Currently Reading, Backyard Fracking, and Filipino Rondalla

CURRENTLY READING: All of my reading lately has been on the non-fiction tip. The last fiction I've read was a slog of a collection that I haven't finished yet. (It has some incredible craftsmanship, but damn if most of the stories just don't do it for me.) Anyway, what HAVE I been reading? I've made it into the Dark Horse years of AMERICAN SPLENDOR. I'm about halfway through NOTHIN' BUT BLUE SKIES: THE HEYDAY, HARD TIMES, AND HOPES OF AMERICA'S INDUSTRIAL HEARTLAND by Eric McClelland which I discovered while perusing BELT MAGAZINE's website. And lest you think I'm just now jumping on the whole "Rust Belt Chic" bandwagon, I'll just say that I grew up during most of the stuff in Chapter 4 of BLUE SKIES (i.e. the Cleveland chapter). It's been enlightening nonetheless to look at the historical context of my early life.  And, I just picked up BIOPUNK: SOLVING BIOTECH'S BIGGEST PROBLEMS IN KITCHENS AND GARAGES the other day at a bookstore discount table for $4, because there just has to be a story in here somewhere.

BACKYARD FRACKING: Something I forgot to mention when I wrote up having seen the short documentary BACKYARD at FLEFF. During the Q&A with the filmmaker, someone asked if she attempted to get any comments from the fracking industry. She says she did, and that it was rather easy to. She was granted tours through various rigs -- sans her camera crew -- and interviewed workers who apparently only had the same pro-fracking talking points. She reported being unable to find anyone with a unique pro-fracking story, which she attributes to the industry's powerful propaganda machine. Power that was corroborated by an audience member with an account of the presence of energy companies in the independent film business and festival circuit. Know thy enemy and co-opt. Basic, really.

FILIPINO RONDALLA: Of course they'd have a Filipino Rondalla group at the Ivy League for which I work. To paraphrase the motto, "Any person, any extracurricular activity," apparently. It brought back some childhood memories of my first visit to the Philippines when I was about four. I remember a candle dance and a tinikling demo, just like what I saw at the group's concert last Saturday. That said, I have to acknowledge that this student display of Filipino culture--the culture of my parents--isn't the culture of everyone in the Philippines. I fear for the non-Filipino audience members who may have left feeling armed with a proper overview of "Filipino culture", and then trying to share this knowledge with, say, someone from the Visayas or Mindanao. They may not be received well.  After all, Filipinos have stabbed people for far less....

Next time, I'll probably talk about the lung pox I'm fighting.

FLEFF, Fracking, and Experimental Short Films

It's been a couple of years since I'd last made it to FLEFF, the annual Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival.  It's typically a week-long affair with screenings and panels, and typically I miss most of it because of my day job.  This year, I was determined to make it to something, anything, and I did last Sunday.  I didn't catch much, but I got a lot out of what I saw.

BACKYARD (2014). A short documentary by filmmaker (and proprietor of Pale Blue Dot Media) Deia Sherman about fracking and its effects on the lives of different people from different states.  Living in upstate NY (in one of the areas that's managed to keep the frackers at bay so far), the stories had familiar themes.  But it'd be a mistake to dismiss this film as some echo chamber piece, tailor made for an "environmental film festival" in Ithaca, NY.  Its stories are compelling and, to me, eerily reminiscent of the environmental, labor, and health and safety problems at the start of the auto and steel industries in the Rust Belt.  That's a line of research I've been chasing for a bit, and the subject of a big post or two down the pike.  All I'm saying is that the Clean Air Act and OSHA were established for reasons.  Take it from a former denizen of the land of the Burning River.

UPSTATE FILMMAKERS' SHOWCASE.  A series of experimental shorts by (mostly) cinema faculty from Binghamton University.  Each of the films played with the notions of time and linear narrative in some way.  They're were all good (all the details at the event link), but my favorites: Close the Lid Gently, SoundPrint (which involved some audience participation using greeting card sound modules -- that's what I've got in the pic there), and 300 Features and 40 Shorts.

It's been too long, FLEFF.  Catch you next year.

It's a Good Good Friday!

Mabuhay ng Pilipinas, motherfuckers! It's that of year again for my personal Good Friday observance.  First, the obligatory theme song. Listen as you read on. [ETA: forgot the bloody video.]

This year gives us not one, but TWO stories from my motherland.  First, a sad note...

Good Friday: Philippines Bans Tourists from Participating in 'Realistic' Crucifixion, Says it's not 'Circus'

Earlier, the only requirement to participate in the annual crucifixion rites in Philippines was that the person needed to be a Catholic. However, this year only local Filipinos can participate.

Harvey Quiwa, chairperson of the committee in charge of the 2015 Holy Week rites, announced the ban stating that this year all efforts will be made to ensure that the Lenten rites do "not become a circus."

Well, that really fucks up my plans.

Then again, my plans haven't been fucked up like our good friend Ruben's...

No successor: Crucifixion man must do it for 29th time

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Philippines—Still without a successor, signboard maker Ruben Enaje has been obliged to extend his real-life crucifixion act for another year, making the Good Friday reenactment in Barangay San Pedro Cutud in this Pampanga capital on April 3 his 29th year so far

Enaje said he was hoping that the council finds an appropriate replacement for him soon because his aging body can not bear further pain.

Enaje really wants out, though...

“The spots on my hands and feet that are pierced yearly get healed in six months but the pain on my right shoulder where I carry a big wooden cross persists year round,” he said.

We all have our crosses to bear, but damn.