Don't Hate Wait

I once recommended a restaurant to a friend wanting to impress his date.  On the night of the event, I was the recipient of an irate phone call.

“This better be worth it,” growled my friend as the maitre d’ showed him to their table.  “We booked in advance, but they made us wait almost an hour!”

Growly then proceeded to make it sound like the wait was a hellish inconvenience.  Now I was under pressure.  Maybe what I hyped as the best lobster in the world would just taste like chicken.  I could not let him pin his evening’s failure on me.

“Wait, I don’t get it,” I suddenly realized, “You are supposed to be there on a date, so what does it matter if you had to spend an hour together before you ate?”

He did not have to answer me.  The fact that he was calling me this early into his evening was already an indication.  I could already conclude that he did not like who he was with.  The key piece of evidence was that he minded the wait.

“That bad huh?” I chuckle at Growly.  “I’m sorry you hate this blind date, but you can still make it fun for you.”

“It will be fun when this is all over,” Growly growls, “but right now all I can do is wait for the food we ordered, wait for her to eat it, and then wait for a cab to take her away so I can go to a strip club.”

That’s a lot of waiting, and my friend isn’t very good at that. 

The Super Secret Law of Bad Company Time.  You can’t have a good time if you don’t like who you are with.  (If you are alone and bored, can you guess who doesn’t like you?) 

Hating the wait is a product of not liking where we are and who we are with.  The alternative is to look forward to whatever should be next – so much so that we attempt to force ourselves into the future.  That can’t be easy at all.

Impatience – the choice to focus on the future instead of the Now we are presently in - sends out an invitation to Frustration.  We tell Time to “Go faster!” and then sit there while it does not.  My friend prays to all the forces of the universe to “make this date more interesting,” and then gives me an angry phone call when the universe lets him down.

Patience is a choice to embrace where we are and what is happening.  It is what it is, and we are here now.  In the absence of an interesting companion, I find that there are still many ways to enjoy a waiting situation. 

PLAY.  I like to make up silly little games and challenge myself.  How long can I hold my breath?  Can I zone in on a specific conversation happening across the room?  Can I memorize the items on this menu? 

BOOKS.  Every early arrival – be it at a doctor’s office or the airport – is an opportunity to catch up on my reading.  I have a book with me as a standby at all times. 

PEOPLE.  Unless I am waiting in a dark alley for some contraband, there is a good chance that I will have some people around.  Watching them can be extremely entertaining.  I can sit in a bus stuck in traffic and imagine fantastic stories about how that passenger got his deformed arm – and if his buddies call him “T-Rex” 

TALKING.  This is a stretch for me, because I am generally a very private person, but I’ve found that as long as I make everything up as I go along, I can have an entertaining conversation with a complete stranger fill up my waiting time.  I can make a new friend, and my new friend can go home and tell his wife how he met the man who invented Post-Its at the bank.  (And his wife would never believe him, because she knows for a fact that the lanky woman from Friends did that.) 

MUSIC.  I can put my headphones on and use this waiting time as an opportunity to just listen.  To actually hear the music, and not just use it as background.  I may notice a violin that I never really heard before, or realize that I’ve been dancing to a song that was actually about perspiration oozing from a man’s private parts. 

DETAILS.  I like to use idle time to appreciate.  It could be the sky, or the grain on the wooden coffee table.  I can in take the scenery in dramatic detail a step further by… 

WALKING.  In response to the question "What are men thinking?" Jerry Seinfeld dared to tell the truth:  "Nothing.  We're just walking around, looking around."

I am a huge fan of walking around, looking around.  With my headphones on I can combine walking around with music, people, and details.  I play my music loud enough so that it is being fed directly into my brain, and I make my eyes the camera.  I produce, direct, and watch my very own music video. 

SNOOZING.  Again, unless I am in a dark alley or somewhere unsecure, I can always catch up on my Zees while I wait.  My compensation for my insomnia has been to quit driving and instead travel by taking long rides in airconditioned busses where I lose nothing by snoozing. 

Houston’s Super Secret Law and The Dumb Waiter:  If I merely let moments pass until the moment I want arrives, then I will have lived for only that one moment in time. 

Things are happening right now where I am, so instead of looking for ways to merely pass the time until my moment arrives, I can make sure I enjoy the moments as they pass.

I have found that doing this keeps me excited.  I find reasons to arrive early.  I never mind when you are late.  I begin to look forward to waiting time.  I find myself smiling when I hear the announcement that my flight has just been delayed for another four hours.

How can I hate when I can wait?

Did The Job

I RAVED about OTJ ("On The Job") after I saw it on the big screen.  It was a big moment for me, as there were a lot of personal “Firsts” - things I never thought I would live to experience while watching a Tagalog movie.

I actually CARED about (some of) the characters.  This has NEVER happened before.  Halfway in, I looked over at my companion and felt it:  "They must be doing something right, because honestly, right now I want these guys to escape..."

I thought about the movie days after I saw it.  In itself, this is not strictly a “first,” since I think about how AWFUL every Tagalog movie I ever saw was for days on end as a matter of amusement.  OTJ was different.  I was thinking about the story.  I was reliving some of the characters in my head.  Joel Torre and that potentially annoying arrogant kid Gerald Anderson GOT to me.  Joey Marquez became my hero.

I did not want it to end.  I hated to admit it to myself, but as the story seemed to approach the close, I was screaming in my head "No, not yet!" - I wanted to see more of Acosta and Tatang!  I wanted this to be the pilot of six-episode mini-series.

THE SOUND.  Oh my God.  I said it in a comment I posted elsewhere:  "Magugunaw na ang mundo!" - I say this because the unthinkable has happened:  This Tagalog movie had sound that made sense.  The dialog was in sync (and when not in sync, well hidden by edits).  The sound properly conveyed space.  The foley was just right - not overdone.  The entire audio experience was magically just right.

And the soundtrack?  Gimme that OST!  Seriously.  Most Tagalog films I had the displeasure of watching (read: giving a chance) had to have some cheesy music sung by one of the actors worked into the movie.  OTJ had scoring that simply did the job.

THAT BEING SAID, OTJ won't score more than 7 or 10.  I Rave within a context - and that context is in comparison to all the Tagalog Films that tried before.  No, OTJ is NOT the best movie of the year.  And PLEASE do not put it up there with "City of God" or "The Departed" just because of some similarities we insist on seeing.

 

Get excited, but slow down.  We have a good thing here, but let's recognize where we are:  we are pointed in the right direction.  We have careful technical consideration and a good story in there.  We have powerful inspired performances that can even be described as "haunting."  Those are all big deals!

However, a lot of the elements that make me sigh at Tagalog films still found their way into OTJ.  So now off to the "room for improvement" section - the Rants in this Rave.

The Title.  How long was the brainstorm on this one?  It seemed like a wasted opportunity to title this film with some better thought-out combination of letters and words that could have made a great statement.  "Inside Out" comes to mind, or even "Borrowed Lives."  As trite as those suggestions may sound, my point is that a better title is expected out of a roomful of geniuses creatively considering collectively.

The Story POV's.  I was totally immersed in Tatang's POV.  I could bounce over to Acosta's and feel his world as well.  Coronel's...?  Seemed like a waste of momentum every time.  Some of us feel that Coronel’s side of the story may have been better served in shadow.  As important as all his conflicts seemed, his POV could not deliver.  Wait, I blame...

Classically Pathetic Performances.  Oh my, Piolo, when are you ever going to bring something to the table besides that one expression and your rock-hard nipples?  You know how Ben Stiller had "Magnum?"  Piolo has "Mopey."  That's all he brings to the table.  Is he hopeless, or did the director fail to reach inside him to pull out something even passable?

And then you have the cliché that was Leo Martinez’s delivery of what was supposed to be the most complex character of them all.  One does not become that cold without the “calculating” part of the package - that gleam of superior intelligence that we only see when it is too late.  For someone that height-challenged to reach the rank of General and have that amount of influence, I was expecting to meet a mix of inexplicable charm and massive but subtle power.  What we got was a cartoon character.

Let's throw into this item THE WOMEN in the Film.  Each character had the opportunity to be integral to highlight character conflicts and moral dilemmas...but they did not.  The women in this film were used as background noise.  Coronel's wife made Piolo look like an Oscar nominee.  Some chick with no breasts who needed a career jumpstart made an appearance in the middle to show some nipplage.  Tatang’s hot supermodel wife seemed grossly undirected.  Acosta’s wife gave great background noise, and not much else.  Wait, I blame...

The writing, or the editing.  Yes, the story was very moving, but the supporting characters were massively undeveloped.  It's almost as if the writers focused so much on Tatang and Daniel that they left the others - especially the women - to fend for themselves.  I could not care about any of the women - couldn't love them, couldn't appreciate where they were coming from, couldn't see much reason to keep them in the edit at all.  Except we needed...

Gratuitous love scenes.  You are not a Tagalog movie without this, so I was expecting a beach ball to come in at the end as well so the cast could break out into an ensemble number.

 

Seriously, if I see a scene that does not move the story along, it has to go to the cutting room floor, doesn’t it?  It’s a tough call, but aren’t tough calls and broken celebrity egos part of the big picture?

Maybe Direk wanted to do another parallelism montage where everyone is giving it to someone all at once, but the attempt was not properly setup for me.  For love scenes to work, I have to feel the emotion.  Even if it is just revenge-booty, I have to feel it build and blow up!  Remember the notebook?  When they smash into each other to kiss, we all went "Yes!  Finally, f**king YES!!!"

When the OTJ men grabbed their chicks, we just cringed and said "Meh, whatever, fast forward."  Wait, I can blame...

Erik Matti?  I have built a prejudice on his work over the years, so I must apologize for my own perceptions.  To me, an Erik Matti film is like an Ice Skating routine.  You have a checklist of technical stuff to pull off for the judges, and you try to string the tricks together and hopefully tell a story.

Erik Matti strikes me as a guy who watches what other directors do and sets out to prove he can do what they do.  All the tricks are in there, somehow, somewhere.

There's the fluid one-shot - which stumbles when the camera is struck along the way.  I am of the opinion that a well thought out fluid one-shot montage is supposed to lead to a climactic event, important element, revelation, or hero shot.  Something has to put all those elements together after that long take - whether it's all the Avengers converging into a circle, or something exploding.  In the case of the OTJ prison tour, it ended with Daniel tossing some clothes onto his bunk bed.

 

Watch OTJ again and see what other devices Matti uses like he is checking them off a list.  The hospital shootout, the foot chase into the trains.  Like I said, an Ice Skating routine.

Did I say skating?  I also mean SHAKING.  I am not a fan of camera-shaking for style's sake.  When Daniel makes his first kill, it is one out of anger.  That scene was crucial, and I needed to see Daniel barrel through it.  Unfortunately, the director shook the camera all throughout the scene and said to the poor foley artists, "Make sense of this please!"

I expected the grit of the opening scene to color the rest of the movie.  If you are going to show me someone’s head splitting open after a bullet rips through it, I want you to show me how a rusty sharp object breaks skin and creates a faucet under someone’s ribs.

The Super Secret Law of Cinematic Honesty.  If it’s ugly, make us want to look away, even though we can’t.  If it has beauty, make us want to stare.

If we were being honest here, we are saying this:  Killing is ugly, and it ain’t easy, but these guys develop the necessary calluses.  It takes more than a shaky camera and a blur with lots of sound effects to convey that nastiness, and how one can administer that kind of evil and then stash the experience in some corner of their being where their conscience will hopefully not find it for a long time.

There was potentially some great ugly-beauty there, but Direk just chaos-edited his way through it.

talk about a missed opportunity.

I won’t even get into the plot-holes.  Oh, hell, here’s a few.

When you are with a potential murder victim – and you are a cop – you do not:  a) leave him alone while “you get the car” if the car cannot drive into that little alley all the way to his door; and b) ignore two mean strapping jacket-wearing shady characters walking in the alley towards the person you are supposed to protect.

 

When a murder target is in his hospital room and you post cops to protect him, those cops do not leave their post – no, not even when a gunman makes a ruckus and runs out of the hospital.  That is what is called a distraction, and only amateurs empty the fort.

Ah, the old clueless cops cliche...

OTJ had massive substance, so when gratuitous devices and plot shortcuts are forced into it, I get distracted and find myself saying "pssh!"  Was it also style - or producer-meddling - that influenced the choice of scenes and events as the film unfolded its ending?  I leave that up in the air, as I personally felt that most of the film was setting up for a kill-shot that just grazed the target at the end.  A kill, but not quite the headshot.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, I must end with a RAVE.  This last "First" is an invincible testament to how I feel about OTJ.

I have NEVER willingly seen a Tagalog movie TWICE.  If I represent the Filipino snob that is holding back the local Film Industry with my cynicism and lack of support, OTJ has scored a major victory.

I say all this not as a respectable Film Critic.  I have no clout or MowellFund background here.  I am hardly a student of the industry.  I am nobody.  What I am, is the guy you are selling tickets to.  I’m the one who walks in there and wants to be entertained by a story and moved by five-dimensional characters.

I bought your ticket twice.

Bravo, OTJ!  You are magnificent in your own right.  A blue-chip in your Junior League.  Take the 7 of 10!  We can work out those three points if we stay honest, open, and passionate with the details.  What really matters now is that you have set us on the road that leads to a breakthrough!

I celebrate this Job.

 

Got IGGY With It

I was a college student majoring in Psychology when I first learned about Id.  Defined as the “evil” part of us that is driven by pure instinct, Id was characterized mainly by one trait:  A need for Instant Gratification.

I had taken to calling it IG instead. IG gets angry and hits people.  IG sees something it likes and takes it.  IG is a sociopath:  a thief, a murderer, a rapist, a corrupt congressman.

What supposedly separated Men from Animals was that we weren’t all about IG – that a man could have patience.  To be fair to animals, they can be patient as well – as those of us with dogs may have noticed.  That puts IG beneath animal behavior.

And yet here we are, a world populated – even governed – by IGGY people I like to call IGIOTS. 

 

If it isn’t some jackass cutting to the front of a queue because he perceives his needs as more important than everyone else’s, it’s some uncouth customer service rep constantly checking the time in the middle of your conversation.

When I am being Iggy I say things like “Hurry up!” and “Let’s go already!”  While I don’t often say “Are we there yet,” I do go for the more creative “While we’re young...?”

I chiefly blame technology for making me Iggy.  The need to come up with ways to do more in less time has whittled my patience down to a point where anything less than instant just takes too damn long.

MOBILE PHONES.  The usefulness has deteriorated into a crutch that hampers my ability to live in the here and now.  Phones make the world smaller, so I can deliver my oh-so-important words straight into peoples’ ears the moment I think of them.

That isn’t good enough.  Remember the rotary phones?  Takes too long.  I hated people with a zero on their digits.  I also often wondered if I would be hacked to death in my own home by an axe-wielding burglar because the emergency hotline people were myopic and included a 9 in the number I had to dial.

To fix all that, the touch tone was invented.  And then speed dialing.  And then voice-activation.  I can now program my phone so that all I have to do is grunt into it.

“Mmmh,” and then my mother will pick up.

To me, the worst use of my mobile phone is when I check on the whereabouts of somebody who is already on the way to meet me.  I can be so Iggy that I don’t realize how constantly checking on your updated arrival status does not make you go any faster.  If anything it has the opposite effect.

HIGH SPEED INTERNET.  I used to be happy with dialup.  (Can you imagine dialup using a rotary phone?)  I used to doze off to the sweet sound of that electronic hee-haw.

These days, if my Mac starts beachballing for more than five seconds, I will seriously consider replacing it.

 

LouisCK’s Super Secret Law of Lousy Internet Connections:  “Would you give it a second?  It’s going to space!”

I am now the spoiled brat who fails to marvel at the wonder of this amazing magical technology.  Come on!  If it takes a whole minute for me to view a photograph of you from five thousand miles away, that’s still a good deal!

WORK PRESSURE.  Few people can be as Iggy as the office boss.  He who wants whatever it is he wants “right now” – or even “yesterday.”  Whether he wants a report of last year’s toothpick usage, or his intern to hide under his desk, this man exercises igiotic behaviour “like a boss.”

This is not strictly an office phenomenon either.  Iggy school teachers have given me homework that “will only take about an hour” and “is due tomorrow.”  Does it matter that five other teachers gave me the same speech?  These teachers inspired me to plagiarize.

I continue to blame technology for creating the unreasonable expectations that make people Iggy:  “They can put a man on the moon, surely you can photocopy three complete sets of Encyclopaedia Britannica before my coffee gets cold!”

MOTORIZED TRANSPORTATION.  Walking used to work, but it is now too much of a drag.  Not when I can get to go where I want to go sitting in a comfortable chair that magically moves at least twice as fast.  As fast as a trotting horse, if I am lucky.

But of course, that is not good enough.  So says the Iggy driver honking at me because I moved the car a full second after the light had turned green.  Jesus Christ, a full second!

My default response to being honked at is to step on the brake.  The next impulse is to get out of the car so that I can walk over to the honking Igiot and politely ask how I can help him.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were honking at me because you had something important to say.  I’ll just get back in my car now and we can… Oh dear me, the light has changed, I guess we’re not going anywhere for at least another forty five seconds.  I do hope your office building is still standing when you get there.”

Whether I am in a queue, at a rendezvous, by the phone, or on the brink of an event that will change my life forever, I’d like to believe that waiting ought to be embraced as a pocket of time that provides me with an unexpected chance to be enriched – even those 45 seconds waiting for the light to turn green.  But technology and the promise of omnipresence has gotten me to forget where I am.  Hating waiting is a result of my failure to recognize that I can choose to enjoy a situation.

Can I really live a life where my recurring wish is for things to be over with?

Sounds Iggy to me.