Monday, December 19, 2005

ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE!

Well whaddaya know. I found him. David Byrne was literally right above my head. Aint that a hoot? He was meeting with a bunch of Filipino filmmakers and journalists at director Butch Perez' apartment on the sixth floor of the building where the Living Room is located. Naturally, the subject of the evening was "Here Lies Love", his current musical work in progress about the life and times of Imelda Romualdez Marcos. Blogger Jessica Zafra and adman David Guerrero were the first on the scene to warm things up before writer Krip Yuson appeared to provide some anecdotes about the day Imelda awarded him his first prize for writing ("So young", she said to him as she handed him his trophy). Marcos' onetime documentarian, Egay Navarro and his wife Rica were also present to add to the conversation as were the photographer Neal Oshima and his wife Susan. But the real star of the evening was the inimitable Ms. Sol Vanzi, Imelda's onetime press secretary, who provided some interesting - and quite positive - tidbits about the Great Shoed One (did you know Imelda only had 1,500 pairs of shoes and NOT 3,000 as widely reported?). It was a rather fun evening although brief. We chatted over Cabernet, San Miguel beer, and cigarettes (he smokes American Spirits) before breaking up the group because he had to go eat chicken inasal at JT Manukan before going to sing karaoke with some of Butch's friends at IO. I guess he's having a good time so far. He leaves for Laoag and Leyte in a couple of days. Oh, and I saw the video work and heard the music for "Here Lies Love". It's OK. Hard to judge frankly as I was only able to view it on a laptop computer screen.