dark as ebony...EDITED

"...Done to death I know, but not like this...we strip it down, make it visceral and real..."

The eerie opening lines of the ballet director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) to his company upon introducing them to their opening season performance. Maybe he wanted them to know the gravity of the task ahead of them: that of re-interpreting an overused storyline in ballet productions all over the world. Or maybe he just wanted to flex his skills at seduction, that of choosing the premier ballerina of the moment, celebrating her muse-hood and wringing her dry until she was devoid of all moisture, flavor and spice like the fate that befell ex-premier ballerina Beth Macintyre(Winona Ryder) in this case....

Although this, in my opinion, is not best-actress-material performance by Natalie Portman she does flex her acting and emotional muscle well here. Transitioning from the soft, feminine, uncertain delicateness of a fragile young lady to the twisted, lunatic contortions of a raving madwoman and then back again several times throughout the film not only displays her versatility but also her method of attacking the role of a deeply disturbed character.

Nina Sayers (Portman) is the ballet dancer in the company chosen by Leroy to play the Swan Queen and the evil twin, the Black Swan for his production SWAN LAKE. It is obvious that right from the very start Nina is on a personal crusade to acquire this role. But after dancing miserably in the audition, she felt she needed to appease Leroy verbally through a personal meeting. He highlights that her calculated and more controlled style of dancing was excellent enough for the Swan Queen role but wasn't for the more provocative and passionate style that befitted the Evil twin. The lead dancer had to embody both roles. Leroy however uses his position of power to take advantage and kiss her and then through some Machiavellian machination credited Nina with the Swan Queen role for the performance.

Thus began a hazy and intense journey for Nina, well mentally at least. The stress of the upcoming performance got to her. The increasing criticism of "HE-who championed her" on her rigid dancing moves. His numerous daring sexual advances as an excuse to release her from the bondage that her potentials were allegedly trapped in and prevented her from performing at her optimal best. The comparisons to Lily (Mila Kunis) a dancer from another company who was lent to them for the Swan Lake production whose more less-perfectionistic but graceful and freer style of dancing was so desired by the director. The drive to be perfect, an unspoken dogma that suddenly haunted her. These all eventually coalesced to wreak havoc on Nina until performance night...

The crescendo of disillusion and detachment blew on full steam. Doppelgangers appearing out of nowhere at unexpected instances, stigmata-esque manifestations characterized by imaginary bruisings, cuts and scratches in her body and fingernails, out-of-body sensual experiences including that of pleasuring herself with her hands, hallucinations of events taking place but with lack of tangible reality when her senses eventually overtook her seemingly intoxicated self ... these were but one of many manifestations of the inner demons that suddenly plagued her from the sheer pressure of trying to achieve perfection.

On the night before the performance all demons broke loose when she partied and let loose with her rival-turned-ally Lily. Ecstasy for starters, and flirting with two boys, dancing the night away in a noisy club as sides, the whole menu of a night seemingly turned into a disaster for Nina until they got to the main dish....sex with Lily in her bedroom despite her mother's pleadings at the door. This part was probably one of the most interesting in the movie naturally but also because both women played the role very well. There was total submission to the sensual act, Nina allowing herself to be pleasured orally by Lily's willing lips, mouth, tongue etcetera...all part of Nina's distorted sensory perceptions...

Performance night and the first act is going well until one of her doppelgangers distracted her and the Swan Prince drops her in the dance lift that would end the first act. Furious, Nina storms into her dressing room only to find Lily already donning the Black Swan costume in an effort to replace her in the second act. Nina loses it completely and stabs Lily to her death and hides her behind closed doors. She suddenly finds herself morphing into the Black Swan, the passionate second skin that had eluded her throughout her struggles through rehearsal and frigidity. She dances flawlessly on stage as the Black Swan, in an almost unearthly perfection. The applause is thunderous....

The third act finally unveils to her and to the viewers that the persona she wounded and had thought dead in the dressing room was herself. She needed to endure the pain to master her dark side and unleash the passion she had not known existed inside her. Dressed and dancing as the Swan Queen again in the third act she bleeds from the wound she had instilled on herself - finally giving way to a semblance of clarity in the end and an arcane happiness at having achieved a performance of freedom after intense personal suffering...

This could have been an otherwise disturbing film for many except that I love these sort of macabre films with imaginary and sometimes demonic representations of personal experiences of people. I've no idea whether a film has been done about a ballerina's emotional and mental struggles before massive performances but this certainly was very watchable for me and could possibly inspire my next photoshoot. Maybe scratch out the lesbian theme three quarters right into the movie...or maybe not!!! :)

Guapitoooooooooo...

Too cute for words!!

I'm obsessed...well actually I AM OBSESSED!!!!

Guess who? :)

Kisses to all...and hopefully to him :)

exercise your Suntec moment...

Being back in the Lion City is refreshing. I don't know why. Maybe it's because every time I come back here there's always something new being built or finished. The big Noah's ark that is Marina Bay Sands stands out like an incongruous bump in the Singaporean landscape. I still cannot get over the fact that they built another line for the trains here considering how diminutive this country is compared to the rest of Asia. Or maybe the heat of the city adds extra miles to the couple of meters you walk thus contributing to the size of this nation? Tell me about it, I am not one to walk under the humid conditions - a far cry from my first time here when I was capable and willing to walk miles (hundreds and hundreds of meters in Singaporean parlance)!

So what is your Suntec moment?

Hahaha If you don't know what that is then go ahead and read.

I caught up with a long-time fan yesterday. Long time is long time as in wayyy before this blog was ever made - can you imagine? We had fancy coffee and a couple of drinks as well as some healthy snacks(always for me!). I've never really done any big-time touristing here as never try to stereotype myself as the classic Filipino tourist and WORK interferes all the time as well anyway LOLLL. But I did don my tourist cap yesterday and went around my area. You know in a city that is so little and expectedly for me, one THAT MIGHT hold too few surprises I was actually taken aback at how close everything was to my hotel. Go ahead and figure. We were having drinks at Bali Lane in the Moslem area when my eyes saw a view of this huge and well-known porcupine (I like calling it that) structure. This gigantic building is quite memorable for me because my first time in this city I posed for a picture in somebody's hotel room and there was a view of the spines from its back! KINKY!!! LOLLLL I was quite surprised to actually just see it from where I was. And to think from my view I could see also see Raffles Hospital which is only blocks away from where I was staying! My friend told me everything within the city center is just really so close to each other and so easy to get to. It's just that we choose to contribute to the country's public transportation funds or we'd rather be lazy-arsed individuals and not exercise a little LOLLL

Now I was tearing my brains apart to try and identify the name of this giant spiky structure. Believe me it isn't so easy when a bit of Stella Artois has penetrated your cerebrum! But as always I try and struggle because I believe it's a mental exercise that helps me and my poor addled mind stretch itself to the limits. It's also a reminder that despite the massive doses of hormones and medications I take, my brain is still intact and my mental functioning is still very polished as it used to be. Ahhhh... Suntec City! I got it! I'll never forget that place because as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I've had my picture taken with that in the background!!!

After several more rounds of Stella, a song I really liked played in a bar right beside ours. With a bit of alcohol in my veins and a looser tongue (can you imagine this? I'm already considerably loose sober! hahaha) I decided to approach the faux deejay what the song was. Why faux? Because it seemed that he was multitasking his way around - talking to customers, adjusting the music controls and going back and forth to usher in guests to his bar. Problem was I asked him about several notes into the next song already. The playlist was on shuffle and he said that with the kind of program their music was running on it was a bit hard to go back to the previous song or even look for it on the list. I've never known such bullshit as there is always a way to find a song that's been played on your list and I kinda guessed he was just too lazy to look for it! Nothing I did could convince him to look more closely so I left him alone, leaving the place a bit drunk and still with no title for a song whose title continues to elude me! LOL

Now back in my hotel my Suntec moment spurred me to look for the title of the song online! With my alcoholic convalescence making slow progress I thought it was going to be a long night. My tenacious and ingenious self finally found it after a reasonable mustering of patience and after a titanic struggle for so many minutes on Youtube. It was simple enough really. I typed on Google "singer + sounds like Bruno Mars" and voila! I clicked on the links that this wondrous search machine provided for and I was able to stumble upon the song. I don't want to sound condescending but I think there's a little bit of smartness with the way I handled looking for it. I think in some small way it provided me with a simple satisfaction which is still satisfaction however you look at it!

I would never yield to failure, nor would I ever allow my brain to decompose from lack of use so I'm always gonna look forward to more Suntec moments as my miserable life progresses on....

Now that was a rather weird rant and an unusual post. So arcane of me really to start write from nothing...I guess this is why we call it blogging rather than composing noh? hehehehehehe

i'll miss you

Now this is what I hate about deaths within the family. Somebody dies in the family and everyone gets to see everybody because everyone wants to sympathize, commiserate with the bereaved ones. People from afar go back home or people you don't see within your own backyard comes out of the woodwork to sympathize, pray, hear Mass - the usual. It is just so miserable even thinking about this. Why don't people ever wanna see people under blue skies, not under dark clouds????

They're forgetting the fact that before the person died there was an opportunity, a chance to make more of an effort to reach out, keep in touch, to touch, to talk, to even familiarize, to just be a little bit personal. There's that reality that what could have been, COULD HAVE BEEN! Don't you think life is so fucked up because of this reality? But then again, regret never comes first otherwise too many lives would be too perfect altogether!

Well this is my story and this person's too. She was actually the wife of my cousin and I remember her to be so gentle, so benign, and forgive me if there is a negative connotation to this, passive almost. She just blended into the background because she was one of the nicer persons within the family. She was always there, the soft-spoken one, the one you could always talk to without warranting any negative feedback. Life was not too kind to her too. Her husband, my cousin, deserted her when the big C took over her life and body. It was like a sort of evil spirit took over him from which no amount of exorcism could fight the demons. She had to resort to her own sisters and brothers for support during her last few months. She needed lots of emotional support during that time and her husband's side of the family, US, were not there for her. I somehow feel guilty. Time and circumstance was too quick to snatch her away from us.

Now I cried during one of the speech her sister gave during the funeral Mass. Because she painted a most clear picture of her sister - always smiling, never angry, never offensive, always the most beautiful among her siblings and she painted a sad image of her final days too. Her husband's desertion, how she clung to him despite the neglect SIMPLY because HE was her husband, she loved him and only death will do them separation from each other. It was disheartening for me.

I think the only way I can atone for not ushering in emotional support is by lending a hand to her daughter. Yes she did have one daughter, and she is the exact replica of her Mom. She looks just like her actually - beautiful and benign. I will do my utmost best to be always be there, to be in touch with her because she is her Mom's legacy to the world and to our family.

Farewell Ate S. You are always here in my heart....

SEE ME LIVE!!!!

LOVE YOU ALL

CLICK this LINK .... WINKLERGIRL live live live live

http://imlive.com/live-sex-chat/shemale/flaviaboneca/

Lingerie, lots of loving, pure unadulterated fun with your one and only TS blogging superstar!!!

MWAHHHHH to all!!!!

J'adore Adele!!!!!!!

Her voice is a combination of Florence Welch's powerfulvocals, Carole King's timeless relevance, Tori Amos' depth and Alanis Morisette's devil-may-care independence...

On repeat on my I-touch!!! ..

hiatus....

It's good to do nothing. Although nothing really does not mean much to me. When I am not traveling I am just back home in sunny lil Philippines. I want to tell myself that I am not really doing anything but that's hardly the case. Doing nothing in my books means sleeping all day, coming out of my room only to drink and eat which is never the case with me. I am restless, I need to be moving a lot, I can hardly keep still.

I have been crazy about yoga for a year now. Actually I do not know how I have been able to keep this fact away from my blog but downward dogs, ujjayi breathings and shoulder stands occupy a large chunk of my week these days. I think when I have the chance I try to tuck in 4 sessions a week which is already a lot for me, considering I am still on number one in the list of things I do when I am on hiatus. Two to three times a week is fairly good for me. PLUS I get tired of things quite quickly and I want to take it easy on yoga because of the boredom factor. If i do things with constant regularity I get tired of them quickly. It's a like a big ax hanging on my head, this ugly thing called boredom, among many other axes.

How about my movie and primetime TV show addiction? With blitzkrieg quickness I pored through episodes of this insanely addicting but ridiculously girlish "Gossip Girl" TV show. Seasons 1 to 4 in just a couple of weeks!!! Well that's not exactly a record considering some people who have nothing to do with their summer vacations watch three seasons in one day. But then again they are most likely of the crime of being antisocial and I am not thatLOL. The reason why I deliberately took weeks to finish through three seasons is have been trying to postpone watching them because I originally wanted entertainment while I am away on my travels. Alas curiosity is an evil creature that ruins premeditated endeavors. How can I avoid the television show's venom? High school ("allegedly" although Leighton Meester is 25 years old) girls toting Bottega Venettas and Balenciagas while strutting through the halls of their campus is phenomenally delicious. It's the good life but with older actresses playing college girls. Roger Vivier shoes and Paul Smith ties are currencies the characters use. The girls are beautiful and the MEN look ravishing. Sadly though I am nearing the end of the line because I'm almost done with the reruns so in a short while I'm going to be subjected to the torture of waiting for the current episode to appear and only once a week - on fucking television LOL. Or I could always masochize and allow the delicious anguish of waiting for the episodes to accumulate and then devouring a copy of the whole season in one Bacchanalian viewing...sigh decisions decisions decisions...:-(

Tennis and badminton are still regular parts of my routine of course. Tennis on television though and badminton on the indoor courts twice a week. I alternate yoga and badminton as workout routines re: the boredom factor (read back to paragraph two). And anyway badminton is probably my only contact with men who do not want to screw me HAHAHAHAHHA so I constantly go back to it like a whore I regularly visit LOLLL . I have male and female friends in my badminton circle of friends and it's a nice change from my closer circle of friends. Everyone is competitive which is very enjoyable for me as well. As for tennis, eons ago I used to play it but nowadays I hate tennis club politics and anyway most of the men playing in our clubs are old overweight daddies who get drunk right after their games at night. Boohhh..

Alcohol!!!!!!! Of course my vacations are never complete without them. Aside from cheap beer that tastes like Benadryl meets citrus fruit meets horse piss (not that Ive tasted horse piss hahahaha) = Red Horse Beer, me and my friends enjoy a cocktail of rhum, Coca Cola and 100% pineapple juice. It's gorgeous and never leaves you with a hangover the next day that is if you water down the drink with the right amount of ice. BUT if you love to experience the real essence of the drink, avoid watering it down "on the rocks" of which a deadly consequence awaits you thereafter- joint and shoulder grogginess, a dry mouth and a semi-vegetative state the minute you wake up after a whole night of this LOLLL.

I guess everything i do whenever I am away from the fast pace of traveling and meeting people boils down to company. I enjoy good company, slapstick-ish humor and excellent non-cerebral conversation. Wherever the weekend or the weekday places me and no matter how inebriated I turn out the end of the evening, I always make sure I am in the company of cool and issue-free people. And freedom of speech is an absolute necessity albeit with some respectability (respectability is a grey area though particularly when things get wilder as the drinks flow more freely hahaha).

Au Revoir Winklergirl fans!!!!

an article for the pessimists...

It's been a long time since i found a brilliant and really piercing article. This one nailed it in my proverbial head. Disturbing and all the necessary adjectives that I can conjure is how I would describe this piece of writing.

ALL HAIL the gospel of Christopher Hitchens! I should get back to his book, "God is not Great" when I've built up enough tenacity and momentum to tackle it LOL ...

-----

Beware the In-Laws

Does Kate Middleton really want to marry into a family like this?

By Christopher Hitchens

A hereditary monarch, observed Thomas Paine, is as absurd a proposition as a hereditary doctor or mathematician. But try pointing this out when everybody is seemingly moist with excitement about the cake plans and gown schemes of the constitutional absurdity's designated mother-to-be. You don't seem to be uttering common sense. You sound like a Scrooge. I suppose this must be the monarchical "magic" of which we hear so much: By some mystic alchemy, the breeding imperatives for a dynasty become the stuff of romance, even "fairy tale." The usually contemptuous words fairy tale were cer

tainly coldly accurate about the romance quotient of the last two major royal couplings, which brought the vapid disco-princesses Diana and Sarah (I decline to call her "Fergie") within range of demolishing the entire mystique. And, even if the current match looks a lot more wholesome and genuine, its principal function is still to restore a patina of glamour that has been all but irretrievably lost.

The British monarchy doesn't depend entirely on glamour, as the long, long reign of Queen Elizabeth II continues to demonstrate. Her unflinching dutifulness and reliability have conferred something beyond charm upon the institution, associating it with stoicism and a certain integrity. Republicanism is infinitely more widespread than it was when she was first crowned, but it's very rare indeed to hear the Sovereign Lady herself being criticized, and even most anti-royalists hasten to express themselves admiringly where she is concerned.

I am not sure how deserved this immunity really is. The queen took two major decisions quite early in her reign, neither of which was forced upon her. She refused to allow her younger sister Margaret to marry the man she loved and had chosen, and she let her authoritarian husband have charge of the education of her eldest son. The first decision was taken to appease the most conservative leaders of the Church of England (a church of which she is, absurdly, the head), who could not approve the marriage of Margaret to a divorced man. The second was taken for reasons less clear.

The harvest was equally gruesome in both cases: Princess Margaret later married and divorced a man she did not love and then had years to waste as the model of the bone-idle, cigarette-holdered, gin-sipping socialite, surrounded with third-rate gossips and charmers and as unhappy as the day was long. (She also produced some extra royal children, for whom something to do had to be found.) Prince Charles, subjected to a regime of fierce paternal harangues and penitential cold-shower boarding schools, withdrew into himself, was eventually talked into a calamitous marriage with someone he didn't love or respect, and is now the morose, balding, New Age crank and licensed busybody that we flinch from today. He has also apparently found belated contentment with the former wife of a brother-officer.

Together, Margaret and Charles set the tone for the dowdy, feckless, can't-stay-married shower of titled descendants with whose names, let alone doings, it is near-impossible to keep up. There are so many of them! And things always have to be found for them to do.

For Prince William at least it was decided on the day of his birth what he should do: Find a presentable wife, father a male heir (and preferably a male "spare" as well), and keep the show on the road. By yet another exercise of that notorious "magic," it is now doubly and triply important that he does this simple thing right, because only his supposed charisma can save the country from what monarchists dread and republicans ought to hope for: King Charles III. (Monarchy, you see, is a hereditary disease that can only be cured by fresh outbreaks of itself.) An even longer life for the present queen is generally hoped for: failing that a palace maneuver that skips a generation and saves the British from a man who—like the fruit of the medlar—went rotten before he turned ripe.

Convinced republican that I am, and foe of the prince who talks to plants and wants to be crowned "head of all faiths" as well as the etiolated Church of England, I find myself pierced by a pang of sympathy. Not much of a life, is it, growing old and stale with no real job except waiting for the news of Mummy's death? Some British people claim actually to "love" their rather dumpy Hanoverian ruling house. This love takes the macabre form of demanding a regular human sacrifice whereby unexceptional people are condemned to lead wholly artificial and strained existences, and then punished or humiliated when they crack up.

The last few weeks brought tidings of the latest grotesqueries involving Prince Andrew, Charles' brother. If I haven't forgotten anything, he had just recovered from tidings involvingoverwarm relations with the Qaddafi clan when his ex-wife was found to have scrounged a loan from a wealthy American friend whose record, alas, was disfigured by a conviction for sexual relations with the underage. The loan would have defrayed part of the unending wasteful expenditure that is required to keep the Ferguson girl staggering between scandals and sponsorships. I mean, the whole thing is just so painfully and absolutely vulgar. And, among the queen's many children and grandchildren, not by any means exceptional behavior either ….

This is why I laughed so loud when the Old Guard began snickering about the pedigree of young Ms. Middleton. Her parents, it appeared, were not quite out of the top drawer. The mother had been an air hostess or something with an unfashionable airline, and the family had been overheard using lethally wrong expressions, such as serviette for napkin, settee forsofa, and—I can barely bring myself to type the shameful letters—toilet for lavatory. Ah, sothat's what constitutes vulgarity! People who would never dare risk a public criticism of the royal family, even in its daytime-soap incarnation, prefer to take a surreptitious revenge on a young woman of modest background. For shame.

Myself, I wish her well and also wish I could whisper to her: If you really love him, honey, get him out of there, and yourself, too. Many of us don't want or need another sacrificial lamb to water the dried bones and veins of a dessicated system. Do yourself a favor and save what you can: Leave the throne to the awful next incumbent that the hereditary principle has mandated for it.

(Credits to Slate Magazine for publishing Hitchens' article. Their website is www.slate.com )

Happy Birthday to a Good friend and fan of this blog!

My first video in almost four years for fuck sakes!! Haha

This one is dedicated to my friend Jai...

Lots of love darling on your birthday!!!

Mwahhhhh

The Alan Parsons tutorial...

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