Babbling Point

:) A WASTED REVIEW * * * * * ** * * Check out Randy Lander's review of WASTED at The Fourth Rail . Astig! Congrats Gerry! Now, if only we can find a way to give WASTED major distribution. (By the way, for those living abroad, copies of WASTED can be ordered from Cold Cut Distributions .) WASTED is still available in comic book stores and any magazine shop that sells PULP and MTV INK. Just ask the sales girls because WASTED usually ends up in some upper shelf or bottom drawer. If they say that don't have it, INSIST THAT THEY DO!!!

:) IT'S AN AD, AD, AD WORLD! “Sanely applied advertising could remake the world.” --Stuart Chase “Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” --Stephen Leacock “I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all.” --Ogden Nash “Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century. “ --Marshall McLuhan “You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough.” --Joseph E. Levine “Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission. “ -- Fred Allen “Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” -- Stephen Butler Leacock “Advertising promotes that divine discontent which makes people strive to improve their economic status.” --Ralph S. Butler “Advertising is the foot on the accelerator, the han...

- (Here's something I wrote last month but didn't get to post because our workload went completely insane. Which is what's happening now and I have nothing new to say expect work-- which I can't talk about because it's all top secret-hush-hush-blah-blah.) Good morning. It is exactly 11:11am Dino once told me that every time you look at a digital clock and see it’s 11:11am, it’s a sign that aliens are trying to send you a message. Then someone else said if you look at a digital clock and it reads 1:43 it means you’re falling in love. But sometimes 11:11am just means you’re late for work and 1:43 means you’re really, really late for work. I’m supposed to be working but just wanted to give my fingers some stretching exercises and hopefully get my brain going. On the way to work, I kept falling asleep behind the wheel. Took me an hour to get to work. At 2am, it would probably take me just 15 minutes to get to work. Then again, it’s a bad sig...

+ THINGS THAT GO BUMP DURING LATE NIGHT When we were kids, we used to watch THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JOHNNY CARSON and LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN on the very snowy FEN17. I guess that's were I got the crazy idea that I could be a talk show host when I grew up. Years later, when I got gigs to interview celebritries for glossy magazines, I always imagined that I was behind a desk and that my mini-tape recorder was a mircophone. That was the closest I got to fulfulling my crazy dream. Well that, and everytime I got the chance to be the emergency co-host of Jessica Zafra. Of course, I'm still waiting for some sexy celeb to flash me. That dream has yet to happen.

+ BLOCKED Deadline for the stories is 12 days away and I still have no idea what to write. Made worse by this ad I'm supposed to be writing but I can't seem to get past the instructions to "make headline bigger" and "make headline more direct". Two very simple instructions which I can't seem to bring myself to doing. I should. And move on to the next ad. Move on to writing my stories. But I'm stuck. Help. There. Just wanted to say all that before I go back to writing this ad. BIGGER HEADLINE. MORE DIRECT. Sure. Okay. No problem.

:) What I Should've Done Many summers ago, I fell in love with a girl who I thought was the girl of my dreams. Towards the end of May, the girl of my dreams met the guy of her dreams. (To my surprise, it wasn't me.) The night she told me about, I stood outside the gate of her house and grovelled to be let inside. (Well, it was more like whimper to be let inside.) I beeped her using my Motorola StarTac Analog celfone. She didn't reply. So, I sat down the sidewalk of her street and called up Mark and begged for an explanation why the hell the girl of my dreams would leave me. We talked till the battery of the StarTac died. (Good thing I had a spare battery-- which was the side of a cigarette case.) How I wish I had seen RICHARD CURTIS' LOVE ACTUALLY before that devasting summer night. I should've come up with a plan-- a gimmick that she'd remember and make me oh so endearing, instead of being oh so revolting because of all my grovell...

:) !Click! Eddieboy's excellent photographs are now online. How I wish he'd also upload the pictures from Club Dredd. And I still think Karen should write about the glory days (and nights) of that club and call it THE BOOK OF DREDD.

:) SUPER STUFF Check out the Maritess' online store ! Your favorite, friendly OFW is back! Lots of crazy little merch that will help a whole lot of people. All proceeds will go to the Save Bindlestiff fund . For more info on Bindlestiff please go to http://www.bindlestiffstudio.org .

+ a clean, well-lighted internet cafe 3:20am I'm in an internet cafe. No one in this place is surfing the net. Well, maybe two or three more people are checking out Friendster. Everyone else is playing some netgame. (Mostly Counter-Strike, so every is yelling and shouting that they've been shot, need back-up, need more money to keep on playing.) How I wish there were a a 24-hour internet cafe where the kids didn't come to play games. That it would be a real cafe with real coffee. Where they didn't play loud hiphop music. A Starbucks with internet access. I'd love that. Can't we have that? Unfortunately, such a thing won't make money in this city, which is why every so-called internet cafe has become gaming central. Nothing wrong with that. The rest of us poor surfers just have the suffer the explosions and shouting matches while checking mail and blogging. I've been driving around. Ended up here. Try...

WWW :) Alright! I got in Ellis' World Wide Wednesday !

:( HAUNTED BY HER And your skin, oh yeah your skin and bones Turn into something beautiful D'you know? For you I bleed myself dry For you I bleed myself dry COLD PLAY "YELLOW" Can somebody please tell me which female vocalist covered Cold Play's "Yellow"? I keep hearing on JAM 88.3FM, but the DJ never gives an intro or extro to it. I tried to Google it, but I don't seem to be typing in the right keywords. Who is she???

:) THE CUTTING-EDGE KID Check it out, baby! Brandie's ads got featured in the new edition of Jim Aitchison's CUTTING-EDGE ADVERTISING . "A new full-colour edition of the world's most highly regarded book on print advertising. Following the success of the first edition, Cutting Edge Advertising II has become the standard global text on print creativity for professionals, marketers and students. Dozens of new cutting edge print advertisements have been included from the US, UK, Australia and Asia. But that's not all. For the first time, readers will get to see the latest work from the Philippines, South Africa, China and Eastern Europe."

:) MEOW! NOCTURNA , a world in which hundreds of the most diverse creatures work to create the night as we all know it. One night Tim goes to the orphanage rooftop and discovers that his favorite star has disappeared, and unfortunately it's not going to be the last one. The trailer looks wonderful. For a moment, I thought Tim Burton made this animated feature. Hope a copy of it finds its way here.

+ D-DAY Five years ago, my dad passed away. He was named Salvador because he saved the life of his parents. During the tail end of the war, his parents were caught by Japanese soldiers. At that time, we was still in his mother's womb. They were released because his dad begged the soliders to let them go, so that he could take care of his pregnant wife. They escaped to a island, a small fishing village, and that was where my dad was born. His name was Salvador but his friends called him Buddy, and truly, he was a great friend to many people. My dad was a workaholic. (Which probably explains why I'm typing this in the office at 1:44am) We only saw him on weekends. During our dad's wake, Brandie pointed out that my dad help bring us up despite being absent from the house. My dad was a TV man, a broadcaster, a producer, a dreamer. He brought in SESAME STREET and ELECTRIC COMPANY and taught us how to read and write. He brought in shows like WONDER WOMAN, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR M...

:) SHE'S BAAAACK! "What if nobody else reads this blog? Ah, does it really matter?, I ask myself. Well, does it matter if no one else hears a sigh in the dark, or a giggle in an open park, or, in a somewhat similar vein, a fart in an empty elevator? They all feel good nevertheless." -- Petite Hey Mrs. G! Welcome back to blog-land. :) And here's something Petite started couple of years ago but never quite finished: Chapter Four A fat drop of oil-slicked rain fell on Michelle’s upturned face. She wiped it off impatiently, her eyes fixed on the hulking shadow of the EDSA Central MRT station. From this distance, crazy shapes seemed to be dancing on the station’s walls. Michelle walked faster. It was 10 minutes to midnight. She wanted to catch Gani before the night’s skooging began. If not, then she’d have to wait until the next day. By then it would be too late. She took the steps two at a time. A film of perspiration formed on her forehead b...

+ SPACE TIME WARP Last Saturday, went to Cecille’s birthday party. She just turned 23. The party was held at the lanai of her house, which had red brick walls and pillars. In the middle of the lanai was a pool table. All of this reminded me of the house we left five years ago. As I watched Cecille and her friends laugh and talk about movies, comic books, their first jobs, and college days, I could not help but I flashback to seven year ago and remember the nights we spent on that lanai in La Vista and just talked until the sun rose. Back then we were so energized. Optimistic. Invulnerable. Unstoppable. No dream was too stupid. We had plans to conquer the world. As the bottles of beer and vodka piled on the table, I stood up, felt the buzz hit me one more time, and said I really had to go. Cecille said I had to stay and wait til the sun rise. I smiled, shook my head, and just felt really tired and old, old compared to the lot of them. Before I left, I felt like a time...

+ Me, Myself, and Budjette I Googled myself again. (So, sue me!) And I just discovered I seem to be some computer programmer-hacker-dude. (Kinda like Neo.) BUDJETTE'S MEMBER PROFILE: I've been a member since Jul 8, 2002, and have logged in 177 times. I last logged in on Fri, Feb 13, 2004. While in the forums, I have voted 0 posts helpful, letting my fellow members know their posts have helped me with my work. (If you feel a post has been helpful to you, click on the link at the bottom of their post to cast a vote for "TipMaster Of The Week". You don't need to be the one who asked the question to vote.) Below are the "Forums I Participate In". Feel free to click the forum links below to join me in these forums. Of course, I really wonder when I have time to do all this programming. All along, I thought I was the only "Budjette" in this universe. And on other days I seem to find the time to be a psychologist . Click and se...

So, Joss "Buffy" Whedon will write the new mutant title THE ASTONISHING X-MEN and Bryan "X-Men the Movie" Singer with write ULTIMATE X-MEN. With all these big shots taking over writing chores in comic books, how are newbies like me supposed to get our big break?! Of course that won't stop me from picking up those titles. I'm really a big "Buffy" fan, but I did like their musical episode. Maybe we'll end up with X-Men the Musical?

_ PHANTOM 101 Migs posted in the the comments board that I should a backgrounder on THE FLYING PHANTOM. For those interested, here's the gist of it... THE FLYING PHANTOM first appeared in the pages of COMICS 101. We then revealed his secret origin in ALAMAT 101. (Will try to upload those pages in the Alamat site... umm... paging Jojo!) The adventures of the Flying Phantom are in set in World War II. The Hollywood way to sell him would be: "He's the Rocketeer and Hellboy rolled into one!" In our grand plan, the Flying Phantom would have fought Nazi vampires and super-men, giant robots, and zombie stormtroopers. There were even plans for an Angel Ace / Flying Phantom cross-over. (I have the sketches here somewhere.)

+ HAPPY BLOODY DAY TO ALL YOU YOUNG LOVERS OUT THERE Recylcing rejected ads... pieced together by me and Brandie... for two friends who are about to spend the first Valentine's apart.