Leavings 041813

These are just some things I've been thinking about; you can read through the whole thing or just skip to the parts you're interested in.

1. Through the Deep, Dark Valley, by The Oh Hello's

Annoying apostrophe aside, The Oh Hello's show promise on this debut album. I chanced upon it on NoiseTrade, a pay-what-you-what website, but it's also available on the band's own website.

The bible geek in me got a really big kick out of all the references in the lyrics — there's some Psalm 23 and post-Exodus Hebrew frustration, some Adam and Eve angst, and a prodigal son narrative in there, for instance — but it's nothing like any contemporary Christian music I've heard. I haven't seen any interview or post in which the band makes some statement of faith, anyway. The only obvious clue is "I Was Wrong," whose first line is, "I was born at the hands of the potter." But these songs about love, wandering, and forgiveness could apply to any other relationship, not just one's relationship with their God.

The best songs are open to interpretation. For instance, my favorite, "Like the Dawn," could very well be about Adam's discovery of Eve, but it could also be about a relationship that may or may not be doomed. In "In Memoriam", the mention of God, which the band capitalizes on its website, could tell you that the song is addressed to God, but it could also just be a passing mention in a song to a faithful lover or friend.

Foreign critics say that the US is having a folk music revival, so I guess The Oh Hello's hope to be part of that. Listeners might thus be quick to dismiss the band as copycats of the Kings of Leon or Mumford & Sons, especially on the songs with male vocalist Taylor in the lead. However, I hope you stay for the stronger songs, the ones where female vocalist Maggie is the star. It's not just because I'm female myself or because her voice has a lovely drawl, but also because those songs happen to be lyrically stronger.

I think the album could have done without "I Have Made Mistakes" entirely; it seems redundant right after "I Was Wrong." One exception to my Maggie-songs-are-better kick, though, is "The Lament of Eustace Scrubb"; Taylor's subdued voice conveys the plight of this Narnia character very effectively, while the lyrics don't give the whole story away.

2. "The Carrie Diaries" and wish fulfillment

I've never seen "The Sex and the City", but I like its prequel series, "The Carrie Diaries", whose first season just finished. I think many of the characters' actions and reactions in recent episodes are wish fulfillment, but I don't care. If young girls get their ideas about sex and relationships from the culture they consume, then I hope they're consuming this, because the lessons from this show could save teenage girls from a lot of pain.

a. Don't put up with shitty double standards for males and females.
b. If you think a relationship is getting in the way of getting good grades and/or being true to yourself, maybe it's time to revalue that relationship.
c. Great boyfriends don't pressure you into doing anything you don't feel ready for.
d. Overthinking things can ruin friendships and relationships.
e. When you screw up, don't make excuses or create unnecessary drama; just apologize.
f. Sex is not love, but if you're not one of those people who can detach themselves so thoroughly, it's better for you to do it with someone you love.
g. Parents are people, too — but they shouldn't dump their drama on you or use you as a go-between when their relationships are on the rocks.

3. Diverse casting

Another thing I like about "The Carrie Diaries" is its diverse casting: Ellen Wong (Jill "Mouse" Chen) is Chinese, Katie Findlay (Maggie) is part-Chinese, RJ Brown (Thomas West) is African-American, and Freema Agyeman (Larissa Loughlin) has Iranian and Ghanaian parents. Also, Chloe Bridges (Donna LaDonna) may have Hispanic roots; her real surname is Suazo, and she played a lot of Hispanic characters before playing Donna LaDonna. (I read a lot of Wikipedia, okay?) I think they just need to even up the number of POC males/boyfriends; there's only one, and he's with Mouse, the only other teenage character clearly identified as a POC.

Diverse casting and representation is something I've taken an interest in since the racebending debacle that was "The Last Airbender". It's nice when casting directors recognize that POCs don't have to play stereotypical roles, when they don't whitewash POC characters in the source material so they can cast the current hot young white actor, and when writers realize that characters can be changed to accommodate more POCs in a dominantly white cast. For instance, Mouse in the "Carrie Diaries" source novel isn't actually Asian, but casting Ellen Wong shows that you can have POC characters who are just as capable and valuable.

It's also nice when they incorporate a POC/biracial actor's roots into the story. Larissa Loughlin could just have been a fabulous black British lady, but her back story includes escaping an oppressive adolescence in Ghana. Kristin Kreuk, another part-Asian actress, commonly plays white characters, but in her current series, "Beauty in the Beast", her character Catherine is biracial, with an also biracial younger sister (played by part-Filipino Nicole Anderson) and a clearly Asian mother.

Actually, "Beauty and the Beast" also has a laudably diverse cast. Not only is the lead biracial, but the police chief is black, Catherine's partner Tess is Hispanic, and the new assistant district attorney is South Asian. It's nice to see POCs written as complete human beings instead of stereotypes, and it's even nicer to see POCs in positions of authority and power.

It's also nice when American shows recognize that POCs are Americans, too, not outsiders just trying to blend in. So, while movies like the "Red Dawn" remake and "Olympus Has Fallen" show whites as the heroes and POCs as inferior and/or untrustworthy — if not as the antagonists, plain and simple — "Beauty and the Beast" shows that POCs can be good citizens who live to protect the innocent and uphold the law of their [new] homeland. Catherine's mother appears only in a few flashback scenes, but it's important to note that she's portrayed as a good-hearted military scientist who wants to defend her country.

The best part is that nobody's view of the characters is obscured by their racial or ethnic backgrounds; the audience doesn't see an all-caps look-at-this BLACK police chief, but a capable, solid police chief who just happens to be black. The only time someone notices a character's race is when some jerk refers to Tess as "Diversity Barbie", but it never happens again and is clearly taken as offensive.

I'm just sad that "Beauty and the Beast" has pretty mediocre writing; I want the show to succeed if only for what it achieves through its cast.

I'm not the one to break down all the good things about diverse casting, though; a lot of this stuff I came to appreciate by reading Racebending.com. I can only add that while casting in American media doesn't seem relevant to Filipino pop culture, I'd still like to see the day when teleseryes don't use blackface, when brown or dark actors and actresses can play leads (who are not oppressed yayas or ignorant indigenous people), when Chinese Filipinos on the screen don't all have thick accents and care only about who will inherit the family business, when characters from Visayas and Mindanao don't just serve as comic relief with "funny" accents, and when casting in general favors other Filipino actors as much it does half-white actors. Throw in some good, original writing, and hey, maybe I'll start watching local TV, too.

Bike Notes 4: First Ride to Work; First Troubles

After Sunday, leaving my bike chained up in the house was kind of hard to do. The new bike smell—bikes have new bike smells!—would greet me from the bottom of the stairs every time I stepped out of my room, and the long wait for jeepneys at the end of each work day suddenly seemed much longer.

I didn't want to set out without knowing what I was up against, though, so I waited until I'd studied that bicycle safety page some more and observed other bike commuters on my planned route. In my previous post, I planned to do little neighborhood rides at first, and it would be at least another week or two before I'd try an EDSA crossing. By Wednesday, though, I was feeling confident/stupid enough to think I could survive Aurora and E.Rod and make my first major bike ride to the office.

Timing was off. That night, I had to sleep over in Makati to see my dad after his business trip and give him back the family netbook*. Thursday morning, I went straight to the office from Garma's** house for the annual company physical. It wasn't till yesterday, Friday, that finally I saddled up.

I scowled at the overcast sky and knew I was tempting fate, but I just really, really, really wanted to ride my bike. I packed my breakfast and an extra T-shirt, put on my helmet, and pushed off for Aurora.

It was awesome.

I kept the bike safety tips in mind, watched other bikers on the road to see what they would do, and just pedalled at a steady, relaxed pace. It was really funny to let the jeepneys zoom by and then to catch up to them at all the stoplights.

As I approached that bike shop with the overpriced moldy foldies, I was tempted to shout something witty and scathing at the smiley shop boy who wouldn't take me seriously, but it was enough just to sail past his dusty wares. Also, I don't know how to be witty in Filipino, because I speak the language of the lost burgis.

I'm not going to lie, it was really intimidating to share the road and travel in such close proximity to all these bigger and faster vehicles. I'm very, very, very thankful that they all steered clear of me.

All told, I reached the office in roughly the same time it normally took me to take jeepneys. As I entered the room, I thankfully cheered, "I'm alive!" at my officemate—and never felt more so.

Getting there, of course, was only half of the day's adventure. I still had to get home. Before I could even pull out of the company garage, though, I already had trouble.

One other reason I'd waited to bike to work was that I still had to buy one of those blinky red LED lights for the rear of my bike, to make sure that vehicles coming up from behind at night would be able to see me. Before I left the house yesterday morning, I finally screwed it onto my bike and put in fresh batteries.

When I came down to the garage after work, my hand went right to the light to turn it on and found that the lights were there, but the reflective cover and the batteries were gone. Some jerk at the office—only employees can park in the company garage—thought it would be funny if I didn't have a working safety light for my ride home. I have no idea who it was, as I wasn't the only one tickled by my new bike; another officemate took a picture of half the company's burly motorcycle couriers clustered in curiousity around my little bike. It was funny then, but it hurt to imagine it again as I made my way home. I couldn't believe that someone might consider a pair of double-A batteries, or worse, a stupid prank, to be worth more than a colleague's safety.

Later, I realized that the light might have fallen apart on my way to work that morning, and I simply hadn't noticed, but I have no way of proving this, either.

It was a good thing that I had two lights with me; I'd also bought a white light to fasten onto my handlebars. I was able to improvise and fasten it to the back of my bike before setting off. I don't know what might have happened if I hadn't had that second light with me, really, and thinking about the ride home makes me even more thankful that it was there.

I was really rattled by the theft/loss, and the Friday night rush to get home didn't improve my spirits. Drivers weren't in a mood to give way to each other, much less to a bike commuter. Again, though, I just followed the guidelines I'd studied and stayed slow and steady. The EDSA night crossing was actually the easiest part, right before the snafu of jeepneys and FXs jockeying for passengers between Puregold and 20th Avenue. I figured it was better that drivers honked at me for being too slow and taking up their lane*** than to go fast, weave, and risk getting rear-ended by a Marikina jeepney doing the same thing.

Just as I neared my turn, my second light**** fell off. I'm not sure how; maybe my foot kicked it while readjusting the pedals. Traffic usually stands still at the stoplight there, though, and the jeepney driver behind me pointed the light out to me so that I could walk back and pick it up. Everyone in that lane—at least, the driver behind me and the passengers in front of me, all staring—probably thought I had no business being there, but no one was gladder than I when I made my turn and got home.

Yesterday, I biked to and from work for the first time. I was no longer a pedestrian and claimed a little bit of road for myself. I'm alive, glad, and ready to see how far I can go today.

Probably just down to Shopwise to get a new bike light.

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Lots of asterisks for today's notes!

* My parents got the same model netbook as me, and after the supplier-installed OS started giving them problems, I put Ubuntu on it. It works pretty fine for them, except for the rare times it doesn't. Then my dad and I e-mail back and forth about what to do with it. This time, he actually sent it to me to fix.

** We've called my maternal grandmother Lola and my paternal grandmother Grama for as long as I can remember. I guess it avoids confusion. Garma is a childhood mixup that stuck.

*** On my way to work, I stayed toward the right side of the road because that's where the other bikers tended to cluster. Also, I had to make a right turn to get to the office, and I just knew it would be easier if I didn't have to weave among other cars from the wrong side of the lane.

Going home, though, I stayed on the left side of the lane, so that I could make an easy left turn onto my street. This may have been the cause of half the honking, but it really seemed better than staying on the right and then having to cross to the other side of the lane.

**** That was the only time that light worked. After the fall, it wouldn't turn on anymore. I suppose that's what I get for choosing cheap imports over the branded lights in the sporting goods stores, but P50 and P88 just seemed a lot more practical than P500 each for the same thing. I told my dad about it, and he said to still get the cheap ones, plus a box of rubber bands.