Does he wear the red Speedo?
For a couple of months in ’95 or ’96, plain white letter envelopes sealed with a green foil X would arrive at the Today newspaper office for me. They contained not jueteng payoffs (Come to think of it, no one ever offered to bribe me, which shows how much influence I had) but handwritten letters about The X-Files. They were not signed, but as a columnist I was used to anonymous letters, and I was not creeped out by the torn X’s on the flap. I had already declared myself an X-phile, so I was happy to find that the truth was out there. The envelopes provided me with information that I used in my column, particularly the letter of complaint to RPN-9 about how scenes from the show were shortened or deleted to make room for commercials.
Eventually the author of the X-letters turned up at the radio station where I was doing a talk show. He dragged his brother along, and that’s how I met the Alamat Twins (they are not actually twins), Budjette and Brandie, who became unpaid fixtures on my Sunday show. Originally we called them the Nestle Twins, after the old milk ads featuring Richard and Raymond Gutierrez as very large children, but I settled on Alamat, which was the title of the comic books they produced.
The newspaper is gone, the radio show is gone, and Budjette and Brandie are now creative directors at ad agencies. The X-Files is on reruns on Channel 9 at 1am, interspersed with grammatically-dubious ads (Do you mean “I dream to win”, i.e. you dream in order to reach your goal, like a visualization exercise, or do you mean “I dream of winning” or “I dream of victory”?) and I’ve seen my favorite episodes featuring Tooms the liver-eating, limb-stretching mutant, and Peter Boyle as the insurance salesman who could predict when people would die (now there’s an actuarian). The second X-Files movie opens in Metro Manila soon. Never mind the critics, the Alamat Twins and I are watching it on opening day. Then we should do a podcast.
Here’s an appreciation of Scully in Salon: “Sure, Mulder was hot, and made you want to heal and help him and go with him to the Andes in search of the yeti or whatever it was he planning to do with his three-day weekend…But as the show matured, it was Scully–the cerebral head of the X-Files, torn between her Catholic faith, her scientific impulse to explain away the inexplicable and her affection for her partner–who was destined to become the (still cerebral) heart of the show.”
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
August 1st, 2008 at 13:49
i can’t wait to see the movie, too! i have been watching old x-files episodes on dvd for sometime now. eugene tooms is also one of my favorite monsters of the week, along with flukeman, virgil incanto, the devil who was summoned by this group of teachers, and the peacock family (the mother gave me nightmares when i was in college), among others. i have so many favorite episodes–the mentally-retarded girls who have the souls of angels, the gargoyle episode, the one where gary shandling and tea leoni played mulder and scully (episode was written and directed by david duchovny), the weatherman who actually influences the weather, at ang dami dami pa!
August 1st, 2008 at 15:24
I was like 12 years old when RPN was airing the show and I could not directly watch it without getting the creeps. I watched the first movie with my dad and really loved it. I will definitely watch the upcoming movie also. Long live Dana Scully and Fox Mulder.
August 1st, 2008 at 16:26
X-Files…
Hmmm…This show has made me look over my shoulder since…The black helicopters…the supposed waves that could peer to what you are thinking…
Now, I came to realize after years watching the show and its re-runs…we are already volunteering information that can and will be used against us in the plausible,dystopic future (provided that I live that long…)
How have we “volunteered” that information? The Internet!
How many of us store sensitive information…on “free” sites?…hmmm…
Remember the sinister Skynet of “Terminator” fame? Skynet gets smarter and smarter every second, every minute of the day…then it arrives at the conclusion that humans are dispensable AND all hell breaks loose (along comes the franchise with aging Guvnah Ahnold, “prequelish” tv series, and the upcoming Terminator with Christian Bale…)
Well, that’s through the looking glass, darkly fellow Netizens…;)
and indeed…The sky might definitely be falling on us. There might be no Them but it all depends on Us ;)
August 1st, 2008 at 20:46
The truth is out there. Deny everything. Conspiracy is policy. I want to believe.
I used to have 3 X-Files books, magazines with Mulder and Scully on the cover including the sensational Rolling Stones issue, X-Files trade cards, and a casette of Songs in the Key of X.
Everytime my children rip newspaper pages into tiny bits, Tooms comes to mind.
I’ve seen the first X-Files movie so this one is a must.
August 2nd, 2008 at 20:11
Wait for the scene after (or in the middle of?) the end credits. I’ve read there’s some surprise there. :)
August 4th, 2008 at 13:36
Finally got to see the movie. It just reminded me of how much I miss the TV show. I was so satisfied with what I viewed and remembered how my TV viewing life changed on that cold, rainy November night in 1993 when I watched my first X Files episode.
I found it strange seeing Billy Connolly in a non-comedic role.
Too bad I didn’t stick around after the credits. This may require a Youtube search.
August 11th, 2008 at 15:20
I, like most X-philes, lost interest when it became too conspiracy-centered. And stopped watching altogether when Mulder left. Californication is the best stuff David Duchovny’s done since then.