Afternoon sun

© Joselito Briones

This is what the afternoon sun looks like in our tiny living room.  There’s a young tamarind tree, passion fruit vines and other greens all planted and taken care of by Charles.

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On my father’s shoulders

© Joselito Briones

In the Philippines we start celebrating Christmas in September, as soon as we get a respite from summer heat.

It usually ends early January.

One Christmas season, I must have been 5 or 6, my father took me to work - a bus depot that he managed.  In the waiting room, right next to the glittery Christmas tree was a poster of “Jaws”, that summer’s ubiquitous image. 

There was a buzz in the air., “Mrs. is here.”, everyone whispered.  “Mrs.” was always just “Mrs.”.  She was the boss, owner of the company.  My father must have been busy attending to work.  When eventually he caught wind of her presence, he grabbed and lifted me to his shoulders and we ran and looked for Mrs.  The idea was to see if she was giving Christmas presents.  She was gone by the time we got to her office.

Whenever I’m reminded of that day though, I realize it wasn’t the missed “papasko” that I think about.  It was that my father never  picked me up  before then, at least not that I remember. I remember that it was nice being on his shoulders. I remember it was awkward because even at that young age I was tall and spindly.

I remember feeling special.

 

We went back to his office and he sat me on his desk He told me to keep my hands open and onto them he dumped all the coins from his pockets.

Happy days.

 

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i can use my right hand again...

© Joselito Brionesor so i dreamt.  

I woke up middle of the night without the usual heaviness on my right arm. i slowly moved my fingers. They’re here alright, although i couldn’t tell where my right hand was.  moving some more confirmed that my right hand was resting flat on my belly.  my right hand was moving freely again.

fearing the disappointment of finding out that this was just a dream, i forced myself awake, once in a while moving my hand to make sure that i can still do it.  after a couple of hours i fell asleep again.  I woke up again and found my right hand very stiff again.

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glorious morning

this is the morning glory vine that charles planted at t  window by my side of the bed. it’s already got two flowers since he planted it a month ago.  pretty eh?

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you...

left something in the toilet, darling husband.

 

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bukó revelation

There was one time when one of my sisters, Ate Julie, when I was about 10 or 11 and she in college, was obsessed with the movie "Fame", Irene Cara, and her song "Out Here on My Own".  I was still in elementary school then and have not heard of the movie until she told me about it.  She had a radio with her and she turned the station dial relentlessly until she found a station that played the song. What was memorable about it was that before then, I never saw her passionate and excited about anything at all.  She's always kept to herself.   I never saw her reveal so much of herself after that, either.

Satisfied on finding and hearing the song at that moment, she let me in on a something even more precious to her:  she said much as she loved the song,  there was another in the same movie that she loved even more.  I remember her trying afterwards to play down how much she loved it, which only made it obvious that she did.   She had a girly crush and she told me about it!

Today, as everyone in the family has their heart and mind with her, I looked up the song and found the video, above, which appears to have been filmed a couple of blocks from where I first lived in New York.

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our lovely fish tank

© Joselito Briones
I love how with the new Canon 5D Mark IV, pulling focus is just a matter of of pointing at different elements of the view on the touchscreen LCD monitor.

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christmas splurge

© Joselito Briones

room fragrance from cire trudon - we love the "ernesto" scent but even if we didn't like any of their scents, we would've bought one anyway just for the bottle-atomizer.

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thanksgiving potluck at work

© Joselito Briones
lovely people, good food.


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mochi from daigaharakinseiken?

© Joselito Briones
our neighbors arisa and the kids are back from their japan trip and they brought us this present - best mochi ever!  it comes with an ampoule of molasses to drip on the mochi - how nice is that?  i googled the image and it looks like it comes from a store called "daigaharakinseiken", but as i can't read the characters i can't tell for sure.

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dave warns bett - a scene from "house of trixxx"

© Joselito Briones
so this scene takes place before the other one.

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first completed scene of "house of trixxx"

© Joselito Briones
This took several rehearsals, 3 hours of filming, 10 takes (different angles) and days of editing - resulting in less than 3mins of the movie. I haven't even started on putting in the audio that was recorded separately (crappy audio on this video is from camera).  Bett/Zirconia is played by Aja and Dave by Edwin de Leon.

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gorl wants food

© Joselito Briones
random photo time.  this one was taken in a safari park in indonesia earlier this year.


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edwin joins the cast of house of trixxx

© Joselito Briones
actor edwin de leon joins the cast as of "house of trixxx" as dave, bett/zirconia's younger brother.  am so glad of his enthusiasm in tackling the role.

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preparing for a shoot

we're finally doing a couple of scenes, and i don't wanna mess up so i did this very rough story board. i thought a dp/camera guy was gonna join us and i was looking forward to concentrating with directing, but... so i'm gonna end up doing those too.  i went to aja's and momo's to check the room we're shooting in, and try to dress it up a bit.  hope things go well.

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a meta-mystery game of a neo-noir movie making kind

© Joselito Briones

i've turned the g+ page of +House of Trixxx into a meta-mystery game.  because, why not?

big fan of sherlock?  fond of nancy drew-ing?  you think we're now over-saturated with mysteries and crime-dramas and you can predict every cliché and every ending of every whodunnit?

let's take it a step further.  predict the outcome of this story without seeing the actual movie.  why be Sherlock when you can be Doyle?  Why be Ms. Marple when you can be Ms. Christie?  ever written or thought of writing a crime-drama? predict how this story is structured and what's gonna happen.  every post is a clue.   no worries, even if the movie doesn't get made, the screenplay is already registered with the WGA, so the storyline you're solving for will be based on that.

post your predictions on the link above.  correct predictions wins a portion of the script as additional clue.  if you can piece together the whole plot, you'll win a copy of the entire screenplay.

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1st day of rehearsal for house of trixxx

© Joselito Briones
This is one of the scenes that we did on the 1st day of rehearsal.  Momo was kind enough to stand in for the role of Dave (the character has since been renamed Paolo and hasn't been cast), Bett's cop brother.  In this scene, Paolo confronts Bett for withholding information about an on-going murder investigation.

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main drag characters complete as ms. ivy ferriya joins the house of trixxx project

© Joselito Briones

welp, there it is.  now that ms ivy ferriya has joined the project, all the major drag queen roles are cast.  now on to the other characters.

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rimowa - now that's what i call service

my rimowa suitcase          © Joselito Briones

i've had this rimowa suitcase for 5 years now and it's been with me everywhere.  it's supposed to be a carry-on, but there's been a couple of times when i had to check it in.  the last time it happened, i noticed a missing screw-on foot (stand).  i brought it to rimowa's new york shop , and they repaired it for me even tho i bought this one in hong kong.  they even checked the locks and found that they are a bit shaky, so they repaired that too.  at no cost! (and look at that, they even decorated it with a ribbon)

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