If you’re wondering where I am, I’m at McDonald’s.  I have a full view of KC Concepcion’s posters for BAYO, and a full view of my least-favorite species in the animal kingdom: Homo sapiens sapiens.

I have zero fashion sense: I’m just a jeans-shirt-jacket fellow.  The only way I know how to “spice up” my usual non-fashionable self is when I wear boots, which are very impractical when you’re aboard the MRT and you’re walking from the Shaw Boulevard platform to Ortigas Center.  However, my jologs fashion sense had me developing a rather keen eye for the fashion sense of other people.

Like Makati City party girls who wear ultra-short miniskirts and shorts even if they have ensaymada dough for legs.  Or old women who think that glutathione makes them look less like Jason Voorhees… although they look like Michael Myers.  Leatherface, even.  Rather than make women look like movie stars, glutathione and whitening agents have the opposite effect.

And then there’s the fashion sense of fathers everywhere: the collared, short-sleeved polo shirt.  Nothing speaks more of corporate fatherhood than wearing a Lacoste polo shirt, jeans, and leather loafers.  I think the inventor of the Daddy-Do should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for changing the way we look at fatherhood in general.

Or that annoying trend of today, Abner Mercado’s abel Iloco scarf.  I don’t know what’s up with that, and I certainly don’t know what’s up with emo kids wearing it with their skinny jeans and Paramore t-shirts.  Then they take pictures of themselves at comfort rooms at Gateway… I just hope they don’t go to Recto.

Which begs the question… who the f**k is Paramore?

Philippine Mainstream Media has this rather absurd habit of reporting about the State of the Nation Address, in that they count the number of times the President is applauded during a speech.  I like to think of blinking “Applause” signs hanging under the rafters of Batasang Pambansa, where on cue, the audience will clap.  I think of it as a rather Pavlovian reaction: the gallery applauds the lies and incompetence of the President’s nationwide PowerPoint presentation.

There’s nothing about a SONA that (to use a favorite phrase) strikes me as strange.  In an ideal world, the SONA is supposed to be a truthful, transparent presentation of the ills and the problems of the Philippines, and what The Present Government is doing about it.  A SONA by Gloria Arroyo, surprisingly, does not depart too much from that ideal: a SONA is a truthful, transparent presentation of the ills and the problems caused by The Government that’s running the Philippines, and what The Present Government is not doing about it.

Truthful… by virtue of implication.

I have to disagree that the SONA is the rhetorical device used by the incumbent Regime to placate the Filipino people; that distinction goes to relief goods and crisp P500 bills you get at Landbank as a “subsidy” if you’re poor.  The SONA is a forum where, once a year, we celebrate lies with the intent to dupe the Filipino people into thinking that we have a functional government and a “Strong Republic,” that we feel the progress.  We don’t have to experience or acknowledge progress, ladies and gentlemen: we only need to feel it.  Besides, rhetoric requires that you know what’s going on.

I’ll be counting applause.

After weeks, I finally got to watch “The Dark Knight.”  Me and my friend Dette watched it at Gateway, and we left the theater in a state of speechlessness and awe.  It certainly lived up to the hype, and then some.  I’m firmly convinced right now that the “dark knight” in the movie is not actually Batman, but The Joker.  And I’m going out on a limb in saying that “The Dark Knight” was the best movie the late Heath Ledger starred in, and deserves an Academy Award for it more than he ever did “Brokeback Mountain.”

I suppose that everything has already been said about “The Dark Knight” and how everyone loves The Joker, but I’d like to pay some odes and dues to Two-Face.  As a “Batman” fan, I never really developed a kind of affinity for Harvey Dent, but I now think that Two-Face deserves more than what we usually give him credit for.  I really liked about the bit with chance being fair.

Man, was I riveted to that Lamborghini Reventon cruising along Gotham City!

I think I won’t pollute the blogosphere with too many rants about “The Dark Knight” anymore.  Often, the best compliment to a movie is not - at all - to review something that damn good.