Something culled from chef Mario Batali's commencement speech at Rutgers this year (and swiped right off Alvin Trono's blog, haha--thanks Alvin!). The NY Times printed it last June. This is for you, Peach:
Pay attention to the truth. It's not an intellectual thing. It's a gut thing. My truth is that I love real, honest, passionate, intense experiences. Experiences that don't apologize for themselves or claim to be something they aren't. . .You want a recipe? Boil some spaghetti in well-salted water. While you're doing that, heat up some good extra-virgin olive oil in a skillet and throw in some thin slices of garlic and some red pepper flakes. When the pasta's cooked, toss it in the skillet. Throw in some chopped parsley and a little of the pasta water. Toss it around. Put it on a plate. Grate some Parmigiano Reggiano on top. Congratulations, dude. You've just made spaghetti all'aglio e olio. One of the greatest simple truths of humankind - and a damn good emergency dinner. That's a recipe. It's an idea. It's a dish. It's an icon. It's an experience. It's not rules. And as you cook up your life, I hope you never let anyone else's recipe for success intimidate you or get in your way. Rules are overrated.
curiouser and curiouser
About Me
- Name: The White Rabbit
- Location: The Rabbithole
"We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection." - Anais Nin
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Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Hack Heaven
Psssst. . .Rhapsody! Andrei joined us at rehearsals for the first time yesterday. Sooooo excited for him! He was so excited. And of course, if he needs anything, his sisters-in-law are now just a dance step away. Haha.
By the way, as I'm rehearsing and writing for a bizarre corporate show simultaneously with Footloose, I'm dedicating one of my favorite numbers in the show to you. It is a tribute to everything we've ever learned and loved about musical theater. . .and how it all now boils down to fitting a pharma company's anti-hypertension and anti-diabetes drugs into the picture. Feel the agony as I try to find melodic euphemisms for "retinopathy" (blindness caused by diabetes), or for a diabetic's typical fear of possible amputation, and of course, for the drug Avandia's ability to provide "durable control" for the symptoms that cause this ailment . Geesh. My apologies to Kander and Ebb, who I KNOW are turning in their graves this very minute. Hay, hirap talaga kumita ng pera!
Sung to the tune of All That Jazz from the musical Chicago. Sing along now everyone!
Come on babe
Why don't you live it up
You're in control
We'll take away your fear
You'll keep that ole' chin up
You're in control
Let it flow
We're clearing every block
We'll help you keep away
From that insulin shock
We'll manage every risk
Keep glucose levels locked
You're in - con - trol
(Treatment!) You're in control
(Diet! Exercise!) You're in control
(Ha...ha...ha!)
When cells are starved
Blood sugar levels stirred
Be in control
When your eyes get weak
And your vision's blurred
Be in control
Hold on, hon
Before it takes a toll
Avandia gives you
Durable control
It brings your sugar down
And takes away that frown
You're in--
Con....trol!
Just say no
To CV complications
You're in control
Spread the news
To diabetic patients
They're in control!
Come on babe
One thing you'll never be
(Though the risks are high)
Is an amputee!
Coz with a little help
From Avandia, see
You're in control
Oh. . .you'll turn that glucose into energy
(You're in control)
We need to manage that obesity
(You're in control)
Oh. . .start livin' free from complications
Nuthin' like early detection
(News to share because we care)
You're in control
--Wild counterpoint--
Bridge:
Be free from stress and strife
Be--cause you love your life (now)
Be. . .in. . .conTROOOOL!
Control!
By the way, as I'm rehearsing and writing for a bizarre corporate show simultaneously with Footloose, I'm dedicating one of my favorite numbers in the show to you. It is a tribute to everything we've ever learned and loved about musical theater. . .and how it all now boils down to fitting a pharma company's anti-hypertension and anti-diabetes drugs into the picture. Feel the agony as I try to find melodic euphemisms for "retinopathy" (blindness caused by diabetes), or for a diabetic's typical fear of possible amputation, and of course, for the drug Avandia's ability to provide "durable control" for the symptoms that cause this ailment . Geesh. My apologies to Kander and Ebb, who I KNOW are turning in their graves this very minute. Hay, hirap talaga kumita ng pera!
Sung to the tune of All That Jazz from the musical Chicago. Sing along now everyone!
Come on babe
Why don't you live it up
You're in control
We'll take away your fear
You'll keep that ole' chin up
You're in control
Let it flow
We're clearing every block
We'll help you keep away
From that insulin shock
We'll manage every risk
Keep glucose levels locked
You're in - con - trol
(Treatment!) You're in control
(Diet! Exercise!) You're in control
(Ha...ha...ha!)
When cells are starved
Blood sugar levels stirred
Be in control
When your eyes get weak
And your vision's blurred
Be in control
Hold on, hon
Before it takes a toll
Avandia gives you
Durable control
It brings your sugar down
And takes away that frown
You're in--
Con....trol!
Just say no
To CV complications
You're in control
Spread the news
To diabetic patients
They're in control!
Come on babe
One thing you'll never be
(Though the risks are high)
Is an amputee!
Coz with a little help
From Avandia, see
You're in control
Oh. . .you'll turn that glucose into energy
(You're in control)
We need to manage that obesity
(You're in control)
Oh. . .start livin' free from complications
Nuthin' like early detection
(News to share because we care)
You're in control
--Wild counterpoint--
Bridge:
Be free from stress and strife
Be--cause you love your life (now)
Be. . .in. . .conTROOOOL!
Control!
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Freaky Cool
Liam Neeson will voice Aslan. Watch out for a hint of brogue in that roar! Haha. Interestingly cool.
"After being informed that Brian Cox was no longer involved with the production, there’s been a very long wait with lots of speculation and many rumors surrounding the casting of the voice of Aslan. Today at the Comic-Con panel for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Walt Disney representatives confirmed that Liam Neeson will indeed be the voice of Aslan." - narniaweb.com
Behold, NEESLAN...
Juuuust kidding....hehe.
"After being informed that Brian Cox was no longer involved with the production, there’s been a very long wait with lots of speculation and many rumors surrounding the casting of the voice of Aslan. Today at the Comic-Con panel for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Walt Disney representatives confirmed that Liam Neeson will indeed be the voice of Aslan." - narniaweb.com
Behold, NEESLAN...
Juuuust kidding....hehe.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Once In A Lifetime
A few snapshots from Mitch and Alvin's lovely, lovely wedding last June 19, 2005. Congrats, guys!
The happy De la Peñas
The Lord's Prayer: Roden, Lionel, Obi Wan Kenobi...er, I mean Johann, ME, Pam, Gigi P., and Sweet
Shiela, Steve, Mayen, Rein, ME, Mitch's friend, Mitch, and Fatherduck! Going wild on Lana's Motown tunes...
And they lived happily....
The happy De la Peñas
The Lord's Prayer: Roden, Lionel, Obi Wan Kenobi...er, I mean Johann, ME, Pam, Gigi P., and Sweet
Shiela, Steve, Mayen, Rein, ME, Mitch's friend, Mitch, and Fatherduck! Going wild on Lana's Motown tunes...
And they lived happily....
Cohabitation
This was re-posted from a re-post. Hehe. Thanks guys, whoever you are!
Top 5 Secrets to a Perfect Relationship:
1. It is important to find a man who helps at home, cooks from time to time, cleans up, and has a job.
2. It is important to find a man who can make you laugh.
3. It is important to find a man who you can trust and doesn't lie to you.
4. It is important to find a man who is good in bed and likes to be with you.
5. It is very important that these four men don't know each other and must never meet during your life time.
Top 5 Secrets to a Perfect Relationship:
1. It is important to find a man who helps at home, cooks from time to time, cleans up, and has a job.
2. It is important to find a man who can make you laugh.
3. It is important to find a man who you can trust and doesn't lie to you.
4. It is important to find a man who is good in bed and likes to be with you.
5. It is very important that these four men don't know each other and must never meet during your life time.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Midnight Blue
Met up with Tito Freddie last night. Weeks after that unfortunate mugging and mauling incident at a park in Melbourne, he is still reeling from the shock. He seems fine on the outside, wryly making light of everything. Even the cuts and the swelling on the right side of his face have almost completely subsided. But the wounds apparently run deeper. Much deeper.
For someone who’s perfected the art of solitude, and has been very vocal about preferring life that way, I don’t think he ever felt as painfully alone in his entire life as those long, sleepless hours in his hotel room after being released from St. Vincent’s Health Hospital. A pair of warm, comforting arms would have been appreciated then, but even that wouldn’t have been enough. In the steel-cold silence of the night, in a strange city, after such a violent experience at the hands of strangers, he sought nothing and no one less than God. God’s arms around him, telling him everything will be alright. But God was nowhere to be found.
At least, that was what it felt like at the time. And who can blame him? After being so acutely aware of God’s intervening Hand during and after the traumatic event--waking up in the hospital without remembering how he got there, mercifully unaware of anything that happened after losing consciousness at the park, remembering the brandished knife at his neck but realizing he had somehow escaped unstabbed—he had still fully expected, nay, demanded that Jesus himself visit him in his room and take all the fear and pain away. This strange, but not so irrational cry from the soul will probably be appeased in time, he says, but right now he is too angry not to wallow in it.
It’s proving to be a pretty expensive bout of wallowing. In anger, he immediately bought himself the latest Nokia model, setting him back a cool thousand dollars. The purchase required two credit cards, but what the **ck, he says, who gives a hoot anymore, anyway. As bizarre as all this sounds coming from Tito Freddie, the man on whose edgy, but always uplifting spiritual perceptions I have based most of mine, I completely understand. Even the cussing. The man didn’t just lose his video camera, cellphone, and expensive backpack after all. Bloodied, sore and fearful, he lost a lot more that evening.
His thoughts flying, he ruminated on how he now understands why it took Joseph (the dreamer) 22 years to reach a point of forgiveness after being betrayed, beaten up and left for dead. Who’s to know that those 22 years of healing were probably not even between him and his guilty brothers, but between him and God? Who’s to know indeed.
It’s difficult to sit two feet across from one of the most commanding and assured figures I’ve ever known, and listen to his quietly tormented outpourings over pumpkin soup, banana caramel waffles and oversized dalandan juice. Perhaps the comfort food was necessary. But none of us at that table was really very hungry. At least I wasn’t. I felt the world I had known with this man changing drastically as he dug deeper and shared his previously unarticulated thoughts. These were not easy words for him to say, and he couldn’t have said them just to anyone. He was angry, but no longer at his mugger, nor at the female accomplice whom he remembers vividly as “the only woman in Australia I ever saw with bad skin.” I was glad to see his humour still intact. He will need it to get him through this.
For someone who’s perfected the art of solitude, and has been very vocal about preferring life that way, I don’t think he ever felt as painfully alone in his entire life as those long, sleepless hours in his hotel room after being released from St. Vincent’s Health Hospital. A pair of warm, comforting arms would have been appreciated then, but even that wouldn’t have been enough. In the steel-cold silence of the night, in a strange city, after such a violent experience at the hands of strangers, he sought nothing and no one less than God. God’s arms around him, telling him everything will be alright. But God was nowhere to be found.
At least, that was what it felt like at the time. And who can blame him? After being so acutely aware of God’s intervening Hand during and after the traumatic event--waking up in the hospital without remembering how he got there, mercifully unaware of anything that happened after losing consciousness at the park, remembering the brandished knife at his neck but realizing he had somehow escaped unstabbed—he had still fully expected, nay, demanded that Jesus himself visit him in his room and take all the fear and pain away. This strange, but not so irrational cry from the soul will probably be appeased in time, he says, but right now he is too angry not to wallow in it.
It’s proving to be a pretty expensive bout of wallowing. In anger, he immediately bought himself the latest Nokia model, setting him back a cool thousand dollars. The purchase required two credit cards, but what the **ck, he says, who gives a hoot anymore, anyway. As bizarre as all this sounds coming from Tito Freddie, the man on whose edgy, but always uplifting spiritual perceptions I have based most of mine, I completely understand. Even the cussing. The man didn’t just lose his video camera, cellphone, and expensive backpack after all. Bloodied, sore and fearful, he lost a lot more that evening.
His thoughts flying, he ruminated on how he now understands why it took Joseph (the dreamer) 22 years to reach a point of forgiveness after being betrayed, beaten up and left for dead. Who’s to know that those 22 years of healing were probably not even between him and his guilty brothers, but between him and God? Who’s to know indeed.
It’s difficult to sit two feet across from one of the most commanding and assured figures I’ve ever known, and listen to his quietly tormented outpourings over pumpkin soup, banana caramel waffles and oversized dalandan juice. Perhaps the comfort food was necessary. But none of us at that table was really very hungry. At least I wasn’t. I felt the world I had known with this man changing drastically as he dug deeper and shared his previously unarticulated thoughts. These were not easy words for him to say, and he couldn’t have said them just to anyone. He was angry, but no longer at his mugger, nor at the female accomplice whom he remembers vividly as “the only woman in Australia I ever saw with bad skin.” I was glad to see his humour still intact. He will need it to get him through this.
Monday, July 11, 2005
Back To The Future
It's starting. The ball has starting rolling for Footloose matters and everything else not classified under "day job". My brief, but extremely productive and educational chapter with Stratworks has already begun to close, meanwhile. And for me, this all just means that Life is beginning yet again.
The Footloose pictorial is happening today at a real episcopal church near McKinley, the musical's senior characters being rigid christians who have banned dancing in their town. It promises to be a full day's job for me, being one of the actors to be photographed, as well as the souvenir program's editor and writer tasked to interview Jay-R and Iya Villania, the show's stars. Our lives will, from this day on, revolve around their impossible schedules.
Add to that a semi-rush assignment of three articles (the first of several) for the show's media presskit. These must be done way before the day of the presscon, which will happen sometime soon, I am told. All that aside, I've also got major revisions to do on 5 songs for this corporate show I'm doing for Stages. I just learned about it this morning. Apparently, the client decided to change 5 out of 6 songs completely, after I had already finished and submitted them all, of course! Why such major elements were not finalized before I started to write them will forever remain as another great mystery of the modern world.
Listen to me, complaining again about being swamped with deadlines and interviews and costumes for pictorials and makeup and dance class and my usual when-will-i-ever-find-time-to-listen-to-the-soundtrack-and-read-the-script woes. And.I.love.it! Never realized how much I missed it all. I actually miss this looney bin I've been swimming in for the past 8 years. And the great part of it all is-- I'm baaaaack!
And where is Rein in all this? Right beside me cheering me on. He just did an unbelievable thing yesterday. He bought me a treadmill! An amazing gift meant to keep me fit and strong for the days leading up our big day and beyond. How we got it to fit in my tiny flat is the true achievement, haha. I have been on a health and fitness track lately---not strictly, but gradually trying to make it part of my life. I also try to play badminton as often as I can. I mean, as Rein says, why wait until that triple bypass later on to find a need to get a mountain bike and some good cross-trainers?
So, second half of 2005: Here I come.
The Footloose pictorial is happening today at a real episcopal church near McKinley, the musical's senior characters being rigid christians who have banned dancing in their town. It promises to be a full day's job for me, being one of the actors to be photographed, as well as the souvenir program's editor and writer tasked to interview Jay-R and Iya Villania, the show's stars. Our lives will, from this day on, revolve around their impossible schedules.
Add to that a semi-rush assignment of three articles (the first of several) for the show's media presskit. These must be done way before the day of the presscon, which will happen sometime soon, I am told. All that aside, I've also got major revisions to do on 5 songs for this corporate show I'm doing for Stages. I just learned about it this morning. Apparently, the client decided to change 5 out of 6 songs completely, after I had already finished and submitted them all, of course! Why such major elements were not finalized before I started to write them will forever remain as another great mystery of the modern world.
Listen to me, complaining again about being swamped with deadlines and interviews and costumes for pictorials and makeup and dance class and my usual when-will-i-ever-find-time-to-listen-to-the-soundtrack-and-read-the-script woes. And.I.love.it! Never realized how much I missed it all. I actually miss this looney bin I've been swimming in for the past 8 years. And the great part of it all is-- I'm baaaaack!
And where is Rein in all this? Right beside me cheering me on. He just did an unbelievable thing yesterday. He bought me a treadmill! An amazing gift meant to keep me fit and strong for the days leading up our big day and beyond. How we got it to fit in my tiny flat is the true achievement, haha. I have been on a health and fitness track lately---not strictly, but gradually trying to make it part of my life. I also try to play badminton as often as I can. I mean, as Rein says, why wait until that triple bypass later on to find a need to get a mountain bike and some good cross-trainers?
So, second half of 2005: Here I come.