Eight's amazing

I wasn't able to watch the opening of the Beijing Olympics because I was busy enjoying crispy pata, guava sinigang, kare kare, dilis friend rice, lumpiang ubod, and adobo in my nephew's 6th birthday in Fely J's. I tried looking for it in Youtube this morning but the Chinese government must have had it all pulled out. Good thing my friend sent me the link of the coverage, so not all is lost. In Barcelona, they had an archer shoot an arrow into the torch. In Atlanta, they had Muhammad Ali light a ball that took forever to reach the top to ignite the flame. In Sydney, they had this woman light a circle that suddenly lifted from the ground. Like a burning UFO, it gingerly moved to the top of the stadium. In Beijing, they had this runner sprint in the air trailed by an awesome video. Then, there's also the world's biggest pep squad and Cirque de Soleil to back it up. The production number was a spectacle in gargantuan proportions. I hear the director of House of the Flying Daggers did the entire shebang.

Beijin 2008 Cérémonie d'ouverture partie 1

There goes the air pollution levels.

I wonder how London will manage to top Beijing? Will they have Queen Elizabeth or Prince William sky dive or zip from Big Ben to wherever the torch is?

Covering U2

I love it when other musicians do covers of other people's songs. I love Alanis Morissette's version of Crazy, which was originally sung by Seal. It was played in the Central Park fashion shoot scene in The Devil Wears Prada. I also love Britney Spears' version of You Got It All and Aqua's Turn Back Time. Yesterday at the Nokia-sponsored Fashion Watch Quartet Series 3, events director extraordinaire Robby Carmona played a really good head-bobbing, finger-tapping remake of U2's Where The Streets Have No Name sung by Vanessa Carlton. Nice.

Project Run(a)way again

They say a picture says a thousand words. And I think that's what they should have showed the contestants in the second challenge in the second episode the other night. For those who missed out on it (I can't blame you since it's aired so late), the challenge this time was to design an outfit based on an assigned legendary Filipino designer and to inject one's personality in it. To help them come up with their concept, students from SOFA were assigned to each contestant. I think it might helped if a visual peg was shown to the contestants. You can't expect someone to come up with something based on someone else's description of a designer's style - especially if you aren't familiar with their work, or what they're known for to begin with. It's just like asking a artist to do paint Return of the Bucintoro to the Molo on Ascencion Day by Canaletto without ever seeing it or to have someone draw any of Stan Lee's Marvel characters without seeing any of his comic books or watching any of the Marvel movies. In the end, it was the work of this guy who made the fabric he got look cheaper than cheap that didn't make the cut. It was an alright show. 

Except for a few things: - Teresa Herrera looked like a Swiss maid wearing a teletubby costume. - Better if they interviewed the SOFA students to ask how they helped each contestant come up with their design. It looked like they were just there to hang out. - Aries felt bad that the old lady was booted out in the first episode but he had a sudden change of heart when he saw his first ensemble next to hers in the studio so he moved it farther away from it.   - They really ought to spruce up the contestant's apartment. - Why make Amina the guest judge when they didn't design bags, which is more of her area of expertise?

- When the booted designer left on stage, there was no, hug, beso, shaking of hands.  But the host did say "take care"

Wedding surprise

32 years ago today, my parents were pronounced man and wife. So to commemorate their matrimonial experience, I'm hosting an intimate dinner for them in one of the restaurants where they used to frequent when they were, in my Mom's words, "going steady." I'm doing this because:

• I'm the only child here. At least until August 10th when my brother comes back from his China woo-ing trip.

• I figured it'd be great to celebrate it differently.

• I wanted to give them the gift of reliving the past in present time.

I originally intended to take them to Little Quiapo so they could have pancit and burgers like the good ol' days but unfortunately, there isn't one that's situated in a proper location. I was thinking of buying the food instead in their branch in BF but figured the food won't be so great by the time I get to Makati. Luckily, my Tita who was once perpetually super glued to them way back said they also used to eat in Aristocrat. So that's where I'm taking them tonight - to the branch in Jupiter for some Chicken Barbecue, Honey Chicken, and Pancit Canton.

*images from www.kainpinoy.com

I also wanted them to be collected in a red Volkswagen Beetle because that was what my Dad used to drive but I couldn't find any. So what's a thoughtful son left to do? I searched and bought one.

A toy model of it, that is. I wanted to have the roof engraved with the date but was afraid it might ruin the paint job.

My new roomie

With my pug-hating brother out of the country, we decided to grab the chance to ship one of the dogs to the condo so we could have something to play with, scare, or startle. Maggie (short for Steel Magnolia) ain't exactly made of steel. Infact, she's perpetually a bunch of nerves. One slight boo sends her scurrying across the room to seek shelter under a chair, bed, or anywhere that's far from the boo-er. For the last couple of nights, she's been keeping me up thanks to her constant pacing around the room. Last night, she was scratching the bedroom door. When I opened it thinking she wanted to go out of the room, she just stood and started into the darkness. "What do you want, Maggie?" I asked. So I closed the door, messed up her blanket and pillow and told her to go to bed. So she did. Had I known that was all I needed to do for her to hit the sack, I would have done it earlier. Despite her slightly irritating nails, she makes a good alarm clock though. She's been waking me at 630 am. I don't know if this is a good or bad sight to see so early in the morning.

Paris for Prez

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Who will you vote for?

Peel or not to peel

I had my monthly cleaning at Belo awhile ago and the girl who attacked my face recommended I have it peeled so my skin would be baby butt smooth. She recommended I do the Fraxel Laser Treatment.

"Fraxel Laser Treatment is a revolutionary procedure that allows us to treat your skin problems in a new unique way never before possible. This unique fractional laser resurfacing technology leaves the surrounding tissue unaffected and intact. This fractional treatment allows the skin to heal much faster than if the entire area was treated at once; using the body’s natural healing process to create new, healthy tissue to replace skin imperfections. A Fraxel treatment eliminates sun spots and age spots, improves uneven pigmentation and melasma, and improves wrinkles and Stretch Marks with minimal downtime. It also helps improve acne scars. The Fraxel laser penetrates deeply into the skin dermis with thousands of tiny microthermal treatment zones."

It sounded interesting until I saw this in the Belo website: So, nevermind.

Home improvement

The room I'll be sharing with my brother in our new city abode has two large windows, one large wall, and a tiny closet. How we will fit, I don't know. And frankly, I don't care if we won't have a lot of space. I'm thinking more on what colour the room should be in. At first, my brother wanted the room painted in mocha while I wanted it in blue, which are the respective colours of our rooms in Alabang. To compromise, we both decided to have the walls painted in blue but make the huge wall in Paul Smith stripes. But it was going to be a tedious feat for the painter to do and a probably a not so pleasant experience for us to see stripes on the wall after a stressful day at work. This afternoon, I checked Ikea and discovered that they had Paul Smith-like fabric at only A$12.00 a metre. We could probably still do that but that'd mean cleaning the fabric once in a while. Hassle. So, I thought we could probably have black and white photos made into a collage and printed on a huge canvas that will be mounted on the wall. It will only stretch the width of our beds and will be hung on top of the headboards. This is a rough sample of what I want, select photos of our family holiday trip to Rome and Paris. I have yet to send the photos to someone who knows how to lay it out better than I do.

Third time ain't a charm

In Hollywood, the best movies whether cash cows or critically acclaimed, sometimes come in trilogies such as: 1. Matrix I had to watch the first one five times to understand it. I have yet to do multiple screenings of the other films. 2. Oceans 11 through 13. It makes one want to wear a really good suit to work. 3. I didn't like Spiderman very much but it did so well in the box office. 4. Xmen, even if they didn't make Phoenix appear the way she did in the comic books. 5. The Godfather 6. Lord of the Rings (if you loved the movie, you'll love the Very Secret Diaries of Lord of the Rings), 7. and to some, High School Musical. Unfortunately, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is a sad example of how sometimes, good things do not come in threes. When I first saw the trailer, I said to myself (and whoever I was with then) that it was a movie that I really wanted to watch. Isn't that the voice of the guy in the Voltron Intro? Now I think I should have waited for it to come out in HBO. This, of course, is the latest sequel in the revamped Mummy franchise which began in 1999. The first one was a witty reinvention of the horror classic, the sequel was a typically overblown attempt to be bigger and better, and this one is simply an act of desperation. Things I didn't like about it (contains spoilers): - Rachel Weisz didn't reprise her role, instead Maria Bello was cast to play the adventurous, Legend-knowing wife. I guess if you've already won an Oscar, you can turn down anything and give "conflicting schedules" as an excuse. - Maria Bello was too old for Brendan Fraser and Brendan Fraser was too young to play a father to a 20+ year old. - Jet Li didn't have much speaking lines. I think he only had 20 minutes worth of it. - It wasn't established why the curse involved being a terracotta statue forever. - The son in Mummy 2 had a British accent. The son in Mummy 3 completely lost it. - Jet Li plays too many warlord/ Emperor/ ninja guy roles - I found it weird that the good guys weren't shocked to see mythical creatures. Perhaps interacting with Yeti and three headed dragons are daily fare in the O'Connel household - The editing was bad. - How could have the 2 Chinese suck ups survived with a few bumps and some bruises after a bomb was dropped (and went out with a bang!) on their jeep

SMS

The universe has a funny way of testing my patience with (stupid) people. An office staff of this talent manager called me up yesterday to follow up on the payment for three of their talents we used in one of our PR campaigns. Me: "Your check is ready but I can't release it until you give me a copy of the signed contract and your billing, which I've been requesting for weeks." I was tempted to tell her she could send it via snail mail/email/fax/homing pigeon/morse code/singing telegram/mental telepathy/smoke signals just so it could be over and done with. Stupid lady: "Ok, sir. Kailan po pwede kunin yung check?" Me: "You can get it anytime just as long as you give me the contract and billing." Stupid lady: "Sa Friday po, pwede?" Me: "Yes, just as long as you have what I asked for." Stupid lady: "Okay, Tenk you po." This morning, Stupid lady texted me. Someone oughta teach this woman about the proper use of punctuation marks. Annoyed, this is what I replied to her: