Photos from the Jan. 19 SlantEd Comedy show at the El Rey Theatre
Hello Pinoylifers (and the brand new army of haters – thanks for the traffic). 2009 is starting off strong for Pinoy stand-up comedy. Jo Koy had his first hour long special air on Comedy Central in early January and on January 19, Edwin San Juan’s SlantEd Comedy show had its first Showtime taping that featured Edwin, Bernadette Balagtas, Joey Guila, Dan Gabriel, Ron Josol, and Paul Ogata.
Here are some photos from the January 19th SlantEd Comedy show taping at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, CA.
Album Review: Black Kids astound with sound on “Partie Traumatic”
Album: Partie Traumatic
Artist: Black Kids | www.blackkidsmusic.com
Release Date: July 22, 2008
Review by Anthony Foronda
“Dance! Dance! Dance!” is the phrase of the day when it comes to the Black Kids’ debut album Partie Traumatic. The Jacksonville, Florida outfit’s debut album is a throwback to the fun, 80s synth-pop sound which made this new musical discovery such a joy. With every listen, each track is wrapped in pure unadulterated pop goodness that definitely gets you moving.
For Tim Lincecum, it’s Cy Young and not sayang
Teachers and FANHS folks, here’s another thing to put in your Filipino American history books. Pinoy major league pitcher Tim Lincecum has won the 2008 National League Cy Young award.
Giants ace Tim Lincecum wins NL Cy Young Award - Associated Press
Surviving a Filipino Zombie Attack
This year, Halloween fell on a weekend. However, I wasn’t with the Geto Boys trick or treatin’. I was at home watching DVDs and handing out candies to children with nice costumes and begrudgingly giving candy to teenagers dressed like they just shopped at Hot Topic. (Note to teenagers, a Pixies band t-shirt, jeans, and skeleton gloves is not a Halloween costume). Halloween marks the ending of Filipino American History Month and what better way to remind us that we need to wrap up the history month celebrations than to have countless horror films playing on dozens of cable channels.
One channel was showing a marathon of zombie films and I saw that 28 Days Later was playing. It’s a pretty good zombie film and I highly recommend it if you got some free time on your hands. The premise of the film did get me thinking. What if there was some form of lab created genetic zombie virus that attacked people with at least 1/4th Filipino ancestry? What would we need to do in order to survive and minimize the risk of zombie infection?
Fear not loyal PinoyLifers. The fan boys behind this site got you covered.
Some Dos and Don’ts for Pinoy Weddings
It’s good to be back home after a nice vacation in Hawaii. I just attended my friend’s wedding on Waikiki and it was a beautiful beachside ceremony. Over 100 people attended his destination wedding which was pretty cool. The bridesmaids were dressed in exquisite matching dresses while me and the groomsmen were decked out in matching aloha shirts and white pants, making us look like the hotel ukelele band or the valet guys.
A wedding should be a time when people need to understand a few basic rules of social etiquette. The bride and groom spend a lot of time and money putting together a classy event for their guests to enjoy. And we, as Pinoys and Pinays, sometimes violate these unspoken rules of wedding guest etiquette that can make our people look like total chodes. Here are some dos and don’ts based on observations at various Filipino weddings I’ve attended.
Album Review: Metallica gets back to metal with “Death Magnetic”
Album: Death Magnetic
Artist: Metallica
Release date: September 10, 2008
Review by Francis Yap
Metallica is a band marred with a history of controversy, starting from their earlier days of alcoholism and debauchery to their not too recent legal pursuits against online file sharers. Combine this with “St. Anger”, which is the least successful album in the band’s career, and you’ll see that Metallica has a serious task of winning back their die hard followers along with a new generation of metal fans. The band has faced plenty of criticism from fans and critics alike since their infamous “Black Album” due to their change in musical direction. They shifted away from their complex, fast, and epic pieces to songs with a hard rock edge, simpler, and commercial styles. Nearing middle age, can Metallica still seem relevant in the Metal world?
Robbie Lawler Retains EliteXC Middleweight Title
For all you MMA fans out there, Robbie Lawler defeated Scott Smith with a TKO in the 2nd round to retain the EliteXC Middleweight title. The fight took place on Saturday, July 26 in Stockton, CA and was aired in a prime time national broadcast on CBS. Pretty cool that a bi-racial Pinoy was in the main event for EliteXC’s second prime time network show. And he won by delivering some hard knees to the body and head of Smith. Props to both Smith and Lawler for a hard fought main event.
Check the links below for the news coverage:
Lawler TKOs Smith, EliteXC crowns two champions in Stockton - Denny Burkholder, CBSSports.com
Lawler’s sequel victory highlights epic night of EliteXC championships - Josh Gross, Inside MMA on SI.com
Robbie Lawler’s Profile on ProElite.com
Interview: Ron Josol – The Prime Minister of Pinoy Comedy
Comedian Ron Josol from Toronto, Canada came to visit the Pinoylife headquarters in Los Angeles (aka Moonie’s house) and took some time between watching MMA and a smoke break to do the first ever audio interview posted on Pinoylife.com! Get to know this Pinoy comic as he talks about his influences, his car accident, making longanisa, and soda.
Ron Josol Interview: Part 1 of 3
Read on for parts 2 and 3.
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.
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.
