I have been so attached to my newly retuned clavier for about three days now and my ears seemed to have developed a permanent echoing ringing to them.

Too much headphones static, I suppose. I swear I could occasionally taste electricity running through my body, especially after drinking three cups of cappuccino without so much as a gulp of fresh air in between.

At times I feel like my ears are not there anymore, but some ugly sound wraith gobbled them up for gratification.

Recent Remixes:
· Isle of Capri, bosanova, reggae and polka versions
· Moon River, unaccompanied piano and disco remix with custom drummer
· Obladi Oblada, rock interlude
· Little Brown Jug, town fiesta march and kindergarten versions
· Beautiful Brown Eyes, horny slow rock and ballad
· Lovers’ Concierto, all tempos imaginable, up to and including my all-time favorite pipe organ version with vibrato/sustain that sounds like something straight from a 1950s vampire movie

Today, while listening to some rather old RAM files I found in an obscure hard drive folder, I was struck at how the theme of Jet Li’s Once Upon a Time in China series had so many versions.

I have seven of them at hand:
1. The original one, used in the opening synchronized forms sequences of the movies, with the heavy percussion and male choral voices
2. The instrumental one with the lead flute
3. The one with the Jacky Cheung vocals
4. Another instrumental dominated by a very heavy gong
5. The “pop” version, with a lead singer and some backup voices
6. The “Westernized” one, used in Once Upon a Time in China and America
7. Another Western rendition, less heavy, with a banjo for a lead

Shi’s suggested remakes:
1. By Rob Zombie, with the shrill voice of the White Zombie main man himself singing in Mandarin
2. Eminem remix
3. Charlotte Church and Andrea Bocelli duet
4. Westlife remake, as they are quite fond of coming up with their own remake of everything
5. N’Sync version, with the guys making a cameo in the next OUATIC installment
6. Shakira mambo, with Jet Li making an apperance in the video, riding charging horses (Ah-whah-whah.)
7. Carlos Santana acoustic
8. Elton John!!! Piano!!!
9. Linkin Park remix, to be included in their Reanimation album, with Jet Li to appear in the music video alongside Oriental members Mike Shinoda and Mr. Hahn
10. M2M squeaky, mellow number
11. Britney Spears version, with numerous “Uh!” gruntings in between instrumental refrains
12. By Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, love song style

For more information on the series, visit The Internet Movie Database.

How do I keep my mud on my feet
It’s wearing me down, can’t stay
I’m praying too deep
It’s hurting my sleep
I can’t let you go away
Too late, you tried
Too late, you died

I don’t understand
There’s blood on my hands
I can’t have you as my own
Your heartbeat has ceased
I’ll leave you in peace
But haunt me inside my dreams
Too late, you tried
Too late, you died

This song is entitled Mikaela.

It is one of those short and sweet yet undeniably unforgettable tracks off Oracle, the 1995 debut album of the Filipino band Sugar Hiccup.

Mikaela contains arguably the best combined use of Melody del Mundo’s ethereal soprano voice and the darkly passionate guitar riffs of Czandro Pollack.

I have been playing this song repeatedly since the previous weekend, along with Moden De and Little D, both also from Oracle.

If you still have not heard anything by Sugar Hiccup, go hunt for a song of theirs – something from Oracle is best.

Tracks off Womb, the second album, are not bad, but the sound no longer has the uniquely dreamy, almost otherworldly, touch so palpable in the first album.

Just

Just don’t listen to me
I lie
Time and again
Until the falsehoods
Fall from my lips
As easy as breathing

Just don’t say a word
I won’t heed you
As always
You ask for nothing
You give everything
Without doubt

Just don’t come any closer
I will push you away
With every moment
I am weaker
I am afraid
That I can no longer hide

Just don’t look at me
I can’t bear the promise in your eyes
That you will fight for me
Without question
When asked to
But we are not just meant to be

Just walk away
Before I hold you back
Just leave
Before I run towards you
Just forget me
Before I learn to love you
Even more

Just stop

If you still do not have a copy of the Trainspotting OST Volume One, get one now.

It combines some of the best rock, alternative and techno tunes of the late 1990s. What’s more, the movie stars Ewan McGregor of Moulin Rouge and Star Wars fame.

I unearthed my Trainspotting album last week because I had to make a non-stop medley out of some tracks from said OST and the Mortal Kombat II: Annihilation soundtrack.

There were two choice tracks out of Trainspotting Volume One: For What You Dream Of (Renaissance Mix Bedrock vs. Kyo) and Born Slippy (Underworld).

The latter one has the heavy, rhythmic percussion beats that would make our local Dinagyang festival choreographers drool. If one is keen and has needle-drop-sensitive headphones, he/she can cut off the vocals at the intro and outro parts of the song and make the whole thing an instrumental (or should we say synthesized?) stand-alone.

At around half past eight this evening, an electrical fire broke out about four blocks away from our house, near the Sacred Heart missionary residence at Quezon Street.

It was a freak incident caused by a short-circuit from a flimsy wire-tap contraption, devised by those who were not legally and properly connected to the Panay Electric Company but source their power straight from the streetlight posts.

To make matters worse, the accident started right next to a firecracker factory. By 9 o’clock, there were huge sparks flying off the burning site, threatening to cross blocks. Not to mention the explosions that were heard throughout the whole of Arevalo whenever more gunpowder would catch fire. Majority of the people in our subdivision got panicky enough to decide to pack their things just in case the whole thing got bigger.

Luckily, the police and the firemen arrived by 9:30 PM and were able to put out the flames and get the victims to the hospital, as there were a few people who got electrocuted.

It was quite an eventful night for me. Minutes right after the fire broke out, I was there close to the site with two other former college schoolmates who lived nearby. Up close, it was blazing hot and reeked sourly of gunpowder, paper and wood. Observers, including ourselves, would retreat a few meters if there were explosions.

At one point, there was a series of big explosions, probably from completed kamara and bilong-bilong, that tripled the size of the fire so suddenly it made people scream and run away.

There were six buildings that got burned down, including the missionary house and the firecracker factory. There would be a follow-up investigation as to how and why the fire started exactly.

Some wire-tapping heads will roll. I am very thankful that the fire did not get to cross blocks, otherwise more individuals will be added to my To-Torture-Mindless-Before-Killing list.

This afternoon, I caught Jean-Claude Van Damme’s co-written starrer Jihad Warriors (The Order) on the silver screen.

Van Damme plays an antique thief/smuggler who searches for his missing father. Along the way, he runs into the deluded Messianic plans of an obscure religious sect’s leader.

Hot action, lukewarm adventure, cold acting and gratuitous torso-baring at its finest.

My only three consuelo de bobos from the flick were:

The fight scenes
Not a surprise, since Van Damme has an innate grace that makes his moves so fluid. This time, his technique veered away from the balletic, acrobatic Colonel Guile full-blast Karatedo and has gotten more close-in, a la Steven Seagal’s Aikido.

Charlton Heston
A veteran Hollywood name makes his rather short-lived appearance as an archaeology professor who is friend to Van Damme’s missing father. Heston had a few classic car-chase lines, among them the likes of “Up yours!” and “Be careful with the car; it’s a classic model.”

The Soundtrack
Almost all of it was performed by the Belgian Symphony Orchestra. The sound was an integration of Western choral and Arab influences.

Here is an Amazon.com movie summary:

In The Order, Van Damme plays a thief of religious artifacts whose archeologist father has found the lost scripture of a mysterious religious order.

When the old man is kidnapped, Van Damme soon finds himself cruising around the twisty streets of Jerusalem, getting into dynamic kickboxing battles while disguised as a Hasidic Jew.

With the help of a beautiful Israeli cop (Sofia Milos), Van Damme uncovers a plot within the religious order that leads to secret catacombs beneath the holy city.

For Father’s Day, I gave my father, in true Star Wars fashion, a mean-looking gold keyholder with a rainbow hologram.

The design is that of one big poppa of a butterfly. What I liked most about the keyholder is the way it glints against and catches the light.

Today was rather busy for almost all the people of Iloilo City, resulting to the commercial areas being so crowded. Aside from the celebration of Father’s Day, June 16 precedes the formal start of classes, unlike last week’s orientation period of sorts.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will be visiting the city tomorrow to listen to the accomplishment reports of the Regional Offices of various government agencies as well as hold a Cabinet meeting with local officials present. Expect hellish traffic and rerouting tomorrow, among other things.

He bids the flowers of Spring
Mount the tree-top that men may raise their eyes
And walk on upwards paths
He bids the moon in Autumn waves be drowned
In token that he visits laggard men
And leads them out from the valleys of despair

The above verse is an excerpt from a character’s invocation in the Noh drama Atsumori, penned by Zeami Motokiyo.

It is the story of a warrior-turned-priest, Rensei, who meets the ghost of a man he had slain in battle, Atsumori. We staged this play in college, part of a four-act, all-Asian extravaganza entitled Dream.

Some time after the breakthrough staging of Dream, our theatre group TAGISAN was invited to join the Iloilo Theatre Company. Along with groups from other universities, we collaborated on an innovative post-modern, Asian-spiced rendition of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral.

The costumes from both Atsumori and Murder in the Cathedral were, naturally, based for the most part on Noh get-ups. Included in our research for authentic inspirations in the outfits were the most notable and intricate masks worn by the characters in the Noh drama to represent a greater metaphor than just their individual persona.

I was able to locate the Noh mask images that I downloaded some time ago:

These are mere icon-size versions as the original images were quite large. From left to right, they are:
· Fusikizo: Youth, vigor
· Okina: Age, wisdom
· Hannya: Demon, primal instincts

Do the last two names listed above sound familiar?

They most certainly do, as both Okina and Hannya are characters from Rurouni Kenshin, also known in some parts of the world as Samurai X. In the series, these men are part of the Onmitsu Oniwabanshuu.

Okina, represented by a Noh mask of a grizzled old man, is the elderly (but still delightfully hale) Nenji Kashiwazaki, mentor figure and fount of wry wisdom. Hannya, the ninja who perpetually hides his visage behind a fearsome horned mask, is likewise represented by a Noh mask of a laughing horned demon/spirit.

The fusikizo mask could be applied to, arguably, Aoshi Shinomori. He became Okashira (leader) of the Oniwanbanshuu at the age of 15 and his actions were pivotal in determining the direction that these ninjas would take in the new Meiji era. In the Noh drama, it is always the youth who takes action, driving the story onwards.

There is something about this triumvirate that rather strongly reminds me of the Freudian Id (Hannya), Ego (Fusikizo) and Super-Ego (Okina). Somewhat interesting parallels, as the Noh began to take form roughly five hundred years ago, way before the word “Psychology” got its meaning that we know of today.

On the other hand, I may just need some more coffee.