Pounding The Keyboard

To alcohol, the cause of—and solution to—all of life’s problems.                                                                               -- Homer Simpson        Funny, but Leaving Las Vegas (the 1995 depressing movie that earned Nicolas Cage an Oscar) suddenly came into mind when I was about to open our refrigerator to pick up a beer. In that movie, Cage’s character was an alcoholic and a miserable writer who went to Las Vegas and drank himself to death.        And as if on cue, I also suddenly remembered all my friends and relatives who died from alcohol-related illnesses. I remembered watching them drink their liquors in a hurry as if they were in a race and the grand prize was a liver disease.        Maybe, I was subconsciously reminding myself the dangers of drinking alcohol—I had been drinking myself to sleep for the last few nights (one or two beers or a few shots of whiskey, just enough to help me lull myself to sleep; hot milk was really of no help

       Two Filipino (film and TV) directors recently passed away—both suffered a heart attack and now, a lot of their colleagues are saying that the culprit for their aggravated health conditions is “the horrible working hours and conditions in television.”        I worked briefly as a TV writer (for teleserye /soap operas) and I can attest to the fact that, indeed, you’ll be eating, drinking and breathing stress—mental and physical—in this job. 24-hour brain wracking meetings aren’t really unusual while the regular meetings which often start at noon usually last after midnight. Meetings are often held in a room teeming with caffeine, unhealthy snacks and second-hand smoke and discussions are often intense that without you knowing it, while you’re busy spewing out the reasons why it’s not good for your show’s main character ( a tough NBI agent) to die from rabies after being bitten by a puppy after surviving two plane crashes, five ambushes, three terrorist attacks and a n