Earl Baylon is my Hero
Room to Improv cast member, UC Irvine alumnus and future mega-star Earl Baylon was recently casted as, get this, a HAWAIIAN in two Round Table Pizza commercials. I know, I know, a gig is a gig but man this is great!
See Earl in the video below at the 0:32 second mark as a “Hawaiian” and at 1:35 as the “SUPER Hawaiian”
Earl, did you honestly think I wasn’t gonna post this?!?! Have you even been to Hawaii?
Some Dos and Don’ts for Pinoy Audiences
Hello Pinoylifers. It feels good to be back. If you haven’t done so, please check the article about the Lea Salonga concert. It was a great show and if she ever gets booked to play at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with a full orchestra again, I strongly recommend going.
That being said, I did have some observations regarding Filipino behavior at the event and I just wanted to share a few things with all of you in the hopes that we, as a people, don’t look like complete ‘tards at the next formal concert.
The Force is Strong with Lea (Salonga, not Skywalker)
Lea Salonga is no stranger to firsts. She was the first female casted as the lead role of Kim in the original London production of Miss Saigon. She was the Asian female casted to play the role of Eponine in the musical Les Miserables. And she was the first Asian woman selected to be the singing voices of not one, but two Disney princesses in the animated films Aladdin and Mulan.
On Friday, July 11, Lea Salonga added another first under her belt, becoming the first Filipina artist to headline at the new Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.
Why Jeffrey Abalos is Awesome
If you needed further proof why Jeffrey Abalos is awesome, he put this video together and played it at his brother Royce’s wedding. Remember, there is no-charge for awesomeness.
Part 3: Resurrection
Pinoylife.com.
Wow, when’s the last time that juxtaposition of characters was relevant?
I am having a difficult time writing this, probably due to all of the writer’s rust I need to shake off. I’ve spent so much of my time in the last few years refocusing my life and growing as a person that this Pinoy pop-culture website endeavor that started way back in 1998 had to be put in a cryogenic sleep in January of 2005 just waiting for something to trigger its reactivation.
What the hell happened?
That’s a question a lot of people that read Pinoylife.com or TheFlavorOnline.com who don’t have my cell phone number are probably wondering. My personal life changed in 2005 and it caused me to refocus and reprioritize things. The time and money that I had to go out and cover as many Pinoy events for the site got shifted to starting a family and moving my personal career forward. (What? You guys thought I did this stuff for a living?) Some of the other regular contributors to the site also started seeing their careers take off and they could no longer dedicate the time needed to provide written content.
The financial costs and effort needed to keep the site up were simply too much for me to take on and thus, the site was put into deep sleep.
Why bring it back?
In every story where some character is in some deep sleep, there’s always an event that causes that character to wake up because that person’s purpose is needed again. In Futurama, Phillip J. Fry was revived from a 1000 year cryogenic freeze to fulfill some prophecy by Nibbler’s people. In Aliens, Ellen Ripley was woken up after 57 years of hypersleep after her drifting spaceship was found by another space crew and she eventually went on to kick some mother alien butt. And of course, Han Solo was freed from the carbonite at Jabba’s palace in Return of the Jedi to go on and help lead the loveable Ewoks destroy the shield generator on the moon of Endor so that Lando, Wedge, and the rest could blow up Death Star #2.
For Pinoylife’s case, the trigger events were simply people telling me that they needed it back. People missed having a voice to read that talked about the Pinoy world that we knew. They longed for the sarcasm and dry humor. A few of you also told me that you were just fed up with some of the wack stuff that you saw in the Pinoy community and had no central place to see this stuff put on blast. I heard all of you and I got the message.
Simply knowing that there was void that needed to be filled wasn’t enough. I had to figure out a way to make this thing work with respect to cost and time. Luckily, over the three years that have passed since the last update of TheFlavorOnline, blog technology has gotten pretty good and now everyone and their mom has a blog which makes it pretty cheap for me to run this sumbitch.
Expect some changes
Folks, I have to be honest and say that there’s no way I’ll be able to give the same type of coverage the old site did. I simply don’t have the resources to be at every event, take photos, and write stuff. This version of Pinoylife.com is going to be my personal blog that will focus on the Pinoy pop-culture world as I see it. I’m doing this to provide a perspective that I feel is not being properly represented in our media.
You’ll probably see a few guest writers (hopefully), and with some luck, Pinoylife.com can be something worth going to again.
My goal for the day was just to get this site back up with an article. Let’s see where this goes.
A message from Moonie to all of you
Check out the trailer to my first independent film.
