Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Would you like bat-tea, bat-coffee, or sala-bat?
While trolling around the Internets, I found out that a friend of this blog (and my buddy Ivan's sister) is getting married. And not only that, she's having the ceremony in the (haunted) chapel at Paco Park.All this is just a way for me to post this exchange from Joey de Leon's classic musical, Alyas Batman en Robin, between Joey's Batman and Dawn Zulueta's intrepid reporter:
Reporter: "Batman, pwede ba kitang ma-interview?"
Batman: "Sure. Magkita na lang tayo mamayang gabi sa PPC."
Reporter: "PPC? Baka CCP, Cultural Center of the Philippines?"
Batman: "Hinde, PPC--Paco Park Cemetery."
Now that was a great Batman movie, right up there with The Dark Knight. Rene Requiestas played The Joker. Panchito, whose character is usually named Tiyo Paeng in Joey de Leon movies, plays the penguin. But not just any penguin: in this one, he's Tiyo Paenguin.
Labels: comic books, hehehe, movies
Swine flu outbreak in Pangasinan?
While the whole world is on alert over the swine influenza outbreak in North America and New Zealand, the Manila Times seemingly has a scoop on their hands with a report stating that swine flu has already reached Pangasinan. The pig story is a little fishy (heh)--there's already a denial from the director of the Bureau of Animal Industry--but it would really bring a lot of comfort if one of the big news outlets went ahead and checked the story out.Labels: news and issues, swine flu
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Seven days will quickly go
Fact remains, I love her soSeven days, so many ways
But I can't run away
(Will Sunday be too late? Do I have to tell the story of a thousand rainy days? It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting wet.)
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Ate Vi
On Facebook, Howie Severino posted a picture of him interviewing Vilma Santos for a story he's doing for i-Witness.(At least I hope it's for a story he's doing for i-Witness. Because if he's, like, just interviewing her for shits and giggles, that'd be weird.)
Anyway, it just reminded me of this old joke, my favorite, about Vilma going to McDonald's to bring home snacks:
Vilma: "Miss, isang cheeseburger at isang fries."
Counter Girl: "For takeout, ma'am?"
Vilma: "No, for Lucky."
Thursday, April 23, 2009
FQ cross-post
Several months ago, uncertainty surrounded the staging of the Donaire-Viloria card because of the lack of sponsors, and Solar was forced to postpone the fights. It did turn out to be a good move, and the sponsors must have been happy with the 32.3 rating that the event scored in Mega Manila, despite the absence of Pacman to pull the ratings up. Here's a chart to put the rating in context, against some of the most popular shows and events in the country:
No one expected that the ratings for this event would scratch Pacquiao fight levels; only big events such as the Marimar finale or Angel Locsin's first transformation into Darna ever get into that stratosphere. But the fight, despite numerous commercials and a dead timeslot, managed to draw about as much viewers as GMA's primetime programs, and more than either network's noontime shows. Put it this way: more people cared to watch Donaire and Viloria fight Raul Martinez and Ulises Solis than watch Gerald Anderson fight Jake Cuenca over Kim Chiu.
Read the whole thing over at Fire Quinito.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Status update
Had the best weekend stretch in a while.Thursday: Dinner with old friends at Bagoong Club.
Friday: Will Ferrell night at Nomnomnom with Oli and Leks. Enjoyed this much more than grown men should be legally allowed to.
Saturday: Frank and Ria's birthday dinner with high school buddies, at the new Eastwood mall.
Sunday: Private pool swimming party in Calamba with officemates.
The only drawback is that without my usual lazy weekend, I'm really dead tired right now... and it's only Monday!
What about you, how was your weekend?
Labels: friends
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Fire Quinito
I have a new blog that's all about sports, and it's up now. It's called Fire Quinito, and it's a different, fun look at Pinoy sports.I don't ask for much, even though a lot of you have been reading my blog for years now, so go there. Read it. Bookmark it. Subscribe to the RSS feed. Share it on Facebook.
(Also, as Frances Ellen points out, if all the sports stuff from this blog [which she and most of you skip through anyway] move to that blog, there'll be more girly stuff left on this blog.)
If you're not a sports fan, I'd still highly recommend taking a look at this post about Chris Tiu and Joseph Casio's brewing bromance. And there's this insane story about a star Fil-am basketball player that's all kinds of crazy.
And if you're hooked, check out the ongoing primer on the amateur Philippine Basketball League, which contains, among other things, an anecdote about Melanie Marquez and a discussion of the state of generic drugs in the Philippines.
Labels: basketball, firequinito, sports
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Numbers
PEP has the television ratings from the weekend, and the numbers say that the Eraserheads Live: The Final Set broadcast was a big winner.But first, a note about the ratings. PEP actually mis-reports the ratings (and have been doing so for two years now) by representing the ratings as percentages, but they are not; they are rating points. The difference is that rating points are absolute numbers; that is, a primetime program such as "Tayong Dalawa" that gets a rating of 20.0 has about the same amount viewers as a noontime show like "Eat Bulaga" that also gets a rating of 20.0. In the AGB Nielsen reports, there usually is another column for audience share, which is represented as a percentage. This indicates the percentage of the audience watching a particular program versus another program at the same timeslot.
A few years back, I read somewhere that for AGB Nielsen's Mega Manila report, 1 rating point is equivalent to 30,000 households. I can't find any documentation anywhere though, so take that number with a grain of salt.
Anyway, for last Sunday, the Heads concert got a rating of 21.1. For the day, the top programs were as follows:
1) Sharon - 21.9
2) Ful Haus - 21.5
3.5) The Final Set - 21.1
3.5) Rated K - 21.1
5) Mel and Joey - 20.6
But wait, these numbers don't tell us the whole story. Sharon and Ful Haus each run for only about thirty minutes, while the Heads concert ran for about two hours. The 21.1 rating, then, is an aggregate of the rating for the whole two hours. If you consider that there were probably a lot of viewers who dropped off during the latter part of the broadcast, it's a good bet that the first half hour or so of the concert was actually the most watched program on television last Sunday.
(The nationwide numbers for the Heads concert are much more modest. This might be a factor of the inherent nationwide weakness of GMA Network; ABS-CBN has traditionally dominated the ratings nationwide due to the station's reach and popularity in Visayas and Mindanao.)
But back to the concert's Mega Manila ratings. How well did it really do? Consider the ratings for Eat Bulaga and Wowowee for the past few days:
Thursday, April 2: Eat Bulaga - 20.5; Wowowee - 19.6
Friday, April 3: Eat Bulaga - 19.4; Wowowee - 18.5
Saturday, April 4: Eat Bulaga - 23; Wowowee - 18.1
So while the Heads concert did well, it only did about as well as a good episode of Eat Bulaga.
But then again, the noontime slot has a built-in audience already, so of course many viewers will be tuning in. But how many viewers usually tune in during Sunday nights?
Sunday, March 8: SNBO "Missing You (Martin and Pops Reunion Concert)": 12.5
Sunday, March 15: SNBO (no program indicated): 14.0
Sunday, March 22: SNBO "Walang Pera": 13.9
Sunday, March 29: SNBO "The Matrix Revolutions": 13.4
The ratings have been pretty consistent, and the Heads represented a 50% increase in viewership in the time slot.
Labels: eraserheads, television
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Eh
Rick Manzano usually does fine work over at Project Manila, but there was something that ticked me off in his last post:Last February, I received an email from someone in the US telling me how fascinated he was with the art galleries that I go to in Cubao X. Apparently, this Filam lived here before. Too bad, he’s only seen the “tourist spots” though. I think these are the worst places you can ever take tourists. (Think Luneta Park. LOL)
First, it's a pretty good spot to take tourists. Forget the Rizal monument for a moment; Luneta has a beautiful rainforest-like orchid garden that too few people know about (along with Japanese and Chinese gardens elsewhere in the park), calesa rides, art-deco architecture in the vicinity, and the single prettiest thing Manila has to offer.
(I haven't even mentioned my absolute favorite part of the park, Children's Playground!)
Second, what was up with the "LOL" at the end of the post? What is so laughable about the idea about going to Luneta? Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but was it the prayer rallies at the Quirino grandstand? Or the old joke about maids and drivers going out on "day-off dates" in Luneta? Or the general un-hipness of the place?
I probably should take all this with a grain of salt, and this was probably just a throwaway comment, but yeah, it kind of bothered me. Not least because it's just waay to easy to be a hipster douchebag these days.
Labels: blogs
