I’m going to go against the grain on this one.

The new Transformers movie, the one they call Revenge of the Fallen? Loved it.

Just about every writer that I respect and every blog that I bother to read bashed the movie until it was reduced to a heap of scrap metal. While I normally nod in agreement at every argument these writers and bloggers make, I will make an exception this time around.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Michael Bay’s latest grand-scale Hasbro commercial, is not just a good movie.

It’s a great movie. Four-stars-out-of-five great. Eight-in-a-scale-of-10 great.

And I don’t say that as a popcorn flick fan who gives the thumbs up at every movie that stretches endlessly and fills in the gaps between dialogues with exploding robots that transform into cars and airplanes. I say it as a serious movie buff who thinks Anthony Hopkins delivered a spectacularly disturbing performance as a flesh-munching psycho in Silence of the Lambs.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is Dirk Nowitzki great.

(After having read this grief-laden link posted on this guy’s Facebook account)

Dear reader,

After all the special moments we had shared, I fear you are now close to completely forgetting me. Allow me to reintroduce myself.

I am the guy you waited for every morning to share coffee with. I’m also the same insignificant ass who spent the night before thinking you’d keep on waiting, as long as I keep coming up with those witty one-liners to intro how your favorite team creamed an opponent.

You must remember me. You once suffered how I’d spend the night slobbering with saliva and beer foam while launching into some pompous speech of self-importance, unmindful of the possibility that I’d be late for our breakfast rendezvous. I was cocky. I thought you’d wait anyway. That all I had to do was mindlessly hammer fingers on laptop keyboards and you’d rush to the newsstand early in the morning to take me home for breakfast.

I do not know when I started noticing that all there was left of these mornings were a cup of cold coffee and an empty table.

Truth is, I didn’t care at first.

You’d come back. I was sure.

I was wrong.

And heck, I miss you.

(Thanks to Gerry, for the heads up)

Deconstructing Chip Tsao
By Francis T. J. Ochoa

SEE, here’s what you don’t get. Chip Tsao was simply writing a satire on the Spratly Islands controversy. Chip Tsao was trying to be funny. Chip Tsao, apparently, was simply unaware that Filipinos don’t normally find racist jokes funny especially if they are about old buildings that smell like cockroaches or questionable medical degrees.

Bittersweet moments are made of these.

Fittingly, for a band whose songs’ lyrics make it open season for armchair metaphor-hunters, the Eraserheads: The Final Set was one big irony crammed into a three-hour celebration.

Take the four members of the band. Individually, they may turn heads or draw here-and-then shrieks of recognition. Put them together—Ely Buendia, Raimund Marasigan, Buddy Zabala and surfer dude Marcus Adoro—and all they have to do is say jump and the SM Mall of Asia’s reclaimed foundations receive a severe test from a hundred thousand pairs of stomping feet.

And then the ultimate irony. The four, who had previously taken separate career paths after a sudden and suddenly messy divorce several years ago, took the stage one last time to say goodbye.

That was what the Final Set was, after all. A chance for the Eraserheads to give its loyal following a formal and final farewell.

 “Ito na talaga ang huling El Bimbo,” frontman Buendia yelled during what was supposed to be the final song in encore.

If there are still doubts that Barack Obama’s the coolest president ever, they were crushed at the Verizon Center recently, where the US chief executive took time out to watch a Bulls-Wizards game.

Too bad, though, the Bulls didn’t give their No. 1 fan a reason to stand from his seat and do some crazy fist-pumpin’. The Wizards horribly messed up Obama’s home team.

But apart from not being able to cheer himself hoarse, President Obama was just like any ordinary fan…

(pictures under the cutline)

(I’m freeing this post from my drafts, where it had been consigned to for quite some time now)

I remember you from when we were kids. Being from where I came from, you seemed so strange; you with the breath so cool, but with no trace of mint. Only the strong scent of  pine trees and clouds.

Strangely, now that we’re both grown-ups, you’ve become even more vague in your unfamiliarity.  Being with you again makes me wonder: Does the cold come from the clouds that embrace you or from your shoulders?

I remember you from when we were kids. Why couldn’t you have stayed that way?

My mental to-do list now feels like a washing machine, with items tumbling, spinning and intertwining hopelessly in my head.  I wish I could get everything over and done with but like the Chinese say, the journey to a thousand miles begins with a single step.

So this is my first step. Crossing off a post I owe a friend.

One, I need to keep alive a Pay-It-Forward kind of thing launched by the Baguio Transplant.  Last month, she put up this blog project wherein she would give out handmade/homemade products to the first five people to respond to her post.

So here goes: The first five people to respond to this post will get a handmade/homemade gift from yours truly.

   

They’re doing it all over again.

As you all know by now, the Eraserheads have listened to the pleas of the multitude and are going to reunite for one more gig to make up for that abbreviated reunion concert in August last year.

And this isn’t going to be a continuation. It’s going to be an entire show, not just one that picks up from where they last left. That’s what the Heads themselves said when they held a press conference announcing the concert. It’s going to take place at the Mall of Asia on March 7. So red-letter that day and begin your Frodo-like quest to get your tickets. I began mine with an open letter to the organizers just recently.

And if you need any more reason to drag you off your butts to go on a crusade, beg, strip, offer sexual favors and donate eggs to monasteries in exchange for tickets, it’s this rather melancholic message from the band’s frontman:

“As far as I know, this is going to be the final time (the Heads will play together),” said Ely Buendia.

Let me start this one off with an admission.

I am not the No. 1 Eraserheads fan.

High school buddy Gerry, after watching Manny Pacquiao finish off Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy career, blogged about the two boxers the Pacman should mix it up with next year.

He started off with Ricky Hatton, the beer-guzzling bloke from Manchester City who should present an easy target for Pacquiao’s pet left straight.

The bigger fight, though, would be Floyd Mayweather Jr., for the right to inherit boxing’s mythical pound-for-pound throne.

Sad to say, though, Manny Pacquiao’s next fight has already been sealed. And it ain’t with either fighter.

And you guys got the scoop here at Smallville.