The Homer Gang

Singapore, 07-28-2007

Circa 1990, in the suburbs of East Bajac Bajac, a small Baranggay in Olongapo City, lives a budding cartoonist. In exchange for a few minutes of pleasure, this young kid skips meal just to draw his favorite cartoon character. This passion to draw extends to the walls of St. Joseph’s High School. A few minutes walk from his home.

As the teacher exhorts how mathematics shape the life of successful people, this young kid sketches the yellow figure he loves to draw, the yellow figure with a hairdo the size of a giant saw. After a few minutes of meditating the concept or his favorite cartoon hero, he shows it to one of his great friends in anime land. “Sheeeeezeee”, this is how he says it but I forgot to ask him how he spells that word, so 17 years after I would assume that this is how he spells it. Christian Reyes, now a licensed Chemical Engineer working somewhere in the middle east would wave flags of complement in agreement to what I just have drawn…yes, that young artist was me. In a time where Adobe Photoshop was just a fragment of man’s imagination, I was already passionate in drawing. I don’t even have a dream of owning my own computer that time, but I was just engulfed in arts…different seasons to speak. And that time it was the rise of the 20th century’s best television series (awarded Dec 31, 1999, Time Magazine)1.

Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie. Sounds familiar? Matt Groening, the man behind this longest running American sitcom said in an interview that they have just passed their 400th episode and thought this was a landmark time2. 20 years after its creation, The Simpsons hit the big screen.

The people behind this series have their reasons for doing this movie just now, and one of them is that we don’t have digital animations back then. Though it took them some time to write the script it all fell in one perfect place. Director David Silverman hopes this could regenerate interest in 2D animation and that it would be a great bonus for them3. Why not? That would be a great bonus for us artists who are still alienated in 3D software programs.

Let’s travel back in time. Back in highschool.

A day after a typical Simpson episode on RPN 9 (it was aired on RPN right?) our gang would regroup in one secluded place of our classroom and cover ourselves with a great force field with The Simpson Zone written all over it. No one would dare enter our zone as we talk about how bleeding gums Murphy made the day again. Hmmm…I am having a difficult time remembering the exact episodes but 17 years later, here in Singapore, while shopping with my wife, the monument of my youth stood right before me. It was not just Bart (he was my cartoon hero), the complete family was there for photo ops. After a few minutes of convincing my wife to take a picture of me and the Homer gang, she did so, hurriedly. And here you saw it in my blogsite. A dream come true…. 17 years after my wandering mind digested this yellow humor. I finally got to have my picture taken with them.

Though I am still waiting for $7 worth of financial aid from my wife, I could only imagine how those who have watched this movie laughed their heart out and who among them where already alive when Homer’s annoyed grunt “D’oh!” first hit our existence.

Argh! I am really that old!

1. Wikipedia, The Simpons 2. First, Singapore, July 2007 issue 3. First, Singapore, July 2007 issue

From the Mouth of Babes

I received this email and thought of posting it on my blog..I do not know who is the author of this compiled benevolent thoughts coming from a group of 4-8 year-olds. For some reason I'm very sure a few years from now when I get back to my blog posts this would be one of my favorites..

What does love mean

in the minds of the young

image grabbed from here

When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love."
Rebecca- age 8

"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."
Billy - age 4

Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other."
Karl - age 5

"Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs."
Chrissy - age 6

"Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss"
Emily - age 8

"Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen."
Bobby - age 7 (Wow!)

"If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,"

Nikka - age 6
(we need a few million more Nikka's on this planet)

"Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday."
Noelle - age 7

"Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well."
Tommy - age 6

"During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore."
Cindy - age 8

"My mommy loves me more than anybody You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night."
Clare - age 6

"When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you." (what an image)
Karen - age 7

You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget."
Jessica - age 8

And the final one -- Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife.

Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.

When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said,

"Nothing, I just helped him cry"

Romans 8:1-2

We need to understand that God doesn’t excuse our sin. Our loving, heavenly Father uses discipline to bring us back to godly behavior. He allows us to experience sins consequences. But divine condemnation isn’t one of them.

Dr. Charles Stanley, In Touch Daily Devotional, 07-25-2007

Really Simple Syndication

Like a child leaping for joy as his father finally agreed to bring him to the park, exaggerated as it may seem. That's how i felt a while ago when i finally made my blogsite available through an RSS feed.

Now most of the readers of my blog(assuming you are more than one) can subscribe to my feed from this page. Really exciting? Yes it is...for me! Hehe!

Thanks to the evolution of Web 2.0, geeks like me have more time pondering alternative hobbies other than dancing our way to NerderLand. Have lots of things to look forward to as i intend to write more and more about anything that would come my way. I discovered it is of great help writing about the present so that you have something to read about when you sit in the future figuring out where you went wrong and how everything turned out right - leading to GREAT LESSONS learned.


God speed!

In Pursuit of Happiness

Singapore. 9:52pm


Here are my thoughts again after a long hiatus inside a cave of asp.net codes, world history and book-reading. Suddenly, I found myself recuperating in unimaginable ways. Was it the mind sweeping activities I chose to get busy with? Or was it the encouragement of what’s left of the masses that I gained notoriety as a streaming scoundrel?

One word to fill the blank. Grace.

Yes, of all the attributes that covered my whole being, those that covered me with a placenta of self-proclaimed influence. I almost got to my last breath ignorant of the real fuel that kept my body pumping life for 30 years. I almost threw my dreams to the ravine of an identity crisis. Unabashed and indignant of anyone who comes my way by telling me to sit down and have a good cup of coffee with a cup of good people.

In daytime, I enjoyed life while at nighttime I hid from life. And as the earth freeze for a time being, as the night overcomes the day, I crawled the floor of humiliation grasping for thin air. With a blind sight and a frail body I shook my head in disbelief.

Suddenly out of the corners of the dark alley that I am trapped into, a spark of hope fleets in to light my path. And as I took a small step forward, one mighty arm saved me and broadens the path beneath me. In a minus eighty eight degree centigrade temperature, grace was sufficient for me to feel embraced again with love and forgiveness. As I leave the dust of my wrong decisions leading to mountains of consequences, I found confidence and strength in the sovereignty of a universal master plan so vast for human perception yet so simple before the greatest Artist in the history of everything.

He paints the canvass with different colors and different strokes of His brush. He might have given emphasis to the beauty of the clouds, but He never missed the details of the rough rocks that serve as static walls that the waves embrace. Giving a beautiful refreshing sound of hope as heat subsides when the water meets the shore.


God meets us where we are and not where someone is.
Joseph M. Stowell, Radical Reliance: Living 24/7 with God, 2006

ενιαίο

The continous and widespread fragmentation of the Church has been the scandal of all the ages. It has been Satan's master strategy. The sin of disunity probably has caused more souls to be lost than all other sins combined.

Paul Billheimer
Love Covers(Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1981)


Today I learned that unity does not begin in examining others' fault but in examining my own faults. I realized it is a bit tiring demanding for change when I am no capable of admitting that I am not perfect myself.

The answer to arguments? Acceptance. The first step to unity? Acceptance. Not agreement, unanimity, negotiation, arbitration or elaboration but ACCEPTANCE. Everything else follows. As there is no way we are told to build unity but only to keep unity.

“I pray for these followers, but I am also praying for all those who will believe in me because of their teaching. Father, I pray that they can be one. As you are in me and I am in you, I pray that they can also be one in us. Then the world will believe that you sent me"
John 17:20-21

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Robert Zimmerman (Jewish) 1964

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

It was only recently that I've read about this American icon (and i was surprised to discover that he is a Jew)...the great poet who helped shaped the future of popular music. Armed with his pen and guitar, spiced with the guts to challenge his own genius, Zimmerman became the youngest topical song writer to emerge in the 60s.

As the rest of his peers are busy with school...science and listening to local radio tunes, this young lad has ears on Little Richard and Woodie Guthrie...

Now I have better things to write about as I become entangled with the roots of a musical genius whom I often hear but never had the time to listen to.

If the point is sharp, and the arrow is swift, it can pierce through the dust no matter how thick.