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.

“At times Ginny felt something rise up in her throat, wet and thick, as if the last shreds of her heart were loosening. She’d try and force it out but it wouldn’t come. It crept back into her chest and squatted there, and wouldn’t let her do anything right.”
–Jean Thompson

isn’t that the most depressing beautiful shit you’ve ever read?

i was taking this upper-division communications course taught by a dynamo of critical thought and short blonde hair that, had i been sober during the time period, i should have appreciated more for her enthusiasm and fire. small class, thirty people. in any case, there was this girl in the class who usually sat in the row in front of me. eve. i knew her name because she’d write it over and over at the top of her notes, doodling flowered script of those three letters with just enough balance of whimsy and purpose to drive me crazy and make my neck hot. i took shitty notes in that class.

of course, she was beautiful. pale alabaster skin scented with some fruity bouquet which i attributed to magic, but was probably just a combination of pantene and pink lotion. she wasn’t smoldering or slutty, but she was captivating. she had that shimmering ethereal quality; stark, as if she were sculpted from marble set against the world’s burlap background.

eve always wore her hair up, except for the day she decided to ensnare my heart. she was doodling butterflies that day; it was always her name or butterflies. fucking butterflies. small flocks taking flight off of her page into my eyes, landing on the part of my brain which directs conscious thought. anyways, she set her pen down and stretched that maddening stretch you girls do, soft and deliberate. then, as if it were the most sane thing in the world, she reached up and took her hair out of its bun.

her long gorgeous brown hair. a slow-motion cascade of heaven set free, rippling down her shoulders, down her back, down down down. my soul was agog. i swear i don’t know how i stopped myself from reaching out and touching it. thankfully, the shock kept my hands in place.

all this time, all of this splendor had been hidden right atop her head. as if i didn’t have enough problems already.

then in a series of motions so fluid they defied logic, she wrapped up her hair back into its bun, held in place by a miniature chopstick.

she settled into a soft sigh and returned her attention to the lecture leaving me staring at the back of her re-exposed neck, even more tantalizing than before.

some short time after that, maybe a week or so, i was sitting in the row in front of her, knowing full well that i had nothing wondrous to offer as a distraction for eve sitting directly behind me. my hair was short and black, with no mysteries to unfold; my neck, scruffy.

so, without really thinking it through, i started doodling butterfly nets.

the connotation didn’t really sink in until the third one or so. a net in motion, indicated by multiple receding curved lines. it was at that point i realized i had just done something overt. and i half-wished she was paying attention to the lecture as she should, so that i’d be spared the uncomfortable ramifications of barging into her notes from a row away.

at the end of class i stood up and caught her eyes as i was leaving. her lips were a slight smile, her eyes shining back at mine. she had seen my nets, but her reaction was poised, giving me nothing. i think i said, “hey,” or something equally mundane, and paused mid-stride,

and then walked away feeling her smile fading in my rear-view memory.

“hey.” that’s all i had. or rather, that’s all i could think to do. pathetic really. and things haven’t really changed.

[…lost data]

last night i went on a mixcd safari for several hours. out of nowhere. well, not nowhere. but i was sitting there sipping a stout margarita on the rocks, labeling a copied cd for a friend, and i realized i had one blank cd left. so i was trying to think of an appropriate choice in my collection to copy, to make best use of the last blank cd.

my first thought, naturally, was a cd that i subsequently couldn’t find amidst my unpacked boxes. the search for that particular cd took about half an hour and accomplished little but foster self-loathing for my lackluster organizational skills.

during this fruitless excavation, i’d been changing the record on the turntable, and on occasion bringing the needle back so i could hear certain songs over again. i made a half-hearted mental note to earmark one song in particular for a mixcd. it was percussive without being overbearing. emotionally evocative without being gratuitous. sexy, but not slutty. i replayed it twice. and then my half-hearted mental note caught a spark and was suddenly lit ablaze.

i knew what song would come after it. and then two more songs that would fit well with the theme later in the mix. during the early peak.

but i needed a third track cooler. something to smooth out the shotgun blast of summer heat from the first two tracks. but not too cool.

just a sultry thunder rumble to follow the initial lightning strikes; all a precursor for the balmy storm yet to come.

literally, within five minutes i had a good quarter of the mixcd mapped in my head. fifteen minutes after that, there were several dozen records at my feet pending consideration and a rough draft of the mix written in frantic scrawl on a couple pages of paper.

inspiration hadn’t just hit. it had fused to my brain and taken control, allocating all mental resources to the selection for and structure of this unborn mixcd. unmitigated fury of purpose. wild-eyed moments of mumbled one-person dialogue.

i hadn’t felt that kind of headfire in a while.

rollerskating. last night i went rollerskating. the tablemanners crew (tats, gerald, et cetera) and a few other dj’s put on an event at skateland up north of the city.

it was fun. i know that’s a fairly simple statement, but when you take into account i can’t recall the last time i felt that way after an evening, it carries weight. it was fun.

i can’t skate for shit, and a good portion of my night was a wobbly struggle to keep from busting my ass. and on more than one occasion i thought i was going to be the catalyst for a domino catastrophe. but there was no calamity of any kind. i mean, there was the bullshit that manifests whenever you get more than two people together, but even that was minimal. negated by the glee of strapping wheels to your feet.

i’d almost say it was wholesome if it weren’t for the all-you-can-drink alcohol and the abundance of bootyshorts. but i’ve never seen that many smiles at a club or a bar. it was a tenuous balance of child-like joy and drunken impropriety. but the spell was never broken. at least from where i was standing, er rolling (rather tenuously myself). it could very well have been a recipe for disaster, unlimited drink and a rollerskating rink. but either fate was smiling or the communal spirit of a few hundred hiphop heads, club-goers, and scenesters was laden with enough pristine enjoyment that it shielded the event from any drama or disaster. it was really something.

when was the last time you were at a club and all the faces in your field of vision were painted with smiles? when was the last time you were at a bar and somebody stumbled and took down three bystanders?… and all parties involved and even witnesses nearby couldn’t help but laugh; concerned hands outreached to help the fallen back on their feet. it was peculiar seeing the population of a club transported to a fresh setting devoid of the usual posturing and pick-up games (or at least replaced with milder incarnations).

people forget to have fun when they’re out at the club or the bar. or is it just me? that’s entirely possible.

it was new. it was a clean-slate environment. and even though a lot of the faces were the same, the new lighting evaporated the shadows frequently attached to them.

sauced-up nightplay on disco wheels. goofy and slick and reaffirming. a reminder that there was once a time we weren’t so tangled up in the brambles of jaded adulthood. a second look at our fresh-faced reflection. a brand new pair of borrowed skates, one and a half sizes too small.

good times.