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There are two type of guys that I find myself attracted to.

The first type of guy is the Brooding Artist. I happen to be a huge sucker for them, but I’m betting it’s because they’re the only type of guys that move in all my social circles. Despite that, I am hopelessly drawn to them. How can I not melt at the sight of that messy-haired boy, smoking his cigarette with long tapered fingers while he sits and broods about the state of the world? The Brooding Artist is an amazingly intelligent and creative individual who can play a thousand instruments while razzle-dazzling me with trivia about my favorite authors or bands. He has a taste for obscure indie films and anime and he burns me DVDs of his favorites labelled with “Must see before dying!” in thick, black ink. The Brooding Artist and I can stay up until dawn, talking passionately about philosophy, love, and life. He makes me fall in love with his words.

Though he might know a lot about the aesthetic and metaphysical, the Brooding Artist’s intelligence drops down to a zero when it comes to his personal life. Wherever he goes, he leaves behind a trail of weeping, brokenhearted little girls and furious knife-wielding women, thirsty for his blood. Sometimes he does this intentionally. Sometimes he doesn’t.

He tells me about his past, of course, because we talk about everything. I’m not stupid enough to fall for someone with such a crazy history. But I love the Brooding Artist anyway because he’s just as spontaneous, insane, and dangerous as I am. “Let’s look for sushi, I’m starving,” I’ll tell him. “Only if we can go out of town after,” he replies. “Right now? Sure, let’s go!” He understands that it takes a tremendous amount of effort to go out in the world and pretend like you’re not about to fall apart by the seams. It’s a struggle he has to go through every day as well. He says the right things to make me get out of bed each morning and to keep myself going, going, going. But when it’s his turn under the bell jar he falls silent, withdraws into himself, and I’m left standing outside unable to do a thing.

The next type of guy is the Normal Guy. I have nothing to say to him and he has nothing to say to me because we’re both so different. The Normal Guy is about as normal and mainstream as you can get. He’s got a few skeletons in his closet, but nothing as scandalous as the bones hidden in the crypt of the Brooding Artist. He doesn’t understand the way I think and why I do the things I do. I don’t understand how he can never once dare defy society’s norms and do the unconventional.

He likes hip-hop; I like good old-fashioned rock. But we both love to dance. In the middle of the dance floor, with the beat of the bass pounding through our bodies, it feels like we’ve been doing this dance all our lives.

The Normal Guy is the man I will marry. He is interesting and intelligent without being insane. His moods are steady and his mind is clear, and that helps me stay calm and steady more than pretty words ever could. I know I’ll function well with him backing me up because he will be that one consistent, predictable factor that I desperately need in my otherwise chaotic life. Like that song by Oasis says, “Because maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me.”

The Normal Guy will never understand me, of course. He’ll never understand the thoughts that race through my head when I go quiet. He’ll never know what to say to make me feel better. It will be a little unfair to him, I think. But for his sake and mine, I’ll do my best to keep from snapping.

I met a Normal Guy last night, which is why I’m writing this silly entry. I’m not sure if I’m falling in love with him or if it’s just a very deadly crush. Either way, I’m pretty fucking doomed. I don’t know if my existence registers a blip on his radar and if anything I said to him made the smallest imprint on his memory. For some reason, it doesn’t seem to matter. I will see him tonight. I will see him tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. I haven’t felt so eager and excited about seeing anyone in the longest time.

I’m a huge sucker for freebies, so when Abe mentioned that the Band of Bloggers would be going on a trip to Ilocos sponsored by a certain senator, I jumped at the chance. Little did I know that my “free vacation” would end up resembling a crazy post-college road trip, minus all the fun, plus politics.

Traveling with Abe and I were Aileen and Sasha. The trip to Ilocos takes about ten to twelve hours by land, and I did the smart thing and stayed up the night before so I’d spend most of the ride asleep. When I woke up sore (from the uncomfortable bus seats) and cranky (couldn’t sleep well because of said seats), I learned that my worst fears came true. This was no vacation. There would be no beach. We were there to tag along with the senator’s group in the bus and attend all his campaign rallies, then write about it in our blogs after. What in the world did I get myself into?

The only opinion I have on politics is rather crude and uninformed: no matter what promises the senatorial candidates make, we’re still screwed. They’re still going to use 10% of my hard-earned money to pay for their mansions and to keep their mistresses happy. Corruption won’t disappear in my lifetime. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t get involved in any of this election stuff and pander to politicians’ bullshit, much less write in my blog about what amazing people they are. But there I was, smack dab in the middle of it. I suppressed the urge to throw a hissyfit and decided to be a sport about the whole thing, taking down my thoughts as fast as my hand could write.

About 60% of our entire trip was spent riding the bus. After ten hours on the road, we headed over to the airport where our kind benefactor, the senator, arrived with his trophy wife. He spoke about things I couldn’t quite hear because he wasn’t using a microphone. Not that it mattered. I’m sure I’ve heard the same old speech about change, reforms in the political system, and the development of the country’s economy before. I thought we’d head over to our hotel afterwards but instead, we rode around Laoag City in a motorcade where the senator waved and I stuck my face out the window and watched the people standing by the roadside. Most of the time, the name they chanted was not that of the senator’s, but of his wife–clearly a lot of them won’t be voting for him because of the promises he made. What really broke my heart though, was the hopeful look they carried on their faces. They actually believe that this guy will wave his magic wand and radically change their lives for the better!

Popular politics is a sad sad thing. Clearly this senator is loaded. His aides are educated individuals who were working their asses off; I’m sure they weren’t doing this for charity. Everything in the trip was paid for–meals, accommodations, snacks. In Ilocos we stayed at Fort Ilocandia, which I didn’t really get to enjoy because we got there late in the evening. But from what I could see in the moonlight, it was quaint and gorgeous, far from the cheap roadside places I expected we’d be staying. I don’t even want to begin to imagine how much this guy spent for the whole campaign. Millions, probably. All this for a bunch of votes! It doesn’t make sense to spend so much money for the grueling task of serving the Filipino people. Nobody is that altruistic. That’s why I wasn’t swayed by his impassioned speech to the people of Batac. It was too clean, too rehearsed, too polished, like he spent hours in front of the mirror perfecting his modulation, deciding which words to emphasize.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more of this farce, the Band of Bloggers broke away from the caravan on day two due to some problems. We ended up in a resort in La Union after another very long bus ride, and the bad weather prevented me from frolicking in the ocean. *sigh* I’ll admit that this wasn’t the best trip I’ve ever been to but despite all my bitching, I am indeed extremely grateful for the experience. Watch me never get invited to cover an event again!

I finally finished watching the first season of Masters of Horror last night! I know it’s only thirteen episodes and I’ve had it for a couple of weeks, but it takes me two to three hours to watch a one-hour episode because I end up multitasking somewhere in between. I meant to do a review of each episode but I’m too lazy for that now. So I’ll just talk in detail about the ones I liked and lump everything else into the next paragraph.

To be perfectly honest, Masters of Horror doesn’t live up to the hype that the opening credits bring. At least not for me. Save for two or three episodes, the whole series is basically Are You Afraid of the Dark? for adults. And by “adults” I mean that almost every episode has raunchy sex scenes and a woman’s perky breasts. Most of the first season is incredibly disappointing. The plot devices were lame and cliched beyond belief, the gore is so-so (and sometimes non-existent), and the endings are prosaic and unimaginative. Their rendition of H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch-House was truly horrifying only because it was so bad. I really wanted to like the fourth episode, Dance of the Dead, because Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins composed the musical score. But even that was rather awful and the “music”–if you can even call it that–sounded a whole lot like buzz buzz BUZZZZZ to my ears.

That being said, I have two recommendations. If you want hot women and mediocre horror that functions as nothing more than an excuse to show lots of tits and ass, watch these episodes:

Episode 4, Jenifer
Episode 7, Deer Woman
Episode 12, Haeckel’s Tale

If you are looking for something that will satisfy your bloodlust, I suggest that you save your bandwidth and watch these:

Episode 1: Incident On and Off a Mountain Road

I enjoyed this episode very much and naturally, I expected the next 12 ones to be just as satisfying. Little did I know that I would be sorely disappointed. Incident On and Off a Mountain Road feels and moves like a quality slasher flick. It starts with a girl driving late at night on a lonely mountain road, and you can tell she’s going to be so screwed because any girl alone in a dark place might as well be wearing a huge sign that says “Kill me now plz!” Soon enough, she encounters a serial killer who bears a striking resemblance to Hellraiser. A lot of running away from him happens, then some flashbacks of her having raunchy sex with her boyfriend just because, and then a very interesting twist kept my eyes completely glued to the screen.

This episode inspired me to teach myself some self-defense, mostly in the form of waving around a hunting knife and trying to look bad-ass while doing it. You never know when you need to escape from the clutches of a psycho.

Rating: 4/5

Episode 8: Cigarette Burns

Cigarette Burns revolves around a man’s search for a very rare film called La Fin Absolue du Monde (The Absolute End of the World)–a movie so violent and foul that it incited a murderous riot among audience members during the first and last time it was shown to the public. The narrative is clear and well-told; your curiosity will get so piqued that you’ll be sitting on the edge of your seat, waiting for the mystery to unfold. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the quirky characters were rather endearing. My favorite one is the French snuff filmmaker. I can’t explain why but there’s something about him that’s just so…lovable. I shall blame that on my penchant for finding the freakiest guys really attractive.

Towards the end of the episode, you do get to see snippets of La Fin Absolue du Monde but it didn’t live up to the hype and mystery surrounding the film. For that, I will give this episode a 4 out of 5. Expect a lot of blood, gore, violence, and fun times.

Episode 13: Imprint

This is the only episode Showtime refused to air because it was too shocking and graphic for the average person to stomach. I’m actually not very familiar with Takashi Miike’s work, except that I’ve heard that he’s made other films that are even more disturbing than this one. I’m currently downloading Ichi the Killer and I’m a little bit nervous about watching it alone because it’s supposed to be one of the wrongest films ever.

There are no words for how insanely fucking awesome Imprint is. It was gruesome, it crawled under my skin and stayed there festering like a rotten wound, it disturbed me to no end. It’s everything I love about in a horror flick and more. Fancy adjectives can’t do justice to how awesome it is, so this is all I have to say: FIND A WAY TO SEE IMPRINT NOW. I’ll burn you a copy if I have to! It’s that fucking amazing. Admittedly the plot twists were a little hard to swallow, but at that point I was seriously freaked out that I couldn’t afford to be nitpicky about things like the internal cohesion of the story.

Rating: 5/5

I love Imprint so much that I’m willing to forget that most of the first season of Masters of Horror was utter crap. I’ll give the show another shot and start watching the second season tomorrow. Let’s hope this one won’t let me down.