The big chill out of town: Hot Fuss finds itself in the heady cool of Baguio - and its first run-in with the Kapamilya Karavan

What possessed me to grab the hand of Kim Chiu, I’ll charge to high altitude. It must have been all those whiffs of tropical pine and hits of Baguio, uh, Gold that got me — a guy used to giving showbiz the cold shoulder — fired up enough to warm up the screen teen’s digits with my own. She and her co-commander of kilig, Gerald Anderson, the other half of the commercial cute unit known as “Kimerald,” had rounded up a massive huddle of their love team troupes across SM City Baguio’s driveway, with several screaming battalions spread out on the mall’s balconies and stairways.

The duo’s immense draw was no different from earlier in the day, when ABS-CBN’s Kapamilya Karavan, the network’s traveling show-mobile, had parked itself at the end of the Grand Float Parade celebrating Baguio’s annual Panagbenga Flower Festival. After heralding another “season of blooming” for the country’s “summer capital,” the festival’s hefty flower arrangements — a Pigrolac pig here, PNP crest there, and even a big bottle of San Mig Pale made from brown-dyed daisies — had reached their final wilting destination at the open field of the city’s Athletic Bowl. With a filled-to-the-rim grandstand and a vast mass surrounding a stage pulled from an Isuzu truck, it was as if Kimerald, uniformed with shades pulled down and in matching ABS-CBN logo tees, were aesthetically superior alien leaders sent to zap Baguio’s citizenry into submission.

Family Circus

“Nakikita kayo ng buong mundo!” Kim declared, revving up an already-gaping audience as she stood by Gerald on the Karavan’s foldout stage. The huge LED screen behind them was the visual gateway to their channel’s studio home base and to several other locations where festivities were underway. What the bedimpled alien leader said was true, though, considering ABS-CBN was pouring live Panagbenga coverage into every tube in the nation and around the world via its Filipino Channel (TFC).

And while the ABS road show shuttles troupes of talent each month to the next frenzied fiesta (be it Cebu’s Sinulog or Bacolod’s MassKara), Panagbenga’s potent flower power coinciding with Baguio City’s centennial this year deserved some extra star power from the channel. Flanking Kimerald were Pinoy Dream Academy alums Bugoy Drilon and Liezel Garcia, the Parekoy boys (John Pratts, Zanjoe Marudo, and Jason Gainza), and Pupil, to guitar-grind some sullen head-swaying out of the gushing mall show crowd. Kim and Gerald’s appearance at the Athletic Bowl was like a dandy day at the arena in ancient Rome: spectators screaming for blood — young, hot teen idol blood. It would take an army squadron to keep a love-attesting, camera-flailing mob at bay as the two made their way back to their vehicle, reminding those who couldn’t get enough of them to swing by the Kapamilya show at SM Baguio later in the evening. The fact that I would later follow may have been an indication that being so high above sea level had already gotten to me.    

One Pine Daze

Maybe I was being a little modest when I mentioned Baguio’s formidable flower power this year. With Baguio as a bloom-town amid its centennial celebration, the weekend before Panagbenga 2009’s closing ceremony on March 8 was shrouded in the haze of a General Patronage sort of Woodstock. And as the city’s center-and-meeting point, Burnham Park was where the free love, fraternizing, and solicitation came together: the area surrounding what I like to call Lake Taho (I’ve never seen such a dense taho vendor populace), mushrooming with pitched tent communities, kids kicking balls and riding bikes around, and cart clusters peddling everything from golden corn to cheap silver bling.  

Since the first of February, it had been a heady month of celebration for the city — from airsoft challenges and muscle showdowns to mall tours of all persuasions (The Camerawalls, John Lloyd Cruz, Ramil Omosura?). The weekend of the Grand Street Parade and Grand Float Parade was the peak of the Panagbenga, especially with main roads closed off and the rest becoming parking lots from the traffic, visitors like myself taking to the streets rather than rotting in our cars. 

You couldn’t avoid the pinball motion down Session Road, what with all the bodies you had to bump along the way. Even at the multi-scene bar complex known as Nevada Square, black lights and booty music seemed to draw human traffic pileups in the three-tier lineup of nightspots, along with the occasional lost E-head vigorously grinding his teeth amid the grinding of bodies. At one on Sunday morning, Session still granted its amber glow to various creatures of the night milling up and down the road — trickles of people may be spilling out of still-open ukay haunts, some stumbling into ramshackle karaoke bars with P50/hour VIP rooms. It’s like Baguio was slipping everyone a chill pill so that they could all come together; the low of 14 degrees keeping heads cool, making an inclined walk a little more effortless, and turning a shot of hard booze into a virtuous choice.

In the land of penis ashtrays and ponies with pink-dyed manes, I had found myself at the frontlines of the Karavan’s variety show. Of course, a Panagbenga tribute had to include hosts from ABS-CBN Regional Network programs TV Patrol Northern Luzon, Naimbag na Morning, and Mag TV Na, Atin To stretching the show late into the night with way too many “bring me” games, dance numbers, and video clips of celebs like Gary V and Bea Alonzo greeting Baguio a happy 100th. Still, the stars would soon become aligned for the Kapamilya-crazed in attendance. Precious Adona, bare midriff and all, steadied her diaphragm for the umpteenth starlet rendition of Umbrella; the PDA scholars trilled inspiration into the hearts of everyday Baguio folk; and the Parekoy trio (well, more Zanjoe and John Pratts, really) hunted and gathered hormones, inviting two self-fanning girls up onstage for some lip service.

At the end of it all, there were Kim Chiu and Gerald Anderson; his seamless Tagalog earning the audience’s beaming, her immense dimples urging you to reach out and touch her outstretched hand as she performed her squeaky-syrupy, marvelously lip-synced version of Only Hope. And in that moment of silky hand (hers) clasping psoriasis-plagued palm (mine), I reveled in the intoxicating pull of entertainment; of a color-wheelin’ festival many brave the five-hour drive up north for; of the multitude of ways Filipinos are unified by enjoyable escape. And hey, maybe, just maybe — I actually enjoyed myself.

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The next Kapamilya Karavan rolls through the Araw ng Davao on March 14.