Celebrity and fame killed Michael Jackson

As a kid growing up in the 1980s, I idolized Michael Jackson. So much so that instead of being called by my real name I wanted people calling me "Michael" or "Mike" --- although my dad also supposedly named me after the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger too, how true that is I don't really know. At four years old I used to dance with uncoordinated energy to his song "Bad." I used to think he could do no wrong, apart from that weird dance step of his that involves holding his crotch.

Then things started changing. He eventually became so far removed from the guy I used to look up to. It eventually became all about what misadventure he would get himself into next, no longer about his music --- which never really lost its luster as it still resonated with a sizable audience around the world. It's just that people found a new reason to watch Wacko Jacko's every move, and it was no longer constructive.

When documentaries aired in 2001 trying to explain Jackson's side, I found myself wanting to believe him. I wanted to believe that he and his siblings had been abused as a kid, that the fame-at-all-costs attitude of his dad robbed him of the chance to learn to live a normal childhood. But people kept pushing and insisting he was a weirdo to be feared. They insisted that apart from his extravagant stage persona and performances, he was good for nothing but an existence in a glass cage so all his strange behaviors could be seen for all the world to laugh at.

In the end, celebrity and fame snuffed out his life.

Shockingly I had already seen in the movie Music and Lyrics how a teenaged pop singing sensation (fictional as she may be) could have her humanity destroyed by fame at an early age, never to regain it. I am 100% sure that that was what happened to Michael Jackson.

As a teenager I used to aspire to become famous. Now I probably know better. The price of fame is just too high.

White noise

As a writer, my one greatest weakness is that I suffer from the potential of giving people what Mao used to call "logorrhea." It's like loose bowel movement but with words instead of feces.

I am so jealous of people - songwriters, lyricists and poets, for instance - who can drive home their loaded point with the sparest of verses. Perhaps I'm more jealous of songwriters as I hardly read poetry anyway. It's amazing how the songs with the best and deepest emotional connections to our hearts are those that have the simplest lyrics paired with the most appropriate melody.

Other people have told me my talent is in explanation. Sometimes I get sick of it. As a speaker I am proud of it, but as a writer, there's no challenge in explaining things as best as I could in black and white. If I were a novel --- and I say this because there's no way I can be a song or poem ---I'd barely have turned any of my pages; if I were a magazine I'd barely have sold because I don't have a good angle.

Keane. Sugarfree. Vienna Teng. I envy them all, their profound lingual grasp of "less is more," their letting the music speak.

Arthur Golden. Bill Dare. Banana Yoshimoto. I envy them all, their grasp of "KISS" - keep it simple, stupid.

Maybe I have no mystique left to me because I'm all explained out. I'm all white noise, there but not there.

Look it up

Over the past few months I've become genuinely surprised, frustrated and annoyed at how lazy people have become searching the wealth of information the Internet has. Here we are, swimming in a veritable ocean of information, and yet people still keep asking the same dumb questions - persistently.

Worse, people are becoming gullible and believing all these myths circulated by email, forums and whatnot. They don't even realize that a lot of these said myths have already been tested and debunked.

I have to wonder: Am I the only one nowadays who can appreciate the value of "looking it up?" As a kid I was brought up by my dad to find the answers to my own questions. Back then I criticized him for taking what I thought was the easy way out of my nagging, but now I realize he was actually teaching me a very valuable lesson.

So those of you out there reading this: Before you nag other people with questions about what you don't know, let your fingers do some work for you. How hard is it to go to a search engine, type in a string of words into a one-line text field, and hit the Enter key afterward? You will not believe how much "work" people think you put in when you simply show them the results of your Internet search.

Lord Kamina goes on a CD-shopping spree

It's been a while since any anime got me this excited and pumped up.

Animax started airing GAINAX's Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann last month and I've been following it with fervor. As a Gundam fan I usually like my mecha anime cut from the "real robot" mold, but Gurren Lagann is undoubtedly an homage to the "super robot" anime of the 196os and 1970s, complete with impossible feats, ridiculous weapons and hot-blooded pilots shouting the names of their attacks before they do them.

2007's Gurren Lagann is notably the polar opposite of GAINAX's other, more popular opus, 1995's Neon Genesis Evangelion. That production was ultimately cold, depressing and apocalyptic - even director Hideaki Anno admitted that the production of Evangelion was part of his therapy. However, its flawed characters and their hang-ups, especially protagonist Shinji Ikari, resonated worldwide and catapulted it to mecha anime nirvana.

Gurren Lagann is different and more in keeping with GAINAX's earlier work, 1988's Aim for the Top! Gunbuster, with less women and hard sci-fi concepts. The titular robot runs on nothing but emotion and willpower, for crying out loud, and can sprout drills out of every part of its body - just witness the "Giga Drill Maximum" attack. Its charismatic chest-beating leader Kamina is no exception, sporting outrageous glasses, spouting epic quotes and barking his signature line "Who the heck do you think I am?!" The show runs deeper than the simplistic rock-and-roll introduction however, as there are three arcs to the 27-episode series that all bring with them their own overriding emotion. All of them are animated with the kind of visuals that would frankly look more at home in a movie than a TV anime, such is their quality and polish.

Mark my words: This feel-good series will be a mecha anime classic someday.
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After a long spell of buying other things, I got around to expanding my music collection again. It's been months since I bought any CDs. This time I pulled out all the stops: I bought all the CDs I promised myself to buy on a Post-it note sometime last year. I went and bought CDs from Keane, Hoobastank, Death Cab for Cutie and Snow Patrol.

That's probably the most number of CDs I've bought in a trip to Music One. These should tide me over for a few more months...

Just when I was about to give up on car club forums...

...I get good "karma" from people who appreciate what I do.

After becoming a virtual persona non grata on a certain car club for speaking out what I believe, I had gotten disillusioned with car club forum websites and the airheads that reside in them. I'm glad I didn't give up on them entirely. Apparently FitFreak.net's members know how to recognize goodwill and good advice.

Maybe there's some point to me doing the Mr. Miyagi thing this long. As long as I can help, I'll do so.

"Internet Channels was here 2004-2009"

Every time someone got rolled off from Barclays, or resigned from Accenture entirely, it used to merit a stoppage of work and at least thirty minutes of drama, saying farewells and looking back on the good times. For my first couple of years there that used to be the case.

When people started to leave en masse however, that drama went away. Everyone just bit the bullet and accepted the hard truth: that the recession was taking its toll on our client and there just wasn't any work coming our way. I used to think getting rolled off at Barclays meant that someone had screwed up, or someone didn't perform up to par. This time that just wasn't the case. We didn't fail the client. The client failed us.

For the longest time I had imagined how my own final day at Barclays would turn out like. I imagined that instead of going through the dramatic rituals, I'd just disappear in the background with only the leads knowing that I had indeed rolled off from the project. Hahaha. How prophetic. I never thought that's how I ended up leaving Barclays. One difference though: Everyone knew.

Looking back, I don't think I'd have done my final day any differently. It was in effect also the final day of the Internet Channels test team as we knew it. So few of us would remain behind. I decided to make a "shrine" out of the old nameplates that we still had lying around and slap them onto an unused whiteboard. Those with missing nameplates we just filled in with a felt-tip pen.

Jona told us there was a glimmer of hope for our team, though. We might just go back to Barclays by October if everything goes to plan. We'll see. I'm not really keeping my hopes up. I figure three years in Barclays is enough. I needed a change anyway.

It was fun while it lasted. Thanks, my friends.

"Don't fall in love with your car"

I spent the week without Aibo as I sent him into my friend Butch Ortiz's shop, CrossFive Auto, for rust removal around the rear hatch area. This rust sadly seems to be the legacy of that major rear-end crash Aibo had with a bus one year ago.

When Aibo came out of that crash sporting a new rear bumper and rear deck spoiler, people were amazed that he looked much better than ever. Unfortunately things weren't so rosy on the inside. One day while hosing down Aibo's dirt, I had noticed the water from the hose seeping into the same rear bumper everybody adored. Sure enough, when I dismantled the rear interior trim panels, I spotted a few rust spots on the welds. When Butch's crew took a closer look, they found even more rust around the lower lip of the rear hatch.

Fast-forward to today.

My dad had spotted me wrenching away at Aibo's misaligned tie-down cargo hooks this morning and asked me about the particulars of the repair job I'd just had done. He figured out the rust was due to last year's Friday the 13th crash. Afterward, he told me that once a car figures in an accident, I should be prepared to sell it. He repeated his advice: Don't fall in love with your car. Treat it as you would a pair of jeans. If even crash-free cars sprout rust, Papa said, what fate awaits those that have had a bus-sized suppository rammed up their rears?

Unfortunately I'll have to be stubborn on this one.

In the back of my mind, I had already decided that Aibo would figure in my life as my car for at least seven more years. I don't want to replace his GD1 Jazz frame with a brand-new GE6 Jazz; I was never as smitten by the GE's Joan Rivers-style stretched facelift looks as I was with the lovably cute GD, and it's just not enough of an improvement anyway. He is also my ongoing lesson in becoming an adept DIY mechanic, having had so many parts installed to it with dust and grime on my hands and sweat all over my brows and shirts. And have I not already mentioned that Aibo was my very first trackday experience?

Couple that with a shaky, uncertain post-recession future and my preference to prioritize housing over a new car, and the decision to keep Aibo, rust, body filler, warts and all, is a no-brainer.

Sorry Papa. I already own my dream car, and I want to run it till I have a family of my own.

Waging war with the nouveau riche

For a few months now I've been frustrated with the way the PJACU forums have turned into.

The place has turned into some sort of ridiculous place of worship, where the main virtue is how quickly and how lavishly this husband-and-wife team can blow their money on their cars and their other toys. Every month they have either big-ticket mods or shiny new cameras - which is a little too frequent, to be honest - and with every new acquisition, they go on a massive show-and-tell rampage to wow everybody else. Just when I wondered where these people get their money to finance their various "hobbies," I was aghast at learning of their willingness to go into debt just so they could show off. They have a kid, for crying out loud! Even worse, every post they make just seems to allude to their next purchase.

Recently things came to a head when the husband bragged about his plans of getting a brand-new Nissan 370Z come June...some sort of birthday present. The same guy bragged about the cars he and his family members had owned over the hears.

I had had enough. I got flustered and frustrated about how things had gone so far away from the club that I originally joined. PJACU was about showing off the cars and their modifications, sure, but it's also about trying to help fellow Jazz and City owners with much more important things such as maintenance, repairs and do-it-yourself tips. Seeing PJACU turn into this brag-to-the-heavens pissing contest is a major disappointment and it frankly just put me off.

I tried contacting my friends and some of the moderators about it and while some of them were willing to hear me out, ultimately these efforts were as useful as busting a padlock with newspaper. While I remained active, I was no longer enjoying my time there.

Perhaps it's about time I moved on. As much as I want to chew these two idiots out for their deplorable habits with money, and consequently the stinking bad example they're setting for fellow PJACU members, how they spend their money and get themselves deeper into debt is admittedly none of my business.

My goodness, their loss of taste and sensibility is irritating though. Ugh. I vow never to turn into them.

Final days with Barclays

I haven't been blogging as frequently as I should. A lot of developments have happened over the past couple weeks.

The biggest and most important one is this: After three years, I am now parting with the friends I've made at the Accenture Barclays Unit. Due to the recession, there just hasn't been much work for the Internet Channels team and so the decision was made to split the team in half. The bigger half will no longer be working with Barclays but for other clients.

Well, I guess it was just a matter of time. I suppose this was also for the best too. It is not good for me and my fellow leavers to stagnate in the specialized knowledge we have. Moving to other clients will ultimately work out better for us and broaden our horizons. We don't know where we're going to yet but two possibilities have surfaced: either we stay in the Cybergate area or move to Union Bank Plaza (UBP) in Ortigas.

My seatmate Joebelle and I were wondering how this development would affect us. If we move to UBP, our problems would include parking space and looking for a gym. There's no gym inside UBP. We might have to bite the bullet and plunk down cash to work out at Gold's Gym in Robinsons Galleria or Fitness First in SM Megamall, both of which are quite a distance from UBP.

Trivalities aside...this is my final week with Barclays. My last day with them is on June 3. I'm still waiting for that email containing the details of my next gig, along with the other leavers. Just a minor shame that my good friends PJ, Paolo Cruz and Joel were part of the lucky (?) ones that will be staying with Barclays.

We'll see.

Of grunt work, singing and a kid on a mega-tantrum

Mother's Day 2009 was a pretty busy one.

Firstly, we sang at four different masses today, singing the a capella "We are an Offering" and an accompanied "Inay" for all the mothers in the parish. When you're up and singing from 7am to 6:30pm, that's a pretty big ask.

Second, I finally got to install the Recaro SRD seats I bought three months ago. This project couldn't be completed because the Bride RO-type seat rails I ordered took their sweet time getting here, only arriving two days ago. Removing the stock seats was an easy task, but fitting the SRDs to the car and mating them to the Bride seat rails, and transferring the seat belt buckles to them was a much larger and more demanding task than I thought. Quite a bit of grunt work was involved as well, moving the parts around with muscle power. Unfortunately exhaustion and general clumsiness set in and led to a few scratches on Aibo's interior and my bedroom floor.

Last but not least was the ultimate irony to this Mother's Day. While I was removing the stock driver's seat from inside Aibo, Bianx, Mama and I all heard frenzied shrieking that sounded as if someone had finally snapped. It might as well have been because across the street from our house, at the church parking lot, was a little kid no older than 10 years old, the source of the huge racket that lasted almost 20 minutes. He was throwing a massive tantrum toward his mom, who was seated inside the family car. He shrieked, called his mom names, and was punching and kicking the little Toyota - even a car owned by another family wasn't spared the beating.

Equally shocking was that no one, most of all his parents, seemed to be stopping this out-of-control brat!

Warm pools, warmer welcome

Mav invited me to tag along with her friends on the little weekend summer outing they planned in Los Banos. We went to a place called Splash Mountain, which sported four slides, a "lazy river," and the warmest swimming pools I've ever dipped into.

Excepting the ridiculous Calamba traffic, the suicidal lunatics on SLEX everyone else calls drivers, and a lost shirt, it was a wonderful weekend that unfortunately ended a little too quickly. I taught Mav how to float and swim, and she cooked a huge batch of adobo for all of us. It was nice that I could finally relax with Mav's friends and just enjoy myself. A big hearty thank-you to Jem, Mai, Joyce, Jogs and Ara for making me feel very welcome.

I love you baby Mabie!