Contemplathings XII

1. To resign or not to resign

It's final. Our company's migrating our account to Araneta Center on the 21st. Which means by then, I will have to start taking a jeep and a bus (or the MRT) everyday I go to work, since I live in Taguig. I ruled out the shuttle service in Market Market. (I've been getting tips that the car seats smell of old laundry.)

Then I read a company email from one of the Bosses. It noted that there is an alarming upward trend in absenteeism and tardiness, blah blah blah, and that there are agents who keep on getting away without punitive action. The email ends in a cheerful note: "I am not pleased and I don't want this to continue. I want blood."

In any case, there will have to be only one way to save my ass: resign before my neck says hi to the ax.

2. To text or not to text Joey.
To say that I miss him terribly would be the understatement of the century. There are times I would lie in my bed and try to remember his face and I would find out my memory of what he looks like fades by the day. That's a terrible thing, starting to unconsciously forget how someone you love looks like.

I want to continue texting him, invite him for a genuinely innocent cup of coffee. But that is the most guaranteed way to look like a stalker, and I'm not sure if I'm ready to look like one.


3. To go out or not to go out on V-Day.
I have been invited by someone already to go out on the day after this coming Friday the 13th. But I'm not sure it would be fair to the guy if I date him when I still have strong feelings for Joey.

I am also surprised though to find out that if it comes to it, there are actually people I would consider dating. Jeez, I'm a mess.

***

My apologies if I can't continue my project in progress. There are just so many things going inside my head; I think I need a real Pensieve. As Jamie said, blogging is some sort of Pensieve, but I think I need the real thing. I'm that screwed up.

Project in progress

Every now and then, I get this sort of fit that makes me ambitious. And then I decide to write some story based on some outrageous, surreal premise. I get so drunk with the possibilities of such a story that I plunge head first into actually writing it. Of course, when I wake up in the morning, I will get a massive hangover and find out I puked on the carpet.

But I never learn, that's why I'm doing it again. I am hopelessly stubborn.

Click here to check out my latest stab at a full-length short story.

ABC cancels Pushing Daisies

Are we saying goodbye to Ned, Olive, and Chuck?

ABC did not explicitly say they are axeing Emmy-nominated Pushing Daisies. But when people start mumbling euphemisms, one immediately notices mean things are being done in a polite manner. And that last phrase is, of course, an oxymoron.

According to a report by the Los Angeles Times, ABC President of Entertainment Steve McPherson broke the news on November last year that the network was giving up on three second-season shows, Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money and Eli Stone. I should have found out about this a long time ago, if not for my firm resolve to avoid sites related to Pushing Daisies for fear of second season spoilers.

ABC has maintained that though they will not order more episodes of Daisies, "the door is still open." This is hardly any consolation to viewers, since talk of ABC's final decision has prompted stars of Daisies to look for other jobs. Director Bryan Fuller has returned to writing for Heroes. while I've read somewhere that Kristin Chenowith has been signed up for another TV show.

Dirty Sexy Money is a friend's favorite, though I personally haven't seen an episode. I am more concerned with Daisies, because the show's originality is so refreshing after heaps and heaps of reality TV serials. Plus it bears resemblances to Amelie and Stepford Wives, of which I am both immensely fond of.

At the end of the day, the rationale behind all this is as simple as ABC (pun intended): These shows, Daisies included, has not drawn enough viewership as to make them profitable enough to be kept spending on. I guess the real chief nemesis of good TV shows is not any writers' strike, or even censorship, but the business of attracting advertisers for more profit.

The Curious Case of Pirated Pushing Daisies

It's a curious coincidence that it was Lee, a Bacardi friend, who introduced me to Pushing Daisies, an American TV series about a piemaker who can bring back the dead to life. Lee Pace stars as the piemaker Ned. I lent him my Roald Dahl and Margaret Atwood books, and I told him it must be a sort of swap, so he lent me his pirated copy of Pushing Daisies. Ah, the wonders of piracy.

In her better days, Jessica Zafra once said in her columns that piracy is not the consumer's problem. It is the movie studios' and record labels' problem. For exploiting the talents of artists and mass producing their work, they rake in millions of dollars. Sure, artists get something out of royalties, but it's a pittance compared to the huge profits the Big Guys amass.

If anything, piracy, she says, bridges the gap between artist and audience. There is no middle-man who, by working the economics of price and supply and demand, hinders the audience's appreciation for the artist's work .

But I guess I'm saying this, only partly because I hoard pirated DVDs. Those peddled in the streets with up to 18 movies. And with the second season of Pushing Daisies coming to an end, I am wildly excited about the prospect of seeing the whole second season of Pushing Daisies sold in the streets of Guadalupe. Marathong umaatikabo na naman ito.

Even though YouTube has uploaded episodes already, I opted not to watch any since I intend to do the whole second season in one sitting--which is not an easy feat since, considering the cliffhanger episode at the end of season one where Vivian reveals to Olive that she is Chuck's mother.

Hopefully, I'll have money next week to buy a pirated copy of season two and finally find out what happens next.

Things to Look Forward to this 2009 (1)

This is long overdue, but I can't think of anything else to write about. My creative juices are at an all-time low. It must be the cold weather, my blood is having difficulty in reaching my brain.

Anyway. Now that the Metro Manila Film Festival is (finally) over, the backlog of foreign movies are now trickling in. Not that I am not fond of homegrown films. But this year's MMFF offerings are as uninteresting as the offerings for the last several years.

I have noticed theaters are now showing The Curious Case of Button Benjamin Button, starring Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt. Loosely based on the 1921 short story by Scott Fitzgerald, the film has a premise that should draw hordes of moviegoers. It actually did. Benjamin (Pitt) is born with the appearance of an old man, as his years go by, he "grows younger" until he becomes a baby. Along the way he meets Hildegarde Moncrief (Oscar winner Cate Blanchett), the daughter of a Civil War veteran, with whom he falls in love and eventually marries.

Benjamin Button boasts of being the product of two talents known for being great in adapting books into movies: Director David Finch (Fight Club) and Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, 1994; Munich, 2005), who won an Oscar for Forrest Gump.

This years seems to be a rematch for Oscar laureates, because Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet of the Titanic fame are back in Revolutionary Road, a movie about the a couple with differing dispositions and apirations. Sam Mendes of American Beauty is at the helm of this long-awaited reunion of two of Hollywood's box office darlings. Man Booker Prize nominee Justin Haythe (The Honeymoon) wrote the screenplay.

There is also Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in July. Steven Kloves, who wrote the first Potter films, returns as screenwriter for this sixth installment of the Potter saga. When I first saw the trailers, I instantly noticed the beautiful black-and-blue themed cinematography. Then I found out the movie's cinematographer is Oscar-nominated Bruno Delbonnel of Amelie. No surprise there. David Yates of the fifth film also returns as director.

Angels and Demons also conquers theaters this year, with Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) as director again. The Da Vinci Code was a bore and a disappointment, but hey Ewan McGregor is the camerlengo Carlo Ventresca, so I will see this film and watch Tom Hanks humiliate himself.

There is also another attempt to redeem the X-Men franchise from complete waste with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which traces the early life of Logan who will eventually become Wolverine. To obviously pander to comic geeks, this installment also promises cameos of future X-Men.

For those who pine for Heath Ledger, there's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a movie about a traveling theater troupe who made a truce with the devil. Heath's death prompted director Terry Gilliam to recast Heath's role with Johnny Depp (oh), Jude Law (oh), and Colin Farrell (oh) playing Heath's character's many transformations. Terry Gilliam is a member of the phenomenal Monty Python comedy troupe.

A fan of Alice Sebold? There's a film adaptation of the 2002 book The Lovely Bones, a tragic story about a girl who was raped and murdered by a local serial killer. BAFTA winner and Oscar-nominated Saoirse Ronan stars as Alice Sebold. Susan Sarandon and Rachel Weisz also star in this much-awaited film by LOTR god Peter Jackson.

So many films to see. So little time. So little dough.

PS. I'm going to see Benjamin Button on Friday, with someone which I wish to be the One who shall finally break my long-cherished singlehood. Yeeha!