Morocco

This is not him. His teeth are whiter, if you can believe that. 

I was on my way to buy two bottles of Merlot when I saw this picture of a happy boy. It was a large enough picture, maybe a foot by a foot and a half, and the boy had the whitest alabaster teeth I've seen on anyone. It was dazzling. He was a chubby brown boy, Third World brown, and he was in his school uniform. His smiling face was looking at something to his right. Perhaps he was listening to a funny friend who's about to unload the best punchline in the world. Perhaps, with that sparkle in his eyes, he was looking, with courage, at the class muse, and that a close friend captured his infatuation in a picture that will soon be enlarged. Perhaps he was listening to good news, maybe a long weekend that's shaping to be the best weekend ever, and that explains his adorable smile. He's a happy boy, and his picture is a delight to look at. 

Have I mentioned how dazzling his teeth were? 

I will call him Morocco. Or Mor. I cannot disclose this shining boy's real name, not because I don't know it, which I do, but because he's just fifteen years old. I happen to know his real name, and Morocco sounds close enough to the name that was printed a few inches below his picture. I know he's fifteen, and I know that for a fact, because he was born July 1, 2001. I am not making that up, that date, on account of it was printed below Morocco's real name. I am not making any of this up, just so you know. Morocco died on February 27, 2016. This date was printed directly below his date of birth. 

The Missing Blog Soup! Blog Soup #2: Smog, Posers, and More Posers from Nine Years Ago

You simply have no idea how filthy the air we're breathing unless you're 26 floors above ground level. I'm sitting here in the office, in a station near a window, overlooking the busy metro on a busy Friday morning, and there's just smog ahead of me. Smog. Twenty six floors above the metro is a putrid limbo of carbon monoxide brought about by our irresponsible attachment to pollution.

It is just dirty out there, you see.

Anyway, you want to read something interesting?

Astrologer wrong on the big prediction

BHOPAL, India (Reuters) - Hundreds of people flocked to a village in central India Thursday to see if an astrologer who forecast his own death would indeed die as predicted.
But the 75-year-old man survived the day.
Kunjilal Malviya, who lives south of the Madhya Pradesh state capital Bhopal, had been meditating in his house after announcing he would die Thursday between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m
A police official confirmed the astrologer was fine and quoted his family members as saying the prediction failed because many of those gathered had prayed for him to live.
"We are afraid of his prediction coming true because all his predictions till date have been correct," his son Anirudh said by phone earlier Thursday.
"My father had predicted the death of my grandfather 15 years ago and it came true exactly like he calculated."
Police have been posted near the house to prevent the astrologer from killing himself, authorities said.
Millions of Indians consult astrologers about their futures as well as marriage and job prospects.
Malviya's prediction is not the first of its type by an Indian astrologer. But in the past, crowds have beaten up astrologers when their predicted demise failed to occur.

It's just about time them posers made for actual value. Entertainment value, that is, and really, nothing can be as fun as seeing them fakers failing to put their money where their mouths are.
And since we're talking posers, let me ask you this: how real can reality TV get when all the characters are trying to make "pa-star" in front of the camera? And come to think of it, how do you expect anybody to behave characteristically when they know that they are being monitored by a 24/7 camera feed? How does the tag line go again, Reality ng Totoong Buhay? Or some shit like that, right? Oh common, we all know it's TV, and it's primetime TV for that matter. My life, and everybody else's, is the ultimate reality TV since the things we do are never recorded for posterity. I can do whatever I can without fearing eviction, I can make fun of everybody else without getting censored or suspended for one day. I can get naked and make love without worrying about internet-wide publication. I can get sick and get confined without summoning the staff medics for support. I don't have to worry about 24-hour security. I don't need to prep up and look pretty for no cameras. I can get bored and not complain about it since I just need to shut up and get away with the lack of theatrics. I don't have to pose in my real life, and I don't have to answer to the MTRCB either.

The MTRCB has got to get involved in all that relentless self promotion. And we all know that censorship utterly defeats the point of reality tv.

It's the perfect Macdonald's theme party. Poser's night.

This was written during the first ever Flipino translation of Endemol's Big Brother series. The one with the gay half-Iranian Uma? The one with the grossly uncultured booger-flicker Franzen? No? It had that band Orange and Lemons singing "Pinoy Ako," which, FYI, was a hit among musical plagiarists with no real knack for creativity on their own. Of course you remember it, I mean, it's not so easy to forget a motley cast of trying hard flop outs and their 24/7 campaign to out fake the hell out of each other.

I like the recent Big Brother cast though. Celebrity Edition 2 opens up a big can of whoop ass. I hope Yayo Aguila or the Canadian Beauty Queen Riza wins.

An Intro to a Horror Movie Review, and then the Actual Horror Movie Review on Yakuza Apocalypse

I gasped with pleasure as I entered the vacant orchestra of Cinema 12. Paranormal Island does have the makings of a piece of shit B movie, but I never expected this, not this sheer absence of the audience. And it excites me, you know, to walk into an empty theater to watch some horror film on its last screening of the night. The dim light on my wrist told me I have some fifteen minutes left before this decidedly obvious garbage starts, so I hop scotched my way to the men's bathroom. Hurrying is not the manner of the gleeful. We hopscotch while gasping with pleasure. 

And then I found out, on my way to the bathroom, that there are five people in the balcony. The light from the widescreen advertisements reflected old people's faces. This makes perfect sense because you cannot be looking forward to watching this drivel in your youth. I am young, relatively, on account of I can still hopscotch and gasp with pleasure. Underscore still. 

Do not go out and watch this movie alone. Stay at home and masturbate, instead. 

It was around twenty minutes into the movie when my eyes smelled like garbage from lying in clinics. And then it dawned on me that I should be doing movie reviews again. And I will, My Dearly Beloved, I will. Just let me segue into what can be the best piece of news ever. 

Theirs is the only horror movie opinion that matters to me. And I have access to their brutally funny reviews again. Click here.

Now, having said that, let me tell you why you, My Dearly Beloved Sweet Nuts, might want to consider watching Yakuza Apocalypse. But before anything else, let me refresh your memory. I am not an expert on Horror Movies. I am a connoisseur, yes, for I have very exacting tastes that are refined by three decades of devotion to horror movies. I know now what I want to be seeing, and I know what sort of murders excite me. I know who the Final Girl will be, and how the Gun Rule kills the mystery. I am still on the look out for the One Crazy Plot Twist. Meanwhile, I am not an expert, and I don't have an expert's opinion. You can refer to your Facebook News Feed for that kind of crap because anyone with an internet connection, and their mother, seem to be an instant expert at some shit. And they think so too with such uneducated audacity. 




Horror Movie Review #39: Yakuza Apocalypse

It should be said that the fine, fiiine Akira is played by the equally fine, fiiine Hayato Ichihara. This movie features a hot man with a full back piece tattoo. And he flooded my basement twice. 

1. The World's Toughest Terrorist is some guy in a frog costume: fabric and Kermit-green. Alright, his martial arts Are spectacular, but what makes him truly dangerous is his Kaeru-Kun Death Stare. His bulging frog eyes (on that enormous frog head, fabric and Kermit-green) become netted with bloody eye veins, and his iris become two angry red pearls. The effect the Death Stare has on people is the kind of torture you might see in someone whose lungs are being strangled. Are you seeing the face now? 

Fierce is a Frog Costume vs a Yakuza Vampire. And then there's me. 

2. "Yakuza Vampires" is a bad ass phrase, sure, but it does not, and I mean Does Not hold a candle to a Frog Costume with a Death Stare. 

3. The idea behind "The Garden of Civilians" is the Yakuza Vampires sprout humans from the soil for vampiric consumption. Oh yes. We are looking at equal parts of absurd and brilliant, and how the hell can you not love the imagination of the Japanese?

The Garden of Civilians is a real garden. Flowers grow on human heads, because these humans are being harvested for the vampire gardeners. And there is a rainbow, too, for that happy happy joy joy effect. 

4. What's a vampire story without people turning, right? It turns out that the Japanese are way ahead of us. Their newly turned vampires inherit a strict Yakuza personality and a full back piece tattoo. So let me ask you again, My Dearly Beloved. How can you not love the imagination of the Japanese? 

5. The climactic boss fight is where our hero and the last bad guy standing scream and then punch each other on the face, at the same time in between measured intervals, until one of them's unconscious. The victor doesn't have enough time for that kiss with tongue. A kaiju (an enormous Japanese monster like Godzilla or Mothra or King Ghidorah or the sort that Ultraman Ace karate chops when he feels like it) wreaks havoc somewhere, the hero unfurls his bat wings, and he flies somewhere for the ultimate battle or maybe to buy juice. 

6. You should know that Takashi Miike directed this piece of eye gold. 

What If

**I wanted to pitch in, but I had too many ideas. So I wrote them down instead for your reading pleasure, My Dearly Beloved Sweet Nuts. 

Thank you, Mr. Johnson, for starting this.

1. What if Corinne Bailey Rae didn't put her records on? 

2. What if Gloria Estefan, the Miami Sound Machine, and everybody did not do the conga?

3. What if Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg weren't young, wild and free?

4. What if Adele gave up and stopped chasing pavements? 

5. What if Air Supply wasn't all out of love, Bright Eyes? 

6. What if Bon Jovi didn't want to lay you down on a bed of roses? 

7. What if Bob Marley wasn't waiting in vain? 

8. What if Adam Sandler didn't want to grow old with you? 

9. What if Mariah Carey's hero did not come along because he didn't have the strength to carry on? 

10. What if Kelis' Milkshake didn't bring all the boys to the yard? And what if she did teach you, and she didn't have to charge?

11. What if Mr Big didn't want to be with you? 

12. What if someone told Louis Armstrong that it wasn't a wonderful world at all? 

13. What if Elton John didn't feel the love tonight? And there wasn't a calm surrender to the rush of day? 

14. What if Diana Ross didn't stop? In the name of love? 

15. What if Blackstreet had diggity? 

16. What if someone disagreed with Barry Manilow and told him that the nights weren't any better at all?

17. What if Pink didn't get the pary started? 

18. What if Whitney Houston wasn't every woman after all? 

19. What if Wild Cherry didn't get white boy to play that funky music? Not even until he died? 

20. What if Foreigner, Wynonna Judd, Tina Arena, and Mariah Carey all changed their mind and decided they didn't want to know what love is?