Saw this and shot its photo. Because there’s always reason to hope.
Love love LOVE this song! All because of Rock Band 3! hehehe
If this is the last dance, if this is the last dance,
Save it for me baby.
I don’t wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you would let it go
And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know
Isang tulog na lang.
It’s the amazing, insightful, and exciting stories like this that kept me a fan of video games. I outgrew lots of things, but this one seems like it’s there to stay. And yes, your children should NOT play Mass Effect 3.
Because this one isn’t for your kids. It’s for you.
I still think about it: about when I last saw you, and all the million things I wish I was able to say.
In my mind’s version of that memory, you’re smiling. You’re happy. And I wish that was something Real. That it was something True.
Dancing Drawings - My Reflections on Cartoons (cross-posted on LJ and Blogger)
I don’t watch much TV, but when I do, I watch cartoons.
I really don’t remember how it began, but for all my life, my great love has been animation. More specifically, cartoons.
I remember when I was about 2 or 3 years old, I started trying to draw. My parents remember how the walls of our old home were covered in crayon wax. I even remember that the color was left on for a long time. I suppose they were either sentimental, or they wanted to make me feel like what I scrawled on them was special. Still. I remember moving my hands, making shapes. I loved lessons I learned about shapes too: squares, triangles, circles. I liked trying to put images on paper, even if I was never at all very good at it (and still not). Skill and love are not always the same thing.
I did, however, remember a time when I saw a cartoon. It must have been Mickey Mouse, because I remember how he looked like he was made of simple shapes: circles. I thought I could draw that. But he moved.
I looked for a sheet of paper and I tried to approximate Mickey with pencil. He looked more like a bean afterwards. And to add to my frustration: the TV version moved. Mine didn’t.
And he talked! It was just gibberish then. Later, I got to see other cartoons and started deriving meaning from language properly, it was more than just pictures. They were stories. They were characters. They were a world that didn’t exist (they weren’t “real life” like the news shows of my parents or the drama shows of the house helpers), but they were more fun.
Video games were an even bigger source of amazement. Cartoons, and I could make them move! I finally had a way to ‘paint’ my own cartoon story, thanks to moving pixels and electronics. When Mario jumped, he did it because I said so, unlike that hapless coyote who falls for the Road Runner’s tricks. Games then never looked as nice as the TV shows, but I didn’t mind. (On some days, I’d watch the “Super Mario Brothers’ Super Show” on Channel 2 and clutch the controller of our Family Computer, as if I were guiding Mario save Princess Peach yet again.)
To this day I still watch cartoons. Age didn’t make me dismiss them as for kids only: learning about how they are made and the time it takes made me really, really get into them deeper. I read somewhere that one episode of “The Simpsons” used to take up to 148 days to finish: writing, drawing, voice acting, the works. It would take much longer for an epic like “The Lion King” or “WALL-E”. The stories also didn’t necessarily have to be for children either; any fan of anime will attest to that.
There’s anime, there’s CGI, there’s traditional cel-based shows, and I’d watch them all. Hell, I still watch cartoons on TV. I guess you never really leave a love you’ve had for years on end.
Here’s a couple of favorite TV shows I’ve nurtured. I’ll leave out anime for this post; there are too many!
The Real Ghostbusters came first, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles really put me on the road to liking cartoons forever! It was fate, I guess, that I had the same name as my favorite one, the sarcastic Raphael. It was a kids’ favorite for lots of reasons: memorable characters, ninja fighting action, and that song! The remakes in the 2000’s never got that charm back, but still, this one I remember very fondly.
The Simpsons used to appear regularly on Fridays, back in a time when Friday evenings on local TV were exclusively for children. I liked it then because it was funny slapstick. I got older, and started understanding the more outrageous comedy, particularly the provocative jokes that blew right past my 8-year old self. To this day, I still think it’s good comedy. I still look for this when I channel surf. 23 years down and it’s still interesting, never mind the shine came off some years ago. 
I must be the only one who misses cartoons on Fridays on Philippine TV. Batman: The Animated Series made its debut in this city through those Friday nights. At the time, it was a sit-in to replace the Ninja Turtles when the series started to spiral out. Little did anybody know it would be a masterpiece of animated storytelling, and broadcast to a whole country every week for years! The X-Men series had more fans, and The Simpsons was more mature, but Batman was like the basketball pick and roll: fundamental and core to any cartoon fan’s experience. And yes, it did explore deep ideas like psychosis, regret, and ultimately self-redemption. Hell, if I have kids one day I want them to grow up watching this too. 
Codename: Kids Next Door was pure fun for me, mostly because it had a certain nostalgia only grown-ups can understand. The kids are the heroes, the adults are villains, and they fight for the right to enjoy their youth: candy, playtime, and tree houses all included. I also liked how the characters, who are children, all know and understand the inevitable: they will grow up, and have to stop, and be adults too. So, they go all-out and enjoy their youth for all it’s worth. Kinda like how we all have to own up to mortality, and say “yes” to what we have in life today.
In high school, South Park was the cool kids’ show. If you knew this, you were cool. Especially at the time when nobody really wanted to be profane and outright crass, and especially depict otherwise adorable-looking children as such. It was really funny then because it was irreverent and wild. Still makes me laugh to this day, but Lord knows I hardly see it around today.
Wait, scratch what I just said. The REAL Cool Kids of high school were into Beavis and Butt-head. Hell, the GRADE SCHOOL kids who got to see this (especially at a time when it was hard to get cable, and MTV Asia didn’t carry this show yet) were the cool ones. Why? Know what, just YouTube a clip of them laughing. I don’t care about what, just listen. Exposure to this show makes you have fun somehow! It’s not drugs, but it comes close. Hell, MTV should just scrap Jersey Shore and do re-runs of this instead. It’s more interesting anyway, the butt-monkeys. (And YES, they have new episodes of this. I am delighted.)
You can’t talk about smart cartoons without talking about Daria. Starring a recurring character off of Beavis and Butt-head, the show depicts high school life quite well. By “well”, I mean with more realism than most high school stories, especially at the time when “Dawson’s Creek” was the biggest TV show (and a favorite also, but that’s a different story). Biting, acerbic, subversive and witty as hell, this show was incredible. I’d look for the DVD set somewhere.
Oh my God, this show was made of GOLD. Rocko’s Modern Life was the precursor to Spongebob Squarepants. Heck, much of Spongebob owes its life to Rocko, as the Rocko team worked on Spongebob later in life. The comedic style stuck too. But what made Rocko better for me was how they were more overt in showing themes NOT FOR KIDS, while still targeting kids! (The episode of Mrs. Bighead trying to seduce Rocko was a particular case that made its way to the newspapers here.) Of course the show pushed the limits, and I liked it that way. Nickelodeon stopped being as adventurous ever since, which is sad.
I think it was the hip-hop hook of the intro that got me. The Boondocks, based on Aaron McGruder’s comic strip, strikes a chord for the cause of racial stereotypes. “A black South Park with a bigger brain,” I like to think of it, but that’s unfair. South Park was never this smart. This is satire at its finest, using racist comedy and crisp Japanese animation to execute a very, very funny show. The insights presented are also very sensitive and clever, but if you’re ignorant you’ll probably only notice the N-word jokes.
Samurai Jack, I loved too. It didn’t have a lot of jokes. It didn’t even seem to have a lot of cheer and brightness to its dystopic future setting. It did, however, show a lot about honor, righteousness, and personal strength. Okay, I made that up. It’s art is BEAUTIFUL and I love it for it. The action is also rightly intense and at times downright violent. It would be the foundation of the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated shorts produced by Cartoon Network, which also turned into gold. While we always knew how these kinds of shows would end, it was also still awesome how they got told, and lovingly voiced.
Had to post The Rugrats, just to balance Cartoon Network’s dominance. (Sorry Nick! Your cartoons aren’t as cool.) But sensitivity aside? Rugrats wasn’t always about a moral lesson or some big picture that only adults could see. This one I loved because it was 100% pure charm. It’s cute, it’s clever, and it’s adorable. It also had characters you could relate to in surprising ways. Yes, they’re babies, but it makes you wonder: if babies were like that, could we be so ‘baby-like’ ourselves? Rumor has it that even after the “All Grown Up” spinoff, they’re making more episodes, and for that I’m happy.
I have gone full-circle maybe. Adventure Time is a kids’ show that isn’t ashamed of being for kids. It’s about a boy and his magical dog in the Land of Ooo. It’s also got possibly the BEST WRITING of any comedic cartoon today. It’s like the wildest imagination of people is distilled into this show, and rendered in adorable, ridiculous, and incredibly random ways. I mean, where else can the sentence “Rescue Princess Bubblegum and Lady Rainicorn from the Ice King and his evil penguin Gunter with the help of Marceline the Vampire Queen” make sense if not with a child? I grew up loving the cartoons that didn’t aim for kids; now I’m an adult and I love Adventure Time. (But YES, the show has jokes no child will understand! Mwahahahaha.)
The old quote was “Growing up is mandatory, growing old is optional,” or some such thing. I mean, you can choose to be old. Or you can choose to stay young. Little did I know that choice was made for me, way, way before it presented itself. And yes, I am having more fun today than I did before.
HOW TO BE ALONE
by Tanya Davis
If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.
We could start with the acceptable places: the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.
There’s also the gym. If you’re shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in.
And there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there’s prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you’re hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your ‘avoid-being-alone-principles’.
The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they — like you — will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less intriguing a person when you’re eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching…because, they’re probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there are always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might’ve never happened had you not been there by yourself
Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.
You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company. But no one’s in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.
Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school’s groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. ‘Cause if you’re happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.
It’s okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach.
And it doesn’t mean you’re not connected, that community’s not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. Take silence and respect it. If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. If your family doesn’t get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.
You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
