SATC (Spam and the City)

Speaking of Pinoys and canned meat, here's a blog entry on egg dipped and sugar glazed Spam by LifeFlix, a Pinoy designer based in New York. Her inspiration? Tony Bourdain's show No Reservations. 

I wonder if Amy and Romy will eventually come out with a Spam-themed book sequel?

Thanks to lovely soulsis for the meaty link, and to LifeFlix for the photo and the Spam nostaliga. Yum yum!

Very canny

"Indeed, wherever they are...Pinoys seem unable to wean themselves away from canned meat, no matter if all around them is freshly harvested food. Someone said it is a gastronomic hangover from the American liberation days."

-- Randy David, musing over the Filipino diaspora after being served carne norte adobo from well-meaning (and inventive) Pinoys abroad, in Reflections on Sociology & Philippine Society (2001: 76)

Carrie: The Resurrection

And by 'Carrie,' I don't mean that knife-throwing waif with mother issues from Stephen King's 1976 horror flick, but rather Carrie Bradshaw, patron saint of big hair and urban singlehood. 

I cringed when I heard that a Sex and the City (SATC) movie was in production, and debated whether I could drag myself to watch it. I loved SATC, but was relieved when it finally capped off its sixth season. By then the show had lost much its original fire. It was time to let Carrie and friends happily ride off into the celluloid sunset. A SATC movie sounded too much like a vanity project, like George Lucas's tragic Star Wars prequels, The Simpsons Movie, Rocky Balboa (I could go on and on...). It smacked of a cash-in, an unnecessary exhuming of a pop icon skeleton.

But, hey. After watching this, I realized, who am I fooling? Vanity project? Cash-in? Who cares. SATC will always be SATC. I'll be at our local VUE theater on the 30th of May, along with a stampede of other women, rooting for Carrie. 

See you there.

Inverted telescope

"I did not find a good name for this experience till almost a quarter of a century later, when I was in the Philippines and teaching myself to read Spanish by stumbling through Jose Rizal's extraordinary nationalist novel Noli Me Tangere. There is a dizzying moment early in the narrative when the young mestizo hero, recently returned to the colonial Manila of the 1880s from a long sojourn in Europe, looks out of his carriage window at the municipal botanical gardens, and finds that he too is, so to speak, at the end of an inverted telescope. These gardens are shadowed automatically -- Rizal says maquinalmente -- and inescapably by images of their sister gardens in Europe. 

"He can no longer matter-of-factly experience them, but sees them simultaneously close up and from afar. The novelist arrestingly names the agent of this incurable doubled vision el demonio de las comparaciones...the spectre of comparisons."

-- Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons (1998: 2)

Losing it

You have got to hear this.  

BBC Radio 4 inspires a mesmerizing sense of pride and admiration among the 61 million odd inhabitants of this small island, and has managed to do so without sounding like a state mouthpiece. 

Each show feels warm and intimate, creating a sense of connection through the medium of voice. In spite of the standardized British accent, it never feels alien (unless it's The Archers.. I can't stand that show) Five years ago, new, alone, and without a TV, I sought solace in radio. It ended up being my first, and best, guide to decoding the many oddities of this very Angry Island.

 

How is it possible to have a state run, state owned, monolithic media outfit without an authoritarian government to match? I'm sure it's all explained here. Speaking of giggles, I am reminded of the truism that they tend to erupt at the worst times -- even for Kings. Though not every episode (the King's included, which I found just plain weird) is as charming.