Piercing

This novel by Ryu Murakami which explores the dark side of the human mind takes us to the edge of what a person is capable of doing just to exercise his demons.

In the book, Kawashima Masayuki, a yuppie in urban Japan, is struggling to fight for the longest time the urge to stab his young daughter with an ice pick. Wrestling with his inner self, he finally decides to embark on a journey to fight the demons that have been tormenting him due to a previous experience wherein as a teenager he stabbed a stripper who turned out to be...

“Only voices and images from external world could neutralize those from the inside”

Kawashima Masayuki finally devises an obscene plan to kill a prostitute to liberate him and protect his wife Yoko and daughter Rie from his demonic obsession.

But Chiaki, a prostitute he hired who specialized in S & M plays while holed up in a hotel room to carry out his plans, turned out to be a disturbed soul herself.

Together they went deep into the realms of their psyches as they relived their past experiences and tried to find answers to their questions in the process.

Murakami’s cold- blooded story- telling wherein sometimes was a bit overboard owing to his very fertile imagination will be a shock to the faint-hearted, but to the initiated in this genre, there’s really nothing new to offer that we haven’t read nor seen in the past.

The Corduroy Killer

I was probably 9 years old and was rummaging into some old magazines back home in the Philippines when I happened to chance upon an article entitled The Corduroy Killer.

It was an article about a prodigious American Grandmaster who wears and favors Corduroy pants while making his mark as a teenage sensation in the Chess World and dishing out his wood pushing brilliance against much older opponents. The said article influenced me during that time to play chess.

Both my father and grandfather were avid chess players and they taught me the rudiments of the game at an early age. My dad even built a chess set cum table out of Mahogany, which was a very good choice because the hardwood has two shades of color (black and brown)that is perfect to make those unique, beautiful and distinct chess pieces.

I was a pretty good chess player when I was young but my Dad is much, much better. In fact, I never won a single game against him. Sad to say, my interest waned but the love for the game is still there although I must admit that I have not played a single game in years. But still, I follow the game whenever I can and I am quite familiar with the current crop of wood pushers where Super GMs are getting younger and younger each year.

That chess prodigy was the genius- turned recluse Bobby Fischer who visited the Philippines in the 70s and lived for sometime in Baguio City in his later years unbeknownst to many Filipinos and the world. He later sired a daughter to a Filipina wherein his long- time friend and confidante GM Eugene Torre confirmed in several interviews with some local papers.

Yes, Bobby Fischer is dead.

The best chess player the world had ever seen died yesterday in Reykjavik, Iceland, the place where he registered his greatest triumph at the height of the Cold War when he outwitted and defeated Russian GM and World Champion Boris Spassky in a proxy battle between the United States and the Soviet Union.

From being a World Champion, he spiraled deep into oblivion when he refused to defend the title against Anatoly Karpov. He became erratic and reclusive and eventually disappeared from the public over the years but his contribution to the world of chess can never be quantified and forgotten.

A lot of champions have come and gone but Bobby Fischer’s brilliance and charisma will never be equaled. His shadow and influence among the world’s chess players and lovers will remain forever.



In Memoriam: Robert James "Bobby" Fischer
March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008)


Here's the link to
Bobby Fisher's 60 Memorable Games

Charlie Wilson's War

Watching the movie Charlie Wilson’s War, which was based on George Crile’s non- fiction bestseller Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History brought me back in time when as a 9- year old boy growing up in a rustic town in Albay, the Philippines, I first learned of the news of the Soviet Union’s Invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Day in 1979 from the pages of The Bulletin Today and Daily Express that my Gran’ Pa used to read, an event that caught the world by surprise that was soon followed by the US-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics in protest of the invasion.

And while people in Manila can watch the news on several TV channels, we only got two channels working at the time on our side of the planet depending on where your typical aerial TV antenna was positioned/pointed at-- we have RPN from Iriga City on our west side and GMA from Legaspi City up north.

I tell you, it was a funny exercise one had to do just to get a fair TV reception during those days not to mention the struggle one had to endure while you were up there on the hot tin roof trying your best to position those aluminum antennas to perfection so that you can watch some shows on your black & white console TV starting at 6 o’clock in the evening if you were lucky enough to catch the unpredictable and unreliable schedule of the networks.

No news from the Radios for me either, since the Philippines was still under Martial Law at that time and most local commentators probably think that World News was not worth the airtime vis-à-vis the New Society’s mumbo-jumbos that they were asked to praise to high heavens on air by the lapdogs of the Dictator Marcos.

But I had an abundance of Time, Newsweek and Asiaweek magazines courtesy of a doctor who rented my aunt’s house next door as his residence cum clinic. Those magazines plus the usual newspaper fare were my ticket to the world, current- events wise.

Anyway, back to the movie, Charlie Wilson, played by Tom Hanks, is a Democratic Texas Congressman who loves booze, drugs and women and all the perks that his position can get to satisfy his insatiable appetite for hedonism.

He was your typical politically incorrect Congressman who can dish out lines like “You can teach a woman how to type but you can’t teach them to grow tits” when asked why he preferred beautiful and voluptuous women in his office and get away with it. He was your typical leech on Capitol Hill that sucked the blood out of the nation’s coffers. He was a loud, foul- mouthed, indifferent, and arrogant man until he saw CBS’ Dan Rather on TV interviewing the Mujahideens that were fighting the Evil Empire while on a field assignment in war- torn Afghanistan.



His curiosity piqued, he began to inquire about the US role in the on-going conflict that led him to a disgruntled CIA Case Officer Gus Avrakotos (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) as well as to the bed and politics of the known anti- communist and Houston Socialite Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) who arranged for him to meet Pakistani strongman Gen. Muhammad Zia-Ul- Haq as well as visit the Afghan refugee camps in Peshawar where he had an epiphany after seeing and hearing from the very mouths of the refugees the atrocities being committed by the Soviets to the Afghan people.

Thus, the beginning of the Soviet’s downfall in Afghanistan was sealed. And the Unholy Alliance among the players in the Reagan Administration’s not-so-secret proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan was born. And the Central Intelligence Agency’s dirty role in the war effort from across the border in Pakistan to return the favor to the Russians what they did to America by way of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam began.

Director Mike Nichols showed us the wheeling and dealing that is the hallmark of the America’s brand of Democracy as well as the policies that go with it whether foreign or domestic.-- from the “favorable exchange” in Congress to an inside look at political fund-raising gatherings to sleeping with the enemy. You name ‘em and the film showed ‘em albeit in passing but just enough for the viewers to get a glimpse and understanding of the real deal, of how the system work behind those facades that the customary players (the US Government, the Media Conglomerates, Congress, etc) want the people to believe.

He showed us how Charlie Wilson as a member of the House Defense Appropriations Sub- Committee raised the ante by doubling the initial measly $5 million budget for the US support to the Mujahideens that eventually reached almost $1 billion with a lot of help from Arab Countries like Saudi Arabia and the rich Gulf States.

He showed us how the CIA procured arms to supply the Afghans with weapons that can level the playing field against the Russians. This is realpolitik in its truest sense of the word, when strange bedfellows like the Isrealis, Egyptians, Saudis and Pakistanis can set aside their religious differences with the aid of the Almighty Dollars from Uncle Sam worked together to fight a “God-less” enemy in Afghanistan.

True enough, with the help of the new sophisticated weapons in their hands, the Mujahideens turned the tides of war in their favor and the USSR, rather than get stuck in the quagmire, did the unthinkable and withdrew after years of trying to tame Afghanistan, their pride and reputation as a superpower be damned.

Of course, this was aided by the winds of change blowing wherein Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika gaining grounds in the Russian home front and other Warsaw Pact Nations that eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

The Film tried its best to convey as much as it can History- wise to the viewing public but found wanting. They resorted to footages as well as dialogues where names of prominent personalities were floated to make the film more authentic but did not impress--

What with an F-16 being shot down by a Stinger surface to air missile instead of the obvious Russian fighter jets like the Migs and Sukhois? Although they got the menacing Mi- 24 Hind Helicopter on some scenes, still they could have done away with that shot of the US F-16 being blown up in the sky.


Also they made it appear that the “Lion of Panjshir” Ahmad Shah Massoud as the recipient of the bulk of the CIA’s arms delivery but anybody who knows his Afghan War History knew that this was not the case since the arms were delivered by the Pakistanis to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a Pashtun rebel leader with deep ties with Pakistan rather than to the forces of Gen. Massoud.

Although Massoud was a known ally of the West and a brilliant war tactician but being a Tajik did not endear him to the Pakistanis who serve as the conduit of arms getting into Afghanistan and so was denied the much needed arms supply.

Was this a ploy on the part of the right- wingers to mislead the American public that the CIA did support Gen. Massoud's forces rather than the ones that the Pakistanis nurtured until it metamorphosed into the dreaded Talibans and in the long run Al Qaeda?

The Pashtuns' and Tajiks' deep- rooted hatred for each other can be summed in the lines uttered in the movie that became a source of a little controversy, “When a Tajik man wants to make love to a woman, his first choice is a Pashtun man.”

By the way, Massoud was the same leader of the Northern Alliance who warned about Al- Qaeda’s plan to attack the West and was assassinated during a supposed media interview by the henchmen of Osama Bin Laden posing as reporters just two days before the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center.

Charlie Wilson on advice from Gus Avrakotos who knows better that the war is not over even after the withdrawal of the Russians asked his friends in Congress to allocate funds for the construction of schools in Afghanistan and was rebuked instead by one of his colleagues by telling him that, “nobody gives a shit about a school in Pakistan”, that only show you how some members the US Congress were illiterate not only on matters of foreign policy but also on geography.


The emergence of Al Qaeda, Taliban, Jemaah Islamiya, Abu Sayaff and all the other terrorist groups that were responsible for the worst terrorists attacks that the world has seen began when the “Victors” became oblivious of the fact that while driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan is sweet victory in a sense, they did not see the consequences of their subsequent actions when they left the war-weary Afghans with their country in shambles to fend for themselves.

These lapses and miscalculations of the Powers That Be resulted in us reaping the rotten fruits of their indifference. And it can be said that the seeds of the modern form of terrorism were sown in the blood- splattered soil of Afghanistan.

The lessons of the Afghan War can be summed up in these lines that appeared at the end of the movie,


“These things happened . They were glorious and they changed the world…
…and then we fucked up the end game.”

Yes, indeed.

Note: This is Part One of what I call The Afghanistan Trilogy- The Kite Runner, Lions for Lambs and Charlie Wilson's War.

12 Daze of Christmas

"From the early 1950s to the mid-70s, the hippest places in Las Vegas were the little casino lounges, where free-swinging entertainers presided over 24-hour parties in what were the city's 'living room.'

"Fay McKay was one of hundreds of Las Vegas entertainers for whom show business was a job. Her 'signature' number was this parody of 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' which she performed in showrooms throughout the city and around the world."

-"Lost Vegas: The Lounge Era"

Peek-a-Books #1

"All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words."

-AMY LOWELL



Note: My Bedside Companions for the last 2 1/2 Weeks...

Lea Salonga puts Tarrytown under her spell

Despite having to run almost two miles from the other end of the Terminal to catch the Northwest Airlines Flight from Detroit-Metropolitan Wayne County Airport to La Guardia, having missed our original morning flight earlier, we were still in a very good mood.

And flying all the way from Michigan two days before the event and then “hitching” a ride from the Bronx to Tarrytown, New York on the day of the concert with old friends in tow in exchange for the promised prime concert seats, we were in cruise control.

The uneventful 30-minute trip on the slow, lazy road to this little picturesque village on the eastern shore of the Hudson River did not dampen our enthusiasm a bit. We arrived at historic Tarrytown at quarter past seven on the cool and chilly evening of November 2. We were in high spirits in anticipation of a wonderful evening of music at the Tarrytown Music Hall.

Yes, we traveled far for the much-awaited concert of Broadway Star and Tony Award Winner Lea Salonga in this side of Westchester County, New York.

As we walked from the parking lot, braving the wind chill gnawing at our bodies and numbing our skin, I couldn’t help but notice that Tarrytown is really quite old, small and dark compared to the other places that I have been to.

Tarrytown has that distinctive air of the old world with clusters of Victorian and Gothic revival houses built in the late 1800s and early 1900s lining its narrow streets. And what with Sleepy Hollow just a stone’s throw away only added to its allure and mystique, at least for a history buff like me.

In fact, pictures of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman suddenly materializing out of nowhere circled in my mind as I turned the uphill corner towards the venue. But tonight, Washington Irving’s character from his classic, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, will take a back seat to the Lady of the Night.

As we neared the Music Hall, we suddenly realized that Tarrytown has turned into a Pinoy Town. In every street and corner, bar and cafe, store and restaurant, one could see and hear the unmistakable sound and presence of the Filipinos who came with full force.

This I can say, Filipinos really know how to party and can be counted upon to support a very talented kababayan as she tries to wield her magic again in Uncle Sam’s America. There were a lot of American fans too who flew in from as far as Texas and California. Some even drove for hours from Canada and various places on the East Coast. The majority of them, of course, came from New York and neighboring New Jersey.
They all came with one purpose and one purpose only -- to hear once again this song bird who has captivated the ears of the world since she was 17, when after a global search she was chosen to essay the role of Kim in the hit musical Miss Saigon, to which she never looked back.

The Music Hall on Main Street was built in 1885 and is one of the oldest theaters in Westchester County, where various luminaries from US Presidents (Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft & Woodrow Wilson) to legendary musicians (Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, etc.) among others have once graced its hallowed grounds.

THE CONCERT

The concert did not start on time, although the musicians were on stage before the 8pm call time, but since heaps of people were still pouring in and also queueing for the restrooms, the musicians bade their time until Bjorn Olsson, the Executive Director of the Music Hall, appeared on stage to welcome everybody with a crisp and effortless “Mabuhay!” which he confessed he had learned a few minutes before he went up the stage.

He proceeded to his short and concise speech and finally called on Lea Salonga, who casually sauntered onto the stage in a simple but elegant black pantsuit, went for the microphone, and then those old familiar lines from Stephen Sondheim’s SOMETHING'S COMING came out flowing like a cool breeze into the warm night air.

Could be, who knows?
…If I can wait, something’s coming, I don’t know what it is, but it is gonna be great…

It was a very appropriate opening number for Lea and surely an omen of things to come for the mesmerized audience who erupted into thunderous applause at the end of the song from West Side Story.

After greeting her Kababayans in the audience, she shared to us that it was the first time for her to hear a non-native speaker pronounce “Mabuhay” correctly, and opined that as a Filipino she doesn’t want to hear Mabuhay being butchered, to the delight of the large Filipino crowd.

She then told us that for our listening pleasure, she had put together songs “that I personally enjoy, songs that have in one way or another been associated with me.”
And this being her first concert in many, many months, she wanted it to be special, and added to the audience‘s amusement, “You have no idea how it feels to sing without having to cry! All of you who have seen Les Miz in the past seven months know what I mean,” in obvious reference to her role as the tragic Fantine in the Broadway revival of Les Miserables, where she brought back to life the character that Daphne Rubin-Vega killed.

People just couldn’t get enough of her as the cameras kept on flashing without let-up, prompting her to ask the concertgoers to "go easy on the cameras” and revealed that her “eyesight must have graded more, from the ‘strobing’” and that she might “have an epileptic attack” in the process, although she quickly added that although she doesn’t have epilepsy, she didn't want to “start that right now, seriously” and politely asked us to just “relax, sit back and enjoy the show.”

Lea Salonga’s voice was so pure that when she sang I’VE NEVER BEEN IN LOVE BEFORE from the Musical Guys and Dolls, it was like hearing the confession of a young and innocent girl, where one could really feel the simple yet heartfelt message of the song.

Then she reminisced about her early years as a performer wherein she shared that she used to sing on top of the table, to the delight of her mother, and can still vividly remember her first standing ovation at age 8 in a “blue dress and white cardigan and suffering from an allergy attack” on the day of her audition, landing the lead role for Repertory Philippines’ production of Annie The Musical that eventually paved the way to her pursuing a career in show business.

She sang TOMORROW in an up-tempo manner and got away with it. She sang it in a way that one couldn’t help but think that the song was and still magical in Lea’s capable hands after all these years. It was well-applauded and I’m sure many in the audience were having flashbacks of that cute little girl singing this very familiar tune on black and white TV many, many years ago and half a world away.

The star of the night admitted that even after years of being in the business, “there’s still quite a few roles I’d like to play. Hopefully, one day I’ll get the opportunity” as she rendered a haunting and beautiful rendition of I DON'T KNOW HOW TO LOVE HIM from the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar and made a very good case for herself for the role of Mary Magdalene.

If only Andrew Lloyd Webber was in the audience…

Ms. Salonga paid homage to Mr. Lloyd Webber by declaring that she found the very talented songwriter to be “incredibly prolific” and confessed a role she has coveted for most of her life, showing her wit in the process to the delight of everyone--

“A role that I always had my eye on from when I was quite young but even at my age now… Fine, I’m 36! But I still look darn hot!”

And added feeling intimidated by the role despite coveting it badly.

“Even though I’m older than the person upon whom the show was based when she passed away. It’s still a part of musical theater canon for female singers, it intimidates me incredibly and I am not yet brave enough to tackle her on” but swiftly added that when the right time comes, she’ll be able to handle them like the rest.

YOU MUST LOVE ME from Evita the Movie came next and it’s not even fair to Madonna to merit a discussion here of the vocal discrepancies between her and Lea.

Lea Salonga’s voice can melt the heart of any strong man and surely is capable of capturing the hearts of a thousand Perons, too. Evita is one role that she can do without question, if you ask me. I am sure the people who heard her sing live that night and the ones who have heard her before will surely agree with me.

And she shared to us a funny little secret about a role that,

“I’ve wanted sooooo bad that while I was in Miss Saigon I kept dropping hints & not very subtle ones either“... to Cameron Mackintosh, perhaps?

“Yeah, I’d like to play Eponine in Les Miserables.”

And her ploy was amply rewarded when--

“I was very fortunate to be asked not too long after I left Miss Saigon to be a part of the big production“ and sang the most applauded song of the night that merited a standing ovation from the crowd.

It was her audition song for Miss Saigon, ON MY OWN.

Then she sang the Tagalog song, HAHANAPIN KO that was composed by Jose Mari Chan and popularized by Anthony Castelo in the 1980s and dedicated the song to “all the Filipinos that have left the country and still love our Motherland.”

Buckets of tears flowed from the Pinoy concertgoers as her smooth and soulful rendition of the ballad touched the hearts of so many of us Filipinos who have not returned to the old country in years. The song and the tears became a form of catharsis for many of us because not only does it link us to our past, it also reminded us of Home…

Her solemn version of SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME, from the musical Oh, Kay! by the prolific duo George and Ira Gershwin, added another dimension to the concert and with only a guitar accompanying her, the song became even more personal and meaningful…

“Although he may not be the man some
Girls think of as handsome
To my heart he carries the key…”

Suddenly somebody from the audience sneezed loudly and like the trooper that she is, she blurted out “Bless You!“ in between the song lyrics and went on to sing the song in its entirety without missing a beat even as the audience was now laughing their hearts out. The sneezing bandit was never identified but surely, nobody would have liked to be in her/his shoes that night. Ha-ha.

Lea Salonga is an artist who knows how to interact with her audience and can really play with the crowd.

We all know that she became a Disney Princess not only once, but twice but she explained to us good-naturedly her apprehensions about it--

“My daughter would probably not believe that Mommy got to do that and is probably looking at me rolling her eyes!”

You can tell by the way she talked that she’s one proud mother to Nicole as she further confessed that her fears have some basis when she said,

“She’s ignoring me already and she’s only 17 months old!”

She did sing the two Disney songs from Aladdin and Mulan but with just the short Princess Jasmine part of A WHOLE NEW WORLD for the former, and a different and more complete version of REFLECTION for the latter.

She intimated that she got to record the "long original” version from Mulan but executives at Disney only released the short version for the movie, and as a form of “revenge” she always sings the complete version in her concerts.

A parade of beautiful songs highlighted the second part of the show and it was a blast seeing Lea’s expressions change from song to song--

--Her phrasing’s perfect, her diction impeccable and her voice crystal. Her effortless singing can literally and figuratively take you to a whole new world of musical magic.

She proclaimed that she loved ABBA and one can discern her respect for the immense talent of Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus in the song she chose to sing from the musical Chess.

Her poignant SOMEONE ELSE'S STORY can make you cry unabashedly without regard for anybody.

She can make you high and giggle with her sweet and girlish interpretation of the Kristin Chenoweth’s original “TAYLOR, THE LATTE BOY", one of the most applauded numbers of the night.

WHEN OCTOBER GOES was written by Johnny Mercer just before he died of cancer in 1976, and accompanied by a beautiful albeit melancholic melody that Barry Manilow composed in honor of his friend. Lea gushed how Manilow, known more for his cheesy compositions, was able to pen such a beautiful song. She fell in love with the song so much that she included it in her latest album “Inspired.”

You could see the smoke in Lea’s eyes when she admitted that she had her own share of heartaches, too. But she did not give up on love and in the end found the man of her dreams.

She opened her heart to us and dedicated the next song, I STILL BELIEVE IN LOVE, from the musical They‘re Playing Our Song, “to all the singles out there” and asked them to “never give up on love.”

The very emotional I'D GIVE MY LIFE FOR YOU put the music hall in silence and induced goosebumps on our skin, even 18 years after we first heard her sing that now classic song from Miss Saigon of what every mother would/can do for her offspring.

The night would not have been complete without the song that brought her back to Broadway. Her crystalline voice soared anew as she gave life to the Les Miserables' tragic character, Fantine, in I DREAMED A DREAM...

"But the tigers come at night, with their voices soft as thunder. As they tear your hope apart. As they turn your dream to shame!"

Lea showed us here her versatility as she shifted from one difficult note to another in an effortless show of vocal prowess, not to mention her heartbreaking interpretation of the song. She did it with much aplomb to the delight of the audience.

I have never heard Billy Joel’s homage to the Big Apple sang as beautifully as Lea did. In NEW YORK STATE OF MIND, she bared that she would never get away from New York, that no matter what she will always come back to New York. She considers the Big Apple as her home away from home.

The medley of SOMETHING WONDERFUL/BEING ALIVE from the musicals The King and I and Company, respectively, have in a way summed up the wonderful evening with Lea Salonga. I guess you could safely call it a night of enchantment in the enchanted village called Tarrytown.

Her encore of the Beverly Craven original and carrier single of her album "Inspired", PROMISE ME was hauntingly touching and well-received. I can say that she gave justice to the song and owned it in the process.

The concert lived up to its promise and it was a night to remember forever. Lea Salonga came aptly prepared to give her fans their money’s worth and she did not disappoint. Her song selections complimented her voice really well. The venue was suited for a more intimate and personal approach and she exploited them to her advantage.

The years have been kind to her, too and she really has matured as a singer and a performer -- confident, poised, witty, charming and beautiful.

And of course, She’s HOT!

Muted Silence

Marcel Marceau
(March 22, 1923- September 22, 2007)

The Master of Mime died two days ago at the age of 84.

Like his idol Charlie Chaplin, he perfected his art whom he fondly named as "L'art du silence" which brought him worldwide fame and accolades wherein eventually his name became synonymous with his art.

His striped suit, battered silk opera hat and single red rose became his signature as he single-handedly showed the world his enormous talent and the uniqueness of his craft.

He conveyed to us through his performances the soul of every human being. He showed
us that just by a sudden flick of one's finger or in the blink of one's eye, one can fathom the deepest recesses of human emotion.

He tackled the different aspects of human emotions in the The Mask Maker and his Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death proved to be so powerful that prompted one critic to say that "Bip" accomplished in "less than two minutes what most novelists cannot do in volumes."

Now that he has quietly faded into the night,

the world is in silence...

Au Revoir Monsieur Marceau...




See him dance the Tango...

Here

...