This was imported from my old
BlogDrive blog posts.
One of the rare times I can blog peacefully. Oh well…
Top 5 tunes for the week:
1. Forbidden Lover – by L’arc~en~Ciel
2. Kaizoku no Uta – by Danger Gang
3. Desert Rose – by abingdon boys school
4. Boys Be Suspicious – by Nightmare
5. Fure Fureppon Pon – by Mai Kadowaki
Oh well. For the next paragraphs or so, I’ll be randomly discussing things.
First, some movie lines:
RANDAL: There was a guy who said the store was closed for two hours yesterday. I tore up his memebership.
DANTE: Shocking abuse of authority.
RANDAL: Hey, I believe in the philosophy of a ruling class, especially since I rule.
(while talking about bed domination)
DANTE: No, I’m just making a broad generalization.
VERONICA: You’re making a generaization about broads.
(after hearing Veronica’s mind-“blowing” confession)
DANTE: I feel sick.
VERONICA: Please don’t feel sick.
DANTE: Every time I kiss you, I’m gonna taste 36 other guys.
[these were from the semi-indie movie “CLERKS”]
There are some people who are wary of David Blaine. One of my friends actually believe David is a demon’s pet.
Oh come on. He’s a freaking magician, for God’s sake. And what he does is magic. For some reason we can’t know how he does it, or how he makes things go his way, but anyway we can’t call it magic if we knew how he does his thingy, isn’t it?
I hate magicians with curtains and with rabbits under the hats. It’s obviously a sham any way ou look at it, even if you can’t do magic yourself. David’s satge is the streets; his audience are anybody he meets. His magic repertoire is endless. And he doesn’t do magic to entertain himself and earn bucks.
Most people find it horrifying that he can make beggars win lotteries with a random ticket, make cents float on a paper coffee cup, stay submerged on water for hours, encase himself in a cage of ice for more than 15 hours, make card tricks, make mental predictions of names and numbers, twist his arm for more than 360 degrees and even float for at least 2 inches from the ground.
I like his so-called “art” form, quite entertaining as well. But he’s quite an enigmatic person. Hope he comes to the Philippines sometime.
My dad and I was discussing the plight of the PBA team Welcoat Dragons while eating dinner. If you have been watching the PBA, you can see the 9 other teams faring well while Welcoat is still kissing the proverbial basketball doormat for the third straight conference. I know Leo Austria [the coach] and his wards, especially the team managment and the senior brass are now scratching their balls and dreaming of trophies while hunting for prospective imports for the next conference or so.
I’m not a fan of Welcoat Dragons, but I really hate seeing the competition, well, not being competitive enough. It’s like seeing Hornswoggle against Big Show, Khali, Kevin Nash, Big Daddy V, Mark Henry, Andre the Giant, Kane, Brock Lesnar and Goldberg in a 1-on-9 handicap match. Damn.
My dad was questioning how Welcoat, once the winningest franchise in PBL history, has fallen so far in the pro ranks although they have gotten great reinforcements and top draft picks. They got Nic Belasco in a trade while they drafted Joe Devance and Ryan Arana in the recent draft. They have Jay-R Reyes and Denver Lopez and Froilan Baguion in the lineup. So what’s wrong [asks my dad]?
I answered three possibilities. One obvious Welcoat mistake was their failure to get the best out of the dispersal draft a year ago. I mean, they tried to draft the players the other teams obviously protected in their lineup. Adducul was protected by Ginebra and Ranidel/Yancy was protected as well. If they only did their homework, they could have gotten better players. I’d bet Mike Hrabak was not protected by Red Bull in that list. So is Egay Echavez, Allan Salangsang, Roger Yee, Jimwell Torion, and a whole lot of crack role players who can help their cause, but shucks.
Another Welcoat mistake is complacency. I mean, they traded JunJun Cabatu (a sure-fire good project of Tim Cone aside from Bono and Quinahan) for Nic Belasco, why didn’t they go the full nine and made a revamp? They got a whole slew of peeps who they can use to get better players, so WTH. And they should check with the other teams on a semi-regular basis for trade possibilities. Look at Air21, they got Gabby Espinas for a draft pick. I actually had my eye for Gabby Espinas for quite some time now because he’s expendable in Magnolia from the moment they got Eman from the draft, so I thought many other teams would eye this black pearl. I hoped Welcoat could get him, but oh well.
The same pisspoor situation with Welcoat happened with Adducul in Ginebra too. Welcoat didn’t push hard enough. They offered peanuts to Ginebra in exchange for Adducul. If I were them, I could have offered JunJun Cabatu back then plus a firstround draft pick plus Denver Lopez back then for Adducul and a secondround draft pick. Losing two big players is no big deal. Adducul can get back his career on the right track with Welcoat. Now Adducul’s a journeyman, a trade veteran, a benchwarmer and a career wreck after 3 trades. I suppose Welcoat can bite the bullet now and take Adducul from Purefoods, he’s expendable there. Just like Asi and TalkNText. Welcoat obviously didn’t hear about Asi’s availability as well. Coca-cola is now enjoying a team Renaissance while Welcoat is left in the Dark Ages.
The trifecta for the Welcoat mistake is the bench depth. In PBL they had a whole slew of bench players who can play big minutes for them. In the PBA they actually don’t have the same bench depth. I mean, they can raid the free agent pool for quality players, why are they sticking up with dried figs? Nic, Joe and the starting 5 can deal with the teams, but without a solid cast of players they can’t play good basketball. Jordan can’t play well without good bench players, ne? I mean, it’s a team game; It’s not a one-man show or two or three. It’s a 12-man show. It’s a team show. And Welcoat can’t play good basketball with the bench unwilling to pick up the slacks and play like men on fire.
I suggest some things for Welcoat to do in the offseason for a competitive next season:
1. REVAMP – Do a Buddy Encarnado, Leo. Dump the unnecessary, and get the best players that your money and spare players can buy. There are loads of players in the other teams getting less minutes than they should like Chris Calaguio and Yousif Aljamal and Jojo Duncil. Sacrifice a few second-round draft picks. Trades work with the right offers, and don’t offer peanuts again. Gold can only be acquired with something as valuable as gold.
2. RAID THE FREE AGENT POOL – This one worked wonders for Purefoods with Chico Lanete and PJ Simon. Also did wonders for Ginebra with Aris Dimaunahan (previously) and Mark Macapagal.
3. BALANCE THE TEAM – 3 centers, 2 power forwards, 3 SFs, 4 SGs and 3 PGs should work fine for a 15-man lineup. Your team is overloaded at certain positions and some positions (like C) lack the bomb.
4. TEAM EFFORT – Nic can’t save Welcoat’s ass all the time. Joe’s not always healthy all the time. Get the best role players and play like men with pistols on your temples every single night.
5. GET A TEAM-ORIENTED IMPORT – I suggest getting imports with the caliber of Jerald Honeycutt or Torraye Braggs. Never mistake ballhogs for black Messiahs.
And there you have it. But oh well, if only a Welcoat fan can agree with me on this. I’m a Ginebra fan.
The band mania in the Philippines is now starting to slowly fade away again.
For the last three years, the local RP music culture faced an unprecedented boom. With the masses getting tired of pop idols, rapping wannabes and singing divas, most of the youth formed bands in the hopes of replicating the Eraserheads mania. There came Hale, with smash hits. Same with Cueshe. Soon after their big successes, hundreds of youths started to make waves. They formed bands with outrageous names such as “Taken by Cars”, “SinoSiKat”, “Up Dharma Down”, “Kamikazee” and the like. Even the old-timers such as Parokya ni Edgar, Rivermaya, Sandwich and Ely Buendia (forming “Pupil”) shared in this musical rebirth, enjoying more sales than Salbakuta and the rest of the fat rappers combined.
PULP enjoyed higher revenue, MTVAsia nd MYX made a killing in the music video business, television networks channeled some of this phenomenon to their telenovelas and guest appearances, nightclubs became trendy again, rock concerts enjoyed much more thicker mosh pits, and bands kept being signed by major record labels like hotcakes.
But these, like elephant denim trunks, high-heeled clogs and game shows, starts to transform from a red giant to a white dwarf.
I think it started when one band was accused of stealing riffs from the New Wave’s “Chandelier”, their tune in the late 80’s. Then it started to implode.
I call it the WW2BAM-Marimar Syndrome. IBC-13 once enjoyed phenomenal ratings overkill when they signed up Boyet De Leon to host “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire” and Edu Manzano in “The Weakest Link” back about 5-6 years ago. They enjoyed a huge advantage over GMA and ABS-CBN, and the two huge networks saw their nightly shows were becoming stale eggs. Soon they joined hands in toppling the IBC-13 juggernaut. They launched game shows themselves, from the insane to the thought-provoking, and they were the ones responsible for bringing down IBC-13 back to earth. The same with RPN9 with “Marimar”, a Mexicanovela starring Thalia, which made similar huge waves across the television airwaves in the 90’s. GMA and ABS-CBN soon found themselves in a huge ratings crash against Thalia. They united again with killing the competition, signing up too many Mexicanovelas until the people got sick of them, RPN soon found themselves relegated to the dumps again.
Bottom line: GMA and ABS-CBN are two huge great white sharks in a water body the size of a normal resort swimpool. They never like competition other than themselves. They’re like the Mafia and Triad combined. And they only air very minimal good shows.
The bands soon found out that there were TOO MANY youths joining the proverbial bandwagon. The ones who ruled the nightclubs before were forced to share their time and take paycuts because the managers signed up too many bands for the night. Solo singers started to sign up with major TV and record deals and make an aggressive PR drive to rake in what they lost to the band acts. The market soon found themselves having way too many band albums with dwindling sales. People soon started to listen to other bands and switch loyalties then and there, losing fan bases and the so-called “overcompetition” now threatening to spoil the musical paradise. Adding to that the departure of Rico Blanco, the staleness and repetitiveness of the band genres, and people are starting to lose interest in them in favor of Koreanovelas, new game show surges (the Deal or No Deal thingy) and other preoccupations, the bands are now feeling the kick. And to think most of the bands stick to rock when most people are getting sick of rock.
I think they have to reinvent themselves and branch out like what Parokya ni Edgar did to stay this long in the industry: make themselves fresher in every album. Nobody gets tired of hearing Parokya ni Edgar. Everybody’s now tired of Hale and Cueshe and Spongecola. Get it?
And the record companies should reconsider their band signings. To reduce competition and make greater sales, they have to realize that in some aspects of their businesses, LESS IS MORE.
The concert organizers should not tolerate higantic band lineups and consider making a three-band slecial there and then. Look at Japan. There are tens of hundreds of bands and singers there but they enjoy modest sales, and they don’t fade away. Another secret that they should consider is that rock isn’t the only genre out there. Almost all bands out there figure in f**king rock, it f**king makes me sick. Show some diversity!
For me, I actually stopped listening to OPM when Eraserheads disbanded, Wolfgang went AWOL and Rivermaya lost Rico Blanco. The end. Unless some messiah makes my ears perk up and re-listen again to OPM, well, I stay put on my current music fodder. So far, no regrets.
Now we go to a discussion on… MOE.
Moe basically is a word in Japan, literally means “sprout” or “bud” (accdg to Del-Ray). But if you are a hardcore otaku, the other meaning is a world apart from its dictionary definition. For otaku, it’s the referral to anime/manga/eroge/game character attribute, characteristic, appearance or/and mannerism that arouse them or makes them fixated upon the latter.
Me? My moe preferences are tsundere, meganekko, ahoge, loli, shy types and passive yuri characters. Lemme discuss each subs. By the way, all my moe preferences only applies to women, no yaoi moe here.
Tsundere characters are those types of characters with the tendency for aggressiveness, mean streaks and/or obvious jealousy marks, but near the end or climax parts they turn out to be as sweet and caring as the girl next door. Although their kind comes in almost all genres (quite noticeable in some cases) and even some Comiket events are tsundere-themed, they figure more prominently in romance titles. In romance titles tsundere leads always pick on or be mean to the lead guy. That’s because they only want to be beside the guy they like but can’t act as normally as guy-hunting girls do. They do sweet things to the guy they like but usually deny they did it out of love although it is very obvious they care for the guy very much. Even if they got the guy as their boyfriend, their jealousy range from a pfft to a volcanic eruption. Examples are Shana from Shakugan no Shana (especially the cute small version in Shana-tan) and Louise from Zero no Tsukaima. Other tsundere float their stuff in slice of life stuff (Kagami in Lucky Star), otaku-based stuff (Ogiue from Genshiken), school stuff (Eri in School Rumble), other stuff (Kagura in Furuba), and many many many many other more. Oh, in eroge, a tip from one of my forum mates figured. Most tsundere characters in eroge and visual novel games sometimes figure in a more complex path than the usual leading broads. And the scene accesses sometimes get awry.
Meganekko are simple cute girls in glasses. As long as they’re cute, beautiful, and wears glasses, OK. Example is Miyuki from Lucky Star. Sometimes the meganekko wears glasses at the start, then removes it after a few manga volumes or anime episodes or eroge trigger scenes.
Ahoge… this one is a complex one for Westerners. Ahoge is a strand, or a clump of standing hair on top of a character’s head. Basically it’s a “Fool’s Hair”. Sometimes it looks like an antenna, a transmitting rod, or even jut an accessory on top of their head. And some ahoge characters are either otakus or simply morons. A prominent ahoge example is Himeko from Pani Poni Dash!. Though not an idiot, another ahoge type is Konata fro Lucky Star.
Loli is a type of character that looks (or have been deliberately drawn and depicted as) too young for their age. Or inversely, kids that act (and have extensive knowledge of ) an adult. But I prefer more the latter, as in like the Kodomo no Jikan series. Aside from the censorship and obvious H references, it was cool.
Shy types are those characters that have tendencies to blush too deeply when they are near the person they love. They stammer, they sometimes hide behind walls, they have difficulty conversing with their person of attraction. But they usually end up as sweet as sugar, and sometimes shows a very serious side when the situation requires it. Instant identifiable would be Hinata from the Naruto series.
Passive yuri characters, basically the “bottom” of the couple. You know the seme-uke principle, the aggressor is the seme and the passive is the uke (bottom). That usually applies to yaoi, but in yuri I prefer to use passive. These character types usually are the ones who get attracted to the other female character (usually the aggressive/pushy one), and tries to get closer to them. They possess more feminine characteristics than the top one. The aggressive type either is nearly close to a male by looks/hair/mannerisms, or a silent-type bishounen-lookalike girl. These types of characters come aplenty in most yuri series, more prominently in Marimite.
There we go. Wait a minute… I only discussed the moe I like. Try to wiki the rest if you want ^_^
Ciao for now!
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
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