First (and maybe last!) El Bimbo Post of the year!!! The glow hasn't come off, yet!!!

First, this link to Josel Nicolas' thoroughly excellent komix variations on the El Bimbo Variations. I call it the El Bimbo Variations Variations, because it just sounds so stupid, but he has a better name for it, the El Bimbo Adaptations. It's for his undergrad thesis in UST, and I think he plans to do thirty of these. I'll talk about him in-depth in an essay I'll be writing for February, but in short: Josel Nicolas is I think the smartest komix artist that we have in the Philippines right now. He just understands the form, and knows how to play with it. We need more of those.


Second, is this link, to Ina Santiago's 2009 year-ender, focussing mainly on contemporary Pinoy culture, and I'm mentioned a couple of times here and there, but the one of notice ought to be this bit from the penultimate paragraph:

"Had Adam David refused his first book award: an up-yours to the academic and literary institutions that he has critiqued time and again for its patronage politics. Now that would’ve been him practicing his own patricide."

I've heard variations of this sentiment, mainly verbal and mainly from friends and mainly good-heartedly glib, and I think it's a very valid question to ask in light of my pronouncements and output and leanings, and it's something I've been itching to answer, and I've been waiting for someone to actually type this question out so I can link to it and answer it, and so, here it is, and here it is, briefly:


If you want things to change, you have to do it in the eyes of the most number of people possible, and you have to do it successfully. I've always seen the book as a necessary compromise that bridges what I feel are issues in art with how I think they ought to be addressed, and to slicken those arguments into a diatribe that will just be too charming it will not be seen as such. The writing was part of it. The blurbs were part of it. The award was part of it. It is my radio-friendly progrock guitar solo. I wanted it to change notions about self-publishing. I wanted it to change notions about poetry. I wanted it to change notions about language. I wanted it to change things. And if I have to win P50,000 for that to happen, so be it.


And to quote Carljoe And The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth... Javier: "In my opinion, turning down the award would not have been patricide. 50,000 yun e! It would have been suicide."


Or is that too manly of a reply?