Xixi Maturan's THIRD WORLD LIVING

Seven months after shooting Howard Yambao's BEST. PARTEE. EVER. in a slammer in Pampanga; I get to once again be part of a film starring THE COMEDY QUEEN herself, Ms. AIAI DELAS ALAS , with The Joel Lamangan no less at the helm.  A cameo is always welcome; it is a short appearance, with minimal exposure requirements and I get to just be myself or as to how I deem the role should be carried out with.  I play a parlorista who rages on another parlorista [played by Byuti Veloso] ; who I share a chin prominence making us look like twins!  Ms. Aiai's character, a Barangay Kagawad and sort of a 'jane of all trades' pacifies us.  We shot in Proj6, Quezon City and it was a breezy day which made it quite comfortable.  That was on April 2.  I never expected that suddenly I would be called back to do more appearances ; delighted and totally flattered who was I not to oblige? I did three more scenes; two of which were highlights of the hilariously riotous opus that cel

Frankly , I haven't heard of her before the story conference of Howard Yambao's BEST. PARTEE. EVER, entry to last year's QC INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL starring JC De Vera.  JC played a straight-acting gay man caught in nasty broil of Ecstasy addiction and trade.  The film was shot almost in its entirety in the confines of provincial jail where I played a hot headed old fag jailbird. At the conference, as we were introduced, she caught my attention.  Well-made up and in a cocktail dress she amiably smiled at everyone , her name: CATALEYA SURIO.  As we were given a rundown of role assignments, I realized that she was playing a transwoman in for some crime and detained in the male cell.  This was because in the Philippines, a sexually re-assigned is still recognized with what is on one's birth certificate.  Ah, alright. "As far as I remember, I was ALWAYS a girl", Cataleya nonchalantly declares in our online interview.  Orphaned at a very young age, She

Poverty. Its prevalence. It , connoted to be the main word to reckon with when the label THIRD WORLD is stuck upon a country's forehead.  It , without having to bat an eyelash flood our thoughts with the dire lack of material needs to feed the best of races and fly high into a plane where abundance lurks.  But on a hundredth thought, Poverty may simply be a manifestation of IGNORANCE.  A blatant syndrome that of which several cranial functions are left unattended to perhaps augment other mortal values of those who call the shots.  If we look around and identify the essence of ignorance, we may simply be amazed with how seemingly happy they are not to know a lot things to propel progress through communal struggle.  We all are ignorant at some point of our lives, but somehow experience may just play roles never imagined to exist. Asia is one continent where third worlds abound.  But then, there is only history to blame.  Colonizers  simply did not consider the natives they ensla

RODRIGO {Photo: Duterte Today FB Page] All of us who are worth anything,  spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth. -SHELLEY While  for some twisted loop and leap of destiny our third world country elected a president who dared promise a decent society free of the ills of mind warping substances, sticky itchy fingered officials who dipped on public funds as their own, and the elimination of pseudo humans who only did intriguing tasks that created havoc upon a race systematically razed of moral decency and self-value in the distant and immediate history; so to speak.  A charming puck faced crowned by a dominantly fat disproportionate nose rose from the ranks of mayoralty of a southern city became the highest elected official of the land; amazing as it may seem but his notoriety was totally ignored just for the sake of 'someone' unorthodox and therefore new.  New but jaded that he is, one cannot deny but join the fanfar

'Tis mad idolatry, To make the service greater than the god -Shakespeare In some scenario, there might be two kinds of people : The Greater and The Lesser ones. Of course, the former bear the power to influence, manipulate and enslave the latter.  Scanning through social media , it is interesting to note that minions work overtime for their gods.  They must come cheap since you cannot count them with your pubic hair. They abound and embrace the thought that there are no moral standards in building up and defending their choice of a modern day flesh and blood idol who reign supreme in owning them skin and soul.  They are basically called TROLLS, since they dwell in the dark caverns of their beliefs and are presumed to only have ugly intentions of confusing issues at hand and provoke teeth and blood argument as well as maximum disruption.  They are indeed the lesser ones who assume almost respectable as well as mediocre names to surf through the widest platforms with their

He's a fool, who thinks by force, or skill To turn the current of a woman's will. -Tuke. Rodrigo had it coming.  With Leni Robredo as his VP, he must have shrunk in dismay when the final results blasted into the tally boards.  He must have cringed with the idea that she wasn't going to be a peeble but rather a rat on his shoe who would chew away the nastiness that he was accustomed to.  Those who doubt the democratic exercise screamed [and filed protests later, and ongoing still] anomaly to the highest order.  But she was proclaimed and well went to her way as the second most powerful person in the land.  Known to be naughty and oddly disrespectful to women, the Bicolana widow readily was outspoken with every single malicious thought, deed or insinuation thrown at her. Frankly, Rodrigo's treatment to a lady is beyond wits for comfort.  Imagine an old man ogling at the length of her dress to a meeting ; or a supposedly respectable man firing her cabinet seat th

Nothing indeed , but the possession of some power  can with any certainty discover  what at the bottom is   the true character of any man. -Burke EJK  or Extra Judicial Killing crept into global consciousness with a brown flavor.  Definitely.  Overwhelming and undeniably alarming, its wake gave the islands a rather twisted picture.  Rodrigo* , true to his character lambasted his critics in a trail of presidential speeches which were not only tainted with anger and a cuss here and there, but rather an alzheimeric [not a real word] oral diarrhea whatever the occasion or audience.  He hammered on his promise to wage war on drugs and whoever was into it within his breathing space he would 'PATYON KA NAKO!' [I will kill you!']. While the I-will-kill-you-slur is embedded into the colonized culture, it offers a myriad of effects on a diverse inter island population not to mention the persistence of several generations sharing a nation in a single sweep of the di