i’m proud of my ethnic background. i’m filipino, and halfway around the world there’s a nation of islands populated by people with whom i share a cultural heritage: customs, traditions, modes of thought. i’ve been to the philippines on multiple occasions, and (once you leave the polluted metroplexes) it’s beautiful. out in the provinces you can find lushgreen tropical plantlife stretching far off into the mountain skyline horizon. you can meet people so genuine and well-meaning, they reaffirm your belief in humanity’s potential.

but i can’t, for the life of me, figure out what kind of crackrock they’re smoking over there thesedays.

i went to houston this past weekend for a formal family gathering. it was a fun time as far as those things go. but… they played this song…

you see, apparently there’s this song that’s popular in the philippines, and it has an accompanying… well, “dance,” for lack of a better term… and…

you know what, here, just watch this video right quick. just trust me.

this is, i assume, the official music video for this pop tune. it’s really fucking annoying, let me just say that from the get-go. but stick with it at least through the first chorus. the shit starts to pop off around 1:10.

(click here.)

alright, if you managed to get through the whole thing, just take a breather for a second and try to regain some sense of reality. just breathe.

no, no, don’t press play again, you’re not ready. you don’t want to overdose.

my brother showed me this video before we went to the family party, so i was at least somewhat braced. but still, the first time i saw the video, i believe my exact reaction was, “what the fuck?!” followed shortly by “this is so so wrong.”

let’s just start with certain parts of the video.

it’s the kids that really unsettle me. the kindergarden class or whatever. i don’t know if i’m just getting older, but really, what are we teaching our children? won’t anybody think of the children?

the fish. the fish surprises me every fucking time. because by the time you’re halfway into the video, you’re either nauseous or your mind is so blown you cannot look away. then, bam, the damn fish. it’s like after i’ve watched the video, my mind can only process so much, so the memory of the fish is cast aside. every fucking time.

okay, anyway. so i’m at the family party. you know how these things go, bad music but good times. someone’s uncle is out there dancing to bad commercial hiphop; snappin’ fingers, poppin’ collars, whatever. clusters of teenagers testing the thin line between dancing and dry-humping.

then they played the song. they played “otso-otso.”

and the place. went. apeshit.

it was like one of those choreographed scenes from one of those high-school coming-of-age movies. you know, where the entire graduating class apparently had the time to put together a dance routine, because, you know, people just do that sort of thing.

it was… shocking. i couldn’t even laugh. my brain just skipped right past hysterical laughter and went straight to stunned eyes-wide silence. thankfully i was sitting down at the time, or i might have passed out. people stormed the fucking dancefloor. old people, young people. giddy, hands on their thighs, popping the smalls of their backs. singing along.

i should’ve snapped a picture, but my limbs wouldn’t respond. shit, my brain wouldn’t respond. i was watching everything happen, and i kept trying to take the images and sounds all in, but my brain just kept asking me, “but what does all this mean?”

i’ve been thinking about it all week; trying to make some sense of everything. but i don’t reach any conclusions. i don’t know if this is some sign of the apocalypse. i don’t know if this is some thinly-disguised vision of the future where everyone is happy and gyrating to bastard incarnations of afrika bambaataa’s planet rock. i really don’t even know how i feel about it.

but i want it on vinyl.