The Wily Filipino

Six Questions.

Thanks to Mark from Clickmomukhamo!, who sent me a link to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine -- and lo and behold, almost all of my quiz archives were indeed still alive, and now they're safely downloaded onto my hard disk. (Reading through them, I've realized that they all pretty much end at 1990, which was when I left the Philippines.)

Here were a few questions; there's one completely obscure one that I simply have to include because the answer is just too funny. (Sorry -- you non-Pinoys (and young Pinoys) would probably have to sit most of these out.)

1. The old and the new: Beverly Hills and the oldest street in the Philippines is located in this city. What is the city's name?

2. [Here's the obscure one.] In an elaborate parody of Superman, Mighty Mouse and The Empire Strikes Back, Joey de Leon plays a boy named Mickey with super powers who discovers that his arch-enemy, played by Ruel Vernal in a Darth Vader suit, is actually his father. What is the full title of this film, whose name was bleeped out by censors in television ads?

3. [Another obscure one.] The seminal Pinoy punk/hardcore/thrash band G.I. and the Idiots gave us such memorable lyrics as "The Philippine flag is a dirty old rag" and a stanza of almost Wordsworth-like lyricism, "We can't get along with our music! / We can't get along with our songs! / We can't get along with our assholes! / So we put our assholes in our songs!" What did "G.I." stand for?

4. In September 1975, he told Sports Illustrated magazine, "I was the national champion in shooting. I won the championship when I was 16 and kept it for many years. My shooting got me in trouble. I was once charged with murder, but was acquitted." Who is the person speaking?

5. "She raised her skirts and contemptuously thrust out a naked foot. He lifted his dripping face and touched his bruised lips to her toes; lifted his hands and grasped the white foot and kissed it savagely -- kissed the step, the sole, the frail ankle -- while she bit her lips and clutched in pain at the windowsill, her body distended and wracked by horrible shivers, her head flung back and her loose hair streaming out the window -- streaming fluid and black in the white night where the huge moon glowed like a sun and the dry air flamed into lightning and the pure heat burned with the immense intense fever of noon." It's the last paragraph of a classic short story by which author?

Answers a couple of days from now, plus more questions to mull over.

Meanwhile -- once again, politics intrudes into fun time -- I'm mulling over how to respond to the front-page story in this week's Philippine News that, in an informal poll with a small sample, 70 percent of Filipino Americans said they'd vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger:

Manny Cabildo of San Diego County... said he liked Schwarzenegger "because he had a business background."

The actor looks at things in a simplified way, he added. It's either black or white, "no gray."

Maybe Arnie can hire this guy for his campaign; "all black or white, no gray" sounds pretty catchy to me. After all, simple-minded people deserve simple-minded politicians, and vice-versa.

So, question no. 6:

6. Who are these 70 percent, and why are they being total idiots?

Posted by the wily filipino at August 13, 2003 12:56 PM