The Right Kind of Famous

02 January 2013

I want to be famous.

Who doesn't want to be famous? Perhaps people under the witness protection program. Me, I want to be famous like nobody else has ever become. I want to be famous for everything I have ever done and anything I will ever do. Even buying groceries. I want people to be like "Oh my god! Ernest Angeles buys San Miguel Beer, Chicken, and Fried Chicken breading! Then he rents Die Hard! I totally eat beer and eat fried chicken while watching Bruce Willis action movies too!"

I don't want to be just any famous guy. I have listed down four qualities I want my kind of fame to have.

First, I want it to be Big. I want everybody to know my name and my face. I would be walking into a train station and all CCTV cameras would suddenly point to me. My face would be in billboards across EDSA and the North Luzon Expressway. I would be endorsing everything. Even feminine wash. It would be like "Ernie Angeles likes your vagina to smell like MAYAMAN Feminine wash, now with formaldehyde!" and people would buy it, even men would but it. I want there to be action figures of me and toy geeks would be like "Yeah, the new Hasbro Ernie Angeles release is pretty cool, it even comes with a computer chair stand and different wig attachments but I still like the v1 release, the face was more realistic and they used better material." I want people to know me so much that figures of speech have been made about me like "He ernie-d the pavement." which would mean he drank lots of beer or something. I want my name and my face to be everywhere.

Next, I want it to be Lasting. I don't want to be just a fad. I want to be famous like Shakespeare! After the initial attention has died down people will start studying my life and work in schools. There would be chapters in history books entitled "From the Early Post-Modern period to the Rise of Ernie". Hundreds of years after my death, preschoolers will be making dioramas from scenes of my life. Kids will be like "Yeah, this is called the Redefinition of Awesomeness." and other kids would go "Dude, everybody does Redefinition of Awesomeness dioramas, mine is The Mastering of Megalodons." School buildings will be named after me, I would be in every currency of every country. People would name their children after me and people would be like "Dude, that's a cool name."

Thirdly, I want it to be Annoying. I want to be so famous that I would regret being famous. I want to come to a point in my life where I could say to people that "Yeah, fame isn't everything it's hyped up to be. It's fucking annoying." I want to have to buy a new car and house every week because people keep finding out where I live and shouting outside holding up signs saying how much they love me. I want to not be able to watch a TV show without a mention of my name or seeing my face in the commercials and I would just cut-off all connection to the outside world because there is too much of me. I want to have to have a personal chef and personal farm because all the food packaging in grocery stores has my name or face on it and it sickens me. I want to be so famous that I will want to time travel and beat myself up at this moment of my life that I made this blog post and shout "YOU HAVE NO IDEA! YOU CURSED ME! YOU CURSED US! YOU CURSED FUTURE YOU. YOU FOOL!"

Lastly, I want my fame to be Significant. I don't want to be famous for something stupid like a youtube video or saying "Lady Arwen, we cannot delay." I want to be famous for world changing shit. Like I wrote a book or something and people were like "OH MY GOD, THIS IS THE BEST THING WRITTEN EVER. THE WORLD HAS TO CHANGE TO MAKE IT WORTHY TO BE WHAT CONTAINS THIS BOOK," or something similar. I want people to cry so much in my wake that the sea level would rise. I to be so significant that my grave would always have visitors, every fucking day. The visitors would bring their children to my grave and say things like "Back in my day, we used to worry a lot. We used to have war and lots of unnecessary violence. evil, sadness and bad stuff. This man, this man made sure you won't have that." Yeah, I want the thought of me to bring tears to people's eyes, even those who never actually met me.

Yeah, Big, Lasting, Annoying, Significant, that's the kind of fame I want.
I want to be even more famous than god.
In short, I want to be BLAS Famous.
WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
BLASFAMOUS! Get it? HAHAHAHAHA! I'm a fucking genius.
Yeah the whole thing was  a lead up to that. It was wonderful. Feel free to ignore everything else except the joke. WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Ah crap, I'm funny.

Woooh, HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA! Blasfamous, still can't stop laughing.

Suddenly, Friendship

31 December 2012

Contrary to popular belief, I do not seek out to make new friends. I don't even think that works. I merely enjoy starting pleasant conversations with the familiar strangers I encounter in my everyday routine. I believe classes are better when I'm sitting next to someone I can whisper my side comments to, exchanging small talk with shopkeepers pierce the dullness of the commercial experience, and people are fun and interesting if you give them a shot.

That is the main difference between me and most of my friends. I am willing to give people a chance to enter my life. For example I was playing Magic: The Gathering, a trading card game, with two of my friends at our usual hang-out when a guy  comes up to us and asks if he could play with us sometime. I was, of course, happy to see a guy come up to us like that. I asked him for his name, told him we usually play Commander format instead of the Standard format. He was happy to see new people he could play with. My friends told him about the Hobbyist club that has a booth at the AS walk and maybe he could join them if he wanted to have people to play with. He then thanked us and left, we assumed, to sign-up for the hobbyist club.

"Nice guy," I said as he walked away.

"Yeah, good thing we thought to point him to the hobbyists."

That's how it works, I had absolutely no idea that being approached by a stranger asking if he could play with us every once in a while was at all making my friends uncomfortable. I was willing to welcome him in, but the rest of my gang is exclusivist. It's a wonder we ever became friends.

But that's the thing with friendships, you can't make them. They just happen.

Friendship, as I've sometimes discussed with Tinek Olivar, cannot be declared. I used to do that. I declared people my friends. I had no regard for who I liked better, friends are just friends. People I hang out with are friends. People I see often are friends. I was a friendship-whore. Later, I realized that those connections I called friendships weren't strong enough to endure even the smallest hurdle. Friendship, I realized is more than that. But it remains very simple.

I am friends with my friends because we mutually enjoy each other's presence and we have shared a significant number of experiences to test that truth. Our friendship is not an arbitrary title we have bestowed upon each other because we see each other often and we hang out a lot. It is something you did not realize has already happened and the label falls on it like a formality. Suddenly, friendship.

I recognize that what I had just stated is a definition and that's uncomfortable for my good friend Tinek who dislikes defining things. I like defining things. I like placing labels on things because it comes with responsibility. Now that I have people labeled as friends I must do what friends do. But a friend won't ask for anything except patience and presence.

Right now I have a lot of friends, real ones. Some new friends who's bonds are fresh, exciting, always fun. Some older friendships, scarred by past conflicts within the group, enduring and soldiering on. And then there's those that have been through the fire, tested. Friendships that stay together because we have forgone the things society requires of friendships and just did what we thought works. We didn't need to be with each other all the time, space cannot separate us. We hold no "bonds" we just all like being together. No responsibilities to each other other than what each declares to himself.

I love my friends.
2012 has been a good year for me for the most part because of my friends, old and new.

That's why 2013 doesn't scare me. I know whatever it is I have with these guys cannot be separated by distance.

To friendship and a great new year.

Urban

22 March 2012

Urban

My heart is asphalt and concrete

Poured in a frame of steel

With windows of glass and plastic

Painted pink and white and teal

Bound by wires of copper

Pumping gasoline and flood

Through black veins of rubber

Spewing smoke and light and crud.

Hello, Lady Forever

15 September 2011

This is my first attempt at a Shakespearean Sonnet, inspired (or at least patterned in a way) from Shakespeare's Sonnet 104. I know the iambs aren't perfect, please forgive it this time, it's a first draft :)), I'll get the hang of writing with the stress of syllables in consideration as I write this stuff (I hope). This was originally intended as a class assignment now it also is signal of my return to dipping my foot in the cold sea that is poetry.

Hello, Lady Forever

 

You shall not age like leaves do fall at fall.

My eye sees you eternal and divine.

For in the land time did and will take toll,

But to your grace all beauty did align.

Three seasons that does not seem that much cold,

Nor did summers that passed burn like before.

Gone is the beauty of nature I’m told.

Those lovely pearls have fallen on your shores.

The land is cloaked by your eternal face.

The shadows will and shall live above life.

Are you the gift god made just to disgrace.

The very earth he cut with his own knife?

For pretty things fade ugly at your shade.

You killed all other beauty God has made.

Some Stupid Thing I Probably Shouldn't Be Doing But It's Done So What the Hell

04 May 2011

Because I'm so smitten

And I'm done admitting

I'm Writing this song about you

As I sit on the porch

As I've done before

I really have nothing to do

Then I think about you

As I'm known to do

Yeah really this is nothing new

Because I'm so smitten

And I'm done admitting

I'm really so smitten about you

I'm a hopeless romantic

That's sunk like Titanic

Yes I know how stupid that rhyme is

But I'm can't help myself

Maybe no one can help

Maybe you'd like to give it a shot

Because I'm just so smitten

For third time admitting

That I can't help but keep loving you

You've said it I know

I have to let go

To be frank all my friends say it too

I wish I just could

I know that I should

But what can I do it's just true

I'm so goddamn smitten

I do wish I wasn't

Because I know you can't love me too.

Ang cute mo pala kapag mahal kita.

01 April 2011

A Toast with Myself: In Defense of Drinking Alone

30 March 2011

Somewhere, somehow, somebody decided that it was not a good idea for people to be drinking alone. That drinking alone is a sure sign of teetering on the edge or deep emotional issues that need be resolved immediately by interventions or, at the very least, drinking with friends. Surely you know of this? I've been getting a lot of smack for my habit of drinking alone (and the sometimes preference of it over drinking with friends), people have been suggesting I get therapy, calling me an alcoholic and similar stuff, and I don't mind the concern, I just don't think there is anything to be concerned about.

This frowning upon drinking alone may be because alcohol is generally viewed as the social lubricant, and having nothing to lubricate but still pouring out the lubricant just doesn't make sense to some people. In this society if you drink alone you must be depressed, or troubled, or downright pathetic, which is sad since it need not be like that at all. Now I won't deny that I do drink alone when I'm depressed, but depression isn't the main reason for drinking alone. The reason I drink alone is because I like being alone and I like drinking, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing them together.

Whenever friends tell me I shouldn't be drinking alone I ask them why they think so and the answers can't get any lousier; "It's friggin' emo.", "It's not gonna help you, man", "It'll make you sadder". Now, again the presumption is that drinking alone is done when you are sad, solitude is not the same as sad! When one drinks alone one finds an opportunity to converse with oneself similar to the way we converse when drinking with a group, the alcohol lubricates the internal lines of communication too.

When I drink alone I am not required to keep my end of a conversation, talk about something I have no great interest for, pretend to care about some pitiful problem of some guy who thinks drinking with friends means getting advice while drunk. Drinking alone is about relinquishing the problems and loosening up, letting shit go and just relaxing. Since I talk a lot when with my friends, drinking alone is when my mind finds no need to engage anyone in a conversation.

Now I can go on and tell you how to drink alone or what to drink when alone but it won't really matter, drinking alone is about being with yourself and you should decide what that should be like. Personally I prefer an ice-cold beer and a bag of Cheetos, but every now and then a man would want some whiskey on the rocks.

Now cut the people who drink alone some slack, there's nothing wrong with it, it's just prejudice. To say that drinking alone is a sure sign of alcoholism is AA bullshit. First of all it considers us powerless over the "drug" then telling us how we should relinquish our concerns to a "higher power", we are not powerless against alcohol, we're not even alcoholics! Has anybody even considered the reason for drinking alone? How about simple appreciation of alcohol? Doesn't that count? How about 'time for myself'? The taboo of drinking alone has been intensified because of these beliefs.

Ernest Hemingway has been quoted; "I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was Chateau Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company" it indeed is. But it's  better than drinking with an actual person, the bottle doesn't jabber or judge, the bottle doesn't mind if you get drunk as shit, and you don't have to worry about who is gonna drive the bottle home. Go ahead, drink alone, you are perfectly sane.

"I take my wine jug out among the flowers
to drink alone, without friends.

I raise my cup to entice the moon.
That, and my shadow, makes us three."

(Poem From: Drinking Alone by Li Po)