The Wily Filipino

The Best of 2003.

There used to be a time when I would have a nice long list of favorite books and films as well, but I barely got to read or watch anything. (So if you're wondering where The Station Agent or Mystic River or 21 Grams or The Triplets of Belleville or Lost in Translation or Swimming Pool or even Kill Bill Vol. 1 is, I haven't seen them, unfortunately.) So, here we go: my favorite music of 2003, a couple of movies, and a trio of books. (As usual, as it includes new discoveries, so not everything came out this year.)

Top 7 Titles:
(actually, 59 albums all told)

Dengue Fever, Dengue Fever (2003)

The concept goes like this: indie supergroup does covers of '70s Cambodian rock songs (and one Ethiopian song), complete with the amazing Chhom Nimol, a Cambodian pop star now residing in Long Beach. Whether an object lesson in cultural appropriation, loving homage, or testament to the universal power of rock 'n roll, this album is one of my best listens of the year. (Ros Serey Sothea's "I'm Sixteen," which some of you may be familiar with from the Cambodian Rocks or Love, Peace and Poetry compilations as the mystery "A2" track, is given, at first listen, a disappointingly polished reading, but it ends with an appealing coda that deftly evokes cheap-Siem-Reap-bar ambience.)

Easy Star All-Stars, Dub Side of the Moon (2003)

It sounds gimmicky -- a dub version of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon -- but quite simply, it works, being both faithful to the material (practically every solo and background sound effect is remade and accounted for) and irreverent at the same time (the sound of cash registers and change at the beginning of "Money" is replaced by bong hits, though it's not as jokey as the Squirrels' The Not-So-Bright Side of the Moon). Fans of either dub and Floyd (and I am one of the millions out there who knows the album inside and out) would enjoy this. Okay, it's not Scientist's Scientist Rids The World Of The Evil Curse Of The Vampires (a couple of friends were hoping for brain-frying, universe-cracking-open dub, but not here), but it sure makes "Us and Them" a lot more palatable.

Guided By Voices, Hardcore UFOs (2003)

In which the second greatest band in America continues to reward us with its largesse: in its third box set in eight years, we get a DVD (complete with documentary and almost every GBV video ever made), a greatest-hits disc, a cd of live tracks, a rarities and demos disc, and their long out-of-print debut album from 1986. Considering the set is Robert Pollard's sixth or seventh release of the year, are GBV fans spoiled or what?

Merzbow, Merzbox (2000)

More proof of the obsessive, acquisitive consumerist impulse than musical genius, this 50-disc limited-edition boxset (including a Merzshirt, Merzstickers, Merzdallion, Merzposter, MerzCD-ROM and a full-length Merzbook in a black rubber case) is the end-all and be-all of Merzmania: the Merzstar collapsing into itself out of sheer Merzdensity.

Elvis Presley, 30 No. 1 Hits (2002)

I never really got Elvis until I saw my daughter jumping around to "Stuck on You." Since then I've enjoyed the sheer exuberance of the music, racial politics be temporarily damned: this is vital, fearless and elemental.

Wing, Wing Sings The Carpenters (2003)

I hadn't derived so much entertainment from an album this dismal year as I did from this one. This, too, is music that's vital, fearless and elemental, but in a slightly different fashion.

Yo La Tengo, Today Is The Day (2003)

Their full-length release this year, Summer Sun, seemed a little loose and lazy -- which, I suppose, was appropriate to the title, but this more cohesive EP benefits from a surer sense of purpose: to get six short and sweet songs out there. And being the greatest band in America helps. Highlights: a breakneck "Today Is The Day," a gloriously chaotic "Outsmartener," and a forlorn reading of Bert Jansch's bleak "Needle of Death." (One bit of disappointment, particularly if you were looking for something Ornette-like inside: when are Susie Ibarra and William Parker really going to jam with them?)

Runners-up:

Komet, Gold (2003)
The most organic-sounding electronic music since Aphex Twin's Richard D. James Album: surface noise you can dance to.

Lifeguards, Mist King Urth (2003)
Here Robert Pollard (and Doug Gillard) exercises a more expansive, hard-rock side of his songwriting.

The Sea And Cake, One Bedroom (2002)
Angular lounge music for indie rockers.

Whitehouse, Cruise (2001)
Some of the most fascinatingly repellent music ever put to record.

Earworms:
(songs that rattled around in my head this year, some of which have shown up as "Your New Favorite Song" selections before)

The Angels Of Light's "Evangeline"
Chingy's "Right Thurr"
Deerhoof's ''Panda Panda"
Mark Eitzel's "No Easy Way Down"
50 Cent's "In da Club"
Guided By Voices' "When She Turns 50"
Thee Headcoatees' ''Teenage Kicks"
Kylie Minogue's "Come Into My World"
My Morning Jacket's "Mahgeetah"
The Pebbles' "Twist And Shout"
Britta Phillips and Dean Wareham's ''Your Baby''
The Pinoy Beatles's "Day Tripper"
Elvis Presley's "Stuck on You"
The Sea And Cake's ''Interiors''
The Shins' "Know Your Onion!"
Shonen Knife's "Strawberry Cream Puff"
Stereo Total's "Beautycase"
Matthew Sweet's "The Ocean In-Between"
Velvet Crush's "Time Wraps Around You"
Gillian Welch's "Look At Miss Ohio"
Whitehouse's "Cruise (Force The Truth)"
Yo La Tengo's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love And Understanding"

Two Movies:

Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale (2000)

Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Three Books:

Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace

Lyn Hejinian's My Life

Nick Hornby's Songbook

Pants on Fire; on "PC."

A little item on the First Lady buried in the Times yesterday caught my attention:

The first lady also said that the "Roses are red, violets are blue" poem she read at a National Book Festival gala in October was not actually written by her husband even though it has been attributed to him. She did not say who wrote the poem.

"But a lot of people really believed that he did," she said. "Some woman from across the table said, 'You just don't know how great it is to have a husband who would write a poem for you.' "

Let's look at this closely: what is she saying about those people who "really believed" it?

Compare that with the officlal White House press release of her remarks at the National Book Festival Gala last October:

We delight in great works of literature and especially in the works of budding new artists. President Bush is a great leader and husband -- but I bet you didn't know, he is also quite the poet. Upon returning home last night from my long trip, I found a lovely poem waiting for me. Normally, I wouldn't share something so personal, but since we're celebrating great writers, I can't resist.

Dear Laura,

Roses are red, violets are blue, oh my lump in the bed, how I've missed you.

Roses are redder, bluer am I, seeing you kissed by that charming French guy.

The dogs and the cat they miss you too, Barney's still mad you dropped him, he ate your shoe.

The distance my dear has been such a barrier, next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier.

I'm happy to be the inspiration behind this poem.

Hmm. Maybe people believed it because she said so?

This proves a simple point: No one from that administration can be trusted.

It sounds an awful, awful lot like this exchange between Tim Russert and Dick Cheney on "Meet The Press " last September:

MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.

MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know.

To shift gears abruptly, here's a quick unorganized response to Rhett's recent post on political correctness.

Okay, there are two separate points here: It's probably just me, but I always separated "the PC movement" from "the multicultural movement" because they seemed to have different functions and aims. Though obviously part of the same package, the desire to include someone other than a dead white men into curricula seemed to me part of a multicultural agenda rather than the primarily gatekeeping-function of being "politically correct" (see below). When a public library celebrates Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and sets up a display of Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat in its front window (for instance), it seems prompted more by an effort to be more "multicultural" rather than it being "politically correct." I don't know if that makes sense.

Rhett's gay lit vs. Roman history example is a little misleading, because I don't think advocates of multiculturalism all saw it that way -- i.e., with emphasis on the "versus." While I'm quite sold on the idea that, say, the model of ethnic studies is the site of oppositional politics against a white, heteronormative mainstream (and that multiculturalist discourse is simply a fancy reworking of the old melting-pot narrative), I don't think gay lit was supposed to supplant Roman history. The last time I checked, students were still quite free to take Western Civ classes.

Conservative groups started using "political correctness" as a cudgel against the left, which is no wonder Rhett's Google search turned up right-wing websites. But there is a separate use of the term "PC" -- one that has trickled into popular discourse -- and one that specifically pertained to language and semantics, which is the way the phrase mostly survives now.

Its legacy, I think, has been somewhat more important than it's given credit for: a lot of my students, coming straight from high school, use "she" or "s/he" or "Dear Madam/Sir" way more often now. Despite the intricate idiocies of PC run amok ("waitron," "vertically challenged"), people (at least around here) do use "mail carrier" and "flight attendant" and "chair" more often as well. Does this mark a change in people's consciousness about gender? Maybe. (Or is it still the same sexism, but cloaked in a more polite disguise?)

And I can imagine that it has done much more for the workforce as well, particularly in terms of bringing issues of sexual harassment to the surface. Do people say less homophobic / sexist / racist jokes in public now? (Or am I being completely naive, considering where I work?)

Having said that, the term "PC" is also often used as a prefatory warning to something un-PC, e.g., "I don't know this isn't going to sound PC, but..." Kind of like "Look, I'm not a racist, but..."

ROTK, Finally (big spoilers below).

Yesterday was our anniversary, so Madeline and I finally got to go out and see The Return of the King. (No, that wasn't all we did; we did go to Masa's the night before.) When one's expectations are so high, the movie is bound to disappoint -- which it didn't, as it exceeded them and more. Absolutely amazing. (I read the books when I was in high school and all I could remember from the last book was the spider -- couldn't even remember whether Frodo made it out alive.)

Favorite moments off the top of my head:

- Andy Serkis in the flesh.

- The "helicopter shot" of Gandalf, Pippin and Shadowfax riding up the levels of Minas Tirith.

- "Sneaking? Sneaking?"

- The lighting of the beacons.

- The scene when Hugo Weaving presents Aragorn with the reforged sword. (Madeline had to chuckle, though, when the camera pans lovingly up and down the blade.)

- Eowyn pulling off her helmet.

- Legolas surfing down the elephant trunk.

- Shelob wrapping up Frodo in a cocoon. (I honestly thought he was dead.)

- "Don't go where I can't follow." (Sentimental fool that I am, I almost lost it on that one.)

- Frodo and Sam, holding each other on the rock surrounded by lava, "at the end of all things."

- "My friends, you bow to no one."

- Elijah Wood, looking like he stepped out of a Caravaggio painting, boarding the ship.

On "Public Intellectuals."

Here's Elaine Showalter on one of 2003's "most overrated ideas":

Intellectuals and professors who write for a general audience are always valuable, but the idea of the "public intellectual" as a specific role is now well past its sell-by date. Being a public intellectual has degenerated from a calling to a career. Aspiring public intellectuals can now get a Ph.D. to prepare them for this academic market niche, and some enterprising professors have already added the term "public intellectual" to Web sites. In theory, the public intellectual could address any subject, even — imagine! — teaching and higher education; but public intellectual purists reserve the title for social critics who take an exclusively oppositional stance to political policies in general, and American foreign policy in particular. The public intellectuals' lack of accountability — no bucks stop at their desks — and their remoteness from the world of difficult, flawed, risky, but necessary decision-making (the "tenured gadfly," as Richard Posner says in his updated "Public Intellectuals," is an oxymoron), makes their critical posture seem self-indulgent despite its virtue. Anybody can complain, blog and find fault; the real intellectual might try to solve problems.

Giving.

Georges Bataille, in The Accursed Share (1967):

We need to give away, lose or destroy. But the gift would be senseless (and so we would never decide to give) if it did not take on the meaning of an acquisition. Hence giving must become acquiring of power. Gift-giving has the virtue of surpassing of the subject who gives, but in exchange for the object given, the subject appropriates the surpassing: he regards his virtue, that which he had the capacity for, as an asset, as a power that he now possesses. He enriches himself with a contempt for riches, and what he proves to be miserly of is in fact his generosity.

May you all participate in the ecstatic consumption of the surplus this holiday season.

Quick Trivia Question.

All right, folks, here's a trivia question for y'all, since Lenny Bruce is in the news for being pardoned for his obscenity conviction back in New York in 1964:

What are the first three words of Lenny Bruce's How to Talk Dirty and Influence People: An Autobiography? (I read the book back when I was in high school and was too young to figure out what he meant.)

Apocalypse, Again.

The dominant discourse about the Vietnam War (and Apocalypse Now), particularly in terms of its incorporation into the American Narrative, is that it's the Great American Trauma, unhealed like Maya Lin's black scar cut into the earth. While this is true to a certain extent -- there is no denying the fact that working-class kids of all colors were sacrificed for the defense of freedom and Western civilization -- it's also accompanied by much bleating about America's supposed loss of innocence. The ghosts of the war still loom over every foreign policy decision since; it is perhaps unfortunate that they don't haunt American politicians more persistently.

This discourse, however, is essentially egocentric: it's still all about America, and only about America. Whether Apocalypse Now wittingly or unwittingly reproduces this discourse is another thing altogether; Jean reminds us that the film is also about Francis Ford Coppola. (Nowadays the only specters allowed to haunt Americans aren't even the 58,000 dead soldiers, but the POW/M.I.A.s; even their ghosts, as it were, are unsettled.) There is little talk about Vietnamese, since the U.S. has already done its part in its clearly anti-Communist War refugee policies.

The biggest joke of all, I think, is the truism that this was a war that the United States lost; I think it should be clear that the Vietnamese people were the real losers here.

As for our obsession with the film, Frank Chin writes: "We have to be able to accept Conrad and Coppola's works as the white racist works they are and still recognize them as great white lit and film. And I think most writers from non-white peoples can and have been reading racist white lit and recognizing it as great lit."

I love the film because it's great to think about. Coppola makes a brave connection between colonialism and the Vietnam war through his use of Conrad, and even up to now that lesson on American imperialism and the war on Iraq has not been learned. Despite the film's obvious flaws, which we've discussed in previous posts, it's also a antidote to earlier rah-rah films like The Green Berets. The critical acclaim which Oliver Stone later received for Platoon should at least be recognized as part of a rewriting of that Vietnam War narrative even if it's still ethnocentric in essence; this would be rewritten again, however, in Rambo: First Blood Part 2 and Missing in Action.

(Hey, did I write that parts of Platoon was filmed on Mt. Makiling during my high school graduation in 1986? I'm kind of tickled by the fact that a very young Johnny Depp was wandering around somewhere in my hometown of Los Banos.)

There's also the fact that Apocalypse Now is simply a flat-out fantastic film, with amazing performances throughout (even if it does drag in the latter fifth). I get a chill every time I hear the whocka-whocka of the helicopter blades at the beginning; the horrific, hallucinatory glory of the first few minutes alone already marks the film as a work of genius.

It's too bad that Coppola, after making four of my Top 100 films of all time (including The Godfather, The Godfather 2, and The Conversation -- the latter being one of the three greatest films ever set in San Francisco, including Vertigo and Chan Is Missing), never made anything remotely close again. (I always used to joke that The Virgin Suicides was the best Coppola film since Apocalypse Now.)

More on Apocalypse Now.

Barbara writes:

i think i am still figuring out the part where eleanor coppola's notes book and hearts of darkness documentary come in (i have yet to read and view these) and examine the irony and even hypocrisy of the movie's making (and intention). ugly americanism on camera and its mirror off camera. that just like marlow and kurtz in heart of darkness, and just like willard and kurtz in apocalypse now, coppola, sheen, brando lose their civilization the longer and farther away they are from their known world. i wonder if these things eclipse the greatness of the movie for me or simply reconfirm the film's message.

I'm not sure whether this was deliberate on John Milius's and Coppola's part -- I doubt it was, considering Coppola's famous words at Cannes ("This film is not about Vietnam. The film is Vietnam," or words to that effect) -- but the absence of Vietnamese in the film somewhat supports your notion, both in the context of the film's narrative and Hollywood / colonialism. Aside from the Vietnamese woman with the puppy, the Vietnamese are essentially disembodied, spectral figures (whether represented as arrows flying out of the jungle green, or as an unseen soldier yelling "Fuck you G.I.!"); this is further reinforced by the appearance of the ghostly and silent Montagnards towards the end.

One could argue that this was a function of the screenplay; Willard, after all, is sent upstream not to deal with the Vietnamese, but to "terminate [Kurtz's] command." But it's an example as well of what Tzvetan Todorov (in The Conquest of America) and Mary Louise Pratt (in Imperial Eyes) have written about before, namely, the absence of "the native" in the colonizer's sweeping gaze.

To Sheen's "credit," I distinctly remember an interview with him in a Christian inspirational magazine called Guideposts (my mom had a gift subscription, in case you were wondering) where he cites his near-fatal heart attack in the Philippines as the reason for his spiritual and political awakening.

Any chance of posting more of that old paper you wrote, Barbara, or are you saving that for a bigger project?

(I can't believe you haven't seen Hearts of Darkness yet, Barbara! It's a great documentary on the creative process (and hubris and a colonialism of sorts, reminiscent of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo and Les Blank's Burden of Dreams). I should have you over and we can do an AN/HOD doubleheader and do an adobo cook-off -- or forget that and watch all the extras on The Two Towers DVD instead, which Madeline and I haven't seen yet.)

Finally, a couple of hollers to two fellow bloggers who may or may not be reading this:

Jean is obviously the expert on Filipinos and American war flicks; any thoughts, Jean?

And one for Eileen: you wouldn't happen to know Francis and Eleanor personally, would you?

Photography and Race Symposium.

A few months ago I was invited to present at a symposium organized around the Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self exhibition at the International Center of Photography, which just opened this month. (See Holland Cotter's review in the New York Times late last week.) The accompanying book, now out on Harry N. Abrams, is edited by Coco Fusco and Brian Wallis.

It's called "Visualizing Race in American Photography: An Interdisciplinary Symposium" and will be held at the Columbia Law School (410 W. 116th St.) on Feb. 7th. I'm going to be on a panel entitled "Considering the Archive" with Ken Gonzales-Day, Maurice Wallace and Laura Kleger. I'm mistakenly credited as being from UC Berkeley on the website -- go Gators! =)

The other two panels are entitled "Transdisciplinary Relevance of Racial Imagery" (Kara Walker, Kellie Jones, Deborah Poole and Jose Esteban Munoz) and "Looking into the Future: Race and Digital Imaging" (Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Maria Fernandez, Lisa Nakamura and Tom Foster).

Random Links and Responses.

1. Oh my god. Who are these people???

2. Don't give kids crappy presents!

3. Barbara has an entry on Apocalypse Now, which happens to be my favorite movie of all time, up there with Wong-Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love. The French plantation scene restored in Redux unfortunately slows down an already slow film, and adds little to the narrative. (Interesting how two of the big scenes excised pretty much had the only speaking scenes for women.)

What the scene does do, however, is to underscore the fact that the film was, consciously or unconsciously, never about Vietnamese, and, by extension -- to make a gross generalization -- neither was the Vietnam War.

You should have gone for that Apoc Now / Platoon doubleheader -- both flicks were filmed in my home province of Laguna.

4. Leny and Barbara are asking about language. What -- no one wanted to check out Aswang? =)

I re-read my previous post and I guess it wasn't very clear. The students did write answers regarding the importance of "minority" languages, challenging the authority of English, language as ethnic inclusion/exclusion (i.e., you weren't supposed to get it), etc. (In an interview Wayne Wang said something to the effect that he thought it was important for viewers to hear those languages.) One student rightly wrote that the lack of subtitles made people pay more attention. One of my takes on the question was that the (non-Cantonese / Mandarin-speaking) viewer would have to work hard -- and be frustrated -- in perhaps the same manner as the two cabbies looking for Chan.

No one answered anything on untranslatability, though this did come up in our discussions of Barbara's poem; there would be a couple of native speakers of Tagalog who would say, "Well, it means this, but not exactly -- it's hard to translate," and so on. And sure, they could grab a Tagalog dictionary and look up the words, much as I could have photocopied the part of the Chan Is Missing screenplay with the translated sections, which I later did. But I also wanted to make a point about the text (both poem and film) resisted translation or, at the very least, refused to give up its meanings so easily. I think the students (some of them, anyway) later appreciated how Zack Linmark's book, through narrative form alone, could be read as resistance to the standard coming-of-age text, as well as Standard American English -- a refusal to unroll the Rs, so to speak.

(Barbara: A Latina student of mine, who obviously could understand the non-English words in your poem, commented in her essay that you seemed to be "shouting" by the seventh line ("where all the words are Tagalog"), and "exhausted" by the last (where "the Tagalog words become more and more spread out"). She also observed that "Katolika" "has a stronger meaning in Tagalog in this poem because it brings about the idea that she's not just a Catholic woman, but a Catholic Filipina woman." She also addressed my previous question to you about why the non-English words weren't italicized. Great, great stuff about going to a California grocery store and not finding it odd that one could hear three languages -- so why did it seem so disjunctive on the printed page? Her words: "So why should it seem odd when put into writing?" Okay, enough quotes from my student.)

Language and Aswang.

My Asian American Culture students are probably cursing my name, because I asked them this question for their finals (though a good number of them succeeded admirably):

In a few of our class's readings/viewings -- Wayne Wang's film Chan Is Missing, Barbara Jane Reyes's poem "101 Words That Don't Quite Describe Me," R. Zamora Linmark's novel Rolling the R's, to name some examples -- some words, if not entire blocks of dialogue, are left untranslated. What could this signify?

I had then expected answers regarding untranslatability, minority languages, language as instruments of inclusion and exclusion, the politics of translation, the interrogation of the primacy of English (one student would write in his exam that it was "a challenge to English hegemony) or, at the very least (even if I didn't personally agree), the idea of a native tongue as being "closer" to some kind of ethnic "essence."

To these characteristics of language I'd add another dimension, related to exclusion: language as signifying the secret. Or, in this case, representing the mysterious/exotic. I was happily reminded of this after watching Wrye Martin and Barry Polterman's enjoyable low-budget horror film Aswang, from 1994 -- a real treat for you indie-horror fans out there. The setup's pretty simple: a young woman is paid to be a surrogate mother (and to pretend to be a wife) by a wealthy man who apparently needs an heir in order to inherit their rural Wisconsin estate. Our pregnant protagonist visits the ancestral home and is introduced in turn to the ailing matriarch, and the creepy Filipina maid named Cupid (played with relish by Mildred Nierras) -- and is told about Claire, the sister who is "touched" and "gets upset easily" and lives in a cabin separated from the house.

And there is, of course, the aswang; for you non-Filipinos out there, it's a vampire-like creature straight from Filipino mythology. (Funny how the online reviewers -- one of which helpfully wrote, "It's pronounced ass-wang" -- found the premise intrinsically nasty, whereas I simply found it the stuff of childhood stories. Yes, the aswang happens to feed on fetuses sucked out of pregnant women.) We see it first in a framed drawing on a wall -- we are told the family spent time in Basilan -- and the nosy neighbor is horrified: "Good Lord! What is that?" "The aswang." "Wh-- what is it doing?" "Feeding."

But one of the coolest things* about the film is that the mother, the son and the maid speak in Tagalog to each other throughout the movie, and their speech (at least the version I saw) isn't subtitled. (The white actors playing the mother and son are pretty game, even if the pronunciation isn't the clearest.) Most of the Tagalog words are colloquial conversation, limited to "No" and "Thanks" and "Please pass the cider," but still. There's even a scene when Cupid puts her ear to the pregnant woman's stomach and pronounces "Mga dalawa, tatlong araw na lang, malapit nang mahinog" -- crucial information, I thought, but here, just left to the viewer's imagination. (Later, when the maid falls down on her knees and begins praying, one realizes that the audience is supposed to think it's a magical incantation of some sort.)

Tagalog here, particularly when seen in the context of the genre, functions to intensify the fear of the unknown; something bad is going to happen to the protagonist -- perhaps even discussed openly -- but both she and the non-Tagalog-speaking audience is deliberately left in the dark. (That "something bad" becomes clear once the aswang's phallic tongue is unfurled.) So while the Philippines is tangentially imagined here as the source for humid horror (in a fashion similar to those bad "anthropological" X-Files episodes when Scully and Mulder encounter "other cultures"), I am at least let in on the secret.

*But perhaps the coolest scene in the film -- particularly for you gorehounds out there -- is a battle between two women, with a hoe, a chainsaw, and a cramped living room.

No ROTK Today.

Oh well. While Barbara was busy finishing watching ROTK at 3:30 in the morning, Madeline and I were busy cleaning Izzy's vomit off her bed. Three times.

After succumbing to the flu bug (which I had acquired in Chicago), Izzy had seemingly already bounced back, only to get some sort of viral "stomach flu." So she had a negligible low-grade fever most of the day yesterday and was a little cranky and didn't want to eat or drink and had to stay at home. This was not usually a problem, as she could be usually counted on to eat a little something and drink her milk and fight off whatever bug she had. Until last night, that is.

As I was cooking dinner, I noticed that Izzy had apparently flopped over to one side in her booster seat. Thinking she was fiddling with something, I called out, "Are you up to no good, honey?" Then Madeline came over and realized, to her horror, that Izzy was having convulsions. We pulled her out and she was still shaking uncontrollably. Two or three minutes later (though it seemed like forever), her lips had turned a horrible shade of blue, and then she passed out. Madeline kept calling her name, but she lay limp in Madeline's arms.

By the time the paramedics came -- yes, Madeline and I were freaking out at this point -- Izzy was awake again, though barely, and throwing up. But at least she was conscious.

As it turned out, it was your garden-variety febrile seizure, the one Dr. Spock and the other infant care book authors tell you constantly not to panic about. Her temperature had spiked suddenly and caused the convulsions. "It doesn't cause brain damage," they say. "They can't swallow their tongues." "If it's your child's second or third febrile seizure ever, there's no need to call in." "Only start getting worried if the seizure is over ten minutes." (Ten minutes! I'd be hysterical by five minutes!) But we'd never seen it before, so we were scared to death.

In any case, we've resolved to stay with her all day tomorrow (or today. rather) -- maybe a little walk with her and Shelby in the morning, then (depending on how much sleep she gets tonight) some TV and a lot of PediaPops. We're not out of the woods yet -- we couldn't get a urine sample last night to check and see if her fever was bacterial -- but at least she's asleep now and her temperature's down. I'll be waking her up in a few minutes, at midnight, to give her infant Tylenol, and then hopefully she'll sleep all night. ROTK can wait -- Viggo ain't going nowhere for a little while.

Your New Favorite Song, Part 4.

Saddle Creek is selling the stellar A Christmas Album by Bright Eyes to benefit the Nebraska AIDS Project. There's a version of "Blue Christmas" for download and below, in case you're not converted yet, a stunning version of "White Christmas" -- i.e., your new favorite song.

(By the way: does anyone ever download these things? Do you like them? Hate them?)

After Waking, #1.

The wheel of responsibility lies caked on birds' wings. Eyes open to a flutter, the image passes in silence. We are too tired to think. Hands are washed daily. An opacity in the current, a tremor in the stream, and the world rests on shimmer.

No Smurf Names This Time!

I have no shame:

RIDING CROP: You love precision, but like to have some fun as well. You are flexible in your sexual relations -- you usually just go for the scary show and have a sweet and soft interior, but when the right person fires you up, you can leave marks!

What kinky toy are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

LOTR Mania.

I can't even begin to imagine how much this signed book would go for -- nine days and counting.

Still, you could go for a cheaper alternative: a Gollum photograph signed by Andy Serkis (you folks did watch The Taming of Smeagol documentary, didn't you?), an autographed poster for $18.99, an autographed photo with 12 signatures for $29.99, or (okay, this isn't cheaper) a display case with the One True Ring, signed by Frodo, Sam, Gollum and Sauron ($450 and counting). Wouldn't these make great gifts for your Ringgeek loved ones?

(Speaking of mania, Madeline and I already have our advance tickets for ROTK on the 18th.)

(And speaking of better gifts, particularly for Viggoheads: Mr. Mortensen himself is a co-editor of Twilight of Empire: Responses to Occupation, and he's in fine company here, with Medea Benjamin, Mike Davis, Amy Goodman, Amir Hussain and Ambassador Joseph Wilson, among others. It's out on his own Perceval Press.

And if you're not in the mood for anything explicitly political -- Aragorn has been quite outspoken many times, bless him -- his book Coincidence of Memory features his paintings, photographs and poetry.)

Stinker of the Year.

(Stinker Of The Year, of course, does not mean it's the worst album of the year. I'm sure Clay What's-His-Face or Limp Bizkit or Blink 5150 released something head-shakingly bad, but why bother? I'm a total music snob; they're beneath me.)

I was originally going to award the most disappointing album of the year award to Liz Phair's self-titled record. Almost all of the Matrix-produced tracks, particularly "Rock Me," are indeed horrible beyond belief. With her voice all processed beyond recognition, and the lyrics ("Baby, baby, baby, if it's alright / Want you to rock me all night" goes one chorus) truly insipid, Liz Phair is quite bad, certainly according to her previous standards. But at least some of the tunes are... well, fairly catchy, even if you don't like Avril Lavigne.

No, the most disappointing album of the year goes to Radiohead's Hail To The Thief. It's a morose, humorless slog through boredom and dread and and paranoia, with moans and mumbles of consumerist conflagration and military apocalypse. One gathers that this is all meant to be important, but not with the same epic sweep as OK Computer, or the sonic novelty of Kid A. This is dull, affectless playing and singing, and while I'm sure Radiohead may have meant it that way, I'm not sure that the album was supposed to sound so passionless, with the songs practically devoid of melody. (Check out Christopher O'Riley's very good True Love Waits for abundant evidence of the latter.)

I've always liked Radiohead -- from the indie-rawk Pablo Honey all the way to the odds-and-ends-y Amnesiac -- but Hail To The Thief is a step backwards in their otherwise impressive musical evolution and reinvention. Signs and portents abound, but here the world ends with Thom Yorke's whimper.

[Up next, maybe next week: the best albums I heard all year.]

Some Random Thoughts on Adobo.

1. I was walking down the street -- on St. Francis Boulevard in Daly City, as a matter of fact -- one day in 1995 when something in the air literally stopped me. It was the unmistakable smell of garlic, vinegar, and soy sauce, and I found it remarkable because (the thought occurred to me) I had never smelled it before. Not literally, anyway, and let me digress a little before I explain.

2. I've been thinking a lot lately about the smell of adobo. Anthropologists have always prioritized only two or three of the human senses (hearing and seeing, not to mention talking), and the sense of smell always ends up taking a back seat. But smell is crucial to adobo -- the sting of vinegar in the nostrils the minute after you pour it into the simmering pot, the murky, deep smell of chicken cooking after the second hour of cooking - so much so that it's instantly recognizable anywhere else.

3. My brother and I were chatting on the phone about adobo (he lives in Philly), and I asked him how often he cooked it. His response: "Meron akong kapitbahay, ano?" [Loose translation: I have neighbors, you know!"]

4. In contrast, Leny Strobel's poem gets it absolutely right:

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

5. It's an unambiguous declaration of ethnic presence, an olfactory attack on the mainstream: We're here and you can smell it.

6. But to get back to my point in #1 about never having smelled adobo before: when I was growing up in the Philippines, adobo was just always there, another smell in the entire panoply of smells and odors and aromas that constitute the Philippines: garlands of sampaguitas, turned-up earth after a monsoon rain, lechon sarsa, tuyo, tricycle exhaust, sewage, kalabaw dung, and adobo. That unexpected whiff on a foggy Daly City day (which is practically every day) jolted me out of my suburban ennui.

7. So I wonder whether the smell of adobo in the U.S. is the same anywhere -- not the literal smell that, judging from the different variations posted already, I am sure would differ -- but whether it means the same everywhere else. It certainly didn't for me in the Philippines. Does it have the same meaning in Saudi Arabia? In Hong Kong? In Rome? Is it truly emblematic of Filipino identity in the "diaspora," or is it only in the United States that an immigrant population -- with those T-shirts that say, "Love, peace and adobo grease" -- has embraced adobo as the national (or transnational) food?

8. Unlike kare-kare -- which plunges you into the ground peanuts vs. peanut butter debate (I take a third way: the Mama Sita way) -- adobo creates little controversy, unless it's your neighbor furiously at work with a can of Glade in the hallway. (This really happened. We hated her anyhow.)

9. Unlike other Filipino dishes that are used to establish the borders of cultural difference in a sometimes ugly fashion -- I'm thinking of balut and dog meat here -- adobo is uncomplicated, a symbol that at once signifies everything (identity, colonialism, ethnic pride) and nothing, or rather, nothing but itself.

10. It's also uncomplicated in a literal sense as well. The great thing about adobo is the relative transportability of the ingredients, particularly if you're going for the simplest recipe. Unless you're stuck in the middle of nowhere (as do many Filipinos now, alas) without even a bottle of Kikkoman in sight, adobo is fairly easy to cook. (As a former classmate once scoffed when hearing of my cooking abilities: "It's the one dish any Filipino male learns to cook!")

11. And with that, this Filipino male gets up to stir the pot.

[I've gone ahead and collected not just blog entries posted today, but links sent to via e-mail or the comment box and entries posted since the "call for entries." If you wish to be delinked (or have your description changed), please let me know.

I'll be updating the list again tonight -- if you folks want a copy of the list below (all html-formatted so you can simply edit your entry and append it), then drop me a line.

And don't forget, folks: people mingle at parties, so please write comments or response entries when you can...]

Adobo Party People:

On 'Aiha’a, a recipe for turkey adobo.

Joffin-Mari Baril on how life is a pot of adobo.

BatJay writes on adobo power -- twice -- praises his partner's cooking, and ponders python adobo.

Michelle Bautista has adobo for Thanksgiving (thankfully not the kind with spit in it, and not moose adobo either).

Gitz Cano on adobo memories.

Veronica Montes says, "Adobo, you will be mine."

On On My Plate, a recipe for adobo-flavored garlic fried rice.

Rhett Valino Pascual with his adobo haynaku, and more musings on adobo.

Barbara Jane Reyes gets someone to fix her computer.

Jose Reyes with his recipe for Italian adobo.

The Sassy Lawyer with six adobo recipes.

Leny Strobel with more hay(na)ku, and musings on the origins of adobo.

Eileen Tabios delurks with an adobo poem -- and something on "licking, biting, chewing.... swallowing".

Jean Vengua on "adobo weather" and adobo as "a dish of magical realism."

Sunny Vergara writes about the smell of adobo.

How New Is New?

I don't usually pay attention to the Grammies -- their irrelevance is notorious, though I do know people who are still from the "she won a Grammy, so her music must be good" school -- but this boggles the mind.

From the Grammy website itself:

Best New Artist (For a new artist who releases, during the Eligibility Year, the first recording which establishes the public identity of that artist.)

* Evanescence
* 50 Cent
* Fountains Of Wayne
* Heather Headley
* Sean Paul

What do they mean by "public identity?" I mean, 50 Cent already had hits in
the late '90s, and so has Sean Paul! And Heather Headley won a Tony Award in 1998! Most incomprehensible of all is the fact that the critically acclaimed debut album from Fountains Of Wayne came out in 1996 -- heck, I feel like I've been humming "Sick Day" forever.

Does "new" not mean "new" anymore? And who exactly constitutes this "public" -- the viewers of Total Request Live?

If that's the case, then let the "Best New Artist Grammy for Guided By Voices" campaign begin.

Adobo Day, December 8.

Don't forget, folks: December 8 is adobo Day!

Those of you participating can drop me a line at wily [ a t ] thewilyfilipino.com on Dec. 8, and I'll send all the links to you in a formatted list to append to your entry if you wish. (I've also been keeping track of a bunch of adobo-related entries being posted in blogs so far.)

I Have The Coolest Smurf Name Ever.

Thanks to the Smurf Name Generator, I have the coolest Smurf Name ever -- cooler than "Stews In His Own Gravy Smurf,", cooler than "Lemon-Fresh Smurf."

I am Hannibal Smurf.

I will write it again: I am Hannibal Smurf.

Five afterthoughts:

1. Aimee, if you're reading this: check out Viggo Mortensen's Smurf Name. You will die.

2. It kind of sucks that my brother will also be Hannibal Smurf. Sorry. I am the Hannibal Smurf.

3. Orlando Bloom is Drippy Smurf.

4. Tom Cruise is Fetid Smurf.

5. I am the Hannibal Smurf.

Short Note on Jollibee.

Barbara's been writing about Jollibee lately, so I thought I'd respond via the blog. Jollibee is indeed owned/founded by a Chinese Filipino. Interesting, though, that she kind of equates it with colonial mimicry: Jollibee stared down the McDonald's onslaught in the mid-80s with an advertising campaign that was "nationalistic" in thrust -- that Jollibee was the real Filipino fastfood. (McDo was seen fairly early on as emblematic of American identity -- and the coolness factor was such that the beautiful people, at least in the early 80s, would be hanging out at McDo for their pre-clubbing snacks.) In any case, the nationalistic ad campaign struck a nerve, and to this day Jollibee has been trouncing McDo in terms of market share. (It also helped that it offered greasy chicken and pansit palabok and that its spaghetti was a little sweeter, just the way Filipinos like it.)

So yeah -- the fast-food franchise model may have been derived from McDonald's, but there was a very conscious effort to portray the fastfood (and its corporate identity) as Filipino. Maybe not "a stronghold of heritage, a monument of Filipino victory" as they unironically describe it on their website, but still...

Happy knows more about this; maybe he can respond.

Aftershower #1.

Expedited delivery:
The tap on the window
Memos for your consideration
Sharpened pencils in a row

It's standard operating procedure:
The detritus of clips
Spinning in my chair
The clash of deodorant
Rising above the tide

Consider it done:
I hear motorcycles in the woods somewhere.
The muted gentle buzzsaw
The sapper and tick of horses
Wind and river and jangle of quarters
Soil and dapple and rubber stamp

More Quizzes.

Seer


The ULTIMATE personality test
brought to you by Quizilla

Because, unlike Rhett, I don't dress provocatively when I go out.

I do have a stunning revelation for Rhett: I have never seen an episode of Star Trek, original version or TNG or DSN or whatever else there is. Never ever. Bits and pieces here and there, yes, but I can count the number of times on my fingers, and I can tell Picard from Spock and... that's about it. (I did see Star Trek on the big screen when it first came out though. Wasn't Persis Khambatta in it, muttering something about "V-ger?")

I did learn BASIC back in 1983, but the most complex routine I learned to program was having the computer spit out random cards from a 52-card deck.