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Lately I’ve been listening to Stevie Wonder a lot. Original Musiquarium, Songs In The Key Of Life, “Do I Do”. I figured it was nostalgia—plug in memory of Stevie singing “Superstition” on Sesame Street—and a craving for the kind of soulful swingy music that was popular in my childhood. I was kind of glad that “I Just Called To Say I Love You” was judged a case of plagiarism (though I’m mystified as to how it could’ve happened) because I don’t want it in the Stevie discography. (Remember that bit in High Fidelity where a guy asks record store clerk Jack Black if they have that song, and Jack flies into a rage because they don’t carry that kind of crap, and the guy says it’s for his daughter and Jack says, “Oh, is she in a coma?”)

But the “phase” has lasted too long to be a mere phase. The other regulars on my current playlists are that horny little troll-genius Prince, and Led Zeppelin. I’m glad I was a kid in the age of Zeppelin, when guitarists coaxed strange sounds out of their instruments, drummers played like they were beating their drums to death, and vocalists peppered their songs with references to The Lord Of The Rings (which I hadn’t read yet). There’s something I wish I had done in grade school at St. Theresa’s. Sometimes, during homeroom period, there would be impromptu “programs” in which you were called upon to sing, dance, or recite a poem. I always opted for the poem, but I wish I had stood in front of the class (and this is easy to imagine because when I run into my grade school classmates they tell me I look exactly the same, airstrip forehead and all) and started singing, “There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold. . .” I probably wouldn’t have managed eight minutes (I still think “And there’s a wino down the road”), but it would’ve been something.

Until recently I had a personal policy against going retro: I would only buy new music, usually indie rock. This policy was rescinded when I finally admitted to myself that while I like a lot of these newer bands, I can do without them. They’re alright, but they’re just. . .alright. Hindi ako makikipagpatayan para sa kanila. I put this down to age, but I’ve wondered if there was some other reason.

Last year, the music critic Sasha Frere-Jones published a controversial piece called A Paler Shade Of White, in which he says indie rock lost its vitality when it stopped borrowing from black music. The piece is clearly calculated to provoke—in the age of political correctness anything that mentions race is sure to stir up trouble—but I found myself agreeing with many of his points. Especially when he says that today’s indie rock is, to put it more viscerally, kulang sa libog. Many indie acts do confuse lassitude and monotony for authenticity and significance.

One of the more interesting responses to the Frere-Jones piece came from Carl Wilson, who noted that “It’s not just race, it’s class.” Enjoy. Discuss. Meanwhile I’m going to annoy my cat Saffy with my rendition of “Immigrant Song”. It really ticks her off.

Three Pinoys are among the, um, winners of the 2007 Darwin Awards! Not only are they not around to claim the glory, but their identities remain unknown. The Darwin Awards are given to individuals who improve the gene pool by removing themselves from it.

“(21 June 2007, Philippines) Three entrepreneurs planned to profit from stolen scrap metal. They entered a former US military complex and approached the prize: an abandoned water tank. Bedazzled by the potential upside, the three threw logic to the wind, and began to cut the metal legs out from under the tank. Guess where it fell? Straight onto the thieves. Their flattened bodies have not yet been identified.”

Meanwhile, a radio prankster known as the “Filipino Monkey” (no one knows his real nationality, he could be more than one person) is being blamed for triggering the latest diplomatic row between the US and Iran. The “Filipino Monkey” has been pestering ships in the Persian Gulf for years. This time he almost caused American warships to fire on Iranian patrol boats.

 A 13-year-old girl hanged herself in Dardenne Prairie, Missouri after receiving insults from a boy she’d met on MySpace. It turns out that the boy did not exist but was an invention—a cyber-character created by the neighbors.

This is why I prefer my friendships to be analog: I have to know these people exist.
Friend Game in the New Yorker.

Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen in Maastricht, originally uploaded by 160507.

Other places to hole up in in case a virus wipes out the human population: The World’s Most Beautiful Bookstores, in the Guardian.

Carlo the Dessert Diva arrives bearing a large cake box done up in black ribbon with a big bow.

Jessica: Dapat ba talagang naka-black ribbon yan?

Carlo: Yes, that’s their order. Why?

Jessica: Isn’t that how the NPA delivers death threats? Packages tied in black ribbon?

Carlo: That’s exactly what my mother said!

Ricky: Ganyan ba ang death threat? Ang Pilipino talaga, kahit death threat, over-styled! Masyadong madrama!

Warning: Do not read this if you intend to watch I Am Legend. I put off watching I Am Legend because anyone could tell just by looking at the poster that something terrible would happen to the dog. I could bear to see Will Smith die onscreen, even if it’s impossible to dislike Will Smith or wish him ill, but I cannot watch an animal come to a tragic end. Omegaman, the earlier film adaptation of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, was constantly showing on TV when I was a kid, but I don’t recall if there was a dog there; all I remember is a scene in which Charlton Heston is chopping and frying onions. (My childhood memories are littered with Charlton Heston movies—Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, and during Lent, The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur; it was as if movies were legally compelled to cast Heston as the savior.)

But I read a good review of I Am Legend, and I figured that if there’s anyone who can carry a movie all by himself (besides Russell Crowe) it’s Big Willie. Besides, it was time for my first trip to the cinema in 2008. Never mind that I’ve yet to see a movie written by Akiva Goldsman that didn’t make me want to throw things at the screen.

I Am Legend is not exactly terrible, just flat—like a can of Coke that’s been opened and left on a table for hours. No fizz. Will could make it on sheer presence, but he works hard and is effective at conveying the loneliness and terror of a man who’s been alone way too long. But director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter Goldsman fail to give the material shape or rhythm; the fate of humanity is at stake, and we don’t feel a thing. The scenes of an empty New York City with deer running alongside cars abandoned on the streets and Times Square choked with weeds are impressive, but not nearly as eerie as the sight of empty London streets in 28 Days Later. When the monsters attack it’s not even scary. Then suddenly it’s over and you can hear the audience go, “Eh?”
And my worst fear was realized. Sabi ko na nga ba eh.

I decided that if I were the last person in New York, my cats and I would hole up at the Metropolitan Museum.

David Markson has a novel called Wittgenstein’s Mistress in which the narrator believes she is the last person on earth.

“In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street. Somebody is living in the Louvre, certain of the messages would say. Or in the National Gallery. Naturally they could only say that when I was in Paris or in London. Somebody is living in the Metropolitan Museum, being what they would say when I was still in New York. Nobody came, of course. Eventually I stopped leaving the messages.”

My favorite apocalyptic tale involving a boy and a dog is Harlan Ellison’s A Boy And His Dog. It was made into a movie with Don Johnson, which I’ve never seen, which I’m told is a good thing.

The ducktail, the Jewfro, the Colonel Sanders’s evil twin, and now the terrifying Fifth Beatle moptop on Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men—Joel and Ethan Coen have gone where few hairstylists dare to go. Visit the Gallery of Hairstyles in Coen Brothers movies.

The New York Times review of Jeffrey Jeturian’s Kubrador (The Bet Collector), which opens in Manhattan this week.

Down and Out and Running Numbers in The Rougher Precincts of Manila
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Much like man’s best friend, the rough-hewn Filipino movie “The Bet Collector” chases its protagonist from step to step, misery to misery, all but nipping at her heels. . . .

I still like the NYT review of Maximo Oliveros, which described it as “shot on commercial-grade digital video by someone playing the maracas.”

My last interview with singer-songwriter Ely Buendia was in 1994. I figured that two bands, one coronary, and a digital revolution later, it was time for an update

Jessica: The Julie Taymor movie Across The Universe features the songs of The Beatles. How would you feel about a movie musical featuring the songs of the Eraserheads?

Ely: They should call it Across the University Avenue.

Bald Hairdressers and The Afterlife of Porkchops, in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.

Things I might’ve known before I signed on to manage a rock band, that could’ve helped me stick around longer than four months, or at least feel less useless.

(1) If the band was already famous before you joined them, you’re parsley. You’re there to make it look like they have a manager and therefore cannot be messed with, but you’re not actually going to manage anybody.
(2) If you are a fan and consider it a privilege to breathe the same air as the band, you probably won’t be contradicting them much. Later, when they’re comfortable enough around you to fart in your presence, you will reassess your definition of “a privilege”.
(3) You work for the rockstars; you are not a rockstar.

A hotel room in San Francisco, California, April or May 1997. My roommates have gone off to visit relatives and I am alone and stationary for the first time in weeks. It’s two in the morning and I’m drifting into unconsciousness.

The phone rings.

I ignore it. I need my sleep. I just spent a few hours chasing half the band and two roadies up and down Haight-Asbury. They wanted to be photographed next to the street sign, like The Beatles during the Summer of Love. Then the guys scattered. We arranged to meet at the van in a couple of hours. This simply meant that in two hours I would look for them in every store on the street, prise them away from whatever was holding their attention— using force if necessary—and bodily drag them back to the van. Okay, I’m exaggerating— half the band was very well-behaved—but what’s the point of reminiscing about the experience if you can’t make it sound more dramatic than it really was? I don’t have any stories of cars being driven into swimming pools or TVs being thrown out of closed windows, so hyperbole is all I have.

Two hours later the guys piled into the van with minimal wrangling, which was weird. On the drive back to the hotel the vocalist stared enraptured at the billboards. “They’re breathing,” he whispered in awe. One roadie stretched out in the back seat and cried, “Help me, I need a guide, wala na akong maintindihan!” Apparently some old hippie at Haight had offered to open the doors of perception for the band, you know what I’m saying? The business manager and I had a discussion with the promoter, who wisely said he would lock the new friends of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds into their suite.

The blasted phone won’t stop ringing. I pick up. “This is the front desk. Are you with the band that’s staying in this hotel?”

“Yes, I’m their manager.”

“You better come down here,” the man said. “One of your band members is in the lobby, taking off his clothes and howling.”

I throw on a jacket and dash downstairs in my pajamas. True enough, the guitarist is walking round and round the fountain, keening like an old woman at a wake. How he got out of their locked suite, I have no idea. I call him. He runs away, shrieking. Through the glass doors I see a police car coming. I’m not sure if they’re coming for our half-naked guitarist or for someone else, but I take off after the topless howler. As the flashing lights of the police car draw closer and closer, half the band arrives from dinner with their relatives—rhythm section, good timing—and they chase the guitarist. They catch him and hustle him out through a side door and into the van where no one could hear him scream. Arrest averted.

For the record, I still love the band and listen to their albums. To rip off the ending of one of my favorite books: “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

Ricky goes to a music store to look for a CD.

Ricky: Do you have the album by Feist?
Salesperson: Yes sir, the Sfice Girls.

Here’s a serious topic: Who was your first crush? I thought mine was Parker Stevenson of The Hardy Boys, but that was in a giggly, “Let’s braid each other’s hair” way. The crush who actually triggered puberty was Warren Beatty, whom I saw on TV in Splendor In The Grass. I had already seen a couple of Woody Allen movies by then, and I said, “Oy.”

My gay friends’ first crushes were: Matthew Laborteaux in Little House On The Prairie, a seatmate in the second grade, Joe Hardy of The Hardy Boys—the fictional character but not Shaun Cassidy, Shaun Cassidy, the guy in James At 15, and Johnny and Scott of Sigmund and The Sea Monsters, except that we couldn’t remember which one was Johnny and which one was Scott. Then Carlo remembered that he had a crush on Gulliver in the cartoon series The Adventures Of Gulliver (only loosely based on Jonathan Swift’s opus), and it turns out we all had a crush on Gulliver. Making a cartoon character everybody’s first crush.

“Didn’t he have a love interest in that cartoon?” Ricky asked. “A tiny Lilliputian girl? What was her name?”

“Flirtatia,” I said. “You know, I worried about that relationship. I mean, how were they supposed to even kiss?”

“Me too!” everyone cried.

Later someone walked past the restaurant carrying a tiny dog and Noel asked, “What happens if a Doberman mates with a teacup chihuahua?” And everyone chorused: “Gulliver”.

Our first crush explains A Lot.

In Confessions of a Technophobe, Joe Queenan asks: Why are so many dramas and thrillers now set in the past? Is it because, in a world of mobile phones, satnav and Google, suspense is impossible?

Good point:  The sight of an actor sitting before a computer googling his enemy doesn’t really raise the tension. However I can think of at least four movies in which technology is thrilling: Infernal Affairs (covert texting), and the Bourne movies.