Category: tv

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So J and I are responsible for this:

http://bleepthisblank.wordpress.com

About the Site

bleepthisblank contains reviews of anything that catches the authors’ fancies. Consider this a space for recommendations: watch this show, try this restaurant, read this book, play this game. Bleep this blank.

About the Authors

Eliza graduated from UP Diliman in 2007 and now works in Makati. She has won two Palanca Awards, and her fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications here and abroad. She loves the Oxford comma, is ambivalent toward the semicolon, and hates the ellipsis.

…

Hates it.

Jaykie is taking up a masters degree in Applied Mathematics (Major in Actuarial Science) in UP Diliman. If you are in need of an actuary, you’ll know who to contact. He enjoys gaming, be it tabletop, online, board, or card (esp. Magic). If you are in need of an actuary and a dungeon master, you’ll know who to contact. Could make for a very interesting game.

They met sometime in 2009. Together they enjoy watching films and TV series, drinking on weekends, and playing a round or two of the Game of Thrones boardgame.

Contact

bleep.blank[at]yahoo[dot]com

For our first post:

With Peter Berg confirming that a Friday Night Lights film is in the works, we think it’s high time that we revisit this series.

We just finished watching all five seasons of Friday Night Lights, which certainly deserved all the praise it got in its five-year run. It is set in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas, and concerns the struggles and victories of its football team, its football coach, Eric Taylor, his family, and the close-knit circle of the football players. It is heartwarming, engaging and sincere, and we’d recommend it to anyone, football fan or not.

Personally it got me interested in watching football, though don’t ask me to explain the rules to you. I’m actually planning to watch the Super Bowl for the game, and not just the halftime show.

Anyway. FNL makes for excellent television, but it’s not flawless. It has plot holes large enough for Smash Williams to charge through, and the show has the tendency of dropping character arcs and characters just like that.

If you haven’t seen the entire series, stop. SPOILERS!

Read more.

(Visit us from time to time. Okay?)

So I’ve resigned from the “new job” and will soon be employed as a writer here. I don’t know why I keep updating you about my work situation. Perhaps also to remind myself. Why did I resign? Let us meet up for coffee and I’ll tell you. But the quick summary: It was a fun place to work, but I didn’t have the stamina.

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In the meantime I’m at home trying to get my shit together. Step 1 of getting my shit together was applying for an NBI Clearance, which I did yesterday. An entire lifetime could be lived during an NBI Clearance application. I was told to go to Robinsons Otis because it was reportedly faster, but I was going to meet up with Eula anyway so I chose to go to Robinsons Galleria. If you’re planning to line up there, for the love of all that is holy, be there early. And by early I mean earlier than 5:30 a.m., because I was there before the sun even rose and I was number 364. Can you believe that? What time did people start arriving, 3 a.m? The NBI satellite centers process only 500 applications a day. (NBI Main processes 2,000.) Number 500 was handed out at Galleria yesterday before 7 a.m. Yep. So. Be there early.

They allowed numbers 201 to 399 to come in at 10 a.m., and numbers 400 onwards at 12 noon. Bring a book, an mp3 player, a friend to chat with. And food. And patience. And remember: 2 valid IDs, P115.

I finished the application at 5:30 p.m. And was told that I got a “hit” and could only get my clearance on Feb. 8. Feb. 8! I was too tired to feel angry at that point, so I just got on a bus and went home.

Check out the NBI website to find out where else you can go to get clearance.

Also, NBI? There has got to be an easier way to secure clearance. I mean, come on, man, I pay my taxes. I don’t pay my taxes just so I can sit inside a mall for 12 hours waiting for a lousy piece of paper.

I imagine my younger siblings lining up for this for employment and I die a little inside.

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Anywho, recommendations!

Lucifer – In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Lucifer Morningstar throws up his hands and says, “I give up!”, and hands the keys to Dream. Hell is Dream’s problem now, and good riddance. In The Kindly Ones we find him running a piano bar. But what are the other plans of the former Lord of Hell? Author Mike Carey tells us. And what a series! High concepts! I love this.

Room – Jack and Ma live in Room. It’s a very small room. Look. Five-year-old Jack believes Room is the world, and everything else (the shows on TV, the stories in their books) is fantasy. Old Nick brings them food and clothes and takes their garbage away. Jack has to stay in Wardrobe when Old Nick visits Ma at night. One day, Jack watches TV and sees a man taking the same painkillers her Ma keeps in a bottle. But how is that possible? How can the painkillers in Room appear in TV, which isn’t real?

At that point I felt real terror, and that’s when I knew what a gripping tale this is. Of course if you follow the news you’d know what the novel is based on. The knowledge doesn’t diminish the story’s power. Do check it out. I read it in two days.

Sherlock – And the most adorable picture ever.

That’s it, pancit!

Hello, morning.

Happy we were finally able to go home to Bulacan, despite the near knee-high flood submerging the subdivision. Happy, too, that Jaykie agreed to stay till Monday morning, and he was able to finally meet my sister and my lola. They were showing Pak Pak Dr. Kwak on the bus, and I laughed at times, to my utter horror. We arrived late Saturday and had my mother’s (famous!) caldereta, Reese’s ice cream, leftover sansrival cake, yema, and possible diabetes. My father insisted that Jaykie drink; isang shot lang daw, pero maya-maya ubos na ang laman ng bote. Also learned that he was going to have an air-con installed in the master bedroom, but every time he sets an appointment for the workers to come in, a storm enters Philippine territory. All of my siblings enjoyed Jaykie’s iPad, lured by Fruit Ninja. Discovered this new TV game show via my sister: R U Kidding Me? where host Vic Sotto (si Vic na naman, sinundan kami galing sa bus!) on Saturday night mistakenly said, “Magbabalik ang Who Wants To Be – ” Then we all got freaked out by this segment on Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho about people who eat raw meat. Kare-kare for lunch the next day, then spaghetti, then fish for dinner, then these banana cookies made by the creators of Boy Bawang (they’re yummy), then more sansrival, and the entire second season of Justified. On our way back to QC they were showing You To Me Are Everything on the bus, but I think I fell asleep.

PS I’ve sold a science fiction story called “The Mechanic” to Kaleidotrope. Hooray! Details to follow.

weekend update

I wasn’t too fond of this series last year, but later in the season the acting and writing got better, scenes got to that level of dark they needed and deserved, and now Pretty Little Liar‘s among those shows I look forward to seeing every week.

Ezra still bores me though. Jesus.

Ugh. Go away, Ezra.

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And that’s all I can say about the weekend. Oh wait, I also finished the first season of Justified (very good), and we’re also almost done with the third season of Damages (Patty Hewes is less crazy this time around). With the city flooded, there’s really nothing to do but stay indoors, sleep, read, monitor the flood via Twitter, or watch something entertaining.

I wasn’t able to go home for my mother’s birthday. I am majorly pissed. I monitored the news and made phone calls, hoping I might make it home. But the flood was already thigh-high outside our home on Saturday and there was water inside the house and it won’t stop raining so my mother decided that it’d be better if I just stayed put.

I wish we could move. I wish we could move the river.

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Before that, Thursday night/Friday morning was a bit crazy. For a while there the office looked like an evacuation center. There were reports of five-foot high floods in the metro, and roads were either unpassable or congested. (When we say “traffic jam” we mean “parking lot-like”.)  Fortunately, I was able to go home to the condo in my jacket and flip-flops because the flood outside the office was only ankle-deep.

Jaykie and I meet up on Thursday nights, and he wanted to go that night, but Chino Roces cor. Vito Cruz Extension looked like this from 9:30 pm to I-don’t-know-what-time-really-because-I-fell-asleep-waiting.

I suddenly woke up at around 2 in the morning and saw from my window that the streets were clear. I texted Jaykie this, as a joke, thinking he was asleep anyway, but he replied and said he’d go pick me up. Before I gave him the go-signal, I called MMDA’s hotline number (136) to check if the roads he would take were flooded. They weren’t, so we met up, had food from Mini-Stop, downed some Gilbey’s, and went to sleep.

That was one unproductive weekend, I have to say.

<just click to enlarge>

Went to Makati Med armed with my healthcard to have my ears checked, thinking they were the culprit for my vertigo. The ENT doctor said my eardrums were clean. I had a hearing exam (pure tone audiometry and PTA with speech, similar to the one I had last year), and the results came and my hearing was fine. So I guess the diagnosis is still BPPV. He handed me a brochure with information about vertigo and how to deal with it (see above photo), and instructed me to keep taking Serc as long as I was “symptomatic” and avoid salty and spicy food.

Crap. I thought I had ear blockage of some sort and the doctor could make my vertigo magically disappear. Oh well. At least my ears are okay.

That night Jaykie and I watched the first two episodes of Justified. I’ll be sure to follow this. I didn’t know it was based on an Elmore Leonard story! Have a read:

“Fire in the Hole” by Elmore Leonard

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Oh, on Monday night Jaykie dropped by work to pick me up. We had dinner at Mom & Tina‘s before we went to his condo to watch the season finale of Game of Thrones.

mango kani salad (half-order)
fettucine with smoked salmon and capers
fish 'n rice
chocolate fudge cupcake, lemon meringue square
jaykeh!
uncontrollable laughter and the Huge Upper Arm of Doom

Sniff. No more Game of Thrones. I don’t know how long viewers had to wait for Season 2.

I have reviewed all four books (so far) of A Song of Ice and Fire series, but I haven’t reviewed the TV adaptation. I only have this to say: it’s good TV. Good production values, rich scenic detail, spot-on casting.

(Cut for possible spoilers.)

Continue reading

reviews

Moon


Sam Bell works for Lunar Industries, a company in the business of harvesting helium-3 from the far side of the moon. Sam oversees the company’s automated harvesters and sends back canisters of He-3, which Earth then uses for energy. Sam is the only human being in the facility. Every now and then he receives messages from Earth. The messages (from his wife, Tess, and child, Eve) are not live, because communication problems on the moon have hampered the reception of live feeds. He is accompanied by an AI named GERTY. He has been on the moon for three years. When the film opens, he is nearing the end of his contract.

But there’s a problem: it appears that he is losing his mind. One moment he turns and sees a teenager with dark hair and wearing a yellow jumpsuit in an empty cabin. He longs for his wife. He spends his days distracted. One day, he goes out to drive his rover and crashes into a harvester and loses consciousness.

While watching the film’s first few minutes, I kept asking, Who’d sign up for this? Who’d be so desperate to agree to stay on the moon alone for three whole years? Then I find out.

Moon (written and directed by Duncan Jones, who also directed Source Code) is the kind of film that sucks you in and spawns discussions. The references to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris are apparent. I loved it, and Sam Rockwell is awesome.

Damages


I just finished Season 1. It was brutal and compelling and I just couldn’t peel my eyes off of it. It’s not an episodic show, like Law & Order, and it’s definitely not a comedy, like Boston Legal. There is one big case that the characters try to crack within the 13 episodes. Meanwhile, the body count continues to rise and lawyer Patty Hewes becomes more and more psychopathic. Glenn Close is perfect, but I find myself more drawn to lawyer Ray Fiske (played by Zeljko Ivanek), and the young couple who gets caught in the web.

My sister brought home strawberries and blueberries from Baguio

and they are superb when mixed with milk and cream. Mmm.

Also during this week: Yakimix and Amici with Jaykie’s family, home, lipstick for my mother and sugarfree candy for my father, my mother observing that there’s always murder in my stories (eek!), and that promise that Jaykie and I will eat right, exercise and lose weight – totoo na! :)