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Dark Phoenix, Php1299; X-Men Forever 2, Php885; Wolverine, Php885 at various National Bookstores

After we read the interview with Chris Claremont about The Wolverine, which is based on his work, we realized that the only Chris Claremont comic book we own is the compilation of The Dark Phoenix Saga. So we went on a quest for comics by Chris Claremont. The quest turned up three titles at three National Bookstore branches: Dark Phoenix (which we already had) at Power Plant Mall, Wolverine (with Frank Miller) at Shangri-La Mall, and X-Men Forever 2 at Glorietta 2. We’ve read them all and we want more. If you spot titles by Chris Claremont, please alert us. Also, whatever happened to Dazzler? Did she ever relent and join the team?

The books we read, the albums we listened to.

Around November we’re releasing a new collection of short stories. Yeah, it took us long enough. We’re also reissuing our first collection, Manananggal Terrorizes Manila, which is now out of print, as an e-book. The stories in the first book were on floppy disks: even if they survived, how would we read them? So we’re scanning the hard copies and proofreading the OCR files—basically rereading stuff we wrote 200 years ago.

It’s a weird feeling, rereading yourself. Sometimes you think, “I wrote this crap? Whoever allowed this to get published should be shot!” Sometimes you think, “Holy crap I was good, where did it go?” You feel like patting yourself on the back and kicking yourself in the head, often at the same time. (Try doing that at home.) And you have to stop yourself from rewriting everything.

While proofreading Portents, which we have posted on the Story page, it occurred to us that we refer to music quite often in our fiction. The hideous love story contains an entire Police song. The bad science-fiction has The Brandenburg Concertos, and the one about the jazz band has Monk and Miles Davis. The title “Kind of Brown” is from Miles’s “Kind of Blue”. And Cosmic Thing by The B-52’s turns up in Portents. In an earthquake!

Before we knew it, we were rooting in a dusty box of ancient cassettes for the music we were listening to while writing Portents:

A lot of Joe Jackson, particularly the stuff from his Look Sharp! album. (And It’s Different For Girls.)

Prefab Sprout, an English band which should have a much larger reputation. They’re probably best known for When Love Breaks Down and Cars and Girls. Our favorite, which we’ve been listening to non-stop since Sunday (Help!) is an odd, lovely song called Wild Horses. The adjective “unfloored”, the line spoken by Jenny Agutter from Logan’s Run, the startling falsetto. It came out the same year as our first book. Which means nothing, we just like to say it.

We’ve been a fan of Rickie Lee Jones since high school, and Pirates is an album we know backwards. Some years ago we were at the Sundance film festival when we got word that Rickie would be playing a set. Small venue, limited seats, first come, first served. We absolutely had to see her, so we dragged Raymond out and lined up in the snow for an hour. Just as our faces were about to freeze off, the doors opened. It was a short set, six songs, most of them from a new movie we hadn’t seen, but it was worth the risk of frostbite. And she sang Satellites, which caused people to burst into tears.

The early movies of Cameron Crowe introduced us to a lot of musicians we love. Singles was our introduction to grunge, Mother Love Bone, Soundgarden. Say Anything led us to The Replacements.

If you read our stories while listening to these songs, they will seem better than they are. In fact you can dispense with the stories altogether and just listen to these.

Matt Czap’s animation of Badger’s Star Trek pie-eating contest story in Breaking Bad, versus

The Lardass Barf-o-rama story from Stand By Me.

via Open Culture

Having started with the Dutch Vermeer, continue with the art of the Low Countries.

We were having merienda in Rockwell, enjoying the afternoon gloom and discussing an idea for a movie. Ricky noted that the lead would have to be an actor of a specific age group and socio-economic class. Having seen Sana Dati, we know whom we would cast in all the “disente at seryosong tao” roles, so we said, “T.J. Trinidad”.

We really should pay more attention to our conjuring powers because foom! who should appear in an FC Barcelona cap and jacket, walking towards Healthy Options, but the abovementioned.

“Is that T.J. Trinidad?” we asked.

“It is!” Ricky confirmed.

“Let’s talk to him!”

“Oh no,” Ricky said. “You accost him, and I’ll watch from a distance.”

Between potential embarrassment (He tells us to go away) and potential regret (We do nothing and he goes away), we pick embarrassment. No matter how cringe-making it is, it’s still a story you can laugh about with your friends. Tales of regret tend to be corny or depressing. “Live dangerously!” we said. “We’re going inside a health food store!!”

So we went up to T.J. Trinidad as he was buying organically-grown groceries, and from a personal space-respecting distance of 1.5 meters, said we loved his character in the movie. Luckily he was familiar with our work, which always alleviates awkwardness. When Ricky saw that T.J. was not yelling for security, he joined us.

We congratulated T.J. on his Best Supporting Actor award, which he wasn’t around to collect. He said he was absent because they couldn’t find a yaya for their one-year-old kid. We talked about how he worked with the director to create a back story for his character in the movie—a guy who has to strike a balance between his personal principles and his family’s expectations. Three minutes, the limit for accosting famous people.

Sana Dati opens in theatres on 25 September.

About the conjuring: We were taken to an exorcist when we were a year old so we stopped doing it. Then we had a formal scientific education that dismisses it. We get the occasional weird episode, though.

We have very fond memories of the fortnight we spent in Eastern Europe many years ago: the magnificent architecture, museums, concerts and operas at very affordable prices, the cheap liquor and the heavy all-meat meals (meat fried, breaded, stuffed with cheese and served with an egg on top) we consumed while wearing all the clothes we had brought because it was still freezing in late March. Those were good times.

How we could’ve remained ignorant of the existence of Balkan on Perea Street near Greenbelt 1, Makati, we have no idea, but we rectified that by going there twice last week.

Balkan serves Yugoslavian home cooking in a cozy, unpretentious setting. Meaning it’s like having dinner in a real house (for living in, not getting photographed in).

We recommend the cevapcici—spicy Serbian sausages served with rice, and the sarma—pickled cabbage rolls stuffed with beef, rice and spices. The house specialty is jagnjetina—baked lamb, which is as fall-off-the-bone tender as the menu promises, but rather bland for the Filipino palate. We kept imagining it as caldereta or adobo, or anything with a thick sauce.

Prices range from Php280 for a platter of sausages with rice to Php700 for the baked lamb. They serve San Miguel beers, Php50-70, and their wines start at Php370 the bottle. The place is open daily from 11am to 1am.

Yes, it is a doorstop.

On our next visit we will try the Balkanski kebab—”grilled chicken breast embraced by smoked bacon”, dzigerica (pork liver steak), and palacinke (Nutella crepes). And crack open Rebecca West’s classic travel journal and Balkan history, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

We have a suggestion for the management: Could you install a TV with cable so we can watch Djokovic’s matches with the full atmospherics? (What happens when we boo?)

Balkan is on the ground floor of Maripola Building, 109 Perea St., Legaspi Village, Makati, telephone (02)846.0744 or 0917.547.4188 (Look for Marko).