Saturday Fun

April 12-18

Magic Morning

Ice Age

Iron Lady

The Gunslinger

Magic Morning

March 1, 2014

Saturday

"Something stronger than the moon above..."

I went home seven hours after I got off from work. The song, from the soundtrack of my life, was playing on the radio.

It's the start of the weekend that I intend to make meaningful.

Somebody asked why did I treat seven people for breakfast.

"Karma," I said. "I'm doing good to offset the bad things I've done in the past,"

Just like glimpses of the secrets of the universe, it just happened like it's a random, isolated event though I knew it wasn't. There's no such thing.

Some of my office colleagues were going out for breakfast after our graveyard shift. They invited me and my buddies to come. I don't have to be a telepath to know they'd asked me to treat them.

"Sure," I said.

It was also a test. I wanted to see who would share, since it's pay day anyway, and who would take advantage. What I saw is what I've predicted. I'm blessed blessed with the gift of clear discernment of character.

I haven't lost my touch, I thought.

"Johnny can afford it because he has no responsibilities," one of them said.

I found that remark exteremely disgusting it made my blood boil. But I kept my cool and forced myself to ignore it. These people don't know anything about me yet they're convinced they knew everything.

I have a lot of responsibilities that I don't tell people for the simple reason that confiding to them is tantamount to an invition to intrude into my personal life. The inner sanctum of my soul is forbidden ground.

After they all left, I went back to the office building, confirming with my buddies JC and NJ about our boys night-out tomorrow evening in Lapu-Lapu after I finish my short film on Mactan Shrine.

My plan was to watch cable movies on the pantry while resting before going to the gym. When I came in, some employees on their break were watching some fashion reality show. I was glad when they left and I switched the TV to Ice Age Meltdown on HBO.

I was laughing with the many funny lines and scenes like when Sid was kidnapped by a tribe of sloths and worshipped as the Fire God-- then was thrown down a volcano as a sacrifice.

One of my favorite scenes is the vultures in a visually spectacular production like a Broadway musical.

"Food, glorious food..."

I can also identify with how Manny felt when he thought he was the only mammoth left as the ground beneath them continued to melt.

I know the emotional abyss of being alone in the world. Somehow, you want to believe that there's someone like you somewhere out there. It's what gives you hope even as the world as you know it is being destroyed right before your very eyes. 

Ice Age Meltdown

I'm not afraid of growing old.

Only those with low breeding and inferior character make fun of age.

But I'd rather die young than suffer the mental torture of Alzheimer's as Margaret Thatcher did in Iron Lady, which was the next feature.

I hope that my mind can transcend it if it comes. I can only hope. Destiny hides even from clairvoyants.

"You are not Prime Minister anymore," her daughter had to remind her," and Dad is dead."

But how many of us really understand that we can never again return to the world where we belong?

"It used to be about doing something," Thatcher said in a moment of clarity. "Now it's about trying to be somebody!"

"You want to change the country?" a friend challenged her. "Then lead it!"

The Iron Lady

I have no desire for fame or political power. I can take center stage in a musical but not in an arena that breeds betrayal and compromises of principles. In that sense, I will not say I'm a leader, though I've had evidences to the contrary throughout my life. But I'm nobody's follower either. I like to think that I still retain the glowing embers of the valiant idealism of my youth.

Yet, if I want to change the world, I will find another way, away from the eyes that see only prejudice. I've lost my faith in humanity. When all is said and done, it all amounts to nothing. I may sound cynical, but the label is not mine, and I'll be damned if I apologize for that.

I seem to be going through a stage of evolution in the past week, I texted my friend CB as my text message became the next chapter in my saga. I told him I was in the gym around noon after my movie marathon, my first workout in over a week.

It's crazy how random slices of ideas you haven't really thought about suddenly come together to form a vision, like pieces of a puzzle. In a flash, you come face to face with a new crossroad in life, a new direction into a more alien landscape, a portal into an alternate reality.

I just finished Stephen King's The Gunslinger last night, I went on in my text message epic.

I'm on a higher quest than Roland's pursuit of The Man In Black. There have been times when my journey has taken me, if at times in metaphor, to wastelands enchanted by evil and ghoulish towns possessed by religious zeal as scorching as the eternal fires of hell.

There are forces more ancient than this world, more malevolent than the human mind could possibly conceive.

"It will be sad to see you broken and set into a blind path," the teacher Cort told Roland. "But the world has moved on."

"I don't like people," says Jake, the young boy who came from a land as strange as that world. "They fuck me up." Same here.

The Gunslinger confronted the succubus who had seduced him and Jake.

"God damn you!"

"No god damned me," said the demon. 

Stephen King's

"The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower"

(Read February 28, 2014)

Roland: Huggybear

Jake: Freddie Highmore

The Man In Black: Tommy Lee Jones

Alice: Julianne Moore

Brown:  Taylor Kitsch

Cort: Michael Chiklis

Kennerly: Tom Wilkinson

Sheb: Donnie Wahlberg

Sylvia Pittson: Shannon Beiste

Roland's Father: Kevin Costner

Roland's Mother: Miranda Otto

Marten The Enchanter: Christian Bale

The Man Touched By God: Donald Sutherland

The Young Roland: Daniel Radcliffe

"In a world that's full of strangers..."

Got To Believe In Magic

David Pomeranz

[Theme from Zapped]

"But I don't think time is gonna heal this broken heart," went the next song on this inexplicable day. It's more significant to me, one that brings me poignant memories of lives gone by. "No I don't see how it can when it's broken all apart..."

Broken-Hearted Me

Anne Murray

"A million miracles could never stop the pain,

I put all the pieces together again..."