The Wily Filipino

Your New Favorite Song.

To combine the Japanese and cover song posts: The greatest pop cover version in the history of recorded popular music ever -- and by popular music I only mean music since the '50s, not "popular music" in the Richard Thompson sense -- is (of course) Shonen Knife's version of the Carpenters' "Top of the World," off the If I Were A Carpenter tribute album.

Hear it (5.44 mb, 192 kbps m4a).

Your New Favorite Song.

Somewhat in response to Liza's quite sad post, I'm temporarily scuttling the all-Japanese downloads plan to include yet another cover version of Spandau Ballet's "True."

I always loved Tony Hadley's histrionics, actually. In many ways it's the perfect karaoke song (for 30-somethings like me) because a) I was there, and b) it requires actual performance on the part of the singer, because of the way he holds the mic, and the way he closes his eyes, and the little break in Hadley's voice after "And I want the truth to be said!" goes up an octave after the bridge -- and then the dramatic pause, which means the performer has to, um, pause dramatically as well. Steve Buscemi got it totally right in The Wedding Singer. (The only downside: what to do during Steve Norman's cheesy sax break.)

Anyway, here's Filipina R&B singer Arnee Hidalgo, from her 2003 album Cold Summer Nights, which you US-based folks can get at Kabayan Central. This was a version when "acoustic" was all the rage in the Philippines (it still is): practically just vocals and guitar, kind of when "unplugged" was really unplugged. She changes the lyrics a couple of times, but that's all right; it's still a sweet cover, with the Cheesy Sax Break now turned into a slightly shorter Cheesy Guitar Break. In an ideal world her version should have been some sort of summer cuddle-anthem and done more for the original than P.M. Dawn's "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss."

Hear it (7.74 mb, 192 kbps mp3).

(Speaking of '80s covers, there's a fantastic cover of "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?" -- coincidentally, another Wedding Singer song -- done by The Last Town Chorus, which really makes me want to hear their album.)

Your New Favorite Song.

(A few months ago I had wanted to do with an all-Japanese month of music downloads -- I started with Merzbow, and failed to follow up -- and now here's the continuation.)

Grown-ups don't have to dislike music for kiddies, and kiddies don't have to dislike music for grown-ups. There's Dan Zanes (to whose concert I took Izzy last month), whose albums are infectious slices of Americana; Lisa Loeb and Elizabeth Mitchell (from Ida) also have an album of mostly nursery rhymes and lullabies. (An old grad school housemate of mine used to date Liz, I think, so that's only a few degrees of separation there!)

But don't get me started on those cut-rate albums where random kids are assembled in a studio and made to sing nursery rhymes -- or worse, sanitized renditions of pop hits. I once heard this awful version of "Hey Ya!" with all the "Lucy Liu" references removed...

Izzy, in turn, likes the Beatles and the two Elvises (Presley and Costello); her very first concert was Gillian Welch, although she really only got into it when David Rawlings did a cover of "Big Rock Candy Mountain."

But back to the subject at hand: Izzy really likes the Japanese singing duo Puffy, and the fact that neither one of us understands a word doesn't stop her from jumping up and down. Okay, me neither.

"LONG BEACH NIGHTMARE," from the 2003 album NICE., is a prototypical Puffy song (thanks here to Andy Sturmer, "Godfather of Puffy") and though this one doesn't utilize the usual "homages" -- generally, a "Day Tripper" riff here, the introduction to "Baba O'Riley" there -- it's still full of creamy pop goodness: oooohs, handclaps, girly voices singing in unison. In other words, perfect.

Hear it (4.7 mb, 192 kbps .m4a).

CFFSC Report on U.S. Filipinos and Homeland Security.

SCHOLARS RELEASE REPORT ON U.S. FILIPINO DEPORTATION

San Jose, CA - The Critical Filipino and Filipina Studies Collective (CFFSC) releases Resisting Homeland Security: Organizing Against Unjust Removals of U.S. Filipinos, a report on the state of U.S. Filipino deportation.

Resisting Homeland Security makes visible what remains invisible to many: the detention and removal of U.S. Filipinos. The existing information on U.S. Filipino deportations following September 11, 2001 collapses U.S. Filipino deportations uniformly and arbitrarily across any and all racial-ethnic groups. Contrary to this popular misunderstanding, the report alternatively offers exacting research and analysis underscoring a more complex picture - that after September 11, there is a "systematic targeting of Filipinos for deportation" that is related to the legacies of U.S.-colonial rule, the current U.S.-led war on global terrorism avidly supported by the Philippine government, and the emergence of homeland security racism.

Included in Resisting Homeland Security is a section on "Community Organizing." This section provides insights on how grassroots organizations fight against unjust removals and detentions. In particular, the section chronicles the Support Campaign to Prevent the Deportation of the Cuevas Family of Fremont, CA, assesses its efforts and strategies, and offers recommendations to build effective anti-removal campaigns.

Jay Mendoza, Executive Director of the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON), notes: "Resisting Homeland Security is a significant document that all Filipinos and all peoples concerned with social justice should read and deeply understand. It is a reminder for all cultural diverse and multiracial peoples to work in alliance and coalition with each other, despite ethnicity, nationality, or race-towards the single objective of justice for our communities."

For the CFFSC, Resisting Homeland Security is "a document of hope-to inspire all to participate in a global movement for justice and equality." The report may be accessed at the Filipino Living Archive.

Founded 2002, CFFSC is a U.S.-based national network of community-engaged scholars, professors, and educators.

"The Tagalogs at the World's Fair."

To accompany the exhibition of Filipinos at the St. Louis World's Fair, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a series of full-page articles, or rather, lists of non-sequitur factoids about the people on display.

The excerpts below are from an article on the Tagalogs -- "They are many-sided orientals, these alert Tagalogs." -- dated July 17, 1904.

While many of the statements have a "scientific" directness to them -- "They have a literature of their own," "Their skin is a coppery brown," "They are devout Roman Catholics, but hate the monastic orders," "They are natural musicians." -- others take on a somewhat surreal quality:

- "They plunge into the sea amidst a school of sharks and fight the latter with long knives."

- "They are fond of gaudy dress and wear uniforms discarded by soldiers."

- "They bathe several times a day and change their clothing at every bath."

- "There are more pianos in the island of Luzon, in proportion to the population, than anywhere else in the world."

- "There is hardly a Tagalog family that does not boast a poet."

- "They do not kiss. They smell one another instead, placing the nose and lips on the cheek and drawing a long breath."

- "Up to the year 1844 the Tagalogs had no distinctive family names, being known instead by a certain harsh ejaculation."

Some GBV Links.

Got back from the Philippines last night. Listening to "Ester's Day" by Guided By Voices as I waited for my suitcase at the baggage carousel made me feel sad.

Some GBV-related links:

- Mindy Hertzon's beer-soaked Orlando concert photos.

- a tribute at Nude as the News (check out in particular the Top 100 GBV Songs of All Time link at the bottom)

- video footage from the last-ever concert in Chicago ("Over the Neptune / Mesh Gear Fox" and "Don't Stop Now" were the set openers and closers, respectively)

- and more videos from the day before (Sprout doing "Gleemer" is especially sweet)

- and if I had to pick only 49 GBV songs, in no order (though a good chunk of it comes from Bee Thousand:

A Salty Salute
Watch Me Jumpstart
Game of Pricks
Motor Away
My Valuable Hunting Knife
Blimps Go 90
Little Whirl
Real
Hardcore UFO's
Buzzards And Dreadful Crows
Tractor Rape Chain
The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory
Smothered In Hugs
Yours To Keep
Echos Myron
Gold Star For Robot Boy
Awful Bliss
Queen Of Cans And Jars
Ester's Day
I Am A Scientist
Peep-Hole
Teenage FBI
Things I Will Keep
My Kind of Soldier
My Impression Now
Fair Touching
Chasing Heather Crazy
Glad Girls
Don't Stop Now
Sad If I Lost It
I Am a Tree
Bulldog Skin
Now to War
Over The Neptune / Mesh Gear Fox
Weedking
Exit Flagger
14 Cheerleader Coldfront
Drinker's Peace
Cut-Out Witch
The Official Ironmen Rally Song
To Remake the Young Flyer
Atom Eyes
It's Like Soul Man
Wire Greyhounds
Back To The Lake
Pretty Bombs
Gleemer (The Deeds Of Fertile Jim)
Wondering Boy Poet
Choking Tara (Creamy)

Last Semester.

My favorite class last semester -- and in retrospect, probably one of my favorites ever -- was one that I was completely unqualified to teach, had never taught before, and indeed, would probably refuse to teach again. That was my Pilipino Literature class, something of a tall order for a professor with an anthropology degree (though I do have a Communication Arts undergraduate degree from what seems like a lifetime ago).

I don't think my students enjoyed it as much as I did; I think I failed to give the class more structure than I should have, and instead relied on a semi-chronological, semi-thematic approach which probably didn't work under close inspection. I'm not sure that many of the students appreciated the open-ended, freewheeling discussion that occupied much of the three-hour class either. Some, I'm sure, were shy; a good number, I suspect, may have wanted more lectures instead. (I think some people absolutely hated the Joel Tan story I assigned, as seen from their papers. The inevitable discussion question -- if the story were about a man and a woman, would reader's reactions be as extreme? -- did come up, but explicit sex probably wasn't the students' bag.) Inflicting a gradlevel-style seminar on a bunch of undergrads may not have been the greatest idea...

Despite the two novels and a number of short fiction (and theoretical essays, for which the student needed much preparation) I assigned, the majority of class discussion revolved around poetry. This was probably the most revelatory part: I was consistently surprised, then amazed, at the multiple levels of interpretation that the class could come up with -- sometimes only when discussing a couple of lines! (And these were from at least one student who confessed, at the beginning of the class, that they didn't like poetry because they couldn't understand it!)

I wouldn't say that the students were starting to read the poems like they were lit majors (thank goodness, since I wouldn't be able to do that either), but on good days there was a palpable creative energy in the room, when I could imagine hearing the whirring of gears in students' heads. At the beginning of the semester we discussed a poem by my friend Lito, and man, he should have been there; by the end of the semester people were still quoting him in their papers...

I don't think I'd make a class of 40 students do blogs again -- the process was unwieldy, people were frustrated by Blogger's constant outages, and I couldn't keep up with my comments either. What's more, students weren't necessarily writing about other students' comments, and therefore the dialogue I had ideally wanted didn't really occur.

What it did provide, however, was a fairly easy opportunity for students to read each other's work and, most important, for the poets being discussed (at least the ones with blogs) to read what students had to say about their work. (Barb and Eileen, if you're reading this: know that you totally made my students' days. Barb, one of the students did write and say that she was inspired to write more poetry from now on.)

So I don't know what the students thought, or if they learned anything; I'd have to wait when the evaluations come back. Maybe the Filipino students would now have -- I don't know, some sort of pride, perhaps, in Filipino American literature -- but I must confess that that's more of an artifact of ethnic studies rather than a genuine class objective on my part. (Appreciation, yes, but equipping the students with tools for analysis is for me more important.) I would love it if the poems acted as some sort of gateway drug to the wonderful world of lit, but that's wishful thinking. But the overall reaction to Oscar and Barb's poetry reading, for instance -- I can't claim any responsibility, obviously, but for many students it was their first poetry reading ever -- made it seem that there was real interest, if not excitement, in the whole endeavor. (The Q&A portion, for instance, went on and on.)

Oh well. If I get low evaluation ratings, so be it; at least for me, it was just about one of the most pedagogically satisfying classes I've ever taught. Sometimes it's great to be a teacher.

OPAs in Japan.

The Sassy Lawyer has an entry on the possibility of "performing arts schools" in response to the Japanese government's stricter immigration policies.

For the Arroyo government to plead for a moratorium at this point is rather hypocritical, considering the fact that it -- and the different administrations prior -- has basically facilitated human trafficking in the first place.

We all know as well that OPAs in Japan are not primarily hired for performance, so the entire ARB/ACC process is in many ways a constructed governmental hurdle (and OPA as more or less a fictive category*) that also makes it easy for money to be made illegally. Nothing like bureaucracies to give what is essentially a reprehensible practice (on the part of the government) the veneer of respectability and morality.

The article the Sassy Lawyer linked to does not mention anything about Japan (or the Philippines, for that matter) doing anything punitive about human traffickers; the people who will be bearing the brunt of the new hiring regulations will be the Filipinas themselves, as they are now viewed by the state as being illegal aliens. Most of the statements coming from DOLE at this point have been almost consistently downplaying the human trafficking aspect, making it seem that it is really most anxious about the loss of remittances, and not the welfare of the OPAs.

*This, of course, does not mean that the OPAs in Japan do not sing and dance, but in the few interviews I've conducted with returning OPAs make it clear that this occupies a relatively small percentage of their work duties.

Kahulugan nang Kakonyohan.

E di napagbintangan ako nang kaibigan ko na konyo. ("You are more conio than you think, Sunny. I will not even editorialize or moralize on the concept.") Ako naman, medyo siyak -- ako? Eh malinaw na malinaw sa akin kung sino ang mga konyo noong ako'y nasa kolehiyo sa UPLB -- una, sila mga taga-Maynila -- at kung sino ang hindi (ako). (Totoo nga na ako'y pa-blog-blog, at nag-aral sa isteyts, pero merong kasing natatanging kahulugan ang pagiging konyotik, at hindi naaayon sa akin.)

Tinanong ko ngayon sa dalawang expert -- isang Atenista at isang taga-Maynila -- kung ako nga ba'y isang konyo, at mag-pa-assure na hindi. Ang sagot: "Ay naku, Sunny, malayong-malayo ka sa konyo. Sabihin mo sa kaibigan mo, mali siya." (Buntong-hininga.)

Kaya heto, galing sa mga informants ko, ang mga necessary conditions para mabansagang konyo:

- Pera. (Puno't-dulo ito, pero meron pang isang mas importante, which is...)
- Linggwahe. (Hindi lang wers, pero kolehiyala English talaga.)
- Damit. ("Gap," sabi noong isa, pero mabilis siyang kinorek nang asawa niya. "Prada, Calvin Klein jeans, Girbaud...")
- Saan nag-aral, college. (Dalawa lang na college, sa totoo lang: Arreneyo tsaka La Salle. "May konyo rin sa UP, pero...")
- Saan nag-aral, high school. (Nagsilistahan sila nang mga iskwelahan na ngayon ko lang narinig yung iba: Assumption, Zobel something something, ICA, Wood something something, ano pa?)
- Tirahan. (Forbes, Dasma, Greenmeadows, ano pa? "Iba nga lang ang Konyong Alabang sa Konyong Pasay -- mga Konyong Pasay, may rice rockets iyan.")

Ako: "Puede ka bang konyo na taga-probinsiya?"
Informant: "Malimit, pero kailangan sa Maynila ka nag-college or at least high school."
Ako: "Meron bang mga artistang konyo?"
Informant (mabilis): "Wala. Puro jologs iyon." [Nagisip nang konti.] "A, meron -- si Mikee Cojuangco. Si Kris Aquino."
Informant #2: "Si Martin Nievera, puede rin."

Kaya paki-linaw naman, mga mambabasa: sino ba nga ang konyo?

In the Philippines, #2.

As many of you folks probably know, Asia is video/music/software piracy central, and the Philippines is no exception -- camcorder-shot VCDs of The Aviator, The Incredibles and Alexander for about 50 cents each sold quite openly on the streets (and sometimes in malls themselves).

(Of course, the legit releases are good as well -- you can get fairly cheap Asian movies, that sell for three times the amount in the US.)

I usually check the places out to see what stunners appear in Los Banos. Over the summer they used to have full seasons of The Sopranos and Sex and the City on the streets; they're gone now. But alongside Spiderman 2 and The Matrix (perennial best selling bootlegs here) were some "weird" DVDs -- weird for a small provincial town in the Philippines, that is: Control Room, Supersize Me, The Hunting of the President. At one stall I saw at least 8 different Tinto Brass titles; bizarre, I know. But the biggest surprise was an actual set of the Criterion edition of Inagaki's Samurai trilogy (no booklets, of course), selling all together for 120 pesos, a little over 2 American dollars.

Speaking of wild goose chases (and consumption -- this is all related, I swear), another friend of mine asked me to bring back some duhat as a pasalubong, which she can apparently use to improve her complexion, not that it needs any improving.

Since I wasn't sure whether she meant duhat soap, duhat lotion, or whether I was supposed to bring back a fruit and a twig, I went straight to the girly section of Mercury Drug and didn't find it. Lots of papaya, though (could it have been papaya?), tons of facial whiteners, and the real surprise: armpit whitener. "No dark spot in 7 days," the box said.

(As it turns out, duhat seems to be primarily used for diarrhea. Someone's pulling your leg, girl -- I'll bring you the Dunhill Lights instead!)

Meanwhile, Leny gets angry about Bloomberg and the tsunamis, and my favorite cringeworthy line from a seasonally-appropriate cringeworthy song suddenly comes to mind [cue Bono here]:

"Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you!"

Let them know it's Christmas time indeed.

Happy New Year.

Considering the fact that 2004 was just about the worst year of my life, in just about every way (maybe one day the whole story will be told), I'm glad to see it go, though I'm disheartened, thinking that things may only get worse in 2005. So, a big No Thank You to the following: the rain coming through my front door, pesky students, and most of all, the tsunamis, George Bush and his disciples, and other people who made this year totally miserable.

But there were still numerous bright spots: the consolations of pedagogy (in particular, my Pilipino lit class), the consolations of music (especially the last Guided By Voices concert in SF), four professors from Cornell (and one from Princeton), my friends (and those who couldn't make it) who surrounded me a couple of weeks ago at my birthday (you all know who you are), my family, and most of all, my daughter Izzy. Thanks for making me happy. I really mean that.

My friend Nerissa just sent me this excerpt from Pablo Neruda's "How Much Happens in a Day":

In the course of a day we shall meet one another.

…Joy, my love, joy in all things,
in what falls and what flourishes.

Joy in today and yesterday,
the day before and tomorrow.

Joy in bread and stone,
joy in fire and rain.

In what changes, is born, grows,
consumes itself, and becomes a kiss again.

Joy in the air we have,
and in what we have of earth.
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Happy new year, everyone.