The Wily Filipino

Halloween.

And how about them White Stripes? Aren't you tired of the White Stripes? Don't you wish they'd just... disappear? I mean, what self-respecting rock 'n roll band doesn't even a bass player?

Madeline and I obviously look nothing like Jack and Meg White (we're not even real fans of their music), but the costumes were easy. Alas, I had no time to make a big red guitar out of cardboard, my hair's all wrong, and when my crimson pants arrived, they looked like something an old golfer would wear. (This pair, of course, is what I should be wearing.)

Izzy isn't going as a junior White Stripe, but as a baby snow leopard. Then we're taking her "trick-or-treating" (in quotation marks, since she won't get to eat any candy) for the first time, probably up to Seacliff and Robin Williams's house.

The Worst of 1983.

I've already written about 1983 -- Spandau Ballet's "True" -- was my pick of the year. But because my friend Jane (when are you ever going to update your site?) is throwing a 1983 party, I felt inspired to write more about the year. (Guests are supposed to come dressed as they were in 1983, so Jane is apparently wearing a mohawk, in tribute to Nina Hagen. I'm still trawling eBay for a long-backed Lacoste polo shirt in white or red, like the kind Ted Shackelford used to wear on Knots Landing -- add on a pair of tight blue jeans, white socks, and Sperry Topsiders and I'm set.)

1983 actually wasn't a bad year, as it was the true beginning of my musical education: it was the first time I could afford to buy a long-playing album, because my allowance was upped (yes, I started late): The Police's Synchronicity. I still think it's unbelievably good, though it spelled the death of the Police as a tight power trio and the beginning of Sting and His Inflatable Head. 1983 had some great pop nuggets like Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," the Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang," Men At Work's "Overkill," Dexy's Midnight Runners' "Come On Eileen," The Human League's "(Keep Feeling) Fascination," The Clash's Combat Rock (okay, so "Rock The Casbah" isn't exactly PC nowadays), Musical Youth's odd reworking of the Mighty Diamonds' "Pass The Kutchie," Joe Jackson's "Breaking Us in Two," and (you-all can criticize me for this one) Stephen Bishop's "It Might Be You."

But looking back in my old age, the best part of 1983 was really the worst parts. Some of the worst/best parts were truly grim:

- Bonnie Tyler, "Total Eclipse of the Heart"
   Little comes close to the sheer excess of "Total Eclipse" -- the lyrics, the hoarse histrionics. And that video: billowing curtains, flowing nightgowns, kids right out of Village of the Damned. "Turn around bright eyes" -- what the fuck was the point of having children with glowing eyes??? Guns 'n Roses would later come up with "December Rain," but few songs can touch our Bonnie. It's time for a chest-pounding Celine Dion remake.

- Styx, "Mr Roboto"
   For the longest time, I thought this was called "Secret Secret." Taken from the concept album -- a phrase I don't miss -- Kilroy Was Here ("Kilroy! Kilroy!"), "Mr. Roboto" spelled out themes of technological alienation and xenophobia... why am I bothering to dignify this with a reading?

- Toni Basil, "Mickey"
   I really never want to hear this ever again.

- Laura Branigan, "Gloria"
   Fuck, this was bad. And the fact that she also came out with "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You" in the same year and have it covered by Michael Bolton compounds her offense. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

- Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, "The Girl Is Mine"
   The idea of Paul and Michael duking it out over a "doggone girl" -- oh, wait, there's no "duking it out," since Michael did say "Paul, I think I told you, I'm a lover not a fighter."

- Air Supply, "Making Love out of Nothing at All"
   One line, taken at random: "The beating of my heart is a drum and it's lost and it's looking for a rhythm like you."

- Toto, "Africa"
   Sorry, Barbara, but it sucked. At least they had the good taste not to have any musicians from Soweto guest on the track.

- Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack, "Tonight I Celebrate My Love For You"
   Ick. They're about to have sex.

My vote for Supreme Craptastic Godhead Song of 1983 goes to "Making Love out of Nothing at All" for its completely overblown lyrics ("You can take the darkness from the pit of the night / And turn into a beacon burning endlessly bright"), the ever-increasing octaves, an actual guitar solo, the background choir singing "Making love!" in falsetto, and... I'm getting exhausted just thinking about it. The dubious charms of this song lies in the fact that, on its surface, the song was your prototypical Big Power Ballad, except that it was performed by the Siegfried and Roy tag team of '80s Music. "And every star in the sky is taking aim at your eyes / Like a spotlight." Who makes these things up?

No Comment.

Or rather, I wanted you folks to read a comment: here's my original post, then read the comment.

I'm speechless, so... no comment.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil's "Miracle Fruit."

Here's Eudora Welty, writing about the photographs in The Democratic Forest, by my favorite photographer, William Eggleston:

They focus on the mundane world. But no subject is fuller of implications than the mundane world! When you see what the mundane world so openly and multitudinously affirms, there is everything left to say.

After reading Aimee Nezhukumatathil's new poetry collection, one is more convinced than ever that poets -- or, at least, this particular poet -- unlike ordinary human beings, have different eyes through which to see: the reds of a jungle, a sari swinging over the shoulder, cherry farmers, potatoes pulled up from the earth. Each poem in her quietly stunning Miracle Fruit is a finely calibrated balancing act of breathlessness and restraint, sprinkled with words that must be savored in the mouth: "fire sponges, jingle shells, a remnant of whelk," she writes.

Here's an almost random excerpt, the last stanza of "In Praise of Colophons:"

My favorite colophon reports that another monk
designed Carlyle over two centuries ago. Its letters
sit round and open as fishbowls on a windowsill.
The balance so delicate, one strong wind
could spill the glass and its slippery contents
across the stone floor. O, but the light in each
watery leaf, the small transparencies in those fins --
the arc of orange fish that leap and leap and leap.

Her poems are afflicted with the ecstasy of small things, with an exuberant, barely containable delight in the ordinary. Look, she says to the reader, these are the miracles I see. And you must see them too.

The New Amazon Search Engine.

I don't know what Amazon.com was thinking, but their new search engine -- one that seemingly makes you look inside books by default -- renders the browsing experience needlessly, stupidly difficult. It's confusing, it's annoying -- but a little amusing as well.

For instance, there are apparently 16 references to the word "asshole" in this book (all typos and whatnot are Amazon's fault). Can you guess what the book is? =)

(I'm almost tempted to make this a contest, since I have a whole stack of duplicate CDRs that are going into the trash, but...)

1. on Page 27: ". . . before it drains, enough drains, but maybe that'll be good, natural, a slow draining, like a leeching-not like a leeching, asshole you sick fucking asshole-not a goddamn motherfucking leeching- Would we tell people how it happened? No, no. This would be . . ."

2. on Page 139:
". . . tree. He'll hit me like he hit me then-one good shot, in the sternum, sending a quick, simple message-You're an asshole-that I felt for months, every time I breathed. I find my car and drive across town, all the passing headlights . . ."

3. on Page 157:
". . . down from the wall; I can't sit, I'm wired. I pace in front of her. I got their plates! Stupid assholes. The police car pulls up two minutes after. It looks huge. The engine roars. It's immaculate, shiny like an enormous . . ."

4. on Page 263:
". . . says, chuckling, amused by me. "Don't sweat it. Don't worry," he says, with what seems to be exaggerated drunkenness. Asshole. "It's cool. It's mellow." He's really talking like this. I want to kick him in the head. "Then where are . . ."

5. on Page 264:
". . . 264 A H W()SG "Why are you talking like an asshole?" He does a gesture indicating drinking, the throwing back of a shot, the kind of gesture you make when you . . ."

6. on Page 266:
". . . part about how we don't know what he took or when, I point to John with my thumb and then: Asshole does the cute shrug for the cops! But his eyes are starting to look nervous. Maybe he did take something. . . ."

7. on Page 272:
". . . hands in fists, the hands tied down, as the color continues to drain I watch the stupid fucking dickhead asshole sleep. Then he gets up. He is awake and he is standing, and pulling the tubes from his mouth, from . . ."

8. on Page 290:
". . . side. How could we wait for so long and be so devoted and ready, only to have this roundbacked asshole devour our chance for an audience with Bill? This will not stand. I will toss him aside if need be. . . ."

9. on Page 317:
". . . anger." "Of course it is. These people have already attained, at wha ever age, a degree of celebrity that you assholes will never reach, and you feel, deep down, that because there is no life before or after this, that fame . . ."

10. on Page 339:
". . . her to marry you, and together you will fight through AIDS, because-no, she won't want anything to do with you, asshole- . . ."

11. on Page 398:
". . . about eight particles-I'm stepping on them! Of course I am! Of course I'm stepping on them, how fitting! How expected, asshole! I lean over to pick up the particles but I already have a handful in the other hand and as . . ."

12. on Page 401:
". . . of the cremains. I should keep some. I could keep just a few bits, as souvenirs. Souvenirs! What kind of asshole- What a fucking sick dickhead, souvenirs, thinking of souvenirs. I shake out the bag. I do not like to have . . ."

13. on Page 406:
". . . yes, she grabbed at the air, grabbed for us and for you, and where are you? Where are you motherfucking assholes? . . ."

14. on Page 413:
". . . when I drive no-handed, using only my knees, for a little while, lookee here, ha ha, look at this! "Don't, asshole." "What?" "Use your hands." "You can't call me that." "Fine. A-hole." And as distressing as this, his first curse, is the . . ."

15. on Page 422:
". . . minute or so of silence. I turn up the radio. "Then let me out." "I want to let you out, asshole." "Then let me out." "I mean, are you trying to break some record? Like, right now, you're sitting here, seemingly . . ."

16. on Page 445:
". . . the humid wooden walls. It was at first warm and for a while the sweating felt good, but then some asshole kept putting water on those rocks, or whatever they do to make it hotter, and then I couldn't breathe, and . . ."

Earworms 2003, #1.

I'm interrupting my irregularly-scheduled posts on some of my favorite music of the last 30-odd years to bring you tunes that have been spinning around in my head. (Okay, I couldn't find my Stereolab CD that was supposed to accompany my Stereolab post.)

[My Morning Jacket's "Mahgeetah"]

My Morning Jacket's It Still Moves will no doubt be on critics' top 10 lists this year. I can't say I completely agree; the rest of the album hasn't made that much of a dent. There's little here that, say, the Allman Brothers or maybe Uncle Tupelo hasn't done before; comparisons to Neil Young, the Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Will Oldham and even the Harry Smith anthology (?) have been made, but it still sounds mostly like indie-fied guitar boogie to me.

Not that there's anything wrong with indie-fied guitar boogie, though. The album's opening song, "Mahgeetah," combines two seeming opposites; it's a rockin' slab of pure pop joy, heavy beats and lilting vocals, guitar crunch and beach twang all at the same time. It's a stunner of a track, one that lifts you off your feet.

(And while everyone above is quintessentially American -- okay, not Neil, but he's arguably one of the greatest interpreters of the American Experience, period -- the image the song calls up for me is oddly, incongruously Filipino. In my head I see a small rural town in the provinces, and an open-air basketball court with strands of Christmas lights everywhere. Shy young men in short sleeved shirts. Young women in summer dresses. Stars and crickets and the full moon above. A wind to keep the mosquitoes away.)

The Real Model.

There's nothing very new in Bush's speech to the Philippine Congress -- the usual civilization versus chaos rhetoric, the long partnership between our two countries, and so on. It's already become wearying to have to point out inaccuracies and other irksome bits left out for the purposes of creating a smooth historical narrative. But I'll point out a simple one, at least:

America is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino people. Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines from colonial rule. Together we rescued the islands from invasion and occupation. The names of Bataan, Corregidor, Leyte, Luzon evoke the memories of shared struggle and shared loss and shared victory.

I assume that by "colonial rule" Bush was referring to Spain, and by "invasion and occupation" he meant Japan -- in which case he completely elides 50 years or so of... colonial rule, no? Some liberation.

But the best part, really, is the implication that the Philippines could somehow be the model for Iraq -- forget all this MacArthur in postwar Japan business, here's the genuine model:

Democracy always has skeptics. Some say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the institutions of democracy. The same doubts were once expressed about the culture of Asia. These doubts were proven wrong nearly six decades ago, when the Republic of the Philippines became the first democratic nation in Asia.

Bush achieves two remarkable things in the passage above: 1. he glosses over the fact that the U.S. was in the Philippines for 46 years or so (and those reservists in Iraq complain about their extended tours!), and 2. he more or less admits what many people already know -- that the invasion of Iraq was about pure, naked, imperial ambition.

Sometimes President Smirk gets it right.

Singles Reviewed.

Holy God. And I thought I was being obsessive about my music.

On Land of a Thousand Dances, every U.S. #1 hit since 1950 is being reviewed. (And dig the Harry Smith-inspired design!) And on Popular, the U.K.'s #1 hits since 1952 get their turn.

(Coming soon, but not too soon -- I am simply swamped with work, and I have no idea what other people on my blogroll are doing on their blogs anymore: a long-promised review of Aimee Nezhukumatathil's book Miracle Fruit (Aimee knows it's already partially written), a review of the somewhat disappointing Guided By Voices show at Slim's last Saturday, reactions to President Smirk's speech to the Philippine Congress, an entry on Dennis Lehane's Mystic River, Filipino Americans and chopping down cherry trees, and my love-hate relationship with Stereolab.)

On Why This War Will Be A Long, Long One.

Via Buzzflash, here's some excerpts from former Army Special Forces commander and current deputy undersecretary of defense Lt. Gen. William Boykin, at the First Baptist Church in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma earlier this year:

[SLIDE SHOW, PICTURE OF OSAMA BIN LADEN] "...we said, 'There's the enemy. That's our enemy. That's the man that hates us. And all of those that follow him." [PICTURE OF PRESIDENT BUSH] "And then this man stepped forward. A man that has acknowledged that he prays in the Oval Office. A man that’s in the White House today because of a miracle. You think about how he got in the White House. You think about why he’s there today. As Mordecai said to Esther, 'You have been put there for such a time and place.' And this man has been put in the White house to lead our nation in such a time as this.

"But who is that enemy? It’s not Osama bin Laden. Our enemy is a spiritual enemy because we are a nation of believers. You go back and look at our history, and you will find that we were founded on faith..."

[PICTURE OF SATAN] "And the enemy that has come against our nation is a spiritual enemy. His name is Satan..."

I like this other quote:

The enemy is none of these people I have showed you here. The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.

Lordy. Now you know why they're called wingnuts.

1975: Bruce Springsteen, "Thunder Road."

Much ink has already been spilled about the grandeur of Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" -- salvation, transcendence, the open road (or as Prefab Sprout once put it, "cars and girls") -- so I won't bother justifying why it's on my list. Suffice it to say that I've listened to it more times than I can count. And I'm not embarrassed to admit that it makes me a little misty-eyed every single time.

The version I'm including here [update: it's offline] isn't the one on Born to Run, which I've always found slightly disappointing. (He sings "Well I've got this guitar and I've learned how to make it talk" and plays a weak little riff.) This hushed, piano-and-harmonica version (from 1978, I believe) starts off the Live 1975-85 box set, and it is beautiful beyond belief. There's magic in the night indeed.

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

Ah, the cluelessness of the rich and corrupt.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's "What's President Smirk having for dinner?"

Representative Imee Marcos -- yeah, makes your eyeballs roll, doesn't it -- has the menu for the 2,000 peso-per-head banquet:

She said the native dishes would include "adobo" in olive oil, milkfish belly with mango sauce dipping, Filipino-style beefsteak, fried rice with smoked fish, and crisp-fried pork skin.

Native delicacies will also be served, such as roasted pig, "puto-bumbong," "lumpia," ice cream, pork and chicken barbecue, chocolates, "halo-halo," and "pan de sal" with an assortment of spreads.

Someone else can have fun with this: Texas chicken? Kalderetang tuta nang kano? (We already have a reading list; what else should he eat?)

Representative Crispin Beltran is asking for a full accounting of Malacanang's expenses:

"Bush is going to stay for a mere eight hours in the country, but already, the administration has used up millions to make his short visit as comfortable and welcome as possible, even if they're all at the expense of the people's economic and political interest," he said.

Economically, of course, this is a big thank-you note for the military package and state dinner GMA received earlier this year. And President Smirk gets a loving ally in his "war on terrorism" -- and a guarantee of more years of support now that GMA is running again -- and the head of Father Rohman al-Ghozi to boot! And a performance by Lea Salonga! Nothing to make our American guests feel more welcome!

And as Rep. Marcos -- now we get to the clueless part -- said:

"President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo must really mean to impress her visitors," said Marcos... "Our countrymen should feel proud that we could feed our guests so well even though in their homes, many poor Filipino families would be sharing a can of sardines and a packet of instant noodles."

Classic. Like mother, like daughter.

So Bad, It's Good.

I'm awash in gloriously bad music today: a Rod McKuen / Anita Kerr 3 LP set (The Sea / The Earth / The Sky) on the Califone (not as good/bad as the classic In Search of Eros, though), the horrific Deepak Chopra and Friends' A Gift of Love in the CD player -- Rumi poems read by folks like Madonna and Demi Moore (and most memorably by Deepak himself), all set to cheesy new age / softcore porn music -- and most memorably described on Amazon.com as:

As a wayfarer on the path, this CD has helped deepen my love and longing for God...I shed tears; my skin prickles as I shiver with deep knowing. The combination of the spoken word and music results in an intensified resonance which vibrates throughout my whole being. What a beautiful gift to us, Deepak...my heart thanks you!

My skin prickles indeed.

And Wing through my computer speakers. I'm ordering a copy of Wing Sings The Carpenters now.

Update: I feel a little bad now because Wing Han Tsang herself has written me twice after I placed my order and she seems awfully nice. I asked her whether she had any plans to reissue her first couple of CDs (now out of print), and she wrote back:

i also let you know as well,so you know what,s go on.nother particular.you,ll will hear 5 songs of the phantom of the pera i am singing in my first and i am singing them again in my new cd (all your favourites) and i sang much better.i,ll not reprint any of my cds but i prefer i,ll sing them and recording them again to show myself and to all my fans i am improving.

Comment Spam.

God I hate spam. I get enough of it in my mailboxes, and now my blog comments are getting them too -- urls for "horny chickz" and whatnot (namely, the three folks mentioned here). (Joseph Duemer actually found the guy behind "Lolita.") I'm assuming bots simply look for "mt-comments.cgi" and post away, hoping I don't catch them in time before the spam post registers on Google.

Of course, I don't have time to monitor what few comments I already receive. (I also have to rebuild every time I delete a comment, and the spam comments are almost always hidden a few months in.) And I like my Movable Type comment system and don't really want to move to some external comment site like Squawkbox.

There are some MT filtering hacks out there; JayAllen.org also has a long discussion of what the filters should do. But I'm still a little too traumatized from fiddling with a botched MT installation from about a year back to even think about redoing my templates...

[Update: see comments section as well for mt-blacklist -- but in the few hours since I composed this, I've already received four spam comments from someone named "Preteen." Fucking spammers.]

Weekly Link Roundup.

I'm awash in poetry this week! But first: MacDiva on conservative bake sales and free speech.

Gorgeous stuff from Nick Piombino, brutally excised here:

This, in fact, *is* experience, a reasonably
Typical concoction of anxiety, ecstacy, distraction, relief & despair,
All held together by wishes and hairpins,
Already falling apart at the moment that it started,
Zooming, booming , bursting, flaccid & odd,
Lying, standing, turning, stretching & bent,
Embarassed, victorious, diseased, cured, unifed & alone.

And Sawako Nakayasu:

"A trail of anything - insects, hamburgers, bicycles, popsicles, miniature lightening bolts, road maps - anything..."

And on Tram Spark:

I'd like to take apart some brakes just now,
find a socket, fit a ratchet to the socket,
fit the socket to a bolt, try the steel spring
adapter that goes round corners.

And finally from new blogger Barbara Jane Reyes, who makes me blush in an earlier post:

tell me a silence. i prefer your silence.
away. fact. utterance.
seams. negotiate.
notion. line. body. spill.
leaves. bury. face.
practice. contain today.
house life. exact lie.

And I'm listening to the most awesome version of Spiral Starecase's "More Today Than Yesterday" -- this one by Shirley Scott and the Soul Saxes. With David Newman! Hank Crawford! Richard Tee! Chuck Rainey! Bernard Purdie!

Shonen Knife @ Slim's, SF, 10/9/03

For the past few days Madeline has been calling me an Orientalist. (I wanted to tell her that Edward Said would be spinning around in his grave at the rank misuse of the term, but...)

This was because I had spent the past week singing "I'm gonna eat jelly jelly jelly jelly jelly jelly jelly jelly beans" in anticipation of the Shonen Knife concert last night.

"They're infantilized 40-year old women," Madeline said.

"But Izzy really likes their songs, though," I said. (This was true: Izzy now asks for the "strawberry song," or "Strawberry Cream Puff.")

"They wear girly mini-dresses," Madeline said.

"But you really like that Carpenters cover version," I said. (This was true: with the exception of Matthew Sweet's "Let Me Be The One," the Shonen Knife track is the best thing on If I Were A Carpenter.)

"They use all these food metaphors," Madeline said.

"But so does Cibo Matto," I said, but I think that proved her point even more.

"And you like them because they speak bad English," Madeline said.

"But they rock!" I answered feebly.

The show, in any case, was a total blast. I went with a big bunch of people for once: my old friend Jane, June, Ellen, my colleague and fellow Throbbing Gristle fan Darren, Jerry and Max -- sorry, I didn't get to talk to the latter two because I was busy chatting with the women. =) Three of them were actually Friendster friends, too.)

Deerhoof opened the show. The tiny Satomi Matsuzaki "conducted" the group's off-kilter, choppy, art-damaged songs; the drummer, sitting on the floor and banging on something (I couldn't see -- like some of the people I was with I suffer from Short Asian Person Syndrome) made a total racket. (Though when Deerhoof started with "Panda Panda Panda," June turned to me and said, "Now I think we're participating in Orientalizing.")

Shonen Knife played a relatively short set (maybe an hour?), but one which didn't disappoint: it was still an hour of sweet, sugar-laced, punk-pop with aggro guitars. They started the concert with "Konnichiwa" (I guessed that one right) and promptly went into "Flying Jelly Attack" and "Twist Barbie." (I looked over at Jane and there was no hiding the look of glee on her face.) Some new songs followed, including one about someone with "a poor sense of direction," and the evening ended with (I think) a sped-up version of "Pretty Little Baka Guy," with a red spotlight shining on stage during the slow headbang part. (The crowd, as was the band, was flashing devil horns at this point. It was Hard Rawk after all.) Then a fantastic encore with "Top of the World" (Madeline's favorite) and "Banana Chips."

(I've also come to the belated realization that I'm getting old -- my drinking abilities have been sadly diminished, as proved by the last three concerts I've attended. Sigh.)

Chicken Adobo, Part 2.

There's something in the air, and it's adobo: adobo with beer, adobo with cinnamon, adobo with ginger, adobo with oregano, adobo with lots and lots of grease. And Joffin-Mari, where's the adobo negro recipe you promised? (Can't vouch for all the other ingredients, but the grease is crucial; the Mexican version, I think, involves ancho chiles, onions and oregano.) Even Eileen is volunteering to host an Adobo Sampler Party!

And -- through sheer serendipity -- here's an excerpt from Professor Leny Strobel's "The Power of Adobo" (taken from the Babaylan Speaks website):

Keep the lid off and let the flavors
Engulf the house to its rafters
Better yet open the doors
And windows, let your
Nosy neighbors envy you
of the delights
Of adobo

What a great image -- the olfactory equivalent of cranking up the speakers...

Mp3 Update.

Two posts in a day! Nothing major, though: I've decided to post an mp3 of the song I write about regularly, but only for a limited time. This week it's the 10,000 Maniacs; I may continue to do the other songs (The Cure, Marvin Gaye, Steely Dan, and I can't remember what else I've written about) in future weeks.

So download it below -- it'll only be there for a week, so hurry!

No One Listens To Margaret Cho.

3.5 million people and counting, at least:

What you talkin' 'bout ARNOLD?!!! Yo Terminator! You need to stop goosestepping up to the gubernatorial race because you have to terminate your campaign. What the fuck is wrong with you? Bodybuilding is alright and everything, but you are not doing multiple reps, you are making multiple missteps. I got nothing against Austria. I got mad love for Vienna Sausage and shit, but you need to stop grabbin' on ladies and wipe that steroids eating grin off your face. All these women came forward to talk about how you were harassing them, and will not say their names because they are afraid you are gonna fuck them up like Sarah Connor. This is way worse than Clarence and Anita. We are not talking about a pubic hair on a Coke and unsolicited movie reviews of Long Dong Silver. You didn't get some head from a hot and willing intern, you molested ELEVEN women who did not show you some thong to pump you up, and if it is just six that had the bravery to step up, then I suspect there are a lot more waiting in the wings getting the courage up to call you out What I see in you is testosterone od, and if you don't get yourself into some x chromosome management program, you are going down. You don't need to check yourself because you have already wrecked yourself.

Excerpted from her October 5 blog entry.

Chicken Adobo.

Funny that Eileen Tabios, that woman possessed by fallen angels, would post this recipe for chicken adobo, because I've been thinking of doing a chicken adobo post for some time. (Madeline once proudly told a roomful of Filipino grad students that I "can cook adobo now," only to be met by a snicker from my friend Andrew, who replied, "It's the one dish single Filipino men know how to cook!" Apparently Eileen doesn't know it, so I don't feel so bad.)

Speaking of white folks who cook adobo, Mark Bittman (yeah, that Mark Bittman) writes something to the effect that chicken adobo is the best chicken dish in the world -- can't find the exact quote, but it's in his excellent How to Cook Everything. (For the record, Bittman's recipe is way too salty.)

Anyhow, I'm posting Eileen's friend's recipe, because it uses some ingredients I don't use (ginger! chicken stock!), and I'm interested in trying it:

Chicken Adobo By Bruce The Drapery Fella

Ingredients:

3 - 4 lb. frying chicken, washed and cut up
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup light or dark soy sauce
4 or 5 1/4" slices of fresh ginger
5 cloves of garlic, crushed and skins removed
1/2 cup vinegar
chicken stock to cover (three or four 14 oz. cans of off-the-shelf stock should do)
1/2 teaspoon of corn starch, diluted in water (if thicker sauce is desired)

Method:
Put all ingredients (except corn starch) into a large pot, bring to the boil and then reduce heat to simmer until chicken is tender (approx. 1 - 1 1/2 hours).

Remove the chicken when it is cooked and "finish and adjust" the sauce to taste. At this point you'll want to remove the ginger and garlic, add the corn starch mixture, sugar, vinegar or spices like chiles or a dash of Chinese Five Spice. Don't forget to start the rice!

Looks pretty fancy to me.

Mine's a lot simpler: 6-8 chicken thighs, 1/3 cup vinegar, about 4-6 tablespoons of soy sauce, two teaspoons of crushed garlic, 1/4 teaspoon of peppercorn, one bay leaf, and salt and pepper to taste. Brown the chicken first, then dump the whole mess in and simmer with the cover on for as long as you can bear to wait. And don't forget to skim the grease off for the white folks! =)

(My other variation involves coconut milk: more or less the same ingredients above, except that the garlic is now upped to a whole head, minced. Then stir in half a can of coconut milk before serving.)

Anyone else?

1987: 10,000 Maniacs, "The Painted Desert."

Back in 1987 my world was ruled by the 10,000 Maniacs' album In My Tribe; that was one worn-out, dead cassette tape long before my romance with that album was over, though it never really ended. (Then it became one of my very first CD purchases, in the fall of 1995. The Philippine version of the tape didn't even have lyrics, so it was a revelation to finally figure out what Natalie Merchant was saying most of the time.) In My Tribe, in any case, was my lone exposure to anything resembling American folk at the time, and for me it was a fresh breeze blowing from nowhere. (I was a little wiped out on "new wave" at the time, and I was about to enter a brief -- and embarrassing -- interest in horrible lite jazz.)

Merchant will probably always be seen as being 10,000 Maniacs, and with good reason: her supernaturally beautiful voice, combined with her distinctive pronunciation, elevated their music from an earthbound folk rock to something more ethereal. But for me it was always the late Robert Buck's lyrical, swooping guitar -- much in the same way that Johnny Marr, and not really Morrissey, was the true voice of the Smiths -- that anchored the band.

I suppose a good number of 10,000 Maniacs songs could have easily been my selection: the effective, if somewhat didactic "What's The Matter Here?" (along with Suzanne Vega's "Luka," easily one of the jauntiest songs on child abuse ever written), the moving "Gun Shy" ("And now does your heart pitter-pat with a patriotic sound when you see the stripes of Old Glory waving?" she asks her "baby brother" returning from boot camp), "Like the Weather" (which benefits from that irresistible guitar riff), the uncharacteristically furious "You Happy Puppet" from Blind Man's Zoo, and two songs from the Candy Everybody Wants ep: a haunting cover of the Horse Flies's "Sally Ann," and a cover version of "Everyday Is Like Sunday" that's even better than Morrissey's.

But I chose "The Painted Desert" instead. It's not one of their storytelling songs; this one takes the form of what looks like letters (never) sent out to some unknown addressee. It begins:

The Painted Desert can wait till summer. We've played this game of just imagine long enough. Wait till summer? When I'm sure the rains have ended, the blooms have gone, everyone killed by the morning frost.

Cactus, stars, ruins, sand, tumbleweed: there's a nice evocation of images here that the narrator will never see. Amidst Buck's chiming guitar, the song builds to a crescendo:

I wanted to be there by May at the latest time. Isn't that the plan we had or have you changed your mind? I haven't read a word from you since Phoenix or Tucson. April is over will you tell me how long before I can be there?

It's not a semi-operatic, "Jungleland" conclusion for sure; just the muted sound of a deep but ordinary futility, of an endless longing and waiting for some regeneration from the desert.

(I was inspired to return to my list and write about the 10,000 Maniacs after meeting Aimee Nezhukumatathil the other day; she teaches at SUNY Fredonia, which I had always associated with the Maniacs, though Aimee tells me they were from another town 20 minutes away.)

The Weekend.

Friday was Madeline's birthday, so poor Izzy got shuttled from one day care place to another (she would be coming with us the next day) and I took Madeline out to dinner at Chapeau!, one of our favorite restaurants in the Richmond. Sweetbreads, basil soup, heirloom tomatoes, bottle full of bub. And I got her, among other things, Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, so Madeline stayed up all night trying to finish the lackluster Elizabeth George mystery she was slowly reading before.

And then the next morning -- and this is the sort of thing that only young parents can get excited about -- Izzy actually peed in her potty!

The next day it was lunch at Le Cheval with our friends Alice and Jens; we also realized we hadn't been to downtown Oakland in over four years! All the Jerry Brown-revitalized buildings -- the new apartments, the Museum of Children's Art -- were completely new to us; I seem to remember only vacant parking lots in that part of town last time I was there. Lemongrass prawns, porkchops in something or other (can't remember), and the best mussels in the world.

Last night Barbara Jane Reyes, in her second reading of the day (how does she do it?), read one of my favorite poems from her book Gravities of Center: this was "Anthropologic," a piece which at first seemed practically impossible to read, heavily reliant as it was on its layout on the printed page. I think it worked great though, especially with the big Santiago Bose painting behind her, but she said she wasn't going to read it ever again. (Alas, she didn't read one of my other favorites, "Heaven Is Just Another Concept:" "If poetry drives us all to madness, then I know no logic to dictate any measure of realignment.")

Aimee Nezhukumatathil had the audience cracking up with her poems; it's interesting how the humor (at least for me) bubbles up to the surface in the act of reading. On the page I tend to pay closer attention to how the words work -- stupid of me not to step back and listen to how funny the bigger picture is.

Today Madeline and Izzy went to a pregnant colleague's jealous-sibling consolation party (don't ask), and I went with the dog to Fort Funston for some offleash walking. Unfortunately, Shelby didn't really want to walk, and so I ended up getting back into the car to buy a cake in South San Francisco for our pregnant colleague's baby shower.

I pulled into the restaurant's parking lot and got out of the car, only to discover in disgust that I had run over a used condom on the ground. (The Trojan wrapper was right next to it.) It was then that I realized that the weekend had practically been bookended by encounters with the highs and lows of Filipino American culture: a terrific poetry reading one night (yay!), and sex in a South City Goldilocks parking lot (yuck!).

Tonight! Two Pinay Poets.

TWO
PINAY
POETS

Saturday
October 4, 2003 @ 7:00 pm

Babilonia 1808
1808 - 5th Street
Berkeley, CA
www.bwf.org

Celebrate Filipino American History Month with Two Pinay Poets: Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Barbara Jane Reyes, who will read from their debut poetry collections, Miracle Fruit and Gravities of Center, on Saturday October 4, 2003 at 7:00 pm at Babilonia 1808, at 1808 5th Street in Berkeley, off University Avenue.

This event is co-sponsored by San Francisco State University's Asian American Studies Department, and will be moderated by Professor Benito Vergara.

ABOUT MIRACLE FRUIT:
As three worlds collide, a mother's Philippines, a father's India, and the poet's contemporary America, the resulting impressions are chronicled in this collection of incisive and penetrating verse. The writer weaves her words carefully into a wise and affecting embroidery that celebrates the senses while remaining down-to-earth and genuine.

"When language, sensory experience, and imagination meet and mingle in an inventive and convincing way, we have the ingredients for those moments of grace that characterize important poems. Aimee Nezhukumatathil's Miracle Fruit is rich in such luscious moments. Every line is alive with the excitement of what can be known about the world, every poem bursting with an eagerness to share it."
--Gregory Orr, Judge, Second Annual Tupelo Press Poetry Competition

ABOUT GRAVITIES OF CENTER:
Contained in this collection are poems and prose pieces which exhibit Barbara's oftentimes eclectic style/sensibilities and willingness to experiment with form and language. With serious and playful poems very much rooted in San Francisco Bay Area urban and suburban cultures, settings, and vernaculars, a geographically faraway Philippines is never absent from this Pilipina American writer's consciousness. Consistent throughout Gravities of Center are themes of longing, desire, diaspora, postcoloniality, feminism, and coming of age.

ABOUT THE POETS:
Aimee Nezhukumatathil was born in Chicago in 1974. She received her B.A. in English and received her M.F.A. in poetry and creative non-fiction from Ohio State University. She is the author of a chapbook, Fishbone, and was the Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Institute for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin. She is currently an assistant professor of English at the State University of New York, Fredonia. She is the author of Miracle Fruit (Tupelo Press, 2003)

Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila and raised in the SF bay Area suburb of Fremont. She received her BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, where she served as editor-in-chief of Maganda Magazine, and is currently working on her MFA in poetry at SF State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003).

Saturday October 4, 2003
@ 7:00 pm

Babilonia 1808
1808 - 5th Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
510-549-1808

For more information, contact Mike Price 510-549-1808.

Babilonia 1808's mission includes promoting dialogue and cultural exchange between communities, while challenging audiences with thought-provoking contemporary art. Babilonia 1808 offers visitors the opportunity to experience diverse local, national, and international art in a casual, non-institutional environment.

A Thief And A Dictator? You Don't Say!

Oh dear. This woman doesn't look very happy, does she? Indeed, she looks a little haggard, though I can't imagine that she actually loses sleep over anything.

This woman is a little weepy because she has just filed a libel suit against Presidential Commission on Good Government commissioner Ruben Carranza (and a good chunk of the Today staff, including publisher Teodoro Locsin Jr.) for calling her husband a "thief and a dictator... terms which have unjustly blackened the memory of my deceased husband."

How dare they, indeed! However, she thinks that truth will prevail: "Let them not take the truth because truth is God," she said. She continued, in a stellar example of her wit and wisdom:

Money and power, you can't take with you to the grave. Truth and honor you take with you beyond the grave, beyond infinity and eternity. This is what I am fighting for.

Shudder. All this talk about the grave is a little too morbid for my taste. I certainly don't want her to join her husband any time soon -- at least do a few more interviews, girl!

Old and bitter, that's more like it. But you're already there.

(AFP photo reproduced with no permission from this article.)

Eight Hours in Manila.

This story kind of slipped under the radar, but as the day of President Smirk's visit to one of his staunchest allies in the coalition of the willing comes near, it's best to pay attention:

The communist New People’s Army has deployed at least 50 of its “elite, highly trained” troops in Metro Manila to carry out an assassination assignment on US President George W. Bush, who is scheduled to visit the country on October 18, military sources said.

Of course, there's nothing like an "assassination plot" to justify the usual arbitrary arrests of "leftist elements:"

Individuals supportive of the NPA cause in Metro Manila will provide refuge to the assassins during their stay before October 18, the source added without elaborating.

But let's take this seriously for a minute; suppose there was indeed an assassination plot? Would the Philippine military be ready for such a thing?

[Lt. Col. Daniel Lucero] doubts the capability of the NPA to carry out such a high-profile assassination attempt. The military claims to have diminished the NPA’s strength and influence through continuous operations.

“With the kind of preparations we are doing, we can assure you that President Bush will be safe on his visit here,” Lucero added.

Latest attacks by the NPA, however, have killed at least 40 soldiers in Compostela Valley, Eastern Samar, Mountain Province and Albay.

“There are some lapses [by our field units] but all in all we have downgraded the NPA’s capability to launch terrorist activities nationwide,” said... Lt. Gen. Gregorio Camiling Jr.

The problem with the Armed Forces of the Philippines is that they aren't just hopelessly corrupt, they truly make "military intelligence" sound like an oxymoron.

And while some of you readers no doubt may be going "Hmm...", let me assure you that a) Cheney would be five times as horrible as Bush and b) the Philippines would no doubt be nuked beyond recognition.