I know that there is a proliferation of movie review blogs and shit and there are real damn good reviewers like Rotten Tomatoes. But after watching two films in a row over four bottles of beer, it is apparent that I also like to start watching films and write something about it. So, I am adding in this supposed to be book blog anything about film, music, and things in between because I also like listening to music, and things in between that is why it will be so.
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.
Man, I even forget what I’ve read these past months since my last blog entry. It must be the election season that made me lethargic seeing the fucking political rigodon of the ruling class all over again. I tried remembering the books and it was a mesh-up of different genres that all the more meshed up my messed up mind. Someone gave me two books and it put a smile on my face seeing Pablo Neruda’s works Full Woman, Flesh Apple, Hot Moon . It sounded sexy and I find the book sexy. I took comfort in a poem under XVII and I am meaning to write a longer thought train on it. Paolo Coelho’s By the River Piedra I Wept was magical Coelho again. It has all the ingredients of a love story with that magical realism touch that made me conjure my long lost desire to visit Spain, if it is indeed in Spain that the story unfolded. And I think it is actually a happy ending with the lead characters getting together without the magic, and the mystery. They just loved each other and love conquers all, or is it?
I tried reading M is for Magic by Neil Gaiman but did not finish it. It was this time that my reading interest waned for some unknown reason. I returned it to the library unfinished. But I bought A Good Year by Peter Mayle and was it a film that they made into a book or the other way around? I’ve watched the movie before reading the book and it described pretty well the provencal life in France. I want to live in a farm surrounded by grapes and interesting people. The book is better as I can still smell the fine wine.
Then I got hold of American Gods by Neil Gaiman again and it brought back my interest in his works, and reading. It made me dream of gods, and the crass materialism that rules the world. He is a good writer and he has long hair.
So it was a newspaper people jargon. When a news reporter finds his first ever smash story, they call it 'seeing the elephant.'
The story set in San Francisco, California that is in the United States of America is fun. The young reporter whose passion is to write a great book worthy of becoming part of the annals of literature has been reading the works of literary greats but is fast depleting his finances because he is not earning, because he is trying to write the first sentences of his future great work.
Our hero’s name is Slater Brown and he got dumped on his first shot at The Morning Trumpet, a weekly newspaper, because he sounded very literary and dreamy, and did not meet the expectation of the editors. But he tripped on something magical, a radio that can pick-up conversations. In short, he got the juiciest shit and really got the elephant by the cojones. He became the toast of the town but was hounded by a dreamy encounter with a lovely woman who happened to be a good chess player. He did meet Callio de Quincy, the mystery woman, and they liked each other right away. It was with her that he divulged his innermost dreams, aspirations, and his magic shit. And it was her who can really feel his innermost dreams, aspirations, and how his magic radio is actually just shit that can hit the fan any moment.
San Francisco is also home to the smartest person in the world, Milo Magnet, who tried to manipulate the weather for whatever purpose it might serve. It was during his stint as the hotshot reporter that Slater hooked up with Milo Magnet and organized a chess match between Milo’s computer and Callio. Of course, Callio lost that brought her father to despise Slater more while Slater found his soul and disposed his magic transistor radio to pursue his destiny as a writer and his heart as a young man, sigh, in love.
The book described San Francisco at its dynamic best. From the restaurants and the food it offers to the scenic ordinary spots and the cable cars. Slater Brown described the city in a feeling way and how its people make it more interesting.
Going to see the Elephant made me miss San Francisco. My short stint experiencing the BART, the Golden Gate Bridge, Mission Street, the Cable Car, Pier 39, the most crooked street, the Budweiser beers, my KFC chicken without anything on it, the fucking scenic cold beaches, the drive, the people, and most especially a good friend holding his fort in probably the second best city in my world.
it was my cousin Marissa who just arrived for a vacation from Australia where she now resides who woke me from my blogging stupor as she proudly showed a picture of her with her god Mitch Albom of the Tuesdays with Morrie book fame, heard of him? She said she frequent bookstores in Brisbane to check out if they have sale items (new books in OZ cost roughly a thousand or more Philippine pesos) that she can purchase for more than 80 percent off just because the front cover is not perfect, or has a dent or a cut or whatever shit to lower the cost.
Anyway, I actually just read Mitch Albom's "For Another Day" and did not exactly enjoy it for some unknown reason. I liked Tuesdays with Morrie and even gave it as a gift to one of my cousin on her 18th birthday years ago. but "For one more Day" somehow disappointed me. It is about an over the hill baseball player who lost his marbles along the way when his mother died and got estranged with his wife and daughter due to his alcoholism. He tried killing himself, the suicide course to escape, but ended up alive and talking to his dead mother. It was a ghost story, Albom said, and I thought that we really do have ghosts to purge and heal somewhere in our lives. Plus the ghosts my sons occasionally see when they are in the mood for ghost hunting and stories and shit.
I have to admit it is heartwarming. It is touching, Not necessarily life touching, but a good read altogether to start up my reading groove again.
Man, I even forget what I’ve read these past months since my last blog entry. It must be the election season that made me lethargic seeing the fucking political rigodon of the ruling class all over again. I tried remembering the books and it was a mesh-up of different genres that all the more meshed up my messed up mind. Someone gave me two books and it put a smile on my face seeing Pablo Neruda’s works Full Woman, Flesh Apple, Hot Moon . It sounded sexy and I find the book sexy. I took comfort in a poem under XVII and I am meaning to write a longer thought train on it. Paolo Coelho’s By the River Piedra I Wept was magical Coelho again. It has all the ingredients of a love story with that magical realism touch that made me conjure my long lost desire to visit Spain, if it is indeed in Spain that the story unfolded. And I think it is actually a happy ending with the lead characters getting together without the magic, and the mystery. They just loved each other and love conquers all, or is it?
