ApaTAOism

Cutie New York rich kid of E!'s The Daily 10, Ben Lyons has mentioned a lull in the series of comedic meteorites from Judd Apatow  with star factory-releases like Walk Hard, The Dewey Cox Story (snigger) and Drillbit Taylor. I beg to differ. This is Hollywood Natural Selection 101. With all due respect to Messrs. Apatow,  John C. Reilly, Owen Wilson, and Seth Rogen these flicks are merely necessary evils to appease the Sumner Redstones/Weinsteins clones of this Wal-world so they can go on doing the likes of Hard Eight, Darjeeling Limited, Superbad and/or this summer's Pineapple Express which thankfully brings bourgeoning leading man, James Franco back to to his Freak and Geeks origins as if f**in Tristan & Isolde never f**in happened.

 Anyway, all is well again in Apatopia with Forgetting Sarah Marshall wherein Apatow falls back on his own blue-ribbon recipe for box-office classicism of all-story and-no-big-stars. He utilizes his Freaks cohorts, writer Nicholas Stoller to direct and actor Jason Segel who starred in, wrote and conceived the tale complete with YouTube and Blogger back stories. In the vein of Isabel-Evans-versus-Izzie-Stevens Katherine Heigl, the film is serviced by TV pin-ups Mila Kunis (That 70's Show & Family Guy) and Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars & Heroes) who are both a fair balance of Maxim popularity and geek cult-dom. In this world, the heroes are averagely cute, adorably funny in their typically clueless manhood. The heroines on the other hand are typical creations from the mind of such men in real life-- impossibly gorgeous and fit both in actuality and in the Wii; a dude's girl he can both hang and have sex with. The shrill, cliched bridezillas most of this men are likely to end up within real life are satirized into the background or as villainess. Thus, this makes the stories and the characters so involving for there is enough fantasy and happily-ever-afters copulating with the not so pretty reality.

Segel, who played the strangely appealing pink-eyed stoner uttering the immortal, "Dude, keep your baby away from him! He wants to rear your child," in Knocked Up, like Rogen, is the quintessential Apatow lead every man--a smart, schlubby, horny teddy bear with a heart of gold. Russell Brand, playing Sarah Marshall's pretentious but harmless lothario rocker boyfriend with a vacuous cool, delivers the loud guffaws with only a look and a shrug best caught in the sex war scene and the rejection of the fanatic advances of Jonah Hill, another Apatow staple. Bell draws nuance & sympathy from the cookie cutter Life & Style title character to her credit. Kunis, once the raving brat Jackie Berkhart, is irresistibly winning as the rebound girl and a surprising movie screen face. Both she and Bell in their little beach outfits make me want to swear off carbs, a normal life and sanity altogether. 

Perhaps it may be a little early to see how beings and things unfold and are explored in the growingly Lucas-like universe of Judd Apatow. We've seen some of his Phantom Menace but not necessarily its Jar-jar Binks' or worse, Howard the Duck. There are no conventions in his honor or for his movies so far, but we watch in bated bong breath for his next observations on life, sexuality and the American Way.

P.S. Seriously considering abandoning my ambitions and just move to Hawaii and just surf on my days off instead of brining my life in ennui, Perez Hiltons and ANTM marathons. Shit.

pro bono, edge, adam, and sigh, larry...

...also my family and then some other creatures

Click on title to link to movie site.

This was worth braving through the salty, biting winds of the Inner Harbor, the labyrinthian rush hour of Pratt St. looking for the only IMAX theatre within 10 miles of my zip code not to mention $18 for parking and a lost ticket for space on the other side of the Harbor. 

Somehow Friday seemed to be the day that the well-to-do East Coast urbanites of nearby Federal Hill would come out of their Ethan Allen-ed lairs and their JC Penney ad-styled world. They seemed to be everywhere that I would have checked myself if I was still in Baltimore had it not been for the homeless guy who asked for change and the crab cake platter I ate over fries and hush puppies while waiting for the 7:30 pm show.

 At an Urban Outfitters (love their stuff btw but), with the mean girls and the catholic school-garbed gossip girls and the artsy hipsters loitering as clientele, I could not help but think of this hilarious other blog I stumbled upon. Side note: I'm into about 85% of the entries and by default, fall into entry #11 (which kinda makes me glad for my choice of a Hestia-esque existence, btw), so does that make me white or just pretentious?

As my fellow audience members started to mill into the Science Center theater, I could not help thinking I'd intruded into some neighborhood party and exclaiming, "Shit I'm the only black person in the room!" I picked a center seat third row from the front--nausea central--but could not care less for I intended to be un-bothered by the more ideally-seated mob behind me and other than the old couple five to six seats down, I was the closest to U2's virtual genitals like I had wanted to.

Anyways, on with the show. Any bitch-fest I had hatched up prior to it became null as the lights dimmed and the IMAX place became a rock arena and fittingly enough the familiar opening count of Vertigo sucked us all into U2-pia. 

Uno! 

Dos!

Tres!

KATORSE!

Anthem after another, the rock arena became a religious experience as Adam Clayton (the group's resident true rock star) handed me his bass; Edge (the token prodigy/deity) let me strum his guitars and; I fly over the stage close enough to kiss Larry Mullen's nape. The audience were clearly intended to feel more than a sense of being there but to be like spirits floating around basking it all. Bono sang One and stretched out his arm and our palms met. He angles his a certain way and I found my pedestrian hands ensconced in the virtual palmar that touched those of the late Pope and lead one of the world's greatest rock bands. The other star was rather very heard than seen. The sound engulfed and washed one into the core of the event. Screw DVDs and HD TVs. This film could only be truly experienced in an IMAX. 

Behind me, the Fed Hillites sang-along, woo-whooed and shouted Free Bird. Grams and Pop-pop five seats down were not immune and Grams did not hide her appreciation every time we panned close to Bono's designer jeans. Speaking of which I should be happy about the crotch shots but up close to one of the sexiest men alive I could not help but think that the way he wore his $5,000 denim kinda reminded me of how my Tatay would wear his pants. NOT GOOD. Good for my dad cause he's analogous to Bono but for me, nooo! Not good at all. Aargh! It shouldn't be. Aaack! You are #1 in my list of sex symbols I'd like to hear singing in my shower. Why, Bono? Baah-keht?

The song below is a favorite from their How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb album and has driven me to tears early into U23D. I once have "theme-songed" this to the wrong couple of people in the past tarnishing one great song every time it plays in my i-Pod. Stupid me when I needn't have looked farther than my own blood to dedicate this to. If there's one thing these Irish lads have taught me is that family is the greatest rock band in the universe.

Nay, Tay, and all the rest of my lovies click on play  below or click here for the lyrics. Thanks for all the unequivocally loving and supportive e-mails. Love and miss you.

The ReBUTTal

Should have posted this days ago but I have to go to work. Wishing I am doing the dirty with both Will Hunting and Jason Bourne at the same time (go figure) may be a lovely thought but that don't pay the bills.

cameron crowe knows my life

I first saw this movie in the early 90's when I was just a fledgling La Sallian college kid. This was like heaven opening and giving me a glimpse of how life should be. It was all to happen in Seattle.

Now I have the bourgeoning album collection, the Doc Martens, the black leggings and the cute hat, the java haunts and money to spare for an Alice in Chains show but alas, this wannabe-Janet Livermore is sixteen years too late, on the opposite coast and past the 25-year mark. Despite it all, the yearning to do something bizarre is still thumping in my chest cavity like a badmotorfinger.

Somewhere, somehow that apartment, that life, and most of all that soundtrack exists- a Gen-Xanadu where one sips coffee with Ament, Gossard and Vedder while reading the paper and they hang out in your couch watching NatGeo and Chris Cornell in all his long-maned glory is a next-door neighbor just passing through. It's gotta be out there somewhere.

I SO WISH...I SO DEFINITELY WOULD...

I am irrevocably besotted with Conan but Kimmel seems like an upstanding kind of guy. This goes to show all my lusting for 2007 People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive is not the least bit misguided and so worth the campaign from Pitt and Clooney. Sarah Silverman is one of the most insanely, deliriously, oh-no-you-didn't funniest persons on earth and one cool Jew BUT bitch totally stole my song!

28

What is it about death? What is it about dying young? Beauty, brilliance, and promise cut short, gone way too soon? Why does the loss throw us into a confounding sadness and endless questions? Banal, existential to the just plain tabloid. The whys and the what ifs.

He was blond and built yet defied cliched stardom routes. His portrayal of the cinematic square-jawed, mono-drawling Western hero embodied every celebrated big-screen tradition then threw it out the window unto the faces of Rev. Phelps and his ilk and our own closeted biases in HD-colored heartbreak. The fact that he was chosen to play the Joker, a role immortalized in stone by Nicholson speaks volumes on his gifts. Many people were enamored by him as the golden boy in 10 Things or A Knight's Tale but I chose to remember him on the silver screen as the tragic Southern boy, the loving and unloved son in Monster's Ball. Or far better as just him as the head of one beautiful young family running errands on the streets of New York caught for posterity by nosey paparazzi lenses.

For most of us he might be the last person we expected to be in the six o'clock news rolled out in a gurney, wrapped in a body bag so early into a new year, a blooming career, parenthood. Just early on in general.

Heath Ledger, actor, leading man, lover, artist, son and father is dead. To paraphrase a quote about another loss of another golden Wunderkind (this time from music), we have barely begun to grasp how much he shall be missed.

one early blustery new york morning

Towards the corner of 41st and 5th, a few paces from the New York Public Library and a block away from fashionable Bryant Park, in a huff of feminine emergency to look for the nearest drug store, I literally stumble on this metal and concrete revelation. And this is just one of the thousand reasons I am helplessly, irrevocably in-love with New York. 

Click on the title or image to get the big picture.

from my table at the reading room

from my table
Originally uploaded by cjbando

The hotel is littered by white folk with the air of entitlement of the upper middle class.

The elegant middle-eastern concierge and the chic, skinny black girl at the desk do not seem to question my being there. But a lone girl checking into a Midtown NY literate-hipster hotel for a night can pique curiosity anywhere one goes be it Cauayan or Manhattan.

Concierge guy goes on to instruct me in all his cosmopolitan metrosexual conciergerie discretion about the rules of the hotel: no smoking... something about me AND my guest... Ooh-la-lah! How very clandestine. He proceeds to ask me wether I am there to shop and I say just to get away. That's not a bad reason at all he says.

I glanced to my left. Two tables away I see Elijah Wood in all-black and a faux hawk sipping espresso like the rest of us civilians. For a minute I thought he has fallen off one of the Tolkiens like an errant bookmark. Trust the fates who take delight in my constant punked state to set my token celebrity sighting in an NYC hotel called the Library Hotel to be Frodo Baggins.

The well-dressed white folks do not appear to wonder about my presence among them or are just good in hiding it like they always do. Perhaps it's due to the buggy eyes of my '07 fall-winter Miss Marc hobo or the DKNY bubble of polar bear and squirrel-- a welcome reject I have snagged from some red-neck outlet store but sshh, don't tell. Sometimes one need not dress to kill, just armed and camouflaged for survival. Natural selection.

A cute staffer of gay-boyfriend material approaches to inform me that my room is finally ready. I stuff my iBook into my backpack, grabbed my annoyingly necessary winter garb. Genetics is destiny and ones claim to the midoclorians, I thought as I flash him my Melki smile.

Season's Greetings To Fellow E-heads Everywhere

This was meant to be posted as a comment to my friend, Jean's profile but friendster does not seem to allow embedding from YouTube in their comments boxes anymore. WTF.

Anyways, this band deserves more than and, encompasses any kind of box. They are the best thing that has rocked the swill-fest that is Philippine entertainment. Always the lovable losers with their profound poetry and sublime sound, they have proven that substance and masa market value need not be bleached, Belo-ed and brain-fed by the likes of Fermin and Nay Lolit. Quintessentially Pinoy wether it be with their tanzan collection or their childhood-ingrained allegiance to Star Margarine, their work in music, video and even print proved that to be bakya need not be a total belief in the witticism of Boy Abunda, by incorporating pop culture, philosophy, satire and absurd kanto-boy humor.

They shattered expectations and made one proud to be Pinoy, but were always the odd ones in the Flip showbiz freakshow, which made them even more loved because they were one of us. Not better or larger than life, like an FPJ or Ate Guy. No Cinderella sob stories. No Richard Gomez working at McDo getting discovered. Just four dudes from UP with a penchance for Voltes V, rock music and a point of view.

For a very short span of years (way too short) in the 90's, Pinoys have been given credit for having working brains with countless anthems like Ligaya, Pare Ko, Magasin, Ang Huling El Bimbo, Fruitcake, Wag Mo Nang Itanong, and the massive, With a Smile. A personal favorite is Shake Yer Head. They may have gone their separate ways through the years, but their words and music still remains significant for every long-suffering Pinoy scattered among the continents and perhaps, for non-Flips who've been sucked into our tight circles.

They are in memories of LVN and Sampaguita movies in the afternoons of our childhood. They are in every heartbreakers and campus crush ng bayans we busted our asses making their thesis for. In every rainy afternoon coddled with the one you love be it your honey, your boo-boo or your nephew. In every road trip and food trip you make running away from your problems. In every drunken sessions with the Magic Sing. In every prayer meeting with San Miguel while bonding with friends over isaw. In every balikbayan box opened with glee or with an "Ayoko nito!" They still sound so damn good and that is a sign of f---in' greatness, man!

one big reason why john lennon is a genius and a prophet and why we've barely scratched the surface of his divine brilliance

December is the month of John Lennon's death anniversary. Decades after this song came out, the words & music of this great man has never been more painfully true.

"A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,

We hope it's a good one..."

Thank you Sir John. So much.

september ends II

THANK YOU, FLEA
Originally uploaded by cjbando

Last September of 2006, I had the two most surreal extremes in one week. On September 23 I got to witness the Chili Peppers and the Who in the first ever US Virgin Fest. On the 24th, I flew to Toronto to watch, along with my sister, my most beloved band in concert on the 25th. The day after, one of the happiest nights of my life became one of the saddest. On September 26 I found out my dear friend, Puppy had passed away in most tragic circumstances.

Finally after a year of respect for the memory of a friend, I have finally had the gall and the time to post that one hot minute of sheer happiness before I come tumbling down into a bawling, mourning heap. This post is a loving tribute to love, to a band I love so much it hurts and to a friend I love like family.

Once upon a time in this girl's life, in a Dragon Mansion in the Spottiswoodes of the Lion City, a Puppy named Maribel sees me off, along with our friend Christine, to my first rock show at the Hard Rock with the best advice for a rock fan ever: bring a handkerchief for an Eraserhead to wipe his sweat with. The hankie is still tucked away in my journal at my childhood bedroom, still permeating with Ely Buendia's cologne. Thank you and I love you, Pup. It still hurts.

reflections on a backwater pearl part 2: Penny Lane likes my country

So there she was, in the midst of Manila's signature smog, looking over the taxi queues and the gladiatorial jeepneys, and the endless throng of people moving through dust, smoke and the garbage punctuating the streets- a smiling, laid-back ideal, all comfy and cozy. Behind her a thunderstorm condenses into a certainty of turning everything below her into muck in a good half hour.

My sister told me Natalie Portman endorsed Ba-yo last year. Either Padme Amidala had gone slumming or was being charitable. 

The clothes are really cute though.

reflections on a backwater pearl part 1, the rants

They may seem rearranged
In the backwater swirling, there is
Something that'll never change.

-Meat Puppets, Backwater, from the album Backwater, 1993.

Upon arrival at the NAIA, I realize, I have boarded a plane (my third in a series of connecting flights) in Nagoya to my final destination, Manila, and stepped out of a time machine.

There are about ten open cubicles at the fully packed Customs. Two are asssigned solely for OFWs and balikbayans. All the rest, including the closed ones are for the Anglos, the Euros, the snotty, noisy fellow Asians and a Midwestern family of Children of the Corn whom I shared a plane with since Detroit. The Flips outnumber the foreigners 5:1.

The average Flip man has no trepidation to openly stare and leer at any exposed female flesh even in the year 2007. The lighter the skin, the more lecherous the overtures.


It is some form of social buttress to rub in the have and have-nots. A freebie Lacoste tote and a hack-job Louis can supersede but easily cower in the face of true substance and character in most concourses.


To quote the great Jessica Zafra, "It is easy to be mistaken for an intellectual in this country." Peppering one's sentences with English words or phrases and random TV trivia is like accesorizing an outfit or brandishing a cell phone.


The horizons of Metro Manila are riddled with billboards of fair-skinned and celebs endorsing skin-whitening products and cosmetic surgery centers, conveying to the ordinary, hardworking joe who aspire for their lives: If you are brown and your features are less than aquiline, you are not good enough.


Beneath these 50-foot images of misled perfection are shanty towns, perpetually constructed roads, decaying structures, the hustling and the hustled jousting for space on streets & in malls and then, there is the world's worst traffic.

In the face of dust and heat and an unfortunate lack of A/C during one's commute, thoughts form that Manila is a hellhole where hellholes come to die.

"Senator, love your suit!!" (written October 28, 2007 BWI pre-departure area)

"Haul his ass back to Baltimore!"-US Senator pertaining to Hannibal Lecter.
I'm loosely quoting from one of my favorite films EVER, Silence of the Lambs, which I managed to catch on the eve of of my departure from Charm City, Murrryland, Home of the Brave. Nothing except for the V-fest could make me prouder for ending up in this tiny historic state. The very words came back and bit me (pun intended) when I was informed my flight yesterday was unceremoniously rescheduled without any due notice from my travel agent. My bony ass was hence hauled back to Baltimore County and I have managed to catch the last few scenes of the Lambs repeat. Yes, that part where Starling found herself in Jamie Gumm's lair. Jodie Foster was just utter perfection in this, combining intelligence prevailing through white trashiness.

The rest of the day, I just drowned my sorrows with the Top Model Marathon and the very hilarious America's Most Smartest Model in either VH1 or MTV (couldn't tell the diff). My trip may had been derailed for a day but my IQ did get a vacation.

Now I'm here in BWI waiting for my flight to Detroit then Nagoya then Manila. After a very short few weeks, I'll be hauling my ass back to share the same air with Hannibal Lecter and Edgar Allan Poe (he's a couple of blocks from where I work. Really). Life is alright as long as you know how to grab it by the face and match it with the right bottle of wine.

Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town

Aah, this song, this song. What earthly word of utter love can you use to describe this masterwork by Eddie Vedder? Jesus Himself must have come down and grabbed this man's arm on the night he scribbled this miracle of a song. By God if this ever gets more beautiful one can explode and create a small planet from one's dust. You may not remember exactly when and where you first heard this song, but you know it's always been there. In the warm fuzzies of your soul along with your first Christmas..lullabies in the safe nest of your mom's arms... your grandma's smile...

Been in a download frenzy lately for music from the 90's. Must be the influence of the Pumpkins at the Pimlico... or my usual angst having been propelled time & again into the reality that my choices are rather unusual by suburbia's standards wether pinoy or otherwise..or it may be just another homecoming anxiety. Shite! I'm so excited yet so dread to go home. HOME. Only to say good-bye all over again.

Hope to sing this to Jeremy and Jethro as I rock them to sleep...

i seem to recognize your face
haunting, familiar, yet i can't seem to place it
cannot find the candle of thought to light your name
lifetimes are catching up with me
all these changes taking place, i wish i'd seen the place
but no one's ever taken me
hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away...
hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away...
i swear i recognize your breath
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising
me, you wouldn't recall, for i'm not my former
it's hard when, you're stuck upon the shelf
i changed by not changing at all, small town predicts my fate
perhaps that's what no one wants to see
i just want to scream...hello...
my god its been so long, never dreamed you'd return
but now here you are, and here i am
hearts and thoughts they fade...away...
hearts and thoughts they fade...away...
hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away...
hearts and thoughts they fade away.

-"Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A SmallTown",
Pearl Jam, Vs.,1991

LET'S PLAY A GAME

Not a Nickelback fan but this video is just too adorable to pass up on. Maybe it's the afterglow of another Virgin summer. Or maybe it's my horoscope. Aw hell, I just love rock 'n roll period.

Anyway, on to the game. How many celebrity cameos can you name in this music video? How many friends, neighbours, and relatives in it can you claim to know? How many cities/places can you recognize here? Participate. participate, participate. Turn up your noses some other time.

I'll give you a free pass. That Nelly Furtado is showing some support for her fellow Canucks, eh? Now I leave the others to you. Enjoy the shallows. The water's fine.

SAVE A HORSE, RIDE A VIRGIN (Year 2): Post-its From Two Days of Crab Cakes, Southern Comfort, and Rock Fests

Amidst the 100-degree heat, losing the Anne twins to the half-naked sunburnt throng in between acts, Wu-Tang and Velvet Revolver; the dust clouds of All-American red dirt; my trampled trusty Ikea mat that has managed to remain pristine after last year's fest; stark tanlines left by my torqouise hommage bra to Amy Winehouse; the Southern Hurricanes rendered watery by the heat and popularity; being shaded by a Walmart-bought Rolling Stones towel; snuggled, comfy, and in raptures wrapped in a recyclable garbage bag watching Pumpkins; picking empty bottles of water to earn the protection of that garbage bag from a summer storm; coming close to a public orgasm at the sight of Sting mouthing Don't Stand So Close To Me; hearing an incredulous "Mmm-hmmm," from a Pimlico gate mama jaded by years of Preaknesses, when I pointed out that the dainty tin of lavender-chamomile tea inside my backpack is INDEED lavender-chamomile tea (she let me through anyway); warding off advances from Hollister-clad jailbaits (just a couple) and; catching the eye of a rebel billionaire causing a huffed moment of panic and mental blabberings about fears of being a querida, nunhood and breaking my father's heart, I've said this before and I say this again and to infinitude (pause for breath): VIRGIN FESTIVAL 2007 WAS A MOTHERFRIGGIN' BLAST!!!!!!! The proof is in the crab cakes.

Click here for more, more, more, more, more, more, and more.

To the twins Lou-lou and Row-row thank you for sharing this year's bacchanalia with me. What a summer! Mini-me, shove your Incubus pics up your ex's arse. Lou, thank-you barely encompasses my gratitude for your selfless persuasive talents over pimp-daddy, Beckham-wannabe trash-collector guy. Here's to looking forward to next year.

I'm saving my grungy Ikea mat and the garbage bag for next year.

of homecomings, random anxiety & mad men

Just my luck to happen into an AMC marathon for Mad Men. It has had a slew of good reviews for its spot-on depiction of the corporate world in the early 60s on the cusp of the Beatles, the sexual revolution, women's lib, and the surgeon general. Back then, Dylan was just another beatnik unknown from Minneapolis yet to sing his way to the Gaslight. America was still replete of poodle skirts, segregation, picket fences and girdles. It was an era where career women are secretaries and called dollfaces to impunity. The men stared at you until they have their fill as if sexual harassment never existed because it didn't. When the new girl Peggy revealed insight reputedly uncharacteristic of her gender, it's likened to witnessing "a dog playing the piano".

The blogs have been buzzing about it but I don't find it it that shocking at all although I like it. Maybe it's just me or I just find the supposedly period & surreal scenes all too eeriely familiar. That life, glimpses of it, is just a 20+-hour plane ride away or in the next pinoy party...

Shudder.

2Pac reconnection

Once again in an insomniac state and glued to VH1, I come across the Rock Doc, Tupac Resurrection.

Back in the day, I had gotten wind of Tupac Shakur through a TV feature on Poetic Justice, some US Billboard video show or, a some sneak peek show on movies showing in the States that would likely end up in either limited distribution in my shores or, straight to pirated VHS or Betamax after losing out to Sharon Cuneta commerce. Some time later I found out through my aunt's padala of People Magazine, his performance was better-received by critics than Janet Jackson's debut, and I gathered that he was also a rapper and a post-Rodney King era icon.

Now, I do not claim to be well-versed with his discography. The only song of his that I am truly familiar with and, happens to be a favorite, is California Love which I first heard though Rick Dees Weekly Top 40. Very edgy.

The cool kids of La Salle talked about him on rotation along with all the other MTV idols of that era because they can afford cable TV. I could only get to watch cable then while waiting for my take-out of inasal chitlins (bul-o & tina-e) and 2-peso serving of rice at Nonoy's Barbecue outside the old Era Theater. I did sense he was a figure of reckoning, spinning out of control towards immortality, a fact that escaped most of the Giordano-clad whose hero-worship of him and of Vedder, Cobain et. al. were wielded like Benetton bags. Along with irony.

I learned he spent a good part of his childhood in Baltimore and was classmates with Jada Pinkett in a local performing arts school. He thought Madonna was a nice person and so was Tony Danza. Janet Jackson's people asked him to get an AIDS test before a big love scene. He liked Don Mclean. Like any self-respecting art-school geek, he read Shakespeare. The late Gene Siskel was a fan of his.

As I was choosing a picture for this blog, I could not help but choose the image above though, I was spoiled with choices of him shirtless, ripped, and in deep thought. I'd seen it before maybe from People (of course) and it stayed in my psyche. He just seemed so calm here yet his eyes look like he was about to explode and not to mention, so young.

The documentary, featured him as how both his adoring and detractors remember him. Young, charismatic, arrogant, volatile and fiercely beautiful. His ideals, his passion, his liasons, his rawest emotion, were not merely worn on his sleeve. It was tattooed, pierced and cocked like a loaded gun. Like every cursed and tragic spokesperson of a generation, he shall never grow old--an heirloom of youthful rebellion to be passed on to the next in line. Hard to imagine him beyond 25. No great comebacks. No tour de force at Madison Square. No Oscars. No T-Mobile endorsements. No collaborations with 50 or Kanye or JT. No Live-Aid reconciliations with the former Puff Daddy and and Biggie. Even turning 30 or 40. 

He shall and always will be Tupac.

For my friend Shivaun.

GO, GO, GO....PLEASE!!!

VERY worrying news of late about the incomparable Amy Winehouse.

Amy, you may not know me or any of the numerous nameless who are in awe of your gifts but are pulling for you to live through this hell. You were party to one of the most singularly felicitous hour of my life when you performed at the V-fest at the Pimlico as you have been to thousands of others that hot memorable summer day. There is no doubt to your brilliance and we are all praying for your spirit to get past your delicate heart’s failings.

Please hang around with your anonymous adoring longer not for our own happiness but for your own good. Take care of yourself, love. Help yourself.