Magical substances

it's been a hectic but fun week.

quick recap:

saturday night, Elmer, my friend from Fu magazine who i may be getting into trouble for posting this entry, got us into a wine-tasting thing, where we got to sample all sorts of wine i really could not tell apart except for separating the white from the red and for one particular wine, i think it was sauvignon, or was it cabernet? that smelt strangely beany, for free.

me and my friend Eman went on the pretense that we were part of the staff of Fu magazine, and one of the waiters seemed to enjoy pushing those little bitty food thingies i can't spell, which were really quite good (yes, hors d'oeuvre, which is one of the few words i truly dislike).

Elmer also invited me to a karting gig their magazine covered earlier the same day, though it was too far off from the wine tasting venue for me to go to both, so i had to make a choice. i'd been writing at my favorite coffeeshop spot when i received the invite. Elmer, on the other hand, had come from a car show before proceeding to knock back some of that great vin.

i may lose my job for saying something like this, but i'm in the wrong magazine. Elmer and the rest of the Fu staff seem to have all the fun. oh well, have to start somewhere.

last night, sunday, me and a few friends from my old job went to see Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah. i keep meaning to read the comic, but haven't gotten around to it. while the musical is delightfully unapologetic, mixing sentimentality with a humor that tries very hard to be unsentimental and yet manages to be warmer and more sincere than it ought to be, i'm uncertain about how well it translated the comic material. it felt very commercial to me when i'd expected it to be edgier. typically pinoy in its self-reference, with that post-modern slant which itself has become typical of modern pinoy art, filled with inside jokes from pinoy pop culture. none of this was as annoying as it could have been, or may well ought to have been. i absolutely loved the way they worked around stage limitations to portray the material in the book (i particularly enjoyed the ingenuity of the giant frog scene), and the music and lyrics were brilliant, with what sounded like an homage to Danny Elfman, i found, particularly delightful.

i should've asked Carlo Vergara about the adaptation when i got his autograph for Mabel's collection, but my natural introversion got the better of me, and i collected his and Eula Valdez's autographs with barely a word save the shyest of thanks, and slipped away as quietly and as unnoticeably as possible.

and, anyway, it would have been embarrassing to tell him i'd not read his comic book yet.