I saw Speed Racer on the first day. I walked out before finishing the movie. I was not the only one. I like the movie review which refers to the latest Wachowski siblings’ “film” as “Fuchsia vomit.” I thought I should have watched this movie in one of those hideous SM cinemas instead of Greenbelt. I paid 190 pesos only to walk out.

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While I understand that the movie is an homage to the anime version, there are some aspects of anime that will not translate well to film unless you’re a good filmmaker. I think the best Wachowski siblings’ film is Bound. Then Matrix. After that, all shit breaks lose.

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One of the best film translations from manga is my favorite Lone Wolf and Cub. Tight storytelling, nuanced acting, clean direction. Unlike Speed Racer it was just an puddle of videogame colors, God-awful script, over the top acting (I just want to slap the kid brother and brain his pet chimp till Kingdom come), and it was just a glorified saturated copy of anime. Supporters of the film say that the Wachowskis wanted to copy the visual narrative of the anime. Had I was told this beforehand, why should I watch a copy when I can just watch the original anime series?

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Emile Hirsch. Promising young actor. Not in this film. It is unfortunate that a lot of the people will find out about him in this crap. Watch Into the Wild. Emile is amazing there.

In Speed Racer, he just perfected his nose scrunching skill.

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The only thing I like in Speed Racer was Christina Ricci’s Louise Brooks hairdo.

I know most of the people who watched this will not know one of the most influential hairstyles Cinema has ever produced. Hell. I should be shot for the comparison, but I’d rather watch the silent films of Louise Brooks more than Speed Racer. That hairstyle has more cultural gravitas than this Wachowski crap.

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I just saw next week’s line-up of films. The Hottie and the Nottie. Putang ina naman! Leche! Utang ng Loob!!! Matagal pa ba ang lintek na Batman?!?!?!

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I can’t wait for Batman: The Dark Knight. I think that it was perfect casting feat to select Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent. Friends of mine who are into DC comics say that Harvey Dent is one of the most toughest and complicated villains. I’m glad they got such a great actor for the part. I still can’t get over his acting in Neil Labute’s In the Company of Men.

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People will watch this for Heath Ledger. Me, too. But moreso with Eckhart and I’m watching it for the more talented Gyllenhaal: Maggie! Sure, his brother Jake is prettier than her but this bitch can act. I’m thinking of showing The Secretary to my Hum2 students. But I think that is too much. But maybe I just will…..What can they do? Fire me for indecency? Hahahahahaah….

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Some friends say that they can’t wait for Indiana Jones. I don’t know. Isn’t Harrison Ford boinking Calista Flockhart? Does that make him a necrophiliac?

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I’m watching the latest Indiana Jones for Cate Blanchett! I love it! She’s a villain sporting that Luoise Brooks bob!

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One promising film this week: Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay! I LOVE HAROLD AND KUMAR! Their first film I was laughing my fat ass off. It may be a stoner flick, but it is satirical in nature. Plus John Cho is a hot bitch.

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Although I am iffy that the censors will cut out some scenes. < Sarcasm > Because Lord knows scenes with marijuana inhalation have adverse effects to viewers more than scenes of blatant violence and gun fights. < /sarcasm >

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Back to the 190 pesos movie ticket. I almost fainted when I found out. I am old!!! I remember paying 20 freaking pesos to watch Roderick Paulate bakla films in Mandaue Cinema. Both are dead, I mean Roderick has no career and the cinema is now a Chowking branch.

To celebrate mother’s day, I started to learn how to drive. Or should I say relearn how to drive. Back in high school, I could drive. But I almost killed my sisters so I stopped. So, today, after more than a decade of refusing to get a license, I enrolled in a driving school and drove….if your definition of driving is being overtaken by a tricycle, then I drove pretty well.

I am exhausted right now. The driving instructor made me drive around Makati Central Business District. At one point I was so ready to go down and do my favorite traffic signal: hailing a cab. But I have to learn how to drive. Not because I am getting a car, but because my mother is getting older.

All my life, I never saw my father drive. Family legend has it that he knew how to drive but once drove drunk and rammed into a store. So. he swore off driving. I never saw him behind the wheel. It was always my mother. She would drive me to and from school.

My mom’s a good driver. Her high school friend who migrated to America visited her once. She drove him around and his comment of my mother’s driving skill? “My testicles disappeared.” The statement was funnier in Tagalog.

She would say “Don’t talk to the driver while the driver is driving.” I couldn’t concentrate as the driving instructor was telling me “Clutch. Gas. Check your mirrors. Half-brake. Slowly.” I wanted to scream and break into the bank and steal millions so that I can afford to hire a driver instead.

When I was 7, the family driver would suffer as I insist on sitting on his lap and that I take the wheel of the car. I had fun then. Fast forward more than two decades, I feared the tricycles whizzing by. But deep down, I wanted to drive a backhoe and flip the pesky jeepneys away from the road.

In high school, I learned how to drive in the old airstrip in Lahug. (Now, that airstrip is populated by call centers. ) I was eager to rev it up as I took to the road. On that fateful day, I was a freshman in high school and drove an old blue Toyota pick-up. My sisters rode at the back. I was a bit of a speed demon. I floored the accelerator then ten seconds later, I hit the brakes. My sisters flew and Dang hit her forehead. She was crying. As I parked the pickup at home, my elder sister flew down in a rage and slapped me. Good thing, I didn’t fracture my little sister’s skull….just a bump but she was crying.

So, I chose the passenger seat ever since.

But I dread aging not because of the wrinkles but there will be a time that my speed racer mother will not be able to drive. So, I enrolled. I just called her and told her I drove around Makati and sweat bullets throughout the ordeal. She was giggling then was elated. I told her that I didn’t scream only whimpered.

Truth be told, I kind of enjoyed driving around. But of course, I lack coordination. Th instructor said I was extreme. He told me to stop behind a car at a length of a car. I stopped behind a car…and the space between us can fit four more cars. At the start, the instructor noted that I love to step on the gas and I was “vrooming”……at the first gear. Driving around Makati, I was picturing myself taking my mom to the mall….going to the provinces. It made me smile until the taxi behind me blasted my ears with his horn to which I gave him the finger. Apparently, I am advanced in road rage skills.

So, I still have much to learn and have much to practice. I told my sister I am going to drive my mother on Sundays and Holy Week. The rest I will just take a cab or get on the trains.

My brother-in-law told me that I will do fine. He told us it was difficult at first but I will get used to it. I got a slew of text messages congratulating me of this endeavor. Maybe next time, I can be able to drive through McDonald’s in Alfaro, Makati and order me some shakes. I’d be in tears just after achieving that feat of multitasking…driving, ordering, paying and consuming.

I am just thinking learning how to drive is one thing, dealing with skyrocketting gas prices is another. Not to mention the pollution I will contribute as a driver. One step at a time. My foot is still on half-brake mode.

Years ago, I was drunk. And almost got a tattoo. Thankfully, i was not THAT drunk. So, I don’t have a tattoo. Only a colony of stretch marks. I was still working for the newspaper.  So, I didn’t get a tattoo.  But I dyed my hair dirty gray.  But someday I will get a tattoo. Not today.

So, I just watch the downloaded episodes of my only favorite show from Discovery Travel and Living Miami Ink. I love this show so much I even bought a shirt. Thanks again to my little sister for that rapidshare account in which I can download movies way WAAAA-AAAY faster than torrents, I am enjoying the first season of Miami Ink.

Addie is adamant that I should not get a tattoo because he finds it “filthy.” I just keep quiet like a dutiful spouse and surprise him with a hot pink Chinese dragon with chartreuse claws and false eyelashes snaking up my back one of these days. Haahahaha.

The reason that I don’t have a tattoo yet is because I am still coming up with a design. Also, I subscribe to the belief of pre-colonial pintados that one has to earn the tattoo and not borne out of a whim. Ergo, even some traditional groups in the Philippines insist that only the older members of the tribe get elaborate tattoos. I saw some of my friends’ tattoos and thought they look anemic and typical. One had this hideous drawing of a girl’s decapitated head with flowing locks because he’s a Virgo. I told him “That looks like Mystika and you won’t peg down the word ‘virginal’ on somebody like her.”

On a side note, I googled “Mystika Filipino singer” and got this photo:

Wahahahahahaha. Well, I’d rather be a Mystika fan….

So, anyway, tattoos…..I don’t want a small-ass tattoo on my arm. One of my favorite authors of all time is Junichiro Tanizaki and he had this amazing short story about a tattoo artist and his greatest work of art. It was haunting and the process was discussed with such loving detail that I wanted to have one despite the one other thing that is keeping me from getting one: the pain.

On that night when I got drunk, I was with people I haven’t seen for years now.  One of them was a tattoo artist. Forgot his name.  Cute, but sadly, straight.  I forgot his name.  I swear he was tracing my back with his finger erotically.  He was gasping that he “should do me.”  That thought of doing the nasty evaporated when he said that I am a tattoo artist’s dream come true: I’m wide and pale, just like a giant canvas.  To which I proceeded to down more Red Horse to have that “loving” statement extricated from my mind for the night.

He was insisted I get a tattoo right then and there.  I was just slurring my no’s.

So, here I am just watching all these cool designs in Miami Ink.  Maybe in the future, I’ll get a tattoo from them.  Maybe I can finally be satisfied with a design.  Maybe.  I can see Addie’s eyes get narrower and his lips curling downwards at the mention of me wanting to get a tattoo.

Or maybe I’ll do what I did when I was 18 and bored.  I took a pentel pen and drew Maori-inspired tattoo on my face, the ink burning my eyes but I looked fantastically butch and ready for a haka after.   It was a bitch taking the pentel pen marks later though.

Ah…the downloading of the Miami Ink episode is done.  Got to watch now.

So I bought a pencil case. Not because I am having an age-defined crisis but because I needed one. Recently, I have been bleeding my savings for stuff that are taking me away from computer-dependency. I managed to find a stash of quill pens. So, I needed a pencil case. I wanted to splurge on a bad-ass pencil case. I thought perhaps in this day and age there will be more compartments, buttons to press. Instead I was snagged by glitters and fur.

But first a stroll down memory lane…..

I remember growing up that one of my favorite things to play with was my blue pencil case with a fighter jet photo. I know I know so butch, but I really wanted to be a pilot then. I love the several buttons that pencil case had. One press and out pops a ruler. Another press and a secret compartment compartment slides out.

I was also particularly fond of my tin pencil case with the Jim Davis‘ other comic strip character Orson. I love Orson more than Garfield. It was yellow and I used it on the sixth grade. It was a vision of irony: I’m listening to Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit while I arrange my pencils inside the yellow pencil case.

High school snuffed the pencil case usage. I just had a pouch with pens. In the UP College of Fine Arts, I thought it was pretty funny to place my pencils and pens inside a Dunkin Donuts tin cylinder featuring one of the worst movies of all time Kazaam starring Shaquille O’Neal. No, I never saw the film. Even the classroom hipster Jordan thought it was ghastly. Apparently, I was the only one who saw it as an act of irony.

Then I grew tired of irony. So, I relished into pop culture brainwashing. My next pencil case was the perfume container of Versace Blue Jeans. And then I graduated and the computer stole my attention for years.

But now, I’m having gadget fatigue and pandering to my analog side lately.

So, the pencil case….

This particular pencil case was just on a bottom tier shelf in National Bookstore in Glorietta. The graphics caught my eyes and stated giggling on the glitters. Then, the devil is TRULY in the details.

First, I am particularly fond of bears. So this cute one in red background with cute cartoons are nearly a shoo-in for me.

Aawww…… I loved it even more when I read the wisdom of the pencil case:

And not only the wisdom, I noticed a row of bears doing this:

They’re shitting! I have never bought anything cute and with shit before so this is definitely a first. If one were to deduce this graphic….if life is so full of happiness that you had to shit it out does this mean happiness is shit? Brillo, baby!

Inside there is the panel that has the multiplication “table” and the saying with the cute shit graphic!

What is more potent than bullshit? BEAR SHIT!

I’m calling this “My Find of the Year.”