What’s your music player? iPod
Default genre preferences: House, Alternative, Dance
Most played track: Better The Devil You Know by Kylie Minogue
Recently added tracks: Culture War by Arcade Fire, The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala by Arctic Monkeys, Hawaiian Air by Friendly Fires
The one song that never fails to make you smile: Make that two! Sweet Disposition by The Temper Trap and Strawberry Swing by Coldplay
Five songs you’d play at a party: Human by The Killers, Spinning Around by Kylie Minogue, Get Over Here by Rasmus Faber, Chanson Du Soleil by DJ Meme, and 17 Again by The Eurythmics
An album yet to be added in your player: The Score by The Fugees
If you get an error message saying “All your tracks will be deleted except one”, which song will you save? The Prayer by Bloc Party
Your guilty pleasure: I've Never Been to Me by Charlene
Oh you have got to be kidding me.
This is the final artwork that made it to print?
COME. ON.
I produced better output the last time I joined an on-the-spot drawing contest. IN MY HIGH SCHOOL SOPHOMORE YEAR.
We are supposedly a hotbed of artistic talent. We even sent a couple of natives, now national heroes, to art schools in Europe eons ago. Our advertising creative directors are pirated by the biggest agencies in other Asian countries--we make their own vision understandable for their own markets. Flip a page of a decent fashion magazine and you'll realize, sans merchandise price points, that our layout and typography is at par and sometimes better than what publishing houses in the UK and US deliver to the stands.
Fine Arts and design graduates have taken upon themselves the unofficial task of rebranding this country minus spine-tingling and hair-raising visions of the Bahay Kubo set against sunsets and meadows. Heard of Team Manila? In case you haven't, they've singlehandedly made national pride a cool manner of self-expression. They've even mentioned in the past how they've been itching to revamp the NAIA terminals. After all, the airport is a tourist's first physical encounter with a country. Do you even know that?
Your work would've been groundbreaking had it been 1994. But 1994 was almost twenty years ago and the font family you took those letters from has probably been rubbed out. Ever heard of Helvetica. I have a documentary DVD dedicated to that font and the power it has over the fields of history and commerce. Perhaps I can stage a mini film viewing for you.
And that campaign jingle. You must not have set foot on Saguijo or The Collective yet. Or God forbid, Cubao X. Do you not know how much emerging musicians there are in those grounds? I'd be offended if I were Ryan Cayabyab. I wouldn't want my Metropop masterpiece to be massacred in Carlo J. Caparas fashion. I'd cover my ears in dismay if I were Hajji Alejandro. It would be a shame to hear my signature song altered like that. I'd rather hear it again in an awards show.
Are you unaware of the power of social media? Of bloggers and alleged social climbers that do more than elbow rubbing with world figures and whose written work - no matter how Strunk and White would disagree - actually have a pull with local readers who would rather scroll up and down Google Reader than care about your tacky visuals? Try Anna Wintour's Fashion Week seatmate Bryanboy, whose H&M podcasts are more tolerable than this YouTube video of your dreary brand launch. You could have asked him to ask Marc Jacobs to name a bag after this country - only to be sold in Marc Jacobs stores in Greenbelt. That would have sent the global fashion community and foreign lifestyle press packing their Rimowas for at least a day at our local mall, and a night on the town.
Don't you dare tell me about budget constraints. If we could afford to have first grade students learn math inside perennially flooded classrooms, we could have written a check for someone whose work can send a battalion of international missionaries to our depressed areas. Hell, you could have grabbed a decent graphic designer by the balls and have him render one study after another on the sole promise of worldwide acclaim. Ex-deal unnecessary. You could have eavesdropped on happy hour conversations of advertising folk in small, stealth pubs in Salcedo Village and struck gold out of their brain farts. Best of all, you could have made a mad dash to my office at the corner of Ayala and Buendia and demanded me for at least fifteen sample slogans. I would have obliged to the tune of Iced Venti 3-Splenda Americano.
All in all, it was easy to have come up with a smart, spanking, sublime campaign for this country, dear Department of Tourism.
So why then are you stamping this loser of a campaign on our foreheads?
I'd rather watch those old PAL ad campaigns from the 80s. I can live with the cobra hair.
Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, answer these questions.
You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title.
It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "my life according to (band name)"
Tag your music loving friends!
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Are you a male or female: The One
Describe yourself: I Should Be So Lucky
How do you feel: Wow
Describe where you currently live: Come Into My World
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Spinning Around
Your favourite form of transportation: The Locomotion
Your best friends are: All The Lovers
Your fear: Did It Again
What is the best advice you have to give: Better The Devil You Know
Thought for the Day: Get Outta My Way
Your happiest moment: On A Night Like This
How I would like to die: Dreams
My soul's present condition: Cruise Control
A good friend of mine told me that there was a band that chanelled The Killers, both in look and sound, in the film Going The Distance. He's right about the alternative rock vibe and the partially correct with their wardrobe - though we all know that only Brandon Flowers can rock those feather epaulets.
UK band The Boxer Rebellion, portraying themselves, injected that much-needed alternative sound to the all-too-familiar string of 80s ballads that melded with the film's witty script. (I had to wait for the closing credits to know that the band was for real. Glad they are.)
Here are the songs that made it to the movie's official soundtrack.
Spitting Fire
If You Run
And catch the movie while it's still showing. If you're not a romantic flick person or a Drew-Justin fan (like me), at least watch out for Christina Applegate's dry hump scene.
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