By Pennie Azarcon dela Cruz, Executive Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

Whom the gods wish to destroy
They first make mad with really bad songs

NO, I haven’t heard a banshee, this female spirit whose wailing, according to Irish legend, warns of a death in the family. But I’m positive that Anita Ward is a banshee. How else explain that excruciating, keening, shrieking anthem of hers, “Ring My Bell”?

That song, I’m sure, foretells of a death in every family that must have had the misfortune of hearing it. The first time I heard it, I swear all the dogs in the neighborhood suddenly whimpered in fear, tails tucked limply between their legs. For once, I was thankful human ears can’t always hear what dogs can. Well, except for “Ring My Bell,” which must have been specifically written to torture dissidents into betraying even their mothers.

Imagine a fingernail grating across a blackboard while the banshee coaxes: “You can ring my be-e-ell, ring my bell…” Since you’ve probably become catatonic after hearing these words a gazillion times, the banshee turns ballistic and orders you toward the end of the song to “ring it, ring it, ring it, oww!!!” Alright already!

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By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

DAMN Last Song Syndrome (LSS). It is a nefarious condition, often choosing the yuckiest song possible for you to hum all day long. It is particularly effective when you’re taking public transportation, especially when the jeepneys (check out the speeding Montalban ones) feel like discos, playing non-stop remixes of the Carpenters’ greatest hits.

But even in this day and age when heavy rotation usually gets us used to certain songs no matter how horrendous, there remain the ultimate ugly songs, songs so bad they still give us sonic nightmares, gooseflesh and sweating.

Now, there remain many songs that automatically qualify as radio terrors, such as anything by Lito Camo (”Boom-tarat-tarat” has got to be some kind of karmic retribution) or one of these unintelligible disco songs from Asian countries (”Aringkingkingking” and “Dayang Dayang” prove that some things are better off left local). But there are international hits that just cry out for billboard euthanasia. Here are the worst three offenders:

1) “Love Hurts” by Nazareth: Hearing this song always makes me feel like it’s 1978 and the workmen next door are taking a break while listening to the radio. Maybe it’s the fact that the singer sounds like he’s going through a case of hemorrhoids, a case even worse than that of Michael Bolton (who deserves a category all to himself), or maybe it’s the fact that the song has like four words you can understand (”Love hurts love hurts”) and everything else is gibberish, but man this is a horrific song. It’s so bad that nobody has successfully remade it. Some things are beyond the powers of P.Diddy.

2) “The Coconut Nut” by Smoky Mountain: I realize that Smoky Mountain (the first version with Geneva, James, Jeffrey and Tony) is an important group and this song is written by Ryan Cayabyab. But not only is the song silly, its rhythmic progression makes it unforgettable (”The coco fruit/of the coco tree”). Remember the group’s grass-inspired outfits? Ugh. It’s enough to make you swear off this product of the coco palm family.

3) “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Fergie: First of all, let me clarify that I think the Black Eyed Peas are really good and that Fergie has really good pipes among other good things. But I believe her strength lies in the hip-hop fusion dance element that she does so well (”Pick It Up” is sonic pop corn and even though it’s really slutty, “London Bridge” was really accomplished as a piece of ear cotton candy). But The Dutchess’ anthem to keeping it all in is all wrong. Its acoustic nature saps it of any originality and, oh my, those lyrics are really, really stupid. “I’m gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket?” Seriously? And that video, with the hat and the stool and the contrived intimacy? It makes you feel like you got dumber just by watching it.

For another look at music and the good folk who make them, check out the May 18 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

By Leica R. Carpo, Publisher
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

I COULD never sit still as a child.

I had to be literally strapped into my high chair and force-fed to eat. As I could run and chew at the same time, I did not see the point of sitting down to digest my food. Belonging to a fairly active family, I was perpetually influenced to get involved in one form of physical activity or another since the age of 3.

My dad had me waking up at 6 a.m. for swimming lessons in Wack Wack with Pete San Pedro before I could barely walk. My mother’s crush on Jimmy Connors prompted her to enroll me for tennis lessons with Manila Polo Club’s pro Tom Falcis at age 9. Then one summer, my uncles and aunts got it into their heads that we all needed to learn some “self-defense tactics” so I and my clan of 30+ cousins found ourselves taking Tae Kwan Do lessons three times a week with 7 degree black belter Mr. Hong. From there, I expanded my sports’ repertoire to other fields to include Jane Fonda/Hot Legs aerobics, Billy Blanks’ taebo, Bela Lipat’s Ashtanga and Pye Trinidad’s Bikram yoga, as well as golf, badminton and even boxing. I had become not so much a sports addict but a workout fanatic.

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By Eric S. Caruncho, Staff Writer
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

Editor’s note: And while you’re at it, check this out: What didn’t see print in the SIM, May 11, 2008 issue because of limited space.

WHILE going through my e-mail, I noticed one forwarded by a fellow “Jingle” magazine alumnus, which announced that June Millington would be conducting a workshop on “the global Pinoy musician” sponsored by the Lunduyan ng Sining, a local women’s NGO.

The phrase “blast from the past” is overused, but in this case, appropriate because I knew who June Millington was.

I remember a Time article that came out sometime in the very early 1970s — possibly before martial law — which featured two rock bands: Joy of Cooking and Fanny. It was the very first time the general public heard about the phenomenon of “women in rock.” There were of course female singers — Janis Joplin had only recently died of a heroin overdose — but women musicians playing their own instruments and composing their own songs and competing on equal footing with the likes of Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones? It had never happened before.

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By Pennie Azarcon Dela Cruz, Executive Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

WHOEVER said that teachers cast a long shadow must have been talking about Mrs. DR, our math and PE teacher from the elementary grades to high school in this small Catholic school tucked in the armpit of Manila.

She was humongous and was probably the template used to cast the bastonera (jail warden) role in B movies. With her perpetual scowl, Clint Eastwood squint and the foreshortened limbs of a seasoned pugilist, Mrs. DR immediately stomped on my outer and inner child the moment she met our Grade 1 class in the school quadrangle and barked orders like we were in boot camp. Forget Private Benjamin’s nemesis and that dour-faced sergeant in the “Police Academy” series. Compared to her, they’re positively cuddly.

Not being particularly coordinated, I easily became my PE teacher’s favorite prey, the slowest and weakest of the herd who was chopped liver the moment she started that day’s calisthenics routine.

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By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

IT sounds so ridiculously easy, getting into shape. Everyone can do it anytime they want, us especially. I considered myself to be in good shape as a teenager, thin as a reed, yes, but also someone who took up swimming and then judo. College was the time when I kept in shape simply by doing what college students do: run around, attempt to get to class on time (note: not always successfully), stay up late and eat on a madly erratic schedule.

Yet the moment I began working, I began gaining weight and soon, I really was a man of broadened horizons. I kept telling myself, I can just start and that will be that, I’ll be buff and cut and chiseled and so on. But the day never seems to come. I compensate, of course, by buying exercise equipment that remains woefully underused. I have rows of clothing deep in my wardrobe that I promise to wear once I get back into shape. And I dream of this diet and that exercise regimen.

Every year, I think that this is the year I’ll do it, the year when people will say, “Wow, you’re in good shape,” rather than “Wow, you really have gained weight.” Of course, it occurs to me now that nothing short of an illness will zap my fatty tissue away. But one never knows.

I believe that the day will come when I finally get tired of huffing and puffing up the stairs and when I can wear shirts that aren’t size L or something similar. Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t. One can hope.

Now, where did I put that can of Pringles…

Read the Sunday Inquirer Magazine’s Getting Physical issue on May 11.

By Pennie Azarcon-dela Cruz, Executive Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

IN TONDO during my high school years, one gauged the success of the fiesta by how raucous the sound system was: that meant a lot of people had gathered at the basketball court to watch the pa-Liga and were each trying to convert the game into a one-man comedy hour. Towards late afternoon, there would be the furious thump of running feet and the cacophony of raised voices, often slurred and querulous. “May saksakan! May saksakan! Si Mang Kwan, lasing na naman!” one eventually made out from the general hubbub.

Well, nothing really extraordinary for the occasion. The fiesta, after all, is an exercise in excess, the culmination of the Pinoy’s “bahala na” attitude where one made the most of present circumstance and followed expectations, never mind what comes next. For days on end, we’d be cooking assorted dishes, slicing onions till our eyes bulged with painful tears, polishing the good silver, putting up the good curtains and waxing the floors till they reflected our faces. Always, there would be too much food that we would dutifully try to finish in the days to come. On the third day, tired of all the reheated leftovers, we would heave them into the garbage pile, hoping that Nanay would believe that we had worked up a giant appetite to finish everything off.

It went on till most of us siblings got married, left home and started our own traditions which, thankfully enough, did not include a cooking and feeding frenzy also known as the fiesta. Wary of not leaving our children their own trove of Pinoy memories, however, we made room for summer holidays that revolved around the occasional fiesta — the Pahiyas in Lucban, Quezon or the Sta. Clara festival in Obando, for instance. Because they were seen as extra treats and not obligatory occasions, fiestas retained much of their colorful novelty and infectious good cheer for our kids. Should they expect much more, I can only hope they’d find vicarious enjoyment in my collection of fiesta memories, such as this:

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By Eric S. Caruncho, Staff Writer
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

1. WADD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN C. HOLMES. Both “Boogie Nights” and “Wonderland” were based on the life of Holmes, porn’s first superstar. This documentary follows his rise to X-rated stardom, thanks to his unique physical gifts (13 and 1/2 inches), and his descent into hell as a result of cocaine addiction, culminating in his complicity in the murder of four people and eventual death from AIDS.

2. THE PUNK ROCK MOVIE. A verite document on the rise of punk in London, circa 1978. The low-fi footage taken by Don Letts, the DJ at the legendary London dive the Roxy, adds to the excitement of seeing the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Generation X, X-Ray Spex, Siouxsie and the Banshees and others in their natural habitat.

3. THE MAYOR OF THE SUNSET STRIP. Not another music documentary!? This one tells the story of the rise of rock’n'roll in the Sixties through the eyes of LA disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer. The supreme hanger-on, Bingenheimer had his photo taken with everyone from John Lennon to Joey Ramone, but he was also often the first to break important new acts through his radio program. It ends on a note of pathos with Bingenheimer relegated to relic status, barely hanging on with a dead zone slot on his radio station.

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By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

HAVING lived in the metro my entire life, I have a completely different understanding of fiestas. Here, fiestas are almost invisible affairs, palpable only to people who are involved in the parish church. For the rest of the barangay, the fiesta is marked exclusively by the colored (and, notably) recycled plastic flags hanging above the streets. There’s no open house where people can just drop in and eat to their heart’s content. There are no big gatherings. In fact, if you don’t go to church, you can go on completely unaware that there is a fiesta at all.

But within the church, everything revolves around the fiesta, in a way that can only be rivaled by Christmas and Easter. In that sense, it becomes a purely religious event, no longer attached to any social or civic significance.

As mentioned earlier, fiestas are a big deal to those heavily involved in church affairs. This begins with the parish priest (who will be in the shiniest stole combination for the fiesta mass) down to the lay ministers (who will roll out the brand new barong tagalogs for this occasion, so heavily starched the shirts will probably stay standing on their own) to the foot soldiers of the choir (new arrangements and new songs) and us the altar boys.

Yes, you can lower that eyebrow. I was an altar boy at my parish church for five years, from the time I was 13 to the time I was 18. It will be a shock to people who met me in college and beyond, but I took my altar duties pretty seriously and (gasp) even pondered entering the seminary.

Luckily, that little catastrophe never happened, but serving Mass was a major part of my routine for years, and the fiesta was the biggest deal of all. Aside from the fact that the new soutanes were unveiled, there were a lot of processions to attend complete with the Cross, candles and even the incense burner (now that is a difficult piece of equipment to get acquainted with). At the end of every procession was yet another Mass and a good buffet.

But that was pretty much it. Sometimes, there would be a marching band, but that was rare. Otherwise, the fiesta spirit would be fleeting and nearly invisible, fading away like the sound of the church bells tolling.

For more insights, inquisitions and incredible fiesta photos, check out the Sunday Inquirer Magazine’s May 4 issue.

By Eric S. Caruncho, Staff Writer
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

MY 15-year-old Lancer wasn’t the most earth-friendly vehicle around, what with worn valves, blown gaskets, a rusty exhaust and myriad other ills that caused it to leave a trail of oil spots and black exhaust in its wake. How it passed its emissions tests is still a mystery to me.

Anyway, when it finally gave up the ghost (after being totaled in a car wreck), I actually heaved a sigh of relief, like the owner of a decrepit old nag that was finally put out of its misery.

The year before, I had gotten myself a scooter. It was an LML, an Indian-made clone of the famous Italian Vespa PX150, identical in nearly every respect, down to the 150cc two-stroke engine.

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