Homecoming
Feels great that it's back! I've longed for the days I could use it again. It's been a long month. Finally, it has returned! I finally got the Wowiecaster last week from a standard to floyd-rose tremolo transplant. (For those who can't relate, The shiny gold thing is new!) I can do all types of wacky sounds out of it! It's also guaranteed not to go out of tune. Problem is, tuning it in the first place. Before I never cared about the string and spring tension and the position of the bridge and precise sh*t like that. Now, It feels like a whole new animal. I can't seem to get it in tune in the first place. But once I did, It was awesome. Also, I keep on answering lots of questions lately after I unveiled a new axe...
The 5150 frankoustic guitar
I got to work early last saturday, and finished that very same day. I was extremely happy of the output I was able to make. Never before had I made something as refined as that in so little time. People keep asking me how I built it --I answer, Just tape and paint.
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From Pac-man to Tetris
Last January 22, marked Manny Pacquiao's rubber match against Erik Morales. I watched live via pay-per-view how he clobbered Morales with his left hook. ( It was a hook right? ) I spent the whole morning at my dad's friend's house watching the matched unfold. I can't believe how much they bombard the show with commercials! There's commercials during breaks, atop the ring, below the boxers and below your TV screens. Hell, there was even one time I saw an advertisment at the back of a boxer! It's a good thing we did away with "via satellite" and settled for "PPV" cause if we left a little later, there'll be a whole lotta sh*t to clean! Because January 22 also marked my favorite wrestler's visit to glorietta none other that Mick Foley. I came to the mall 30 minutes in advanced to the sight of hundreds of these wrestling geeks. (Hey man, I watch wrestling but you wouldn't catch me walking around in a cactus jack costume) Well, 3:30 rolled around and to the sight of all of us there we saw this 6 foot 4, 300 pound man named Mick Foley. And obviously, the said geeks erupted! He talked for a little while and proceeded to sign the autographs. At this point, the people squeezed in from different direction. And to my disappointment, I was stuck right in the middle of this massive hoard of die-hard fans. Stuck, meaning I never had the chance to get my books signed. But he did manage to cut this massive pizza, My friend Jason said it tasted like sh*t.
Mick Foley
The enormous super supreme sh*t pizza
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8-29
I got to surfing last month, I found this cool short story by Adam David. It's about news anchor Marieton Pacheco, who I always watch every morning. It's true how they described her, her face has an innocent look that it's as if she just woke up ten minutes ago. Which makes her a whole lot hot. Here's the start:
Marieton Pacheco and I are neighbours in Kamias, and I bump into her occasionally in the most public places. The most recent one was in the Kamias Lavandera Ko branch, the one beside the video rental place in the Korean building. I was lugging my laundry in a large black plastic bag that people normally use for bringing-out garbage. My laundry's at least two weeks old, and must've been six kilos heavy, possibly eight, even. The bag was heavy and too big for me to look over. I couldn't see Marieton so I bumped into her and her basket of undies.
The laundry attendants were giggling like catholic schoolgirls when I dropped my bag and helped Marieton pick up her undies from the floor. Apparently, she just walked in before I did, about to hand her basket of undies to one of the attendants, when I bumped into her from nowhere and spilled her undies on the floor by accident. All this I figured from the unwashed-look that her undies had. They were still rolled-around and curled-up along the sides, like she had just used them four hours ago, still looking like they did the last time she tossed them into the basket.
"Ay!" Marieton cried out softly from over my bag of laundry. Her voice had a girl-next-door quality to it. The last time I heard that sort of voice was way back in high school, from a girl who had the same last name as I do. I've forgotten what her first name was, but I remember her last name like I do mine. Marieton's voice had that quality, so instantly, I felt homey beside her.
"Sorry," I said. I was really, genuinely sorry. I laid my laundry bag beside me, all of six-to-eight kilos of it, and crouched down to help her pick up her undies. "Sorry. It was an accident. I couldn't see over my bag of laundry, and I didn't know you were there by the door. Sorry."
"No, it's okay, I was in the way" she said. She was wearing her yellow Chuck Taylor's and blue jeans and an old school white PE shirt that had blue piping. She smelled slightly of old nylon and sweat and strawberries. "Amoy chicks!!" my friend Adrian would've exclaimed. If it was possible, I felt homier and homier beside her. I wanted to take her home and introduce her to my friends and parents.
"I'll help you," I told her. I felt like a Boy Scout, a gallant knight, like those guys in scented-sanitary-napkins commercials.
We were crouched around her basket, picking-up and sorting-out her undies from the floor when I realised it was Marieton's undies in my hands. Along the inner side of one pair's garter, I read her name written with red pentel pen, with a small heart to dot the "i": Marieton.
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Why o why did you let this strat die?
According to Luigi, This is a 1967 Fender Stratocaster. But my further investigation leads me to say that this guitar was really made in 1974. Nonetheless this is what Strat collectors would call a CBS-era strat.( I dont mean to go Ross Gellar on you guys, but it has to be said) CBS-era strats were produced somewhere between 1965 to 1985 when again FMC was bought by several investors from CBS...the television company. The CBS models were made by glass manufacturers rather than real guitar luthiers so they really aren't quality Fender guitars and I hate to really break it to Luigi but this is no exception. When I first got the gig bag and opened the guitar on my desk, it looked like it was kept on a time capsule. The metal parts were rusted and the neck takes a whole lot to be desired. I took out the old string tuners to replaced them with new ones and lo and behold, the fingerboard actually fell away from the neck. Tsk..tsk..tsk...CBS. It took me two days to make it playable again. The action or height of the strings were sky-high. This by the way, is natural to this guitar. We plan on using this as an emergency back-up guitar on gigs. I really hope it holds up though.
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About last week
I haven't written in a really long time. I've been real busy lately and I haven't been really stickin'it up to "The man". Anyway, Last week marked our retreat and outreach activities. I couldn't really count it as a vacation neither could I count it as work. It was somewhere in between. The retreat was pretty good. I got the time to reflect over there in the mountains somewhere. I couldn't care to elaborate though. I figured what went on there, stays there. So let's fast forward to 2 days after. It was that time of the year again! It was outreach time! I've always thought of Sun valley as the hip-hop group (hence our Economics name "The Sun valley crew" or SVC)and I knew there was such a village. But go there for an outreach? but we headed up north to go to...well...somewhere beside Sun valley. It was a real slum to be really honest. I remember when we were walking to our meeting spot the drainage next to the path. I kept thinking to myself "What is that gooey coagulated thing?" It's color quite resembled the Brownish green water on a dipping tray of a paintbrush. (like
This ) It's the color I most commonly call "Breen". That! plus cornstarch. When we did get there, I observed how tightly knit the place is. It's amazing how much you could fit in such a small place. Well...actually multiply the small space by 10 and you get their community. My foster mother told me that the place used to be farming place. (that explains the emormous space) She says that way back in the 80's it used to be way cleaner. I got to roaming around just as soon as me and my partner finished cooking up the fried rice. It was then that we figured out that what we believed to be a maze in the beginning was actually easy to navigate. We took roughly an hour --give or take 45 minutes, two bottles of coke and some buko pandan ice cream to get back home. I was amazed at how simple the life over there looked like but how hard it is to actually live it. Things seemed to be less complex and yet it's just really difficult to make ends meet. Im guessing I wouldn't be able to get the hang of things there. I came home once again, just as I do every year with a new understanding for the undepriviledged. And a new appreciation for my life. Really cheesy...
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