Proud Mary Redux

Immediately after Celeb Duets yesterday, T and I went off to the Tatler Ball. At the end of the evening, the band was rocking and oddly enough, launched into "Proud Mary," the same song T had just sung on TV.

With that, she hopped on stage and finished the song with the band:


Compare and contrast that with the "official" GMA video of her performance:


If you got to the end of that GMA video, you'll note my shameless plug for Wow! Magic Sing. L, seated behind me then whispers in my ear, "just goes to show all La Sallites are sluts!" I dunno. I think advertisers appreciate that sort of unpaid endorsement. :)

We Want Our Lives Back!

Athena, Annika and I are getting weary of Celebrity Duets. It's an amazing effort to allocate every Saturday afternoon for a 13-week TV season - that's over 3 months!

Oddly, T's energy is still up, as you can see from her performance today:

This rendition of Proud Mary was one of her best performances yet. She is clearly improving from week to week.

Amazingly, the Celeb Duets season was just extended by a week. The finals will be on October 20, so we might still have a few Saturdays to go, assuming she does not get voted off.

Dimsum

Raymund Isaac launched a book called Dimsum earlier tonight. Naturally, I was interested in who might have printed the book but there was precious little info on that.

Facial Care Centre helped publish the book, as both the beauty company and Raymund were celebrating their 25th anniversaries.

There's a great photo of T in it, entitled Sayuri. At the Ayala Museum exhibit, there's a five-foot-high version of the photo, with a short write-up explaining that Sayuri is a Japanese goddess of chastity and innocence.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't blog about an SE (aka social event, as Annika says) but that Sayuri stuff on "chastity and innocence" deserved a post.

News Flash: Autobots Win!

Autobots defense prevented the Decepticons from scoring the tying goal during the last half of the game, thus prevailing 4-3 and winning the series 3-1.

The heartbreaking score does not show the fury of the last half, as the Decepticons controlled the puck on the Autobots' side, but could not penetrate the Mariano brothers' "wall" defense. Eventually, time ran out on the frustrated Decepticons.

Key non-play of the game was the altercation between players A and G, each alleging a holding violation, with tempers flaring all around. Luckily, all was calm immediately after the game. As always, what happens in the pool, stays in the pool.

Also heartbreaking for the Decepticons was the missed goal by player R on an otherwise excellent breakaway. With his adrenalin pumping, the puck was flicked over the goal, akin to missing a slam dunk.

R is pretty young though, and with his explosive speed, there will be far more many winning moments in his hockey career. He's the sort of new breed that can form a core RP Team that might contend in the U/W Hockey worlds one of these days.

Autobot captain B called tonight's game the roughest of the series. With 12 men and a shallow, narrow pool, it was pretty rowdy.

P.S. from Friday:

Polo management called me today and said a member had complained about the noise from the pool. It remains to be seen if this will be a cause for kicking us out of Polo.

Staying Alive

For the first time, T was not part of the dreaded "bottom three" on Celeb Duets. Perhaps her rock-themed singing is catching on, who knows?

Here she is performing with rock legend Mike Hanopol (who almost kinda looks like one of the guys from Geoffrey Rush in Pirates of the Caribbean).

On a sad note, Tim Yap was eliminated tonight. I can only guess that the Buzz Lightyear and doggy costumes hit the wrong demographic.

The "bottom two" were Tim and Wyngard. As much as I like Tim, I have to say I'm glad Wyn is staying, because he is truly the best singer of the bunch.

I Know!

Athena's first sentence, from September 17:

Decepticons 3, Autobots 2 *

New flash: Decepticons squeaked past the Autobots last night, 3-2, avoiding a sweep and bringing the series closer, 2-1.

The Autobots will call it an asterisk game though, as the Decepticons prevailed on Lifeguard Angel to call "time" at 9:50 PM, thus preventing a possible tie.

The Calayan Clause

Quite a surprise on Celebrity Duets yesterday, when instead of culling the Sensational Six down to the Fab Five, GMA instead threw in a "Wild Card" - all votes were reset to zero and texters were only given from 6:45 PM to midnight to text in their votes. A further kicker was thrown in: only a maximum of ten text votes per cellphone would be counted.

Needless to say, T and I spent the rest of the night forwarding texts to everyone we knew. We'll know by next Saturday whether she gets to stay on the show.

I suspect the Wild Card was thrown in because the rumors had been that Doc Manny was buying load for his drivers and employees and just having them text in to keep him on the show. Whether true or not, I have to say that this tactic was well within the rules.

To the Doc, it made perfect sense. Why buy 30-second TVC's at P150,000 a spot when a text vote is only P2.50? In other words, everyday the good Doc stayed on Duets was free advertising for Calayan Surgicenter. So if the rules allowed didn't prevent a cellphone from submitting a hundred thousand or more votes, so be it.

Unfortunately for Doc, this oversight on the part of the Rules didn't necessarily make for good television.

Again the rumor mill was that yes, Doc was ahead in the total vote count, but if the rules only counted unique cellphone numbers, he was in fact, behind. So the rest of the Dueteers are actually more popular, but their texters just don't have enough load to spend.

Thus, new the Wild Card rule, which gives the unique cellphone numbers greater weight due to the ten-vote cap. IMHO, the Wild Card rule should truly be known as the Calayan Clause.

So all Six stay alive for another week.

Meanwhile, I actually believe that T's performances are improving. Here she is with Rufa Mae Quinto, singing "Like a Virgin" in flagrante delicto.

Autobots vs. Decepticons

I thought I would put in a guest post from C, one of the stronger hockey players and apparently also a potential blogger:

“One shall stand… and one shall fall”.. said the great Optimus Prime. And in their quest to rule cybertron, Team Autobots once again defeated Team Decepticons 9-3. The scores may not be close, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked. Though missing their leader Megatron (A.C.) due to injury and Alex Reyes, Team Decepticons were clearly ahead in terms of firepower. They had their full roster (10 players) going against the depleted Autobots… who come game time, only had a dismal 5 players.

That alone caused concern throught the Autobot Camp… How the hell would they be able to defeat this team? Thoughts of forfeiting the game and just having an all mens mixed game that night were instantly brought up. But if you're gonna lose and die anyway.. wouldn’t you rather die fighting?

As expected, the game started with the Decepticons scoring the first goal but even if they did, Team Autobots realized then on that they actually have a chance. Because even with just 5 players, the Autobots were able to bring the puck into the opponents goal area and were able to hold most of their attacks. Playing 2:3, Team Autobots definitely had their hands full. It's tough enough to go against a team with 6 players.. what more if they have 4 subs?

Fortunately for the Autobots, Ferdie arrived just in time before the second strike. It's now even-steven. But how far can the Autobots last without an ample supply of energon cubes (subs)? Though they have a full team, they still don’t have any subs. Team Autobots were eventually able to tie the score and then get the lead. Just attack and pressure the defense of the Decepticons... that was the game plan of Team Autobots.

A.R. would later arrive as reinforcement for the Decepticons but was instantly barred from joining his team 1 nanosecond (hehe..) after the Autobots saw him. Unfortunately for Team Decepticons, though A.R. would have been a great addition to their frontline, they were already playing with their declared 10-man roster. Which to my understanding, correct me if I’m wrong, you won't be able to change once the game starts. B.J. arrived a couple of minutes later and joined his fellow Autobots, which instantly boosted the team and helped them seal the deal and get the W.

The night was capped at Pizza Hut with birthday boy Ferdie treating the after-hockey-dinner people to a sumptuous pizza buffet. Six(?) different flavors of pizza were laid out in front of the PUHCers and as a true PUHC tradition, the food was gone in a few mins. =P Happy birthday Ferdie!

Team Autobots now leads the best of 5 series 2-0. Game 3 will be next Thursday. Which surely would be the hardest game of the entire series. With their backs now against the wall, Team Decepticons will definitely come back with a vengeance. No team wants to get swept and Team Autobots can't afford to get too overconfident even with their 2-nil lead because it's common knowledge that in sports, a close out game is usually the toughest one to win. Just ask the New York Yankees (NBL) and the Dallas Mavericks (NBA). =)

In support of the team and to try and lessen the now tense and extreme tourney like atmosphere of the series., yours truly… the gentledog arrived with a mascot in tow.. Abu-Optimus-Dog-Rahim =).

To Bench or Not to Bench

Tomorrow is the Bench Underwear Show. T invited me to go and she usually has a first-row seat, as evidenced by my video of Alessandra da Rossi from last year's show. However, tomorrow is also a Tuesday night, ergo an U/W Hockey night.

Hmmm. So do I watch men and women parade on a stage in their skivvies or do I flick a puck around with men and women in their swimsuits? Tough call...

We got the beat!

Maybe it was because of her secret birthday wish, but T had a great performance yesterday on Celebrity Duets. She and her partner, Manilyn Reynes, sang that famous Go-Go's song, "We got the beat!"

I recorded the song using my new Nokia E90. T bought me the new phone at the Gifts and Graces Charity Auction a few weeks ago. I'm happier with it than the Blackberry, which I just never connected with. The key advantages of the E90 are:

1. a better Contacts database (I still find it hard to believe that the BB only allowed one mobile number per Contact)
2. a camera/video camera (better than the Treo's, but that's not saying much), and
3. the still-remarkable-as-ever Nokia speakerphone.

On the downside, the E90 database is still not a perfect match to the Treo and as we speak, Nokia Customer Care and Smart's Tech Team are still tag-teaming on getting the Calendar function to operate. Unfortunately, with the worldwide decline of Palm, I can see that their OS and products will soon go the way of Lotus 1-2-3. So a transition from Treo was always going to be inevitable.

The Blackberry functionality of the E90 is also not as beautiful as on the BB, but then that was truly the BB's only redeeming feature, and not one that's important enough to make it a primary phone.

Huwag na huwag mong sasabihin!

I found the best quality YouTube video of T's performance last Saturday. You can hear every crack in her voice!
It was uploaded by someone sporting the username nonshowbiz, which just makes me feel he/she must be part of the Kapuso team.

In the second half of the clip, Tim Yap performs in a Buzz Lightyear suit and then wishes his mom a happy birthday. When the camera flashes on her, she looks like a super conservative Chinese lady, about as far removed from Tim's outre persona as can be imagined.

She also had the line of the evening. After Dr. Hayden Kho performed, she asked aloud, "Anak ba yan ni Vicki Belo?" In response, there was an audible gasp all around.

As Kitchie says, "Huwag na huwag mong sasabihin!"