Many things were said about the Eraserheads Reunion concert, not one of them critical, every one hopeful for a repeat or continuation. Which is understandable for those of us who are fans. To us, a reunion has always seemed impossible, even if - or maybe because - all we knew about the breakup was that it was a bad one. Too, loyal fans who have followed the individual careers and lives of Ely, Raimund, Buddy and Marcus must rightfully feel ambivalent: insisting on a reunion is, to a certain extent, an affront to the lives they’ve lived beyond the Eraserheads. To demand a reunion concert seemed selfish.

But of course it is all these as well that made the Eraserheads Reunion Concert the landmark event that it was. It is also these that make the The Reunion Concert 08.30.08 CD a must-have for any Eraserheads fan (yes, even with all the bootleg versions online).

And yes, even when Ely sounds different, more mature, with a voice that seems to have outgrown the songs he had written a decade ago. Even when the CD made them sound cleaner than they ever sounded live. Even when some songs were, interestingly enough, from their less famous albums (”Kaliwete” and “Lightyears” from Sticker Happy and Fruitcake). Almost as if they’re testing your Eraserheads fan-hood: if you’re a real fan, you wouldn’t just know these songs, you would have them memorized the way you have “Alapaap” or “Huling El Bimbo”. And yes, even when there were no spiels to give us a sense that this was the Eraserheads of old, the ones we listened to at the U.P. Fair and Club Dredd, the friends from U.P. who played music for fun.

More than any of these, it’s how this first set of the concert - the only set performed as it turns out - tells us so much of what it is the Eraserheads wants us to continue to remember about them. That they spoke of love and courtship with a lightness and humor that youth brings (”Ligaya” “Harana” “Sembreak” “Toyang”). That they could speak wittily of desire (”Kama Supra”), as well as they could take on society’s prejudices (”Hey Jay”). That they could speak of uncertainty and displacement (”Huwag Mo Nang Itanong”) as they could the universals (”Huwag Kang Matakot” “With A Smile”).

That all of these songs are grounded in a context that is clearly third world Philippines reminds us of how worthy Ely, Raimund, Buddy and Marcus are of their status as music icons of this country. Ones who deserve our respect more than our adoration, ones whose individual careers speak of more than just the break-up of the band that made them famous.

Listening to the opening song “Alapaap” in this context, we are allowed to imagine that the Eraserheads are speaking of a different kind of freedom: all four members of the band had freed themselves of people’s expectations, of whatever bad blood the breakup had left, of whatever the fans seemed to demand of them. They did this concert and CD on their own terms. To fans, “Alapaap” can’t but resonate differently: it forces us to ask how far we’ve all come since the time we made this our anthem. The goosebumps and the high aren’t just for the Eraserheads but for us as well.

So in the end, what this CD is, all that it brings, is nostalgia for things past. For lives lost in the Eraserheads CDs that kept us alive once, and for a band that articulated what it was like to be young in the 90s. What the Reunion Concert CD reminds us is, that Ely and Raimund and Buddy and Marcus have not dwelled in the past. That there is their present and the maturity it brings. They have all grown up. And apparently, we must, too.*

The premise of the disappeared is their silence. In Desaparesidos, Lualhati Baustista’s latest novel, what one is treated to is an articulation of these silences that the disappeared bear, over and above the lives that they live as names on a list of people who have been captured and jailed, raped and tortured, and killed. And while you might say Bautista has done this before, or that this story about the Marcos dictatorship is old hat, Desaparesidos is anything but a mere repetition. It is not a sequel of any sort to Dekada ‘70, but is a re-telling of that time in history and how we are clearly and inextricably linked to it, even when we’d rather imagine otherwise. And it’s precisely because of this that it’s an important read for the times.

Desaparesidos is the story of activists Anna and Roy, a couple in the present who have come together in love for each other and nation, and have one child Lorena, who they left to fend for herself, in houses of relatives and friends, for most of her childhood during Martial Law. Unbeknownst to Anna and Roy, Lorena’s childhood was riddled with questions about their absence, and what it was they were doing instead of caring for her and their family. With no answers to her questions, Lorena slowly began to harbor ill feelings against her parents, the movement they were part of, and the nation they served. But child as she was, and absent as her parents were, these feelings would be part of Lorena’s learned silence about what to her was a family that had disappeared before it even happened.

But Lorena’s parents had as many silences to bear. Forced to share their experiences of Martial Law under Marcos, they re-live what had been silenced by their unbreakable belief in what must be done for nation. As part of the group that filed a class suit against the Marcos regime’s human rights abuses, Anna and Roy are made to tell their individual stories of lost families and friends’ betrayals, of rape and torture in the hands of the military, and of renewal and hope in finding each other as political prisoners, and as freed individuals.

And yet, even when there is power in articulation, Anna and Roy continue to be silenced by their need to forget, which turns out to be an exercise in futility. Their dreams are riddled by their fears of capture, their tears are always reminiscent of those they weren’t allowed to shed, their relationship(s) in the present always a remnant of an unresolved past. It is because of this that when they return to Lorena after the 1986 EDSA Revolution, the family suffers as well. That it was missing for most of Lorena’s life made it a silence that all of them had to bear and resolve.

Which only happens when many other silence(s) are resolved, and some of the missing are found. Anna’s baby Malaya, lost since Martial Law is found through Karla, an ex-comrade who decides to come clean and return a now adult daughter to her rightful mother. Roy comes clean about killing ex-comrade Jinky, husband of Karla, the one who turned traitor and was responsible for Roy’s and many other activists’ capture. Lorena finds herself as daughter, when she is faced with the truths that her mother and father have survived through, and upon realizing through boyfriend Eman - himself a new generation activist - that all of the silences throughout their childhood was worth it.

Moving from the era of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship to the present, Bautista’s writing in Desaparesidos seems more adventurous this time around. While not new to social realism and historical fiction, she skillfully uses elements of postmodern fiction here, with a non-linear narrative that intertwines the past of Martial Law with the present of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo presidency as it is lived through the main characters. With this kind of storytelling, Bautista’s use of different narrative voices becomes believable as it shifts among all the characters, across the times and spaces which they inhabit. It even becomes important that Bautista cuts her story in the middle, to tell the story of nation in the chapter “once upon a fairytale, o ang pag-iibigang Marcos-U.S.” - something which wouldn’t have succeeded in a conventionally told story. The epilogue on the unjust outcome of the class suit filed by the victims of Martial Law, no thanks to the current President who decided that none of the victims would get anything, is meanwhile expected of historical realist fiction that skillfully intertwines fictionalized narratives with real stories of people’s lives.

And here lies the importance of Desaparesidos at a time when we are made to think that the vestiges of Martial Rule are gone, and in light of a current government that insists that many of the stories of the disappeared are exaggerations, that not all of those listed by human rights groups are actually victims of forced disappearances or extrajudicial killings. What they forget about the disappeared are those they’ve left behind - they who have nothing to gain by making up the story of a loved one’s disappearance.

More importantly, what Bautista’s Desaparesidos points out is that more than the physical disappearance of the people who are stolen from the lives they had a right to live, there is that which is stolen from them in soul and spirit. The intangible, the unarticulated, and the most painful things that are lost - time, love, family - are those that cannot be returned. For the disappeared, those they leave behind, and those who are allowed by sheer luck to return to tell their stories, Bautista tells us that in many ways, they all continue to deal with silence. In Desaparesidos, we are reminded that we dwell in those silences, too.

If there’s anything that made me pick up Isang Napakalaking Kaastigan by Vlad Bautista Gonzales, it was its size and title - the same things that allow me to pick up books by Milflores Publishing more often than I would any other publishing house. There’s something easy and light about the way their books are packaged, something that calls out to you as you browse through the Filipiniana section of any bookstore. And with prices that are almost always only equivalent to the price of a large cup of coffee in your neighborhood Starbucks, it’s easy to shell out for their seemingly endless set of new releases.

Gonzales’ book of essays though also had the word “astig” going for it. A word that the author himself swears to using, but really only has a flimsy because broad description for what it actually is. In the essay with the same title as the book, the word “astig” is allowed a life all its own: “Kahit saan ako pumunta may astig. Sa bahay, may astig. Sa eskuwela, may astig. Sa TV at saka sa DVD, may astig. Minsan may nagtsismis sa’kin, astig daw ako. Hindi ako naniwala (102).”

And yet, it is this instability of definitions that allows for the book itself to bank on the notion of the “astig” - whether it means to or not. Particularly to a female reader, it is the one thing that allows for the book of essays to be digestible at the very least, and downright enjoyable at most.

This is of course not to say that Gonzales’ essays are politically incorrect as far as gender issues are concerned. In fact, what he employs as male essayist, obviously talking about Pinoy male experiences, is a self-conscious - if not self-deprecating - tone. Usually beginning to tell a sexist joke by precisely saying it is sexist; more often than not speaking of male experiences (such as Military Science, or issues with other males in the family, or conversations with friends) and noting that it is precisely Pinoy ka-macho-han that is the point.

But beyond the male-female dynamic that this self-conscious Pinoy macho voice dares deal with - rare enough on this side of patriarchal Philippines - Isang Napakalaking Kaastigan has much more to offer.

For the generation to which Gonzales belongs, there is familiarity in the book’s nostalgic turn towards the lives we lived in the 90s. We are reminded by these essays that the shows we watched, the music we listened to, the roads we traveled, were by and large the same; we are told that the lives we lived then were intertwined by the technology we had (TV and cassette tapes), and learned to get used to (pirated DVDs and computers); we are made to imagine that we are bound together by the malls we started to frequent, and the changing landscape of consumerism that we began to live and believe.

It is here that Gonzales’ writing becomes even more integral to his telling of the lives he has lived, and continues to do so. In the throes of neo-coloniality and its contingent effects on contemporary culture, the form that Gonzales uses to keep his readers interested is as important as what it is he actually says.

Gonzales’ use of the essay as form, is in fact a reclaiming of a space that in recent years has come to be equated with the woman writer. Through the non-fiction narrative, the woman has been allowed her own voice and experiences - a writing back against the patriarchy that has oppressed her. With Gonzales’ self-conscious, gender-correct, use of the form in telling the lives he has lived within the expectations of becoming a full-blooded Pinoy macho, he himself may be seen as someone who writes back against this patriarchy.

It becomes clear throughout the essays in the book, that the Pinoy male is also as much oppressed and repressed by patriarchy’s expectations of its own self. That the length of the essays is sometimes as short and as experimental as blog entries is telling as well of how these experiences are dependent on memory - selective as that may be. That the experiences are almost always funny, if not downright hilarious, is telling as well of the things that memory keeps, and the ways in which we cope with the things that oppress us.

Another aspect of form that can’t be left unsaid is the language that Gonzales chooses to write in. Using a Filipino that’s easy and comfortable to read, that shifts to English when it must, Isang Napakalaking Kaastigan is representative as well of a generation grappling with the issues neo-coloniality in the forms of available technology and the changing urban landscape. What Gonzales ends up treating readers to is a language that’s urban vernacular at its best - the kind that we use everyday, but which we are told, isn’t the kind of language we can write in. Because it’s too informal, or is just not done.

But Gonzales proves it can be done. In fact, through Isang Napakalaking Kaastigan, he proves many things to be possible for the Pinoy male writer: the use of a perspective that’s critical of his “macho” self, and that’s self-conscious about the sexism that his culture allows him; finding affinity with the form of the essay and its recent function as response to patriarchal literary production; the unapologetic use of a Filipino language that disregards academic notions of acceptable writing.

In the end, and probably without knowing it, Gonzales has in fact defined what it is that makes his writing astig. And as a full-blooded female reader, I can only agree and say: “Astiiiiig!”

It is such a strange time for Philippine TV - and I’m not talking about reality television taking over our lives and creating many talentless stars in the process; nor about the fantaserye reminding us of how much we need to escape from the realities of rising oil prices and NFA rice lines. Both of these aren’t so much strange as they are sad.

What is strange is the rise of the Filipinized Korean-novela - a unique entity in a country where the Mexican telenovela Marimar was only Filipinized a decade after the original became a TV hit. This remake was something we actually had coming, given the too familiar plot of a poor simpleton turned rich powerful woman, ready to seek revenge, but is softened by her true love. It’s the stuff every other Pinoy soap opera is made of.

The Korean telenovela meanwhile is an unexpected entity that has appealed to Pinoy taste. When Meteor Garden became a big hit, it was a surprising thing - what with four chinky-eyed, pale yellow-white lead stars in the F4 and a simple-looking girl as lead stars, alongside a love story that seemed premised on cariño-brutal - not the usual Pinoy love story. Between the turn of the millennium to the present though, the Pinoy TV audience has taken to what we’ve come to call the Korean-novela like moths to a flame, even when the stories have evolved from strange love stories to complicated historical romances. And while it’s clear that the Pinoy taste for chinky-eyed Korean actors and actresses has much to do with the success these telenovelas enjoy, one can’t deny the possibility that there is as well an interest in the more complicated and unfamiliar plots that these stories keep. The kind that we rarely have in this country, fantaseryes notwithstanding.

Probably a testament to the appeal of the Korean story is the re-creation of these Korean-novelas into Filipinized versions, with My Girl on ABS-CBN 2 coming head-to-head with Kim Sam Soon (re-titled Ako si Kim Sam Soon) on GMA 7. These are two very disparate stories, with quite different target audiences, and now as Filipino versions of the originals, very distinct ways of taking on the challenge that is Filipinizing quite a foreign cultural product. How have they fared? And where do we find the Filipino, in plots that are so alien to us?

My Girl As Pinay Girl

It’s pretty clear from the way this teleserye was promoted that the decision to do it had much to do with the new-found success of reality show winner Kim Chiu and her team-up with co-winner Gerald Anderson. Never mind that neither are really actors, nor did their reality show Pinoy Big Brother Teen Edition have anything to do with talent at all. In this land where star creation is about hype and the bombardment of images more than anything, anyone can be a star.

Or get their own primetime slot. Chiu, a typical Filipino-Chinese teenager with the right amount of conservatism and quirkiness, seems tailor-made for the lead role of Jasmine. In fact, half the time, you almost think she’s just being herself. In this Filipinized version of My Girl, Jasmine is a teenage Filipino girl, always trying to save her father’s skin from being thrown in jail, to the detriment of her own individual life which ideally would only involve getting an education and some good ol’ puppy love.

But one out of two ain’t bad at all, for while Jasmine didn’t go to school, she does have her own prince charming in the character of Anderson. And as expected, not everything is well in this love story. For one thing, Jasmine’s job, for which she is paid by Anderson, is to pretend that she’s the long-lost granddaughter of Anderson’s grandfather. For another, this charade (which so far has allowed her to keep her father out of jail, and from being killed) has recently been found out by Anderson’s ex-girlfriend - the kind who doesn’t go away.

My Girl had much going for it in the beginning, with Jasmine’s foibles including her lack of knowledge about the lifestyle of the rich and famous that she was suddenly a part of. And while the love story is what’s mostly sold here, much can be said about Jasmine’s ability to rationalize her existence within the “fairytale” that she suddenly lives in; there is too, value in Jasmine’s love for her father - regardless of his flaws. How Filipino can you get?

But the creative team of My Girl seems to be Filipinizing this a bit too much - at least to the point of it becoming testament to the need to serve a buffet table of artistas at any given time. In this case, it’s the addition of the new batch of teen winners from the second season of Pinoy Big Brother Teen Edition. A decision that might take away audiences who had survived the neophyte acting of the show’s lead stars so far, but now have to contend with beginner’s-acting from reality show contestants turned actors. Obviously the goal is to get a bigger audience share, not keep the story going - which in recent weeks, has really been only going around in circles. Because too, how complicated can you make a Filipino teenage girl’s life? How complex can you make life seem for Kim Chiu and her image of the sweet quirky - ideal - teenager of the times?

Introducing the Pinay Old Maid

What My Girl lacks in complexity, Ako si Kim Sam Soon makes up for. Starting off with Sam Soon planning her wedding to, and being stood up at the altar by, her husband-to-be, this Filipinized version of Kim Sam Soon was off to a good quick start. The first week established the complexity in Sam Soon’s character not just based on her experience of a broken heart, but also with regards to the emotional turmoil that her status in life brings: she’s a Filipina in her 30’s, overweight, jobless, and is pressured to get married.

Sam Soon’s also ruled by the presence of a social climbing sister (who, strangely enough, is thin as a rail), a noisy nagger palengkera of a mother, and a dead father who leaves her with more than just memories. The latter leaves her family in debt - the one thing that pushes her to find a job, and enter a deal with new-found boss Cyrus - the least likeable leading man possible. This deal allows for her family to survive through the debt her father incurred, but is also the source of complexity in Sam Soon’s life, stuck as she suddenly is with a pretend-boyfriend and a real-life boss.

Regine Velasquez’s take on Sam Soon’s character is a refreshing one, willing as she was to look the part (complete with a fat suit and fat clothes, bad hair, and barely any make-up), and become as “fat” in terms of mannerisms and attitude. Watching Velasquez dive into an overflowing plate of rice and adobo, or filling her mouth with pastries, listening to her travails as a Pinoy single woman wanting to find the man of her dreams, or as a discriminated overweight Pinay, is surprisingly believable.

Mark Anthony Fernandez’s Cyrus meanwhile, is by turns a touching character and an irritating one - kindhearted when he wants to be, but absolutely antagonistic when he feels threatened by Sam Soon’s knowledge of his pusong mamon tendencies. Much of what happens between the characters of Cyrus and Sam Soon, is fodder for the comedy that happens in the show, a feat in itself for Velasquez whose only experience with acting has been for light drama movies that tend to repeat themselves. Fernandez’s take on Cyrus’ character is that of the conventional Pinoy male who refuses to be tied down, but likes having a woman swoon over him - if only to keep his confidence intact. This becomes the perfect opposite to Velasquez’s Sam Soon who, at her age, is so ready to believe that prince charming can come in any package - even the antagonistic one that Cyrus appears in.

If there’s anything that drags Ako si Kim Sam Soon down, it’s the minor story about Sam Soon’s sister, which takes up too much time and only seems like an effort at putting in some puppy love story to cater to an audience of a different age bracket. The thing is, the show barely needs this, as the complexities of Sam Soon’s and Cyrus’ lives can stand on their own. In fact the activities and characters that surround the hotel where they both work is contextually enough to keep the show interesting. And downright funny.

Director Dominic Zapata has said that Ako si Kim Sam Soon, unlike the top raters of primetime, is a “slow burn”. What it has become is a good slow burn. Because while I can already imagine the ending to the Filipinized version of My Girl - focused as it has become on the teenage love story/ies and celebrities it wants to sell - I can’t quite say for sure what will happen to Kim Sam Soon and Cyrus next week.

Now that’s a Filipinization that doesn’t sacrifice the complexity of character or plot, originally Korean as this was. In fact what it proves is that Filipinization gives way to a different kind of complexity, one that’s grounded in a culture that’s anything but Korean, and just might be able to tear apart the stereotypes of the Pinay and the lives that she’s expected to live. That can only be a good thing.

The past couple of weeks, Randy Santiago has been pinch hitting for host Willie Revillame on noontime gameshow Wowowee. Suffice it to say that it has been a breath of fresh air, a relief and respite from the kind of hosting that Revillame has been allowed to do on nationwide (worldwide!) television.

Because where the latter is abrasive and disrespectful of the show’s contestants, Santiago maintains an amount of compassion when dealing with Wowowee’s mass audience. Where Revillame would imagine it entertaining to poke fun at his co-hosts, the show’s contestants and audience members, Santiago’s kind of funny doesn’t even brink on bastos.

Without a doubt, Santiago proves that Revillame’s kind of comedy and hosting isn’t the only way to do a show like Wowowee. In fact, there’s no reason to do it the way Revillame does.

Because although Santiago also jokes around with the female co-hosts of the show, as well as the dancers in skimpy clothes, he is able to maintain a certain distance that dispels whatever sexist undertones the show’s format maintains to begin with. With Revillame, everything seems inappropriate, from his body language to the words he spews out without thinking them insulting.

With his penchant for drama, Revillame also likes reducing his contestants to tears, as he forces them to tell the stories of their lives - sad as these are, if not downright horrible. And yet more often than not, Revillame will respond with a punchline that pokes fun at what the contestant has gone through, or at what she looks like, how she sounds. It is here that Revillame always seems to be taking advantage of the contestants’ class origins, using it to illicit tears - and maybe money - from the richer members of the audience, or maybe to get higher ratings (who knows?).

Santiago, forced to stay within the show’s format, also asks about the contestants’ lives but with more sincerity, and responds to their stories with more compassion. There are no punchlines to be made here, and Santiago seamlessly segues onto the game that the contestant is joining in the hope of making her life better, instead of trying to illicit laughter about the sad story he has just heard.

In the process, what shines through is Santiago’s breeding - his sense of propriety in terms of dealing with the contestants and mass audience of the show, his notion of what’s funny and when to use it, and a keen sense of where he stands relative to the rest of the show. More often than not, Santiago pokes fun at himself, using as premise his own silliness instead of other people’s deficiencies.

It would do Revillame well, and the makers of Wowowee, to see the light. Santiago proves there’s much that can be done within the show’s format; that there’s no excuse to be abrasive or disrespectful for the sake of comedy or entertainment. And definitely no reason to romanticize - and make money out of - their mass audience’s stories of poverty.