Barong
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: FYI

The barong, the Filipino alternative to the coat-and-tie, was originally a workingman’s garb, usually made of abaca fiber.  Its origin is traced to the kanggan, the short-sleeved collarless jacket Filipinos wore in pre-Hispanic times.  It is said that during the Spanish period, the barong was worn to set the indios or natives, apart from the Spaniards.  Another story claims that Spanish authorities made the natives wear the barong because it was difficult to conceal weapons under the sheer fabric.  And why no pocket.  Because the poor indio had no money or personal knickknacks to tuck away.

Miscommunication
Mood:  d'oh
The Greek capital of Athens once hosted a football match between a Greek team and a team from China.  Before the match, music began playing over the stadium's sound system.  Thinking that it was the Greek national anthem, the visiting Chinese players all stood to attention.  The Greek players and spectators knew that it was not their country's anthem, but they too sprang to attention, assuming that it was the Chinese anthem.  Then, as everyone continued to stand to attention, a voice boomed over the speakers praising a brand of toothpaste.  The music had been part of an advertising message.

Correct Way of Playing the National Anthem
Aside from the Philippine flag with the official 'Royal Blue' field being propagated by the National Centennial Commission, there is a move to return to the 'correct' way of singing the national Anthem.  Filipinos are being encouraged to sing the anthem fast and with a martial spirit worthy of the revolution.  However, in many gatherings we are still oppressed by taped music that wraps the anthem composed by Julian Felipe.  In the attempt to make the anthem 'stately', some arrangers and composers have transformed the military cadence into something yawny as a royal or graduation march.  Worse, choral groups show off by branching into different voices and counterpoints that discourage the public from singing along.  Under a law forgotten by everyone except the National Historical Institute that is powerless to enforce it, the anthem should be played exactly as it is written by Julian Felipe in 1898 without any change in tempo or arrangement.  If we stick to the letter rather than the spirit of the law, then we will have only two ways to do it: either through a solo piano or through a town band.

Introduction of Sodomy
Mood:  amorous

In Genesis, God informs Abraham that Sodom will be destroyed for its wickedness, and Abraham asks God why he will destroy both good and bad people: what if there are fifty good people in Sodom? God relents and promises to spare Sodom, if they can find fifty good people there.  Abraham haggles all the way down to ten good people and God agrees.  Two angels are sent to Sodom where they visit a good man named Lot.  Being angels they must have been  such beautiful men that the people of Sodom got so excited they stormed Lot’s house and demanded that his two visitors be given to them for sex.  Lot offers his two virgin daughters instead, but the people insist on the men! Some men force their way into the house and are blinded.  Thus, the origin of the word sodomy.  You will have to read the rest of the story yourself – down to Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt.  Come to think of it, this unnatural act was introduced to the Philippines by the Chinese!  In 1598, the archbishop of Manila wrote the king of Spain about the Chinese practicing sodomy among themselves and spreading the habit throughout the archipelago.  In the same year, Antonio de Morga, a civil official, wrote to Spain calling for restrictions in the movements of the Chinese who were causing so much trouble in terms of crime and other practices including sodomy.  Even Augustinian missionaries in Iloilo were horrified by the practice because they believed that if God’s patience was taxed, he would repeat what he did to Sodom.  Miguel Benavides, archbishop of Manila and founder of UST, was one who insisted on tougher measures.  In 1603, he requested that a new parian (a community of Chinese settlers built for them) be set up to segregate the Chinese and protect the Filipinos, both male and female, from this sin against nature.  He advised the king to expel the guilty from the islands and allow only merchant Chinese into the colony.  He also asked that these few Chinese be placed on ships in the harbor during the night!  But because the Chinese were indispensable to colonial life as artisans, carpenters, merchants, etc., poor Benavides was a voice in the wilderness.  He lamented that morals were lax because of greed and complained that sine they protected the Chinese who ran flourishing poultries in Quiapo, the Jesuits were thus blinded by commerce and looked the other way while sodomy and other sins were committed in their midst.  Obviously, the Spanish chroniclers were sinophobes who blamed the Chinese for every imaginable crime in Philippine society – from disease and kinky sex to economic sabotage.  The accounts reveal the way people thought in the 16^th century and show how much we have progressed or retrogressed. Was sodomy indeed brought by the Chinese?

Paul McCartney is Dead
Mood:  quizzical
One of the principal effects of the Beatles' decision not to play any more concerts after 1966 was that the public had a vital dimension to their hero worship snatched away.  Sure, the Beatles were in the studio making their finest records, and could be glimpsed occasionally emerging bleary-eyed from some session or other.  But it wasn't the same.  The Beatles weren't visible any more.  They couldn't be monitored like before.  And that is how, towards the end of the Sixties, the rumor began to spread, in all its absurd, malevolent glory, that Paul McCartney was dead.  Or to be perfectly precise, that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car crash in November 1966.  The implications of this were fairly obvious, such as who exactly was that playing the terrific bass lines on 'With a Little Help From My Friends' and 'Penny Lane,' and how come his mysterious successor had a dead ringer of a voice?  Assuming that Paul McCartney is still very much alive, which seems like a pretty sensible assumption to make, an analysis of the so-called 'proof' of his untimely demise will give some idea of not only the frightening intensity of Beatlesmania, but also the lunatic edge of the Sixties.  The story was supposedly started in America by a college paper.  Pretty soon it made a local radio station, and on the basis of the no-smoke-without-fire rule spread across the States.  The car crash story started when it was discovered that an accident of the kind described in the rumor had taken place around the time specified.  One of the two fatally injured passengers was a young man with dark hair.  He had been disfigured beyond all recognition.  Another fact which lent credence to the rumor was that The Beatles had held a McCartney look alike competition in 1966.  This now took on a vaguely disturbing angle – were they in fact searching, under the guise of a good natured contest, for a replacement for their dead bass player?  It seemed plausible at the time, especially when it was discovered that no announcement had ever been made regarding any winner of the contest.  The story circulated that a young Scotsman named William Campbell had replaced McCartney and had been playing on recordings by the group since 1966.  their retirement from concert appearances meant that nobody could twig that it was a bogus Paul. In the crazy logic of the best rumors, the treasure hunt did not end there.  For the story went that The Beatles were so contrite at having duped their fans that, towards the end of the Sixties, they began to put clues on the sleeves of their albums and into their lyrics.  These clues, whendeciphered and compiled, added up to indisputable proof that Paul McCartney was dead.  That was the theory. the 'clues' started as far back as the song 'Yellow Submarine'.  Dating from the year 1966, this song is a shadowy undertones of possible death mentioned in the grooves - its childish ditty format is reckoned to mask one of John Lennon's most enthusiastic drug songs.  As regards the Paul rumor, the story had it that at one point in the song Lennon shouts out 'Paul's a queer', the object being to instigate a smear campaign against McCartney so that fans would not feel too bad when they learned that he was actually brown bread. Two more clues in the lyrics of songs fuelled the rumors.  One is fairly obvious - the line in 'A Day in the Life' which runs 'he blew his mind out in the car.'  It is now widely believed that this refers to Tara Browne, the heir of the Gu9inness fortunes, who died in a car crash just before recording for the song commenced.  The other clue is more obscure.  apparently there is a spoken line in the lengthy fade out on 'Strawberry Fields Forever' which goes 'I buried Paul.'  Others have argued that it is Lennon saying 'Cranberry sauce.'  This, on the face of it, seems more likely.  However, there remains the possibility that, having sung all the words to 'Strawberry Fields,' he is in fact complaining to the other Beatles, 'I'm very hoarse.'  The remainder of the evidence lies in the sleeves of the LPs released by The Beatles between the years 1967 and 1969.  The first one of these, 'Sgt Pepper's lonely Hearts Club Band,' boasts an impressive pop art mural of celebrities and statesmen, with the four Beatles at the front of the throng.  Look closely and one can see a 'wreath' of flowers arranged in the shape of a bass guitar.  Squint at the flowers and they appear to read PAUL?  this was taken to mean a question mark hanging over McCartney's existence.  the raised hand at the back of Paul's head on the front cover is supposedly an Indian death sign.  But for proof positive, eager theoreticians gestured excitedly to the inner sleeves - there was the reputedly alive 'n' kicking bassist wearing a badge with the damning initials OPD.  Could this mean anything other than Officially Pronounced Dead?  Yes, it could also stand for Ontario Police Department, where he was given the badge.  The rumor mongers were not deterred.  All the walrus symbolism of the 'Magical Mystery Tour' LP was taken to mean a death obsession, for no other reason than that a walrus in Alice in Wonderland killed a few oysters.  But, there again, was a raised hand between McCartney's head.  Twice, in the accompanying booklet.The transitional Yellow Submarine soundtrack album fared no better.  Yet Paul was seen with a hand raised abhove his head.  However, it was the cover of Abbey Road that sent the really inventive scandal hunters into paroxysms of creativity.  The Four were crossing Abbey Road in north London in what appeared to more sensitive eyes to be a mock funeral procession.  John Lennon, at the head of the procession and dressed in white, was the preacher.  Ringo, lagging behind but still smartly attired, was the mourner.  George, in casual clothes and languishing at the back, was the gravedigger.  And Paul was the corpse.  Look - not only was he quite clearly dead, he was also not wearing any shoes.  And everyone knows that most countries bury their dead barefoot.  A volkswagen parked in the middle distance was taken as an important clue.  Its registration number reads in part, 281F.  Keen - but erroneous - mathematicians calculated that Paul's age in the year Abbey Road's release would have been 28 IF he had lived.  Actually being of 1942 vintage, Paul would have been 27.  But then it was remembered that the Beatles were heavily into Eastern mysticism, and those religions believe that everybody is born one year old.  Suddenly it made sense.  Ironically, the treasure hunters missed the most blatant and irrefutable clue of all.  During the fade out of 'Back in the USSR', the first song on the 'White Album', John Lennon can be heard quite clearly speaking the words, 'Ere, Yoko, 'ave this bass.  Paul won't need it where he's going.'

Gay Times
Mood:  amorous

There have been more than a few scandalous queens on the throne of England – queens in the homosexual sense that is.  William the Conqueror’s son, William Rufus, made little secret of his sexual preferences, and scandalized the nation with the camp goings on at court.  Here is a description from one disapproving cleric: “Then was there flowing hair and extravagant dress, and was invented the fashion of shoes with curved points; then the model for young men was to rival women in delicacy of person, to mind their gait, to walk with loose gesture, and half naked.  Enervated and effeminate, they unwillingly remained what nature made them, the assailers of others’ chastity, prodigal of their own.”  William II died young in a mysterious hunting accident.  Despite allegations that it may not have been an accident, there was little scandal surrounding his death.  The people of England thought they were well rid of him.  The great hero, Richard the Lionheart, was also gay.  He was warned by a prominent clergyman to leave off his unnatural practices and spend time with his lovely Spanish wife.  But he left his marriage unconsummated and went dashing off to the Middle East with his rough crusades.  His heterosexual brother, King John, took over but made so free with the wives and daughters of his barons that they made him sign the Magna Carta.  His wife, Isabella of Angouleme, caused scandal when she took lovers of her own.  John had them slaughtered and their bodies draped over her bed as warning.  

Magna Carta
Mood:  chatty
Topic: FYI
Magna Carta is Latin for 'Great Charte'.  It was a document approved by King John of Runnymede in 1215.  Because of the cruel manner in which he treated the English people and his demand for money to help fight his wars, King John was not popular.  The Barons were particularly against the king because he demanded large payments from them.  Eventually they revolted and drew up an agreement which the king accepted.  This document, the Articles of the Barons, was conerted into a Royal Charter which was sent to the sheriff of every county in the land.  Copmmonly known as the Magna Carta, it had a great influence on hitory and marked the first steps to constitutional government - a government according to law.

Television Service
Mood:  bright
Topic: FYI
The world's first regular TV service was started by the BBC on November 2, 1936.  Transmission ceased in 1939, two days before the outbreak of the Second World War.  They restarted on June 7, 1946, the eve of the Victory parades.  The first person to have his image transmitted by television was William Taynton, a 15 year old London office boy, on October 2, 1925.  John Logie Baird had just succeeded in transmitting a picture of a ventriloquist's dummy from one room to another and wanted a live subject.  Taynto happened to be the first person he saw as he rushed out to the street to find someone.  But the boy was so frightened by all the lights and strange machinery that Baird had to give him some pocket money before he would submit to the experiment. The Philippines' ABS-CBN was Asia's first commercial television broadcaster.  The nucleus of what ABS-CBN would be began in 1946 with Bolinao Electronics Corporation (BEC). BEC was put up by James Lindenberg, an ex-GI and electronics engineer who went into radio equipment assembly and radio broadcasting. At that time, the giant Philippine network was Manila Broadcasting, with DZRH as the top station.  In the 1951, Lindenberg partnered with Antonio Quirino, brother of then President Quirno, in order to try their hand at television broadcasting. In 1952, BEC was renamed as Alto Broadcasting System or ABS. "Alto" was a contraction of Quirino’s and his wife’s first names, Tony and Aleli. Though they had little money and resources, ABS was able to put up its TV tower by July 1953 and import 300 television sets. The initial test broadcasts began on September of the same year. The very first full-blown broadcast, however, was on October 23, 1953, of a party in Tony Quirino's home. The broadcasting channel was known as DZAQ-TV Channel 3.  In turn, on September 24, 1956, the Chronical Broadcasting Network (CBN) was organized. The network was owned by Don Eugenio Lopez Sr. The following year, Don Eugenio acquired ABS from Quirino and Lindenberg. However, it was only on February 1, 1967 that the corporate name was changed to ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation.