Now/here no/where woman

I'm far from ready to race again but I plan on planting myself by a fun section of the route (preferably where there will be a lot of shade and a lot of action -- jumps, drops, or spectacular crashes!) and enjoying some of the best company there is this side of the mountain biking world. Top prizes are fun and bragging rights. You can join only if you are endorsed by a godfather. If you have any complaints, you may proceed to two of the toughest mixed martial arts gyms in the Philippines. This race smacks of the classic humor and, well, braggadociousness of some biker boys I know in Baguio and La Trinidad, and will most likely have a mind-blowing, lung-busting, muscle-ripping route. Am I right, or am I right? Format: The enduro format is played out on a trail course and requires considerable technical skills to tackle the downhill portions and enough legpower to get back up to the next downhill leg. The downhill legs, called Special sta ges, are conducted as Individual Time...

We has a new playground! Yesssss! Amateur berm attack.  Pro berm attack. My guardian demonyos get high! Racing to get down before the rain comes in from the neighboring mountain. My Superman after a day in the playground. Even if we've been together for years, I still think he's so handsome!

I don't consider myself a biker that races. If I remember correctly I've only ever joined 2 mountain bike races in this life, and my third mtb race was also my first downhill race, thanks to the needling and precise coaching of my brothers Behind Bars (at Aky's bikeshop). It all began with an 'innocent' visit to the tracks skillfully built by Team ULAW in Cruz, La Trinidad. For the boys this was going to be the first of a series of practice visits prior to The Flow DH Party on July 3, 2010 . For me, it was just going to be play... "FLOW" is the purrfect word to describe the tracks at Cruz... (If you see these, "...", it means words have failed me and I've floated off into a biking reverie...). Lovely smooth berms, big jumps (which I skipped of course), tight switchbacks... enough roots to shake you up a bit, no rocky threats, one tricky off-camber slope that was as slippery as a wet bar of soap, and a wonderful wonderful wonderful 2-fo...

Standing before the larger-than-life, hyper-detailed work of John Frank Sabado, one cannot help but wonder: Where lies the source of Sabado’s phantasmagoric imagery? The answer throbs quietly in the loving arms of this earth. The roots of Sabado’s work lie in the simple story of a boy growing up in a forest that shrank as the boy’s world expanded. Sabado was born into the lifeworld of the Lepanto logging concession in Mankayan, Benguet. There his Ilocano parents worked to support and educate their children. As a boy he spent his days going to the river, fetching water, catching eels, hunting for mushrooms, gathering firewood. To him these chores were not work. They were no different than the mock wars that he and his playmates would wage in the forest. There were many dangers lying in wait for adventurous little boys living in a logging concession but no harm ever befell Sabado and his friends. This was deep play in the arms of Nature, whom Sabado describes with a wide grin as ...

Christ the Locksmith's Lament When a key is lost you come to me for I can pick any lock, open even the chambers of your heart. But once I throw the doors wide you slam them shut again, bolt them quickly from the inside with heavy beams. I am left on the outside listening to the echoes of closed entries, knowing you believe I cannot be trusted not to enter unbidden. © Padmapani L. Perez, 2010 THE EXHIBIT RUNS UNTIL MARCH 31, 2010 . Read all about it at here, at Snippets from the Manila Art Scene , and here, in Ystyle .

(Un)Made by Walking (wrote this for the catalogue of Kaw's Bored on the 4th of July one man show in the Ateneo Art Gallery) Kawayan de Guia arrived at the Omi International Arts Center in Ghent, New York spent from the journey from the Philippines, out of sync and empty-handed. The hosts at Omi drove him to Houston, the closest town from the Arts Center, to buy some materials for the work he would be doing as one of 30 artists from all over the world participating in a three week residency. They took him to Walmart. Within five minutes of being in Walmart Kawayan was assailed by a wave of panic. In that inexplicable moment of terror, Kawayan decided that he should return to Walmart at his own pace, and on his own terms, to understand the way he felt about being there. On America’s Independence Day (Kawayan calls it, “America’s day to shine”) he set out at dawn and walked alone for six hours across 30 kilometers of Route 66 through a landscape he describes as, “Eerily empty. Forgot...

Under the blinking sacred heart of Jesus, shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee, everybody sits placidly in the jeepney, former vehicle of war converted by Pinoy genius into a medium for mass transport, articulating function and frivolity the way only the Filipino can. Today’s dispatcher in the paradahan ng bayan is the artist Kawayan de Guia, who swears that riding the jeepney through the maze-like state of the nation eventually leads to an inexplicable sensation of being stuck in a bygone era.   And the music! Oh the music! The April Boys back to back with Curtis Mayfield, by turns wrenching and soothing the passengers’ collective broken hearts. Alaskado! There’s no getting off because up ahead is a sign that says no loading and unloading and around the corner is a fat cop with Ray-Bans just waiting for ‘small change’ to fall into his itching palms. The elusive Filipino psyche is out for a joy ride in these musical pieces, these gilded jeepney/paintings and jukebox/jeepneys re...

An edited (new and improved!) version of this write up is in today's Inquirer. Portraits of elders with weathered faces, pretty young women in traditional costumes, and mountainsides carved into magnificent rice terraces – these are the trademark images that make up the popular vision of the Cordillera mountain range and its people. Little of this standard imagery is to be found in JP Alipio’s photographic exhibition, Green Shadows, on display at the Victor Oteyza Community Art Space (VOCAS) until March. The collection of photos brings into sharp, almost painful focus a vision of a bountiful environment steadily being laid to waste. "WASTELAND" by JP Alipio Commissioned by the Cordillera Green Network, Alipio documented the state of the environment in all the provinces of the region. The experience has changed his scope as a photographer and his stance as an environmentalist. “It made me more locally-grounded... I’ve moved on from being a hardcore save-the-trees environme...

Congratulations to Kawayan de Guia for bringing the Ateneo Art Award home to Baguio, and to Butch Macansantos for winning First for Poetry in English in the Palanca Awards! Wooohooo!

There are few things that can bring the same satisfaction as this: Being surrounded by trees and family and friends. Working together in an outdoor kitchen area to butcher and cook a pig with Skatoy and a bunch of ponyboys. Making blood sausages with Manong Mattias. Eating tinuno, pinuneg, dinakdakan, and boiled pork with salt and sili. Pouring and drinking gin which No. 1 Biker Boy spiced with cinnamon bark bought in the hangar market. Watching the Artist-in-Residence be the manang and guide the wild kids into the woods and out again. This is one of those things that affirms why I live and love in Baguio. Few things make me feel this alive. *I'm so grateful I don't care that I ended the title with a preposition and that most of this post is made up of incomplete sentences.

Indiogenius muzik! It's been my long-time dream to write for the PCIJ, and this year my wish was granted! The piece is not of the brilliantly earth-shattering, mind-opening, cataclysmic types that PCIJ generates, but I'm thrilled nevertheless heehee.

Calling friends and family of Santiago Bose... Calling friend and family of Santiago Bose... What do you think of this? Out of this world! I think Santi would've loved it, no? I can hear him cackling now.

If you're in town, it's worth climbing the six flights of stairs in La Azotea to see the works of these two antipatiko artists and to have a cup of brewed coffee in the Victor Oteyza Community Art Space. The show hangs til November 21. If you're lucky the artists themselves may be hanging about and they might even let you buy them a cuppa. Mark Dungaw has found religion. Demi del Rosario, proud to be pagano.

Baguio boy photographers Ruel Bimuyag and Dave 'Kulot' Leprozo have flown to Arizona to participate in the exchange program of Through Each Others Eyes , an organization of Arizona-based professional photographers that promotes cultural understanding through photography ek-ek. They will spend two to three weeks there getting trigger happy (with their cameras, of course!), hosted by local photographers. Next year, two photographers from Through Each Others Eyes will come to Baguio where Ruel and Kulot will host them and assist them in shooting our beloved dugyot city. When the exchange is completed an exhibition of the photos will be shown in both Baguio and Phoenix. Yipppeeee! Something new to look forward to! Here are my favorite mug shots of da boys Ruel at play in Sadanga, 2006. Yes that is a human jawbone. Kulot at play in Baguio, 2003. Yes those are his horns showing.

When I spoke to Kawayan late last night he was still putting finishing touches on his pieces and packing them up for the trip to Manila. (Alright, we know it's actually "Metro" Manila and that you've got a whole lot of cities thrown into it but to us it's just this huge unbearable monolithic urban mess that we call Manila. If some one says they have to go down to Manila, it's explanation enough. We don't have to know whether she means Quezon City or Pasig. We are instantly sympathetic.) Tomorrow, Saturday the 28th, Kawayan opens a one-man exhibition, called Incubator, in the Drawing Room. I bet no one at the opening will notice how the show didn't completely come together until the very last moment. I wish I could be there to see how the final headless chicken moments become a seamless show. Yes, I would consider going to Manila for that, but instead the following paragraphs Kawayan asked me to write are making the trip for me. Also last-minute. Firs...

It's been my dream to run a campaign in which my BFF (Best Friend Ferdie) runs for mayor under the Parti Party. We considered doing this and fielding the most unforgettable assembly of nuisance candidates ever, made up mostly of artists and other local vagabonds. The entire campaign would be a string of performances! But then we were overcome by the fear that BFF could actually win. And then what would we do? Also, it would be quite a challenge to raise funds for all the 'batchered' pigs and tapuy that every Parti Party appearance would require. So forget that. But I can still wish for it...

We all have our good Fridays for being bad. If you have baggage (like I do), and if your life's been colonized by a dissertation (like mine), and if you try to behave and be responsible for the most part (like I do choke choke choke), and if you are self-centered (like me) but live with other people (lovely though they may be) and have a precocious adolescent to think of besides yourself and on a daily basis too (like I do), then once in a while, you just want to let things rip and give the whole world the finger. Like I just did. Hee hee hee! Here are a few fragments I collected from friends about last Friday's opening at the Victor Oteyza Community Art Space, a.k.a VOCAS. Randy and Bong put up their first two-man show. Touches of the surreal, breath of the mountains, metal aftertaste of the city, and shades of the Igorot in us all. If you're in town, go see the paintings. Pogi Reggae, Batotoys' Blues, and the Uptown Rascals played music that made the crowd dance. That...