(t5!) My Year in Lists 2008: Jus' Do Sumfin Random

#01: The "25 things about me" meme is all the rage in Facebook right now, but I decided to step it up and give you "30 things about me" to make it congruent with the rest of the (t5!) My Year in Lists entry. I know my awesome friend, Lucas did this first in his Facebook, and it seems like I’m biting. But I’m actually biting this off my other Facebook friend, Marian, who did this back in December. I just thought it’s a terrific way to get some random things from 2008 off my chest.

#02: Reasons why I’m posting my “year in lists, 2008” in February/March of 2009:
i) because I quit my job, and I don’t have internet at home.
ii) because my family vacationed here in December, which occupied a lot of my time. I’m not complaining one bit, though.
iii) because I can get TV show DVD’s for cheap
iv) because my girl seizes the car radio all the time, and I let her do it to avoid the nag
v) because maybe, just maybe, I am starting to lose my edge, as LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy would say.

#03: I haven’t started (t5!) My Year In Lists: Album yet, and I probably won’t finish for another two weeks. I know that the citizens won’t care by then, but it’s imperative that I finish the exercise…for me.

#04: I gained ten pounds when my family was over here for the holidays, but I’m confident that the Filipino summer will sweat it all out.

#05: If I miss a dish that you can easily get from Canada, I can usually make it at home to appease my homesickness. However, I don’t know how to make perogies and thus, I tremendously miss them.

#06: I’m starting to worry that I’m a little bit OCD, because I tend to do everything by 3’s. I’m convince that I do it so that lady luck is in my side, but even I know that’s ridiculous. I shoot a free throw in basketball and I have to dribble the ball three times before I shoot. When I play cards, I have to look at my first three cards before I look at my whole hand. I even do enumerations in threes when I write.

#07: I love camping in the woods in Canada, but I love camping on the beach loads better. It’s the one-two punch of the sunset and bathing suits that does it.

#08: Nothing turns me off quicker than awkward dancing. You can be the hottest girl in the world in my eyes, but that won't matter if you dance like an electrocuted penguin. Sorry.

#09: The most underrated show in television yearly is the Fox reality show, “So You Think You Can Dance”. I don’t know why the gem is so hidden. Maybe because people perceive it as the summer, dance equivalent of American Idol, being that it’s being conducted in the same set, produced by the same guy, and the contestants are going through the same process. Here’s the thing, though. SYTYCD is the hipster equivalent of Idol. The whole operation could have been hokey if the choreographers they have weren’t the best in the business, if the dancers they have weren’t capable, if the critique weren’t so spot on. And with dance, there’s no other stage like singing, and that’s why the best come out. It’s the only place to make a name for yourself on, like Pitchfork for dancers. It also shattered the way of thinking by some people that dancing is effeminate, especially . Hopefully it gets as many seasons as Idol, because each year tops the last.

#10: I’m not a fan of Filipino teleseryes in general. But the number one flaw that exasperates me is their misapprehension of the concept of time. In the beginning of the series when they show the characters as kids, they’re not wearing clothes, or sporting haircuts, or modeling accessories from that supposed period of time. The houses are inaccurately decorated, there are cars on the street that aren’t made yet, and the dialogue contains lingo that hasn’t been conceived yet. It just ruins the authenticity of the shows.

#11: I wear #11 in basketball because the vertical lines make me appear taller.

#12: My motherfucking stolen laptop! Five reasons why that’s the worst out of all worsts:
>> It’s not even that I had a $2000 electronic equipment snatched from right under my nose, or that I had all my personal files in there; the worst thing is being outsmarted, and no matter how much I want to retaliate, I can never make it happen. The fucker’s gone, and most importantly, it’s a bigger hassle for me to chase it. So I have to frustratingly just let it go
>> This happened on my birthday! The anniversary of my birth! What is supposed to be the happiest day on any person’s life!
>> I already knew that the guy can’t be trusted. And it’s not a bubbling suspicion that he’s a shady character, Every single person that’s ever met him knows he can’t be trusted. But it’s this thing that I do, a compulsion that forces me to see the good in people, even if that good is so minuscule that you need a high-powered microscope to see it. What sucks about the unfortunate event is that it has made me cynical, incapable of seeing the good in people for the rest of my life. I’m now programmed to think that everyone I meet is about to swindle me.
>> I figured that I need to purchase a replacement Macbook Pro. The money I used to buy one would have probably allowed me to stay unemployed in the Philippines for another six months.
>> The night it happened, I woke up because the dog was barking incessantly. Now everytime the dog barks at night, I have a reflex to wake up and check out what’s up. As a result, it also made me hate stray cats.
Fuck!

#13: Because I don’t have a microwave at home, I have 15 different fried rice recipes.

#14: On top of my “things to do in the Philippines” list is to start an acoustic band that does indie covers. My setlist would include Interpol’s “Obstacle 1”, Arcade Fire’s “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”, Broken Social Scene’s “Almost Crimes”, Vampire Weekend’s “A-Punk”, Fleet Foxes’ “White Winter Hymnal”, The Notwist’s “Consequence”, TV On The Radio’s “Family Tree”, LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends”, Spoon’s “Stay Don’t Go”, etc, etc, etc, etc…

#15: I don't care if you think I'm dreaming, but Ann Curtis and I had a moment when my family and I went to an ASAP taping in December. We were caught in a stare for, like, a good 30 seconds.

#16: As much as I don’t like motorcyclists here, I dislike people on bikes more: they have a bike path, but they don’t use it; they impede traffic because they’re going 5 km/h; they never actually travel on a straight line; and they don’t have brake lights.

#17: The Barack Obama campaign has exposed how bigoted some people in the Philippines can still be. I don’t want to speak ill of this country because I do love it here, and I wouldn’t have moved here if I didn’t love the country and the people. However, it’s a very apparent and a very unfortunate blemish. It’s repulsive how recurrently people here speak negatively of Obama’s skin color in discussions.

#18: I’m now narcoleptic. When I get comfortable, I doze off. Not a single movie was finished in one sitting without me falling asleep in 2008.

#19: Other than to play sports or to go to an event where formal attire is a must, I didn’t wear shoes all year, thanks to the comfort of Havaianas flip-flops.

#20: Because of what happened to my ex-laptop, my safe place for my new laptop, as well as my other important belongings, when I leave the house is in a broke down fridge that my grandma refuse to throw away.

#21: I’ve been hopelessly trying to learn how to take pictures with my digital camera where only the object is in focus and the rest of the background is hazy. If you have any pointers, help me out because it’s been frustrating.

#22: I discovered that the best hangover cure is an ice cold Mountain Dew.

#23: My Mount Rushmore of drunk food you can get in Olongapo City, 2008:
>> Tap-si-log from Rico’s (that’s tapa, pan-fried marinated slices of beef; sinangag, garlic fried rice; and itlog, egg, either sunny side-up or scrambled)
>> eggcaldo from the Pag-Asa market (Filipino congee with a hard-boiled egg)
>> beef noodle soup from MB’s at 1st street, West Tapinac
>> spicy chicken and beef chao fan with pork siomai from Chow King

#24: I hate canker sores with vim and vigor.

#25: Back in July or August, I saw this huge spider in my living room, as big as my palm almost. Naturally, I had the urge to catch it. I put it in a plastic jar, and fed it flies and moths and stuff. My plan was to strengthen it and to fierce it up (like you would with a Pokemon), so that it can dominate other spiders. It died before our first bout.

#26: In April, I solved my first rubix cube.

#27: I still compile and rate all the albums that I listen to in an Excel spreadsheet. But to add to my music obsession, I have an iPod playlist where I collate and rank all the singles throughout the year. I rearrange the order every week or so.

#28: I watched the movie “Knocked Up”, like, eight times in 2008, mainly because it was the only movie saved in my computer at the time.

#29: I really don’t want to do engineering anymore, but I know that I have to if I want to provide for a family at some point in my life.

#30: The Dark Knight, the best movie of 2008! (t5!) bullet points:
>> it’s a marvelous action movie, but it’s one of those rare action movies (so rare that I can’t remember another one of its kind off the top of my head) where I’m more excited to watch the characters talking, brooding, and monologue-ing than the action itself, You know how some dance records are headphone dance records? TDK is a headphone action movie. Exploding hospitals are great, 18-wheelers doing somersaults are great, but let’s get on with it so that we can hear the movie’s dialogue.
>> oh, Heath! Let’s skip the eulogizing and the “too bad this was a posthumous performance” spiel, shall we, and let’s talk about how fucking magnificent he is in this movie. As good as the other performances are (Zeus’ heartwarming scene subtracted), TDK begins and ends with Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker. This was supposed to be about Wayne/Batman and Dent, how one desperately wants to be the other one, but Ledger just steals it; we just can’t get enough Joker. My favorite scene is when he’s being held in the interrogation room by a cop. He asks him how many of his cop buddies has he killed and the cop says, “six.” “Six,” he mouths back, dripping with faux-concern. I don’t know if that was Nolan’s direction or Ledger’s ad-lib, but it exemplified a combination of perverted glee and inane petulance. Best superhero movie villain of all time in maybe the best superhero movie of all time.
>> One way TDK exceeds the Burton/Schumacher Batmans, as well as a majority of superhero movies, is that they didn’t reveal a half-assed backstory for their villains. In past Batman’s, they showed how The Joker was submerged in bleaching toxic and how someone threw acid at Two-Face at court. Here, Nolan has left The Joker’s past totally ambiguous. Yeah, we know that he’s sadistic and frenzied, we know that he’s a liar, we know that he’s a badass supervillain not to be fucked with, but we’re left guessing about how he became this way. Most importantly, part of the movie’s genius (and in large part, Ledger’s genius as well) is that it succeeded to convince us that he’s a real human being without the swift life story scene, that he’s just a citizen of Gotham only with heavy demons haunting him. There’s this scene when the mobsters upon meeting The Joker for the first time called him a “crazy”. He replies with “I’m not; no I’m not,” like he has been called a “crazy” before, and he believed it way too many times before, but has also scrutinized about it enough times to dishonestly persuade himself that it’s not true. The delivery of that one simple, short utterance uncovers so much, and it more than makes up for the absence of scenes about The Joker’s backstory.
>> An underrated aspect of this film is Aaron Eckhart’s role as Harvey Dent/Two-Face. He could’ve been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar if it wasn’t for Heath Ledger’s venerable accomplishment.
>> I’ve discussed about this with my friends in the past, but what makes Batman different and more interesting than other superheroes is the fact that he doesn’t actually have super powers. Sure, you rarely hear in the news a renegade, orphaned billionaire in a bat costume with ninja training and unlimited technological resources taking on the scum of the Earth; but there are no web slinging in this movie, no adamantium-glazed skeletons, no green, colossal giants in need of anger management sessions. That fact is what makes TDK real and gritty and fucken terrific.