I Am The Walrus

I get freakishly excited when things or people I love cross paths.

After the gorgeous Michael Johns got unfairly booted off American Idol, one of his first pit stops was The Ellen Degeneres Show. Ellen then proceeded to feature Mr. Johns in not one, not two, but three of her episodes — a feat that I doubt any of the Davids could claim in the last year. Is that such a big deal? Oh, I don’t know. The show is just the most Emmy awarded daytime show since it started about five years ago, so maybe it is a big deal.

Next, MJ got invited to the after-party of Saturday Night Live where he hung out with Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and Cameron Diaz. The token party-band, for some reason, couldn’t make it so Michael ended up performing for the talented cast of Lorne Michael’s long-running show.

Afterwards, Michael Johns got invited to perform at a Las Vegas concert for David Foster. David Foster is an accomplished musician and record-producer and among his successful projects include Josh Groban…. and Michael Buble. Both Michaels that I love performed at said concert.

Of course — this is a bit of a stretch — Michael Johns had his shot at fame via the Fox network. The same network that gave you The X-files fifteen years ago. (It’s a Saturday. There has to be X-files).

Jai guru deva om.

(NOTE: It’s 5am. On a Saturday. Do not underestimate my love for this show. Haha.)

1. Mulder and Scully are far from platonic the last time we saw them. They were in bed together — just spooning, nothing acrobatic — and pondering their future, which includes looking for their son, William. Yes, they have a son, conceived the fun, old-fashioned way, which Scully gave up for adoption because he was starting to become “special”. (Special meaning telekinesis and not singing talent ala David Archuleta. Heehee.)

2. Mulder has been out of the FBI since before the show ended. Last time we saw Scully, she was teaching at Quantico and out of the X-files. Doggett and Reyes ran the X-files the last time we heard from it.

3. Which assumes that Doggett and Reyes along with Skinner are still alive. Unlike many of our beloved characters who died before the show ended: Lone Gunmen, dead. Krycek, dead. Cigarette-Smoking Man, dead (?).

4. Speaking of Cigarette-Smoking Man, in his last scene with Mulder and Scully, he spoke of a date when the invasion of the aliens will begin. Sometime December 2012. Which is also the same year my visa expires. So, the more reason to use it next year before aliens invade the planet.

5. Before the show ended, the whole business with Mulder’s sister — which brought Mulder to the X-files in the first place, and made him convince poor clueless Dr. Scully to join him for the next nine years — had concluded with the season 7 episode “Closure” where Mulder finally finds out that his sister — abducted at age nine — died at around age 14.

6. There was this whole corny business on super soldiers. Oh, I’m sorry. Super Soldiers. (Must capitalize). Alien-human hybrids that are powerful and indestructible. Apparently, William is one such being. I remember Krycek describing him as “more human than human”. I don’t really know what that means which makes it more fun.

7. Deputy Director Kersh who was a major pain in the ass turned hero in the end when he aided in the escape of Mulder from death row. He eventually moved to Grey’s Anatomy playing one of the doctors on the show (haha).

8. As for personal struggles, Mulder’s whole family had died by now — his mother, his father and his sister. So all he has is his obsession with aliens and Scully. While Scully still had her own family, she still struggles with the fact that if she had continued her career in medicine, her life would have perhaps been simpler — she wouldn’t have been abducted by aliens, been barren for nine years only to be pregnant and give birth to a child she couldn’t keep, and of course, have a relationship with a man who had a passion for the unknown. Hayyy. Gwapo kasi ni Mulder e.

9. The last cellphone I saw them use was a Nokia 6150 while the CSI:NY geeks are currently lagging Palm Treos. That best paints a picture of how vintage the series is.

10. In conclusion, Chris Carter left the series as wide open as a series can get for a feature film. And we, the craxy X-philes, need more closure than “The Truth” (the title of the final episode). And it all begins in August.

1. The trailer is EVERYWHERE!!!! It’s on youtube, it’s on IGN (www.ign.com), there’s a link on TVGuide (www.tvguide.com), and then there’s the official website (www.xfiles.com). I’ve seen it like five thousand times!

2. Pics and interviews are everywhere too! My most used and abuse bookmark in the last few weeks is the fan-made X-files website www.xfilesnews.com. It’s freaking brilliant. I love these US-based fans. They probably don’t have jobs haha.

3. The Manila release date has been changed from July 23 to August 13. AUGUST 13!!!! I don’t know if I could last that long. Can somebody loan me a thousand dollars to buy a plane ticket to go to the States by July?

4. There’s also an awesome, kick-ass, briliant webad on youtube of Mulder/David and Scully/Gillian talking about how much they miss each other. AAAGGGHHHH!!!!! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYGTaIEDND0)

5. I’ve also joined Pinoy X-philes! (Should I say that out loud? Haha).

I don’t think I’m gonna care about being loveless until after the movie haha.

Hurray for cheap thrills!

1. Alicia Ysit Aseremo Sevilla became a mother on September 29, 1977 almost 31 years ago.

2. Like everyone else in our household, she has a "house nickname" (Elsie) and an "others nickname" (Alice).

3. My lack of make up skills and fashion sense I can attribute to my mother. She is not kikay. The most kikay she has ever done — -as far as I can recall — is to perm her hair every month when I was around eight. And that’s about it.

4. Both my mother and father let me have my barkada moments because they have barkadas too. My mother has her church barkada, her Roosevelt barkada (moms like her who used to wait on us, their Kindergarten children, at school) and her cousins.

5. I also attribute my fascination for artistas to my mom who was, and still is (despite his demise), a die-hard Fernando Poe Jr. fan. Yes, she voted for him. My mom’s most recent favorite is the actor who plays Jumong in the Koreanovela of the same name. (She made me look up pictures of him on the net and asked if she can upload it on her phone. Yeesh.) My mom and I clearly have different tastes in men but we both curled up like teenagers watching Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge.

6. My mother always laughs at my jokes. She thinks I’m funny as hell.

7. My mother likes to buy stuff for the house, like glasses and plates and stupperware (what I call fake tupperware) and then keep them in cabinets for the mice to sleep on.

8. My parents are perhaps one of the few people in the world who without a doubt, and I know in my heart, for sure, are in love. My mom, in particular, I think still has a little crush on my dad after all these years.

9. My mom’s description of my boyfriends (that she met haha): BF #1 "Ang liit!"; BF #2 "Ang laki!"; BF #3 "Kalbo!".

10. My son Cojie is proof that moms just get better with time. She’s been a mom thirty one years but five of those, she was mom to two insane kids.

Whoever made up Mother’s Day must have had an awesome mom too.

About eleven years ago, I had shifted out of Math and into Commres, was completely in love with a huge teddy bear of a man (who — at that time — didn’t have a potbelly), movies in SM North cost only P50 and jeepney fare for UP Ikot was P1.25. One Sunday night, on RPN 9, I saw an episode of "The X-files" called Small Potatoes. By the end of the hour, I was hooked.

I remember me and Huge Teddy Bear boyfriend scouring every branch of ACA for episodes of The X-files I might have missed since  I caught on the series rather late. (Small Potatoes was season 4. And by this time, The X-files was already in its 6th season in the US). I remember spending so much money on recap books (P600 per book was a big deal for an unemployed student). And I also remember dragging Huge Teddy Bear boyfriend to the "X-files: Fight the Future" — the blockbuster feature film that came out in 1998. I even remember bringing five, six tapes to the office so my fellow research geeks and I can watch the series during lunch breaks and after work.

Awww. Poor Huge Teddy Bear EX-Boyfriend. We’re friends now, by the way.

And now the nostalgia of the series is creeping up on X-philes like me everywhere as the second feature film’s release date comes near. Yep. July 25.

(QUICK SIDEBAR: For the last three years, having had no lovelife to be excited about, I always looked forward to one of my cheap thrills — Harry Potter. The new book always came out in July. When the seventh book was released last year, it was kind of sad knowing there’s nothing to look forward to in July 2008. Good thing I was wrong)

This feature film almost never got made because of how The X-files ended. David Duchovny’s departure left a sore taste in everyone’s mouth. That was compounded further by creator Chris Carter’s dispute with 20th Century Fox about copyrights and whatnot.

But the X-philes were adamant. The fan sites were kept alive all these years. It also didn’t hurt that many of the series that came after The X-files were cheap knock-offs. I remember reading an article in Entertainment Weekly a few years ago where the critic asks "Where have all the shows like X-files gone?". There was a clamor for its return. And here it is.

I’ve loved many other drama series after it too. The CSIs. Prison Break. The West Wing. But nothing compares to the sick genius of the creators and writers of The X-files.

I did an experiment once. During one Saturday, I watched a full season of CSI:NY — the best-written of the three, I believe, because they look more into characters than into the cases. And then the next day, Sunday, I watched a full season of The X-files. It was like injecting my brain with Smart Serum.

I also noticed that about 1/4 of every CSI episode are scenes with a loud soundtrack while a character processes his evidence. I got turned off. On The X-files, about 90% is intelligent dialogue.

"Yada yada. Here she goes again. Her and her X-files". Yes. Here I am again. And here I will be for the next ten Saturdays bugging you guys to go see the movie. Whenever you can, watch old episodes on RPN/Crime Suspense every Sunday (I think…).

Next week, a recap of the series finale….