Pounding The Keyboard

I was hibernating under a huge rock in a mountain when I was jolted by the news that the king of pop, Michael Jackson, succumbed to cardiac arrest. The whole world is now mourning. I am really not a huge fan but everytime he'd be on TV, when he was still alive, I'd stop whatever I was doing and watch him. He, with his soft voice, shy demeanor and wild and crazy antics, was always amusing in his interviews. And he was mesmerizing whenever he performed. You can't help but be vastly entertained by him. He was a first class entertainer--methinks he was the best dancer in the world-- and a genuine music icon, not unlike Elvis Presley and John Lennon. His album, Thriller, continues to be the best-selling album of all time. And I still think that his moonwalk , alongside television and cell phone, is one of the greatest inventions of all time.

Damien Rice is a very good singer/songwriter. Why? Because almost all his songs will unfailingly depress you and push you to the brink of utter helplessness. Don’t listen to any of his songs while you’re drunk and heartbroken because it will break your heart more. You will be very lonely that the idea of you hanging from a ceiling with a rope tightly wound around your neck will start to look titillating. This song, Rootless Tree , is one of my favorite Damien Rice songs. You can sing it in a videoke bar and you can dedicate it to an ex-wife who left you for a lesbian, or to an ex-girlfriend who dumped you to marry a rich seventy eight year old man who’s starting to show signs of Alzheimer’s disease, to that girl who chose a married drug addict over you, to Hayden Kho for being in that videos instead of you, to the politicians who continue to screw the nation, to your neighbor who spreads rumors that you eat dog food with ketchup, to Globe and Smart for stealing your prepaid cell ph...

I was rearranging the books in my shelf when I stumbled upon this Lan Medina illustration sandwiched between two books ( 1,000 Street Foods You Must Eat Before You Die and How To Treat Women With Respect (While Secretly Videotaping Them) by former MD Hayden Kho). It turned out to be an ad for a komiks novel I was supposed to write for Super Fantasy Komiks. The main character, Kastigo, a mysteriously dark, ultra-violent but funny superhero, was a creation by Ronald Estacio (then editor of Super Fantasy) but the villains, we discussed and brainstomed. Lan Medina was picked to illustrate it. Mr. Estacio had grand plans for Kastigo, it would have its own komiks entitled Kastigo (it would be 30+ pages long) and a small website would be devoted to it. I’ve already started writing the script when an uprising erupted inside the publishing house. Incidentally, the owners of the company were of Spanish-descent while the writers and the illustrators were true-blooded katipuneros, er, Pino...