HAPPY NEW YEAR!

They New Year is finally here! I'm still alive and I've still got all my fingers! Thank God!

Star Movies cable channel will be showing X-Men: The Movie this month. To promote it, Star TV will be holding a comic book art exhibit, with special emphasis on X-Men, starting January 5, Saturday at Robinson's Galleria, Ortigas. The exhibit will run for more than a week. Leinil Yu, Edgar Tadeo, myself and Alamat Comics will be there on Saturday to open the exhibit. Alamat will be giving talks later in the day. I'll be there as early as Friday evening with Budjette Tan to bring artwork and help set up the exhibit.

Moulin Rouge rocks! I've had the DVD ever since before Christmas and it's all I've watched for the past couple of weeks. An absolutely stunning movie and even more stunning DVD. Some people hate this movie, but I just love it.

BAD DREAMS

Man, what a horribly bad and yet incredible dream I had last night. I sometimes have these really astounding dreams and I've written only a few of them. I think I better write this one down just so I won't forget.

I don't remember where it started, but I was out in a mall of some kind. I get the impression that my dream had more things happening in the mall, but I just don't remember anymore. Anyway. I had my art portfolio with me as I went walking through the halls. I saw a really nice looking dog and I became really friendly with it. Because of that, I met the owner, a really attractive looking woman. I became really friendly with her, talking about a lot of stuff that made us get to know each other better. Then I recognized her. She was Sharon Cuneta, a real famous Filipino actress and star. I emphasize STAR because she's indeed one of the biggest, if not THE biggest stars here. After telling her I wasn't really much of a fan but I was really happy I met her, I said my goodbyes and moved on.

I needed to pee so headed off to the men's room. For some reason, I had to go to a hut outside the mall to do that. I went inside but all the lavatories were broken. I looked around and there was this mean looking fellow inside that seemed threatening so I went out quick. The guy followed me so I turned here and there and then lost him.

And then I remembered why I was there in the first place. I was to go to the offices of Marvel Comics to meet my editor. I did not find it strange that the offices were here in Manila and not in New York. To get to the offices, I had to climb up a really steep rocky cliff. I assumed it was the standard way of getting there. My editor was patiently waiting on his desk at the top waiting for me to arrive. It was tough climbing the cliff but I got there anyway. Once I did, I noticed that there some kind of party going on. It was noisy and there were lots of people.

I was in the middle of mingling when we heard some really loud exploding noises. At first I thought it was just firecrackers, but the sound quality of the booms were different, and they seemed to be coming from very far away. For that kind of sound to reach us the explosion must have been really tremendous. I looked out the window, which were huge and extended from the floor to the ceiling. And outside the window we could see the entire vista of Metro Manila spread in front of us.

And Makati was burning. A huge bomb exploded just then, instantly destroying everything in a kilometer radius. Many other places were exploding and many other buildings were on fire. I thought of watching this in FOX news or CNN, because they would know what was happening, but I just remembered they didn't have a TV there. I wanted to get home, but for me to get home I needed to pass through Makati. I was stuck. Then I saw a huge passenger plane burning arching up into the air. It was too much for me to bear. I thought I must be dreaming.

And with that realization, I woke up, but I dreamed I was waking up. And other people in my dream woke up too, who had shared my dream. We looked outside to the window and we saw that Makati was fine and it was not burning. The airport was busy and nothing seemed amiss. It was such a strange coincidence that we had all dreamed the same thing.

And now in that dream, I was convinced I was in the plot of some movie. I thought, this must be the plot of "Memento". The story was different maybe, I've never seen it, but I have heard that the events in the movie are out of synch, arranged non-linearly so it's tough to know which came first or after. I thought that it was a story I could use in a comic book, with the ending coming in first, that of the destruction of Makati. People wake up thinking it was a dream, not realizing it was a fate that awaited them in the end.

Then I woke up for real.

MY 2002

Next year is going to be pretty hectic. Probably the busiest year of my life so far. All throughout the year I'll be inking High Roads, Leinil Yu's Cliffhanger book. January and February and probably even March I'll be staying in Manila to supervise the filming of the Wasted movie. I'll be in hand to also work on the script and make sure the essence of the story is kept intact.

In March I have a deadline for a 28 page comic book adaptation of Francisco Arcillana's The Yellow Shawl which I'll be pencilling, inking and lettering. I'll be doing the pages smaller, probably 8.5"X13" and I'll experiment a bit with simple lines. It's not a book with Ochlocrat like detail so I'm reasonably sure I can finish it by that time. I need to color this myself so hopefully, I would have bought a Wacom and installed a Painter program so I can at least try to color it.

Immediately after that I'll start work on my Alamat book for the year, in which I'll be collaborating with Budjette Tan and another artist, which should take the rest of the year to finish. I also have a July deadline for a single illustration interpreting 2 segments of H.P. Lovecraft's Fungi From Yuggoth, which I'm doing for Graphic Classics. In August, I hope to be able to go to San Diego for the International Comic-con to promote High Roads with Leinil and Edgar. And upon returning, I'll be moving out of the parents house into my own apartment.

And on December of course, I get married. Probably all this work is so I can have enough money to settle down. And I'm telling you all this so I could embarrass myself into doing all of these things because If I don't, I'll look like an idiot by the end of the year.

Since I'll be moving to Manila for a while, and I won't be bringing my computer, I won't be able to read your emails or monitor the message board as often as I would like. I'll be checking emails only on the weekends when I'm back here in San Pablo. I'll try to check my mail via an Internet Cafe, if I can only wrestle my way through all these zombiefied Counterstrike kids hogging the computers.

So if during this time you write me and I don't write back, this is why.

Merry Christmas Everybody!

And for those of differing faiths, Happy Holidays to you! And if someone greets you a Merry Christmas, try to take it in the spirit of the season. For Christians, it's to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. For others, well, it's the season when families that were separated for many months, be it because of school, of work, etc., come together as a family and be one again. For some people, it means gifts and Santa Claus. For some, its a time for Children, for some it's a town fiesta. Whatever reason people want to celebrate at this time is perfectly allright to me. Just as long as people are happy and they are nice to each other, with the hope that they carry this feeling throughout the year.

And the weather, man, can you beat that? I swear, this weather is so cool. I just wish it didn't drizzle so often. Well, the lighter side of this is that if we were in a more colder country, that drizzle would be snow. And since it drizzles often during Christmas here, well, if we were in a colder country, we would have lots of white Christmases!

Last night I baked a chicken, some ham, drank some leftover beer that went into baking the ham, wrapped some gifts. Emailed Christmas greetings to some folks. Just on a whim, I emailed this pretty newscaster from CNN, Monita Rajpal. I told her that watching her on CNN makes bad news doesn't seem so bad. And I really did mean it. I wished her Happy Holidays and that was pretty much it. It was a very short email which I would not have otherwise sent if I was just a little bit sober. And wow, she wrote back thanking me for the greeting. Well, at least I hope it is her.

Up for this day, heating some of the leftovers. he.he. Then go visit Ilyn, then do some work. Yep, work. I still have a ton to do which I need to Fedex first thing the holidays are over. 2002 is going to be a pretty busy year for me, I think. And that's the way I like it.

Wow, it's almost Christmas! The weather is terrific! The cool weather that started November seems to have persisted, which is just terrific. I try to go out as much as I can, but work still needs to be done. After finishing Ochlocrat, I needed to start work on High Roads, the book I'm inking over Leinil Yu for Cliffhanger. I'm nearly done with issue #1, which I hope to finish before Christmas Day. I hope.

Surfing the net this morning, I stumbled upon this terrific Alex Nino site. It's a Japanese site, so the text may not register on your browser (unless you have Japanese text plugged in), but the pics are absolutely AWESOME. If you are an artist looking for inspiration this just might do it for you.

Japanese Alex Nino Site
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/techno/drome/alexnino.htm

There will be a comic book exhibit at the Robinson's Galleria in Ortigas early January for which I'll be contributing artwork to. I'll post more news about this later on.

OCHLOCRAT

Is finished at last! And I have to say that it was quite an extraordinary experience. I've written about the entire experience at the Ochlocrat Page at my site. No holds barred! No spin! Can't write more about it here. Just head on over there!

WASTED NEWS

News for all you Wasted fans. A Wasted movie is now in production. Several scenes have already been shot and man, they look damned cool. I'll talk more about it when I get more info.

WOMEN

Women! Bah! Who needs 'em? Well, actually I do. I love em! But damn, I'm still having trouble drawing them! Bah! Working on Ochlocrat has made me realize this even more. I just bought the magazine DRAW! where there is a really nice feature on drawing sexy women by Brett Blevins. I need to work on this thing really bad, if I'm ever going to continue drawing much more....

The sun has finally decided to come out this afternoon! The rains the past couple of days were due to the tail end of a cold front hovering right over the Southern Tagalog province, meaning right on top of me! Now that the rain has gone, and the cold front remains, it's pretty damn cold now! Which is cool! Add to that the smell of fresh paint, well, it's Christmas! Strangely enough, I associate the smell of paint with Christmas because many times in the past we have had painters come in the house for some painting work which all have coincidentally occurred during Christmas. So the smell of paint always brings back the memory and the feel of Christmas to me.

Hello to my architect friends who visit the site! Hello Bimbo, Darwin and Cesar!

It's amazing. Just yesterday the sun was out, it was hot, and nary a cloud in the sky. Today I woke up and I thought I woke up early because it was still dark out. Actually I woke up the same time I always do, it was just dark, and it wasn't supposed to be. It was raining, and it rained all day without stopping. It's so dark and wet it makes you think it had been dark and wet for weeks and you don't remember what the sun looks like and how heat from it feels like.

Aw man, I haven't been here in a while. I've recovered from my illness and now I'm desperately trying to finish the deadlines that were further delayed by my 2 weeks of not being able to work. I haven't been able to visit the message board much and I haven't been able to post here much. I feel so bad about those people I've inconvenienced. I hope I can make it up to them.