i have a new favorite reality tv show and it's called 'the law firm.' it's ongoing right now on nbc and i think i'm gonna stick until the end to find out who wins the $250 k prize.
what is it like? it's like survivor meets apprentice. it's executive-produced by my erst-while favorite producer: david kelley (ally mcbeal, the practice and boston legal). 12 lawyers are divided in 4 groups (for tonight's premiere) and they will take on opposing camps for two cases. i noticed stand-outs this early and i already have favorites.
hmmm. all these bring me back to my late childhood dream of becoming a lawyer. you didn't know that did you? hehehe. well, i think my friend, may8, the law student needs to watch this.
[eta] two lawyers were 'fired' after the episode. the show threw some curveballs and defied convention by firing not from the losing team automatically but firing based on individual performances, including major boo-boos. it was a surprise to see jason go, and yes, kelly as well, the asian girl.
Friday, July 29, 2005
the law firm
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
and wednesdays? no.
i feel a little bit better now. went to the office after lunch. no thanks to the fact that i got home after midnight last tuesday.
anyway.
exciting times are ahead. about time to bid the past adieu.
and tuesdays, too!
i've been in the office for twelve hours!
i've been to a presscon at the consulate and back. but why am i still here?
because.
and because i have read that quite a number of people have been fired from their jobs for ranting about their, well, jobs, then i am just gonna stop right there.
add sleeplessness and you'd get the worst of me.
btw, last night's premiere of laguna beach was alright. why, oh why do i get hooked on tv shows about high school/college life? so juvenile. hehehe. and i love it. i don't know why. probabl;y because vicariously i get to live through their lives and experience the fun of high school and college one more time.
Monday, July 25, 2005
i hate mondays!
yes, just like the song.
i was up late on friday and saturday night working (partying is more like it, but then, i was 'working'). i have not been getting enough sleep lately so i get kinda cranky easily.
i haven't unpacked my luggage yet. my laundry pile is getting higher and higher by the day. i need to do some groceries.
my friend shaui lent me her copy of the film 'nasaan ka man' [starring claudine, diether and jericho. daym, first name basis!] and i need to find time to watch it. no expectations whatsoever but i heard it's good.
i've been having some eye-opening conversations with my friends the past few days. it's good, it's all good.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
back in la-la-land
my good friends picked me up at home after my sf trip and brought me to our favorite mall: the grove, where else.
they wanted to eat at cheesecake factory but the wait was two hours! two hours! it's good i wasn't that hungry. so we ended up window-shopping to kill time. finally, our pager buzzed.
we were seven in the group and in some restos, they already compute the gratuity (cheesecake pegs theirs at 18%) if you come in a group of six or more and we ended up paying like $23 for tips alone. anyway, i had a great time with my meal (spicy and crispy beef) that i had more than enough for baon the next day. [update: it's not good to eat the dish a day after. it was blech.]
i'm having pre-birthday jitters. oh no, not again!
battleground
FILIPINO-Americans in San Francisco were treated to a whole day of fun and entertainment over the weekend by the two giant broadcasting networks in the Philippines: ABS-CBN and GMA.
ABS-CBN’s The Filipino Channel staged the San Francisco leg of their Kapamilya Summer Caravan at the Monster Park Fairgrounds with an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 in attendance. They were treated to a back-to-back staging of the network’s top-rating shows: The Buzz and ASAP ’05.
GMA-7’s Pinoy TV brought the entire cast for their musical-variety show SOP to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in downtown San Francisco. An estimated audience of about 6,000 trooped to the auditorium to witness the launching of the newest player in the Filipino cable television business.
At the end of the day, it is us, the consumers who end up as the winners since both networks will be fighting fiercely for our attention and our hard-earned dollars.
The Filipino-American diaspora in the United States is big enough for two, even three or four networks. Quality programming will dictate which shows will be patronized and which shows will be dissed. In a competition this stiff, there is no room for haphazard work and sloppy products.
With more choices, Filipino-Americans will be more informed and more educated on the issues affecting the motherland. They will be more updated with the latest news, whether it is in politics, entertainment or sports.
With the entry of GMA to the U.S. market, Filipino-Americans will now have a wider choice. It’s like back in the days in the Philippines where we watched all the best programs that each station had to offer, whether it is ABS-CBN 2, GMA-7, ABC-5 or NBN-4 (available in the U.S. through Mabuhay Channel in the Dish Network)
Now it's as if we never even left home.
[Here are some photos I took from the GMA-7 event]
his name is richard gutierrez and he almost stole the show from the four main hosts because of the loud screams and shrieks from his fans
sop's four main hosts: janno, jaya, regine and ogie
jolina magdangal. nothing further, your honor.
kc montero, troy's brother and geneva cruz's beau. 
mel tiangco, flanked by jaya and regine
Saturday, July 23, 2005
off to san francisco
in the bay area once again for some stuff i need to cover.
first up: the abs-cbn/the filipino channel gala event at the san francisco city hall. it was a formal event held at the beautiful rotunda of the city hall.
the competition in san francisco is neck and neck, and the verdict will be in tomorrow.
in the meantime, here are some pics.
abs-cbn's champions: sheryn regis, rachelle ann go, sarah geronimo, erik santos, mark bautista and christian bautista
san francisco mayor gavin newsom, havinga light moment with gabby and raffy lopez
erik santos singing, what else, 'this is the moment'
the city hall's rotunda was transformed into a party area complete with a string quartet to celebrate abs-cbn's tie-up with directv
sheryn regis singing a whitney houston cover. nakalimutan ko na ang title. lol.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
really looking forward to
i am a big sucker for great books and among those great books that i love reading and re-reading is this soon-to-become-a-movie novel by dan brown: the da vinci code. the movie has a playdate as ealy as now: may 19, 2006. i'm kinda excited about the movie (starring tom hanks, audrey tautou, sir ian mckellen, among others) but as is my case in novels turned to movies, i am not keeping my hopes up.
in the meantime, since may 2006 is like ten months away, i am training my sights on rent. yes, one of my favorite musicals of all time. i know each and every single song in the soundtrack like the back of my hand. rent, the movie is scheduled to be shown 11/11. and that is like just four months away. i'm drooling in anticipation. for now, i content myself with the trailer from the apple site. [and sony even put ot a blog as part of the film's website. thank you sony people!]
photo via sony
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
just be ready
'los angeles is the disaster capital of the world,' exclaimed don knabe at the presscon i attended this morning at the beautiful dorothy chandler pavilion at the music center. knabe is one of five los angeles county supervisors who attended the launching of 'just be ready: prepare together' campaign of the department of health services.
earthquakes. check. flash floods. check. brush fires. check. drive-by shootings. check. [one of them, actually the host commented, 'los angeles invented drive-by shootings!']. riots. check. fires. check. terrorist attacks. foiled at the us/canada border in 2001.
scary world.
in a totally unrelated story: happy birthday to abe and lumen!
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
full house - not the koreanovela
yesterday was my boss' birthday and he treated us to a ten-course lunch at the full house restaurant in chinatown. it was a long lunch, and everyone was so full after eating.
since there was so much food, we talked to our waited to just put the untouched food in to-go boxes which we can bring home later. we were nine in our table and we had nine boxes.
we decided to be fair and hold a raffle. someone numbered the boxes from 1 to 9 and another one wrote numbers 1 to 9 at the back of our fortunes from the fortune cookies.
i picked out box number 9: abalone and sea cucumber, the one and only dish i did not even bother to taste. me and raffles: never will become a match.
the grand prize winners: crabs (yumyum) and steamed sole (double yum yum).
and here's me with some of the guys and gals i work with --
congrats leo!
four years ago, i watched one of miss saigon's final shows in broadway and cameron mackintosh himself brought back lea salonga to close the show. i watched it then with a couple of friends.
fast forward to the present.
i just got a call from one of them and he was very happy to inform that he made it to miss saigon's cast. they will be performing in the bay area starting september. i'm so happy for you my friend!
Sunday, July 17, 2005
asap '05 live in los angeles
took some interesting photos. i particularly love the one with zsa-zsa (ninth photo down. click to enlarge and see what i mean) because it makes me smile.
zsa-zsa and her healthy twins
summer caravan @ the rose bowl
[the date july 16 is particularly memorable to me. rewind 15 years ago. july 16, 1990. goodness, i am getting old. it was during this day in 1990 when the killer quake happened. i lost a good friend from that tragedy.]
it was a long day today. after an early dimsum lunch with some friends, we proceeded to the rose bowl in pasadena to check out the events at the abs-cbn/tfc kapamilya summer caravan. some of our friends were already there.
the sun was so unforgiving, i think temperature soared to at least a hundred.
anyway, the show was fun. it was almost a three-and-a-half hour concert and the audience was so pleased. what more could you ask for? martin and gary were there. and so were kuh and zsa zsa. lea salonga was a guest. so was jasmine trias. need i mention nora aunor? i guess not. and some other stars and wanna-be stars. (review and photos to follow!)
had late dinner at gingergrass where i had banh mi (the french-inspired vietnamese sandwich). it was uhm, uhm good. this day was so tiring.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
hale-storm
thanks to the filipino channel (tfc), i got acquainted with perhaps one of the best bands of this generation and their name is hale.
i caught them once or twice a couple of months ago (i think in one of those myx shows) and i immediately liked their music. for the second week in a row now, they guested on 'asap 05' and sang 'the day you said goodnight.'
this song, along with their two others in my itunes list: broken sonnet and blue sky are on repeat mode and each one's play count has reached more than 20. did i say i was addicted? probably. not since eraserheads...
the dirtiest city in america
this is bad. really bad. i never would have guessed.
according to a recent study published by the reader's digest, chicago ranks as the dirtiest city in the u.s. of a; followed by new york, pittsburgh, st. louis and birmingham.
my dear city -- los angeles -- is way down in the list. ninth! hehehe.
the top five cleanest cities? portland, san jose, buffalo, columbus and san francisco.
Monday, July 11, 2005
solvang summer solstice
spent the weekend in beautiful solvang, a small town up north which is also called the danish capital of america. it's really a beautiful and charming little town, with quaint stores, galleries, cafes, restaurants and shops. the city even has a 'hans christian andersen museum' in honor of the man widely considered as the father of modern fairy tale.
it's my second trip to solvang (a danish word meaning 'sunny fields') and i must say that i'll keep on coming back.
had lunch at a restaurant called 'the touch,' home of the world-famous belgian waffles and crepes topped with fresh fruit. ironically, not one of us ordered waffles and crepes. hehehe.
i had pork chops. yumyum.
after a hearty lunch, we walked around the village. the photo above caught my eye. back in LA, we don't usually see stuff like this every day.
this one reminded me of an old carlsberg commercial. i don't know why. hehehe.
this one i found cute. i think they call it a surrey bike. tourists can go sight-seeing in downtown solvang using this bike. cute 'no?
three movies in a week
sue me!
i know i said i was not going to watch 'war of the worlds' but i got weak in the knees and i succumbed to my friends' wishes. after an early dinner sunday, we went to my neighborhood cine to watch the movie. i kinda liked it. except for the ending. the critics were right. the ending was just terrible. sobra!
then on thursday, after another early dinner, we watched 'bewitched'. i kinda did not like the film. i don't know why. maybe i don't like will ferrell. i like nicole kidman and she was okay in her role. i did not end up laughing in the supposedly funny scenes. unlike last friday's episode of kampanerang kuba where i was laughing so hard in some of the really hilarious scenes. yeba tfc!
(early dinner at my new favorite: gingergrass restaurant in silverlake. it's a vietnamese resto from the former chef of the famous le colonial. what did i get? pork chops. hahaha!)
finally last night, my friends...no early dinner this time... and i caught 'fantastic four'. i was not awed, and my jaw did notd rop. the effects were amazing, the story was kinda lame, jessica alba was always whining. hehehe. chris evans did not disappoint. and so did michael chiklis. and mr. fantastic. i forgot his name.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
beach bums
who doesn't love the beach?
you know it's the height of summer when people start flocking to the beach. here are some images i took last week from venice beach.
remember the story? we were supposed to meet at lifeguard house number 26? we were here waiting for them but they did not arrive, and they even claimed that they were also near the same lifeguard house.
the skies were overcast during the afternoon, so the water was almost ice-cold. that did not prevent these people from taking the plunge. i was happy just walking along the shore, getting hit by the small waves.
the height (pun intended) of commercialism. big brother 6 on cbs. coming soon. the show premiered last thursday. i wasn't able to tivo it. because i don't have tivo. yet.
here's a photo of a terrified kid (kidding, he was so happy!) being buried upside down by his dad.
now i really know where to buy havaianas for my friends next time i go home to manila for a visit.
just to prove that we were on venice beach and not santa monica beach: what does the bar say? venice right? v-e-n-i-c-e. so it must be venice beach then.
and the venice boardwalk...
...where they sell stuff such as these. i rest my case.
