I know this is a couple of days late, but I believe I have never mentioned to anyone on this blog that I’d love to go to Istanbul someday.   My curiosity was piqued when Kaye gave me a promotional music CD for a hotel in Istanbul.  It’s a full album featuring different Turkish artists, and although still bordering on the electronica, it wasn’t the Trance Eurasia music I had expected were proponents of their country’s scene.  The Music was more diverse than I expected. The Point Hotel’s album collection is aptly titled, “Sweet Dreams”, like you could dream about a very culturally sacrosanct Byzantine Turkey while you’re in Modern Istanbul (formerly Constantinople). I am very in love with the track entitled, “Pink Wings”, which sports undertones of the Islamic beat combined with ethereal vocals.

If you’d like to hear for yourself check out Point hotel’s Myspace,

Again, Eid’l Fet’r.

Yesterday, I felt rain on my head.  Walking through a crowded place, everyone is bustling, running for cover, scrounging for a ride home.

Yet I moved through the noisy crowd like the film and music was slow and sad. Like Karen Carpenter cooed at my ear with her cold voice.  I have always wondered why the rain was such a sad occasion on most literary references.

Download audio file (Scarlett Johansson - Falling Down.mp3)
Scarlett Johansson - Falling Down [Download] [Lyrics]

Oh, and by the way Scarlett Johansson can sing.

Andrew told me that I could write anything I want on this blog, ANYTHING I was passionate about to write. If you know me personally, it’s hard to tell what field I belong to.  That is because I’ve been all over the place and am practically interested in EVERYTHING.

A few months ago, I took the bold step of turning this blog into everything I was interested in.  And now it’s turn out to be an “anything goes” kind of blog.  But I haven’t done it any justice by waiting for its 2D walls to grow cobwebs.  WELL. That’s always been my bane.  Being too busy living life to write about it.  I even missed writing about the very eventful Kadayawan, but if I released anything at this point, I suppose it’s like stale cheese.  Which is worse than the smell of freshly fermented cheese…you get my point.

So, it’s back to basics for me and that’s the fact that I love music.

Did I tell you that I love music?

The other day, I was just thinking about it when I finally reunited with my lovely guitar after TWO YEARS. That’s a fairly long time to be away from an object you held on to practically everyday.  Imagine you lost your phone and found it two years later: that’s how I felt.  

See, when I left Manila two summers ago, someone (who I had kindly sought favor to load my things at the back of the car while I prepared for my trip to the airport) forgot to load my guitar (among other valuable electronic gadgets, irritatingly so).  So by the time I got to the airport, I was cities away from my lovely wooden thing.

A few days ago, I got in touch with my cousin who I haven’t seen for the same number of years and found out that she took the liberty of taking MY guitar with her to Davao.  I just love her, she is definitely the best. That’s why I forgive her for the pink heart-shaped butingting that she pasted on my guitar’s pick guard, it’s alright by me. Even though I would never have approved of it to begin with.  Never mind, we can easily arrange its…removal.

What got me thinking even more while I was finally strumming the thing was how hard it is for a musician to love music without an instrument.  Or to REALLY love music without being able to play anything.  I know you’re all sick of my metaphors, but here’s another one:  It’s like, you can’t really appreciate sex until you’ve done it, in my humble opinion.

I finally get to play a song I’ve been dying to play myself which is Joy Division’s monumental single, “Love will tear us apart”.  For this post, I won’t have you listen to how I played it.  Instead, check out this superb cover from Jose Gonzales (who also made an equally superb rendition of Heartbeats by The Knife as well as Teardrop by Massive Attack).  For me, it’s always a joy to listen to guitar players and hear them sing to the songs that they play.

What more if I was THAT guitar player.

Download audio file (Jose Gonzalez - Love will tear us apart (Joy Division cover).mp3)

Jose Gonzales - Love will tear us apart (Joy Division cover) [Download]  [Lyrics]

Oh well, life moves on.  Hopefully when I move to the States I’ll catch the Wordcamp in San Francisco, booya!

Meanwhile, a blogger who’s not in the field is obviously mulling about the internet.  Just now I downloaded the beta version of Google’s new browser Google Chrome and for a Beta version it has so far impressed me with its speed.  It’s phenomenally faster than Mozilla 3.0 and is apparently more efficient than Safari.  Apart from the exciting fact that Chrome is Open source, it introduces a very unique way of managing javascript by incorporating multiple process in one browser.  Now the brainiacs from Google can best explain what that means not me, definitely, no.  Luckily, they came up with a very friendly way of helping us understand…through a comic strip!

(Note: Click on the images to enlarge, Duh.) The rest of the comic strip is here.

Now, another issue critics are saying about the new Google Chrome is that its suspiciously introducing the browser to the market the way Microsoft used to that elbowed Netscape Browser out of the competition (remember that?).  The strategy was called the Three E’s (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish).  Wikipedia has this to define that very enigmatic yet ruthless adage:

The alleged strategy’s three phases are:

1. Embrace: Development of software substantially compatible with a competing product, or implementing a public standard.
2. Extend: Addition and promotion of features not supported by the competing product or part of the standard, creating interoperability problems for customers who try to use the ’simple’ standard.
3. Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support the new extensions.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Microsoft critics, and computer-industry journalists claim that the goal of the strategy is to monopolize a product category. Such a strategy differs from J. Allard’s originally proposed strategy of embrace, extend then innovate only in how the final step is viewed. Microsoft asserts that this strategy is not anti-competitive, but rather an exercise of its discretion to implement features it believes customers want.

Pretty sly, eh?  Now Google can argue that it wouldn’t be that case because after that infamous case with Microsoft, the browser wars emerged and thus different people with varying personalities, interests and that-which-makes-them-tick have adapted to different browsers.  I am really a Safari girl while my brother is the Mozilla freak.  So is it possible that Google is trying to plunge into the Internet Browser world so that they can sieze on the market that wants to avail what only THEY can provide?  I think that the difference now is how Google has always quietly portrayed itself as Not the big bag wolf Microsoft is.  Sure the open source guise will let people tinker with how the guys from Google figured out how to hasten and manage rendering speed more effectively.  But they’ll be laughing while the other developers crawl their way through possibly…months before anyone gets to apply it on their new patch versions of (insert name of another Internet browser here).

One last thing: why would you want yet another browser?  Well Google’s giving you an incentive to use theirs.  Apart from the speedier rendering, naturally its the most powerful tool for using your favorite Google applications.  They have a comparative advantage when it comes to improving how they deliver their services through Google Chrome.  I’m really loving the Beta, I can’t wait for the next patch!

And so was I.

You can’t blame me for loving the month of July. This month has been packed with so many things I hardly have time to go online and type one of ‘em posts for the birthday of this brainchild.  Anyway, brief history:  Southisms used to be and was supposed to be (exclusively) a music blog.  The rise of the niche blogging hype had called this space for that purpose initially.  However, the writer has transformed over time from the booze-guzzling musicionado to the tube-whirring, film-powered “student” of life, the universe and everything.  So now this must be a blog about the universe and everything, as far as my media brain cell is concerned.  But can’t help drifting back to music-related events since it’s still pretty much part of my nature.

Say for instance, I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about the upcoming Muzika del Sur Music Awards 2008 for August.  Unfortunately I had an ear infection so I wasn’t able to cover their preliminary events. 

I’ve heard the nominations have closed and that’s where the fun usually starts.

In my experience working for the Research Team before, the awards features a range of categories namely: Best Music Video, Rock, Ragga, Metal, Pop, Hip-Hop, and The Mindanawon Award.  Each band in the final roster goes through a nomination process and goes through an extensive review by a panel of jurors.  Last year, we incorporated an SMS system which allowed fans to vote for their favorite artists to be awarded the People’s Choice.  Unfortunately, the process was inevitably problematic and faced a slight amount of controversy when misinformation about the texting information was proliferated.  Thankfully, the bands were such sports about it.

This year’s music awards event had also its own set of problems this year such as the controversy surrounding an Idol Grill (Davao) gig.  My friend Shieka, who was part of the production of the said event had this to rant on the Friendster bulletins:

IMAGINE IF THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU:

** YOU HAVE THIS EVENT THAT YOU PREPARED FOR ALMOST A MONTH PROMOTING AND DOING ALL THE STUFF JUST TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

YOU INVITED LOCAL ARTISTS FROM CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY ( GASULINA) AND TAGUM CITY(KEYK) TO PERFORM JUST TO PRESENT UNITY AMONG MINDANAO ARTISTS, NOT TO MENTION SOME LOCAL DAVAO BANDS WHO ALSO EAGERLY PARTICIPATED JUST TO SHOW SUPPORT ON THE VISION OF MUZIKA DEL SUR.

** MOST OF THE LOCAL ARTIST ORGANIZATONS FLOCKED DURING THE EVENT JUST TO SHOW SUPPORT ON THE DRIVE OF PROMOTING THE MUSIC SCENE OF MINDANAO.

**FRIENDS,FAMILIES,TRI-MEDIA WENT TO WITNESS THE FIRST PRE-EVENT ACTIVITY OF THE UPCOMING MUSIC AWARDS 2008. THEN HERE COMES OUR HERO!

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PROGRAM OUR IDOL COMMAND AND HIS JUSTICE LEAGUE DECIDED TO PULL OUT OUR EVENT BACK DROP STREAMER BECAUSE HIS IDOL LOGO WILL NOT BE SEEN (A. BY THE CAMERA, B. BY THE PEOPLE, C. BY HIS EMPLOYEES, D. BY HIS DRINKING BUDDIES, OR E. ALL OF THE ABOVE). AND WHEN WE ASKED HIS HIGHNESS TO JUST RECONSIDER OUR EVENT BECAUSE SOMEHOW WE PAID HIM TO HAVE OUR EVENT IN HIS KINGDOM… WHOOOOSHHHHHH!!!! OUR IDOL WITH ALL HIS MIGHT POINTED HIS MAGIC WAND TO HIS “CLOWNS” AND ORDERED ONCE AGAIN LADIES AND GENTLEMEN …ONCE AGAIN WITH(DRUM ROLL PLEASE..) ” I COMMAND YOU TO STOP YOUR EVENT! BY THE POWER OF MY MAGIC WAND MAGSITIGIL KAYOO MGA MAHADERA!! KEVERRR KUNG SINO PA YANG MGA MEDIA AT SPONSORS AT BISITA AT BANDANG NANDIYAN, WIZH KO EL! MAGDUSA KAYO MGA BRUHA! ” SO WITH ALL THE SHAME AND DEGRADATION WE PACK OUR THINGS,OUR PRIDE,OURSELVES, AND OUR HATRED HOME.

WE SOUGHT OUR REFUGE AT THE DURIAN BAR (THANKS PAOLO).

Being a musician and part of the media myself, that is NOT an ethical way to treat people from the media and music industry.  The fact that the event organizers have already paid for the place secures their discretion to manage the setting and materials to be used for the event.  Moreover, once the place is paid for, the event organizer and the outlet comes into an agreement that cannot be revoked under any circumstance.  The adage the show must go on is a practical truth because it’s too expensive to flush out the production when it is happening and it insults the professional integrity of all people involved in the production just because one person had a little problem.

Moreover Idol Grill never apologized to the production team and the bands for this horrible treatment.  Publicly or otherwise.

Anyways, I hate how there should always be politics in these events. Why can’t people be fun-loving and just listen to some friggin music?

Photo courtesy of http://morofilm.blogspot.com

My friend Jun Macarambon, who co-wrote “A step for my dream” had their film officially selected in this year’s Cinemalaya, inevitably the most prestigious film festival in the Philippines. I haven’t seen the film myself, but the fact that it made it to the festival should keep everyone’s heads up. It was directed by Monalayn Labado, also a Mindanawon. Hopefully, their producer Teng Mangansakan II, also a documentary filmmaker from Mindanao, would allow to screen the said film for this upcoming Mindanao Film Festival for everyone to see. Lately, the influx of critical Mindanao filmmakers shaking the national and international scene have grown since, perhaps, Lav Diaz. Other films to watchout for that are made by a Mindanao filmmaker include Sherad Anthony Sanchez’s film (director of Huling Balyan ng Buhi) “Imburnal”, which was recently shot in some parts of Bankerohan and Dumalag. It is an entry for this year’s Cinema One Originals. Also, an advocacy film was recently made entitled, “Hunghong sa yuta” which has already run on local cinemas. Noticeably, most of our fresh breed of filmmakers have done stories on Mindanao, treating these stories with a fair sense of what Mindanao truly feels like.

In an interview, Mangansakan mentioned a trend in the past of outsiders making stories about us with an unnerving sort of unfamiliarity, even dettachment. I once watched a 1980 Eddie Romero epic (three and half hours long) film entitled, “Aguila” starring Fernando Poe Jr., Christopher de Leon, Eddie Garcia among other star studs, and the film had vague images of Mindanao as the backdrop of where Fernando Poe eventually disappeared to. It portrays Mindanao as somewhat the ideal place to get lost in, a place ridden with rebels. Although, the rather unbalanced portrayal of Mindanao is for the overall cinematic effect or part of how it was written but that’s precisely how it’s just not enough for non-Mindanawons to describe what Mindanao is like. Even National Media makes me cringe at all the news they run about the region. Whereas that is my advocacy, all strifes of artistic forms or self-determining movements in Mindanao have been hampered by the fact that there isn’t ENOUGH support from the locale, or at least not too many are aware that it needs support. I hope you will show yours.

Goodbye Bill Gates (as CEO of Microsoft)! You’ve clearly shaped our computer experience for the last 3 decades.  Kudos for MS-DOS, Bubba.

Now, I have a clear bias for the disk jockey software I was used to before, and I really think that it’s still the best way of smoothly transitioning songs with one another.  I am specifically fond of the program OtsDJ from OtsLabs but unfortunately only the trial version is available online and they come with annoying OtsDJ stingers that I can’t remove.  So that alone eliminated the prospect of my using it for the party.  Its full version is obviously minus the stingers but cost about a whopping USD 999.95.  But that price is good for professional Radio Broadcasting companies, without going through the trouble of renewing their license for the use of the product.  Clearly, Ots targets a niche market but if ordinary people could get their grubby paws on this thing, it’d top ordinary party music players.  It has its own audio leveling initiative, that even if you transition songs manually, it gives you a hint of where to start off without the songs sounding weird next to each other.  Radio networks try to cheat this awkward transitioning by putting on stingers in between say for example, it’d be strange to put a JayZ song next to something from…Josh Groban.  So you put something in between that cleverly inserts your station ID “Killerboop FM, your music priority” blah blah.  (Which reminds me, I have yet to write about HOW to make a good music compilation since the same principles apply). With the case of Ots, it crossfades the songs smoothly next to each other with or without anything inbetween.  You can continuously play music and it’ll fix things for you automatically.

Since I wrote off Ots from my list, I had to come up with a FREE alternative.  And I chose from four different softwares, namely: Virtual DJ, iTunes, Windows Media Player, and Rhapsody.

Virtual DJ probably has the nearest features to Ots but again it’s not for free.  I  managed to buy an installer from a shop in Manila and have the full version installed on my laptop.  The great thing about Virtual DJ is that, as the name implies, its really made for a DJ.  Not the kind of DJ I used to be, but DJs who play for clubs and are technically playing club music.  I didn’t want to play an all club music playlist for the party because of the moderately “behaved” crowd, if you don’t mind me saying.  But had I intended to play for a crowd more open to House music, this would be the most excellent software to use.  It features an Auto Sync beatmapping thing that lets you match the tempo of a song automatically.  It also gives you an option to transition the beats by the number of bar counts in between.  Okay, that’s DJ talk already.  Mind you, this is ALSO another niche product which hits a happy nerve among its enthusiasts.  Plus, if you really get in to the mixing thing, you can record your entire mix via the program, leaving out the hassle of recording hardware that can burn a hole in your pocket. The next thing you know, you can burn your own music mix straight from the desktop.

Moving on to the poor man’s media players?  I hope not.  We all know how GREAT the almighty Apple iTunes is, but let’s measure how functional this player can be for parties.  First of all, I love its crossfade effect.  It’s as smooth as the visual transition interface used for the iPod, hard to explain really.  But by the sound of it, its the best among cheap downloadable music players.  I’ve also noted that building a playlist with iTunes is by far the easiest to deal with.  I like the idea that I can organize all my playlists in a viewable area at the left sidebar, and drag and drop music files from anywhere: even from other media players!  And some music software won’t let you do that.  My big problem with iTunes has more to do with its rather bland aesthetics.  If it’s music and functionality you’re looking for, you wouldn’t mind playing it on a software that looks like a spreadsheet.

I hardly want to talk about Windows Media Player since it’s practically a local software but I considered it because of its really familiar interface.  The newest version out there, which I use on Windows Vista is one that eliminates the standard row of functions, only to appear if you press ALT.  What I don’t like about Media Player is its rather juvenile Visualizations that come along with the package, which the newest version of Winamp has already beat.  (Note: I didn’t include Winamp in this review because I think it deserves an entire post, to follow).  Where was I?  Yes, WMP is so uninteresting these days.  What I do like about it is NOT the fact that you can change the surface colors but that you can incorporate it in such a stylish way on the taskbar.  It’s not on the system tray it’s on the left side of the bar when minimized as you can see in this picture:

Never mind the product placement there.  Anyway, it’s posited at that side of taskbar you get what I mean?  You can set it up via the taskbar properties.  It’s a great way for Windows to monopolize features all over again!

Last but not the least is the most elusive Rhapsody.

My friend uses this for their bar and it’s a great software to use if you want to attend to everyone’s request. Why?  Because it’s powered by no less than the internet!

Real Rhapsody has iTunes’ playlist building flexibility whereas you can access the internet for full albums from your favorite artists.  Its dashboard is intuitive that it makes an artist suggestion for you based on the kind genre of the artists that you look up on Rhapsody.  And because you can access songs so easily from the internet, it’s likewise more accessible when it comes to building a playlist from a database larger than the ones you have on file.  Unfortunately, it comes with a catch: you have to pay.  At least for either a monthly subscription of USD 9.95 or a yearly sum worth USD 20.00, and those are the last prices I checked before the oil hike, yikes. The software itself is downloadable for free and is fairly respectable when it comes to archiving your music without getting confused.  It’s just that, you can get away with other music players that uses less memory for local music playing.

Out of all of the poor man’s category, I’d say iTunes wins this one and I’d recommend this for an easygoing mp3 player experience. As for the other players, most features I liked are superficial ones, and among those who’ve I’ve lauded for their systematic depth of function, it’s such a drag having to dole out so much cash so that you can appreciate some music.  You’d rather burn a CD.

You can only relate to this if you’re a Filipino and watched TV most of the day like I did.

A particularly odd segment followed this commemoration: the media coverage of the funeral service dedicated to Rudy Fernandez, a Filipino action star. We’re not close or anything, but since he’s dead I guess it’s okay to say at this point, “Too bad we never get to see a movie starring Rudy Fernandez and Lorna Tolentino”. If Rudy was well enough there was a script waiting for him and his wife. I don’t own the rights to the script but the premise of the story is based on a woman’s unwavering love for her partner despite her own personal desires. This would have been their life story. Anyway, what is my conclusion about Rudy’s death? I roughly quote my friend, “Reality is more unbelievable than fiction. Fiction (film) is there to convince us that they are unbelievable indeed.”

My condolences to the actor’s family.

Anyway, did Noli de Castro turn his back on his ABS-CBN family, finally? By smashing the oligarchs no less! Smash, smash, smash. Why are you talking just now de Castro? Are you disappointed in how they’re handling the Ces Drilon kidnapping? I’m glad you could air your testimonial about being kidnapped by the Abusayyaf yourself. He throws a caveat, “Never let the station handle the negotiation with the group.” When he says this you can just see the traces of disappointment in his voice. He’s making parinig ABS-CBN twice in one day! Wow. I wonder if PGMA promised him a cut in the Meralco hostile takeover…

So much for a free nation. Cheers to the social entrapments we are in and the bright box that tells us all about it.

Enough of this Deep Talk, and hello world.

Welcome to the “NEW AND IMPROVED SOUTHISMS!” Don’t you just love Music? I love it so much. What about movies? TV? Radio? Photography? I love ‘em too. Can’t decide what to write with all those things in mind. So here it is. Like it? The whole point of this blog is to grab you by the nuts and show you the fascinating things happening around the Southern region. Wait, there’s more: you get to think twice about it. Show me some feisty opinion as expected from yours truly. I hear someone belt, “Secret, secret? I got a secret!”

More… I say Domo Aregato Mr. Roboto - if you didn’t get my very tacky Styx song reference there, let me remind you that there’s a whole a new world at the tip of your fingers via the internet, particularly blogs authored by young minds like myself. (I was always used to being the youngest in a peer group but then I grew up and started to think I could be young on my own.) I want to celebrate the youth of this blog by celebrating its maturity. What started out as a music blog is now turning its attention to other tangible information and entertainment resources. If you can look at the world and its people by analysing its music, what more if you could examine (especially) Mindanao from the perspective of all its media exposures. Such is the new concept of this revitalized blog: hip, current, versatile, multicultural and conscious. Watch this precious, precious space in the interweb. P.S. If you click the featured video, that’s actually me talking. And also telling you about evil plans of making a video podcast called “Durian Volleyball”. Hurrah!