I'm going to Pasadena today to stay at my mother's place of work (she's a caregiver) to watch tomorrow's Rose Parade (with George Lucas as Grand Marshal). Great way to bring in the New Year! I will also celebrate by going to the nearby cinema to watch either Dreamgirls or Pan's Labyrinth.

Today is December 30, and it marks the 110th anniversary (Rizal Day) of Philippine national hero Jose Rizal's death by firing squad in the place that now bears his name (Rizal Park).

It is also the day Saddam Hussein (or as I like to call him, So Damn Insane) was executed to death by hanging, ending an era of tyranny in Iraq that has only led to an occupation that was uncalled for and a growing sectarian conflict that may or may not be civil war.

Yet this is the Saddam we have come to know and love, the Saddam who engaged in a homosexual relationship with Satan to take advantage of his power in order to rule the world.

Today is Innocents' Day, which commemorates the event where millions of innocent male babies were slaughtered on order of King Herod in his attempt to eliminate the newborn King of the Jews.

December 28 is also my father's 58th birthday, which means time to play this video for this occassion:



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Gerald Ford, the "accidental president" (as well as the longest-living US president) who died this week, has this to say on these guys in the photo on interviews he requested should be released after he had passed away.

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction... and now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."

On Cheney's low approval ratings:

"Dick's a classy guy, but he's not an electrified orator."

Not to mention a skillful hunter.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Thought I might share some great holiday videos from the online repository that is YouTube.

The first video has one of the oddest collaborations in music history: legendary crooner Bing Crosby and glam rocker David Bowie performing a duet of "Little Drummer Boy/Peace On Earth" in Crosby's Christmas special. Crosby had died a month before it aired, but a month before his passing, he recorded this duet which has now become a holiday staple.



The second video is Darlene Love performing "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)" in Late Show with David Letterman (a show tradition for more than a decade now). The song is included in the classic holiday album A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, which despite accolades from Rolling Stone (which named it as one of the 500 greatest albums of all time) to The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, was actually a failure in its initial release due to the fact that its release date (Nov. 22, 1963) was also the very same date JFK was assassinated, thus many radio stations at that time did not play any of the songs due to the period of mourning. Also, the Ronettes (the group who sang the Spector hit "Be My Baby") were the original choice to record the song, before it went to Love after the lead singer of the Ronettes was not able to put much emotion into the song. The song almost remained in popular obscurity until U2 did a cover version (which is also the third video) during their concert tour in 1987.





The next two videos are by two ex-Beatles: Paul McCartney's synthesizer-heavy "Wonderful Christmastime" and John Lennon's anti-war "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)".





Count on Weird Al Yankovic to use the apocalypse as fodder for an entertaining holiday song. "Christmas At Ground Zero" is a song that only Dr. Strangelove would be proud of.



One of the best Filipino Christmas songs is "Fruitcake" by the band The Eraserheads. I did a short music video last year using the song, which I plan to put up on YouTube in the future. But for the moment, we will just settle for this low quality video:



The last video is The Beach Boys in its heyday performing "Little Saint Nick". Unfortunately, the person who uploaded the video disabled the embedding function so you will have to view it here instead.

Two holiday offerings courtesy of Saturday Night Live:

This is the blog's 100th post and not to mention it has reached more than 2000 hits.

On a sad note, I'd like to dedicate this post to Leonardo Reantaso. He passed away the same week as Robert Altman and was just finally laid to rest. "Lolo Narding", as I fondly called him, was the closest thing I had to a grandfather. My paternal grandfather died after I was born (hence I was partly named in his honor) and I never knew of what became of my maternal grandfather. "Lolo Narding" was my mother's uncle, and he and his beloved wife "Lola Ida" were the closest thing she had to parental figures since her mother/my maternal grandmother had died early. He will deeply missed, but he will always remain in our hearts and minds. I believe that death is only the next level in life, and he remains mortal in another realm.

Another sad note, a supertyphoon just hit my home province of Albay in the Philippines. This trigerred a series of mudslides from the Mayon Volcano almost wiping out everything in its path. It is the biggest disaster to hit my province, and from what I've been hearing, the situation has gotten more worse among the people, similar to what happened in Hurricane Katrina.

Some images of the destruction:

For more info on how to support these victims, visit this website or go to to the Philippine National Red Cross' official website here.