< hmmm... >

   The UP Baguio tradition that is Freshman Night necessitates that I have to go through a tradition of my own: that is, moving chairs and equipment from UP Baguio across the road to Baguio Convention Center.  I may want to reconsider: after all, my ankle sprain hasn't fully recovered yet and perhaps they should find someone else to "Spiderman" the projection screen (for all intents and purposes, it's a white cheesecloth) onto the left stage wall of the Convention Center.  It's a pretty odd position to put a screen: it takes a brave soul to climb up a rickety 12-foot ladder perched precariously on a step of the stage's stairs and the floor, with a staple gun on one hand and a corner of the cloth in the other.

   My friend Jordan, who happens to be a Councilor in the Student Council, happened to come down with a bad case of food poisoning, though (according to my friend and his frat brother Mhik, Jordan ate a plate of pancit bought from Tea House that went bad because it wasn't refrigrated).  Somehow, I feel even more obliged to help out: few people would push an old construction dolly with a bockety right wheel into the path of speeding Victory Liner buses en route to Convention Center.  But I'm definitely not interested in being a marshall again: this being my last Freshie Night, I think I need to do more watching than fielding a horde of rowdy, drunk upperclassmen demanding entry when a performance is going on.

   I think I'm growing really old, though: somehow, Freshie Night practice has become somewhat of a lost tradition to many freshmen blocks.  Back in the day, the performance of the block is kept so secret: rooms are reserved, the windows plastered with copies of the UP Forum to prevent "espionage."  In the absence of a room, blocks would go to the house of a blockmate or to some secluded area: preferably the parking area beside Convention Center near where the Wax Museum used to be.  You can even sneak practices at the dark, dank and musty basements of Convention Center.  In the case of my block (SSD III: The SuperBlock), we practiced at my friend Paul's rowhouse at a remote subdivision in Marcos Highway.  After what passed for "practice," Paul and I would head for the store for a few big bottles of Red Horse and two small packs of peanuts.  Me, Paul, Patrick, Stan, Sierra and Echo would then proceed to down the drink, conserve the peanuts, and be driven to our respective homes aboard Paul's van.  Needless to say, we placed third to the last, but it didn't matter to us anyway.  The important thing is that our block didn't fight over Freshman Night: we only got drunk.

   Six years later, I've seen five freshie blocks try to hype themselves out... and fail miserably in the exercise of artistic expression (like we did before).  I've marshalled three Freshie Nights because everytime I watch a Freshie Night nowadays, I see nothing more than a gaudy display of light effects, smoke effects, and dance numbers involving the whole goddamned block (the dance numbers themselves are socially-relevant).  I think it started with our block: to conclude our miserable skit, our block decided that it would be good to do an interpretative dance number to the tune of Buklod's "Tatsulok."  Had I been the man I am today, I would have shot myself watching the song danced in a Frankenstein of samba, swing and tango.

   What makes it worse is that freshman blocks are practicing out in the open.  Rather than conceal their performances from the prying eyes of other blocks and the jeering and snickering of upperclassmen, they practice on open space.  No surprise, I've watched a grand total of 15 unique blocks practicing at the Galerya, the Auditorium and the new CSS complex.  I know exactly what they are going to do.

   Yet Freshie Night brought me my first girlfriend and my first date (at goddamned Dunkin' Donuts).  Freshie Night also brought me to the awareness that I can control a massive stampede of drunken upperclassmen demanding entry: after taking swigs of their bribes (brandy mixed with Coke... I didn't resist) they formed a straight queue and made a beeline for their seats.  Last year's Freshie Night was also supposed to be my chance to dance before the entire UP Baguio student population as a matter of "hazing" for me winning a seat in the Student Council, but I opted not to do so and instead went back to my marshalling duties until I was called up on stage (a few hecklers demanded that I dance, but I can't flick the bird in that situation).

   Whenever I'm appointed to be a marshall, I'm usually pointed out to be the head honcho or the big kahuna "bouncer:" owing to the fact that no infraction goes unchecked on my watch.  Usually, I'm posted on the front entrance: not only do I control the surging mass of people by demanding tickets and identification, I can also smoke freely.  If I fail as a social scientist, I can work as a security guard.

   I'm definitely looking forward to this year's Freshman Night... I mean, light show.

< announcement before entry >

   It's not that I'm moving blog hosting services, it's just that I think that I need another blog to experiment on.  Thanks to my overblown ego, I suppose that I wouldn't have problems if I maintained two blogs, not just TMX.

   Of course, since this is an "experiment," the idea is to write the entries in longhand first, then post them on the site.  Here in TMX, the "hypothesis" is to write everything under one hour without notes, without limits in topics.  In the new writing experiment, the "experiment" is to write everything in longhand, centered around the theme of my hallucinations.  The idea is therapy: I think that if I'm going to live with hallucinations, I might as well write about them.

   Visit my new writing project on Project Hallucinosis:

   projecthallucinosis.blogspot.com

   Why Blogspot?  Something for a change: after all, I have a Google account.  Don't forget to pass by the Project.

< for now >

   In the tradition of the old days of TMX where I spoofed lyrics, here's one.

*      *      *

Asawa
From "Manila" by Hotdog

Maraming beses ko na siyang linayasan
Iniwanan at iba ang inuwian
Ang babaeng mahirap talagang kalimutan
Ikaw lamang ang aking laging binabalikan...

Asawa, I keep coming back to Asawa
Simply no one like Asawa
Asawa I'm comin' home

I've been to every bar and disco
I got drunk in Naguilian
Sang karaoke in Legarda
Somehow I feel like I must go home

Hinahanap ako ng aking Asawa
Ang ingay niyang kay sakit sa tenga
Mga plato na nagliliparan
Mga pintuan na nagbabagsakan
Take me back in your arms Asawa
And promise me you'll never let go
Promise me you'll never let go

Hinahanap mo daw ako, Asawa
At may babae daw akong kasama
Bakit ka kasi nakipagtsismisan
Puro naman kasinungalingan
Take me back in our house Asawa
And promise me you'll never let go
Promise me you'll never let go

Asawa, Asawa
Miss you like hell, Asawa
Simply no girl like Asawa
I'm coming home to stay...

< good lord >

   So there I was: this morning, at exactly 2:15 AM, and I was poring over my fancy-looking thesis draft (the things you can do with Office 2007), my impressive-looking Excel 2007 spreadsheets detailing those Friendster users who lied about their ages and have rather complicated genders (what's so "it's complicated" about your genitals, I do not know), and Johnny Cash playing on the background.  By the time old Johnny fell through the ring of fire, the power went out.

   Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it seems that my older brother forgot to connect the CPU's power wire into the uninterruptible power supply (UPS), connecting it directly into the surge strip.  While there was no damage done, the real damage was found in me forgetting to save my draft.  By some fluke, Word didn't recover the file.  What used to be a 72-page draft (single-spaced) was reverted back to the original 52-page draft I saved a week ago.  At least the eye-candy (that I made myself: I didn't use AutoContent) was preserved.  But who cares about eye-candy when you have to do things all over again?

   Usually I'm not overcome by sudden outbursts of frustration: it takes a lot for things and people to get to my nerves.  I'm not exactly a Zen master: I'm a bomb with a very long fuse.

   Anyway, I got the job done: rebooting from Windows Vista to Windows XP every now and then to play those games that seem to only work with WinXP... which means every game I have.  Living under the deluded idea that I could probably work with *.docx file extensions in good old WordPad, I tried - and failed - to do so.  Working with two different operating systems may sound bad, but at least I can exercise some measure of discipline in working with my thesis and my thesis alone whenever I'm in Vista, unless the urge to play the Comfy Cakes game in Purble Place: the annoying entertainment pack for Vista.

   Now pardon me while I go back home with this ream of bond paper.  I have a lot of printing to do: about 80 pages.

< as promised, r-18 sexperiment >

   I've been called a subjective closed-minded homophobic bigoted slimeball before, and most of the time it's because I exude (OK, ooze) a particular dislike and apparent intolerance towards gay people.  The thing is, I'm not: maybe I may not like the thought of romantic and/or sexual relationships between homosexual males, but I try to get over it.  I deal with so much gayness in my life that I have to accept it.  I don't have to like or love the idea of homosexual gay sex.  The fact that it's there makes it a fact of life, and as a "writer" or what passes for being one, I write about the facts of life.

   Some of my friends say that in order for me to "get rid of homophobia," I have to experience being gay.  It's not a matter of me standing up to proclaim that I'm gay even if I'm not, but maybe I need a rude awakening to get in touch with my "gay side."  Maybe I need to have a gay sexual experience: like herding sheep across a mountain range with a fellow cowboy, sleep outside the tent, shiver, be invited to sleep inside the tent... we all watched "Brokeback Mountain."

   Believe me, I tried to look at fellow men in the gay light, but I can't bring myself to further the idea beyond HHWW.  People who don't know me think that I'm gay, but people who know me cannot imagine a world where I'm gay.  I can't be gay: if I was, it will definitely upset the balance of nature and tear at the fabric of the universe.  I pose this question to my friends: what would happen if I suddenly became gay?

   Anyway, I can't help it if I associate male homosexuality with homosexual sex.  It's a thought I have to entertain every time I see gay couples and if someone tells me that this particular person we both know is actually gay.  It's an idea that becomes lost on me as I lose myself in that kakalurkey (crazy) thought of a bedroom scene where they start to do fellatio, mutual fellatio, mutual masturbation and anal sex.

   OK, it's not wrong: I don't subscribe to an institutionalized moral code.  It's just that unlike lesbian sex, I don't find anything particularly beautiful or arousing about it.  It's a matter of personal preference, although I think that some people would agree with me that when you have two or more sweaty men fondling and kissing each other (be it real or imagined visually) is not particularly aesthetically pleasing.  I also think along the lines of the morphological: that is, the morphemes that consist the grunts and groans of men reaching orgasm does not exactly resonate with the onomatopoeic purrs and whimpers of women reaching orgasm.

   Besides, what's there in a gay orgy?  You may be lost in your train of thought figuring that one out, but I'll spare you the imagining: it's a literal train.  Gay orgies strike me as the literal equivalent to the metaphor of the "human locomotive."  It can either be a rickety Philippine National Railways train that lacks coordination and would derail at any given moment when overloaded with passengers, or would be metaphorically associated with railway marvels like the French TGV or the Japanese bullet train.

   Anyway you look at it, there will be steam and electricity.  In the words of Neil Sedaka, it will be a choo-choo train a-chuggin' down the track, that's gotta travel on and never comin' back: it's a one way ticket to whatever will turn blue.

   Don't get any ideas.

< r-18 sexperiment >

   Take it from me: the difference between theory and practice is that theory is a lot better than practice.  For purposes of simplicity, theory is what you think about and practice is the thing you do after you think about the thing that you will do.  You don't have to talk about the Soviet experiment with democratization in perestroika and glasnost, and you don't have to talk about habitus-field relationships in Pierre Bourdieu's synthesis.  All you have to do to understand this relationship and comparison between theory and practice in terms of lesbians.

   Now I'm not seeking to offend feminists here (which of course depends on how you define "offend" and what kind of feminist you are), but the way I see it, no red-blooded straight male will reject the idea of looking at a hot lesbian ménage á trois.  On a random poll-like exercise I conducted, a great majority of men get some of their sexual kicks out of hot lesbian action.  The idea itself is the subject of masturbatory fantasy: a scene where there's no penis or hairy male ass to obscure the view of sexy and imaginative females getting it on and getting off.  It seems that there is validity in the radical feminist argument that the human biological line has no real need for phallic penetration or for males in general: women can get all the sexual satisfaction they get from cunnilingus, Sapphic lovemaking, mutual masturbation, and slithering all over each other's perfectly-formed bodies.

   This is, of course, the theoretical idea of lesbians.  When confronted with the reality that lesbians aren't all luscious, voluptuous and curvaceous, the theory is disputed and invalidated by the very practice.  Somehow, the theoretical lesbian is a supermodel, a porn star, a Playboy playmate or whatever you call a Hustler model.  The practical (that is, in terms of actual practice) lesbian is not.  Pardon me for being stereotypical, but when you realize that the neighborhood maton is an honest-to-goodness lesbian, you start to rethink the theoretical lesbian to accommodate this not-so-good-looking person.  In the words of Saliva, what used to be a feast for your eyes to see becomes an explosion of a catastrophe.

   Of course, this is grounded on what you would call a "stereotypical" or "subjective" notion or sense of beauty.  I don't want to burst people's bubbles (or erections for that matter), but a lot of this rather sweeping generalization comes from general impressions of that modern commodity called Internet porn.  Watching an obscenely-proportioned and strangely-angled penis or a fat hairy ass that only a man would have (I don't care if you're Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jiminy Glick) in a porn video is nothing compared to sultry and sexy woman-on-woman action where there's no single implication or reference to semen is great.  Personally, I gain more sexual excitement (strange that I get sexually excited) in the purring and moaning of women that the abrupt grunting and groaning of men whenever they reach orgasm.  There is more sensuality in the gentle caresses of lesbian sex than in the mechanical regularities of a man having sex with a woman.

   However, I must point out that this theory only applies to woman-to-woman sex (why stop at two if you could have three, four, a dozen,or even a massive throng of lesbians... hey, stop drooling).  When you apply this to gay sex, it just doesn't seem to work as well.  Heck, it doesn't even work.  Rather than arousal, you get nausea: I mean, we all watched "Brokeback Mountain."  I'm not being stereotypical here: I'm keeping things honest.  It just looks weird.  I'll take HLA any day, and if I could, I'll take it every day.

   Anyway, I'm getting way too ahead of myself.  Come a-knocking at my door with your pitchforks, burning torches and your noose.  Plus points if you're all beautiful sexy lesbians in cheerleader outfits.

   Postscript: I'll write about theoretical gays tomorrow.  You'll definitely not like that one.  But if you like this one, I'll have you know that I haven't had sex before and I'm not a sex maniac.

< lessons in life from a genocidal maniac >

   I'm not one for clichéd statements about life.  Especially that one about life being a box of chocolates that you'll never know what you're going to get.

   A lot of people already know that I don't like chocolates.  Whenever I'm given a chocolate bar or a box of chocolates, I give it away.  I've been known to strip Mars and Snickers bars clean of chocolate and nougat because I'm only interested in the almonds.  Whenever my parents bring home chocolates, I only eat a square and stash the rest in the refrigerator.  From there, my chocolates become communal property.

   Anyway, back to life being a box of chocolates.  For a chocolate non-lover, I've opened my own fair share of boxes of chocolate and I know exactly what I'm going to get: chocolate.  I've never opened a box of chocolates that contained spaghetti.  I only need to read the label to know the contents of that box of chocolates.  When you open a box of chocolates, expect chocolate.

   So the next time you think life's a box of chocolates, you may want to rethink the whole way you view life.  If you need a saying to govern your life, get a life.  If you can't, the best saying about life is found engraved in tombstones.

< 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."