After MTV

Hey, thanks a lot, Kristine! :) Thus endeth about a month and a half of meetings, writing, revisions, and last-minute requests, as well as inexplicable apparitions and sudden disappearing acts. Thursday was frustrating, fun and frenetic -- as I described it, "headless chicken time, backstage at the Ultra." Excising and revising, coming up with new spiels on the spot, going over the scripts briefly with some of the hosts, running around to add the changes to the cue cards and the voice-over talent's script... it's not something I'd want to do every day, but it was a hell of a rush. And when the show itself was well underway, and things were more or less running smoothly (smoother than we expected, to be honest), there was a great feeling of relief (punctuated by "What the HELL did he/she say?!" moments, during the ad libs).

Being a scriptwriter is, for lack of a better term, a humbling experience; you learn early on that your vision of how things should proceed will always be second (or third or fourth) place to someone else's vision, and -- more importantly -- you learn to trust in the experience of others, that the only thing that matters is not whether it's well written or not, but whether IT WORKS. As you know, I may not have agreed with our director all the time, but I have to admit, he knew what would work onstage, and what wouldn't. (And thank you so much for that text reminding me 1. what my job really entailed, and that 2. we could always kill the appropriate people after the event. It bolstered me a lot). :)

Too bad you missed my favorite number: the Paolo + Nyoy + Jimmy Bondoc + Barbie's Cradle tribute/travesty (depending on how much of a purist you are). I know that the actual performances may not have been impeccable, but you could see that those people really loved the songs, and really loved what they were doing (you should see Paolo Santos' face when he's ROCKING OUT), and Margie says that being in the audience was even better: people were singing along at the top of their lungs, really getting into it. I had mixed feelings about Ely accepting the award -- of course, his achievements are numerous and undeniable, but that was a deliberately nasty little speech he made, and I think I'm beginning to understand why an E-heads reunion will not happen any time soon, or ever. Not that it should. I'm just glad they came up with the songs that they did.

As the awards and performances and interstitials rolled by, I found myself glancing at the show sequence posted beside the stage, and marveled at the fact that we were halfway -- no, two-thirds -- no, almost all of the way through, and no major disasters had occurred! "You're so lucky," Georgette said. "It's a sign!" For a moment, I thought, maybe she's right. Maybe I could work in TV. After thinking about it some more, though, I figured, it's something I could do, but I doubt I would be as happy as I am working in print. :)

Regarding the other performances, it was nice seeing how The Late Isabel handled a huge venue. It was also good to see the people going absolutely stark raving bonkers for Bamboo. To be honest, though, I enjoyed the performances the following night even more, at the MTV Ink Anniversary Megastrip stage. :) Drip was great (Beng's singing has, if anything, gotten even better, though I miss Rann's guitar bits and stage presence), Sugarfree rocked (am really looking forward to the new album), and Narda was fun as always (am really looking forward to their next release, as well). Waya and I enjoyed almost all the acts, with the exception of, well, "pogi rock" bands Stonefree and 6cyclemind (as we were leaving at the start of 6cyclemind's set, Joey saw us and started hooting, "Ang sama niyo! Ang sama!"). I hear they're really nice guys, but their music doesn't do much for me. Still and all, it was a good night with good performances and free junk food. But best of all was hanging out with you guys as you terrorized the Sushi-Ya staff afterwards. :)