Menthol-Guy

A while ago my Dad sent me a text message:

Anak, patay na yung idol mo, si J.D. Salinger. (Son, your idol J.D. Salinger passed away.)

I’ve known about it last Monday, or Tuesday–I really forgot but I knew about it six minutes after The New York Times published the news online (sadly, after knowing about it I was really sad for the next thirty minutes and sent a message to my closest writer friends about it; they kind of comforted me, which felt good). I received the text message while hosting a popular fiction quiz contest my organization spearheaded, and it made me smile. Dad knows I really like J.D. Salinger; I’ve probably told it a million times, but I didn’t expect him to text me about it. Hell, he didn’t really like the book (or he must have read it when he was twenty-something, in between his Vietnam war novels, and must have treated it with the same disgust he had with Murakami and Kafka). I showed the text message to my friends and they were happy for me to have such a Dad who at least knows his son’s favorite author.

Before I die I really wish I could to go to his grave and tell him everything I liked about his writing and his novels, most especially Catcher in the Rye. And I’ll probably whisper that his death made me realize that my Dad knows me, because my admiration for him is something deeply private.

Bought Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk last Saturday at the Manila International Book Fair, with two of my friends plus Jmar, Cars and her young brother.

On my way home with a friend, we decided to hit Fully Booked with the gleaming posters of SALE everywhere in its perimeter. At the baggage counter was this section where they have books with prices slashed off as much as eighty percent and, lo and behold, the first book I’ve seen was Ned Vizzini’s Be More Chill! LIKE WE ARE DESTINED.

(These two books cost PhP 700+ but the discount made its price to an affordable PhP 175!!!)

Another book I bought was Martin Amis’s Night Train; I was really intrigued with him since I heard he’s a good writer (British?). Or was it this Kingsley Amis guy? Are they related, after all?

It was funny I haven’t bought that much from the fair. I thought they sell it very cheap, as in half the normal price or something, but maybe it was my fault; the misconception was too sugar-coated. But I wasn’t disappointed. I don’t blame the fair or anything about it. Plus I’m really broke, and had prioritized eating at some Italian restaurant than buying five books (I should have at least bought Jose Dalisay’s book)–which I did, together with my Japanese friend: a platter of pesto and fresh, thin-crust pizza.

Next time I should gear up for bookfairs like these. Well, I only caught wind of it three days last Wednesday (when the fair started) so I didn’t have the time to beg for my parents some money.

Movies
I’ve watched six movies for two days, and another two movies for a night.

• Adventureland
• Alphaville
• The Darjeeling Limited
• Into The Wild
• Serbis
• Teeth
• Tony Takitani
• Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Still downloading Donnie Darko, Eternity for A Day, Y Tu Mama Tambien, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Dan In Real Life and Frozen River. I’ll probably post movie reviews all throughout the week (since compressing them into one lengthy post is nothing short of overwhelming, not to mention boring) and if I do, it tells something about blogging being back into my veins.

Books

I don’t know why but I always forget to read books lately. Maybe I’m not in the mood, though it worries me to think that I’ve been acting quite weird lately (I clean the apartment all the time, you know). It’s probably the rearrangement we made with the beds and all to create space.

I’m still tangled between Othello (required in my Lit class) and Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland at the Edge of the World. I’m about to ditch Lizzie Simon’s Detour in the dustbin since it reeks of something incomprehensible, something I don’t know but the sight of it just repulses me so much I’d like to make a hate review about it. I mean, I respect her being bipolar, fine, but the book just sucks at some point.

Oh, and I can’t even finish a New Yorker article I’ve been reading since last week.

Music

I’m currently listening to post-rock (instrumentals) lately: Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, 65daysofstatic and the like. I think they’re a bunch of neat music since I could listen to them while reading. They’re as relaxing as a John Mayer yet as rock as any rock band out there.

_{Hey, you can add me as a friend if you have a Last.Fm account. :)}

Academics

I got 89/100 and 126/136 in my Communication Theories and Phonetics exam respectively. I’m on the top three! What the fuck is happening! Nothing beats having a life and getting good grades at the same time, really. I should go fuck myself right now, blow my brains out or something.

I’m into Young Adults lately. I’m reading a Will Leitch entitled Catch, with blurbs from Ned Vizzini and John Green (I have yet to find his copy of Looking for Alaska), the canonical Y.A. writers (though I haven’t read any book they’ve written, I’ve been hearing a lot from them). These books are just a light read, yeah, but for teenagers like me who’s such a sucker for confusion, rebellion, alcohol, even drugs–the simple ecstaties of doing things that are legally wrong (and I must admit that)–it’s altogether a different feeling.

So maybe I was taken away by the cover (it’s appeals to me like every other masterfully-covered Y.A. books) but really, the blurbs got me reeling to buy it for PHP140 at Booksale. In Booksale terms, man, it’s expensive (imagine, I recently bought a Toni Morrison hardbound for PHP20).

I’m also reading Shakespeare’s Othello (required for my Lit class) and it’s just neat. I can’t say anything bad about it since it’s supposed to be good, and it’s good, don’t get me wrong. It’s just dragging. Yeah, that’s probably the right term for it. Draaaaagging.

Anyway, here’s a quote from one of John Green’s books. I got this from Tumblr. :)

Gawd, it reminds me of Catcher in the Rye a lot.