stories from the middle earth press room

what you gonna do with all that junk?

hahaha. you gotta love or hate alanis morisette for doing this:

this is a brilliant way to revive a slumbering career (err, since jagged little pill, that is). now, she's the talk of the internet sphere just because of this "home-made" video.

got this article about the parody here.

"Alanis Morissette truly knows the definition of ironic. It's hard not to howl over her sniper-sharp parody of "My Humps." What has made the rap-hit-turned-piano-ballad an Internet sensation is the hysterical video Morissette shot on the fly. Decked out in hottie attire, she shakes her junk with a barely concealed smile as she vamps with a pack of Blues Brothers-esque playas. The music for "My Humps" is completely reconstructed, so you don't know what you're in for until you catch the lyric. Morissette's piercing voice gives drivel like "What chu gonna do with all that breast inside that shirt?" a faux depth you never thought possible. We wondered what the Recording Academy was thinking when the Black Eyed Peas won a Grammy Award for this song, so Alanis, thank u for doling out a little justice." —Christa L. Titus

read another one from Yahoo.

Alanis' 'Humps' could save her career

27/04/2007

Splash

It's a witty joke that has turned into an internet sensation - and could be a career saver.

Alanis Morissette appears to have been having some easy fun when she recorded a brilliant satire of the Black Eyed Peas' hit 'My Humps'.

The slow, serious-sounding piano treatment wildly highlights the shallow lyrics about a woman loved for her "humps" - and the video also parodies how singer Fergie cavorted in her band's video for the song.

Morissette's video, costing less than US$2,000 and shot on a home video camera, soon became a word-of-mouth sensation.

And now it has become the biggest hit on internet video site YouTube, attracting an astonishing 5.5 million hits.

Even more amazingly, it could now completely give her a second stab at success and completely revitalize her flagging career.

Commentator Patrick Goldstein said: "For Morissette, this video may transform her persona as much as taking a part in Pulp Fiction did for John Travolta."

'My Humps' was always widely mocked for its silly lyrics, such as: "The boys they wanna sex me, they always standing next to me, always dancing next to me, tryin' a feel my hump, hump."

By slowing down the song - stripping it of its sexy bassline - Alanis brings even greater emphasis to what she s singing, adding a powerful melancholy to the song.

The video, in which she also dresses up and thrusts her body around as Fergie does in the Peas' video, adds to the dark feelings.

While it may have been a simple satire, Alanis cover has clearly struck a chord - both with fans and critics.

read more here.

--

ah i remember miss morissette...nagasgas siya sa akin in highschool. loved her first album to bits. my blocmate in college associated alanis with me because i was forever singing her songs during our freshman year.

am currently transferring my entries from my old blog to a new address for posterity's sake. blog-city may delete it any time although the administrators said the deadline is until december 31, 2007. well, uunahan ko na sila.

it's fun to read my old entries, especially the ecstasy of owning a digital camera for the first time. hehehe.

august 28, 2003

"since i am a first-time owner of a compact camera that's so easy to use, i've become a photo-shooting maniac on the loose. have taken oble's front and butt. have intruded in my officemates' reveries. have taken photos of their butts. have shot movies while they slept during lunch break. this only proves that i am a harrased yuppie-part-time student and the only respite from my brain-draining exertions is this: intruding into other people's business with my stupid little camera. oh well, i will grow out of it in a week or two.

blasted blog. how can i attach pictures here?" -- luthien

hardiharhar. siguro ganyan din ako uli pag nakabili ako ng DSLR. woohoo.

then there's this entry about this person whom i hated so much in my former life -- este -- office.

posted Tuesday, 9 September 2003

"woe to you who think you hold the power to enslave people! your time will come! you will turn ugly and your marlboro-polluted lungs will give up on you! you will choke to death and you will turn into an ugly hue of chartreuse (like that ugly uniform of ours). your face will be uglier than the decomposing face of michael jackson.

you're at it again. you think you're the boss but you're not. you order us around, burdening us with your work. gaddamit, it's supposed to be your work and you have the nerve to pass it to us! then you do nothing but smoke yourself to death. i hope you die. i'll help you shove those marlboros down your throat .

the only reason why i am holding back and prevent myself from peppering you with sweet and tart words is because you have the access to my DTR and accomplishment reports...

but one of these days i'll be able to kick your silly big ass." -- luthien

she came to check out my multiply, which is nothing but a site for my trash that i have to get rid of. the funny thing about multiply is that it shows the site owner who checked out the site. no "view anonymously" option like in friendster.

so i tried checking if there is any way somebody can be led to this blog by searching my name on google.

bingo! turns out searching my name on google would lead you here and to my old blog. i don't know why it does but i changed my email address registered with blog.com and blog-city hoping that the change would keep my blogs from popping in google when my name is searched. it's interesting to note that my blogs are the first two entries that google would give the searcher and the rest are followed by my articles from the online version of the paper.

so much for blogging anonymously.

and yes, qvenx, her nose is still there to haunt you.

---

been working real hard the past few days that i just literally fall back on the bed and sleep when i come home. yesterday was the worst: robinsons galleria was already closing for the night and i have yet to hit the send button for the last article i wrote for the paper. some real emergency for another beat -- it was not even my beat. the reporter assigned to that beat was not even responding to my boss' messages so ako ang napagbalingan. akk...that left me drained until this evening.

the heat was killing me and kept me in a very foul mood the whole day. it didn't help that one PR firm gave us wrong directions to the event i had to cover and had to walk under the reeeaaalllly hot sun (36 degrees) at 11.30 in the morning trying to look for the venue. the one they gave us was still a construction site.

i gave the PR people a piece of my sizzling hot mind.

i'm usually nice to PR people because they make our lives easier and i am extra nice to people who have jobs that i hope i wouldn't have -- in the future or even faraway future.

but that was one rare time that i got royally pissed off with PR people.

i hope i wouldn't encounter raving lunatics like me when it's my turn to be a PR person.

even though i am oceans away from virginia, USA, i was affected by the video aired by NBC -- the video of the South Korean immigrant that killed more than 30 students and faculty member.

"The reaction of others was anger, not only at Cho for meticulously premeditating his rampage, but also at the media for airing his last recorded words and images.

Meredith Vieira, co-host of NBC's "Today" show, said some victims' relatives had canceled interviews with the network "because they were very upset with NBC for airing the images," the AP reported..."

lifted from CNN's Students angered, disgusted by gunman's manifesto

CNN may have pointed a finger at NBC for not practicing editorial responsibility for airing the chilling videos and photos but -- oh well -- sila din naman eh.

what's scary here is that killer Cho Seung-Hui was inspired by the Columbine shooting, CNN said.

'Cho also discussed "martyrs like Eric and Dylan," MSNBC.com reported, apparently referring to Columbine High School gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.'

and who knows how many scary and demented americans may emulate Cho after this media overkill.

another reason why i am opting to stay here and raise my kids the pinoy way.

and based from the comments from this youtube video south koreans (and east asians) would be suffering from intense racial discrimination from now on.

buti na lang di pinoy yun. naku pag nagkataon, kawawa naman yung mga kamag-anak natin dun.

umm...teka, maraming pinoy na singkit at mukhang east asian. kasama na mga kamag-anak ko dun. *hihit ng hangin*

BIGOTRY IN MEDIA

and look at this article from msnbc:

Loving the U.S., And Hating It Too
For South Koreans, the story of Cho Seung-Hui underscores a nation's ambivalent relationship with America

as the people who commented to the article said:

"you've got to be kidding me! The fact that this kid came from South Korea is about as relevant as the fact it happened at Va Tech instead of LSU. What's important is that 32 people died and worse this was pretty much planned all so that whatever message Cho Seung Hui wanted to send us would be taken seriously. I don't know what disgusts me more, the media whose trying to find a scapegoat to blame it on or the comments I've been reading about kick out all the immigrants. That would give the country back to the Native Americans, but they're about as endangered as the buffalo and the bald eagle. Unfortunately nothing could have been done to prevent the diaster (locking down that campus would have been as futile as an aircraft carrier stopping a tsunami) But if 33 people are dead at least they're families deserve to know why they died and unfortunately that means figuring what the you and the our in that manifesto of his. God help us what are we humans coming to!" - Des Stevens (4/19/2007 at 5:08:26 AM)

This article is misleading/illogical and seems like a propaganda to raise hatred towards Koreans and immigrants.(which is funny for I believe the author of this article is an immigrant, maybe even of Korean descent?) The Real Issue is not of immigrants or the relationship between the United States and other countries, but of GUN CONTROL and violence in society of today. The largest problem was that such a mentally and emotionally disturbed individual did not get enough treatment when needed and even worse was able to get a hold of a gun and infiltrate through society so easily. This could've easily been any nationality immigrant or not. We should use this as an example of what the consequences are when the use and possession of guns are not controlled properly. The issue of immigrant children being caught in between two different cultures WAS NOT THE ISSUE here. I am not saying this is not a problem, it can well be, but this cannot be pointed as the main determining factor of why such an atrocity has happened. - hee J (4/19/2007 at 8:29:12 AM)

and bigotry in the media surfaces.

i wonder why daniel smith (i cannot remember the f*cking guy's name) and the rest of the american population here doesn't suffer from the same kind of discrimination and bigotry here when nicole was raped and these americans were put to trial *luthien oozing with sarcasam*

for once, tayo naman ang mag discriminate against those idiots. hahaha. ang sama ko. joke lang.

doing so would be an insult to the memory of the slain American peace corps volunteer julia. read her blog here.

my mom's confined in the hospital and doctors first suspect it might be dengue due to the low platelet count plus influenza-like symptoms.

thankfully, the doctor has reduced the likelihood of dengue but still we had to be careful...

literally.

it's hard to go from one coverage to another in this 35-degree celsius heat of metro manila. i worked at home this morning since i still had some "left-over" news to write before i went to makati for a series of events to cover. when i got out of the house, i felt the heat radiating from the concrete, burning me.

it took me an hour to get to makati and i had to walk from rustans to ayala tower one at 2 pm in the afternoon because the rustans unloading area was the nearest place commuters are allowed to get off PUVs to my destination.

and i'd like to complain to the ayalas about this scheme of separating the unloading and loading zones. freakin' impractical and so difficult.

anyway, when i got to the press con, i was already a wet puppy. i bathed in my own sweat. yuck. but couldn't do anything about it as it was soooooooo hot today. and it'll get hotter in the coming days. *luthien panting at the thought*

and i still have a month of this heat and super hectic schedule. i hope i'm still alive by that time.

WHY? WHY?

why does everybody want me to quit this job to have kids? that includes someone from the other side of the fence (SFTOSOTF), mananahi ng barong ni Other Half, strangers and anybody who would care to say it to my face...

some of my colleagues were able to have kids and family and still practice journalism. they managed and survived. why can't i? to think that my section is a "woman-friendly" section. if you compare it with the political beat, naku we're better off than them because they don't have week-ends off.

maybe PJR reports could do an issue on balancing the demands of journalism and family life.

i know SFTOSOTF means well but i didn't have the guts to tell that person i'll cross the bridge when i get there. i'm still enjoying what i'm doing and Other Half told me that we would have a child/children after two years pa. we can't afford to have only one parent working for the family, di ba? eto lang ang alam kong gawin so what can i do? i can't teach in the university since 1) my thesis is still somwhere between heaven and hell and 2) i lack experience, which is a more important issue for me.

i'll do what i'm doing until i'm the one who would give up and say i quit. mapapagod din naman ako eh.

alam ko namang mahirap magkaroon ng anak kahit ano pa ang trabaho mo. both of my parents were raising 4 kids while each of them had an 8-5 job AND still had to go to graduate and post-graduate school. tapos nagbebenta pa ng barong for extra income. mas mahirap yun but they managed.

kaya nga i'll cross the bridge when i get there.

ako pa naman eh i resent it when people see it to it that it's their business to tell other people how to run the lives that are not even theirs. mas lalo akong nagmamatigas to prove that kaya ko and tama ako and i'll do it my way so tsuppeeeeee. kahit na alam ko tama sila i'll still stick to my way. yoko ng pakelamero eh. pero sige i'll just grin and bear it basta ginawa ko yung gusto ko.

point ko? please don't pressure me as to when i should have a child and if i should quit my job.

I WISH I WERE A MAN.

i'm a member of the second generation of kids who watched and got hooked on voltes v. i consider myself as second generation since the first generation are those kids at heart aged 32 and up. i'm part of the latter generation that watched the series, together with daimos, without knowing who mazinger z and mekanda robo (a.k.a mekander/mechander robo) was.

oh you know the timeline.

(courtesy of wikipedia.org)

yes, i also one of thpse kids who sang this song:

*to the tune of the voltes v theme chorus*

voltes v lima sila
bumili ng pop cola
dumating si mazinger z
nag-away sila
sabay utot, sabay tae
kontra bulate!

yup, my playmates sang that while running around the neighborhood. i wonder where that came from...

my sister also sang the intro to daimos, which the first word of the song phonetically sounded like hunyase, hunyase. or we may be deaf.

(courtesy of geocities.com/Tokyo/Springs)

my younger sister was so enamoured of the love story between eeeeerrrrrriiikkaaaaaaaaa! and riiiichaaaaaaaaaarrrrd! that she used the call sign ERK for erika on ham radio (when we went gaga over that one, too).

i remember, paulit-ulit na ipinapalabas nun yung mga episodes ng voltes v pero never ipinalabas ang ending. di ba ang kups ng tadhana di ba? it was only after almost 20 years na yata before my brother was able to watch the last episode when we rented the VHS tapes of the 20-plus episodes of the series from one video rental shop that was about to close near our home. o di ba ang tagal ng closure?

and now my brother has the DVD set of the series with the original japanese audio and names. ang alam ko mga pinoy ang nag-dub nung english version ng series. on hindsight, parang pinoy nga ang diction ng mga characters dun, hindi slang tulad ng mga anime sa animax ngayon.

shempre i often imagined that jamie and steve would get together in the end and leave mark out in the cold. i wonder where i get my romantic notions at such a young age...and of course there was zandra who had the hots for prince zardos. i wasn't really interested in their love triangle that included zuhl. hehe. not interested in horned beings, period.

then there's the boazanian beast fighters. my highschool batchmates once nicknamed a classmate's boyfriend as the boazanian beast fighter. it's a long story why it happened but it proves that even as we grew older, we still couldn't get voltes v out of our system.

voltes v, daimos and space battleship yamato were the shows that allowed us kids and parents to gather around the tv and watch as a family.

(courtesy of all things yamato)

it was really a fun time. i remember (teehee, ipapahiya ko na kuya ko) the times when my brother had these pretend-control pads (made of scrable tiles) and/or had the typewriter and some paraphernalia infront of him and played/pretended he was the captain of the ship and we, his sisters, were members of his crew like in battleship yamato. he made these whooooosh sounds like when he was supposedly be pulling the levers and made beeping sounds for the controls. i remember he used to put these "controls" on top of the living room sidetable that my father made and our narrow foyer was the cabin of the space ship. we had to close our front door because it was really cramped in there. or rather our old house was really small.

ngayon ang mga bata hindi na magkasya sa mga pretend keyboards. gusto totoong gameboy o PS3 keypads. walang imagination *sniff*

so back to voltes v, imagine the outrage these voltes v fans when they caught voltes v evolution on hero channel. it was badly dubbed daw (since i did not and will never attempt to watch it lest i let my memories of voltes v be destroyed) that it was sacrilege for the generation that loved the original series to bits.

from the feedback on nostalgia manila, i conclude that it was moronic of abs-cbn to do it.

you can never win against nostalgia, always remember that.

while a colleague and i were having our massage near our place in pasig (we're soooooo stressed out), i suddenly had an epiphany (and it was such a weird thought that i concluded that hunky actors and massages ko hand-in-hand in my world):

antonio banderas would have been an interesting choice for the role of phantom in Phantom of the Opera the movie. i read somewhere that antonio banderas was the first choice but somebody killed the idea because the actor was old. like huuuwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?! phantom was supposed to be really old, waaay older than christine. i read in in one book (one of the the many versions of the french story) that the phantom is supposed to be in his 40s while christine is only 18.

anyway, banderas would have added more "mystery" by going more dark and less contrived than what the other actor did to the character, i guess. gerard butler's voice was also grating and it drove me insane while watching the movie. of course, no one can compare to michael crawford, the original phantom. all i can say is, he can hold his note. enough said. while i was in grade 6 until first year highschool, i was playing the whole phantom sountrack casette tape over and over until my cousin, isko, couldn't stand it and complained that i had a very lousy taste in music.

to get back to the topic gerard butler's voice in the movie phantom was like fingernails scratching the blackboard. but he redeemed himself with this uber yummy movie, 300.

gerard butler was cool in this movie, hands down.

anyway, i'm talking about antonio banderas and the phantom.

banderas would have been an interesting choice for phantom and i wish sarah brightman would slim down since her singing or breathing can be affected by her weight, as shown by the youtube video above. you know some people already have difficulty hitting the high notes with the added pounds. like me. hehehe.

another interesting thought that entered my head while the masahista was kneading my knotted back and neck was leonardo di caprio as anakin skywalker. i read somewhere that he was considered for the role and somebody even sent me through email a mock up poster of episode II: attack of the clones. however, things did not push through but he was quoted here to have been mulling about it before.

Now the truth: Yes, he wants to star in the next Star Wars as a slightly older Anakin Skywalker. Sort of. "I've talked with George Lucas about it," he said. "But I haven't seen a script. We've just had one conversation."

Did he insist on a script because The Phantom Menace left so many disappointed? "I need to see a script of anything I'm a part of. Period," DiCaprio demurred.

i would have preferred him to play the conflicted anakin than that idiot hayden christensen who wasn't able to convey the anger and darkness that bedevilled the character, especially when he was about to transform into darth vader. i mean, hey! that was the crux of the matter, the reason for the trilogy, the reason why everyone was in deep shit come episode 4, 5 and 6.

i know that di caprio was a good actor ever since i watched him in what's eating gilbert grape when i was in highschool. that was way before he turned into a schmuck in titanic, which my friend and i watched in san pablo because we still didn't have a decent movie house in our town (that dump agrix cinema was a rat-infested hole where i first watched petrang kabayo when i was a kid).

let me see...it would be interesting to watch a harry potter movie directed by steven spielberg and they should never attempt to remove ralph fiennes in the role of voldemort -- he's perfect for it. he's perfect in any role. *drool*

add more interesting actors or directors for the past movies or movies in your mind in my comment box. let's see what you can come up with.

after 1 margarita and 4 vodka-sprite (with half a bottle of san mig light) at wasabi, i thought and felt like i was a very intelligent being and the person whom i was talking to was the most interesting specimen there was even though i don't remember his or her name. when i went home and my head hit the pillow, the room spun and i blacked out.

and i woke up smelling like an ashtray and still groggy from what was really a sedate party. i just drank, ate chicken yakitori and sat in a corner for 4 hours.

i don't even know a friggin soul in that party, save for Other Half.

was interviewed by the priest who i think would be officiating our wedding. my goodness, the questions that he asked...