Gordon Goes to Detroit

Noooooooooooooo!!!

"The Detroit Pistons have reached agreement with free-agent guard Ben Gordon(notes) and forward Charlie Villanueva(notes), a source with knowledge of the talks told Yahoo! Sports Wednesday evening."

And your friendly Bulls Blogger rants about it.

There goes my 2010 and beyond scenario (more like dream) with LeBron, Derrick, and Ben leading the Bulls to a number of championships.

Bummer.

Curse Songs

From the backmatter of the second issue of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's Phonogram: The Singles Club:

"It's worth stressing that the curse record is a different thing to a true angry break-up obsessive record. Putting on Gentlemen or early Nick Cave and drinking a lot of whiskey while scowling is actually a healing thing. Not nice for anyone else to be around you as you coat yourself with blood and sin, but actually a utilitarian thing for self-repair, an aesthetically-inversed version of white wine, smeared mascara and bawling "I Will Survive". A curse record is the opposite. A curse song, will, in a real way, open old wounds, tearing the stitches you're trying to make hold. A curse song should be avoided at all costs. I have friends who, suffering through the most virulent stages of the curse, abandon entire bands or even genres of music due to the associated poison."


So what are your curse songs?

Designated Drinker

Tally:

1 bottle of Red Horse beer (with one more to go; Red Horse is not my beer of choice but it's the only one in stock in the nearest suking tindahan open at one A.M. I've only had one but I feel like I've downed half a case of San Mig Lite.)
1 Burger Machine cheeseburger (with one more to go)
unknown handfuls of cheese flavored popcorn
x number of shots of vodka (one bottle down and one more to go)
a number of unopened chips (Piattos, Tostillas and some Nagaraya)

Needless to say, I'm a bit smashed. I'm tempted to not check the spelling on this post--or the grammar--but I'll hold off posting this until later this afternoon after I've sobered up and my brain's working again.

Background noise: girls chatting and giggling about stuff, a hiss and a pop of a bottle being opened, ice tinkling on an empty glass followed by pouring liquid, giggles, "putang ina" liberally mentioned, as well as "asshole" (or was it "aso"?). My ears are going to sleep first, I think.

Times like these I wish alcohol could help me and write works of genius like, say, Charles Bukowski but all I can manage is this post.

I'm off to open the last bottle of Red Horse and scarf down the last burger. And then to sleep. Right after I drive home a couple of the people here home, yes. And no, I'm not that drunk to not drive. A sign of my being drunk is when I go off and write a maudlin post about a frakking Tom Waits song or something. But then again, I wrote that the day after, I think. Oh well...

P.S. I inadvertently hit control something which posted this, uh, post, so fuck the spellcheck and the grammar.

The Strain

Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has a novel out, The Strain, co-written with crime novelist Chuck Hogan.

They have always been here. Vampires. In secret and in darkness. Waiting. Now their time has come.

In one week, Manhattan will be gone. In one month, the country.

In two months--the world.

A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold.

In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing . . .

So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city--a city that includes his wife and son--before it is too late.


And there's a trailer:



It's another book that I'm sure will test my resolve not to buy until I've halved my backlog of books to read, which currently stands at 40, I think, but I've lost count.

And James Ellroy's Blood's A Rover comes out in September but it's still a long way off so I've plenty of time to cut down my reading pile to a manageable number. I hope.

Ellis Will Do Anything

Warren Ellis debuts a new column on Bleeding Cool.

"I have the head of Jack Kirby in my office.

I built it myself. Which means, this being the late-postmodern 21st Century, I stole it from someone else and then tinkered with it until it became a transformative work. What I actually did was steal the Hanson Robotics-designed android head of Philip K Dick off an airplane, resculpted the front and filled its brain with the work of, interviews with and anecdotes about Jack Kirby. Like the original Philip K Dick head, it now does the work of an oracle of that mysterious time, the 20th Century, and of the seminal years of a 20th Century art form. In the case of Phil Dick, this was the science fiction story. In this case, it is of course the comic book."

Read the entire thing here.

Fade Away

Turns out my forecast last week that Cleveland will win the Eastern Conference finals in 6 games was a bit off.

Oh, it ended in 6 games alright, but instead of LeBron and the Cavs facing the Lakers starting this week, it'll be Dwight and the Magic.

There's next year, I suppose, if Cavs management will finally get a player that'll play Pippen to James' Jordan. Mo Williams was touted as such all season long but where the fuck was he during the Cavs-Magic series? And the year after that if they still fail to break out of the East and win the NBA championshiop, who knows? Cleveland can offer James a contract extension in July and it's up to him if he signs or not. If he does, Cavs management will have to do whatever they can to get LeBron a championship caliber team. If he doesn't, LeBron's off to freeagency and greener... no, not greener for that'll imply him going to Boston which I hope never happens. And no to New York too, please. Um, for bullish pastures perhaps?

And now we go to fantasy land...

Think about it--and a little bit of caveat for I've no idea how much cap space the Bulls have or how much cap space they will have come 2010 and like I said, it's a fantasy--but all the support LeBron needs to win a championship is in Chicago. Players to share the scoring load? There's Ben Gordon (if he gets renewed), a budding star in Derrick Rose (though he still has lots of room to improve, defense-wise mostly) and John Salmons (though he tends to get a bit erratic sometimes but when he's on, he's fucking on). Kirk Hinrich can also score when needed, though he's more of a defensive player lately. Maybe he can be Steve Kerr. And for the frontcourt there's the duo of Joachim Noah and Brad Miller who brought some much needed swagger and badassery during the classic Bulls-Celtics first round series. Trade either Tyrus Thomas or Luol Deng but keep one as back-up to LeBron. If they do not want to keep Brad Miller, acquire another center who won't be afraid to get bruised while defending the goal, and maybe also score.

Oh yeah, and I guess they need a better coach. Or hope that Vinnie del Negro improves. And, most important, that Jerry Reinsdorf will open up his wallet.

So, LeBron, in 2010 if you still haven't won a championship with the Cavs and you become a free agent, go to the Bulls. They have the talent and have regained some of their lost swagger and all they really need is a bona fide star.

Shots Fired

Everybody's talking about it. I wasn't even sure it happened when I saw it during the live broadcast for I thought my pre-caffeinated brain was just playing tricks on me even though they replayed it a couple of times and I had to rewatch the late-night replay of the game--the closing minutes, at least-- just to make sure it did happen. And yeah, it did.

From Adrian Wojnarowski's column:

“Whatever happens,” James yelled to Williams in the huddle, “I’m going to come get the ball.” Whatever options fall apart, James insisted to his point guard that he would find a way to get open and promised him, “I’m going to knock down the shot.”

Turkoglu had made an immense shot over Pavlovic to take a 95-93 lead, but he made one grave mistake:

He left a second on the clock.

He left LeBron life.

Great article and all and I liked his storytelling about that final second (I felt compelled to watch it again, dammit!) but there's just this eerie feeling I get when he gets to the part where he paints LeBron James in a messianic way. Don't get me wrong, I am a fan (until he heads to New York, which I hope never, ever happens) but there's just something eerie about it that I can't explain.

And of course, comparisons to His Airness' The Shot is inevitable (it celebrated its 20th anniversary a couple of weeks ago, I think) but I'll leave it to more knowledgeable basketball pundits to debate on which one is better or whatever. All I know is that they're both incredible, unbelievable, awesome shots that one can't help but watch over and over and over...

So, Cavs in 6.

Cabin Fever

I have the entire house for myself the entire weekend. The rest of the family--well, minus Nald and me, but Nald's at the condo in Cubao--went to Baguio and Sagada. I wanted to go with them for the last time I was in Baguio was Christmas of 2005 and I've never been to Sagada and was looking forward to snapping byteloads of pictures using Nel's digital SLR.

But, there are the dogs. No one's going to feed them. It's okay if it'll be an overnight trip. We can feed them early today and hopefully they can bear their hunger until we return the following day. But three days is too much for them and we can't find anyone who'll come in and feed six dogs, one of them a noisy, barky, fierce-looking-but-really-she's-sweet German shepherd. And just imagine, six hungry dogs who've not been fed for three days, barking and yapping when we arrive and they snap at the first sight of fresh meat they come across come Sunday evening: namely, us. They attack and eat us and go on a feeding frenzy across the neighborhood and beyond.

Really, I stayed behind to save us all.

So, three days with no company aside from the dogs. Let's see who succumbs to madness first and who eats whom or who sics whom to eat what or who sics what to eat whom or...

Boom

Godaaaaammmiitttttt!!!

That was pretty much my reaction after seeing Lost's season-ender. Mind-blowing as usual. Still reeling from it, trying to process what I just saw: Jacob and his counterpart (Anti-Jacob?), the full statue, the contents of the box, "They're coming," some deaths and one heartbreaking fall into a hole and then the fade to white (but still can't beat season three's "We have to go back, Kate") and then the realization that it'll be almost a year's wait before some of the mysteries presented this episode will be answered.

Hence: Godaaaammmiitttttt!!!!

Drinking Song

Sunday was not-so-little-sister Cha's birthday so the weekend involved consuming (un)healthy amounts of beer and vodka. If it were up to me, the drink-up's soundtrack would consist of nothing but Tom Waits for his songs seem tailor made for drinking sessions but I doubt the people I was drinking with (cousins from San Juan and some friends) even know who Tom Waits is.

I Hope I Don't Fall In Love With You was the very first Tom Waits song I ever listened to, though the version I first heard was a live version by the 10,000 Maniacs. Looked up the maniacs' version but couldn't find it. Maybe I just imagined it for that was a long time ago.

And anticipating what some you could be thinking right about now: is this indicative of something?

...

Could be the hangover typing.

Now it's closing time, the music's fading out.
Last call for drinks, I'll have another stout.
Well I turn around to look at you,
you're nowhere to be found,
I search the place for your lost face,
guess I'll have another round
And I think that I just fell in love with you.

But yeah, I guess I'll have another round.

Tunay na Lalake

From Hay!Men! ang blog ng mga tunay na lalake:

Manifesto ng Tunay na Lalake

1. Ang tunay na lalake ay di natutulog.

2. Ang tunay na lalake ay di nagte-text-back, maliban na lang kung papasahan ng load. Gayunpaman, laging malabo ang kanyang mga sagot.

3. Ang tunay na lalake ay laging may extra rice.

4. Ang tunay na lalake ay hindi vegetarian.

5. Ang tunay na lalake ay walang abs.

6. Ang tunay na lalake ay hindi sumasayaw.

7. Ang tunay na lalake ay umaamin ng pagkakamali sa kapwa tunay na lalake.

8. Ang tunay na lalake ay laging may tae sa brief.

9. Ang tunay na lalake ay di naghuhugas ng pinagkainan o nagliligpit ng kanyang mga gamit dahil may babaeng gagawa noon para sa kanya. Mas lalong nagiging tunay ang pagkalalake kung di niya kilala o di niya maalala ang pangalan ng babae.

10. Ang tunay na lalake ay di nagsisimba.

Robochompocalypse

'I plan to invest in anti-carnivorous robot security' by Warren Ellis:

"The future is a moving target. It’s not predictable like the weather – and even weather forecasting misses the odd devastating hurricane. Science fiction’s never going to tell you what you’ll be doing next year. What it really does is use speculation to examine the present-day condition – but it can, however, warn you about possible futures."

And earlier in the column is a funny bit about the Wachowskis and their failure in warning people of the coming Robochompocalypse.

Massive Moore Interview

Excerpts from Part 3 of a six-part Alan Moore interview on Newsarama:

"In Watchmen, we were suggesting, I think, that reality is perhaps a web of tiny coincidences and resonant images and little motifs that we hardly notice – this web of meaning that may be all glued together with repetitions of dialogue and slight similarities of image."

And...

"And I think that it’s now time to move to new ways of thinking to help us understand this situation in which we find ourselves. I know that Watchmen is being talked about a lot at the moment because of this ridiculous film, but these are ideas that are 25 years old. I think that I started writing it in 1984. That’s why it was set in 1985, because I had the idea that it would be all out and finished in 1985. But it was 25 years ago.

I think that the world moves at an unforgiving pace, and that this has accelerated. I don’t think 25-year-old ideas, no matter how adequate they were at the time, apply to our current situation – either my 25-year-old ideas or anybody else’s."

And about tying in tv shows The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Streets into the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen:

"That is the beauty of the League! We can tie in all of this stuff. Hey, it’s Baltimore! There might have been some relative of Police Chief Rawls or perhaps Det. Munch who was involved in manning the Baltimore Lunar Base."

Vengeance is To's

Vengeance, Johnnie To's latest film, starring French actor Johnny Hallyday and To regulars Anthony Wong and Simon Yam. It's the one must-see this year that I doubt will even be shown in cinemas here in Manila. It's a longfuckingshot but here's a callout to any generous publisher out there: Send me to Hongkong to watch and review Vengeance for your publication and I'd be happy, ecstatic even, to watch and review a year's worth of crappy films for you.

And pulling my head out of the clouds and plunging back to earth... I guess I'll just have to wait and get a copy from the usual suspects.

Crime Does Not Pay and Two Dead Authors

Steven Grant pays tribute to the end of Azzarello & Risso's 100 Bullets while ruminating about the crime genre and why it'll never catch on with the American comics readers. Excerpts:

"Crime stories, on the other hand, are about losers.

Stories about losers may seem counterintuitive to a lot of readers – like I said, American culture doesn't holds losers in much of anything but contempt – but for a writer they can be fascinating. It's simple math, really: winners win. That's what they do. That's what they must do. Doesn't matter what the story arc is, the story still has to end up in the same place. The hero wins.

Shift the focus to a loser, and the possibilities jump substantially."

And:

"Likewise, losers are usually simply more fun to write. Not only does similar storytelling math apply – the hero can't act villainously (at least not in some way that's not ultimately explicable in heroic terms, like Jack Bauer torturing a suspect for information necessary to stop a ticking nuke that will slaughter millions) but the criminal can act heroically – but no set characteristics are required, except those the writer sets himself. The absence of rules – it wasn't always so, but has evolved that way – fits the genre, and this inherent acceptance, demand even, of ambiguity invites the writer to conceive stories, characters and ethical issues in more fluid and unpredictable terms than is possible with superhero comics. (Not that superhero comics are incapable of it – there's no reason any genre should be – but the baggage that talent, publishers and readers bring to them prohibits it on any serious level, and where it has been achieved to any degree it has usually triggered a defensive backlash to reinforce the "purity" of superhero comics.) From the writer's standpoint, the crime story is simply more open to possibility.

From a reader's perspective it may not look that way, since crime stories, though frequently superheated and preposterous, usually involve the mundane world, as opposed to the supernatural elements that underpin genres like superheroes and horror, supernatural in this instance meaning "beyond nature" rather than "occult." From that outlook, the crime story, absent of vampires, androids, extraterrestrials and radioactive spiders, may seem less open to possibility. But that's a marketing issue. The other problem regarding an audience is the preponderance of "crime" stories, in the broadest application of the term, across other media like novels, film and television. Anyone wanting crime fiction has plenty of options. (Unlike anyone who wants a steady diet of superheroes or even horror, where options across media are considerably narrower.) Which means crime comics are under considerable stress to provide material not found elsewhere."

Read the entire thing here.

He also mentions that author J.G. Ballard passed away the previous week.

And I only found out the other day (via Ed Brubaker's column in his and Sean Phillips pulpy Incognito) that author Donald Westlake passed away last December 31. I'm a fan of his work, especially the Parker novels which he wrote under the name Richard Stark (which is just one of his various pseudonyms).

Ellis and Abrams are Wired

From Warren Ellis' Wired UK column:

"This is the problem with writing fiction in the early 21st century: the real world outdoes you for madness every day. You’d be overdoing it, as a fiction writer, if you had Congolese bushfighters eating their enemies’ flesh during an ebola outbreak… except that it’s happening as I write."

Read the entire thing here.

And that Wired issue guest-edited by J.J. Abrams is very interesting and very fucking expensive.

Watched It

Saw Watchmen earlier. Visually, it was great; Dave Gibbons' artwork brought to cinematic life. And while it tried to stay true (maybe even inanely true) to the graphic novel, as with all film adaptations of Alan Moore comics, it pales in comparison to the source material. The best part of the film was the opening credits montage where director Zack Snyder shows the world's background and origins to the tune of Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin'. (Maybe Snyder should stick to making short films in the style of opening credits montage. Prior to this, I thought that his best work was the opening credits to the Dawn of the Dead remake.) What follows is a very uneven film that tries to get the feel and the mood of the world that Moore and Gibbons created but stumbles more often than not.

Another gripe I have with the film has something to do with Snyder's fight scenes which I think were bloodier and more gruesome than the ones in the comics. Plus, they were shot in Snyder's signature fast forward slow motion (fastfoslowmo?) style which annoyed the hell out of me when I first saw it in his300 (not that that's the only annoying thing in that movie. That whole movie was an annoyance in itself) which made the film feel all the more dragging.

I admit that it took a couple of readings before I truly appreciated Watchmen. The first time I read it, it was okay. It did not wow me or anything, I just thought that it was different than any of the comics I've read before. It was darker, more violent, the heroes were not really heroes (some of them, at least) and what the fuck was that pirate story all about? I only "got" it after the second time around and I appreciated it even more after subsequent readings. If my appreciation for the movie adaptation will increase through subsequent viewings, that remains to be seen.

Haruki Murakami

Recently finished Haruki Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman and I declare that Haruki Murakami is the only writer that can reach the hopeless romantic in me that I keep locked up like Schrodinger's Cat.

His story On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning (which is included in The Elephant Vanishes) convinced me of his greatness that I muttered "shitfuckdammit" the first time I read it and then I immediately reread it three times in a row. He made the work seem effortless and easy. The story seems simple but it's not. Only the great ones can pull it off. Read it and I dare you to disagree with me. When I first read that story years ago I was courting someone so I reasoned out that I was in the mood for such a story (not that the story is overly romantic and mush-filled).

And years later, I buy and read his latest collection of short stories. I figured that On Meeting the 100% Perfect Girl... was a fluke and nothing would come close to it. I was partly right and partly wrong. No story in the collection came close to being a punch in the gut like that story but many of them came close. Amid his weird and strange and oblique stories like Nausea and The Poor Aunt Story, there are stories of lost loves and longing like A Folklore for My Generation: A Prehistory of Late-Stage Capitalism? (Which reads like a Wong Kar Wai film.)

And then there's Tony Takitani. (Which also reads like a Wong Kar Wai film that I hope Wong gets off his ass and adapts a Murakami story. Although there is a Tony Takitani film already, how about adapting Nausea, the one about vomiting? I'd love to see Wong's version of that, with of course Chris Doyle lighting.)

Reading these stories makes one want to fall in love only to wallow in and even cherish the the misery of the ensuing heartbreak.