iPOD

Wicked is how I would describe my reading shit for the past month. I got hold a book I fancied because of one thing close to my heart, music.

“I Pod, Therefore I am:Thinking inside the white box” by Dylan Jones was a trip through decades of music describing the transitions and fads and the things that really mattered in music. From his early days as a vinyl record collector to tapes, to CDs, MP3s, and itunes and all the techie shit that I do not freaking understand, Jones masterfully drew a time line of music close to my generation.

Glam rock, Roxy music, David Bowie, The Clash, Pistols, new romantic, new wave, punk, and every music culture in the fringes. He explained it just how I would like to tell stories of my experiences experiencing these music that was integral to my development, if there is development, as a human being. his passion towards music was translated in his lifestyle as a music writer in magazines famous in the United Kingdom. He did met thousands of musicians and how it affected him.

His continuous praise of the apple IPOd, Steve Job, and everything that constitute the success of IPOD is however a bit annoying for my comfort. But hell, the book’s title itself would not hide the glorification of the Ipod. It is interesting to note though the story of Steve Jobs and his ways and his genius.

Another point of interest is how Dylan Jones showed the egalitarian nature of the IPOD as it does not discriminate the music it will play once you put it in shuffle mode. Why it reminded me of my days when I keep in secret some music that I listen to like Madonna, Prince, The Romantics and other Top 40 hits because the music one listens too defines the person, then, I think. Punk, New wave, preppy, metalheads, and the bagets type with JC Bonnin and Ramon Christopher dancing to Growing up by Gary Valenciano. But with the Ipod, your defined coolest song can be played besides the music skeleton in your closet.

roller coaster reading

Its been a roller coaster ride with my book reading for the past month as I balance my act doing different things trying to make myself look as busy as possible. But even the intention of looking busy falls short as I still enjoy just lying in bed and sleep after getting tired eating a fully loaded dinner.

 I always promise myself to remember things interesting with the previous two books that I’ve read but it all redounds to nada. I did laugh out loud with the parts when I am supposed to laugh and felt sad when the part of the stories demanded or begged for it. But I am stupid for not remembering memorable lines, or quotes. I envy those who can quote story lines and use it to stress a point or make their explanation more colorful and dramatic. Like when someone compares something to a moon, or something, or a sun, or wind, to that effect.

 Chump Change by David Eddie was realistically written creatively. It mostly covered  how a 30 something male slacker turned corporate then slacker again relates to the contemporary world.  The main character continued to struggle with him self with what life he really likes and what the world expects from him, a well educated, master degree holder slacker. I bought the book for P20. Yes, P20 and was planning to sell it for P40. But after reading it, it will be worth so much more than that price. Maybe P120 will do.

 Hard to find, easy to read, a guy lit, for one, and poignantly funny and heartwarming.

Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins is a freaking rolling on the floor laugh out loud book about Japanese fable characters and a story only Robbins can get away with. A sex-crazed Tanuki, or a badger, who served as a messenger of the gods, seduced and screwed humans that started a lineage that affected their world in a crazy way.

I learned from this book that  Tom Robbins is a south east asian fanatic enjoying the study of southeast asian culture and all the shit. That is crazy! Hope he writes something about the Philippines. That would be the bomb.

Still Life with Woodpekpek

Yum – it’s a fucking love story

Still Life with Woodpecker is not just “a sort of a love story” as suggested by its writer, Tom Robbins. It is a love story through and through as it threads the overflowing love of individuals expressing and experiencing it in different ways and in different circumstances.

The story revolves around two characters that came from opposite sides of the life spectrum in almost all aspects of their mortal life and the itsy bitsy idiosyncrasies of freaky individual characters in the sidelines of their world stage.

Leigh Cheri Furstenberg-Barcelona, a princess whose exiled parents, King Max and Queen Tilli, does not give her much choice but adapt to the American way of life. Leigh Cheri, the exiled princess who learned her life lessons quite early experiencing two abortions and being kicked out from school that led her to a celibate life and offered her service to help mankind through alternative lifestyle and being a future Ralph Nader groupie. (I have always been fascinated with Ralph Nader, the forever alternative candidate for the U.S. presidency. Last time I saw his shit was on MTV typing in an old school typewriter.)

Then there is Bernard Micky Wrangle, a.k.a The Woodpecker. The all-black clad Bomb expert. Anarchist. Outlaw extraordinaire. Lover of life and what ever it has to offer. The two met in Hawaii when Leigh Cheri’s lady-in-waiting Guiletta saw Bernard a.k.a the Woodpecker lit the dynamite fuse that wrecked a portion of the place where they were to attend a hippie cum new age type of conference. It was there where love struck them both melting their cold articulation of what love is into a “Love Kills” segue that made Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen get-off their fucked up world.

The Woodpecker sharply articulates his anarchist view of causing incidents, explosive most of the time, literally, to forward his protest against anything that has to do with what is happening in the world. His dynamite talks and the woodpecker walks. That’s what made Leigh Cheri unlock her chastity belt and offer everything she can offer the outlaw.

The outlaw can light his dynamite stick, shove it up his ass for show, but not to out mind his heart over what he felt and what he wanted, and that is not just Leigh Cheri’s ass, but her heart as well. He pursued her, just as she wanted him to be beside her all the time that led to his arrest. Wanted by the pigs, Bernard wanting to make love stay brought him to the pigsty.

It was during the times when Bernard was in the lam that made Leigh Cheri discover her potential for thinking freaky thoughts and theories by her meditating on a pack of Camel cigarettes. As a sign of her truthful love to the outlaw, she carbon copied her outlawed lover’s jail cell and lived just like a convict inside a cell, not going out, not going in, not going anywhere except inside her mind, and heart.

Just as Princess Leigh Cheri was planning to save Bernard the outlaw, she received a letter from the motherfucker spouting shit on her alleging that she capitalized on their love relationship as love struck people would also lock themselves up in clear imitation of what Leigh Cheri, the heir to the throne of the Furstenberg-Barcelona royalty, did for the sake of love.

A pissed Princess can do crazy stuff and that she did. She went out for her billionaire admirer and asked that a pyramid be made in honor of her before she weds him. Of course it was not a platonic relationship, dimwit. She learned to use her beauty and sex machination to maintain the steady flow of money, and liquid sex juice she deeply yearn to cum from the woodpecker. She was able to separate sex from what love really should be until she learned the death of the woodpecker that was able to leave prison by virtue of her lady-in-waiting Guiletta’s whim to release him. Guiletta by twist of fate was actually the next-in-line to the throne of the small kingdom! She is the older daughter of the King from his chambermaid or something. Anyway, Woodpecker was apparently killed somewhere in Algeria when he tried to follow Leigh-Cheri and rescue her from her vicious tragedy.

But it was not the case. By some dumb luck, the Woodpecker was actually alive and even met Princess inside the deepest chamber of the Pyramid on the eve of her wedding. No shit! Of course they tried to argue about the letter, about the camel pack, about the pyramid, but love, ah, love made them see through each others’ bullshit and made them hug. Then the jilted Arab saw them, and locked them inside the pyramid. They escaped in the end. Thanks to the ever present dynamite the outlaw carries almost wherever he goes.

Tom Robbins’ novels always, always reminds me of Ely Buendia and the Eraserheads’ witticism in writing lyrics to their songs. Almost all the Eheads album had that hippie flair consistent with Tom Robbins’ books. Both Robbins and the Eheads’ playful psychedelic shit bring thoughts of mescaline peyote induced hallucinations. Even Ely Buendia changed his name to Dizzy Ventura for sometime, a very suitable name for a Tom Robbins book. But it’s not about the Eheads, or the music scene. I just don’t know how to end this spiel, so here it goes motherfuckers.