10 Things About "Zombadings 1: Patayin sa Shokot si Remington"

1. Writers (Jade Castro, Michiko Yamamoto, Raymond Lee) of mostly tearjerker films (Endo, Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros, Magnifico, Anak, Milan) collaborated to come up with this hysterical comedy.
2. Funniest bit: Daniel Fernando's character giving an impassioned speech on why he hates gays.
3. Martin Escudero (the guy who plays Remington) has gorgeous eyes.
4. Kerbie Zamora (the guy who plays Remington's best friend) is crazy hot.
5. Lead Character needs to procure a similar hairdryer-shaped gaydar.
6. Almost everyone in the audience thinks guy-on-guy action is hilarious, especially between straight male best friends. Lead Character just sank in his seat, hoping it would turn pornographic, much to his dismay.
7. John Regala is the Ray Liotta of the Philippines.
8. This movie deserves more than one viewing. There are just a handful of subtle but funny bits that you could miss if you don't pay enough attention to the entire screen.
9. 'Ang Babae sa Septic Tank' is funnier and much more cohesive, not that a comparison is necessary.
10. This needs a wide international release, especially in North America. The challenge is how to make swardspeak subtitles as funny as they're supposed to be. The title alone is quite difficult to translate into English. Lead Character proposes the following: "Zombiatches 1: Scare the Living Gaylights Out of Remington." (OK, that probably wouldn't work. Any ideas?)

How Lead Character Lost His Fifth Cell Phone

Season 2 Episode 12
(Season 2 Finale)

Lead Character is drunk again. After two pitchers of Blue Imagination, a strong yet tasty concoction from Karaoke5 (a karaoke hangout), Lead Character’s world starts spinning. And with its spinning comes the carnal desire to shuffle on the dance floor. So after an engrossing discussion on love, sex, books, and fecal matter with most of the usual guest stars—JabberedOnion, NonFacebooker, Jorit, Beaj—Lead Character decides it’s time to head off to Twelve, a tiny, suffocating bar that Lead Character and other phallus enthusiasts frequent. Of course, JabberedOnion, NonFacebooker, and Jorit are not big on phalluses (or is it phalli?), so he goes there instead with Beaj, picking up BobbinThread, another phallus fan, along the way.

Lead Character admires BobbinThread in superlative magnitude. Several months ago, BobbinThread quit a high-paying job in financial services to pursue his passion in fashion design. He just dropped everything, went to fashion school, then came back and opened his own shop. Now he's dressing up people and life couldn't be more thrilling for him. To quote a line from the movie Jerry Maguire: "That's how you become great, man. Hang your balls out there." Lead Character feels that unlike BobbinThread, he still has his balls tucked between his legs, and they're tiny.

After hours of sweating their armpits off, Beaj decides it’s time to head on home, leaving BobbinThread and Lead Character to reign over the dance floor all by themselves.

BOBBINTHREAD: I am sooo drunk right now. . .

LEAD CHARACTER: Me, too!

BOBBINTHREAD: . . .sooo drunk, because it's the only manageable thing to be right now.

Lead Character nods in agreement, because if he were in BobbinThread’s shoes, he’d prefer to be in a drunken state as well.

(Flashback: Five hours earlier. . .Lead Character receives a text message from BobbinThread.

“My father only has three months to live, maximum. He needs chemotherapy ASAP.”

Lead Character doesn’t know how to react to the message. He knows no words could ever save BobbinThread’s dad from cancer. All he can really do at this point is just be there for his friend.)

BobbinThread grabs a guy to dance with Lead Character, who immediately obliges. A couple of guys, one in a GRAY SHIRT and another in RED, pass by. Lead Character grabs them to dance with a young white man who’s been dancing all by himself. After a few minutes, GRAY SHIRT and RED free themselves from the white man.

BOBBINTHREAD: I like the guy in red.

LEAD CHARACTER: I like the guy in red for you.

A couple of hours later, BobbinThread and LeadCharacter find themselves outside Twelve, physically exhausted but still high in spirit. Palermo, the bar right next to Twelve, is a fun one. It’s infested with whores who only respond to foreigners, so the underappreciated locals tend to enjoy the attention they get from phallus enthusiasts.

LEAD CHARACTER: Let’s get in there!

BOBBINTHREAD: Let’s!

As they head into the next bar, they notice that GRAY SHIRT and RED are right in front of them.

BOBBINTHREAD: It’s RED! I want to dance with him!

LEAD CHARACTER: In that case, I’m having GRAY SHIRT!

So off they go dancing with the guys. Lead Character makes a bold move and pulls GRAY SHIRT closer towards him. GRAY SHIRT happily grinds with Lead Character.

LEAD CHARACTER (V.O.): Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned!

Just then, GRAY SHIRT pulls himself away from Lead Character and grabs RED with him. They start off to leave. Squinting at the two young men, Lead Character runs his hands on his pockets. His phone is gone.

So that’s it, just like that, Lead Character loses his fifth cell phone. He also lost a couple of his first four cell phones in a similar manner. Lead Character decides he’s not going to have any of it anymore; he has got to grow some balls!

He runs and catches up with GRAY SHIRT, hugging him from behind. Lead Character feels GRAY SHIRT’S pants pocket. It’s definitely his cellphone in there. Katy Perry’s “Firework” blares through the speakers as Lead Character fishes his phone out.

LEAD CHARACTER (cheerfully): Hey! You have my cellphone!

GRAY SHIRT ignores Lead Character and just continues walking away, nervously tailing his friend.

And just like that, Lead Character loses his cell phone, but gets it back immediately using, for what seems like the first time, a pair of balls. If there’s anything worth noting about life, it’s that it is short. One moment it’s your first day at school gaining new friends, the next you’re years beyond college life trying to stay afloat in various ways, because the older you get, the more you have things bringing you down—you have another friend who might be burying his parent soon, and you have a dead-end job to always go back to after your highly anticipated drunken weekends. So it all boils down to which side of the fence you want to end up on—the fucker side or the fucked.

Lead Character, props to him, chose the badass freakfucker side tonight.

Grammar Weekly - Squinting Modifiers

It's time again for another segment of Grammar Weekly. Lead Character's friend, Punky, encouraged him to keep at it because of its importance. Hence this.

Our topic for today is all about modifiers, and how they sometimes squint in a sentence.

To refresh your memory, modifiers are what you add in your sentence to add details to an otherwise bland statement. It's the seasoning on your meat, they're the spices that make plain vinegar pinakurat, the wattle that completes your double chin. . .you get the drift, right? Simply put, they're the adjectives and adverbs in your sentences.

As an adjective: The man who can't be moved just waits in the corner.

As an adverb: He just stands there like he can't be moved.

Now, what happens when modifiers squint?

When a modifier squints, it would seem like it's modifying either the subject preceding or succeeding it, as is in the following example:

"Masturbating often causes clear skin."

Now, that sentence is clearly ambiguous (clearly ambiguous, ha! Could I be any more ironic?), and would confuse a lot of masturbators. Is it when they regularly masturbate that they get clear skin? Or does the act of masturbation itself cause clear skin most of the time? If your sentence offers the same ambiguity, you need to fix your modifier.

And that's it for now. Next week, if I see another post on Facebook about people having a "pictorial," I will discuss the difference between a pictorial and a photo shoot IN ALL FRICKIN' CAPS!!!

But for now, if you want to read up more about modifiers, and how they not only squint, but dangle and get misplaced sometimes, click here.

Lead Character Likes It Creamy

(Season 2, Episode 11 - Finally, after a long hiatus)

Carbonara, in case you were thinking of something bodily. Lead Character doesn't like the real carbonara, which is dry. Gladly, most cafes he's been to serve their carbonara creamy. He's only been to one restaurant that served authentic carbonara, and he couldn't finish it. It was at Vue, a pretty little place at the Cebu Yacht Club, and while their other dishes were phenomenal, Lead Character had trouble downing their penne pasta carbonara.

So today, after work, Lead Character decides to make himself creamy carbonara, grabbing the recipe from pinoyfoodblog. He'd made the same carbonara last Christmas, but he wasn't able to release the entire affair as an episode because his brother deleted the photos he took of the undertaking.

It's actually supposed to be potato wedges for today, but after a prior attempt that involved their oven exploding in front of his face, making him, his mother, and his aunt yelp like helpless little girls, Lead Character decided to steer clear of baking for now.

The ingredients:

Lead Character decides not to follow pinoyfoodblog completely. Instead of the suggested Spinach Fettuccine, he picks 400g of regular spaghetti. The reason? Budget constraints. He also doesn't bother with the nutmeg. Since he had parsley flakes from his attempt at potato wedges, he decides that will make for a proper replacement. Of course there's 2 cans of Cream of Mushroom, 250ml All Purpose Cream, 1 head of garlic, olive oil, and a cup of instant Korean noodles. Why the Korean noodles, you ask? Well, it's in case Lead Character screws up the sauce and pasta and gets too hungry to cook another batch. Not appearing in the photo are parmesan cheese and the generally needed salt and pepper.

As Lead Character starts cooking the pasta, a major problem arises. The flame doesn't get high enough to boil water. He's already salted it and mixed with drips of olive oil so the pasta won't stick, but it never boils. An hour into it, out of desperation and impatience, Lead Character drops the pasta. And this is where the cup of Korean noodles becomes the hero. Already hungry, Lead Character decides it's time to devour a whole cup.

Surprisingly, the pasta cooks al dente, after almost half an hour of swimming in simmering water. But the real challenge now is preparing the sauce. The flame is just not high enough to cook the meat. Lead Character calls up his mother but she doesn't believe him that their stove might be broken once again.

Lead Character's aunt comes to the rescue. He sees her boiling water in her teeny weeny dirty kitchen, so he pleads for him to cook there. She lets him.

The rest of the cooking goes a lot smoother and faster this time. The end result is a carbonara sauce whose consistency is very much to Lead Character's liking.

Serving suggestion:

Top with parmesan cheese on a cafeteria type of plate to make the dish even more ravishing. See? See?

And now the real challenge: eating the thing. Lead Character thinks it is not that bad. Lead Character's sister likes it better than the one he made last Christmas. Unfortunately, after a while, it does get really. . .I'm having trouble picking the English word for it. . .but in Cebuano the word is ngilngig. . .and the only word I can come up with off the top of my head is. . .Schwarzeneggerey. Yes, after a while, Lead Character's ideal creamy carbonara gets really Schwarzeneggerey.