Tag: December 16, 2007

LITTLE does the public know that celebrity talk show host and comedian John Lapus is also a director.

Now, Lapus returns to his theater and Thomasian roots in order to contribute to Teatro Tomasino’s 30th anniversary. He directs “Twosome,” a twin-bill production featuring Welcome to Intelstar and Wanted: Chaperon.

IntelStar is a contemporary drama by Chris Martinez about young people who work in the financially rewarding but rote-and-rut world of call centers. Wanted: Chaperon is written by National Artist for Literature Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero and translated into Tagalog by Jose Villa Panganiban, the founder of the Varsitarian. It is a domestic comedy on how parents try to ensure the moral welfare of their teenage children growing into adulthood.

To some extent, Lapus grew up into adulthood through the Teatro Tomasino (Teatro).

“The problem with journalists is that they don’t know what they don’t know.” -Bob Woodward

JUST a few weeks back my thesis mates took the UP Law Aptitude Exam with no hopes of passing. They took the exam just for the sake of taking it, to experience the thrill of a law aptitude exam.

True enough, they found the test extremely difficult to the point that it made them feel stupid. For the first time they encountered words that they never knew existed and felt frustrated because of their failure to comprehend and solve a simple algebra problem.

But in spite of it all, I still admire them. Entering law school is also one of my options once I graduate, but I am not inclined to pursue it since I believe I am not determined enough. Besides law school is not for the undecided or the half-hearted.

I’VE BEEN hearing a lot of good things about La Mesa Ecological Park (Eco-park) so a few weeks back, when my family decided to go, I was excited to finally get the chance to see the park for myself.

On our way there, as we drove through the polluted streets of Quezon City, my excitement waned and I started having doubts. In 2005, research conducted by the World Health Organization revealed that the air in Metro Manila is one of the top five dirtiest in the world. How can a park as beautiful as people say it is, survive in such a polluted place?

The park is hidden in the East Fairview Subdivision in Novaliches, Quezon City, adjacent to the La Mesa Dam Watershed, the primary source of Metro Manila’s water supply. My doubts were immediately put to rest as we entered the park and were surrounded by an abundance of huge trees and lush vegetation.

WHAT do you think could stir a boulevard leper, a shanty resident and a gutter plebian to unrest and resistance these days?

Perhaps Ninoy Aquino, in one of his many sorties in the impoverished barrios of Tarlac, may have figured out the best answer when he was the province’s youngest governor back then.

The columnist-biographer Manuel F. Martinez, whom I met two years ago when I repackaged the cover of the Divine Mercy comic book, quoted Ninoy in his 1987 opus, The Grand Collision: Aquino vs. Marcos, as saying, “The Filipino is not afraid of poverty. What he is afraid of is social injustice.”

Ninoy, the firebrand orator and popular martyr, has every reason to gloat from Up There. Branded during his time as a “communist coddler” by President Ferdinand Marcos, he may be witnessing a repeat of social injustice in disturbing proportions nowadays.

CHILDREN are very dependent by nature and because of their fragility, the simplest problems that a normal adult can handle and survive will readily overwhelm their innocent minds. Therefore, children need the steadfast support of their family and friends. But what happens when the family fails to provide that support?

A tragic headline was the alleged suicide of Mariannet Amper, a sixth-grader from Davao City who reportedly hanged herself last November. Basing from her alleged journal entries and a letter addressed to a public service television program, Amper seriously lamented her family’s poverty, underscored when her father told her he could not give her the P100 she needed for a school project. The 12-year-old girl was found a day later inside their makeshift house hanging by a thin nylon rope wrapped around her neck.

THE MANILA Peninsula incident last November 29 has exposed again not only the problematic state of Philippine constitutional democracy, but also the problematic relations between the state and the press.

The fact that Sen. Antonio Trillanes and Gen. Danilo Lim, both facing charges in connection with the Oakwood incident in 2003, were able to walk out of the court that was hearing the charges against them and march to the five-star hotel unchallenged should show that there might be some strong sympathy yet for military adventurism not only among soldiers and officers themselves but also among the civilian sector whose authority is exactly challenged and undermined by military messianism.

A RECENT EXHIBIT by 24 College of Fine Arts and Design (CFAD) Advertising seniors recently deplored the endangered art of musical lyric-writing.

MuSick (which stands for “sickness in music”) ran November 9 to 29 at the Fashion Art Gallery in Quezon City. It consisted of paintings, installations and photographs evoking the power of traditional music lyrics.

“We want to campaign for the revival of the lost beauty of most songs today,” Jorelli Griffin San Juan said.

Conrad Lachica’s painting, “Inharmonious Tune,” depicts an antique radio playing a song that irks listeners. Lachica’s work is critical of the cacophony of contemporary music.

Idiotic TV on Music Box, also by Lachica’s, shows people becoming dim-witted while listening to senseless lyrics.

LAST October 28, the biggest beatification ceremony in the Church’s history was celebrated at St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican.

That day, 498 martyrs from the religious persecution during the Spanish Civil War (1933-1937) were beatified in a ceremony presided by Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. Among the new martyrs were eight Dominicans who had worked or studied in the Philippines; six of them had worked in the University of Santo Tomas.

PROBLEM-FREE? Not exactly.

If people think a tolerable working environment is enough to uphold the tenets of competent and responsible campus journalism, many college publications in the University will say otherwise.

Amid a dispute between the staff of Hiraya and the College of Fine Arts and Design (CFAD) administration over finances, The Flame of the Faculty of Arts and Letters has begun questioning why it takes long for the dean’s office to report on how much money the publication has.

“To request for (a report on) our finances, a formal letter addressed to the dean and the breakdown of our expenses is required,” The Flame editor in chief John Lorenze Poquiz said. “We asked the treasurer’s office about our budget but they did not respond.”

Artlets Dean Armando de Jesus however, said that if Flame staffers wanted to know their financial standing, they just have to ask him.

THE CAMPUS Journalism Act (CJA) is supposed to protect campus press freedom in the country. But violations appear to have been committed in schools nationwide since the law was enacted in 1991.

UST, despite having a vibrant campus press tradition, is no exception. Recently Hiraya, the student publication of the College of Fine Arts and Design (CFAD) found itself financially paralyzed because of the refusal of the Dean’s Office to release the college journal fund.

“Hiraya has never released an issue because the dean never returned our proposed articles for publication,” Masajo told the Varsitarian. “The office also has not given us the actual amount of our relatively unspent publications budget which has accumulated for two years now.”