PAO'S PHOTOS ON DAZED DIGITAL'S THIS IS WANTED

This just came in. Three of my photographs have been included in Dazed and Confused Digital Magazine Photograhy Directory. It's now viewable in the THIS IS WANTED PROJECT section, a collaborative gallery composing of Photographs and illustrations that will appear in Barcelona, Stockholm and Milan this summer.


Dazed and Confused is one of my fave art house magazine, you may want to check out this month's issue. They have a feature on Brit Young Actor JAMIE BELL (known for his superb performance in the weeper indie Billy Elliot),
REBIRTH LEBANON (a feature on the best of Lebanese Photographers),
CHROMEO (a feature on the latest music video from these Canadian Elektrofunk Duo),
SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH (Hedi Slimane's Berlin Art Exibition) and a Behind-the-scenes of this year's SUNDANCE FESTIVAL. You can check all these at www.dazeddigital.com

MAN ENOUGH FOR THE MAN BAG

"Anything bigger than a money clip or a wallet is to be left to your girlfriend/wife … and just so we are clear you should not be able to throw your 'wallet' over a shoulder … if you have a man purse, the wall is waiting." - Andy Roddick, Tennis Superstar

Well, check this out Andy. Superstar quarterback for the NFL Tom Brady doesn't think so and he ends up with supermodel Gisselle. He did create a lot of noise after the papazz got a hold of him with his cute camo man bag while he and partner Giselle were spotted in downtown NYC. Tom may not be as big as an asset to New England Patriots as David Beckham is to Los Angeles Galaxy, but Tom just recently got the nod as the poster boy for the UBERSEXUAL. (Ubersexual - from Webster dictionary, a male who is similar to a metrosexual but displays the traditional manly qualities such as confidence, strength, and class - leaving no doubt as to his sexual orientation. David was the quintisential metrosexual boy of the 90's).

And so, where does this lead me... I have been getting a lot of eyebrow raises, questions of interests, and sometimes, of ridicule whenever I'm out carrying my carryall bag. It's a really cool manbag that I got in Cubic Store in Hongkong - the color metallic burgundy. Some people would usually ask - "So Pao where's the trip?" or "Mamalengke ka ba?" or "What's with the lola bag?" to which I just roll my eyes and smile.

I recently got my carryall manbag more than a month ago during my trip after realizing that my backpack wasn't doing it for me. Laptop, phones, wallet, some books, portable audio player, it just doesn't work with the backpack anymore. First, it's difficult to access your stuff with the backpack because it's in your back, second, try riding the metro during rush hour, and you'd be lucky enough to fit yourself let alone with your backpack. Third, If you're like me, I sometimes forget to close the lock, fortunately, some friends would actually tell me that my backpack is open. I'm lucky that it's always that way, but what about when you're in a crowded place with people that you don't know, a friend lost his Ipod because he forgot to cloze the zip of his backpack. Ouch!!!

What's good with carryalls or shoulder manbags is that you're always concious that you're carrying your bag, plus the fact that you have plenty of places or compartments to put your gadgets. It does take a lot of guts to carry one outside because Pinoy men are still kinda iffy with carrying something that looks like it came from your mom's closet.

But what surprises me though is that I've been seeing or I know a number of straight guys who actually have and prefer carrying manbags when they're out. Check out the Ortigas crowd for example, you'd see them guy yuppies comfortable with their manbags.Or even young art students are daring enough to bring them in class. Gola man bags from the Gola sportswear brand are actually every where. It was born out of neccesity they would say. "It's difficult to move without a bag these days because you tend to bring a lot of your stuff with you, your camera, your ipod, your PSP, your toys, so it doesn't really bother because it's very useful" they would say.

Manbags are actually not a new thing. It's been at the forefront of european fashion since the 60's. Mailbags, Messenger bags were a staple for the men who's always on hippie outings. During the 70's it was also used by a lot of men especially because the pants and the jeans then were so tight it's difficult to put wallets without the unevitable bulging. In Hong Kong, when I was there, the men were actually more daring. It's almost dificult to see where a women's bag ends and a man's bag begins. I mean the colors, the cuts, it's the very same big bags that your lola would usually bring to a sunday church. And hey, these men, or even teenage boys at that, are very secure with their preference if I may say so. They're just really comportable with bringing a carryall bag with them. I heard, even in Shibuya and Tokyo, manbags are common to the guys as they are to the girls. There's a cool Tokyo report on the Manbag trend in PINGMAG.




In America where homophobia is still prevalent, they still look down on the somewhat radical idea of men carrying bags. This has never been more realisitcally captured than in the Friends episode where Joey fell in love with a bag that he brought - his MURSE (coined term for a Man Purse). Not only did they mock Joey with his man bag but they also concluded that America is just not ready for men walking down the streets with purse or shoulder bags. Good to have my neck on the other side of the woods then.

Bottom line is, fashion is evolving. If your comfortable with it, no matter how negative or violent the reactions can be, you should wear your own clothes and should never wear it for someone else. In the end it takes a real man to dictate his own fashion... now bring them male stockings!!!

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Here's my TOP 5 MAN BAGS to check out (DAMN, Pao's having bag fettish):
Images from www.carryingcontraption.com

1. GIORGO BRATO TASSLE BAG

2. FALOR TOTE BAG

3. ASOS STRIPE WEEKEND BAG

4. ETRO NEON CARYALL

5. PRADA QUILT MESSENGER BAG

DIRTY HARRY AND HIS OH-SO-WICKED WAND

DETAILS has always been my favorite lifestyle magazine in the whole wide world for their interesting articles and their unabashedly unapologetic "in-your-face" feature stories. Uncompromising and intelligent writing makes this my monthly staple read.

They just don't run out of cool things to feature, and the fashion articles are really well researched and their definitely a good bible for people like me who can't tell the difference between Paul Smith and Paul and Sharks'. They have always been a great alternative magazine to read. I remember them running a great story on the soon to-be Democratic's poster boy Harold Ford Jr. when all the other magazines were going gagah with possibilities of Senator Hillary Clinton.

When every magazine joined the bandwagon on the mainstream media's focus on Iraq and the middle east conflict, out they came with a great article about the struggles and the colonization issues in Congo. Or when everyone was busy talking about the possibilities of economic recession in America, out they came with a full article on the social and proffesional complexities of taking a shit at one's workplace.

An alternative, that I have been vouching this magazine for ... so I was a little surprised seeing Daniel Radcliffe on the cover of their July Issue. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the franchise and I would definitely read an article about him anytime but I just didn't expect Daniel appearing in Details anytime soon.

But dig this, the article's actually funny and interesting as it turned out, and it kinda does put Daniel on a whole different light, somewhere I don't think the Harry Potter fans would be comfortable talking about. So again DETAILS gives you something different... an alternative point of view for the fans of this now turned manboy.

HERE'S AN EXCERPT FROM THE ARTICLE ON DANIEL RADCLIFFE'S IN DETAILS MAGAZINE (JULY EDITION) :

It’s not often you have the privilege of watching a teenager lose his virginity twice in one week, but sometimes magic happens. Even Daniel Radcliffe can’t stay a boy forever, and to announce his wish to be known as more than Harry Potter, he recently decided to share his wand with two older blondes. The first performance was witnessed nightly this spring on a London stage, where Radcliffe played Alan Strang, the disturbed teenager in the acclaimed revival of Peter Shaffer’s play Equus. The second can be enjoyed this September in the film December Boys, in which Radcliffe stars as a lovesick Australian orphan with a strict Catholic haircut.

Then there is that relentless compulsion to show off his body. One startled British tabloid saw his nude scene in Equus and headlined an article hairy botter. “First, it’s a crap pun because botter isn’t even a word,” Radcliffe says. “But equally it’s that thing of being shocked that I should have hair—you know, anywhere else other than on my head. It’s not so much that they don’t want me to grow up. It’s that they’re annoyed that I’m growing up adjusted. They’d much rather I was growing up and going wild and crashing cars.”
We’ve been chatting away for half an hour—Radcliffe swigging his drink and jiggling his legs, me trying to decipher the lettering on his T-shirt—when it suddenly seems timely to ask about the problem of getting a hard-on (maybe this was prompted by the design on his shirt, a plastic-toy-soldier illustration of the Battle of Little Big Horn). In Equus he made out with the stable girl, played by Joanna Christie, a looker seven years his senior. You’ve got to ask . . .

“It’s the least arousing process,” Radcliffe says. “Jo’s beautiful, but after you’ve gone through it a hundred times with an audience there . . . To be honest, when you get naked in front of 900 people, quite the opposite happens. Not to become too graphic, but yeah.”
For readers who failed to catch the show, I bring significant news: Our hero’s member is “average”; that is, no one gasped with envy when he unzipped, but no one asked for a refund, either.

And does he like performing nude before an audience close enough to smell him? “I’d be lying if I said I was completely fine,” he says. “I was nervous and I was a little bit worried. But not meaning to drop a name, I talked to Gary Oldman about it, because we get on very well and I know he’s been naked onstage. And so I said to him, ‘What’s it like?’ and he said, ‘On the first night you’ll be terrified and on the second night you’ll be terrified and after that you won’t care.’ And that’s absolutely true. When you’ve done it twice, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

He looks back to his first effort, at the age of 10, and says he didn’t really know what he was doing.

“Quite sweet, a little boy,” he remembers, referring to those far-off days when no one asked him about sex scenes and when his manhood was as imaginary as wizards and goblets of fire.

BACK FROM OUTER SPACE

I've been procastinating to write this entry for the longest time.

I was suppose to blog my last trip but it was really difficult with the moving and all. I remember that I was religiously detailing every move last year in blogspot but I wasn't able to do it this time around. The trip (Hehe, that was two months ago) was again very productive and It's amazing that the people that I was traveling with finally experienced the feeling of "nirvana" that I was bragging about. It's a very grounding experience, it leaves you with a feeling of being insignificant compared to the vastness of what's happening around you, the different cultures that you get to experience, but it also gives you the feeling of accomplishment and the feeling of being able to champion yourself with every extreme situations that you get to face.

It's really spiritual. You get to know more about yourself and your country while getting lost in transition. New accomplishments for me on this year's journey - I really got to enjoy the company that I was with, last year I was traveling alone and it was a way for me to break away from my comfort zone. I learned that I can survive with what's essential. I enjoy more the spartan way of living... and how the most mundane of event can be the grandest experience ever - such as watching the beautiful sunrise on the beach, I mean sunrise is an everyday experience, but it is only now did I really appreciate how a great event it is for me personally. How I'm blessed by God, that he allowed me to live another day. The trip allowed me to enjoy life's simple pleasures that I always take for granted before.

What else? Hmmm. It was my first time to ride an elephant. It was just so scary because the one that we rode was pregnant and was irritable. We joined this trek in Chiang Mai and there were like 10 of us, 5 Pinoys and 5 Europeans. One of the higlights was the elephant ride. Damn, I never thought that Elephants loved banans so much. We had to buy dozens and had to feed the elephants during the entire ride.

I was able to meet a number of friends that I haven't seen for the longest time. Camille, a good friend that I worked with in Juice TV treated us to a cool nightout in Singapore. We ended up in this cool bar where we saw South African (hmmm... male strippers) dancers. It was a ladies night so there wasn't anything much to do. It turned out a swell evening nevertheless.

I met up with Anne, my super close friend who had to leave Manila and work in Saigon producing commercials. Anne was already a big producer here in Manila, producing the biggest local commercials, but she left everything here to start a career there. I think she was sobrang burnt out here na in Manila. She's enjoying her stay there and she brought us to this cool Market to sample the very best of Vietnamese cuisine. The market was their version of Quiapo or Avenida I think. It was food trip and we, Robert, Jethro and I enjoyed it really well, the other guy that we were traveling with Carlo had to attend to his church service so he missed what we thought was the highlight of our Vietnam trip (I really had to give it to him, he's traveling but he tries not to miss his religious obligations).


My fave country was China. It was a pity because we were only given a two weeks visa in China so we had to cut our trip short. But still, it was an amazing experience. My second time in Beijing and Shanghai but there's always an amazing discovery whenever I'm there. We got to meet my friend Edward who also left his design job in Manila to try it out there. He's doing very well in Shanghai, and I heard that a number of Pinoy designers are actually a big thing in China now. We saw Kenneth Cobonpue's store, and a number of Bench Body outlets on the big malls there. It's good to see that Pinoys are making a mark in such a big market. Pity that we arrived on a weekday in Shanghai so there wasn't much nighlife to checkout.

I'm enjoying photography so much. I took a lot of pictures of the trip and Photography's really my new found passion. You can check some of them at my flickr page - www.flickr.com/photos/bohemian_child

We're producing something that hopefully materializes by the next quarter. We shot a number of footages during the trip and hopefully we'll be able to edit it as a travel show with a twist. It was actually Robert's project and I'll be helping in my own little way.


Well, that's about it with my last journey. It was such an enriching experience and given the time and the budget, I'll definitely do it again. It's a misconception though that traveling should be expensive. Hey, we were able to do it in less than what one will spend for a week's vacation in Boracay or Palawan.

It's not a trip for everyone though. It's difficult and it's a process that one should experience with an open mind ... but the rewards and the learnings are just indescribable.