Maniolas

One of the things I like about flying is the onboard fun that I can look forward to —the movies and the music, to be more specific. At my age, and with all the mucking about that I’ve done, I should be sick of these things and ply myself insensible with the free beer or wine somewhere between Anchorage and Nagoya, but the honest truth is, I’m not. I’m eager for entertainment, which is the only way I can forget the fact that I’m going to be up in the air for the better part of a 24-hour day. I don’t have a fear of flying; it’s boredom I can’t abide. Being up there means that I can catch up on all the movies I never saw and didn’t even know existed. Beng and I almost always take in a movie after our weekly foot massage (such is life in the 60s), but we’re slaves to what’s out there, and not being too much of a cinephile I’m positive I’m missing out on the good stuff by sticking to the mall fare. That changed last week when I flew home from Dulles airport outside of Washington, DC to Terminal 3 on the fringes of Pasay — a distance of 8,548 miles, according to Google. That meant 11:30 hours of self-amusement to contemplate, but I think I hit the jackpot — a trifecta in sporting terms — by watching three great movies on one long trip (I actually saw four, but Read More …

In the age of social media where people spend hours in front of computers, cell phones and other gadgets, it might be wise to reacquaint oneself with the feel of a good book, still the best cure for a lingering attention deficit disorder. Paging all scholars of the late Franz Arcellana, from Francis Quina to Pia Benosa and a couple of others whose names presently escape me. You might be interested to join a gargantuan yet momentous cataloguing of books from his library at the old residence in Maginhawa Street, UP Village by February 2015, and to turn over the first tranche to the Arcellana Reading Room at the Institute of Creative Writing in Diliman around the time of the annual writers’ workshop. True, though the workshop is now held in Baguio only a symbolic turnover may be done there, but actual transfer will be in Quezon City lowlands. This is considered to be a race against time, elements, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue, which seeks to collect tax arrears from the estate and has issued threats of garnishment of a potential national shrine. In the age of Internet and fast-food streaming and collection targets, who needs books? My poor mother, may she also rest in peace, thought the world of those books and so never sold the house that contained them, all three floors of them. She was practically hounded to her grave, aside from cirrhosis, by tax demand letters as the original amount of six figures perhaps Read More …

Almost 20 years ago, in a column for another paper, I said “Goodbye to Garamond,” in reference to how the world of typography — the way by which the printed word is presented to us by publishers, advertisers  and the media — was perceptibly changing. Printed letters — like the ones you’re looking at this very instant — are shaped into what are called fonts (a term often used interchangeably with “typeface,” although some experts will insist that there’s a subtle but important difference). They’re how the letters physically look, which in turn may convey psychological, emotional or subliminal messages to the reader. We’ll get to that in a minute. First, here’s a bit of what I wrote back then: “Have you ever wondered about those fonts whose letters look as though they had been scratched onto plywood with a nail by a heroin addict going through withdrawal? Remember the flickery font they used for the credits of Brad Pitt’s Seven?… These, folks, are examples of what’s been called ‘grunge’ typography and ‘degenerative’ art. The idea seems to be to produce aesthetic pleasure through severe disorientation… Goodbye to Garamond, and all those reassuringly clean and classically balanced fonts. Hello to something like WaxTrax, which fairly drips all over your screen. And so it goes in the BraveNewWorld of cyberspace.” Cyberspace and the Internet, of course, were still a novelty for most people back in 1996, and were full of raw and rough edges — visually and even audibly. Remember when Read More …

The Proud Pinoy Stitchers is composed of cross-stitching aficionados. It was started three years ago by a group of people who met during one of DMC Philippines’ cross-stitch exhibits. The PPS mounts “Karayom Masterpieces,” which opens on Nov. 5, 6 p.m., at the LRI Design Plaza. MANILA, Philippines – Proud Pinoy Stitchers (PPS), along with DMC Philippines and Mandy Navasero host their first “Karayom Masterpieces” exhibit featuring the timeless artworks of Fernando Amorsolo and Manuel Baldemor. These thread paintings are on view at the LRI Design Plaza gallery from Nov. 5 to 11. The show opens on Nov. 5, 6 p.m., and parts of the proceeds will be given to the Philippine Society of Orphan Disorders (PSOD). The PPS is composed of cross-stitching aficionados. It was started three years ago by a group of people who met during one of DMC Philippines’ cross-stitch exhibits. Finding out that they shared a common hobby, they started meeting every Friday — just to chat and hang out with people who understood the fixation of thread and needle. Soon enough, one of them came up with the idea of using social media to gather the few Filipinos who engage in cross-stitching. In 2011, Margaret Tipton founded the Facebook group “Proud Pinoy Stitchers”; and with the other original members — Rene Millare, Yeya Albano, Honey Refe and Dicky Huang — as co-admins, they gathered stitching friends and created activities, challenges and monthly meets. The PPS aims to bring back the glory days of this serene and lovable Read More …