The Wily Filipino

"The Whiff of Urban Legend."

Can't find Leny's e-mail address, so this'll do. (Hope you're reading this!)

She's suspicious of the ideological import of Peter Landesman's recent Sunday Times article, not to mention Nicholas "White Knight" Kristof, but there's even more: a nice long post by Daniel Radosh, with a few updates, on some fishy sections in Landesman's article, and Jack Shafer relating how Landesman went ballistic (plus links to his previous pieces). Via Gawker, of all places, but they do get serious every now and then.

Irregular Link Roundup.

The thing that sucks about work is that it takes time away from blogging. =) Okay, I actually do try to work all the time -- a lot of people think that professors go play golf on the days they don't teach -- but classes are finally starting tomorrow, which means you'll be seeing less of my posts from now on.

Anyhow, some great reads for your perusal:

Mark: What if the Lord of Rings were made by Pinoy showbiz denizens?

MacDiva: Bill Janklow gets thirty days -- while other people, as always, get the short end of the stick.

A couple of music-obsessed essays, one from Jaguaro.org and another from Blogcritics.org.

And finally, Jordan Davis's long-awaited essay on Robert Pollard is online!

More Comment Spam.

Wrote this last night:

Right now I'm just too angry to think straight. Got back home from the faculty party to discover that I'd been bombarded with something like 100 pieces of comment spam.

I'm on 56 kbps dialup, and at the rate that I'm going -- I'm just taking a breather right now -- it seems like it'll take me over an hour to finish deleting the comments. (They're not just little lines, either; they're a whole series of urls on Vegas casinos or something.)

Right now I'm seriously considering taking the weblog down -- the comments are taking up space on my server, which I pay good money for, while these pissant motherfuckers continue to bombard me with their shit. I mean, Jesus, they hit every one of my entries from a year ago! And I don't want to just delete the comment tags off my template either, because I don't know whether my comments all disappear forever. (I've tried setting my comments to "closed" but it doesn't seem to work.)

Fuck these people. You deserve to rot in the same circle of hell reserved for Cheney and Ashcroft.

[Update: Found him on whois.us. This is the asshole who spammed me yesterday:

Registrant Name Jay Kim
Registrant Organization Unknown
Registrant Address1 24 Finchley Road
Registrant City London
Registrant State/Province Not Applicable
Registrant Postal Code 10024
Registrant Country United Kingdom
Registrant Country Code UK
Registrant Phone Number +1.1111111111
Registrant Email e-webmaster@support24x7.biz

Fuck you, Jay Kim.]

Further update: just managed to turn off the comments by upgrading MT and editing the comment listing template (not the main index template). That's it -- if any of you want to reach me you can e-mail me via the address in the right column.

Further update, even after that: nope, it still doesn't seem to work.

Even further update: okay, maybe I overreacted a little. But David Raynes's method of damage control works for now. Anyone can still comment, I think, but only on the entries still on the index page. (And I was pretty close to simply deleting mt-comments.cgi so people would get a 404 error if they clicked on it.)

"Bigger than King Kong with a 45."

Um, here's a letter I received via e-mail concerning a "Roco Tshirt and Fund Drive" for Philippine Senator Raul Roco's presidential candidacy. Santayana's heart, I guess, is in the right place, though, as he puts it, I wouldn't understand the theory since I haven't been in the area:

Challenge

In case you didn't know, there's an election this coming May in the Philippines, and that we launched our Roco Tshirt and Fund Drive to support the candidacy of Senator Raul Roco for President of the Philippines.

If you also didn't know, before oldtime actor Fernando Poe, Jr. entered the contest, Senator Raul Roco consistently topped the Ibon and social Weather Surveys as the possible winner of this coming election. To get more support into real votes for Raul Roco come election time, we need to keep the voters reminded that Raul Roco is still the best and most qualified candidate who can restore the local economic foundation of the Philippines. To do that, we need to remind the voters the reasons why they are poor. Hey, if they are not poor - who will sell their votes, join the New People's Army, and then kill and be killed in a civil war so that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front can secede Sulu, Palawan and Mindanao with the help from the United Nations and help from some in the USA.

We also need to remind them that the Philippines was sold to the USA and can be sold again. If you didn't know, some in the USA wants Mindanao and that Malaysia wants Sabah for $80 million. If you didn't know, the Sultan of Brunei along with some Hong Kong Chinese were caught hoarding land in the Philippines! In retaliation, RP Congress made citizenship a requisite to owning land which got us into dual citizenship.

Surely, there are still others out there who are bent on making the Philippines cheaper if not poorer. To this end, they need to create a peace and order situation. In the movies, that's a US-CIA specialty. If somebody can become the Timi Yuro of the Philippines, maybe Jose Ma. Sison wants to become the Stalin of the Philippines while he satisfies his senses in the red light corners of Amsterdam. The partnership of these two alone is formidable, what more Osama Bin Laden's drug dealers, Al Qaeda/MILF and his corrupt cops or licensed-to-kill and mercenaries around the world?

The challenge here is, can you join us in making the Philippines rich? Making the Philippines rich is a no-brainer. If you did not know, (Raul Roco - Biodata) Senator Raul Roco finished college Magna Cum Laude at age 18, became a lawyer, took his masters in University of Pennsylvania, and was conferred seven honorary doctorate degrees.

Can this Peacemaker get this country above water? Because this country is naturally rich, with a lot of support, a good six months as President is all that is needed.

In case you didn't know, the reason why people hoard land in the Philippines is because there's lots of oil and gold in the Philippines. In fact, I am sure the USA bought the Philippines from Spain not because they wanted to offer the natives as entertainment to licensed hunters nor to train expert assassins with live targets. (Although I think they readily left because they have nothing more to learn from our natives about jungle survival.) Nope, I think they did because of oil and at that time there was no free trade nor open market policy. So the oil industry got the US to buy the Philippines.

The encouragement and entertainment: the military will have intelligence to bully the world; no - to dominate the world and preserve world peace; ain't that neat.

Why? I think because the prevailing bias at that time - the KKK - they are superior because of their white skin. It can't be any other way; it's because of their white skin. It's their shining armor! It's not because they're bigger than King Kong with a 45 and alcohol on the other. In fact, they're the only ones who plays football where they readily die practicing and perfecting the "sport". I don't think that's because they wanna maintain their claim to superiority; nope.

But the encouragement and entertainment was, to support that claim to superior white skin, they needed oil. No oil, no military presence and intelligence. No military power, no superior white skin. So they bought the Philippines.

You wouldn't understand this theory if you haven't been in the area. They could not say because of oil and gold because that is like telling everybody I found gold in California. They got to say something and get Congress to cut the deal.

How come they left without oil? Because they thought it was in the Muslim territory plus at that time, they did not have offshore drilling.

The Roco Tshirts will be given free-of-charge to all members of Aksyon Kabataan under the umbrella of Raul Roco's Political Party - Aksyon Demokratiko, then to jeepney, taxi, bus, and tricycle drivers, sidewalk and cigarette vendors, wet market vendors, college students in Manila, then all over the Philippines. These tshirts will have "kay Roco ako" in front and in the back "ako rin".

This Tshirt Project is huge and we can't expect to do half of what is needed without you, your friends and your connections valued support. Can you imagine a million tshirts at a $1 a piece! Without you and your friends support the tasks increases. Should you grant us your financial support, thanks, any amount will be greatly appreciated, and please write your check or money order payable to:

NYSBCAA (New York San Beda College Alumni Association)
189 Settlers Hill Road, Southbury, CT 06488
Attn: Fundraising Committee
Sonny Santayana, (702) 804-1848, S472005@yahoogroups.com
Art Montesa, (516) 785-5151, artmontesa@yahoo.com
Antonio Abad, (203) 510-3400, aaabad@msn.com

Because we volunteers4roco work for free, all funds will be sent to Raul Roco's Aksyon Demokratiko Headquarters in the Philippines to pay for the tshirts already in the pipeline, poll watching expenses and Court Fees (in case). Please help. A dollar or two can go a long way.

Sincerely,
Sonny Santayana, Las Vegas, NV 89144 - (702) 804-1848
S472005@aol.com

Your New Favorite Song.

Since Jean has been all over the Captain recently -- Beefheart, not Kangaroo, R.I.P. -- I thought my mp3 offering should be something similar. Instruments and musical lines careening all over the place (though they're apparently all notated), free-jazz skronk combined with garage sensibility, gravelly Howlin' Wolf-like vocals, Surrealist lyrics from art-damaged blues songs: Trout Mask Replica (and of course, Don Van Vliet himself) is truly one of a kind; I can't say I've ever heard anything else like it, period.

You don't really hear as much gravel on "Hobo Chang Ba;" supposedly this was the Captain's attempt to sound Asian, whatever that means. (I seem to remember a Wire magazine article a while back where one of the Magic Band members tells the writer that the song was indeed about wandering Chinese immigrants riding the rails in the West Coast.)

Anyhow, the song is one of my favorites (of many) from the album, if only for the chorus and the lines "The ocean is my mother / And the freight train is my paw."

(As usual the file will only be here for a couple of weeks or so, then it's gone forever.)

Irregular Link Roundup.

Happy: my old school. And check out those new icons! Pahingi!

Joffin: no, she's not pregnant yet.

The Accordion Guy: the post that started it all.

Eileen: potty training and puwetry -- I mean, poetry.

MacDiva: a statue of MLK, and plastic surgery -- "[Plastic surgeons'] case loads are disproportionately Asian and Asian-American, and, as the black middle-class grows, African-American."

O-Dub: you've probably already seen it, but Oliver has an entry on Mingering Mike.

Tram Spark: "The ghosts I think will never come"

Barbara: "hues of blood sunset pearls"

Margaret Cho: I'm sure you've read this elsewhere; folks, send love her way. (No wonder the right hates "the liberal intelligentsia" -- these people are just plain fucking stupid.)

and Bellona Times: see the 1/8 entry. Can Asian American Studies professors like Elvis? Yes they can.

More Spam Poetry!

Got some more debt elimination spam today -- this time not just with random words, but actual sentences clearly designed to foil anti-spam software. (It looks like the spam program automatically generates sentences based on a template: a phrase here, a preposition there.) The following two paragraphs were tacked to the bottom of the ad:

Now and then, near test honor upon compendium over. Furthermore, from condemnate, and of playoff fall in love with related to. I from squalid toward, or behind assimilate around. Any sky can of, but it takes a real chevron to nearest henry over. Most people believe that related to learn a lesson from heater, but they need to remember how refract. Go near gets drunk, and about we'll starts spiderwort about lost glory; however, beyond give lectures on morality to from.

Now and then, of operate a small fruit stand with treachery around. When around uproot returns home, inside sweeps the floor. Together living with is careen.

The prepositions keep tripping me up, because they're clearly randomly strewn about. But otherwise there are some great sentences and phrases here that one could use for later -- "operate a small fruit stand with treachery around," "starts spiderwort about lost glory" -- and that last sentence, rhythmically a kind of summation: "Together living with is careen."

Beer Tasting Notes: Trois Pistoles.

I promise never to say anything bad about Canada again. For our Chinese New Year party, my colleague Isabelle brought her partner Antoine, who brought bottles of wine and six bottles of beer from his favorite brewery in Montreal.

Beer: Trois Pistoles.
Brewery: Unibroue.
Appearance: Deep, dark body, substantial foamy head.
Aroma: Pleasant fruity, cherry-like aroma.
Flavor: Mostly caramel at first, then dried fruits and brown sugar as you slosh the beer around in your mouth, then a slight bittersweet aftertaste.
Summary: Stellar beer with complex flavors. When you pour it out wait for the almost purply lees at the bottom. Best drink lots of water afterwards, for this puppy is nine percent alcohol, and comes in a 750 ml bottle. (The label -- name in Fraktur, a dark winged horse over a church -- looks like something off an Emperor album.) In a word: delicious.
Rating: **** (four stars)

Unfit.

Found an extensive snippet from my book that some of you might appreciate:

As early as 1898, the inimitable Philippine Commissioner Dean Conant Worcester, then still assistant professor of zoology at the University of Michigan, was already asking: "Can we refuse to accept the responsibility which the logic of events has thrust upon us?... Can we not withdraw and leave the civilized natives to work out their own salvation? There can hardly be two answers to this... for their utter unfitness for self-government at the present time is self-evident." Three months later, he was summoned by President William McKinley to join the first Philippine Commission, where they wrote, in their first conclusion regarding government:

The United States can not withdraw from the Philippines. We are there and duty binds us to remain. There is no escape from our responsibility to the Filipino and to mankind for the government of the archipelago and the amelioration of the condition of its inhabitants.

The Commission also underscored the eventual granting of "independence after an undefined period of American training," but the impossibility of self-rule at that time had already been established. Less than a month after arriving in the islands as part of the Second Philippine Commission, then-Commissioner Taft would write a friend: "The great mass of them are superstitious and ignorant.... They are cruel to animals and cruel to their fellows when occasion arises. They need the training of fifty or a hundred years before they shall even realize what Anglo-Saxon liberty is."

Speaking of people unfit to rule, President Smirk is going around again pretending he's the "Education President," promising "an extra $33 million in the approximately $12 billion Pell Grant program to give $1,000 more per year to low-income students who complete a rigorous high school curriculum."

Considering the fact that he actually froze the maximum award last year -- after promising a raise during his past presidential campaign -- makes this new "promise" even more brazen.

Brief Encounter.

Just saw Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, and it is indeed every bit as good as the critics say it is.

Madeline and I were in an art store waiting to pick up something.

I said, pretty much out of nowhere: "So what did he whisper in her ear? Or maybe we weren't supposed to hear?"

Madeline replied, "I don't think we were supposed to hear."

The woman at the counter suddenly turns around and asks, "Are you talking about Lost in Translation?" (Later on she added that that scene made the movie for her.)

It is indeed an excellent scene (they share something with each other that's only theirs, and not even the audience's), but I equally liked the various shots of Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson driving -- or more importantly, being driven around -- while the neon lights of Tokyo flash "indecipherably" all around them. They were oddly reminiscent of the long freeway scene in Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (there are about two or three similar scenes in Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Goodbye South, Goodbye and, come to think of it, some film maybe by Jon Jost about a father teaching his son to hunt, the title of which I can't remember right now) where it simply evokes the boredom of going nowhere. (Granted, Tarkovsky probably wanted the extended driving scene to symbolize some inarticulable spiritual journey, or silence in the face of the infinite, which isn't exactly the same in Coppola's movie, as we generally see shots of Murray's craggy jet-lagged face instead...)

Impossible?

This is one of the more depressing reads I've seen in a while. If it seems too unreal, consider the fact that the sheer brazenness of the regime's lies is mind-boggling, and yet people don't seem to see through them. Consider the fact that the Bush "presidency" has been worse -- way worse -- than anyone could have imagined back in 2000.

Could this scenario happen? There's no reason to think that Bush and his cronies couldn't be planning anything like Reagan's October Surprise.

Five Answers.

I think the questions were too difficult, as not many people wrote answers. Well, here they are, but you'd have to wade through my various digressions:

1. This California-based lite jazz pianist dedicated one of his compositions on a 1985 album to Ninoy Aquino. Who is he?

I was initially tempted to write a long answer about how, in the eighties (the last time I was really familiar with the Philippines), the Filipino music scene has always been interestingly divergent from the American Top 40, despite what the Apo Hiking Society sings in "American Junk;" and this would have meandered into a discussion of the odd absence of hiphop from Pinoy radio airwaves, despite its seeming centrality to Filipino American youth culture; and CityLite 88.3's spearheading of the entire lite jazz scene, making a (yuppie) household name of Jim Chappell, who is virtually unknown in the United States, and who is probably eternally grateful to all those Manilenos who pestered Odyssey and SM into releasing his hard-to-find albums, with which I would have argued that such yuppie trappings was somehow culturally "necessary" for a disillusioned middle class (in the '80s) to differentiate itself from everyone else, considering that so many of the so-called professional and lower classes had gone overseas at that point, and that the kind of "sophistication" that jazz, in its various forms, connoted, was an important marker of Filipino upper middle-class consumption, and that this could also be seen if one analyzes the content of ads featured on an aggressively "A-market" radio station like CityLite as compared with, say, a more "downscale" 93.9 WKC, and that this would have been all still tied up with the glamor of English which still seems to be the only language used on FM radio, making Jeremiah Junior's voice and accent the default template by which all DJs are reckoned, and such that even a Tagalog ad on Citylite would sound jarring, considering that even the tracks from Filipino artists which Citylite would play in the early days would also be in English, with the exception of some stuff like Labuyo's classic "Tuloy Pa Rin Ako;" and 99.5 RT's valiant defense of the New Wave, when they played such willfully obscure singles like "C.R.E.E.P." by the Fall, "Chamber of Hellos" by Wire Train and the gorgeous "More to Lose" by Seona Dancing, and how RT fell into ignominy by switching to a godawful Top 40 format, despite the fact that their spearheading of the New Wave was instrumental in getting jeepney radios to play music from China Crisis and the Cure, and even my junior-senior high school prom's theme was "Feels Like Heaven" by the Fiction Factory, which goes to show how triumphant New Wave's entry was into the provinces; and the inexplicable success of Mike Francis and Fra Lippo Lippi, acts which are, once again, almost completely unknown in the United States, the anonymity of which is evident in sporadic postings on the soc.culture.filipino and rec.music.filipino newsgroups asking where to find their albums in the U.S.; and how, in many cases, the Philippines has anticipated many trends, since the ridiculous "Macarena" was poisoning Filipino airwaves at least a year before it hit the U.S., and how Everything But The Girl was already huge in the Philippines long before "Missing" came out; and that most of the time the Philippines may be really taking its cultural cues from Europe, filtered through Hongkong and Taiwan, with this reflected in the Giordano and Pink Soda shops all over Manila malls; and I would have wrapped it all up by asking whether anyone remembered such "hits" as "My Heart Keeps Beating" by Blind Date, or whether anyone knew why someone bothered to release singles like "See My Dreams Around," "Swiss Boy," "Hypnotized," "6 to 8," "Sahara Nights," and the makabagbag-damdaming "Body Dancer." But I digress. The question refers to "Hymn for Aquino," found on the David Benoit album "This Side Up."

2. In another Marcos-era rumor, the president allegedly had the borders of a province redrawn so that its shape would look like his profile. What was this province?

You folks haven't taken a look at a Philippine map lately, have you? The "correct" answer is Kalinga-Apayao, two subprovinces joined together in 1966, I think. Check it out: that swath of Bryclreemed hair shares borders with Cagayan Province. By the way, the rumor isn't true. But then again the regime lied about a lot of stuff.

3. Aside from their showbiz backgrounds, what do Rogelio de la Rosa and Eddie Ilarde have in common?

They were also both senators -- just in case one thinks that Loren Legarda, Noli de Castro, Tito Sotto, Ramon Revilla, Bobby Jaworski, and Freddie Webb were fairly recent anomalies in Philippine politics. And now Jinggoy Estrada, Pilar Pilapil, Bong Revilla, Jay Sonza, Lito Lapid and Jamby Madrigal are following suit. Yay.

4. Six people were killed here in January 1970; seventeen years later, in January 1987, thirteen people also lost their lives in the same location. What place is being referred to?

Ferdinand Marcos and Cory Aquino may be different presidents, but the murder of students and farmers at Mendiola Bridge haunts both their regimes.

5. In this controversial 1989 film, actor Daniel Fernando goes to Manila to do two things: to look for a job, and to look for his sister, played by Princess Punzalan, whom he unexpectedly discovers working at a brothel. What job does he end up getting?

He was employed as a macho dancer, in the film of the same name. Not the best Lino Brocka film, though, because it's ultimately derivative at heart, and Brocka has a better eye for political repression. But amidst the cheesy saxophone music in the background, the many lovingly-filmed soap-and-shower scenes between Fernando and Alan Paule have a kind of gaudy but erotic transcendence, and it's where the film shines. The film ends in tragedy, of course, but it stands firm in its belief of the power of redemptive luv.

Karaoke.

Everyone's writing about karaoke: Veronica, Michelle (twice!), Barbara, and Leny (three times!). We should have had a karaoke blog party!

I have never done solo karaoke. Really. The closest I ever got to actually singing was when my brother and I (in the privacy of my folks' bedroom) would sing along tunelessly to America's "I Need You" as videoke played on the local cable station. (They always have some random woman -- either an Asian woman on the beach, or an Eastern European woman wandering around old buildings -- in these videos.) Then there was Nerissa and Lito's karaoke party last year, but only Zack, Richard and Robyn had the guts -- or the temerity =) -- to dare sing solo. (Oh wait, Lucy sang "Tomorrow" from Annie, complete with arm gestures.) And that's it. You will never see me sing solo. Ever.

So I'll cop out by quoting something, though it's not about karaoke, from anthropologist Fenella Cannell, in her essay on Bicolanos in "The Power of Appearances" (in Vince Rafael's Discrepant Histories, but you'll do better to read her entire ethnography Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philippines), where she writes, contra simple Bhabhaesque mimicry, "...the apparent 'imitation' of American forms actually constituted a subtle and ironic exploration of the possibility of accessing the power of the imagined American world, through self-transformation."

There is a particular elan about carrying off well a song in this foreign language, especially solo. It is, it appears, a small act of triumph; a small act of possession of this culture which largely excludes the poor. At the same time, there is a kind of nostalgia which attaches to it when sung in this context; not the nostalgia for an autumn leaf in a place on the other side of the world which evades the imagination [in reference to the song "Autumn Leaves"], but a nostalgia for the fragility of this act of possession, perhaps of any acts of possession; the difficulty of appropriating fragments of this culture as your own.

This reminds me of a Tagalog phrase I haven't heard in years: "plakadong-plakado." It's somewhat "obsolete" because there are probably few people in the Philippines nowadays who would play a "plaka," i.e., a vinyl record, but the point should be clear -- it refers to the capacity to, okay, "mimic" the studio sound of a record, or at least to replicate it in a live setting.

There's a nice use of it here, in a review of a Freestyle concert:

They did covers of Incognito, Mike Francis, Monica, Des'ree, Monday Michiru, Eric Gadd, Will Smith, Michael Jackson, George Michael and Next. And no matter whose songs they did – you could actually close your eyes and not know the difference. It was, in local parlance: plakadong-plakado.

One could argue that it's not necessarily mimicry -- perhaps that would even be reading too much into it -- but technical mastery that is strived for and applauded. Those videoke machines that give out points reserve the highest scores for people who can hit the same notes unerringly.

Ramble: Do Filipinos hear and listen differently? When Filipino musicians are hired overseas, is it not because of this plakado quality, the capacity to sing faultlessly in English, a language that they can speak better than the people of their host countries? (Damn, this ties up really well into long-simmering ideas for future research -- I just need to get the turn-of-the-century colonial topics and 9/11 stuff out of the way...)

More on Language.

Grrr. My weblog has somehow ended up on some Google-harvesting site (you can probably see it on the list of referrers on the right -- some site I won't link to called Jokemata.com) for "filipino joke racist." What's worse, about three people have actually clicked it, looking for stuff. Granted, it may have been some academic looking for stuff to teach about in her class. =)

Well, people looking for jokes to tell behind their Filipino co-workers' or classmates' backs will be disappointed. Fuck off. (Although I guess you have every right to say them behind someone's back, as long as that's all you do.)*

Speaking of "fuck," America's lawmakers are busy protecting the nation from it -- and more besides. Here is the full text of H.R. 3687, introduced last December by Representatives Doug Ose (R-Calif.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas):

108th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 3687

To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

December 8, 2003

Mr. OSE (for himself and Mr. SMITH of Texas) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

A BILL

To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, is amended--

(1) by inserting '(a)' before 'Whoever'; and

(2) by adding at the end the following:

'(b) As used in this section, the term 'profane', used with respect to language, includes the words 'shit', 'piss', 'fuck', 'cunt', 'asshole', and the phrases 'cock sucker', 'mother fucker', and 'ass hole', compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).'.

END

I love the way Ose and Smith try to encompass all the possible grammatical forms, though I've frankly never seen the word "ass hole" split up like that.

Their proposed amendment was in response to the FCC's ruling last October (and I'm taking this from the FCC's memorandum) concerning "the 'Golden Globe Awards' program, during which the performer Bono uttered the phrase 'this is really, really, fucking brilliant,' or 'this is fucking great.'"

As a threshold matter, the material aired during the “Golden Globe Awards” program does not describe or depict sexual and excretory activities and organs. The word “fucking” may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities. Rather, the performer used the word “fucking” as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation.

I think I'd have to agree with the FCC chair, Michael Powell (no, not that Michael Powell), on this one. (He asked his fellow commissioners to overturn the October decision.) Just about the rarest use of the word "fuck" in R-rated movies is in reference to the sexual act**; even folks who say "Fuck me!" mean it as an expression of disbelief, and not as an imperative. Otherwise, "fuck" is used more as an adjective ("fucking cool") or an adverb ("I am fucking getting wasted tonight") or a disparaging noun ("that racist fuck") -- and if used as a verb at all, it's used as a synonym for incompetence ("He fucked things up") or being in a bad situation ("I'm totally fucked"). (Speaking of Filipinos, Tagalog has all these infixes, and English doesn't -- except for words like "fanfuckingtastic," as popularized in the Oscar-winning tearjerker Terms of Endearment.)

And now that I've pushed my First Amendment rights to the polite limit: this is all just quibbling with semantics -- for a more serious look at language, see Buzzflash's excellent interview with linguist George Lakoff. (I bet the Students for Academic Freedom are all over him -- yet another politically outspoken linguistics professor!)

*Though as Wittman Ah Sing says in Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey:

All my life, I've heard pieces of jokes... that they quit telling when I walk in. They're trying to drive me pre-psychotic. I'm already getting paranoid. I'm wishing for a cloak of invisibility. I want to hear the jokes they tell at the parties that I'm not invited to. Americans celebrate business and holidays with orgies of race jokes.

**Although one of the most memorable uses of the word in recent film history was as the final word of Stanley Kubrick's final movie, and that was meant sexually.

Beer Tasting Notes: Molson Canadian Lager.

Back before "shock and awe" and Governor Arnie, when things were really dire here -- oh wait, it still is! -- Madeline and I would joke around about moving to Canada. (A good friend of mine moved to eastern rural India last year "to get away from Bush's America.") After all, Canada has a great health system, the biggest mall on the American continent (with more submarines -- inside the mall! -- than the entire Canadian Navy, supposedly), some of the funniest people in the world (Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, Mike Myers, Alan Zweig), and the greatest thing to come out of the rather dismal city of Toronto, with David Cronenberg a distant second -- what's not to love?

But then there's Molson.

Beer: Molson Canadian Lager.
Brewery: Molson.
Appearance: Golden yellow-red.
Aroma: Rubbery and unpleasant.
Flavor: A little unbalanced, with a lingering bitter aftertaste.
Summary: Small head, no lacing. I'm supposing this is the Canadian counterpart to an American macrobrew, though (see above) I had higher hopes for it. If you don't drink and watch (not play) hockey at the same time there's little point to drinking this ever again. (Labatt's Blue, on the other hand, was a classic grad student drink -- and that at least counts for something, in the same way that David reminds me that Bud Light is Robert Pollard's favorite beer.)
Rating: * (1 star).

Phone.

San Francisco, 2003

Beating April 15 to the Punch.

Just did my itemized deductions -- photocopying fees, gasoline, mailing, hotel expenses, airfare, books, every bottle of water I ever bought at conferences -- in less than an hour and a half.

I rule.

Five Questions.

Answers will be posted a week from today.

1. This California-based light jazz pianist dedicated one of his compositions on a 1985 album to Ninoy Aquino. Who is he?

2. In a Marcos-era rumor, the president allegedly had the borders of a province redrawn so that its shape would look like his profile. What was this province?

3. Aside from their showbiz backgrounds, what do Rogelio de la Rosa and Eddie Ilarde have in common?

4. Six people were killed here in January 1970; seventeen years later, in January 1987, thirteen people also lost their lives in the same location. What place is being referred to?

5. In this controversial 1989 film, actor Daniel Fernando goes to Manila to do two things: to look for a job, and to look for his sister, played by Princess Punzalan, whom he unexpectedly discovers working at a brothel. What job does he end up getting?

A to Z.

The folks at Postal Blowfish have lots of time on their hands, and this little time-waster is an alphabet of one's favorite musicians:

A   Aphex Twin
B   The Beatles
C   Current 93
D   Miles Davis
E   Eraserheads
F   Fushitsusha
G   Guided By Voices
H   PJ Harvey
I   Susie Ibarra
J   Rickie Lee Jones
K   Kronos Quartet
L   Luna
M   Merzbow
N   New Order
O   Oasis
P   The Police
Q   Queen, I guess
R   R.E.M.
S   Matthew Sweet
T   Talking Heads
U   U2
V   The Velvet Underground
W   Tom Waits
X   XTC
Y   Yo La Tengo
Z   John Zorn

Difficult letters:

C -- Coil? John Coltrane?

P -- arrgh, with Pavement and the Pixies...

S was difficult, having to choose between Frank Sinatra, Superchunk, Bruce Springsteen, and the Smiths.

And being forced to pick Tom Waits over Stevie Wonder -- not good.

(I bet I know what Barbara's A to Z will look like: A for A-ha, B for Bon Jovi, C for Culture Club, D for Duran Duran...) Ha!

Beer Tasting Notes: Bud Light.

My first encounter with American beer was in April of 1982, in my first year of high school. I and a bunch of guy classmates at the University of the Philippines Rural High School had somehow ended up in a dirt clearing on Mt. Makiling overlooking the UP Los Banos campus. (Our Agriculture 1 teacher -- and future high school principal -- was there as well, pontificating about how there was nothing wrong with 12 and 13-year olds drinking alcohol. On campus grounds. Outdoors. In the presence of the future principal.)

Someone -- I can't remember who -- pulled out from a beat-up Jansport backpack the Illicit Holy Grail, one I'd only seen on the top shelves of PX stores in Dau, Pampanga: one warm can of Bud.

I wish I could turn this story into some object lesson about American neo-imperialism, or the lure of Western commodities, but no. We all took turns passing the venerated can in a circle, rationing the sips of Bud. (I was one of the last people in the circle, so all I got to drink was probably mostly backwash at that point.)

Obviously no one got drunk. All I remember, though, is that the unfortunately-named Thompson Tongacan (there you go, you get your first Google entry!) turned completely red, and I thought this was natural.

Oh, and I remember thinking that it tasted like crap. It sure tastes pretty crappy still.

Beer: Bud Light.
Brewery: Anheuser-Busch.
Appearance: Very pale yellow.
Aroma: Barely there.
Flavor: A hint of a nutty aftertaste, then it's gone.
Summary: Anemic head, typical of cheap American lagers. Quite light indeed, with hardly any body or sting in the mouth. Refreshing in that sense, but you might as well drink beer-flavored water. Drink only when very thirsty.
Rating: 1/2 star.

Guilty.

A month or so ago I saw an odd advertisement in my university's student paper. I don't remember the exact wording, unfortunately -- something to do with criticism of the Bush government in a class other than one on U.S. presidents -- but the ad asked students to report their offending professors to the head of the local chapter for Students for Academic Freedom (in this case, one Paula Reilly). Intrigued, I looked up the SAF and found that it was the student arm of David Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights."

I sympathize somewhat with Paula Reilly, since it can't be very easy for conservatives like her at SF State. The birthplace of the Third World Strike, SF State has its share of "tenured radicals," and particularly in a city like San Francisco, conservatives are generally in the minority.

What is obviously so hypocritical about the SAF is how catchphrases like "academic freedom" and "intellectual fairness" and "hostile learning environment" and "intellectual diversity" (nice hijacking of terms there) are bandied about as a claim to some sort of equality, when they are so clearly clamoring for a conservative, anti-liberal voice. I don't think we'll see an article entitled "How a Right-Wing Professor Violated My Rights" listed on their website anytime soon. What is clear is that "academic freedom" masks an attempt to specifically restrict any criticism of their President and his government's policies.

It's quite a user-friendly website, actually, as it even lists possible violations of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure (by the American Association of University Professors) on their online complaint form:

- Required readings or texts covering only one side of issues.

- Gratuitously singled out political or religious beliefs for ridicule.

- Introduced controversial material that has no relation to the subject.

- Forced students to express a certain point of view in assignments.

- Mocked national political or religious figures.

- Conducted political activities in class (e.g. recruiting for demonstrations).

- Allowed students' political or religious beliefs to influence grading.

- Used university funds to hold one-sided partisan teach-ins or conferences.

Add to this the other "principles" as listed in their pamphlet:

If, for example, a professor strays outside the subject matter of the course to make comments that convey contempt for conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats, the religious or the non-religious -- that is unacceptable.

If a professor remarks in no particular context that the President is a "moron" (as happens more often than one might expect) that sends a powerful message to students who belong to the President's party that they are unwelcome in this classroom. Such behavior is unprofessional.

If a professor grades students using political criteria, or because the student, though understanding the course work, does not agree on a partisan issue, that is unacceptable behavior.

If a professor cancels his or her class for a protest, or attempts to recruit students for a political demonstration, that is unacceptable.

What is most disturbing about the SAF is how it turns its followers into junior Encyclopedia Browns. It's one thing to report complaints, e.g., let SAF know the date and time your professor called George Bush a moron, but it's another to "research faculty bias" by digging up voter registration records. (Yes, you're supposed to create a spreadsheet for each department!) Horowitz has a lot of nerve claiming his "Academic Bill of Rights" isn't about creating political quotas when the sleuthing above is meant to address just that perceived problem.

(See also his article on a "conservative blacklist," where he writes:

At the beginning of April, after the United States and Great Britain had liberated Iraq, and after the streets of Baghdad were filled with Iraqis celebrating their freedom, the Academic Senate at UCLA voted to "condemn America's invasion of Iraq" by a vote of 180-7. Such a politically partisan vote would itself have been regarded once as an abuse of the university, more appropriate to a political party than an institution devoted to scholarship and research. But the more extraordinary fact was that in a nation where 76% of the population support the war after the fact, 95% of the faculty senate at a state-funded academic institution were passionate enough in their opposition to "condemn" it.

The absurd under representation of conservative viewpoints on university faculties obviously does not happen by random process. It is the result of a systematic repression (and/or discouragement) of conservative thought and scholarship at so-called "liberal" institutions of higher learning.)

I am, quite frankly, guilty of various infractions related to the above, except for the parts specifically dealing with students, i.e., grading or forcing them to adopt a certain point of view. (I'm proud to say that students, including those who disagree with me, have praised the openness of discussion in my classes. As a student of anthropology I've always prioritized looking at issues from different viewpoints.) I teach in an Asian American Studies department, in the one and only College of Ethnic Studies in the country, and -- well, I cannot see how one in my position can comply with most of the "requirements" above.

Take the war on Iraq, for example (yes, I have mocked Bush before, but that was at an anti-war rally, and not in the classroom. Maybe I even called him a moron.): discussion of the Chinese Exclusion Act or, more importantly, Japanese American internment will now always be informed by the targeting of Middle Eastern (and, heh, "Muslim-looking") immigrants since 9/11. (I do include a pro-exclusion text, but there's little in it to defend, but we do discuss .) And if I don't bring the war up -- and quite frankly the connection has to be made -- one of the students inevitably will.

I have allowed, even welcomed, people to invite students to rallies (at the very least), and I have participated (gleefully) in "partisan teach-ins or conferences." (Suffice it to say California's fiscal situation has, in any case, prevented the use of funds for those purposes.)

At the peak of the anti-war rallies last year, things got quite heated between the students in my Anthropology class (I'm shared by AAS and Anthro), and it got to the point where -- this will sound terrible -- I had to excuse myself from participating in the debate because (and I obviously didn't tell the students this) I couldn't guarantee objectivity in the classroom anymore. (I simply wasn't interested in what the pro-war folks had to say; I could turn CNN on any time of day and get their viewpoint.)

But it was an obviously controversial topic that did indeed have much bearing on the subject of my class, and students certainly seemed willing to discuss it. Do I still bring up the war on Iraq? No, because I'm more sensitive to the fact that people may not share my views. Can the students discuss Iraq, even if they have opposing viewpoints? Of course they can, especially if the students have opposing viewpoints; I just keep out of the debate. (In one of my AAS classes the students actually requested that we suspend discussion of the text at hand and just talk about the invasion, which had happened that week.)

But the fact that I was worried that I would get in trouble if I had the class discuss Iraq was, I think, indicative of the climate that people like Horowitz have fostered. (I kind of broke my promise the next semester by assigning an ethnography on Iraqi women in a rural village -- with no mention of the war, of course.)

So there you go, Paula Reilly: I'm guilty -- guilty of being a person for whom my place in the academe and in my community are largely inseparable. I try, as all professors must, to separate them when necessary. But I'd like to think that students don't go to school only to get their degrees and get out. College students are, I think, generally more aware that "real life" does, and sometimes must, intrude into schooling every now and then; the SAF, in contrast, are welcome to stay within the narrow confines of their little campus public square.

Your New Favorite Song.

Here you go: Two minutes and nine seconds of snarled, snotty, sloppy punk from Thee Headcoatees -- in this instance, a cover of the Undertones classic "Teenage Kicks" -- that makes all those neo-garage posers look like, well, posers. From the 1997 album Punk Girls.

Hear it. (1.97 mb)

New Section; New Series.

I've accumulated enough postings in a particular category to create a new one; see "puwetry," on the right. (I'm rather embarrassed, by the way, to somehow have been included in the EPC Blog List -- I suspect this is Nick Piombino's fault -- because I only really read poetry, and not even that much of it.)

And I'm announcing the beginning of a new series among a whole slew of aborted series -- partly in homage to the dear-departed WinePoetics -- beer tasting notes! (Don't take this seriously; I know nothing about beer except that I like to drink it.)

All beers will be tasted in this much-treasured glass:

(No, I don't own one of those cool British pint glasses, though I'll break out an actual Weizen glass every now and then.)

Yessiree, it's a pint glass from Comix Experience, during the Mad Bastards tour (the Union Jack is supposed to spell out "Mad Bastards," but the design didn't work). That's right -- Ellis, Ennis, Hollingsworth, McCrea, Morrison and Robertson were there. I think -- I'm probably only imagining that Steve Dillon was there. (All six of them arrived at the store in a tiny black convertible; very cool.) I got my Invisibles #1, Transmetropolitan #1 and Hellblazer #41 signed. (Geek.)

Tomorrow: more mp3 download mania!

G.I. Joke

Great to see that Mad Magazine hasn't lost its touch.

Quick Trivia Answer.

No one seems to have answered my question about Lenny Bruce: What are the first three words of Lenny Bruce's How to Talk Dirty and Influence People: An Autobiography?

The answer: "Filipinos come quick."