It just might work

When the cast for the "Watchmen" movie was announced, I was iffy because they looked a bit too young for their parts. However, the pictures from Rorschach's Journal (not an official site) look good. Add to that Zack Snyder at comic con saying that he will age and de-age the actors to accommodate all the flashbacks. Plus Billy Crudup's voicing Dr. Manhattan. You know him from "Almost Famous" and is the voice behind "for everything else, there's Mastercard. "

Every little bit helps

I've always been an “every little bit counts” kind of guy. For me, saving a glass or a bucket of water is just as important as raising the water level in Angat Dam. So blackle.com makes sense. And while the amount of energy expended while using a white screen is negligible, multiplying it by the number of google hits may just prove it significant. In any case, every little bit helps.

Save energy. Google with a black screen.

Sa P1,000 nga kinakabahan na 'ko...

In poker parlance, “dead money” means money being gambled on the table that the player is bound to lose. This happens when said player is a fish (inexperienced or just plain stupid) or when he is playing way out of his league. Dead money is also nervous money, which is often the case when someone plays stakes higher than what he's used to.

A home game player such as myself who plays for a few hundred pesos on game nights tightens up considerably in casino tournaments with thousand-peso buy-ins. The idea of losing a significant amount of cash on a single hand is a sobering thought and throws my game off. The general rule is to gamble with money that you're comfortable losing. Anything more would just be dead money.

Which is why I salute the Manila-based poker crew who joined the 2007 World Series of Poker main event. With a US$10,000 buy-in and a field of more than 8,000 players, the main event means gambling with almost half a million pesos which you can lose in a single hand. Here I am nervous over anything over P500, while they're playing with a thousand times as much.

The highest placer is local rounder Neil Arce, who placed 222nd, taking home over US$51,000, which in pesos is not bad. Hop over to Pinoy poker godfather nickg's blog for details.

'Tangina naman o

A loyal presidential ally once accused of felling a forest in the heart of Manila was appointed Wednesday as environment secretary.

Lito Atienza as Environment Secretary? That's about as stupid as retaining Raul Gonzales as Justice Secretary, or putting a priest in charge of the population program.

Review: Friday Night in San Francisco

I felt like reviewing my record collection so I'll post stuff like this intermittently.

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Friday Night in San Francisco (1981)

Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Paco De Lucia

Flamenco dancers call it the duende, the spirit that moves artists to give a performance that surpasses the norm. Unlike a muse -- which acts on creative inspiration -- the duende turns an artist into a conduit for the purest performance direct from Plato's world of forms.

It seems to have possessed three already amazing guitarists into giving a live concert that, fortunately for us, had been recorded and released. “Friday Night is San Francisco” with Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco De Lucia predates the more popular “G3” by more than a decade but still sounds as fresh as the night it was recorded. The reviews as well as the liner notes constantly refer to the magic quality of that performance that was never repeated again, not even the following night.

And it really was magic.

A friend heard it being played at Tower Records and immediately bought a copy, which I borrowed and kept until he asked for it back. This was the late nineties, when we had no CD burners and tape recorders were becoming scarce.

There was something in the performance, a quality that separates it from being run of the mill. And that's a tall order given that the performers were better than average in the first place (to say the least). It opens with Di Meola's Mediterranean Sundance which segues into De Lucia's Rio Ancho. Immediately following is Chick Corea's Short Tales of the Black Forest rearranged for guitar and highlighted by a shoot out in the middle that has the performers trading musical punchlines, sampling Mancini's Pink Panther Theme, and playing a minute or so of classic 12-bar blues.

Frevo Rasgado is a smoother piece that takes us to more familiar jazz territory while the last song Guardian Angel (recorded elsewhere) sounds decidedly more classical. But it was in Fantasia Suite for Two Guitars (rearranged for three) that the duende really manifests. The song featured blistering shredding the likes of which I personally haven't heard outside of progressive rock. The fact that they were doing this on classical guitars just blew my mind. The audience's howls of appreciation (heard in the background throughout the recording) just break my heart, making me wish I'd been there.

Which is what every live album should aspire to do.

Of course it's disappointing

Unless you're under twelve or haven't seen (and understood) more than ten films, you're sure to find something wrong with the latest Harry Potter film. The only way to stave off disappointment would be to come in with lowered expectations, which I did.

The only thing I looked forward to were the fight scenes. The Order clashing with the Death Eaters played like a big, Star Wars battle in my head while reading the book and "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" didn't disappoint much in this regard (only that it was so short). The alternate forms of the warriors were cool, as was the resemblance to fencing, which has been the visual shorthand used since "Prisoner of Azkaban."

The rest was meh.

Unlike PoA, which made an attempt at being stand-alone, OotP just assumes you've read it and recalls the big moments for you. The Weasley twins' last hurrah before dropping out, Grawp, Kreacher, Tonks, LeStrange, DA, almost every major scene made it just because people would want to see them on screen. Their forwarding the plot in any way is simply incidental.

The problem is that the casual viewer would miss a lot of the nuances that they tried to put in. I'm not sure if anyone would notice that the prophecy was in Trelawny's voice, or that Fred and George dropped out of school, or Cho's betrayal and redemption in the DA's eyes, or even the significance of the Order (a roll call would've been nice).

That said I appreciated the small stuff: brooms sounding like motorcycles, the visual gags with Filch, the Snape flashback, the tabloid headlines; and glossed over the small things, which is how any Harry Potter film (even PoA, I guess) should be approached.

Hear hear

People my parents' age -- those who grew up on The Beatles and Elvis and dreamt of Woodstock -- were probably the first generation who wanted their music loud. They were also the first to have the technology to crank it up properly, tinkering with Hi-Fi (and later Stereo) sets to the chagrin of their parents who were used to Victrolas (if they had boom boxes at all).

Generation X also cranked it up, but the irritation we caused our boomer parents were of a different sort. They were cool with loud, they just weren't prepared for the skipping and surfing made convenient by CDs and digital radio tuners.

Gen Y and beyond have gone back to quiet, with the proliferation of tiny MP3 players. My only concern is that they'll grow up with a lack of appreciation of real sound quality. MP3 is convenient, but nothing beats a real vinyl recording played on a kickass sound system.

Anyway, US boomers are getting old and losing their hearing. Enough of them that Patti Smith has a foundation to deal with it. Here's the story from the NYTimes.

Rebel Logos

Literally. Ironic Sans has a collection of terrorist logos. Of course the "terrorist" tag comes from a Wikipedia list, which means that it'll probably change in the next few days. Quick reaction: the AK-47 in the NPA logo (and the others in the category) really looks odd and wrecks the balance, too. Tupac Amaru looks better.

The most retarded ones come from (not surprisingly) the white supremacists. My personal favorite: Hezbollah.

Books on a deserted island

People almost always answer Shakespeare, the Bible, plus some of their favorite authors when asked which five books they would bring with them to a deserted island. They're all idiots. The correct answer would be these five books:

1. The SAS Survival Handbook
2. Camping and Wilderness Survival
3. The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive
4. Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants
5. Primitive Wilderness Living and Survival Skills

All others would be kindling for your bonfire. Except maybe the bible, you could use it to roll joints.

Best of British TV

The thing about British TV shows is that they're more like miniseries. Eight to twelve episodes per season, shot in months, and usually written by one or two persons, instead of a team of writers. The Hollywood model is based on speed and quantity, with ten or more people pitching plots and critiquing each others' pacing. Brits like to take their time. It isn't unusual to see just one writer taking credit for a show's entire run.

One of the best in the BBC (heck, anywhere) is Steven Moffat. I knew him via "Coupling," which is what "Friends" can only aspire to be and "Sex and the City" isn't smart enough to rip off. Loved his work on "Doctor Who," writing some of the very best episodes of a show that spans forty years.

His most recent series is "Jekyll," currently on its third episode. I haven't been this jumpy and scared while watching a TV show since "Tales From the Darkside" twenty years ago.

Then there's "Life on Mars," which is being transplanted into the US next season. Not by Moffat, but still very good. A CSI-type detective inexplicably wakes up in 1973, where (when?) he's also a cop, albeit surrounded by Dirty Harry types. Hilarity ensues but believable and well-acted drama keeps it from becoming too silly.

Perhaps in an attempt to balance their karma after foisting Pop Idol on the rest of the world, the Brits have taken to producing some of the best shows currently out there, bar none. Download away, you're not likely to see any of them locally.