Lesnar vs. Mir, UFC

   It’s big news in Yahoo! Sports: former WWE Champion Brock Lesnar versus former UFC Heavyweight Champion Frank Mir in the octagon.  The headline reads: “Fake wrestling star tries UFC.”  Can Brock Lesnar, an untested MMA fighter who made a name for himself in professional wrestling, beat a seasoned MMA fighter in Frank Mir?

   Tale of the tape: Lesnar is 6′3″, 265 lbs., 1-0-0 record in MMA, wrestler.  Mir is 6′1″, 240 lbs., 10-3-0 record in MMA, Brazilian jiu-jitsu specialist.

   Let me break it down for you: this is mixed martial arts, this is the Ultimate Fighting Championship.  This isn’t about whacking a steel chair over somebody’s head or choreographed fighting with soap opera elements thrown in.  This is “real fighting,” although it involves a great part of watching two men roll around on the canvas for three minutes or so.

   Because this is “real fighting,” my crystal ball is not as clear as it is compared to predicting plot lines in pro wrestling.  Having watched my own fair share of both fighters’ fight videos to make “objective” predictions, it’s still pretty vague to me who will win the match.  As good as Lesnar is on the mount, Mir is equally good on his back.  The cinch is that Mir cannot escape Lesnar’s powerful takedown, but he’s in the perfect position to dispense with an armbar.

   You’re in high school, and it’s Prom Night.  Every girl is dressed like Miss Universe, and every boy is dressed like a waiter in some high-class version of McDonald’s.  You smell magic in the air: it smells like Maybelline New York and Jōvan Musk.  You can make out the faint smell of mothballs from the girls’ tables.  The guy in front of you forgot to take off the tag from his crisp shirt bought from the Van Heusen outlet at SM.

   Tonight’s the night!  Weeks of practicing the waltz has led to this one night, where you’d finally take the girl you’re crushing on to the dance floor.  For months, you have longed to sit beside her in class, to admire her perfect penmanship, to take a whiff of her scent that makes you want to go to sleep forever.  Sometimes, she asks for your help for a class assignment, and you stammer your way around the rules of subject-verb agreement.  You can’t even talk to her outside of those topics, but you treasure them, guarding those moments like they were the Holy Grail.

   You call her your “inspiration,” but vehemently deny having romantic feelings for her whenever your friends tease you over a game of DoTA.  “Hinahangaan ko lang naman,” you say in irritation.  But deep in your heart, it’s more than just “admiration.”

   Face it, kid, you’re in love.

   You scan the girls’ tables and look for your “inspiration.”  Ah, there she is, seated with her friends on the far left, just by the window.  The apple of your eye, the meaning of your life, the Rita Hayworth to your Gene Kelly… or maybe the Rita Avila to your Andrew E.  Just what are they giggling about?  Just what are they talking about?  Could you muster up the courage to dance with her for 30 seconds, perhaps invite her for coffee afterwards?

   I can’t say I blame you, lad: she’s beautiful.  She’s fair-skinned, has long flowing hair.  Her eyes are quite attractive, too.  Hah, even that’s not enough for you.  Her skin is as pure as the first cloud of a bright summer morning.  Her hair is like a cascading waterfall, shining with a light that comes from within.  Her eyes are like sparkling stars torn from the very fabric of the universe.  Her lips are like rubies from a Queen’s crown.  She is, to you, the personification of love itself.

   She reaches into her bag for a handkerchief.  Those long-forgotten Shakespeare lectures in English class suddenly rush to your head.  Oh, were you that kerchief upon her hand, that you may touch that cheek!

   One song passes.  Two songs pass.  Three, four… and the disk jockey has gone through an entire CD of romantic songs, from Frank Sinatra to David Pomeranz to Edwin McCain.  What are you doing, boy!  Get up!  Ask her to dance!  No, you sit there drinking your bottled water, content to watch your girl being led to the dance floor by every dumb jock who wouldn’t know a verb from Viagra.  You seem to be content to watch the folds of her dress flow about the floor with the grace of doves on a wedding day.  What are you waiting for, kid!  Tonight’s the night!

   Suddenly, your trance-like state is broken by the sound of a teacher saying, “Last dance, and it’s ladies’ choice!”

   Surely she won’t dance with you now.  It’s over: you might as well pick up your coat, leave early, and learn how to drink.  It seems that you’re forever fated to watch your girl from a distance.  It’s the last dance, and it’s ladies’ choice.  There’s just no way in hell you’d be chosen now.

   You see her walking towards you.  Slowly, as if in a dream, as if she’s walking on thin clouds.  Then she walks around your table.  Round and round she goes… right behind you.  Your heart is beating a million miles an hour.  You feel a gentle tap at your shoulder, and those words: “Do you want to dance?”

   You look over your shoulder… and nobody’s there.

   Damn!  Everyone else is dancing, but not you.  The dance floor is so full of people now: your girl is probably out there dancing with somebody else or something.  Why couldn’t it have been you?  Sorry, kid: tonight’s not your night after all.  You might as well go home now and tell your parents some made-up story that you danced with a girl.

   But wait a second: who’s that seated in the table at the far left?  It’s your girl!

… to be continued …

   Everyone knows Heath Ledger to be “that guy” from Brokeback Mountain: Ennis del Mar, the gay cowboy.  Brokeback Mountain is the stuff of gay jokes, that you can make punchlines out of lines like, “We’re out of beans, Jack” or “I wish I knew how to quit you.”  In a way, popular culture cemented Heath’s legacy as a gay cowboy.  Movies he starred in, like The Patriot, Monster’s Ball, Casanova, and The Brothers Grimm have become mere footnotes to his moving performance in Brokeback Mountain.

   Heath Ledger died today at the age of 28.  Heath stands out as one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood before he died, but he is a tragic figure: he died at the prime of his life, and at the pinnacle of his career.

   As a movie fan, I say I feel a sense of loss.  All too often, when an actor dies, we remember performances and not people.  We remember actors for the masks they wear on the silver screen, the roles they portray, and nothing else.  Those performances become engrained so much in our minds: when Heath Ledger died, most of us remembered Brokeback Mountain.  I can’t say that we remember him for anything else outside of being a performance, but that’s just it.  Save for papparazzi reports and the Hollywood press, that’s all there is for us to mourn and grieve about Heath Ledger.

   But then again, Heath is immortalized in celluloid: we may not know a lot about him, nor would we know the whole story behind his death.  Heath Ledger lives in his work, in every performance in his 12 years in cinema.  In that short time, Heath Ledger has proven to be one of the great actors of our time.

   He will be missed.

   Here’s a scenario for you.

   Suppose you’re having coffee at your favorite café.  Then, out of the blue, someone you had a relationship with (be it your serious ex or your Platonic ex) shows up at the door.  A stroke of dumb luck.

   Your cappuccino suddenly turns cold, your sandwich feels like fresh vomit in your mouth, and your cigarette suddenly tastes like crap.

   Your eyes remain locked at each other for at least five seconds, but you could swear it lasted forever.  You feel like Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca:” of all the coffee joints in all the towns in all the countries in all the world, she comes to yours.

   So what do you do?

• A: You invite her over to your table.  For a full minute, you both remain silent.  Then you initiate the conversation by talking awkwardly about completely awkward things, like if she saw any good movies lately or about the weather.  You end up talking like this for the better part of 15 minutes.  Then you offer to pay for her coffee.
• B: You drink your hot coffee like a man dying of thirst, giving no regard to getting an intestinal burn.  You call for the bill, pay and leave the change as a generous tip, and rush out of the coffee shop pretending that you’re answering an important phone call from US President George W. Bush himself.
• C: You ignore her.  You look out the window playing the license-plate game.  You count the number of bumps that there are in the napkins your coffee came with.  You ruminate about the chemical composition of your coffee, linking carbon atoms and water molecules in your head, and figuring out where caffeine fits in all this.
• D: You wait patiently for about five minutes, making up a monologue in your head, invoking those cheesy lines you sort of memorized from your favorite movies.  Then you stand up, head to her table, and deliver your lines with your best Al Pacino impersonation.  You talk about the good times you had, what led to your breakup, and then you start screaming, “You’re out of order!  You’re out of order!  This whole coffee shop is out of order!”

   What would you do?

   Fidel Castro is quoted in saying, “History will absolve me.”  If history takes too long, one can take a cue from former President Joseph Estrada: (literally) say your prayers.  In today’s issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Erap says:

…Our country is what it is now because the head of the Church went against God’s will.  Our country is not moving forward.

   Erap was reacting to another PDI story that in 2001, the Vatican reminded the late Jaime Cardinal Sin to not get the Roman Catholic Church involved in EDSA II.  “Vox populi, vox Dei,” Erap invokes: to him, it was “God’s will” that he won the Presidency in 1998.  So in effect, Erap is blaming the late Cardinal Sin.

   Following Erap’s logic, God is punishing the Filipino people for going against His divine will.

   Pardon the religious allusion: Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?

   Now I’m not a religious man, but I think that the faults and errors of this country aren’t God’s doing.  If God is going to punish the Philippines for subverting His will, He’ll do it as only the omniscient and omnipotent ruler of the Universe could.  I’m talking about pillars of fire, cataclysmic earthquakes, blocking out the Sun, raising the oceans, rivers turning into blood, people dying left and right from plague.  That, I think, is a “punishment from God.”  Systemic corruption is not a punishment from God: it’s the doing of man.

   To be honest, I don’t think that Erap should be too concerned with punishments from God right now.  And I don’t think that we should be worried about cosmic retribution anytime soon.  For all the Filipino trait of “pagpapasa-Diyos” is concerned, it’s not God’s fault why we are where we are now.

   (OK, so I’m presenting a paper for College Week on February 26, 2008.  Damn thesis: I should have written about the political economy of sweet potatoes.  So for the better part of a few weeks, I will be yapping a lot in the “virtuality” category.)

   One of the more interesting aspects of online social networking is page maintenance: “tricking out,” so to speak.  In my own research, I found that much of the time and effort spent on a social networking site (SNS) - in particular Friendster - is dedicated to making the profile page as unique as possible.  As such, you wouldn’t be hard-pressed to look at a Friendster profile in the Philippines that is replete with embedded videos, glittery graphics, and text written in aLteR3d caS3s.

   As it seems, users configure SNSs - and Internet use in general - to suit not only their personal needs, but their wants as well.  Where an SNS reinforces actual social networks and makes them available online, it also serves the purpose of reinforcing the ego and to manifest the idea of it online.  Embedding four YouTube videos, an Imeem playlist with 12 tracks, and adding those glittery-looking graphics serve to reinforce - perhaps even create - certain conceptions about identity and self-concept.

   Now these are largely means of self-expression: these are ways by which the abstract idea of the self is committed through language.  Chandler and Roberts-Young (1999, accessible here) call this bricolage: the use of materials-at-hand.  But in effect, you can only go so far: the connection between a particular element and an identity is more of an arbitrary association than an outright description.

*     *     *

   I got in a little scholarly argument with Andrew Feenberg of Simon Fraser University a few months ago over the matter of online social networking being a bit “shallow,” based on my research.  To me, trust and care have to always be present in initiating close relationships like friendships.  To him, the term “friend” or “contact” used in an online community exists as a linguistic limitation.

   Of course, there’s a certain case to be made in the term “friend” being capitalized on as a marketing tool by Friendster, and the same goes for “contact” with Multiply, “space” in MySpace, or to give it a bit of a stretch, “face” in Facebook.  That, to me, frames the whole idea of “social networking:” danah boyd is right in saying that an SNS reinforces actual relationships.  Coincidentally, this is also the same perspective held by Prof. Feenberg.  But I suppose I am also right in saying that an SNS - at least in the context of my study - also creates online relationships that exist only at that level.

   I never tried chewing betel (known here in Baguio City as “moma”), although I’ve been offered the nuts many times as a “substitute” for cigarettes.  Moma, they say, is “healthier than tobacco,” is a better stimulant than caffeine, and is “100% natural.”

   Now I’ll be the first to admit that smoking is disgusting, but I find myself revolted by the idea of chewing something up and spitting it out on road gutters, be it chewing gum or moma.  Many of Baguio’s sidewalks are tainted with red dried-up saliva.  Those not familiar with the sight of chewed-up betel nuts would think that a fetus has been murdered on the curb, or that a diseased wretch has spit on the concrete.  Spitting chewed-up betel nuts is a different story, though: it looks like a tubercular person is coughing out phlegm.

   I am told that saliva can carry communicable airborne diseases: viruses and bacteria don’t die from exposure.  They float around the air and find bodies to attach to and wreak havoc upon the immune system or something.  I don’t know if betel can be swallowed, but I think there’s no better way to dispose of it than to ingest it and worry about poisoning later.

   Vice: to each his own.

   In today’s issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Malacañang urges the Filipino people to forget EDSA II.  To the Palace, forgetting EDSA II means “healing the wounds of EDSA.”  To me, a willing participant of EDSA II seven years ago, it’s adding salt to the wounds brought about by EDSA.

   To “forget EDSA” means to erase the causes and consequences of that fateful January day in 2001, when millions of Filipinos rose up against Joseph Estrada and made the mistake of making Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the President of this country.  To “forget EDSA” means to forget the past, the present, and the future.  It is an outright denial of history.

   This is not about the matter of commemorating EDSA II: this is a matter of remembering why the Filipino people went to EDSA in three separate occasions in a span of 20 years.  We are still pretty much languishing in the kangkungan not because we remember EDSA, but because there is every reason in the 7,107 islands of the Philippines right now to go back to EDSA.  The reason for going to EDSA is never about commemoration: it’s about discontent.  Nobody in his or her right mind right now will go to the EDSA Shrine and lay a wreath to commemorate GMA assuming the Presidency.  But people will go there because they have had it with GMA: just as they did with Marcos in 1986, and Erap in 2001.  As the Inquirer editorial points out, you cannot summon “People Power” at will.

   We Filipinos have a saying: “Ang di marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay di makakarating sa paroroonan.”  GMA, of all people, should be the first to commemorate EDSA II: she should be the first to summon a Presidential convoy to go there.  She should be the first to lay wreaths and light candles on every conceivable place in there.  She should be the first to know that had it not been for EDSA II, all the calls to COMELEC commissioners would not have won her the Presidency in 2004.  Had it not been for EDSA II, she could have faced the real threat of an impeachment trial and a dancing Senator from the opposition that would trigger the ghost of an EDSA long past.  Erap should even go with her on that wreath-laying ceremony: had it not been for EDSA II, we Filipinos would have never had that much-needed reality check of what we demand from a President.

   We should not forget EDSA II… in fact, we couldn’t forget EDSA II.  If forgetting EDSA II means “healing the wounds of EDSA,” I’d rather keep my dripping gash of a wound until such time my children see it, and ask why it never really healed anyway.

   I am using a site tracker, which means I am Big Brother, and TMX just became George Orwell’s 1984.  This is at the suggestion of friends, who say I should seriously consider using a tracker to get some “inside knowledge” of my readers.

   This is “inside knowledge” taken to the extreme.

   So far, here are my impressions:

• As much as I hate the idea of surveillance, I get a kick out of tracking people.
• My dad is a loyal Marochaholic.
• At least a dozen readers have searched for “manny pacquiao scandal” and found my blog via Google.
• Most of my readers are Filipino.  Duh.
• If you heart TMX, you heart Macintosh.
• Filipinos who heart TMX also heart Smart Broadband.
• Romantic experiments have potential in the United Kingdom.
• Canadians read my blog more often than Americans.  I love you, Canada!

   So to cater to these needs, here are some changes I’m considering:

• I’ll make this blog friendly to Safari users, and probably use a Mac-based theme.
• I’ll have my dad stop reading my blog.
• I won’t write about Manny Pacquiao anymore.
• Controversial titles = more readers.  As such, “scandal” will precede or succeed every title from now on (i.e. the title of this entry is “Big Brother’s Watching Scandal”).
• I’ll make this blog available in French Canadian, and future TMX t-shirts will bear the Canadian maple leaf and will be made out of imitation beaver fur.

   Man, I like tracking. 

   I’m lazy, so let me do this entry in bullet-points.

• Mahal, Paglutuan Mo Ako Ng Tahong 
• Pitasin Mo Ang Kamias
• Hinog sa Pilit
• Sinampalukang Manok
• Extreme Papaya
• Buko Salad
• Mahirap Buksan ang Bote ng Kaong
• Ube, Macapuno, Pandan
• Kita Mo Na?
• My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend
• My Boyfriend’s Boyfriend
• Kapihan sa Sulo
• Sana’y Muling Makasiping
• Darna Meets Xerex Xaviera
• Sinukat Ka Ngunit Kulang
• Eseng Balondo: Filipino Gigolo
• Ang Bilis-Bilis Mo, Babes
• Ang Tagal-Tagal Mo, Babes
• Ang Tigas-Tigas Mo, Babes
• Ang Laki-Laki Mo, Babes
• Amoy sa Dibdib ni Sugar
• Marami Ka Pang Babayuhing Bigas
• Balahibong Aso
• Babangon Ako’t Papatungin Kita
• Papatong Ako’t Babangunin Kita
• Huwag Mong Silipin ang Sugat Ko
• Kunin Mo Ang Ulo Ni… Machete!
• Butong Pakwan
• Ipinagpalit Sa Halagang P100,000 Ang Nilalaman Ng Bayong
• Kung Tuturbohin Mo Lang Ako
• Zaldy, Pulis Pangkiskisan