Not the end, mind you, just a change of address. These junklands have been great and fun, but no longer feel like home so we're moving. Still at Livejournal though. Thanks to all friends and readers who have shared, commented, read and spent a moment of their time to take a look.

You can come follow me to my new home where there will be, I promise, more of my ramblings on tv, books, music, film, comics, train rides, taxi adventures, love letters, broken hearts, strange conversations and the odd lazy epiphany or two. See you there.

Love,

And here is John Oliver, cementing his place in the list of People I Want to Marry Someday (the top five of which seems now to be mostly composed of Englishmen).

(Itago na lang natin siya sa pangalang) Pink Ranger tells me about something weird that happened to her just this afternoon. It was a pretty busy lunch hour and she was at Jollibee. There weren't any other free tables so there was this other girl who came up to her and asked if they could share a table. Since she was on her own and it was a bigger table, the Pink Ranger figured it would be okay. Sure, she answered. The girl thanked her and for a while they sat across each other, just finishing their Champs and fries in silence, but all the while she couldn't shake off the feeling that she had met this girl somewhere before. Finally, the other girl said, "Oh, wow. I thought you looked familiar." Turns out, they shared an ex-boyfriend.

"She dated him after he broke up with the girl he dated after we broke up. I think. I didn't really know what to say." she explains to me later, pausing every once in a while to make sure she wasn't mixing things up. They had only met once before, years ago, and it was just a passing introduction. "But here's what was really weird; because we had dated the same guy, it was like we had an automatic common ground. Like we could commiserate with each other at having seen the same guy naked and things not working out. On the other hand, we had seen the same guy naked. It was comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time."

It is weird how that works. Once you're an ex-girlfriend or an ex-boyfriend, you become part of a group of people you may  or may not have ever met, may or may not know absolutely nothing about or may or may not have absolutely nothing in common with, a group made up of old memories, good intentions, ill-fated chemistry and promises that didn't quite pull through; a group of people marked by an emphasis on "ex", signifying nothing but the past - and only the kind that is for forgetting.

Me: Yes, I'm looking for a book by Jim Shepard.
Fully Booked: Okay, ma'am, let me just check our database. Can you please hold on for one minute?
Me: Oh, sure.

Almost ten minutes later...

Fully Booked: Ma'am?
Me: Yes?
Fully Booked: Yes, ma'am. We're still checking if we have any available titles by Shepard, Jim.
Me: Oh. Okay. Why is it taking so long? What does your database say?
Fully Booked: Would you like to leave your name and contact number, ma'am? We'll call you right back after a few minutes. We just need to confirm the available titles.
Me: Oh, okay, sure.

I leave them my name and my home phone number but they don't call back. I left for work in the afternoon and as soon as I get to my office I give them a call again.

Me: Yes, hi. I called earlier this morning? I left my name and my number but no one got back to me? About the Jim Shepard titles?
Fully Booked: Yes, ma'am, let me just check our database. Can you please hold on for a minute?
Me: Uhm. Okay.

Almost twelve minutes later...

Fully Booked: Ma'am?
Me: Yes, I'm still here. Did you find anything?
Fully Booked: No, ma'am, I'm sorry. We don't have any titles by Jim Shefard.
Me: Oh no, no, that's Shepard with a p.
Fully Booked: Yes, ma'am, Shefard with fee.
Me: Uhm...oookay. What about your other branches?
Fully Booked: Okay, ma'am. I'll just check. Can you -
Me: (exasperated sigh) Hold on for a minute, yes, I know.

After another seven minutes...

Fully Booked: Ma'am?
Me: Still here.
Fully Booked: I'm sorry, ma'am, we have no available titles.

A few days later, I get a text from Phil who happened to be at Fully Booked at High Street. He found a copy of Jim Shepard's Like You'd Understand, Anyway and Love and Hydrogen. Sigh. I wish our local bookstores would keep better records.

Phil asks a very interesting question: What, exactly, is P.T. Anderson's Magnolia about? If you had to summarize it for someone who had never seen it before, what would you say? "A rain of frogs? Life in the San Fernando Valley? People who are unraveling? People who want to become better?"

It's funny because I had never really thought about it before - and Magnolia is one of my favorite films of all time. I saw it six times in the movie theatres when it came out in 1999; even dragged a new bunch of people every time I saw it. And I still rewatch it every year, by the way. At least twice (and I am still floored every single time). If my math is right, I will have seen it a good twenty four times at least, but I'm at a loss for summary words.

When I dragged all my friends (some of their friends and this one guy I was kinda dating at the time) to see the movie, I was frantic. I don't think I told them anything objectively convincing. I just pulled them by the hand and exclaimed "Basta!" Most of them liked it, with maybe an exception of two or three people. I remember somebody saying, "I can kind of sense that something really great happened there, I'm just not sure I was able to follow it all."

A film teacher I once met said that most of the greatest films of all time are the ones that have the simplest stories; the ones that can be summarized in one sentence even. I guess you can make an argument for that. Bicycle Thief is just about a guy whose bicycle gets stolen. Citizen Kane is a veiled portayal of William Randolph Hearst. However, you can also, just as easily, make an argument for a less simplified case. It may be that most of the greatest films of all time, despite having the simplest stories, are the ones that touch on many, many aspects of human life.

Magnolia is about a lot of characters and character relationships. One of the reasons I keep watching the film again and again is that I can focus each time on a different character or character relationship, maybe even see something I hadn't seen there before.



But I think, for me, it's William H. Macy as former "Quiz Kid" Donnie Smith that gets me every time. Near the end of the film we see him, bleeding, missing his front teeth. He's completely broken, but he's also for the first time thinking straight. "I do have so much love to give," he says, tearfully, "I just don't know where to put it." How is that for a summary? It's a film about people who have so much love inside them and don't know what to do with it.

And it rains frogs.

At that damn Mini-Stop, earlier this evening:

Girl: So...
Boy: Yeah. So...
Girl: (sighs) Let's not make this any harder than it has to be. We've talked things over so many times now, I'm completely tapped. This is it.
Boy: Yes, I guess you're right.
Girl: Okay. (pause) I will miss you, you know.
Boy: I'll...miss you too.
Girl: You can come by on Wednesday for the rest of your things.
Boy: What about my -
Girl: No, I'm keeping that. (gets up and heads for the door) But you can have all our friends. I don't like them as much as you do anyway.

Does anybody remember the fictional boyband 2ge+her? The one with the albums and TV show that parodied all the boybands that came out in the 1990's? Well, it looks like they were right; (say you had nothing but I called you bluff / you got my sweaters, my hat...I can`t find my cat!) The Hardest Part of Breaking Up - Is Getting Back Your Stuff.

Fatty is a little stuff tiger who came free at a Saisaki buffet. He has a strange shape and the most expressive face I had ever seen on a stuff toy; it could look happy or sad or even disapproving, at times, when you took his hands and crossed them together. Most of the time though, he looked quite concerned, about what, I'm not sure, but it was sweet to imagine that he was worried about something and he wanted you to always be careful. Whenever I looked at him, I could hear him, hear his little voice, saying "Hello".

I will never forget how he looked when I had to patch him up myself, that one time, when he had somehow managed to put a hole on his little bottom, just right by his tail. That's what you get, I told him, running around the city like you do. But don't worry, I reassured him right away, it's just a little patch-up and I've done this many times before. He still looked worried, but suddenly then, more patient. And when it was over I told him, look, you're good as new, he looked as if he thought he was even better than that. He was real. For always.

He was stolen today, taken during a late afternoon train ride, and I feel like I've lost a really good friend.

My confused friend Catman (not his real name) asks: "What does it mean when girls tell you that you're 'too nice'? I don't understand. How can you be 'too nice' anyway? And even if you were nice - isn't that a good thing? I've always thought it was good to be nice! I've had two girls tell me the same thing this last year alone. Did I miss a memo or something? Is there some newly developed definition of the word 'nice' I don't know about?"

I wish I could help you, Catman, but honestly, I don't know what it means either. I've gone out with boys and had my fair share of things not quite working out due to various reasons (religious differences, allergic reactions to my cats, vegetarianism, Bon Jovi albums) - but I don't ever recall someone being "too nice" ever being a negative. I am aware, however, that there are girls out there who consider it a problem and unfortunately, you are not the first male friend of mine to have encountered it. Tell you what, we'll do some research. I'll try to run up a survey or something, gather information and all that and try to come up with some kind of definition.

Anybody got any ideas?