Rant & Rave

We sat in the pre-electric fan Blue Eagle Gym with a game going on. Ateneo vs. Adamson. It was a stunning victory with Jun Reyes nailing a desperation trey from mid-court to beat the Falcons. But i'm getting ahead of the story.

I sat with an old friend talking about hoops when he landed a neutron bomb that temporarily took my mind off the game (that had all the makings of a loss by the Blue Eagles). "Michael Jordan is the worst thing ever to happen to basketball," my rotund friend pronounced. He went on to explain why but I'm not going into that over here. What I can say is that he endlessly extolled the positives of Xavier MacDaniel's transfer to the Boston Celtics. Nevertheless, his jab at MJ stayed with me.

Cut to another time, we were having dinner at the Crocodile Grill in Libis, a reunion of old school mates who liked nothing than to discuss Ateneo hoops and UAAP chismax. I asked if anyone had read the third Harry Potter book. Two of the guys looked at me with stunned horror and recoil and landed me another stinging jab, "You son of a pig of a ____! Harry Potter is full of (palce your own four-letter expletive here)."

Embarrassed, I took the bottle of Dom Perignon and smashed it over the head of one of my fiends, er friends. Well, I didn't but I thought about it.

I always thought that Alan Moore's and Brian Bolland's magnificent Batman: the Killing Joke is one of the greatest comic book stories ever. I gave it to my mom one day to read and she thought that it was "evil" and my dad questioned my choice of reading material. Maybe I should read more grown up stuff. I told my folks that I also bought the latest Playboy issue with Paulina Porizkova on the cover. Now that's as adult as one can get.

While talking to a female officemate (she graduated from DLSU last year) for a story, we drifted off to music tastes -- she looked like a deadringer for Natalie Portman's character of Sam in the most-awesome Garden State and she gushed that she was into new music. When she asked me what stuff I had on heavy rotation on my ipod, I said, "Interpol, the Decemberists, Updharma Down, the Silversun Pickups, and Badly Drawn Boy" she looked at me like I went on an hour-long dissertation of the chaos theory. Turns out she -- way too young to even know who Kurt Cobain was during his heyday -- had stopped growing with Pearl Jam and Sandwich. She should trade notes with John McClaine. Oh he was into Creedence Clearwater Revival?

Ayt! I get it. I'm a nerd stuck in the pages of Alternative Press. Who knew the CD racks of Virgin Records in Times Square like the back of my hand that when a customer was looking for something, I knew where to get it and what else to recommend. I read stuff by Bill Carter, Peter David, Marc Spitz, Bob Woodward, David Halberstam, Nick Hornby (many kids of today don't even know who he is), Time, Spin, the occasional soft-porn rag like Maxim or FHM, T3, National Geographic, Alan Moore comic books, and surfs alt-indie sites like popmatters.com and the war against silence.

It's Saturday morning, as I pen this. In a few hours, I'll be off to get my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, get the 300 DVD, watch the Blue Eagles go for win #3 against the NU Bulldogs, meet up with some Ateneo alumni about a book to write, finish my Monday column, and figure out what to do with my ipod. There's RAW tonight on Jack TV and disc of Mark Whalberg's Rockstar to finish.

Michael Jordan's the greatest NBA player ever while the X-Man is a coulda-been story in Seattle Supersonics history. Batman: the Killing Joke will f---ing mind away and Harry Potter -- while the series will probably never knock down the Lord of the Rings trilogy as my fave fantasy series it will always appeal to the kid inside me just as the Hardy Boys Mystery Series still do.

Now let's roll. Have a great weekend.


Recommended reading: get Bill Carter's Fools Rush In and Marc Spitz' How Soon Is Never (if you like Nick Hornby you'll love this book on how a stumbling bumbling fellow tries to reunite the Smiths and win his true love's heart).