Writer & artist Igan D'Bayan
These days, Igan D’Bayan focuses on the horrors of the digital age, where online platforms and social media influencers emerge as modern-day sirens and harpies, both alluring and ominous. Abandon ye all nopes! Poison in tutti-frutti flavors. He masks the free-flowing dread with lifestyle features and darkly humorous reviews, ever plodding along probably because English is his second language and has a tendency to change his mind and not suffer fools gladly. He will tell you how he soldiers on, because in the words of Samuel Beckett, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” REKORDR is where these platypus-like stories live now — weird, unhurried, and entirely his own.
Manila is the place & Time is the story
Luxury watchmaking was never really about telling time. Sixteen watchmakers from Switzerland, Germany and Japan set up inside the Ayala Museum.
Collected Irritations
A reader once wished my essays were collected in one book so she could hate everything in one place. Her wish is my command.
Why I Am Not A Normal Writer
As the paper I write for marks its 40th anniversary, it seems only fitting to look back at some of the highlights from this gloriously bonkers career.
Eye-catching today, iconic tomorrow: Inside the Ikea PS 2026 Collection
Three days in Älmhult, where a foldable chair hangs like art, a bench rocks like Oktoberfest, and a chair you sit on turns out to be air.
From Malabon to Venezia: Ronald Ventura mounts collateral show at 61st Venice Art Biennale
Four in the morning in Malabon in the Nineties, sopas at Connie’s, and a father who recognises his own town inside a drawing of Venice.
Malabon artist sets sail for Venice
Ronald Ventura transforms boat-body sculptures and lunar motifs into a meditation on water, survival, and the fragile ties between two cities.
‘Something sexy… happening in the Apocalypse’
Somatosonic’s performance wove together technology, sound, pole dance, audio-kinetic sculptures, live visuals, and a darkly brewing storm of sounds.
Pula ang Kulay ng Katapusan
Bakit pula? A foreword to Doktor Karayom’s book of raw, anatomical musings, drawn somewhere between bangungot and alaala.
Why write with the archipelago on fire?
‘Literature is the slower type of art which is consumed in seclusion, a great antidote against the flood of information.’
Cecile Licad’s tones of home
A Hamburg Steinway on the Banaue Rice Terraces, paksiw every morning, and the word motorsiklo written where accelerando should be.
Out to brunch as the world turns
The Great British Brunch at Gordon Ramsay Bar & Grill: unlimited cheese toasties and sticky toffee pudding, and a chef with Ramsay tattooed on her arm.
Inside a kitchen constantly put to the test
Ever the explorer, Chef Josh Boutwood treats The Test Kitchen as a culinary laboratory rather than a typical restaurant.
Heart & soil
A thousand hand-made tiles of soil from Calatagan, Baybay and Tampakan, built to erode: the Philippine Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale.
Podium Social brings culinary cool to Ortigas
Five restaurants on The Podium’s sixth floor rethink how Manila gathers and eats, above a kaleidoscopic view of Ortigas.
Eyes on the Tomahawk and other tales at Smith & Wollensky
The Manhattan steakhouse lands in BGC with dry-aged Tomahawks carved tableside, a Grammy-nominated pianist, and no interest in local tastes.
Exploding olives, tempting tapas, and a tale of virtual travel
Las Flores, Tomatito, Rambla and Rumba: how the Bistronomia Group serves a trip through Barcelona, Navarra and Madrid without a boarding pass.
Meet the Japanese designer who expresses the sublime through the ridiculous
Japanese designer Mihara Yasuhiro brings his sculptural, street-meets-art sneakers to Studio Dimensione BGC, in a bold collab with Suyen Corp.
A glazed rebellion: Scott Garceau’s hole-hearted art at The Crucible Gallery
The monolith on Who’s Next is now a donut, and so is the pulsar on Unknown Pleasures: Scott Garceau glazes rock’s most iconic sleeves.
Real steak cannot be faked
LongHorn Steakhouse rides into Ortigas with a meat-slinging manifesto and no truffle foam anywhere. You cannot fake steak, is the belief.
‘The Imagination peoples the air’: PHL prepares for literary spotlight at Frankfurt Book Fair
As Guest of Honour at the 2025 Frankfurter Buchmesse (FBM), the Philippines is boldly scripting a new chapter for its literature on the global stage.
Ramen, reimagined
John Concepcion and his son Michael on Ippudo Ramen Bar at Uptown BGC, where the tonkotsu stays put and everything around it is rebuilt.
Drops of Juniper
Juniper, like its namesake botanical, weaves a story of depth, complexity, and quiet strength. It’s a restaurant, yes, but it’s also an exploration.
Yamazato: Hotel Okura Manila’s space for delicious rituals
Yamazato offers something more than just a meal. It serves time itself, delicately sliced and artfully arranged, to be held with care and chopsticks.
Ana de Ocampo’s Osteria Antica: A love letter to Italian cuisine
Ana Lorenzana de Ocampo flew a brick oven in from Italy to The Podium: Neapolitan pizza, handmade pasta, and the Ortigas skyline six floors up.
Ronald Ventura’s ‘Kalupaan’: Appetite for reconstruction
Saints in hard hats and a bird nesting in a construction site: Ronald Ventura asks what progress costs, in the first show at Cloudgrey Gallery.
Nuts over coco
Chef Chele Gonzalez, a DJ before he was a chef, turns the coconut into a tasting menu: kare-kare bonbon, refined nata de coco, Wagyu with bistek sauce.
How The Bistro Group rewrote the rules of Philippine dining
Thirty years from the first TGI Fridays in Glorietta to 26 concepts and 225 stores: how The Bistro Group changed the way Manila eats out.
The SpY who loved graffiti
A four-metre mirrored sphere at Giza, a globe inflated until it burst in Bilbao: the Spanish artist SpY brings his interventions to Art Fair Philippines.
So long, 2024, and no thanks for all the phish
Phishing texts, meetings about meetings, and A.I. acquaintances suddenly writing like Hitchens. Welcoming the new year with a renewed sense of dread.
Clark ’n’ roll, the Hard Rock Café way
A new Hard Rock Café opens at Hann Casino Resort in Pampanga, where the stage sits above the bar and a Zeppelin tour jacket hangs by Mariah’s pumps.
TGI Fridays: 30 years of maximum fun, food & stories that sizzle
Thirty years from that first fateful Friday in Glorietta 3: RC Tiongson on red hair, truffle chips and why the vibe has not aged a day.
Tradition takes a selfie with disruption
Olan Ventura & Ronson Culibrina take us to the visual edge and back in Olan’s ‘Prismatic Petals’ and Ronson’s ‘Marahuyo’ exhibitions at Goldenberg Mansion.
Have yourself a very Ramsay Christmas
Gordon Ramsay Bar & Grill’s first Philippine Christmas: Beef Wellington Rossini, a Jingle Bell Sour, and a gingerbread house built like a Gehry.
Feeling Rizal hover ‘In the Air’ tonight in Heidelberg
Rizal on bread, cheese and forever potatoes: retracing his Heidelberg addresses with Ambeth Ocampo, from the eye clinic to the river.
Literature both spectral & realistic: PH gears up for primetime in 2025 Frankfurt book fair
The Philippines takes the Guest of Honour scroll from Italy for 2025: Patrick Flores and Stanley Ruiz on the pavilion, and a line from Sisa’s chapter.
Frankfurter Buchmesse 2024: Books strike like printed lightning as ‘imagination peoples the air’
Great literature is about this very metamorphosis, about the wings that we all have, even if we no longer know we have them.
The dim sum pairing is a lob fest at Summer Palace
At Edsa Shangri-La’s Summer Palace, resident master chef Andy Liew turns dim sum into a study in patience, tradition and the art of the perfect pairing.
Chef Josh Boutwood’s vision for Ember’s fiery fare
Chef Josh Boutwood on the mushroom dish he tried to kill, the salmon heads he loves, and why perfection would be the saddest day of his career.
In bloom: Filipino artist Ronald Ventura sets new record at Christie’s
The artist continues not just to break records at auction houses but also records how society blooms away from what it is originally.
Mia Herbosa: Still lifes, dead birds, figures in repose, a world learning to breathe again
Three dead mayas on a studio floor in 2021 turned Mia Herbosa toward abstraction. Her new show is a visual diary of the years since.
Bringing out the opera in us
Four days of masterclasses at the Metropolitan Theater: Progetto Puccini argues that opera was never foreign to a country that sings mid-sentence.
Bigger, better and Bavarian to the core
Oktoberfest returns to Newport World Resorts this October, with Weihenstephan brews, Bavarian feasts and Austria’s AnTon Showband.
Bistro Group named its rescued strays after restaurants
What started with a stray refusing to move from under Paul’s car became Bistro Fur Friends, and a headquarters that is home to fifteen dogs.
Junyee through time & space
From painting the faces of the dead in a Cebu funeral home to the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining: the long calvary of the father of Philippine installation art.
For a boldly Filipino food experience, seek and you shall Siklab+
Two years and eight corporate chefs to get the crispy pata right: inside the Bistro Group’s first Filipino restaurant, at Shangri-La Plaza.
Kaye Tinga: ‘The CCP is more than just a building; it is a brand, a living entity.’
‘The CCP is really more than just a building; it is a living entity that encompasses everything about art and culture in our country.’
Patek Philippe: How tech intersects with aesthetics
A World Time watch whose date follows you across zones, and a Greenbelt boutique: Deepa Chatrath on making things useful and beautiful.
Farm to table, heart to heart
After a volcano, a pandemic and a lost lease, chefs Jay Jay and Rhea SyCip’s Fatted Calf finds its footing in Tagaytay, one farm-to-table plate at a time.
Mojo risin’: A tale of set meals and endless mojitos
Bottomless mojitos, set meals and a little existential drift: an afternoon at TGI Fridays One Ayala, where P345 buys as many mojitos as the heat demands.
Chef Josh Boutwood’s appetite for evolution
The chef behind Manila’s most restless kitchens on why he never designs a menu until he is standing in the room, and the chapter he is closing now.
Philippine Pavilion’s ‘Structures of Mutual Support’: From the Biennale to Bulacan
From an old armory in Venice to a barangay in Angat, the award-winning community library goes home to the people who helped build it.
Moving in Stereo: Why do audio fools fall in love?
Soundproofing is not acoustic treatment, the way Ryan Adams is not Bryan Adams. The never-ending build of a listening room, failing better.
The empire state of Maria Angelica Tan’s art
A Filipina in her early twenties, a Hudson Square gallery, and leftover adobo before the bus: Maria Angelica Tan distills New York into paint.
Mountain song: PHL Pavilion brings the aura of Banahaw to the Biennale
In the Philippine Pavilion, visitors walk among fabric, fake stones and sound, following the light. Mark Salvatus brings Banahaw to Venice.
Daily grind & morning rituals
Bo’s Coffee spins off Daily, a hand-poured brand born in the pandemic, from 10 cloud stores to 12 cafés built to look like bounce houses.
Shadows fall and I try
Grief tech, Black Mirror bots, and memories of Nanay: she murdered the English language but was Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul rolled into one.
A raising of curtains: Senator Loren Legarda & the story of the PHL Pavilion in Venice
Over lunch in Venice, Senator Loren Legarda recounts how she willed the Philippines back to the Biennale after a 51-year absence.
A night of dragon potions and Red Lotus eaters
A dinner of Sichuan Sour and Shanghai Spritz becomes a night of wild print-industry tales, at a resto-bar built for lowering your defenses.
Cecile Licad on concert memories and the loss of a soulmate
It was an emotional moment for Anton Huang when Licad dedicated the Schumann-Liszt piece to Nedy Tantoco. ‘Sad that it was actually my mom’s last concert.’
Savoring secrecy at Secret Recipe
A Malaysian cafe built on one marble cheesecake returns to Manila, where laksa and rendang share a menu with Irish lamb shanks and tom yum
Communing with Japanese spirits
Not guzzling but communing: an evening of Kagoshima sweet potato and barley shochu, four cocktails and folklore at a Bonifacio Global City izakaya
Andreea Medar’s love letter to a lost village
Andreea Medar connects those drawn to the ghostly, the abandoned and the disappearing with all the lonely voids where love used to be.
Tropic of wonder
Kahlo and Rivera hung as part of a region rather than a greatest-hits parade: Tropical at the National Gallery Singapore, 200 works deep.
Karen Davila: ‘I live my own empowered woman story and I know every Filipina has hers’
From the floodwaters of Real, Quezon to UN Women National Goodwill Ambassador. The only way to know what is on the ground is to be on the ground.
I am therefore AI: Personhood probed in Singapore Art Museum show
Imagine a blackish mirror reflecting a sky-net of electric sheep playing an imitation game soundtracked by Alphaville’s Forever Young.
PHL Pavilion holds roundtable discussion: A journey through the arteries of cities & ideas
Manila was once called the Venice of the East. A roundtable on estuaries and esteros closes the Philippine Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale.
Salman Rushdie at 75th Frankfurt Buchmesse: ‘It’s even more important to create beauty in a time of ugliness’
A year after the stabbing, Rushdie takes the Peace Prize in Frankfurt and talks about putting fear in a little box in the corner of the room.
Somatosonic at The Crucible
Marco Ortiga, Tad Ermitaño and Christina Dy bring homemade instruments, pole dance and cheerful chaos to their “Pneumatic Synergetic” show at The Crucible.
Frankfurter Buchmesse 2023: Why books matter in a time of war & the ongoing assault on truth
Books are being banned, censored and even burned in parts of America. In Germany, they hold the world’s largest trade fair for books.
The Philippines is Frankfurt Book Fair 2025 Guest of Honour
Ten years after Indonesia, the Philippines lands the Frankfurt Book Fair Guest of Honour slot. We want this, we dreamt of this, we have earned this.
Excess equals exuberance in Singapore show focusing on Philippine art
‘What makes Singaporeans respond remarkably well to artworks by Filipinos? I think it’s the sheer liveliness, the vigor, and the energy of Philippine art.’
The Art of Drowning in Visions
Glenn Bautista drew Rizal’s monument from a line by line transcription of his 39 poems, then vanished for 15 years. On the artist we forgot.
Beyond the veil: Carlos Quijon Jr. & Mark Salvatus to represent PH at the Venice Biennale
Curator Carlos Quijon Jr. and artist Mark Salvatus on taking the Philippines to Venice, and the curator’s shift from shaman to jack of all trades.
Who’s afraid of big, bad artificial intelligence?
Talking nicely to the chatbots in case they remember us later, and finding that the scariest thing online is still the people doing the typing.
People, events, dead centaurs, places
A family of dead centaurs in the Danish Pavilion, a German floor torn up to its Nazi-era joints: pavilion-hopping at the 59th Venice Biennale.
Steinway artist Joja Wendt plays boogie-woogie & Beethoven (with flying bumblebees in between)
The German pianist who swings from boogie-woogie to Beethoven, in Manila for Steinway & Sons’ The Artistry in Modern Precision at PGA Cars.
An invisible thread that binds us all
The Pavilion’s closing act reaches the Pinoys of Venice: the waiters, the healthcare workers, the household helpers, all one existential tapestry.
The art of Marco Ortiga: Through the looking glass, weirdly
The conceptual artist holds a mirror up to this ‘see-me world’, and instead of showing clarity and reflection, purveys cracks and malformation.
Nick Lizaso: 10,000 stories and one heart for the masses
After a life on stage and screen, the NCCA chairman calls himself simply an audience member now, watching people watch performances.
Heavy liquid: Milk of Dreams at the Venice Biennale
Surrealism, an emptied Russian Pavilion and a fountain smuggled out of Kyiv in a white Audi: the 59th Biennale, where the going gets weirder.
Backstage at the Biennale
Talking art with the curator and artists of the Philippine Pavilion over liters of Birra Moretti in the beautiful sinking city.
Aze Ong weaves a tale of pain & transcendence
Chronic pain in the hands of a fiber artist who crochets for a living: Aze Ong on making her largest work yet for Art Fair Philippines.
Miguel Syjuco & the ongoing war over who will tell the stories the world will know as true
The Ilustrado novelist on disinformation, power, and who gets to tell the stories the world will know as true, from a desk of literary detritus.
The solitary saga of Manong Frankie
‘When you write,’ Manong Frankie said in a voice that could fell ancient trees, ‘it’s not just with words.’ There is a trail of a life in every word.
The day the music died
Goodbye to the late, great Noli Aurillo, who chanted ‘Au au au!’ to the room before conjuring magic with a deck of cards or one guitar.
Philippines wins historic first award at Venice Architecture Biennale
Curators Khadka and Furunes take a Special Mention for “Structures of Mutual Support,” the Philippines’ first-ever Venice Biennale award.
Ronald Ventura’s hyper-realist Olympics
Two Tokyo shows timed to the Olympics: Ronald Ventura on anime eyes, emoji as language, and a reality we can no longer tell from the cartoon.
‘David Medalla has left us to enter the dream’
Trying to encapsulate David Medalla in one article is like reducing eternity to an hour. His partner and friends attempt it anyway.
Audio Inferno: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love ‘Best Audiophile Voices Vol. 4’
Bass traps, butcher blocks and a Doberman named Lucca: how to make a small room sing without selling a kidney for the privilege.
Ronson Culibrina’s monsoon madness & rainbow spills
Talim Island boyhood, an outrigger’s balancing arm and a witch under a weather-map umbrella: Ronson Culibrina paints the temper of the times.
Galleria Pandemia: Art in the Time of COVID
Ruiz, Ocampo, Miel, Borlongan and Justiniani on what the lockdown did to their practice, and why art is the last thing out of Pandora’s jar.
Art, The Day After
Written from inside the 2020 lockdown: what a random Tuesday will taste like again, and why art does not thrive in the bleakest of moments.
A flood of words, water & wonder at the closing ceremony of the Venice Art Biennale
As the Biennale closes, Mark Justiniani’s mirrored “Island Weather” seems to ripple out of the Philippine Pavilion into the flooding lagoon city.
Houses of Wax and Other Hits
Vinyl resurgence, my ass. Digging through Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and Budapest for the record you did not know you were looking for.
The Art of War in the House of the Rising Sons
De Niro, Pacino, and a neighborhood video store ran by a balding guy we called the Caterpillar. Notes on a boyhood measured in VHS tape.
‘The Irishman’ Cometh: Robert De Niro & Al Pacino star in the last great mob epic
Martin Scorsese’s latest film traces the rise and fall of wiseguys and made men in a subtler, more sober, and contemplative manner.
Robert De Niro & Al Pacino: An afternoon with the kings of New York
First of two parts: an afternoon in New York with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, the kings of New York on Scorsese, mortality and the last great mob epic.
How a bullfrog keeps Jaime Laya awake when it rains
Dr. Jaime Laya on the frogs he had shipped in from the Candaba swamp, the somber santos and vintage narra indoors, and the first sentence he labors over.
If Filipiniana is a flower, then Jaime Laya is a gardener
A morning in Jaime Laya’s Quezon City compound: a bahay kubo built without nails, barandilyas off a demolished house, books stacked as a shelter.
At home with Jun & Menchu Lopez: Where every wall is a door and the Force is always brewing
A house tour where every wall turns out to be a door, the coffee is always brewing, and the Force runs through a home in a galaxy not so far away.
At home with Martin Honasan & Barbie Almalbis: Cradle of art, love & a cat named after Vernie Varga
A house tour with Martin Honasan and Barbie Almalbis: a cradle of art and love, boxes of keepsakes nobody throws out, and a cat named after Vernie Varga.
Raul Francisco & Joanna Preysler-Francisco: Dark, seductive art in the house of love
A Parisian dream in the middle of manic Metro Manila: the Franciscos’ art-filled flat, and the love story beneath the chiaroscuro.
Island of souls
Mark Justiniani and curator Tessa Maria Guazon on Island Weather, the glass-and-steel archipelago built for the 58th Venice Art Biennale.
Fr. Jason Dy: The Parable of Dead birds & The red umbrella
Jesuit priest and Ateneo professor Fr. Jason Dy discusses community art, walking Intramuros with a red umbrella, and his custom batik polo shirts.
Bigboy Cheng: At home with the crown prince of Fresh
A house tour with the crown prince of Secret Fresh, where sneakers, designer toys and Filipino contemporary art end up sharing the very same shelves.
Ang himig ni Pepe Smith
A farewell to Joey ‘Pepe’ Smith, father of Pinoy rock: Juan de la Cruz Band, the Jingle years, a shared film set, and the songs too hard to play now.
Charlie Brooker: On designing dystopia
The Black Mirror creator on robot dogs, dark timelines, and holding an Emmy like ‘a medieval soldier clutching the severed head of an enemy.’
Through the looking glass of doom
‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’ has five main endings and a trillion permutations. Charlie Brooker: ‘It’s all a bit like a bloody Rubik’s Cube.’
If a Jackson Pollock painting were a drink, it would be single malt Scotch
Richard Paterson, the nose behind The Dalmore, holds court in Uptown Bonifacio on casks, memory, and why a great single malt behaves like a Pollock.
Agents of Culture
Cecile Licad, Mark Justiniani and more Filipino culture-makers on the simplest hard questions: what makes you happy, and what is your hope for the country?
A concise history of tomorrow: Patek Philippe launches its ‘Knowledge Series’
Deepa Chatrath tells people the best minds work in mechanical watchmaking: the astronomers, the mathematicians, the master craftsmen.
Inside the cube where art and healthcare meet
Cardiologist and collector Dr. William Chua once got Malang and Ang Kiukok into one room. Inside the clinic where medicine and Philippine art share a wall.
What races through Emerson Yao’s mind while running
Lucerne’s Emerson Yao on the ideas that arrive mid-marathon, from Roxas Boulevard to the Champs-Élysées, and why motion is when the mind goes quiet.
‘Black Mirror,’ mirror on the wall
Charlie Brooker returns with the year’s scariest monster already in your pocket: selfies, the Cloud, and technology gone clumsily, inadvertently evil.
Set the controls for the heart of Kyushu
Tokyo and Osaka hog the feed; Kyushu is the deep cut. Fukuoka to Nagasaki to Beppu, via hot-spring “hells” and a Dutch park with a Horror Toilet.
The sad, extraordinary tale of a general in the Revolución exiled as a ‘leper,’ as told by a Spanish artist
Spanish artist Ginés Serrán on sculpting a bronze monument in Iloilo for General Martín Delgado, the revolutionary hero exiled to Culion.
Even further adventures in hi-fi: Or ‘You zombie be born again, my friend’
Speakers heavy as a monolith, vinyl drops at six in the morning, and a Hong Kong audio show where Jeff Buckley never really died
The day I got high at the Himalayas
A Himalayan sunrise from a windy hotel terrace in Nagarkot, thangka brushes of a single hair, and an open-air cremation on the Bagmati.
A shot of Basi with Bob Feleo
‘I don’t believe in inspiration,’ says master sculptor Bob Feleo, on the Basi Revolt of 1807 and why art should provoke thought.
A tour of India’s Golden Triangle: Immortal beloved
Humanity divides in two, according to Vinee: those who have seen the Taj and those who have not. Seen from the tower where Shah Jahan ended.
Rodel Tapaya and Marina Cruz: Two for the road of art
Contemporary Filipino artists Rodel Tapaya and Marina Cruz on folklore, memory, and building an artistic life together in Bulacan.
Rock of ages
Retracing the Holy Family’s flight through Egypt: cave churches, four monasteries in Wadi El Natrun, and a bible that floated up the Nile.
Salsa Night in the Land of Pharaohs
We are really nowhere men after a hard day’s night, but at this hour, by the tomb of Tutankhamun, there shall be dancing.
Get Your Kicks On Route 666
Noel Gallagher on his first guitar, the Cure’s longest set, a reporter who mistook Fergie for Apl.de.ap: an album of crazy diamonds met along the way.
‘Rivo-lution’ no. 9
Rene Rivo is the Yoda of audio. The man behind Hyperaudio on hotrodding tube amps, tweaking Thorens turntables, and why vinyl never quite died.
Further adventures in hi-fi: Or ‘And he’s buying a stereo to heaven’
Feel the derision of audiophiles once they find out you owned a piece of Bose equipment at any point in your life. It’s like the Mark of Cain.
27 or so encounters with the weird
Ghost sightings, haunted Parador hotels, and weird encounters in Malabon that prove the living are far scarier than the dead.
Moviemov’s homage to Sergio Leone: How the East was won
Sergio Leone turned the tired cowboy movie into the Spaghetti Western, and its poncho-wearing ghost rode all the way to our own “Adobo Western.”
Houses of the Holy
Floating on the Dead Sea, ten seconds inside the Holy Sepulchre, and a rabbi’s joke about the price of a phone call to God.
26 girlfriends I never had
Twenty-six women, none of them his: near-misses, five-second flames and unrequited muses, ending with an art student called Racer G.
Tales of the Weird on the way to Santiago
A reanimated chicken, a gothic coop, a hostel room for snorers, and hammering on a hotel wall at 3 a.m. with nobody in the next room.
Love hurts… and so does rectal probing
A Valentine’s dispatch from the pit: heartbreak playlists, actual rectal probing, the smiley of doom, and why, oooh, crap hurts.
Reverso of fortune
‘It’s like a heart beating, moving inside. The cage is made of a hundred parts and it weighs less than a gram.’ The Reverso turns eighty.
In God’s country
Pilgrims once followed the Milky Way to Santiago. A hundred thousand a year still come, by foot, bike, bus and one donkey, now guided by GPS.
Videoke of Doom at the End of the World
Three minutes as Ian Brown, then back to being you. Nights in the karaoke rooms of Malate, where no one ever gets over anybody.
Requiem for Lady Polyester
Poets mandate their own immortality. A protege remembers Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta, UST’s Lady Polyester, over Leonard Cohen and beer.
Dance the disco corrosion
A commencement address for the doomed: writer’s block, Eva Longoria as a sign of the apocalypse, and one ordinary Monday that broke a heart.
Last rites at Penguin
A last drink at Penguin Cafe in Malate: Noli Aurillo plucking, a Rolling Stones epitaph, and thanks for all the fish crackers.
Cinema Purgatorio
An AB Lit student who snuck out of class returns to the dark: art films, a lost girl named Joy, and a professor finally answered.
Brocka’s brain
Nora Aunor carries her cross of water containers to Vienna: a Lino Brocka retrospective at the Künstlerhaus, unexpected and overdue.
Vienna International Film Festival pays tribute to Brocka: V for Viennale
Autumn in Vienna for the Viennale: Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, Tilda Swinton retrospectives, and Nora Aunor on screen in Lino Brocka’s Bona.
Vienna calling
A bratwurst stand at one in the morning, a drunken geezer serenading me in German, and the question of what could be scarier than history.
Manuel Ocampo’s anarchy in the R.P.
The Manuel Ocampo conversation concludes: anarchy in the R.P., institutional critique, and hell according to Seinfeld’s Elaine.
An apocalyptic chat with Manuel Ocampo: Swastikating between art and death
Manuel Ocampo, between Bosch and Cracked magazine: an apocalyptic conversation on painting, death and the institutional critique of himself.
Mamba No. 3
Kobe Bryant in his Mamba years: from ball hog to facilitator and orchestrator, with the eternal Jordan comparison hanging overhead.
The return of the claw daddy
Hugh Jackman comes down a steel cable onto Cockatoo Island, an entrance only Stan Lee could have written, for the Wolverine press junket.
Black is the color and none is the number
Autumn in Sydney, the bluest skies, and a DVD-store crawl through gallows comedy, Cheech and Chong, and documentaries about dictators.
Moscow and the morning after the night before
Bogatyrs, troikas, Ivan the Terrible and Rasputin, from a tour guide who will not discuss Rasputin. Plus a Moscow hangover, richly earned.
City of blinding light
To run or not to run, I ask myself, rushing past the Winged Victory of Samothrace and Eva Mendes, also touring the Louvre, herself a work of art.
The devil, the Danes and the damned
We are listening to an old man talk about the day the devil went to Denmark, in a Jutland manor five hours from Copenhagen.
The filth, the fury, Makuhari
The Sex Pistols at Summer Sonic in Chiba: four old punks who should have been dead by now, playing tight to a thousand trembling Japanese lambs.
Daddy Groovy
The colonel who sketched a dream house that was never built, and the son who has started to see him in the mirror every morning.
Baroque and roll in Heidelberg
‘Put your foot here and you will return to Heidelberg and live happily ever after,’ our guide says. I stepped into the impression. (Narrator: It would.)
Dead thoughts about death and dying
A real human skull inside a bookcase, mortuary curiosities, and a middle-of-the-night meditation on Damien Hirst and why death spares no one.
La Luz in my religion
Inside La Luz De Jesus on Hollywood Boulevard, the gallery that turned lowbrow art into a congregation, with a gift shop of relics and toys.
Twisted stars, plotted lines and NYC
The city that never sleeps will not let you snooze, so take a walk on the wild side. Five cubist women in a brothel, skies delirious with stars.
From Hell to Eden and back: Welcome to the Eagles gig in California
The Eagles at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles, Hotel California in full cinematic paranoia, for a crowd still hoping to party like 1979.
Achtung Berlin
A vanished Wall, neo-expressionists on Sophienstrasse, and the ghosts of Bowie, Iggy and Lou still loitering around Hansa Studios.
Viva lost Vegas
‘People need to laugh after losing their money,’ somebody informs me. How prophetic. A first trip down the Strip, and a sucker leaves the building.
The wild sleep chase
Three in the morning, wide awake, counting sheep into the thousands. A record, a book, and the bakers’ radios arriving at last like a lullaby.
A city where the lights never go out
Two Japans in one trip: ninja houses and the record bins of Akihabara, then the long silence of the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima.
Singapore Skydive Festival: ’Xcuse me while I kiss the sky
A man with “10,000 assorted fears,” heights chief among them, leaps from a Russian helicopter 12,000 feet over Singapore.
Life, death and all that jazz
Mingus and Coltrane, Harry’s Bar at Boat Quay, and a goodbye to drummer Bob Barreto. Life may be short, but the beats are infinite.
Little Baritan
Little Britain’s grotesques summon a cast much closer to home: the jokers and one-pair-of-trousers eccentrics of a Malabon boyhood.
Questions 67 and 68
Why do noontime hosts say happy viewing, why do movie goons wear leather in this heat, and what does Hollaback Girl actually mean?
The brats of Beat
Kerouac with Steve Allen on piano, Ginsberg howling, Burroughs on a hip-hop record. The spoken-word albums of the Beats, for freaky times.
Look it up… in the fictionary
Neil Gaiman says myths are resilient. Here are definitions for words that do not exist: womanhood, fashion, fine dining, numbers, scientists.
Space cadets glow
The Mars Volta’s Frances the Mute is a kick to the groin of pop: salsa breaks, Flea on trumpet, and Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s frantic flailing.
Hello blankness, my old friend
The blank page as a death shroud, a caterpillar condominium at a battle of the bands, and a beauty queen on a jeepney who broke the spell.
A gonzo tale of two cities
I spotted no severed heads on the trip, I’m glad to report. No love-struck cows, either. Edinburgh and London, with the Malabon blues again.
A post-christmas apocalypse
The wine bottles are empty and the lights have gone out. What is left is traffic, cab drivers turned weathermen, and a fatigue without a name.
London calling
A shoestring rock and roll pilgrimage through London: Denmark Street, Trident Studio, the Apple rooftop, and finally the Abbey Road crossing.
Catfights, jackasses and metaphysics at the 2003 MTV Europe Awards
Awards night in Edinburgh: a Christina-versus-Kelly feud, Jackass mayhem, and Michael Stipe insisting rock isn’t dead yet.
The aural wallpaper to emptiness
Radiohead retreats from the electronics of Kid A back to guitars, and Thom Yorke keeps on chronicling the abyss. A Hail to the Thief review.
Meditations on everything and nothing
Three days of rain, a motel in Malabon, a Chevy Chase moment in Boracay, and the weirdos who turn up in every season of a flooded life.
Jaco Pastorius and the music of the spheres
The first career-spanning Jaco Pastorius anthology arrives, and the bassist who reinvented the instrument gets the retrospective he was owed.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want (in Bangkok)
Nothing could stop me from seeing the Stones live in Bangkok, except the possibility of a dead me. Severe Anxiety over the Rolling Stones.
Let the old freaky year make way for the new freaky year
A year-end gratitude list from a man at peace with the freaks: working ears, a flushing toilet, legal beer, and readers who write back.
Can Chris Cornell save Rock ’n’ Roll?
Audioslave will be crucified for not being Soundgarden and not being Rage. But pure, visceral rock is exactly what the scene has been missing.
The Rolling Stones and the gathering moss of time
Is ‘Forty Licks’ an epitaph for the world’s greatest rock band, or a threat of more to come? Forty years of Jagger, Richards and the gathering moss.
Almost Infamous: Zen and the art of rock n’ roll heckling
How a rusty caterpillar ride at Fiesta Carnival and one Scorpions song turned a Malabon kid into a rock critic. No money for nothing.
Sketching skinscapes and other epiphanies
A Saturday nude sketching session with Malang, Arturo Luz, BenCab and Anita Magsaysay Ho, and one starving non-artist with a mangled pencil.
Apocalypse to the Ears: The most mind-altering albums of all time
Turn me on, demons: nine albums that rearrange the furniture in your head, from Jane’s Addiction to Coltrane, with the tenth slot left empty.
Caught between pop rock and a hard place
Pop rock is safe as milk: a 2002 broadside on Puddle of Mudd, Hoobastank, Nickelback and the Goo Goo Dolls, graded without mercy.
Who’s afraid of Big Bad Prog?
Nearly everyone is afraid of prog rock: the labyrinthine structures, the odd time signatures, the lyrics about topographic oceans. Dream Theater is not.
Floydian Psychology 101
Not a greatest-hits and not an epitaph. Twenty-six tracks that work as a primer, engineered to send you back for the entire Pink Floyd catalogue.
Queen of Pain revisited
Alanis Morissette is light years past the grrls she gets lumped with, but ‘Under Rug Swept’ leaves her where we found her, and overdue a reinvention.
Bass(ic) instinct and the Internet
Before tab sites, you learned Jaco by ear off a worn-out tape. An ode to the low end, written at the dawn of Internet music culture.