I borrowed Street-Bound: Manila on Foot by Josefina P. Manahan and it is a refreshing read even though I have done everything except one (that is visit Museo ng Maynila) that she had suggested in the book. I love to walk Manila and its environs and share its glory and gloom to my most intimate friends. I love to embrace Quiapo’s semi-proletarian noise and smell and extol Recto Avenue’s grimy streets and the people, my people, who scraps the grime for survival. I want shaking the calloused hands of the lumpen proletariats hanging out under the LRT station in front of Isetann and checking out their loots from the hoods.
Street-Bound made me miss the fish and the Kois near the Quezon Circle area and suggested that I tread again the Kamuning Road for some new old treasures stashed at the back of the antique and used stores.
Suck it. I sucked out the book’s marrow laughing at every page of the blood sucking couple’s bloody adventure, till death do they part.
Christopher Moore’s book I normally see in the bestseller shelves of big shot corporate bookstores and not even browse it because it is way too expensive for my taste. And besides, his titles sound just like any trying hard bohemian writer. I am bollocks for thinking that way. He is actually way too cool that some would compare him with Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins.
You Suck is another way of treating the vampire genre applying the craziness of contemporary San Francisco scene and the wackiness of youthful love, and lust, I suppose.
C Thomas Flood is a normal guy from Indiana who tried his luck in San Francisco and found himself in a group of vampire catchers under the influence of a street bum called the Emperor. They captured the 800 year old vampire Elijah and his minion Jody, a foxy sexy red head. Tommy noticed Jody’s sexiness and became her blood donor until she eventually turned him into a vampire, much to his chagrin at first until he discovered his uncanny ability to do supernatural stuff.
An agreement required Jody to leave the area lest she be captured again but got caught in a web of incidents that made You Suck a perfect laugh out loud story.
Before becoming a vampire, Tommy and the rest of his crew worked in a night shift of a grocery store and played turkey bowling. But upon pouncing on the vampire Elijah, they got hold of his treasures and dividing it among themselves, splurged it in Las Vegas with a blue colored call girl named Blue. They fucking splurged $600,000 on her and needed more when they found out Tommy’s new nature. They then tried to get Tommy’s share of the loot until Blue gave them the idea to capture him as their gift to her blue booty.
Tommy and Jody used their vampire powers to lure an emo gothic girl named Abby Normal to aid them in their escape. Abby, with her vampire imagination running wild, thought of being a crony to powerful centuries old vampire until learning the truth, that they were just bunch of week old victims themselves, opted so stay true to her promise and ensconced the two lover’s undying love in bronze.
It is Abby Normal’s chronicles that has that laugh out loud timbre with the way she looked and imagined things in her nosferatu laden world.
Basta, it’s a fun light vampire comedy read that is worth its greedy corporate price of P625.00.
