The Wily Filipino

Your New Favorite Song.

It's the end of July, which means it's the unofficial end of Covers Month here. (But given the fact that I was gone almost half the time, it's a miracle I managed to post anything at all.)

Too bad -- I would have loved to have had more time to pull out some more cover songs, familiar and unfamiliar, from my boxes of burned mix CDs around here: Radiohead doing "Nobody Does It Better," Elvis Costello doing "Poplife," Prince doing "A Case of You," Richard Thompson doing "Psycho Killer," Lisa Loeb singing "Keep On Loving You," Natalie Merchant singing "Space Oddity," and so on.

So I end this month with a non-cover, made "famous," I guess, because it was covered by R.E.M. and buried, uncredited, as a hidden track at the end of their best album, Lifes Rich Pageant -- and was associated closely enough with R.E.M. so that non-diehard fans yelled "Sellout!" when it appeared in an IBM ad.

I know very little about The Clique (I just couldn't be bothered to look them up on the atrocious revamp that is AMG), but I like their sound: bubblegum-era rhythms, the constipated vocals (at least until you get to the bridge, sung in unison), with a garagey, ramshackle feel to the instruments. "Superman," in any case, is a nice precursor to the Police's stalker anthem "Every Breath You Take."

Next: the month of August has no official title to its theme, except that it's something along the lines of "Why aren't you listening to these people?" "You," of course, is the tricky part here, since I have no idea who downloads the mp3s -- jaded indie vets who own every Deerhoof EP, maybe.

Hear it. (3.6 mb)

Comments?

Passwords.

For copyright reasons, I have to figure out different passwords every semester for each class with readings on electronic reserve. Let me tell you, it all becomes a blur after a while:

The word "*****" [deleted from post] will work fine as a password for your AAS 363 class this Fall. Here is a list of passwords that you have used in the past:

WITCHVEIL
ANTHRONIGHT
FLIPID
RICEDOG
ETHNODOG
CORNDOG
GOLLUM
SMEAGOL
HOKEY
POKEY
anthrodog
FLIPDOG

You may want to keep this list as a reference, as you cannot reuse any of these passwords (or slight variations of them) for future course web sites.

Sincerely,

Reserve Book Room Staff

Too bad: I really liked my Gollum/Smeagol combo for a couple of Asian American Culture sections. Hokey/Pokey was a poor spur-of-the-moment substitute.

Comments?

The Price of the Pullout: Even More Deportations.

I can't find the original article anywhere online -- the Daily Tribune's archives seem to be down, and the other Philippine papers aren't carrying the story -- so I've decided to post the whole thing here (since it's circulating via e-mail anyhow):

IN THE AFTERMATH OF RP PULLOUT IN IRAQ US to deport 300,000 Pinoys By Michaela P. del Callar Wednesday, 07 28, 2004 Daily Tribune

The US squeeze is on, despite denials from American officials and their claims of a continuing strong relationship with the Philippines. The United States is expected to intensify its crackdown on illegal Filipino workers following Friday's deportation of 89 Filipinos, a ranking Foreign Affairs official said yesterday.

They were sent back home for various offenses ranging from over-staying, assault, car theft, fraud, extortion and drug-related cases. They served time in jail before being sent back to the Philippines, authorities said.

"We expect more Filipinos to be deported," the official, who declined to be named, said.

There are about 300,000 Filipinos in the US absconders' list.

A source said US Immigration officers have already informed Philippine officials they will be deporting Filipino absconders every three to four months.

The DFA source hinted broadly that the recent deportation of Filipinos could be the US government's way of retaliating against the Philippine government on account of President Arroyo's decision to bow to the Iraqi terrorists' demands to withdraw the Philippine troops from Iraq, a move that has been criticized by international allies as well as the international media, all whom claimed that the precedent set by Mrs. Arroyo was dangerous and placed the coalition forces in Iraq in greater peril.

The DFA official also questioned the timing of the deportation of the Filipinos, which was done a few days after the 43-member contingent was withdrawn from Iraq.

Earlier, BusinessWorld reported that a US commodity loan, in the amount of $20 million that was expected by the Arroyo administration failed to push through, as US agriculture officials were said to have refrained from forging a memorandum of agreement that would have allotted the Philippines $20 million under the US Public Law 480, owing to Washington's disappointment over the pullout of Filipino troops from Iraq.

Although Philippine authorities downplayed this US loan removal, saying the country can do without it, its absence presents a serious loss of funding for projects reportedly get their budget from the PL 480 commodity loan program since beneficiaries of the PL 480 program can either augment their local inventories of rice, corn and wheat or use sales proceeds to fund agricultural projects.

The Philippines and other developing countries compete for benefits under the program, whose terms include a payment period of 30 years and a 1 percent annual interest.

It was also admitted by the incoming Agriculture Secretary Arturo Yap that the removal of the US commodity loan would mean additional budgetary pressures for the government.

The Cabinet-level Investment Coordination Committee on July 13 approved the signing of the loan document for a $20-million commodity loan to cover about 41,000 metric tons of rice. The Philippines last year got $40 million worth of surplus commodities under the program.

"We will have to look at other sources (to fund the projects). At this point of a high deficit we have to catalogue ODA (official development assistance) projects and evaluate foreign-fund sources," Yap was quoted as saying.

The Tribune also recently reported US officialdom was mulling over the idea of issuing a travel ban against the Philippines on grounds of a serious terrorist threat against American nationals and business establishments, allegedly based on intelligence reports, which would serve as strong message from the US government to the Arroyo administration of its "displeasure" over Mrs. Arroyo's decision to pull out the troops in Iraq, bowing to the demands of the Iraqi terrorists. The Philippines is now seen as "the weakest link" in the global war against terror by the international allies.

Diplomatic sources also intimated to the Tribune that the Arroyo administration can kiss the promised helicopters for the Philippine Air Force goodbye, as they are not forthcoming, as a result of the Philippine pull-out.

The same sources pointed out that the word they have been getting is that there would also be US visa restrictions implemented and that even personalities closely identified with the Arroyo administration, including police and military generals and their families may be denied visas.

It was not clear how the US Embassy can deny Arroyo officials visas, especially if they travel with a red passport, on official mission, or a blue diplomatic passport.

Further sanctions that may be imposed, the sources said, could cover restrictions on particular exports or imports, a denial of US assistance and aid as well as a denial of loans and, if need be, investments. The sources also told the Tribune that US officialdom is "not happy at all" at the defiant stance Mrs. Arroyo has been taking, and was especially "pissed" with her statement made in her State of the Nation Address last Monday, where she said if she had allowed the hostage Angelo de la Cruz to die, his death "would not have changed Iraq for the better."

International allies have placed the blame on the Philippines for the upsurge in kidnappings by terrorists, which they publicly say has placed the coalition forces and the Iraqi interim government in more danger. The terrorists have also used as example the Philippine pullout of troops as a means to get the governments of the kidnap victims to either break their ties with the US-led coalition forces or cease doing business in Iraq.

The criticisms from allies have not stopped. The latest scathing remarks on the decision of Mrs. Arroyo to bow to terrorists' demands came from an editorial published in the Asian Wall Street Journal, entitled "Putting the world at risk."

AWSJ pointed out that her giving in to the demands of the Iraqi terrorists emboldened them to take more hostages.

"Mrs. Arroyo seems sadly oblivious to the consequences of her folly. On Friday, she only made matters worse by arguing that the Philippines should be considered a special case because it has more workers -- an estimated 1.5 million -- in the Middle East than any other nation. According to her logic, those large numbers give Manila the justification to cut and run, while other countries are left to cope with the consequences.

"The President's insistence that her actions were 'driven by the supreme interest of the Filipino people' showed a warped sense of national priorities...They are all at greater risk, now that Mrs. Arroyo has shown the terrorists how profitable it is to hold a Filipino hostage."

The humanitarian mission was pulled out from Iraq, about a month before the expiration of its tour of duty on Aug. 20 to heed to demand of Khaled Ibn al-Waleed Brigade in exchange for the freedom of Filipino De la Cruz. De la Cruz was freed a day after the Filipino troops left Iraq.

The Philippines has drawn sharp rebukes from the US as well as Australia for bowing to the demands of terrorists.

After the pullout, the US said it will review its relations with the Philippines. US Ambassador to Manila Francis Ricciardone went back to Washington for "consultations" with US officials on the matter.

Australia, on the other hand, criticized the Philippines for being weak. It also blamed the Philippines for the latest terrorist threat against Australia.

And here's a press release in response from the Support Committee for the Cuevas Family:

Advocates of Recent Filipino Deportees, the Cuevas Family, Call for the End of Unjust Deportations as Filipino Deportations Increase Post-Philippine Troops Withdrawal

Contact: Robyn Rodriguez (510) 209-9428.

Union City, CA--Only a few weeks after the tragic deportation of the Cuevas family of Fremont, California another 89 Filipinos were deported last Friday from the United States.

Philippine officials report that an estimated 300,000 Filipino immigrants are being targeted for deportations from the United States. Some even suggest that deportations, as indicated by the most recent mass deportation of 89 last Friday, might be a retaliatory measure on the part of the U.S. against the Philippines’ withdrawal of troops in Iraq. The troop withdrawal led to the release of Filipino migrant worker Angelo de la Cruz who was held hostage by an Iraqi group.

According to Robyn Rodriguez, immigration scholar and convener of the Support Committee for the Cuevas Family states, “Though it is likely that increasing deportations are linked to the Philippines’ troop withdrawal, the reality is even when the Philippines was staunchly allied with the United States earlier on in this war, the Bush administration was already targeting Filipinos for deportation. Since 9/11, the U.S. government has indiscriminately criminalized and demonized all immigrants, regardless of national origin”. Rodriguez continued, “Immigrants have been scapegoated in the name of ‘national security’ in an attempt to draw attention away from the United States’ international isolation in its global war on terror and the government’s failure to effectively deal with economic recession at home”.

Advocates of the Cuevas family are calling members of the Filipino community to continue the fight against unjust deportations. Executive director of Filipino Community Support (FOCUS), a community based organization in San Jose and coordinator for the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON) states that, “We have to continue fighting against the unjust deportations of our community members. Our experience in the Cuevas case proves that we need to continue to build our collective power in order to demand for the immigration reforms we deserve”. Mendoza continued, “We can draw inspiration from the struggle to free Angelo de la Cruz in Iraq. ‘People Power’ can work. Angelo was not freed because of the Philippine government’s humanitarianism; he was freed because the Filipino people rose up and pressured the government to intervene on his behalf”.

The Cuevas family, supported by nearly 200 organizations and over 3000 petitioners, campaigned for personal legislation from first Senator Feinstein then Senator Boxer to allow them permanent residence in the U.S. They had been living in the country for nearly 20 years when they were ordered to depart. Despite widespread support and media coverage, neither Senator supported the family. Yet, shortly before their departure, Senator Feinstein released a public statement noting her support for another immigrant family.

Cuevas family advocates are joined by Philippine-based organizations like Migrante International in calling for justice for Filipino immigrants in the United States. Meanwhile, Cuevas family advocates support Migrante and its allies’ call on the Arroyo administration, and all “war on terror” coalition members, to recognize and prevent the grave human costs suffered by all migrants, like the Cuevas family and Angelo de la Cruz, in this time of war.###

Comments?

Day 5.

I came home last night to find Oscar committing yet another misdemeanor (a different kind this time).

This morning is cooler. There is no food to be had at the conference center (everything is either closed or not running: the cafeteria, the shuttles, the dorm office), so rather than have vending machine Skittles or Reese's Pieces for breakfast, a bunch of us drive out to a Waffle House about a mile away. Tony Cordova -- the youngest-looking 55 year-old I've ever met -- and I sit with each other. He talks about being a percussionist & jazz singer (and life as a son of the Cordovas); I of course sit there fascinated.

Then it's off to one last panel: Eloisa Borah on the commissioners at the Fair, and Sharon Delmendo on photographs of the fair as "colonial snapshots." (I'm also embarrassed by the number of plugs my book keeps receiving throughout the conference; my identity as self-effacing professor can't take it.) Sharon and her mother and I (and later, Marie and Joyce) make our way back to Metrolink for a ride downtown to the civic center, accompanied once again by Cardinals fans.

And so a few hours later, I'm typing this in a Cheers bar at the STL airport. The Giants are leading, and I'm still digesting the greasy pepperoni pizza I had for lunch. It has finally rained a little, so the long humid spell has been broken. No music stores, alas, so I can't buy my Nelly CD. (I read that J-Kwon is from STL too.)

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Day 4.

Mostly panel discussions today. Jean continues to amaze me, with a fascinating paper on Filipino American bands with the Redpath Chautauqua Traveling tent show. (I was just reading her piece in Interlope last night -- .)

Annalissa's paper on the U of Michigan archives prompts a germ of a project: a secret history of American cities and towns, a Philippine archaeology of our traces on the American landscape.

After the panels, Marie Sulit (who works on Ely Mabanglo), Joyce Ramirez (who works on "Philippine diasporic philanthrophy," and gave a fascinating paper about it), Annalissa, Jason and I decide to go visit the Arch. We hop on the Metrolink, walk through the parking garage and the park, and there it was: all 630 feet of Saarinen-designed steel and concrete.

It's a lot smaller than I thought, but it's magnificent regardless; the clouds would drift across the sky and be reflected on the arch's surface. We go through security and check out the Westward Expansion Museum, where Annalissa is met by an overenthusiastic ranger (he wanted his picture taken with her). It isn't particularly exciting visually, but well-detailed in historical content; we notice as well that the font for the 1898 section (there are separate display panels for each year of the 19th century) has been changed, and it's clear that someone -- maybe Filipino, perhaps Cuban or Puerto Rican -- had demanded it be changed.

Then we finally get onto the tram into the Arch; we're stuffed into these tiny ferris wheel-like pods that look like they come straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Saarinen had to design special elevators to be able to move up in a curve.) The view is great, although the observation deck windows are deceptively smaller -- almost like a castle's arrow slits -- than they look from below. (Outside you can see the stadium, where the Cardinals are playing against the Giants; I discover later, on the Metrolink going home, that the Giants won, and I am cheerfully booed by the train riders for being a San Francisco resident.)

Our sightseeing done, we come down and walk back out through the park to get some dinner. Familiar music is coming from somewhere; I recognize it as Liz Phair's "Never Said." "It sounds like a CD," someone says. Jason says, "No, it's live drums." "Maybe it's a Liz Phair tribute band," someone suggests. "What if it's really Liz Phair?," I say skeptically, thinking there was no way Liz Phair could be in St. Louis.

So finally Annalissa asks a passerby who's playing tonight. "Liz Phair," the woman answers. We walk down to the edge of the park and see a few hundred people sitting on the lawn in front of the stage.

A few minutes later, I am 8 yards away from Liz Phair's bare feet. She looks great. I still can't believe I'm so close to the stage. She plays "Mesmerizing," "Fuck and Run," "6'1," "Divorce Song," some songs from the latest album, (we skip "Why Can't I," walking away in horror, in order to get drinks), and ends with "Supernova." I stand there with a huge grin on my face, the monument above us arcing into the night, a cold glass of Foster's in my hand. It's a perfect summer evening. We are thrilled. It's a free gift from the wonderful city of St. Louis. (To top it off, a fireworks show followed.)

That's little Liz there (my Zire doesn't handle the dark very well, so she looks really tiny). I feel like buying a Nelly CD just to celebrate St. Louis.

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Day 3.

My talk goes well, even if everything starts almost half an hour late, and the registration booths are only just being set up. (FANHS conferences seem like seasonal miracles every time, especially for organizers who do this voluntarily.) The panel is top-heavy with anthropologists; Eric Casino (with a great paper on Worcester and the bifurcation of Filipinos at the fair) and Albert Bacdayan (who, as it turns out, worked with all the legends at the Cornell Southeast Asia Program). (I panic when I'm told, just before I get on, that I actually have 30 minutes, since it's a plenary session; I stretch my talk out to a little over 15.)

From then on, I cruise the hallways: I hang out with Annalissa Herbert, SFSU alum and historian; we gossip about governors-general of the Philippines in the early 1900s and a certain former employee of the University of Michigan.

I finally meet the legendary Mike Price, postcard and ephemera collector extraordinaire. He gives a disappointingly short but fascinating slide show (he thought he had only 15 minutes) and argues about the primacy of the commercial aspect of the Philippine Reservation. Mike is a friend of my folks, with a zillion connections with people in Los Banos. (He's one of three people I've met at the conference, actually; another person, Dick Solis, was the spitting image of his brother Dan who attended the Church Among the Palms in Los Banos.)

(Mike, as it turned out, was the person who jumpstarted my interest in oral history; back in the '80s, when I was still in high school, he gave my dad copies of photo postcards of Los Banos from the 20s. And so I, armed with a tape recorder, marched out and interviewed LB oldtimers, showing them the photos and eliciting their stories about them.)

So Mike, Annalissa, Jesse Gavilan (who is working on U.S. Navy families) and I pile into Mike's van and drive to the Missouri History Museum to check out the World's Fair exhibit.

And then we embark on our challenge: to find the spot where the Philippine Reservation stood, exactly a hundred years ago. The official LPE map is oriented upside down, from south to north, and almost all the buildings were demolished. But we find it: the Puente de Espana (built across the now non-existent Arrowhead Lake) is at the corner of Wydown and DeMun, in Clayton. Much of the Village land is now expensive residential homes; we wonder if there are any artifacts buried in people's backyards. A good chunk of the Concordia Seminary is also on Reservation grounds, so we stop at Concordia Park. The map tells us that it's probably the site of the Negrito (Ayta) Village; Mike recognizes the topography of the landscape -- covered with manicured greenness now, barren and dusty, with a few thatched huts a century ago. We walk to the oldest tree we can find -- something, anything that was there -- and touch it, perhaps for luck, perhaps to feel the ghosts inside.

(A sign on the lawn says "Clayton Leash Law Prohibits Dogs Running Loose.") We run into a guy walking his dog, and it turns out he was a former Wydown Igorot, the mascot of Wydown Middle School. Unfortunately, he has no T-shirts or pennants with the mascot (I would have bought them off him), which was apparently phased out only a couple of years ago. Then we head over for dinner at Jimmy's at the Park, a restaurant that would have been right at the Visayan Village. No dog meat on the menu, though.

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Day 2.

Much better, now that I have the bus and Metrolink schedules fixed (or so I thought). Plumbed the archives, looking for photographs and World's Fair catalogs and magazines; worked myself to a nauseated state looking through months of the Post-Dispatch on microfilm. But now I have a whole stack of photocopies and notes to add to my article.

Here's an excerpt from a spectator's letter to his wife, dated June 20, 1904 (from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company Collection):

I went up to the Philippine Village to-day and saw the wild, barbaric Igorots, who eat dogs, and are so vicious that [they] are fenced in, and guarded by a special constabulary. They are absolutely naked, men and women, with the exception of a towel wound around their loins and up through legs. They have a wild look in their eyes, and are deathly afraid of cameras. The officials will not allow any one to take snap shots of them, for it arouses their ire and they will throw bolos, knifes or spears at anyone attempting it. It seems that to them it is an omen of bad luck to be photographed, and they leave when they see a camera.

...They are the lowest type of civilizatIon I ever saw and thirst for blood... In the Moro village the men and women are not so barbaric, though they are vicious -- the name Moro signifies "head-hunters" and it is said they always lop off the heads of their victims...

Also hung out with my apartment-mate, Jess Tabasa, from Watsonville -- just about the friendliest guy here -- and we talk on and on about his life as part of the Bridge generation. Later on we walked half a mile back to Breakaway Cafe; the waitpeople not only remembered me, they also told me that they overcharged me last night! Later on, after a few beers, we can barely calculate how to split the tab.

Oscar Penaranda turns out to be our third apartment-mate; he commits a misdemeanor within ten minutes of coming through the door.

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Day 1.

I am probably five minutes away from sunstroke, though I don't know it yet. I am also in the wrong part of St. Louis, but that's very clear.

Three hours' sleep on a redeye flight will turn anyone into a sourpuss, so I shouldn't be complaining, especially since this conference was organized long-distance and via volunteer work (and my flight was, amazingly, paid for by my university). But it's overcast, it's in the low nineties, and it feels like there are wet cloths strapped to your arms. Metrolink has somehow broken down, forcing the already grumpy passengers to keep switching trains. Everything is farther than I thought, forcing me to walk a mile in noontime heat from the station to the Missouri Historical Society Library. (The STL Art Museum is a wonder, though, even if you have to slog through a lot of golf course to see it.) The UMSL shuttle never arrives, and so I end up in a maze of wrought-iron fences and dead ends and playgrounds and libraries before I get to my dorm.

For an indigent Cal State faculty member like me, the dorm was perfect: it was dirt cheap, it was one (free) shuttle bus ride away from the conference (as opposed to a taxicab ride away), and all I had to do was to share the bathroom. Indeed, I had it better than others, who have to live the real dorm life in one of the other dorms (I had an "apartment"), complete, I suspect, with boomboxes at 2 a.m. and potsmoke fog in the corridors.

Well, I got what I paid for. The place is clean and livable enough; aside from problems with my keys, it would have been just fine. The trouble was, there were few amenities to speak of: no toiletries, no garbage cans, no phones, no toilet paper, no shower curtain -- almost all of the things you don't pack unless you're going camping.

This would have been all fine if it weren't for the fact that there was nothing around. (The nearest place to eat -- closed for breakfast, unfortunately -- was a restaurant half a mile away, which I do recommend if you're ever in STL: the Breakaway Cafe, on Natural Bridge Road.) The nearest convenience store-type place was in such a decrepit neighborhood about a mile away, full of check-cashing places and liquor stores with bars on the windows and boarded-up buildings. I walked there anyway, and when I mentioned this to the RAs they all said in unison, "No! Don't go there!" (But I really wanted some Church's Chicken!)

Right now, at least, I'm alone: I don't have to talk about my work when I'm sorely lacking sleep, I don't have to think of recent New Yorker articles I read so I can cleverly slip them into conversation. I can sit in my boxers and type this on my Palm Pilot with my door open, and I can complain like an ingrate.

So I don't know what's up with St. Louis. I know there's a downtown, with the arch and all, and the Library was spectacular (photocopied some cool pictures of the Philippine rez too), but I haven't seen the arch yet. Maybe tomorrow after I go through the Post-Dispatch from 1904.

(The people, though, are exceptionally friendly: the numerous people on Metrolink, the bus drivers, the waitresses -- I'm not sure you see people go out of their way like this in SF, for instance.)

But at least I'm alone. I'm alone, as well, to immerse myself in hot water and lounge around in the bathtub. But then I remember that T. Coraghessan Boyle story in the summer fiction issue about him swimming in an (unknown to him) filthy pool at night. So I get out quickly.

Comments?

Your New Favorite Song.

I have no reason, really, for uploading this track, other than the fact that it shouldn't work, but it does.

To subject The Band's "The Weight," with all its mythic American resonance, to the analog chill of the Moog synthesizer just seems plain wrong. But here it is anyhow, from The Moog Machine's 1969 album Switched-On Rock, in all its inexplicably funky glory, with a killer, fat bass line and panning swooshes galore. Bunuel and Christian redemption aside, only the melody remains.

Hear it. (3.4 mb)

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Pullout.

I can't believe it's really happening. Though the whole operation is still shrouded in ambiguity, a direct consequence of the government-imposed news blackout -- are they all returning, and is it going to be by July 20? -- it looks like Philippine troops are indeed being pulled out from Iraq.

To be sure, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is doing this to save her ass as well. Activists in mass rallies, politicians, newspaper columnists -- I include the Philippine Daily Inquirer's strongly worded editorial here as an example -- all called for withdrawal from Iraq.

My dad (we were all debating this over breakfast) swore up and down that there was no way the Arroyo government would "concede to the terrorists" -- by the way, it's "conceding to reason," as one journalist put it -- because the Philippines had too much to lose. But loss of contracts and military support aside, I argued, don't mean anything to the public right now; if an instant poll could be taken, the overwhelming majority of the Filipino people would vote for the withdrawal of troops to save the life of one man. And so, it seems, Arroyo has done.

But as Congressman Teddy Casino of BAYAN put it:

She seems to think that it would be far easier to explain to the U.S. her action on the hostage situation than to appease an angry public in case Angelo dela Cruz dies.

(It isn't every day a former classmate of mine -- and former fellow UPLB Perspective staffer -- gets quoted in the New York Times.)

So I'm not going to be celebrating any moral victories here, or championing the Philippine government's "taking a stand" against an unjust war. Already Arroyo's congressmen are busy worrying about appeasing Uncle Sam. ("You do understand why we're doing this, right, Daddy?") Still, it's worth it -- for now -- to see the Coalition of the Willing get their knickers in a bit of a twist.

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Your New Favorite Song.

There are a couple of misplaced covers on Diana Krall's otherwise uniformly excellent -- no, really, it's her strongest album in years -- The Girl in the Other Room. One is a superfluous cover of her hubby's "Almost Blue" -- you would have thought that she (or Everything But The Girl, whose disastrous cover was on the execrable Acoustic) would have learned from Chet Baker how "Almost Blue" should be done. (See the Let's Get Lost soundtrack for details.)

The second wrong-headed cover is her slinky version of Tom Waits' "Temptation," completely lacking the wheezy, lurching, barroom ambience of the original. Sorry: Tom don't do slinky.

Speaking of "slinky" -- bad segue here, I know -- the Smashing Pumpkins' slinkyish cover of my favorite Depeche Mode song makes the original sound even more sinister. I've never been able to figure out what it's about: drugs? Sex? Riding in a car? What's the deal about "wearing the trousers?" Is it a companion piece to "Behind the Wheel?" Anyhow, Billy Corgan's strangled whine of a voice is great here, still suggesting Dave Gahan's detached monotone; along with the restrained guitar work (dropping the original synth riffs), it makes for a perfect cover.

Hear it. (5.6 mb)

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51 Soldiers.

I imagine that all it takes is one phone call to pull out the already largely-symbolic Philippine "humanitarian mission" out of Iraq to save Angelo de la Cruz's life. That's fifty-one people -- not entire battalions of marines or mercenary-type security guards. Surely it can't be too difficult to withdraw now, or even a month before their slated departure (August 20).

At this point, it does not matter -- certainly not to his kidnappers -- that the poor de la Cruz is simply a truck-driving OFW and is not involved in combat; the salient fact is that the Arroyo administration is still kowtowing to Bush's illegal war of occupation and is still happy to send OFWs to their uncertain fates in Baghdad, hoping to reap some "postwar" petrodollars.

The real tragedy here is that this could have been avoided. Filipinos are neither invincible nor innocent of any crime -- we may know the latter to be untrue, but the kidnappers, I imagine, don't see this. All they see is Gloria tripping over her heels to join the coalition of the willing, and that is enough.

Burning Effigies.

Borgy Manotoc is one of Swatch’s signature models, and the other day in the Philippine Daily Inquirer there was a full-page photo spread / entertainment column on him. There he was, modeling Olympic-related Swatch designs, posing with boxing gloves or a bow and arrow.

Tim Yap wrote:

Borgy Manotoc is on a roll these days. Back from New York for just the weekend to pass the Swatch torch... Borgy made sure that his three days in Manila would be worth the trip.

As soon as he arrived, he made a pit stop at Nuvo for a quiet drink with friends. The next day, he was at the Swatch counters... Who can say this hot-blooded heir does not know the meaning of hard work?

I am trying very hard to read some sense of irony in the article. Here, “hard work” seems like George Bush’s “hard work” serving his country during the Vietnam War. (Granted, a 19-20 hour plane flight and having to work while jet-lagged out of your mind is tough, but I’m sure Borgy wasn’t flying economy.) But his good looks (and brains, according to reports), and industriousness and perseverance and all the accompanying virtues surely aren’t the main reasons he’s gone so far; he is, after all, Ferdinand Marcos’s grandson and the life of privilege he has led all his 21 years devalues the semantic currency of “hard work.”

I really have nothing personal against Borgy Manotoc; he may, in fact, be the nicest, most self-effacing guy on earth. He may even be embarrassed about his grandfather. Indeed, one can easily use the “sins of the fathers” argument against me: Borgy, after all, was not responsible for Ferdinand’s crimes.

But I am more interested about the fact of his celebrity, or rather, what his celebrityhood may represent. His is a different form of celebrity -– not the regular kind that comes with entertainers, or the kind that attends notoriety -– but it is a form that celebrates his good looks even as his origins are alluded to, then discursively erased. In the warped world of Philippine politics and its happy entanglement with entertainment, the lack of retributive justice – encapsulated here in Borgy’s stardom -– is the appalling failure on the part of the government (in collusion with the media, and the amnesiac fans) to learn from the errors of history. To see the smiling face of Borgy is to see the face of his grandfather laughing.

Sometime a year ago I wrote a rather angry post on the Marcoses, and was met with unsurprisingly negative comments. Most of the responses, however, were oddly ad hominem -– that I was envious of Borgy, that I was a fag, and that I would never, in my lowly state as a blogger, ever be like the Marcoses (shudder!) -– and very few of them bothered to defend the family I was attacking. I think this is because it puts Marcos supporters (on the net, at least) in something of an ethical dilemma; attempting to defend the Marcoses’ record of murder and torture and theft puts you in the same irrational camp as the delusional former First Lady.

This moral clarity -– at least in my mind -– is precisely why the absence of justice is so unfathomable. One of the more-circulated images of the EDSA uprising were crowds of people rushing into Malacanang, kicking and breaking apart a painting of Ferdinand Marcos. This, sadly, is as far as the Filipino people ever got towards any form of catharsis. In 1983 one could only burn effigies, and we are doomed, in 2004, to similarly futile gestures. The fact that Borgy -– or to be more precise, the generations before him -– are still free to blithely live their lives of privilege in the Philippines is an insult. The very fact of Borgy’s stardom is an obscenity.

Some people will argue that the Marcoses are relatively small fry, that there are graver problems that need to be addressed before the country can improve. This is completely true. But I think their going scot-free is also symptomatic of a more overarching, systemic problem -– a deep-seated corruption, perhaps, or maybe the pathology of amnesia -– that may, in the end, hobble the Philippines in other profound ways.

Some people (my mother included) have asked me about forgiveness -– that this would be the Christian thing to do, that this would lead to healing and so on. Quite frankly, I cannot think of anyone so undeserving of forgiveness as Imelda Marcos; as far as I can tell, she has never expressed any regret or, indeed, asked forgiveness -– why give her something she has never requested?

One day, maybe soon, Imelda will finally die. But she will not die penniless; she will not die behind the bars of a jail cell. She will die surrounded by her adoring fans. Her death will be eased by the best painkillers that money can buy. Her money will remain in Swiss bank accounts. She will die smiling, knowing she is to be reunited with her Ferdinand. She will die unpunished. Her children and grandchildren will mourn her, and then move on. And the Marcos dynasty will live forever.

Comments?

Update.

Been pretty busy lately: I've gotten three interviews so far, and trying to schedule at least three more next week, hopefully including some good ol' participant observation opportunities. But Izzy and I arrived in the Philippines in one piece, a 15-hour flight, an hour at the baggage carousel, and two Ben Stiller movies notwithstanding.

Up next: themed mp3s (July will be more covers, August will be summer, September will be Oriental Month), and yet another screed against Borgy Manotoc -- or rather, "Borgy Manotoc."