all the bad things that happened to Sandara's career (or what passed for it), I find myself in an odd position of pitying a celebrity.

   Usually, I don't pity celebrities: every rags-to-riches and riches-to-rags story in the realm of showbiz must be taken with more than a grain of salt.  I don't know how much truth there is in Sandara's own rags-to-riches and/or riches-to-rags story.  The obvious truth to me, though, is that as a nation enamored and obsessed with everything showbiz, we never really had any idea what to do with Sandara Park.

   Sandara first entered the Filipino home through "Star Circle Quest."  From the very beginning, Sandara was a butt of jokes: the label "Krung-Krung" was associated with the public's perception of her naïveté.  She represented the cultural sphere that intersected with the Filipino kulturkreise: she was the physical manifestation of the "Korean Invasion" in the Philippines.  She was antithetical to the majority of Koreans we see today populating every known inch of the Philippine urban setting.  There was no air of elitism, condescension or uptightness seen in Sandara's public life: as we poked fun on her, she poked fun on herself.

   But the buck (or the peso) definitely stopped here.  The thing is, the public can't see much of themselves in Sandara Park.  It's not that she is Korean, but the thing is, she's not Filipino.  There is no way you can turn Sandara upside down and inside out and make a Filipino out of her.  She's just so completely and utterly different from every other Filipino that she becomes an anomaly.

   I'm not saying that we're all prejudiced against people with whiter skin or smaller eyes, it's just that there's nobody who can say that "I'm just like Sandara" simply because we're not.  I'm going out on a limb in saying that Sandara can't really claim to be a Filipino because as much as she considers the Philippines her "home," it just isn't the case.  She has been consistently out of place from the very beginning.

   To me, Sandara Park becomes a classic example of how globalization can be a bad thing.  Globalization, in theory, is all about introducing new cultural patterns to a particular culture that shares in the project of turning things "global."  Sandara is just that: a global factor.  The project of Sandara Park is part of that greater project of "globalizing" Pinoy entertainment through import talent, much like what we did to Pinoy basketball.  What makes her different from a Michelle Van Eimeren or a Dayanara Torres is that Sandara is a neighbor to us: she's just like us in being an Asian, but she's completely different to us in not being a Filipino, much less able to speak our language.

   The project of globalization is not just about tolerance: it's about acceptance.  We just couldn't accept Sandara into our homes and into our consciousness.  We don't see ourselves in her because she's completely different from us.  It was no longer a matter of "humanizing" Sandara but a matter of "Filipinizing" Sandara, which took its toll on her.  She became stigmatized into a novelty song singer, a cultural anomaly, someone who had 14-and-a-half minutes of fame.  We cannot accept Sandara the actress, but we accept Sandara the self-deprecating "Krung-Krung," perhaps to validate the idea that we're better than the whole race we assume she represents.

   If Sandara Park should serve as an example, I think we as a nation are not really prepared for the rigors of globalization.  This thing with "colonial mentality" is nuanced: we like foreign products, but we just don't like foreign people.  There are the leering looks we give to Koreans in miniskirts, we mangle our English when we're confronted with Americans, and we stay away from a Sikh crossing the street and call him a "terrorist" behind his back.  We accept Ruffa Gutierrez's pathetic excuse of "cultural differences" between her and Yilmaz Bektas when we have a very vague understanding of what "culture" really is.

   We're a migrant nation: nomads in a world full of cultures in the effort to get jobs.  We, of all people, should be at the forefront of tolerance and acceptance when it comes to all sorts of different cultures.  Our culture should be a mélange of different cultures because that's what the "Filipino culture" is.  We sort of forgot about that when we became cultural imperialists ourselves, and demanded that Sandara be Filipino.  For all her perseverance and determination, Sandara deserved a place in our table.  We turned her into an assclown.

   Like I said, I'm in that odd position of pitying a celebrity.  We never really had an idea of what to do with Sandara Park: her career went down the hill like Jack and Jill and their pail of water.  Such is life: a wheel of fortune that has its highs and lows.  Such is globalization: the term "wave" is a gross underestimation of it being a culture-killing tsunami.

   Such is the tragedy that is Sandara Park: we will always remember her for two songs that she sang for Rejoice.

< the pain is killing me... figuratively speaking >

   What kept me "out-of-commission" for the past three days was a bad sprain in my right ankle.  Because I don't play competitive physical sports, I sustained the injury from an accident: I slipped on the exposed root of a pine tree, causing my right foot to sort of snap inward, rendering me unable to walk for the past three days.

   My latest sprain isn't my worst one, but I haven't been sprained in a long time that I kind of forgot what it feels like.  It's all right if you're lying down, and it feels a heck of a lot better when you prop your foot on a few pillows.  But when you have to limp your way to the toilet, even the slightest weight you put on your sprained ankle sends shockwaves of pain right up your leg all the way to your spine.  Worse, since you do your business standing up, you're trying to maintain all that balance on your one good foot so that you don't piss all over yourself.  Then you make your way back to the bed, take an Advil, and muffle out your hollering by screaming through a thick pillow.

   I don't care if you're a masochist of the highest degree: nobody likes getting sprained, most especially an ankle sprain.  You don't feel the pain the moment you hyperextend a tendon or a ligament: the pain that comes with an ankle sprain creeps up on you like a rapist at Scout camp (it's the best example I could think of).  There's the initial stinging pain, which is quite bearable.  So you rest a bit, hoping that it will be gone after a half-hour or so.  Then your ankle swells into a scarlet mass of pain.

   When it comes to first aid, I do it by the book.  For a sprain, one should immobilize the sprained ankle with a splint or heavy bulky dressings, elevate it, and then apply a cold compress (a pack of crushed ice wrapped in a damp towel) to stop the swelling.  The cardinal rule is to not touch the foot: the injury is already severe enough that to put enough stress and strain on the joint will result in a more severe injury, like tearing the muscles and ligaments or perhaps fracture bones.  The sprain will heal itself in due time.

   But there are just some instances when first aid won't work, especially when you take it upon yourself to give yourself first aid.  Moreso if you're lying on your back moaning in pain.  Other people will have to do the healing for you ("you" in this case me), and these are usually people who don't necessarily believe in first aid.  Right after I got sprained, my older brother twisted my foot sideways in the effort to correct the sprain and/or the possible dislocation of the ankle joint.  When my younger sister found my ankle in a cold compress, she immediately removed it and replaced it with a hot water bottle.

   Then the neighborhood "hilot" came by to - you guessed it - massage my sprain.  By any means, this is not a good idea: there's the possibility of adding more injury, perhaps breaking a bone, in the process of massaging a sprain.  But I really can't do any arguing at that point: after all, I was in no position to make decisions about my sprained foot.  As the patient, I don't call the shots.

   The "hilot" then proceeded to apply Chinese massage oil on the swollen joint - the green kind commonly smelled around old people - and then began massaging the swelling down.  As with traditional medicine, she looked for these particular veins and blood vessels that were supposedly "pinched" ("naipit") by bone and muscle.  I didn't know what that meant for her, but it meant fifteen full minutes of unbearable torture for me.  It's the kind of agony that has me thinking whether I should shit or go blind: heavy hands running over my swollen ankle, my aching foot flexed in all sorts of directions.  My body became a literal house of pain as I stifled my tears and my screaming because the neighbors' children were already asleep.  At least I didn't pass out or peed myself: I've seen it happen before with far more minor sprains.  These are things that really cannot be put in words.  If you really want to experience that kind of abominable and indescribable pain, I suggest you intentionally sprain your ankle and have someone massage it for you, of course counting the risk of multiple fractures on your foot.

   So in the end, my ankle is still painful with the addition of a mild hematoma coming from broken small blood vessels from the massage.  I'll go on limping for a few more days, though: I'm not one to walk with a pair of crutches.  Although the pain is still pretty much murder on my ankle, but what else can affirm your humanity other than a sprain?

   I know: constipation.

< from tv land >

   I like to drink, but I'm a purist when it comes to alcohol.  I like my alcoholic drinks in their purest, because if I'm going to have to drink, I might as well get drunk.  Mixed drinks, while flavorful, stab you in the back: you really can't tell what made you vomit your insides out.  I particularly dislike margaritas.

   This brings me to ABS-CBN's new soap opera, "Margarita."  Like its alcoholic namesake, I don't like it.  I really can't tell what gets me so nauseated every time I'm home early enough to see it on TV.

   I said before that I hate Wendy Valdez.  I don't like Wendy not because I'm a prejudiced bigot: there are just some people you just can't help but to not like.  It's a lot like the opposite of love at first sight.  Force-feeding Wendy into my TV consciousness doesn't help either: I mean, forget all the intrigue surrounding Wendy as a former exotic dancer who did it only because she wanted to help her family, but there's a certain grotesqueness in passing this intrigue off as a plot for a soap opera.

   Now I'm a man: to some degree, I know exotic dancing.  I know what kind of gyrations and contortions are needed in striptease and exotic dancing.  Men who have inclinations to perversion know what it takes to put money on the platform or between the elastic of panties or thongs.  Men lay down their money if there is either a play to the extremes of virginal innocence and whorish sluttiness.  Wendy's dancing is bad... really bad.  She can't be passed off as an exotic dancer even if she tried her darndest and broke her pelvis doing so.  Even the very steel pole she's "dancing" on is a better dancer than she is.

   Watching "Margarita" sends me convulsing (I'm exaggerating) into a series of nausea-induced sneezes that scream "ripoff."  Anyone who has watched "Burlesk Queen" and "Scorpio Nights" sees a rather familiar plot.  But if you watched "Exotica" (that 1994 movie that starred Mia Kirschner and was shown on the old Mega cable channel that showed a lot of European porn), "Margarita" has the exact same plot, only that Wendy doesn't dress as a schoolgirl.  The sourness (I didn't mean anything sexual by that) of the striptease porn movie is found not in the porn, but the existential dilemmas in touching the whore or falling in love with the whore.  Instead, "Margarita" focuses on the "cleansing" of Wendy's image.  She didn't even deserve it: she didn't win "Pinoy Big Brother Season 2."

   ABS-CBN has turned into the proverbial snake-oil salesman with "Margarita:" the rotten tomato that is Wendy Valdez has been repackaged as tomato sauce.  Which brings me to Bruce Quebral: I'm all for the idea that this former UP Fighting Maroon has acting talent.  Marketing him as an action star doesn't work, though: we have learned enough from our entertainment history with basketball players.  Benjie Paras pulled it off by playing to his goofiness.  Bonel Balingit pulled it off by playing to his height and the humor that is to be found in his looks.  James Yap pulled it off by endorsing Goldilocks and played to being Kris Aquino's husband.

   I don't know what in the hell are they thinking with Bruce: you definitely can't pass him off as a Keanu Reeves no matter how many times you show slow-motion fight scenes.  While Keanu can't act his way even if he had a paper bag on his head, Bruce can't act, period.  You can't make an action star out of giving someone a gun and spiking his hair up with hair gel.  I seem to watch a cheap ripoff of a Chuck Norris film every time I see Bruce fight.  The next thing you know, Bruce will be selling exercise equipment on ABC 5's "Venta 5," perhaps the next-generation Total Gym, Abflex 2.0, Billy Blanks aero-kickboxing tapes, or the Bruce Quebral Power Juicer Express (my apologies to my friends Zig Dulay and Jamie Ysrael, who both work at ABC 5, but I just had to throw that in).

   But I really pity Diether Ocampo.  It's bad enough that you're being called laos by what's-her-face gossip columnists and to do a movie with Onemig Bondoc at some phase in your career (yeah... right).  It's bad enough that he had to do "Rounin" and suffer from the hype that came with it.  Diet is one of the most multi-dimensional and talented entertainers in the Philippines today, and it's a shame that he's been treated like a sacrificial lamb just so that Wendy's career will gain some momentum.  Diet deserves more than this: he earned his way through the ranks to establish himself as a great actor.  To put him in the same soap as Wendy is a damn shame.  This isn't the "resurrection of his career," this seems to be to be the death of his career.  If anyone could resurrect a career in starring with a try-too-hard Chinese-branded can of tomato sauce like Wendy Valdez, I'd rather have Onemig do it.  Or Wowie de Guzman.  Or any one of the Gwapings.  You can even literally resurrect Rico Yan and kill him all over again by starring him in "Margarita."

   Maybe I'm a bit too harsh.  Maybe I should give "Margarita" a fighting chance, that my prejudices and bigotry mean nothing because I'm not the one who's on TV.  But I'm not stupid so as to associate this pathetic excuse for a TV version of "Roma/Amor" (a sex-themed story column in Bulgar) with great local soaps of recent memory: like "Mara Clara," "Mula Sa Puso," "Maging Sino Ka Man" and so on.  Instead, "Margarita" put the fight to me in my having to fend off the lingering nightmare of a girl who can't dance, a guy who can't act, and a guy who's figuratively being killed by a girl who can't dance and a guy who can't act.

   "Margarita," to me, only poses a reason for me to dislike margaritas, but gives me a pretty good reason to get drunk after "TV Patrol."  As depressed as I am with the state of our society and the state of our news, I don't have to further aggravate my depression "araw-araw, gabi-gabi."

< oooh, god >

   Now I'm not a very religious person.  I'm not one to have had a close encounter of the divine kind.  I'm over my "atheist" phase: if there is room in the world for God, then my mind must be open to the idea and the acknowledgment of God.  Just because I have not had a deep contact with God doesn't mean that God does not exist: I think I need to negotiate with my spirituality in order to experience God.  Right now, though, I am more inclined towards Albert Einstein's concept of the "cosmic religious feeling:" that awe you get from realizing that you are part of the infinity that is the universe.

   My family is Roman Catholic: at best, everyone except myself goes to an ocassional celebration of the Eucharist.  I don't, though: while I managed to enter Church without melting (both figuratively and literally), I never attended a full Mass in almost seven years.  My folks have all but given up on my salvation: they all say that my paranoia and hallucinations are signs from the heavens, and my schizophrenia is my punishment for not revering God enough, if at all.

   While I've rejected atheism altogether, people still pretty much think that I'm an atheist.  I kind of think that it still oozes out of me like slime, since I'm usually approached by many kinds of Christians.  Friends, in particular, have tried to bring me back to God through leaflets, magazines and prayer meetings: during one of my lucid intervals, I've even been prayed over.

   It's not that I'm a godless being: if you asked me, the omniscience of God must mean that God is practically everywhere.  I think that we're looking for God in all the wrong places: in places of worship, in shrines, in the miracles that become the stuff of primetime news, and in these best-selling books by American evangelicals.  I think that the question of faith is not the search for God, but the reason why we search for God.

   Now I'm not claiming to be a Christian - I am Christian by way of organizational affiliation, but not in practice - but when you really come to think about it, there's a reason to believe that God exists in each and every person.  God works in mysterious ways, and God is manifest in everything we do and everyone we meet.  To do good to your fellow person is to do good to God, because God is good, and isn't Christianity all about loving your neighbor?

   The way I see it, if you have to read a book to get closer to God, you're really on the beaten path taken by lost sheep.  No matter what God you believe in or whatever form your God takes, you will be sought and you will be found.  You will never be lost in God, for all paths lead to the discovery of God.

   As far as I go, I'd rather settle for a God that I've never experienced: the way I see it, every experience I have in life will always be one where there is always room for God.

< oh boy >

   A few months ago, I promised myself that I'm not going to be emotional with whatever I write here.  People read me after their own emotionally taxing episodes: students and call center agents who have really bad days come here just so that they can take their minds off the things that trouble them.  Every time I write here, I wear my mask: I try my very best to be the online version of Advil, or Bozo.  Whenever the urge to write about my bad day, my frustrations and my bitter thoughts surfaces, I change the subject.  I send in the clowns.

   But as much as I like to clown around, there are just those times where I wonder if I have a right to be a clown, if I am all about distraction, or if I can talk about my frustrations.  By all means I should, but all too often, I find somebody else with a greater frustration than I have, that my own bitterness pales in comparison with others.  It's there that I play the part of the clown: I juggle thoughts, pull an endless handkerchief of so many ideas, pull rabbits out of hats, and ocassion, abuse myself just so that other people can distract themselves from their own bitter thoughts for even just a short while.

   Too often, I find myself consoling the grief and agony of other people, drawing from the well of strength deep within me.  Many people have cried on my shoulder over the years: but when the time comes for me to cry, I cry over my own shoulder, hiding my bitterness and frustrations from the face of the people who expect me to get things over quickly.  Then as quickly as I started to cry, I get up, wipe the tears from my eyes and don my mask again.

   People fault me for it, and even I fault myself for it.  When the time comes for me to be bitter and frustrated, I am always exhorted and pressured to move on because they haven't seen beyond my mask.  It seems to them that I'm strong when in fact I'm weak.  I always become the victim of the prejudices of others not because they're bigoted, but because I wear the mask of the clown and the garb of the clown, I ride the unicycle of the clown and play the part of the clown every day of my life.  There are other people out there who either are the stars of the show or claim to be the stars of the show.  I'm just the clown.

   I've always been misunderstood: not just from romance, but also on a day-to-day basis where I have to interact with a lot of people who are pissed off in their own right.  I once bought into the claim that I didn't want to be understood, or the claim that I just have a rather strange "wavelength."  But now, I believe that I'm misunderstood because I'm the clown.  You don't understand the clown: you laugh at it, you demean it like every sideshow freak, and no matter what you do at the end of the day, the clown will always have a smile on its face.

   But as embittered and frustrated as I am in reality, I waive my right to bitterness and frustration every time I'm in the circus tent that is life.  The show must go on: life cannot wait for me to get over with my personal troubles, the demons that haunt me, and the crosses I bear.  I'm the clown, not the star of the show.  I put smiles on faces, not frowns.  In the end, I wear my mask because I am that mask.  The world is far too beautiful and far too funny for me to remain forever in bitterness, frustration and self-doubt.

   When they boo the star, they send in the clowns.

   I leave you with Judy Collins' "Send in the Clowns:"

*      *      *

Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air...
Where are the clowns?

Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can't move...
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns...

Just when I'd stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours.
Making my entrance again with my usual flair
Sure of my lines...
No one is there.

Don't you love farce?
My fault, I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want...
Sorry, my dear...
And where are the clowns
Send in the clowns
Don't bother, they're here.

Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer?
Losing my timing this late in my career.
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns...
Well, maybe next year.

< well then >

   A few hours ago, I was at the Library working on my thesis when I came across a copy of the Outcrop, our official student publication.  To say that the relationship between me and Outcrop is "rocky" is a gross underestimation: it has become a matter of making enemies out of institutions, between the figurative "institution" that I am and the actual institution that is Outcrop.  I was scanning the paper - I don't read it anymore - when I came across the blind item section.  To cut a long story short, I'm now an item: a blind item, that is.

   I don't know much about libel laws: in order to establish a degree of reasonable doubt in malice, the benefit of the doubt (like all cases) always rests with the accused.  It's all a matter of justice being retroactive and reciprocal.  Because I'm not a journalism student, I don't know if it is journalistically ethical to write a blind item.  After all, I'm a bad journalist.

   But if I got a 1.25 back in Ethics class, I should be very well aware of ethics that involve human beings in general.  We are not dealing with amoeba with ethical predispositions towards being the subject of blind items, we are dealing with human beings.  Human beings who have a conception of self, human beings who are Other to the rest of humanity.

   As much as I would like to write about this in terms of ethics per se, I'd rather use practical examples.  Even the worst showbiz tabloids frown upon blind items: Lolit Solis and Cristy Fermin even go so far as to stake their reputations every time they publish indiscretions and intrigue on celebrities, whom they even name.  It's not that I believe everything Manay Lolit and Nanay Cristy say in their gossip columns, but it takes a lot of intestinal fortitude to name the subject of your intrigue and write it under your name.

   Here's the thing: we are all free to impinge upon and violate the egos of people.  It's not because we affirm the idea of radical existential freedom, but because to be honest, it's fun to pick on people.  It's one of those fallibilities that makes human beings human.  But the fun stops when it impinges upon and violates the responsible exercise of our actions.  When you don't have a responsibility to be responsible, you're free to throw pie on people's faces.  But when you have a responsibility to be responsible - whether you're a politician, a journalist, a celebrity, or if you feel that you're accountable to the public - your freedom to pick on people becomes a qualified action: that you should pick on people responsibly.  The fact that you are (or you placed yourself) on a higher plane than the rest of society means that your responsibilities - and the expectations of people towards your responsibilities - are magnified.

   Of course, I'm willing to stand corrected.  Blind items should only be read - and written - by the blind.

< some politics >

   Personally, I'm not very well-versed with Philippine politics.  Like I said before, I'm more of a Lolit Solis of politics than an actual political scientist.  The brouhaha surrounding political issues is something I could talk about in terms of high-minded high-brow political-scientific "discourses," but I prefer to look at things in terms of the sensibilities of the common.

   Hmmm... I think we should legalize the Communist Party of the Philippines.

   I'm not saying let's let bygones be bygones when it comes to the CPP.  I'm just saying that maybe the time has come to allow Communists to participate in national politics.  In Japan, for example, the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) is a formidable force in the opposition.  We can do the same here in the Philippines, so as not to corroborate McCarthyist suspicions that leftist party-list representatives like Satur Ocampo, Teddy Casiño and Crispin Beltran are really Communists.  But outside of that, I think that the nation can benefit a lot in having Communist representation in the political system.

   I don't buy into the paranoid theory that legalizing the CPP would lead into the Communists taking over the Philippines: on the contrary, it serves as a venue for legitimating whatever claims of support the Communists have over the proletariat.  I think we could benefit from having a strong oppositionist bloc led and made up by Communist politicians.  If it's all a matter of "changing the system," the Communists could start by working within the system: it's just like Karl Marx's First International.

   Furthermore, I don't buy into the claims of some Communists that the "higher calling" or the "maximum call" is to consolidate the countryside and encircle the urban areas in order to launch an offensive.  As much as a war is very appealing to me personally, keeping a war protracted will only serve not only to erode trust in the CPP, but also in the ideology it espouses.  The point behind a "protracted war" is to bleed people dry (figuratively), but it obviously isn't working.  I could rant about geopolitics right here, but in a nutshell, Maoist war doesn't work if the nation in question is archipelagic in character.

   The point I'm trying to make is that we are confronted with an ever-expanding envelope of ideologies and political ideals which we can put forth to the table in the forum of public debate.  The world has changed.

< hmmm... >

   I'm no environmentalist, much less an environmental advocate, but I think we should at least be concerned with climate change.  Lately, newspapers are full of photos and news on the Angat Dam falling to critical levels, that islets can now be seen poking out of the water's surface.  There are pictures of rice paddies in La Union literally cracking up from lack of water.  Here in Baguio, the torrential rain is kind of unusual, in the way that the sky can't "make up its mind" on whether or not it will be sunny or rainy.  I attribute it to Mother Nature's PMS.

   I'm no expert, but I kind of see this whole water-shortage thing along the lines of Mad Max movies, except that the breakdown of civilization will be caused by drought.  We will all be fighting over scarce water resources while we're wearing spike-covered football padding.  Aquaman will be the common idea of God.  We will literally kill over water.  The Nightrider will be a water-cooled suicide machine: the rocker, the roller, the out-of-controller.  And everything will be still pretty much powered by pig dung.

   The way I see it, all the political will in the world will not save us from the far and distant future where we literally quench our thirsts with blood (after all, there's no water).  Politicians cannot save the world from the inevitable post-Apocalyptic scenario brought about by climate change and global warming.  Take it from me: I once had this great idea of combining pure hydrogen gas and pure oxygen gas in a chamber and then we would have instant water.  When I mentioned this to a friend of mine who's far more well-versed in Chemistry than I am, he said that the end result will definitely be an explosion.  It's not one of my best ideas, but I'm not a chemist.

   Anyway, I shouldn't have a problem with water as long as there's Coke.  In all honesty, though, I urge you all to conserve water.  Unless, of course, you want to be strapped to trapezes in Thunderdome.

< hmmm... >

   The younger crowd often ask me what it's like to be an overstaying student.  I kind of balk, since there's really nothing good about overstaying: I'm not the best role-model at school.  Mostly, whatever lesson there is in overstaying, those are lessons that I had to learn the hard way.  But somehow, overstaying has given me a whole new perspective: by the time I graduate, I won't use "I survived UP" as a mere slogan on a souvenir T-shirt.  I really did survive, but not without so many insights that four years of schooling will bring you.

   Sometimes I wonder why I didn't get kicked out.  After all, I'm a delinquent in every sense of the word.  For the past six years, I scanned the list of delinquent students posted either in front of the Registrar's Office or at the enrollment desk.  My name and my student number wasn't called up to report to the Registrar to get the "blue form," or to go to the Chancellor's Office to appeal for readmission.  For six years, I was always around.  It's not that I'm invulnerable or immune from rules, but I almost always seem to stick around.  I'm like woodstain on a white shirt.

   I'm no stranger: I've seen all sorts of UP students for the course of six years.  Unlike others, I don't remember the really good students.  My memory fails me on the lot of cum laude graduates because after their shot in the limelight, I never heard from them ever again.  The promise of national development is lost in the lot of UP Baguio alumni who work in obscure jobs at banks and call centers.  I really can't blame them: it is the economy, after all.

   But then there's the crowd: those statistics, those student numbers gifted with a face.  People who happen to be like me: they're just there.  Just there to fill a classroom, to give life to the IB lobby, to populate a tambayan.

   They're just there.

< hmmm... >

   I have a rather stereotypical notion of a "comedy bar:" it's a seedy sing-along place with gay stand-up comedians who make a living out of mocking people.  It seems to me that a culture of mockery is a culture of that defines the Filipino gay, that we all share in a common stereotype of what "gay" seems to be.  Not that I'm uptight or anything, but I don't see anything remotely funny about gay people and the kind of humor associated with homosexuality.

   Often, gay humor is defended because it qualifies as "satire."  I'm not an expert on comedy, and I'm not a funny person, but what makes satire different from other forms of humor is that it is grounded on wit: it is intelligent humor.  Aristophanes' "Clouds" is a satire: in the play, Socrates is portrayed as a ranting old man lying down on a hammock, tied between the ground and the moon.  Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy" is a satire: sinners like soothsayers and fortune tellers suffering in Hell have their heads turned backwards.  Stephen Colbert's "The Colbert Report" is a satirical show that pokes fun at conservative punditry in American news media.  Whenever Jon Santos, Tessie Tomas and Willie Nepomuceno do their impersonations of politicians and public figures, they do satire.  The common denominator in these few examples of satire is that they are witty and intelligent forms of comedy.

   I'm not saying that gay comedians lack wit and intelligence, but it is often the case that the material passed off as "satire" comes across more as mockery.  The same goes with showbiz columnists in tabloids, blind items on weekend afternoon showbiz shows, and the "humor" section of our school paper.  The fact that we can't laugh at every joke also means that we can't make jokes out of everything.  We can't make a clown of ourselves every time as much as we can't make clowns out of others.

   This brings me back to gay humor.  Personally, I think that as a people, we haven't fully articulated the idea of being "gay."  It's just me, but I think that as far as homosexuality being humorous, we cannot really delineate or define the scope of the humor.  Just what exactly are we laughing at when it comes to watching a gay comedian on a comedy bar, or reading something written in gay language?  Are we laughing at the material, at the comedian, at the person the comedian is poking fun at, or at the whole idea of being gay?

   I'm not gay, but I think that there is something more to being gay than gayspeak and gay humor.  All too often, our misconstructions and misinterpretations of what gay is "supposed to be" is the consequence of the actions and language of gay people themselves.  There seems to be an emphasis in things that pertain to celebrities, genitalia, celebrity genitalia and the celebrity as genitalia.  Honestly, I don't find it funny.  I don't even find jokes made at the expense of others funny, whether or not those others are gay or not.

   When they say that laughter is the best medicine, it must be the best medicine for everyone regardless of what you are, what your gender is, or what you're sick of.  Some people may laugh at sick jokes, but they are often jokes that make you sicker than you already are.  Think about that next time you listen to a gay comedian in a comedy bar.