Tales from the Decabiography

10 I am a star wars fan

A long time ago
In a galaxy far far away...

It wasn't so long actually, just 30 years ago exactly on this date when the first star wars movie was shown in the big screen and george lucas introduced us to that galaxy far far away.

My age falls a couple years short to being 30, so I was not around when the first star wars movie came out but I was able to see the third film on the big screen when I was a kid. In fact it was the first movie I saw inside a theater, I don't get to see much movies those days because they were quite expensive for my parents, yet I fell asleep halfway from watching my first movie though, I wasn't a late night guy yet at that age.

Anyway for the sake of the 30th year anniversary of star wars, I got a package 2 days ago from surfing for on-line garbage and it was sealed packs of star wars cards released by decipher way back 1995, the whole stuff costed for only about two dollars and you could tell the seller was trying to get rid of it, he sold it for two dollars to somebody halfway accross the globe with all the handling and shipping he had to do and I swear if his friends could have begged for it in the first place, he could have gave them away easily. The cards were also from the first movie too and I was expecting I could get a darth vader card or luke or obi wan but hell most of what I got were the alien regulars and drunkard patrons of the mos eisley cantina.

If you don't remember what the cantina was, its that gloomy and rugged bar joint in tatooine full of strange aliens having their alien liquor and cutting deals with each other in their alien language. I think the cantina is a breakout scene from the first movie because the sequence itself alone has so much star wars essence in it, that anybody having seen star wars once can identify and relate the place to the movie. Even in popular culture, the star wars cantina has become a metaphor for watering holes full of inter-culture and inter-racial low lives in an unfriendly atmosphere.

There might be bars out there that could have this same unfriendly atmosphere, take the places where there are entry points for large cargoes from other places like frontiers and waterfronts like the cantina is adjacent to anchorhead, and bars around that place are probably hived with smugglers and outsider seafarers at night, and places like these are mostly run by mob lords and you have to think of them as the hutts in human form. Its one place I wouldn't want to drink in unless its the real cantina, even if I had to be a droid.

The cantina has also been the source of star wars idioms like doing the kessel run in twelve parsecs and galactic controversies if greedo did shoot first. It takes a devoted fan to understand these terms anyway, I dont even know where the kessel run is and I bet lucas would have wanted greedo alive by now for the fame he brought by his stupid marksmanship.

Suffraging

I dropped by ariel’s internet café right after work yesterday to unwind for a while. I had two beers and went on playing some world war 2 video game where you relive the war as soldiers on either fronts of the war running in a village in france or someplace and shooting the hell out of the other players around. Shooting people did make me feel better after work though, things you wished you could have done while at work.

Right after I was done playing, ariel was outside his internet cafe with some of his officemates and a bottle of scotch, not only that I can’t stand whiskey it was only a bit past nine and I hadn’t had dinner too so I had to refuse like hell when he passed me a shot to take, I had to go home anyway. He himself already had around three beers before that and he was such in a hurry that night because the national elections is coming up on monday, and sale of alcohol is banned across the country come election day and the day before it, three hours before midnight might be closer than he thought so ariel was beating the clock for alcohol.

Sale of alcohol is banned perhaps for reasons that liquor might aggravate and induce violence at the height of the elections, or perhaps voting sober this monday is better than voting drunk yet people in this country had voted worse than being drunk, you could tell from the kind of dumb people being voted into office in this country the past few years. I get this sort of relief though hearing that some brilliant people now have better chances of winning this monday to even off the dumb people already in office.

This afternoon I went back to ariel’s café because I left some stuffs on his fridge the night before, he wasn’t around and he’s probably sleeping after last night's spree. I found a note posted on the door and it said:

We don’t serve LIQOUR for the meantime

The clerk said somebody drinking with ariel must have posted it last night, and maybe this is another reason why people are banned from drinking, else spell the candidates names wrong.

Tales from the Decabiography

3 The novel catcher in the rye had a profound influence in me

It was way back senior high when we were told to make this book report in our english class, you're supposed to read some book and write something about it. I had just finished reading the iliad novel then but I couldn’t use it for my book report because the same teacher already discussed it in class earlier during the semester and she would probably say I heard the story from her, though the novel I read was the full version from homer.

Before reading the iliad, I was also busy writing my own novel, I even forgot about that for a long time already, only when I started recalling these events before the catcher in the rye that it came back to my head. It was about some kid during ancient macedonia who tamed alexander’s horse before he did and something crazy like that and it killed me. I gave it to my history teacher and she never acknowledged it or anything soon thereafter, it was probably a terrible novel anyway, if some of my friends did get to read it.

Anyway I decided to go get a new book to read, I usually dig out old books from my old man’s bin in the stock room, he had a lot of books when he was about my age, and by chance of fate I opened one plastic bag which had around eight old books or so. I picked out the book doctor zhivago because the weird name for a doctor like that felt like he was a mad psychopath or something. But doctor zhivago was quite thick and I felt it will probably eat much of my goddam time reading it, so I turned to the smaller red book beside it and pulled it out.

The title didn’t make any sense, I first thought that it were about some baseball player in a rye field who’s always playing for the outfield. Nobody told me about it and I tried asking my old man if he remembers anything about it and he just said it’s about some kid who got kicked out of school, so I read the book and I got hooked yet I didn’t know how. I gave my report to my english teacher which was practically bland like water and all, telling her the same thing that it was about some kid who got kicked out of school.

I was done with my book report but I went on reading the book over and over again because I sort of liked it, imer once said it’s the book’s form of english. I realized I liked it because it can deliver to the reader a sense of depression and cynicism in its simple slang english, and in a very conscious state of a first person perspective, and I learned to put into words the same depression, cynicism, non-conformist and pragmatism in my goddam brain before it eats me inside out.

My father got it when he was nineteen, I took it from him when I was fifteen and the book just turned forty this year, I don’t think it could survive another generation. I got elle a copy about two years ago, I bought the book and later met up with edward at a convenience store at ortigas around midnight to get some beers. edward saw the book inside the transparent plastic bag, I told him I was going to give it to elle, he said why the hell was I giving to a girl because it’s supposed to be a guy’s book, and he paused and said.

“that ’s just so gay”

Bar Flies

A schoolmate of mine from manila came to my hometown saturday morning, she told me was going to spend a night here and since it was a saturday, I was free that night so we decided to see each other and get coffee or something. I got out of the house around nine but hell I couldn't find her, I gave her a lot of calls to her mobile phone but she wasn’t answering or anything for more than hour, she probably had something important coming up that she couldn’t make it, she’s working for some law firm and the other day I saw her boss on the early evening talk show news and it probably had something to do with that.

When I said coffee or something to her, the alternative something was supposed to be beer, and since it was saturday and she wasn't around anyway, I wanted to go have some beers. Instead I met up with the little miss traveler that night, she hung out in this bar on this night strip joint where there was a lot of people going around. I joined her on her seat on the bar ledge and we had a few laughs, I had myself facing the bartender and a wall shelved with liquor bottles that I didn’t have to bother myself with the social crowd behind me, though I did lean backwards a couple of times. I always get so uncomfortable in social places but it was a great place to sit nonetheless.

There were a lot of bar flies in the ledge that night. There were two girls sitting beside me, they dressed hell glamorously but they didn’t have dates or anything and they weren’t even talking to each other. They kept opening their purses for nothing too, if should they pulled a lighter out, I could have asked for it since I left mine back home. And they weren’t even sipping on their drinks or anything, you could see it from the back of your head, by the time I have finished my second beer bottle their drinks hadn’t gone down an inch.

They were probably waiting for their dates to fall down from the sky, and while they did they were staring at the cable tv over the liquor shelf, it was showing some football game rerun and I felt funny about them because they were not the kind I’d expect to watch football games, they were faking it out alright, I didn’t even bother watching that game, I only remember it was liverpool against some team I wasn’t familiar with. Football games can get too dragging, I swear the last time I watched a full football game on a full sitting was last year’s fifa semifinals between germany and italy.

Little miss traveler had her share of amusement from her side of the table, some old caucasoid geezer sat beside her and dropped a line to her, I didn’t hear him but he talked together with his hands that you could tell he was talking, these people are losers.

And by the way thanks moiee for that melon vodka you got me.