Supremely yours

Has it been a year already? It only seems like a couple megabytes ago that Supreme began cranking its youthful exuberance into a worthwhile weekly read. Twelve months on, piecing together the fragments of Pinoy pop culture – and filtering it through a slightly renegade perspective – still isn’t a cakewalk. That’s not to say, however, that it hasn’t been crazy fun.

To enshrine this moment in permanent bloggable form, I have culled seven inspiring quotes from sources both likely and slightly left-of-center, wherever that is now. These have seen me through days when I was too emotionally constipated to string together a decent sentence and nights when I was excited to be out of my apartment and awake during unreasonable hours. It’s our first birthday, yo, and I can’t think of a better way to party than to suffix my own writerly experiences unto chunks of streetwise wisdom. Yay!

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

On the verge of needing Lasik treatment, I’ve spent many hours squinting at a computer in the hopes that somehow the alchemy of the writing process would result in a hands-down winner. I really don’t know where great ideas come from, but I’m certain about this: You’ll only be good at something if you keep on chipping away at it relentlessly and maniacally. In my case, writing has become as regular as homework. The fun kind, of course.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” — Kierkegaard

Though at our core, we’re a section dedicated to the unspooling of what’s next, this one-year mark is the perfect time to take a cursory glance backwards and rub some hindsight on 48 weeks of words. Yeah, I’ve had a few crushes with trends that at one time were next and it’s epically trippy that I’ve managed to share that puppy love with you.

It was in Army of Me that you first read about Skins (“The Superficial,” Sept. 29, 2007), that racy and highly downloadable teen series from the UK. While we’re on it, who could forget the gospel of Defacto denim? Salvation through made-to-measure jeans was published here on Oct. 20, 2007. Likewise, my stream of consciousness led me to predict — for better or for worse — that the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus would lead the new pop charge (“”The Return of the Return of Pop,” Dec. 15, 2007). And that Taken By Cars (“Party People, Get Your Dance On,” March 1, 2008) and MGMT (“Last Night a Remix Saved My Life,” July 5, 2008) would grab you by your iPod earbuds.

Speaking of throwbacks from the recent present, I’ve also documented cosplay (“It’s Totally Animezing,” Feb. 2, 2008); The Wackness-inspired slang (“It’s the bomb dot com,” May 17, 2008); Ken Lee and Janina San Miguel (“Bad English? Good TV!”, March 13, 2008); and even “D2 na me!” and other examples of vexing modern-day speech (“How to Mangle a Language,” Jan. 26, 2008). (P.S.: If you’re looking for Gossip Girl, you’re in the wrong place. I wasn’t able to drop that story here because I already did so in my previous incarnation in the other paper. That was — ZOMG — on May 26, 2007.)    

Again, 20/20 vision brought about by nostalgia may be good but — trust me — foresight is way, way better.

“Menswear is all about limits and restrictions on what you can do. It’s built around a set vocabulary, and then it’s about changes in detailing and silhouette and color.” — Patrick Ervell

Okay, the hotly-tipped Swedish designer was definitely talking about black trousers. Call it projection, but it seems to apply to written communication as well. I’ve realized that effective writing depends on one’s mastery of the basics: grammar, spelling, syntax, and punctuation. It’s only when you know how things should be done that you can extend, manipulate, and distort the variables. By the way, Ervell used to be a fashion editor, so he knows a thing or two about restraint.

“Ted, you’ve been living your whole life in a seat belt. It’s time to unclick.” — Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother

Having been invited by a few students and teachers to talk about my journalistic non-expertise, I’ve noticed that the kiddos — especially those who daydream of becoming (underpaid) professional wordsmiths — love to ask what I studied as a college-going hellraiser. I always tell them the same thing: art and Spanish. And I went out a lot.

Not to slam the journalism or literature majors out there, but writers shouldn’t be writing about writing, present topic notwithstanding. Neither should they only be aware of other writers. These days, it’s all about range, not focus. In order to talk about life, you need to have experienced it in all its serendipitous, off-kilter glory. So live, dammit! Then tell everyone about it.   

“The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are. If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the world will prove loving and friendly and helpful to you. The world is what you are.” — Thomas Dreier

That might have come off like hippie garbage, but believe me, it’s true. What you read, watch, eat, buy and listen to is ultimately what you are. That said, I’ve made it my mission to spread only good hallucinogenic vibes with my column. There’s already so much negativity going on out there that I’d rather train my eye to the big city blur of bands, artists, and apolitical phenomena.   

“Tragedy blows through your life like a tornado, uprooting everything, creating chaos. You wait for the dust to settle and then you choose. You can live in the wreckage and pretend it’s still the mansion you remember. Or you can crawl from the rubble and slowly rebuild.”

— Veronica Mars

Do you hear that desperate gasping sound? It’s print, apparently doing the Tectonic to its own death knell. Caught in between the inevitable shift to digital and the global economic implosion, this traditional medium is said to be on its last legs and is giving way to the increasingly dominant online lifestyle. Or so the pundits say.

As someone who’ll clearly be affected by this inevitable passing of the baton, I am really concerned. Instead of becoming all emo and depressed about it, however, I’d rather see the upside. Maybe it’s not so much the demise of print as it is the rebirth of reading. It makes sense, right? We live in very interesting times and to evolve, we need to embrace change and not be intimidated by it.

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” — Mark Twain

Our end goal in Supreme has always been to empower those who take the journey with us. After all, the weight of our words always changes in step with you, the reader. As we blaze on to our second year — one that will hopefully be full of noteworthy scenesters and interesting misfits — two things remain: 1) We will always be grateful for your support and — drama ahead — 2) we will always be Supremely yours.