20:50: christmas day was pretty busy. my mom and i had lunch at my uncle's house, then dinner with everyone back at home. after dinner, i went to the bitter little girl's house. the whiny little girl was there, too, as was the ex, of course. inspired by my actions on the 21st, whiny little girl wanted to be there so she could settle some issues with her ex. unfortunately, he left before we got there. a sign, maybe? maybe not. sometimes we can't leave things to fate. anyway, we just talked and sang all night and waited for daybreak before going home.

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20:27: so, the 24th was weird. my married brothers spent christmas eve with their in-laws in the south and my unmarried brother spent it with his band, probably also in the south. that left just me and my mom. now, i'm not all that close to my mom but things have been better of late. i'm hooked on this show, 24*, and mom's hooked on it, too. we've been renting the videos and watching it together. so at least we've been "bonding". or something. still, having to spend christmas eve with just her would be awkward. we went to a relative's house and i got to meet relatives who used to be just meaningless, faceless names. i hung out with my second cousins once removed >>nieces who are my age or just a little older than i am. special thanks to ulan for explaining the concept. upon seeing them, my initial reaction was "pretty. nice figures. perky. perfect. ugh. i hate these types." not to mention, they're all very close and have known each other their whole lives and they were only meeting me for the first time. but surprisingly, i got along with them pretty well. i brought my cd player with me as a defense system but i didn't even listen to a single track all night. we just kept talking and eating and drinking and playing pictionary until the parents called it quits. yeah, i guess i had fun.

*24 is an american tv series starring kiefer sutherland, dennis haysbert, etc. it takes place in one day and documents the entire 24 hours of the said day, with each episode giving an account of one hour of the day. ie... episode 1 would show events from midnight to 1am, episode 2 from 1 to 2am. if you get a chance to watch the dvd's, do so. this is one kick-ass show!

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12:31: way too many ghosts these past few days. what i went through on the 21st was bad enough and i thought that would be it for the year. ha!

i had to do some "babysitting" yesterday. i watched the two towers with my niece and nephew. weird that i babysit kids who are taller than i am. haha. we were entering the theater when... who should be there but the ex! we talked for a while but i couldn't leave the kids so he said he's see me after the movie.

surprisingly, the audio was better at the first premiere i saw last friday. our seats yesterday were better, though. this time, i got to see the enitre screen without having to turn my head from side to side. so i got the full effect of the opening scene.
i just realized... i can't take faramir seriously coz he reminds me too much of martin short.
too bad it was a fund-raising thing and not too many people in the audience were real fans. but i still enjoyed watching it again. i'll probably line up to see it again on its first day of regular screening.

spoke to the ex briefly after the screening. the kids and i were gonna go for some coffee and i would've invited him but he would've told me off. ...letting kids drink coffee? not a very good babysitter, am i? so we just went ahead and hung out for a bit. the kids introduced me to their cousin, i think my niece has been trying to hook me up with him for some time now. he's a nice guy and we have quite a few things in common. good conversation over good coffee is always enjoyable. but don't be getting any ideas just yet.

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16:38: building up to it was hell. i was getting palpitations and an acid attack. i turned into woody allen, all of a sudden. i couldn't calm myself. nerves at its worst. i started singing a verse from rent, trying to psyche myself. there's only now, there's only here. give in to love or live in fear. no other path, no other way, no day but today. then my friend suggested that i just sing the entire soundtrack of a play to take my mind off of it. so i started singing songs and it worked. i was still sining when it happened. they walked in, i stood up, went outside and gave it. the few minutes it took to process lasted for an excruciating eternity. i didn't know what was going to happen next. would things be said? would it be ignored? would things be completely ruined? i was worried that i hadn't explained it clearly enough. but i guess i didn't have to. i had underestimated our friendship. we know each other so well that we don't always need words to explain things.

it's all good now. things won't change, they can only get better.

i have never before felt more relieved or more alive. :)

oh, and thanks to the bitter little girl and the whiny little girl. i love you guys! couldn't not have done it without you!

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16:14: ok guys, two towers spoilers. be warned.



watched the two towers last friday and i'm watching it again tonight. i didn't re-read the book before watching the movie because i didn't want to notice all the deviations. but i guess it still comes down to that. when we got home, we all had the urge to dig up the book and see what did and didn't happen. don't get me wrong, i had a blast! i have very few complaints about the movie and most of them are just little things that i don't really mind. like not seeing quickbeam, or gamling being too young, or shadowfax looking very handsome but a bit small. just little details. about the biggest disappointment for me was that they shortened one of my favorite scenes from the book... eowyn's litlle i'm-not-gonna-stay-at-home-and-wait-while-you-all-go-get-yourselves-killed dialogue with aragorn. but otherwise, i loved it!

the battle scenes were waaay cool. didn't like the skateboard thing, though. even the music was great. some of the songs sounded like they were real pre-existing elvish songs, not something just written for the movie. the sound design, specially in frodo's scenes, was really good. good use of silence as sound. and eowyn's costumes... i love them! i want them! not that i'd look good in them, but i love them anyway. gandalf's costumes were pretty good, too. and i really liked the armor of the easterlings. the southrons weren't that bad, either. i also liked haldir's armor, even if i don't agree to his being at helm's deep with all those elves.

i'm not a big fan of cgi, but man, gollum was brilliant! i always pictured gollum (physically) as a creature, but here, you get to see that he really was hobbit-like once. his monologues and even just his movement... kudos to andy serkis. WOW. wala akong masabi. the ents were great as well. i especially liked the scene where treebeard first wakes up.

acting wise, they were all good. DIE MOVIE ARWEN pa rin! but i liked eomer and theoden, even if theoden was initially shown as just plain weak instead of being corrupted. faramir was ok, though they changed his character a bit. but oooh... i personally loved that scene when aragorn was suiting up for battle. but then again i've always been a viggo fan. elijah wood was excellent as frodo. towards the end, he starts becoming like a character from a david lynch movie. nice.

all in all... asteeg, man!

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15:31: it was supposed to end yesterday. i was to give it, wait a few minutes, then that would be it. i walked to the gate, heart pounding, hands shaking, head slightly spinning... all i had to do was hand it over. but wait, who was that in the car?

the one person who shouldn't be there.

so i couldn't do it. couldn't give it.
i'm gonna try one last time. if for any reason, something still gets in the way of things... then i think it's time to leave it alone.

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13:30: aaack!! i can't believe i got a good grade for my art history class! woohoo! i was so sure i stank in that final exam. i hadn't known that we were taking our finals two weeks early and it just so happened that i cleared out my bag the night before and left all my notes at home so i couldn't study. hmm... nirvana must really want me to go to singapore next month. better start saving, then.

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15:38: just over a week to go before christmas but i certainly don't feel it. last night, i watched as a little girl sang a carol to the passengers on the back of a jeepney. i thought to myself ...pasko ba? oh yeah, it's mid-decmber! i don't think i've ever been this apathetic over christmas. when i got home, i found a christmas cd lying around the house. it was a complimentary cd given to my bro for that little thing he's doing at the mall this sunday. it didn't really put me in the christmas mood, but one track certainly gave me a good laugh. enjoy. :D

have yourself an ozzy little christmas
give a bat a bite
decorate your devil head with twinlking lights
(ozzy christmas, ozzy family christmas)

have yourself an ozzy little christmas
let the f-word fly
from now on the censors will be up all night
(all those bad words, mother-bleeping bad words)

he's repented his bolder days
and his druggy ways of yore
faithful friends who got smashed with him
don't bring hash to him no more
(we're pretty sure)

through the slurs, you almost can decipher
when he speaks aloud
he's the hottest star among the headbang crowd
so have yourself an ozzy ozzy
ozzy ozzy ozzy little christmas now

---have yourself an ozzy little christmas
by bob rivers

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15:23: i try to remain optimistic and enjoy the here and now. still, i can't ignore the calendar's flipping pages...

every moment marked
with apparitions of your soul
i'm ever swiftly moving
trying to escape this desire

the yearning to be with you
i do what i have to do
the yearning to be with you
i do what i have to do

but i have the sense to recognize
that i don't know how to let you go
i don't know how to let you go

a glowing ember
burning hot and burning slow
deep within i'm shaken
by the violence of existing for only you

i know i can't be with you
i do what i have to do
i know i can't be with you
i do what i have to do

and i have the sense to recognize
but i don't know how to let you go
i don't know how to let you go
i don't know how to let you go

---from do what you have to do
by sarah mclachlan

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16:03: decided to be a responsible student last friday. i passed on the free gershwin concert with etoile and the philippine philharmonic orchestra and watched a christmas carol instead. a painful PhP400 for balcony seats. the set and costumes were typical of repertory's plays, which is fine. but some of the actors were going off-key. and the lights... the spotters couldn't follow their actors and at some point, the curtain call lights went up in the middle of a scene. easy for me to criticize when i'm not behind the board and on the headset.

yesterday, i watched wev at rehearsals then went to brash young cinema for the swp x-mas party. i couldn't relate to all the trekkie-talk, but i had fun anyway. the place was cozy, the food was good, the company was great and artoo was irresistible!

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16:03: i need some jazz. spent the whole of wednesday evening studying for my final exam in music the next day. i studied 3 cd's and got to sleep at 4:30am. it's a little frustrating to be watching norah jones with the tv on mute while you're listening to schoenberg, berg and webern. crazy austrians... thank god for gershwin! the exam itself wasn't so tough. the listening part was fun. two items were from the star wars soundtrack. thank you, star wars philippines! hehehe... one other item on the test was i miss you like crazy. we couldn't figure out who sang it and a lot of us were pretty surprised to find out it was natalie cole.

i spent the rest of thursday watching rehearsals for the mall show wev will be doing. he's working with the people i normally work with in theater and live productions. so everytime he makes a mistake the director shouts "lifey, you better learn this, because if he doesn't, you're getting on that stage! we won't know the difference anyway!" it's fun to watch him that way... he's like a mix of miller and the waffle king. it's a riot!

meanwhile, the countdown to the premiere continues. heard that ASAP is sponsoring a premiere of the two towers on the 18th, the earliest date by far. which means etoile will get to watch before i do, again. and she'll have bragging rights. oh well, i'll see it on the 20th.

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19:10: last weekend was just so much fun, i had to write about it.

friday, i spent the day at the mall with my best friends. usual thing, bummed around and all. afterwards, we headed on to rcbc to watch rocky. we had fun. it was a pretty good show. shanghai boy was brad, thankfully. etoile had a really hilarious skit as the popcorn girl. that night, she said she "swore off sex" because she thought she was "allergic to jizm." ahahahaha!!! i danced the time warp in the aisle and my friends did their own crazy thing. it was great.

saturday was alright. i went to school for the make-up class. literally, a make-up class. we had to do make-up on each other to make us look like the characters from our respective plays. since the cad and my other groupmate got first pick, i got stuck with a guy's role. not bad, though. they gave me a 5 o'clock shadow with dark green eye shadow so it looked pretty real, but i was, of course, smooth as a baby's bottom. bugger, though. everyone kept calling me by my brother's name.

at around 2am of sunday, i got a message on my phone.
what that was about, i have no idea. but... smileys galore!

sunday morning, wev woke me up and told me to get dressed. we were eating out because there was't any food at home. we ate at napoli. wow. i never knew eating could be an experience! P660 bucks for four of us --- completely filled to maximum capacity with bottomless iced tea, good pasta, a tasty pizza and a monster of a calzone. not to mention leftovers. not bad. not bad at all. *burp*
when i got to our gate after lunch, i got a message saying etoile got me a ticket to that afternoon's show. ...like i'd ever pass on that! ha! i changed my shirt (coz i smelled like the restaurant) and hopped into a cab to rcbc. the show was perfect, though i prefered shanghai boy as brad. the crowd was pretty good, too. the dancer, rocker-i and some of the kids were in costume. rocker-i's had to be the best, though. he wore a black tank top (hanging), a black see-thru, long-sleeved blouse (also hanging), black fishnet stockings and a black thong. i mean thong. the only thing covering his backside was this little gold thing, kinda like coat tails, sized just enough to cover his butt. had any other guy worn something like that, i'd have cringed. but hey, it's rocker-i. he'll look good in anything. hehehe...

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