Basketbrawl Diaries, Torn Page No. 1

We were up, 26-24, up to 30, 1-2 scoring rule. I've got a swelling pain already in my elbow, a discoloration marked the spot, toxic blood pushing the fresh flow back. A 1.5 litre of coke was on the line, it was throw an elbow or be crushed in the gutter. The slit-eyed drove to my right, the ball tightly clasped over his left hand. The right elbow was cocked like a spear. I met the challenge: I sprung like a wayward rocket. I knew I blocked the shot--the ball was thrown aback--but the elbow impaled me directly to my ribs. The pain was so disconcerting, I felt my ribs cracking and my heart pumping acid. I had no time to compose myself; everything went berserk. The slit-eyed felt he was bullied so he wanted to throw a pakyaw hook to me but my teammates were quick to the draw, at least two of them had already ganged up on the slit-eyed even before he can launch his punch. I was woozy and was holding the arm of papawis, slit-eyed's point guard, who was desperately trying to escape after hitting one of my teammate with a stick. They all scampered; thinking perhaps that we had something to maim and scorch them. I was holding still on my burning ribs. Three days after, the pain still felt like a sword forever stuck into my heart. I counted at least five bruise spots all over my body. Heal now bastards, I've got to play again and fight for that 1.5 litre of coke as if it is the last in this land of pandemics and manual elections.

Scrap Metal Apocalypse

If Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is to be laid to rest in an ornate tomb, its epitaph should read as this: corporate greed and heightened asininity killed the robots. I knew it from the time I was eyeing suspiciously the spaced-out facial expressions of guys in loosened ties and black pants drenched in urine, and the rapturous glee of toddlers who were punching the air as they were ushered out of the cinema.

The guard and the usher roused me in my abject stupor. Sir, you have to leave your brain here. Whaaaat? Sir, please, if you will not leave your brain, we will escort you away from here. Whaaat the F, I have a ticket, see! Sir, if you will not leave your brain here, you will not only be able to watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in THX, we will also shoot you!!! You will horribly die sir like Optimus Prime and the All Spark Cube is not here so you will not be resurrected!!!

Two wasted hours and thirty flushed to the toilet minutes later, I was burrowing my head to the poster outside of the cinema. This cannot be: Fallen is the name of the geezer robot worshipped by Megatron so this should be Revenge of Fallen and not THE Fallen.

Bay and Spielberg made mincemeat of the robots of two decades past. They pushed the Autobots and the Decepticons aside and in the end let them engage in a pillow fight. The world of clichés got the better deal than the supposedly rampaging warrior-robots. You have a lead who beats Wolverine in recuperative powers, a love interest in poor man’s Angelina Jolie who does nothing but run and distract the rest, a sidekick who is whiny, clueless and dumb, a man-who-knows who is a weirdo, a soundtrack with Green Day on it, a loan from Terminator, a loan from The Da Vinci Code, a loan from Hannah Montana and a loan from all gay films in existence. All the way to the cash register. Get lost Dark Knight, we have a new numero uno in tills supremacy. Shame on you all! Where are the rampaging and blood-thirsty robots? Where is kick-ass?

As I was choking in my own vomit, I watched Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror in DVD hours after Transformers sent me to vomit-land. The heroine is Marilyn Manson’s ex so she is hot but in this, she is one-legged, the other leg is gone and in place is a grenade launcher. She shoots the zombie in smithereens with that M203-foot and even explodes the ground with it so she can be propelled to the air before unleashing a deadly Matrix-y pirouette of raining bullets and ass-kicks. Rodriguez and Tarantino explode everything to ridiculous heights with limbs and guzzling blood to boot, and as always, we laugh and laugh some more.

In Planet Terror, the gross factor of every scene makes us laugh and feel good about ourselves. In Revenge of the Fallen, the sheen and gloss of the robotic carapace, the mighty display of modern arsenal and the invincibility of Sam (he was thrown by the Decepticons so many times and from all conceivable lengths so he must be Jesus) make us sick and want us to strangle ourselves for wasting 2 and 30 digesting an asinine script and a world of ludicrous possibilites.

Give me back my robots, Bay and Spielberg, and my brain, too. Now.