Up Dharma Now

It's here! It's here! Well, almost. Up Dharma Down's second album launch is nigh. Here are the official details:

Friday, October 24, 2008, 8:00 PM
Hexagon Lounge, RCBC Plaza
Ayala Avenue corner Buendia Avenue
Makati City, Philippines

P150 entrance with drink
P500 entrance with drink + Limited Edition CD + Documentary DVD

(Map here.)

Here's what I wrote in last Saturday's edition of Luis Listens:

"They’re young, they write fantastic songs, and they have a unique sound, drawing from rock, neo-soul, and various sub-genres of electronic music. There are those who see them as the saviors of Pinoy rock, and while that would be overstating the matter (and putting undue pressure on the band), I can see their point -- it’s not hard to imagine them making an unprecedented impact, not just here, but overseas. No less than the frontman of one of my favorite foreign acts, Paul Buchanan of The Blue Nile, is a fan of theirs; in fact he called them his favorite group, and said that they make "beautiful, victorious, elegant, muscular music," which is high praise indeed, especially considering the source.

"The launch of Up Dharma Down’s second album, Bipolar is this October 24, around 8 p.m. at the Hexagon Lounge, 4th floor of the RCBC Plaza. When I first heard some of the new tracks performed live earlier this year, my feeling was that they had pushed the excellent songwriting on their debut Fragmented both ways: they were writing even more appealing, more accessible stuff, and they were also doing more challenging, more experimental material. Hearing some of the new tracks in advance seems to bear this out. It should be quite the album."

Iron Ani

Ani de Leon is the first Pinay (and first registered Filipino citizen) to do the world-famous Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii. I think that's awesome. Congrats Ani! :D

Read all about it here!

How To Be Cooler

Read the whole thing here. I'm a hamsterpunk!

"Why I Blog" by Andrew Sullivan

"You end up writing about yourself, since you are a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world. And in this sense, the historic form closest to blogs is the diary. But with this difference: a diary is almost always a private matter. Its raw honesty, its dedication to marking life as it happens and remembering life as it was, makes it a terrestrial log. A few diaries are meant to be read by others, of course, just as correspondence could be -- but usually posthumously, or as a way to compile facts for a more considered autobiographical rendering. But a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public. It transforms this most personal and retrospective of forms into a painfully public and immediate one. It combines the confessional genre with the log form and exposes the author in a manner no author has ever been exposed before."
...
"Even the most careful and self-aware blogger will reveal more about himself than he wants to in a few unguarded sentences and publish them before he has the sense to hit Delete. The wise panic that can paralyze a writer -- the fear that he will be exposed, undone, humiliated -- is not available to a blogger. You can’t have blogger’s block. You have to express yourself now, while your emotions roil, while your temper flares, while your humor lasts. You can try to hide yourself from real scrutiny, and the exposure it demands, but it’s hard. And that’s what makes blogging as a form stand out: it is rich in personality. The faux intimacy of the Web experience, the closeness of the e-mail and the instant message, seeps through. You feel as if you know bloggers as they go through their lives, experience the same things you are experiencing, and share the moment. When readers of my blog bump into me in person, they invariably address me as Andrew. Print readers don’t do that. It’s Mr. Sullivan to them."
...
"Reason is not the only fuel in the tank. In a world where no distinction is made between good traffic and bad traffic, and where emotion often rules, some will always raise their voice to dominate the conversation; others will pander shamelessly to their readers’ prejudices; others will start online brawls for the fun of it. Sensationalism, dirt, and the ease of formulaic talking points always beckon."

Read the whole thing here.

Mapping Invisible Cities

This Friday evening, October 17, I'll be going to the opening of the photo exhibit Mapping Invisible Cities, at the 3/F Shangri-La Plaza, 6 PM. "The upcoming exhibition brings together the works of young photographers from six cities: Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Singapore, Hanoi and Jakarta. The photographers earlier took part in workshops conducted by celebrated photographer Peter Bialobrzeski."

The photographers from Manila are: Catherine L.Quiogue, Che Katigbak, Cristina Sevilla, Dennis S. Rito, Estan Cabigas, Kidlat De Guia, Maria Virginia Cruz, and Tammy David. Yup, Kids and my Kuya Che were two of the workshoppers/photographers. :) The exhibit has already been shown in Indonesia and Singapore and has finally come to our city. For more details go here and here!

Kidlat's pix for this show eventually became the jumping-off point for his amazing solo exhibit, Sleeping White Elephants. Aside from Kidlat's and Kuya Che's work, I was particularly impressed by the pictures of Tammy David, who took an all-too-familiar subject -- beauty pageants -- and managed to capture images both surprising and affecting.

Stranger Fiction

All this talk online about Speculative Fiction has reminded me of the class I used to teach in UP Diliman: Creative Writing 111. Now, CW 111, or Fiction 2 as it is sometimes known, has always focused on writing stories outside of the usual realist tradition: when I took it under Butch Dalisay in the mid-90s, we studied stories by Eric Gamalinda, Donald Barthelme and Joy Dayrit, among others. When I taught it in 2004, I put Aimee Bender, Paul Auster and Cyan Abad-Jugo on my syllabus (Cyan herself was kind enough to drop by the class when we were discussing her story).

Blogs were a fairly widespread phenomenon by then, and one of the first things I asked my class (after "Am I in the right room?") was if they all had internet access. When they answered in the affirmative, I created a group blog instead of assigning the usual reading journals. This way everyone could read everyone else's reactions, and there would be more give-and-take, more discussion.

I was happy to learn that it's still up. (In fact, there was even a somewhat recent entry dated September 4, the first in four years -- possibly posted accidentally.)

Here's the first post, my intro to the class:

Hello, all. This is our CW 111 blog. I am your supposed teacher, Mr. Luis Katigbak.

According to the course description from the English Department, CW 111 teaches one how to write "experimental fiction," and involves forms such as magical realism, metafiction, and 'sudden' fiction. Rather than refer to the material as "experimental" -- which somehow conjures notions of unreadable prose, of soulless demonstrations of technique -- I will call it, simply, "stranger fiction," a term vague and evocative enough to encompass Auster and Atwood, Barth and Barthelme, Gamalinda and Garcia-Marquez, Murakami and McCormack.

Stranger than the mainstream, stranger than the CW 110 stuff, these are stories that contain entire worlds, that are told in mobius strips and phone conversations, stories where a businessman can befriend a giant talking frog. The idea is to explore the possibilities embodied in stranger fiction, to learn that no subject matter is too ambitious or unusual, that no technique is off-limits, as long as the writer knows what he or she is doing. It is also hoped that we will develop a sense of when certain techniques are appropriate or unnecessary, and that we learn that "stranger" doesn't mean "easier" -- that there are stories written this way because there was no other way to adequately tell them, and not because it's a hassle to write "realistic."

Welcome aboard!

Clicking through the archives reminded me once again of how lucky I was to get a class full of great students. Lines like "Paul Auster is wicked" and "Dan Rhodes seems to be addicted to biatches" would leap out at me and make me laugh all over again. I had fun reading through the reactions to Bender's "The Rememberer" and John Cheever's "The Enormous Radio," among other stories, as well as witnessing someone quote Eddie Vedder to illumnate Banana Yoshimoto and Martin Heidegger to react to Jonathan Carroll.

I gave my students a lot of writing exercises to do. One of them is recorded in this blog, in the early July 2004 archive. It was called "Impossible Objects." Basically I asked each of my students to come up with a real, mundane setting and an unreal, impossible object, and then write them down on pieces of paper. (We had just finished discussing "The Enormous Radio" in class.) We jumbled them up and reassigned them randomly so that each student had a setting and object to work with. Then I asked them to write the end of a story involving those two factors. The results were on the whole well-written, often highly amusing and occasionally even touching.

Gabby's, for example: "For my mundane environment, I got a posh bathroom, the ones usually found in five-star hotels. For my strange object, I got a headband that answers all questions that come to mind anytime it's worn." The result is here.

And then there's Kurt. "The impossible object I got: a spinning wheel that creates smoke and tells the future. The mundane place: Seattle's Best Coffee, Katipunan Avenue." Click here for the full post, but allow me to quote the very beginning: "The two friends hobbled out of the coffee shop, one supported by a crutch, the other dragging his twisted, bandaged right leg. They had it with trying to be superheroes. Finally, after everything that happened, reality sank in on them: the future was not for them to change." Fun stuff. (Kurt, where are you, and are you still writing fiction?)

I may teach again someday. I had a good experience with my students. And besides, I got a kick out of being called "Mr. K."

Book Clubbed

Last Monday was fun. Attended the NBDB Book Club discussion of my first collection of short stories, Happy Endings. Answered questions and dispensed writing advice and ate pancit. Thanks to everyone who went --


Thanks to all the Book Club and National Book Development Board people, especially Andrea, and Dianne!


Thanks as well to erudite Erwin Romulo and marvelous Mookie Katigbak! (Pictured here stabbing her iced tea with a fork.)


And of course, terrific Tara Sering, and Yvette my love! :D

Hard to believe my first collection of fiction came out almost eight years ago. (That second collection is way overdue.) Am happy that people who read it now seem to feel that it hasn't dated much, except perhaps for a few stray references to PC XTs and pre-millennial fever. And am very happy that people still respond to its tales of messed-up love, bicycles passing in the night, and postcards from other worlds.

PS. Watch Rakista tonight (Thursday, Oct. 2) at 7 PM on TV5! It's the special Eraserheads episode, he he. :)

Let's Talk About Happy Endings

If you happen to have read my first book, the short story collection called Happy Endings, and you're free next Monday afternoon, September 29, around 3 PM, it would be great if you could drop by Sweet Inspirations on Katipunan Avenue (it's sort of across Ateneo/Miriam, alongside Teriyaki Boy and Chicken Bacolod), in Quezon City.

The National Book Development Board has a little reading group called the NBDB Book Club, and they meet once a month to read and discuss Philippine-authored books. This September, their pick is Happy Endings, described on its back cover as a collection of "stories about reinvented identities, lost loves, thermoacoustic engines and Wednesday afternoons." The Book Club will be gathering at the aforementioned time and place -- and I'll be there as well, to answer any and all questions anyone may have about the book, from the writing process to whatever else. The session is open to anyone who's read the book; no registration required, just drop by. It'll be fun. (For more details, call the NDBD Secretariat at 9268238.)

On a somewhat related note, am very proud and pleased to point out that, thanks to my insane friends in television, Happy Endings plays what could be called a pivotal part in an upcoming episode (Ep. 9) of Rakista. (The show airs every Thursday night, 7 PM, on TV5, as if you didn't know already.) Thanks, guys.

R.I.P. DFW

Holy crap, David Foster Wallace just killed himself.

More on the author here.

Some quotes from DFW.

"Fiction-writing's lonely in a way most people misunderstand. It's yourself you have to be estranged from, really, to work."

"I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction's job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."

"I 've found the really tricky discipline to writing is trying to play without getting overcome by insecurity or vanity or ego."

"The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do?"

"...To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared about how sappy this'll look in print, saying this."

How To Be a Freelance Writer

You're going to the Book Fair, right? If not, then I don't know what to say to you... Except, perhaps, "Go to the Book Fair!" If not for the books, then at least to attend Trouble-Free Freelancing, which is all about, and I quote, "How to Succeed at Freelance Writing with power freelancers Luis Katigbak, Erwin Romulo and others." Yup, we're giving away all the secrets, including all the dark rituals involving limerick chanting, unemployed editors as human sacrifices, and fatted calves (mine; I really need to exercise).

It's happening on Sunday, September 14, 2008, 4:30 to 6 PM, at the Manila International Book Fair, at Meeting Room 4, SMX Convention Center, SM Mall of Asia. And then it's happening again, same time and place, but on the day after, Monday. The second session will be even better, because then we'll be joined by the lovely and talented Yvette Tan. Yihee!

So many great events to go to. Later tonight at The Podium, 8 PM, is Drip's last gig for 2008, since lead singer Beng is gloriously pregnant and will be taking a break for a while, 'til about March of next year. (The gig also doubles as a baby shower, for those inclined to gift-giving.)

And then tomorrow, at the Book Fair, is the launch of my brilliant award-winning cousin Mookie Katigbak's first collection of poetry, The Proxy Eros, from Anvil Publishing, around 3 PM. Congrats Mookie! :D Afterwards there's the opening of Frailty at Cubao X, around 7 PM, a must-go-to for fans of the visually arresting. Starring Bernie Sim! Lala Gallardo! Cynthia Bauzon-Arre! And many many more! :D


CORRECTION: Our Book Fair talk/s are at 3:00 PM, not 4:30. Apologies. We were just informed of the mix-up yesterday, right before we went to the Fair.

Happy Birthday Yvette!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YVETTE!

There is not enough space on teh Internetz to describe how wonderful you are. :D

Pic taken at the launch of Cyan Abad-Jugo's "Leaf & Shadow," and stolen from Panch Alcaraz, illustrator of said book

Leaf and Shadow by Cyan Abad-Jugo

"In this book you will find stories about some strange but essentially friendly creatures: a homesick anito stuck behind an old aparador; a musical rocking horse carved out of a very special block of wood; a poor kapre blamed by Old Manang for all the misdeeds in Lola’s house; and a shadow man who hosts parties in his shadow world." (Description from the Anvil Publishing page.)

The launch is tomorrow, September 6, Saturday, 3 PM, at Powerbooks Trinoma. Congratulations Cyan! :D

Kermit the Bale

Some of you may have seen this already but if not... go, go look.

I think my favorite is the one where's he's standing opposite Russell Crowe.

Rakista Rocks

So I've plugged Rakista, the new comedy on TV5 about a group of college kids who form a band, on my music column and on my Facebook status updates. (Fourth episode airs tonight, September 4, Thursday, 7PM on channel 5!) Now you can read an entire article -- written by Philbert Dy -- on the show. Some excerpts:

"First, you might notice that the voice of the narrator is Lourd de Veyra of the Radioactive Sago project, which is insanely cool. Second, you might start to get a whiff of a twisted sense of humor that has never been present in local television, one that’s somewhat self-aware, and ready to poke fun at all the tropes of the genre. And lastly, you get the strange feeling that the inmates are running the prison, that for once, the creative people have been given free rein over what they want to put on screen, without interference from the station.

"The end result is something part John Hughes movie, part The Adventures of Pete and Pete, a little bit of Joss Whedon, and all Pinoy. It’s a striking alternative to what’s usually offered to young people on television."

The show was created by quirky Quark Henares and dandy Diego Castillo, and features a wonderfully talented/demented array of directors and writers, including a certain (ahem) Yvette Tan. I got to sit in on a couple of meetings and co-write episode 3 (which aired last week) with Yvette, and I can attest to the fun, freewheeling nature of the work behind the scenes, which of course doesn't mean that these people don't work their asses off.

Philbert goes on to say, about the show: "We follow these characters as they go through the ups and downs of college life, band life, and life altogether. Every episode is a little bit different. The pilot feels most like a school dramedy, something akin to Fast Times at Ridgemont High. [...] The fourth [episode] is completely off the rails, following Sven as he tries to become part of the Cubao art scene. At one point, the episode becomes a heist flick, before turning into a zombie freakout." (Or, as Rakista writer Ramon de Veyra puts it, the episode is "utterly batshit crazy and works as a complete stand-alone, practically.")

Read the whole article on Click the City, here. And DO NOT miss the show tonight! Yeah boyee.

This Reminded Me Of My Old Job

This made me LOL, and reminded me of my old job at Smart/Wolfpac. Because when we were putting together Pulse.ph, Rad wanted to add a button that said "Download The Internet."

(For those interested in reading Google Chrome comics, click here.)

And check out Cris Ramos' account of the E-heads reunion on Pulse here!

24 Postcards In Full Colour

Listen.

Lovely little shards of song, wordless and wonderful. And yes, they're ringtones.

"The title comes from the idea that when a phone rings we have an expectatiion of news from another place -- much as we do on receiving a postcard. These 24 postcards come from locations across the globe -- real and imaginary."

The photographs are excellent as well.

Some of the pieces remind me of Graeme Revell's work on my favorite soundtrack of all time, for Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World. And maybe it's just me, but listening to these 24 postcards makes me want to write stories. (Perhaps that's because they seem to be the musical equivalent of flash fiction.)

My favorites are "Cascade NW by W," "H thinks a journey" and "This picture of us. P."

This Was Our Eraserheads Reunion

So I wasn't at the Eraserheads reunion concert last night. For people who know me as a big (no fat jokes, please) music fan, that takes a bit more explanation than I'm willing to get into right now. But I was happy that Yvette and I got to be at soundcheck the night before, to watch and listen to the reunited E-heads go through several complete songs from their repertoire, as well as bits and pieces of their other songs and even a couple of covers (I almost swooned when they did a bit of David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust"). That was enough for me, really. And I was happy for the people who were going last night, who would be witnesses to the most highly anticipated concert in this country since... well, ever.

Around the time the concert was starting, I was having dinner at Pancake House with Kidlat and Lissa. Our talk naturally turned to music and bands and motivations and dynamics and the Eraserheads, just as I was getting texts from friends who were at the venue. A little over an hour later, Kids and Lissa had gone home and I had walked to the nearby Eunilaine supermarket to buy some groceries. That was when the texts about Ely being rushed to the hospital started to reach me. It was a very weird sensation, getting the news and having absolutely no one near me to share it with, to freak out with.

Walked to the Burger Machine down the street to buy food to take home. While I was waiting for my order, this fresh-faced couple dropped by. The girl was toting a Stephanie Meyer novel, the guy had that day's Manila Bulletin. I suddenly remembered that I hadn't checked yet whether my Saturday music column had come out on time (I had submitted it rather late), so I asked the guy where he had bought it. He ended up giving it to me (thanks, man, whoever you are), and I ended up talking to the two of them, complete strangers, about the E-heads concert and Ely's collapse. (They were E-heads fans, of course; the girl more than the guy. I think almost everyone in a ten-year radius of my age is an E-heads fan.) That was how much I needed to talk to someone about what felt like a triumphant/tragic moment in Pinoy music history.

By the time I got home I had learned that Ely was in Makati Med, in stable condition, reportedly. Denise called and gave me a first-hand account of the show and we talked 'til my phone battery died. I went online early this morning, and sure enough, everything was Eraserheads: aside from the official news stories on Ely's condition and the concert, more than half of the recent status updates on Facebook had to do with the Eraserheads, and friends were posting lengthy and in many cases quite affecting accounts of the night, on their blogs. Already quoted Sarah earlier, but two more posts in particular deserve mention:

First, Oli's evocative and extremely well-written account: “It was a transformative show. A countdown timer had people chanting, as if it were New Year's Eve, the seconds before the E-heads would be together again at long last. A drumburst from the darkened stage let us know that they were there and when the familiar chords to Alapaap broke through, we all felt tearjerky. The songs rolled out like old intimates welcomed back into our lives after years of absence. From my vantage point in the middle of the Patrons section, I captured some videos on my old point-and-shoot. What the official DVD release will not be able to capture is Ely's voice remixed with the voices of countless fans singing along -- in low intensity during less familiar lyrics, in full throated throttle during the choruses. The Eraserheads seemed to realize this, and at moments, Mr. Buendia would lay back, content with accompanying the fans who were doing the singing for him. This was our reunion concert too.” [Full post here.]

And then there's Katwo's amazing post, which covers her personal history growing up with the E-heads' music, all the way to yesterday's concert and the now-legendary follow-up jam at saGuijo right after. "This was the eraserheads. This was OUR eraserheads reunion 2nd set, because this was just US. Everyone in the room sang, it didn't matter who was at the mic. The band was just there to assist everyone to purge all feelings, memories and to commemorate the greatness that is the eraserheads. And the gig was such a contrast to the Fort stage. No state of the art stage production, raims and buddy didn't even have their complete instrument set up, there was no 5 meter barricade from the artists, there were only a about, at the most, 200 hundred people in the crowd, free beer getting served, there were no SVIP sections, no security guys, no swanky buffet food, no press. But there we were shouting Tang Ina to Pare Ko, singing Tito vic and joey with Aia on Spolarium, doing our lalalala-la-las to El Bimbo." [Full post here.]

Is it strange that I don't regret not being at The Fort for the first set, but sorely wish I had been at saGuijo for the unofficial second? For a glimpse of the sweaty shouty blissful fun, click here for "Magasin" (thanks to Quark) and here for "Ang Huling El Bimbo" (thanks to Mark).

I'll end with another quote from Katwo. "I finally gave in to my fan-girl self and told Buddy that they've changed my life in more ways than they can imagine. They might have inspired me, but I still did all the legwork to change my life." Well said, well said.

Awesome, Rocking, Surreal

"Tonight was one of the most fun, awesome, rocking and... surreal nights of my life."

Here's an excerpt from Sarah Cada's account of last night's reunion concert of Ely, Raimund, Buddy and Marcus (or, as I like to call it, "E2: Eraserheads United.")

*

The crowd was going crazy (myself included) because... well, this was just the band that pretty much left a HUGE dent in Philippine music and helped shape it as we know it today. Those guys are legends. And they pretty much shaped my musical preferences, too, since I grew up listening to them since I was in 3rd grade.

They played my three most favorite songs: Minsan, Huwag Kang Matakot and, finally, LIGHTYEARS!!! My ultimate favorite song EVER!!! That was their last song for the first set, and they went backstage for a 20-minute intermission.

[...]

Twenty minutes passed, and the band wasn't back on stage.

Another minute. And another. And another.

I was starting to wonder what was going on backstage.

And then some people went on stage. Crew people attending to the instruments. and then some more people came on stage. Buddy, Marcus, and Raymund. And they were not making their way to their instruments. And Ely was not on stage with them.

No way.

*

Read the whole account here.

Last we heard, Ely was in stable condition at Makati Medical. Our sympathies and best wishes to him and his family.

Ultraelectromagneticsoundcheck

So wow; it's really happening, and it's really happening tonight.

Just got home half an hour ago; the sun's up and I'm hoping I can catch enough sleep before a meeting I have scheduled for noon, but am all jangly-awake in a good way. It's like I'm all hopped up on caffeine. Which I am, actually, but the real reason I'm jangly-awake is this: We got to watch the Eraserheads soundcheck last night at the Fort's Open Field.

I think it took a few moments for the fact to sink in: Ely, Raimund, Buddy and Marcus were performing together, again, right in front of us.

Tonight should be great.

Ben and Rose and Archie and Betty and Veronica

I never, ever thought I would read an article about Archie comics that would bring me to tears. (Though the advance press for Archie vs. the Punisher came close.) But, well -- here you go.

"They breezed in one Sunday afternoon, wide eyed and cheerful. Both must have been in their late 70s or early 80s. I watched as they casually walked the floor, browsing and whispering to one another. The one thing that immediately struck me was that they were holding each other's hands. I remember thinking about how lucky it must be to get to that stage of life and not only be with someone you love, but also want to hold their hand."

Of course, it's not really about Archie comics. But of course, it also is. Just read it.