Flight

In her blog, one of my friends wrote: "I'm ending February. See you in March." It has become quite overwhelming, don't you think? First, hogging the headlines and news waves was the heartrending "Wowowee" stampede. Then it was the terrible Leyte landslide. And now it's Proclamation 1017, and all the rest that came with it, each of which were alarming by themselves already: the alleged coup d'etat that was "nipped in the bud," the arrest of supposed participants in a supposed conspiracy, the EDSA 1 rally that was dangerously close to being another EDSA (would it be the third or the fourth?), and, recently, the marine standoff at Fort Bonifacio.

Honestly, my heart just can't catch up. Typing this at my desk with the television open to the tune of ANC, just in case something else comes up, I'm reminded of that Four Non-Blondes song: "So I wake in the morning and I step outside, and I take a deep breath and I get real high, and I scream from the top of my lungs, 'What's going on?'"

It gets to a point where you can just scream at them to stop it already, to just shut up, and do what they're all sworn in to do. But as the survival theory goes, you-or any other animal for that matter-only have two responses: fight or flight. And I don't know about you, but I don't fight ambiguous battles, so I take the flight response-for now.

And in the meantime, I flee to the glittering world of entertainment:

And I applaud that Cinemalaya is going strong, challenging the film industry to fight for survival. "Digital is the future," says Laurice Guillen, the Cinemalaya competition director. And with the digital revolution-which has made it more affordable for small production outfits to make their own films-it's change or perish for the complacent industry bigwigs who think they can just keep on giving us crap because we have no other option. Oh, but now we do! Every month is still a reason to smile, because in the newspapers I see non-formulaic films being shown. Up for a March 1 release, for instance, is "Nasaan si Francis?"

And I try to catch the Oscars fever by scheduling some movie time. I have yet to watch "Brokeback Mountain," and a couple of the other nominated films, but that's already in my agenda. I wish they'd show "Trans America" here.

And I follow American Idol on Star World closely, already blocking off my 6-8pm on Wednesday, Thursdays, and 6-7pm on Fridays. I already have my ideal final six in mind. For the boys it's still Ace Young (last week's competition shows he's not even the rocker type I thought he was, but I don't care, he's got the talent and the X factor), Chris Daughtry, and Elliott Yamin. However, I can still drop one of them to make room for Taylor Hicks. And I wouldn't mind at all if Fil-Am Sway Penala takes one of their slots, because I thought him awesome in singing "Reasons." For the girls, I'd like to see Paris Bennett, Lisa Tucker, and Katharine McPhee.

And I'm particularly looking forward to what ABC 5 would do with the "American Idol" franchise they recently acquired. I am just hoping we won't get more fake superstar-wannabes with plastic smiles, who pepper their sentences with "po" and "opo" and call everyone "tita" or "tito," who won't dig up their sordid past and ride on their dramatic life stories, who won't weep on nationwide television for God knows what reasons for the sake of a popularity boost, who won't fake romantic liaisons just to get that "love-team" appeal, who won't have rebounded hair, and, well… who won't cross-over into acting unless they can really act.

And so I just keep on changing channels, running away from the bad news when it gets to be too much. Like that time my brother and I saw news videos of the Leyte rescue operations. We watch for a few minutes, the scope of the tragedy leaving us transfixed. Then he shook it off. "It's time for some good news," he said, flicking the remote control to another channel. "We're always getting the bad." Email your comments to alricardo@yahoo.com.