RM Ph 07/2017

SPECIAL COLLECTORS’ ISSUE

TEN Y E A RS

OF

GO

IN

G

ROGUE

A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE BEA ALON MARTIN ANDANAR

Interviewed by Patrick Paez

Plus:

F ON S LENI ROBREDO

10T

on the State of the Nation

ARTI L LAW IN MIN

NA

I E

R

ISSUE

JOHN LLOYD CRUZ

and the Year’s Wildest Party

pa h s ro r m

nie

MALANG

One Final Toast

ib b an nza M jia a&R Ra affy Le ma a

I S S U E 1 1 1 ———— C O V E R S T O R Y

CONTENTS July 2017

Girls Don’t Cry It’s one thing to be an actress, and another to be a celebrity— and although Bea Alonzo’s life has been splashed all over tabloids since her career exploded 10 years ago, Mariah Reodica discovers that amidst the chaos of showbiz, the star is keeping things simple.

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“Pinakahate ko iyan: ‘Ang galing mong artista, [kasi] ang galing mong umiyak!’”

BEA ALONZO

PHOTOGRAPHED BY BJ PASCUAL

I S S U E 1 1 1 ———— F E A T U R E S

CONTENTS July 2017

“I can describe the party as five star!

‘Yung pagka-set up ng mga artworks better than Art Fair o ano mang art exhibit.”

ROMEO LEE

MARTIN ANDANAR HAS SPOKEN

ALL EYES ON ME

One Mocha Uson appointment and a martial law propaganda video later, Sec. Martin Andanar and the Presidential Communications Operations Office are back in the hot seat. Patrick Paez catches up with an old colleague from the other side of the media fence.

In this day and age, it’s all about making (or wearing) a statement—from built-in scarves and snap button details to daring plays with prints and textures. Rogue takes a look at Spring/Summer ‘17’s greatest hits in the fashion sphere.

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ONE CONFLICT FOR ANOTHER

WHERE IS MY MIND?

It’s been a month since the fighting broke out in Marawi, and the fighting continues with the city locked down and conflict felt in the areas surrounding it. Raffy Lerma and Arnie Quibranza Mejia report from Marawi and nearby Iligan.

Cubao’s infamous 70-D brought the house down one last time by throwing together everyone from celebrities, artists, journalists, and members of the society set—all for one John Lloyd Cruz’s birthday. Rogue drops in on a party unlike any we’ve seen before.

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HIS WAY OF SEEING

THE DAY OFF

In art and in life, Mauro Malang Santos painted joy with no excuses and no explanations, minus the creative angst that the scene has come to expect. Alya B. Honasan remembers a dear friend and colleague, while six of the country’s brightest young artists pay tribute to his art.

Over a year after his passing, it’s still difficult to write about Luis Katigbak in the past tense. It is in his skillfully chosen words, however, that one of the greatest writers of this generation lives on. Rogue remembers the literary giant with the last story he penned.

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PHOTOGRAPHED BY MM YU

I S S U E 1 1 1 ———— S E C T I O N S

CONTENTS July 2017

AGENDA

“We told [Chef Miko Aspiras] we wanted something that is decadent, but the sort expressed in a way that is

One tumultuous year in office later, Vice President Leni Robredo presents the state of the nation from the sidelines; Peewee Roldan’s Rituals of Invasion and Resistance curates 25 years of the artist’s exploration of the sacred and profane; cinematographer Neil Daza sheds light on his years of creating some of the most moving images in Philippine cinema.

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refined—the rest of

SPACE

the thinking, we

After swearing he’d never design again, Joseph Rastrullo bursts into the scene with furniture built from heritage and tradition; architect Dan Lichauco gives us a tour of his award-winning modernization of the bahay na bato; surrounded by Clark’s relentless kitsch, the Foreign Merchants Club harks back to the elegance of the Old World.

left up to him.”

JEROME GOMEZ

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THE EYE

The 60th anniversary of the Omega Speedmaster watch brings George Clooney into an unprecedented encounter with his real-life hero, astronaut Buzz Aldrin; as men’s streetwear rises from its DIY roots to the mainstream, we take a look at the sneakers that have been kicked up to top-of-mind status.

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THE SLANT Ten years later, Rogue is celebrating the stories behind the stories. Paolo Enrico Melendez shares how Kalyeserye bookended a pivotal phase in his life; Vanni de Sequera reveals the neardisaster behind his interview with Winnie Monsod; Philbert Dy remembers Karl Roy, nine years after the article and five years after the rock star’s death.

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PHOTOGRAPHED BY MIGUEL NACIANCENO

Editor-in-Chief JONTY CRUZ Executive Editor JEROME GOMEZ Managing Editor JACS T. SAMPAYAN Features Editor PHILBERT DY Associate Editor PAOLO ENRICO MELENDEZ

ON THE COVER Photographed by BJ Pascual Styled by Pam Quiñones Makeup by Cristine Duque Hair by Brent Sales

Staff Writer EMIL HOFILEÑA Editorial Assistant PATRICIA CHONG

ART

Bea Alonzo wears an Alice McCall dress and Bulgari jewelry

Senior Art Director KARL CASTRO Junior Designer MARK SANTIAGO Online Junior Art Director ANDREW PANOPIO

Contributing Writers JACLYN CLEMENTE-KOPPE, DODO DAYAO, DEVI DE VEYRA, ALYA B. HONASAN, MARIE ANNABELLE MARQUEZ, ARNIE QUIBRANZA MEJIA, PAM QUIÑONES, PATRICK PAEZ, JAM PASCUAL, MARIAH REODICA, YVETTE TAN Contributing Photographers & Artists JOHANN BONA, KRISTINE CAGUIAT, GERIC CRUZ, PATRICK CRUZ, PATRICK DIOKNO, DEX FERNANDEZ, CZAR KRISTOFF, RAFFY LERMA, JACOB LINDO, DAN MATUTINA, MIGUEL NACIANCENO, BJ PASCUAL, VINCENT QUILOP, ISABEL SANTOS, MILO SOGUECO, JAKE VERZOSA, MM YU, JEONA ZOLETA Interns JAE ALDE, GELO DIONORA, EUSELA LANDRITO, SAM SIANGHIO

PUBLISHING Publisher VICKY MONTENEGRO / vicky.montenegro@roguemedia.ph Associate Publisher ANI A. HILA / ani.hila@roguemedia.ph Publishing Assistant MADS TEOTICO / mads.teotico@roguemedia.ph Senior Advertising Sales Director MINA GARA / mina.gara@roguemedia.ph Account Managers IRA GUEVARRA, VELU ACABADO, DENISE MAGTOTO Marketing Manager TRIXIE DAWN CABILAN Advertising Traffic Officer & Production Coordinator MYRA CABALUNA Associate Circulation Manager RAINIER S. BARIA

Unit 102, Building 2, OPVI Centre 2295 Jannov Plaza, Pasong Tamo Extension Makati, 1231 Telephone: (+632) 729-7747 Telefax: (+632) 894-2676 Email: mail@roguemedia.ph Online Presence:

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Circulation Supervisor MARK ROLAND LEAL Circulation Assistant JERICO ALDANA

Tablet version available at:

Zinio.com/Rogue

Dispatch Supervisors ERIC GARCIA, JIMUEL TATAD Controller EDEN G. ARGONZA Finance Analyst JEMMALYN LUCERO Credit & Collection Officer MISCHELLE MOLA HR Supervisor RUSCHEL REYES

Official Internet Service Provider:

Administrative Supervisor DEANNA GUEVARRA

This issue would not have been possible without the help of MIKO ASPIRAS, MICHELLE AYUYAO, MICAELA BENEDICTO, JOHN LLOYD CRUZ, CHESCA GAMBOA, JEREMY GUIAB, RAPA LOPA, PIA SAMSON, CARINA AND SOLER SANTOS

For subscriptions, back issues, bulk orders, and other circulation concerns please contact: Rainier S. Baria (+632) 729-7747 rainier.baria@roguemedia.ph ROGUE MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED MONTHLY, ELEVEN TIMES PER YEAR. THE EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS OF THE MAGAZINE MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES IN RELATION TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THE ADVERTISEMENTS, PRODUCTS, AND SERVICES ADVERTISED IN THIS EDITION. OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS MAGAZINE ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE AUTHORS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF ROGUE MAGAZINE. THIS MAGAZINE IS FULLY PROTECTED

BY COPYRIGHT, AND NO PART OF THIS MAGAZINE MAY BE USED OR REPRODUCED IN ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS.

ISSUE 111

THE EDITOR’S NOTE July 2017

Welcome to the Show “HOW’D YOU GET HERE?”

It was July 2011 when I found myself in a board room at the top of the legendary Hearst Tower in New York City. Then Esquire Editor-inChief David Granger, looked at me and asked how a first time editorial assistant fresh out of college got to take part in a once in a lifetime seminar on all things Esquire. “I happened to have a Visa,” I joked.

I’ve been thinking about that question a lot lately. It’s been roughly six years since that fateful summer in New York and clearly it’s a different world than it was back then. In that bafflingly short amount of time, I went from being the luckiest editorial assistant ever to Editor-in-Chief of an entirely different magazine—one that I had spent a lot of time watching out of the corner of my eye, both as an admirer and as part of its fiercest competitor.

But first things first: I learned from the very best during my tenure at Esquire. Under our Editor-in-Chief Erwin Romulo, I quickly learned that being an editor is one of the best jobs in the world—as well as the most

demanding. Magazines offer up so many things for me.

They combine hard-nosed journalism and literary writing. It’s a platform for breathtaking photography and inspired graphic design.

The monthly pace allows us to see culture and current events from a fresh and more nuanced perspective, often leading to long hours debating how best to tell a story our way. Some of our issues might have fared better than others, but as my former boss used to say, “They can never say we didn’t try.”

All the while, Rogue would never be far from my thoughts. Even before Esquire, Rogue was the magazine I always looked forward to. It talked about politics and current affairs from a unique point of view, always finding the rust behind every polish. Rogue for all its high society appeal was never afraid to get dirty. And when Esquire came along, the two complemented each other so well. It felt like a great time in publishing, with two prestige magazines challenging one another to get better and

JONT Y CRUZ Editor-in-Chief

better with each new issue. In that level of competition, the reader always emerges the winner.

Six years later, I’ve joined the other team and relearning everything I loved about magazines in the first place. And as I write this, I find myself with that same question back in 2011, “How’d you get here?” I’m not even 30 years old and I’m heading up what I believe is the country’s best magazine today and try as I might, the answer will never really be as good as the question. So the only reply worth a damn is, “What’s next?”

As you read this issue, we are already working on the next one, and the one after that, and so on and so forth. We have a lot lined up and we’re going all out. Rogue has had a lot of great stories in its 10-year run, and our editorial team is more than ready to live up to its legacy.

So this is what’s next: we’re doubling down on our commitment to creating the best stories with the best people. That’s nothing new for Rogue, but I’m not here to fix what isn’t broken. Whether it’s on print, online, or even on air, Rogue will continue to get people talking. Maybe that sounds brash for an editor barely starting his tenure at the helm, but this is Rogue, after all. It didn’t get here by being humble.

ISSUE 111

THE GUEST LIST July 2017

JAKE VERZOSA is a freelance photographer who has explored many destinations around Southeast Asia, and exhibited in Asia and Europe. Of his extensive body of work, he considers his documentaries and portraits as his most personal creations.

GERIC CRUZ is a freelance photographer shooting Manila from a dozen different angles.

He discovered photography by accident in 2006 when his uncle gave him a Polaroid camera—he hasn’t stopped shooting since.

PAM QUIÑONES is the Editor-in-Chief of L’Officiel Manila and is one of the most sought-after commercial and fashion stylists in the country today. In this issue, she styles the cover shoot with photographer BJ Pascual.

DAVID MILAN started out reading The Philippine Star.

These days, he’s the creative director of the publication’s Supreme and YStyle sections, art directing the covers and styling different shoots.

ALYA B. HONASAN is an editor, writer, yoga practitioner, dog mama, cancer survivor, and allaround gorgeous golden girl. (She’s humble, too.) In this issue, she pays homage to an old friend and colleague, Mauro “Malang” Santos.

PHOTO OF GERIC CRUZ BY JOHN JAVELLANA

PATRICK PAEZ, before heading news production and becoming an anchor, was a field guy covering politics, disasters, and the fighting in Mindanao and Afghanistan. In this issue, he sits down with Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar.

MM YU is a photographer and painter who received her BFA from the University of the Philippines in 2001 and was recognized as an Ateneo Art Awardee in 2007. Her works have been exhibited in Silverlens, West Gallery, MO_Space, Finale Art File, and the CCP among others.

DAN MATUTINA is a graphic designer and illustrator, and a founding partner at Plus63 Design Co. In 2013, he received the Art Directors Club Young Guns Award in New York.

BJ PASCUAL is one of Manila’s most in-demand photographers, with over 100 magazine covers and an immense body of work from local and international publications and advertising clients under his belt.

P A R T N E R

P R O M O T I O N

New Angles A masterful combination of form following function, Tumi’s 19 Degree aluminum luggage is the pinnacle of travel gear

WHETHER IT’S MEASURED in miles or in memory, travel is never just a utilitarian experience—and neither is what you take with you. With that in mind, TUMI, the leading international brand of premium travel accessories, presents its first-ever aluminum luggage, 19 Degree.

Blurring the lines between fashion, art, and design, 19 Degree boasts a strikingly modern design, with strategically sculpted angles set against meticulously-crafted aluminum. These contours highlight the profile of the suitcase and give a sense of fluidity, exuding a boldly distinctive appearance.

“19 Degree truly represents the art of intelligent design,” says Victor

Sanz, TUMI’s creative director. “When conceptualizing the collection, we approached it with the question ‘How can we make our design less elementary and more elevated than what is already on the market?’ We felt our customer deserved a better design and an overall better product that not only performs, but looks cool while performing.”

This premium collection features a reinforced framecase design—with two snap closures for carry-on bags and three snap closures for check-in bags— and die-cast corner caps for additional protection. The interior is expertly appointed with the finest aesthetic and organizational features including, a lightweight lining with an embossed

diamond pattern that complements the unique exterior pattern.

19 Degree will be offered in the full range of carry-on and check-in sizes, from an International Carry-On through an Extended Trip Packing Case. All styles will feature integrated low-profile TSA locks, TUMI Tracer , retractable molded top and side carry handles wrapped with leather detailing, and a patented X-Brace 45 telescoping handle system crafted from lightweight-yet sturdy aircraft-grade aluminum, which contributes to the reduced weight of the bags. The four dual-spinning recessed wheels are engineered to offer effortless maneuverability and provide greater packing capacity inside.

TUMI’S 19 DEGREE IS NOW AVAILABLE AT GREENBELT 5, AYALA CENTER, MAKATI; 728-0117.

ISSUE 111

THE GUEST LIST July 2017

PATRICK DIOKNO is a freelance photographer based in Manila, though some will know him as Rogue’s former senior designer, or L’Officiel Manila and STATUS Magazine’s former art director.

MIKO ASPIRAS is a chef who seems to be everywhere, crafting desserts and pastries for Pâtissièr Workshop, Scouts Honor, Le Petit Soufflé, and Freezerburn.

In this issue, he bakes Rogue a cake to rule all cakes to kick off our 10th anniversary celebrations.

JEONA ZOLETA is known for her provocative paintings and installations, always loaded with pop culture, kids’ toys, and post-feminist takes on sexuality.

She has exhibited widely in Manila and internationally.

RAFFY LERMA is a photojournalist based in Manila.

He’s been a staff news photographer for the Philippine Daily Inquirer for more than a decade.

Recently, he has been documenting the government’s war on drugs, shooting regularly on the night beat.

ARNIE QUIBRANZA MEJIA is presently the Vice President of Human Resources for his family’s logistics company.

He was a fellow at the 56th UP National Writers Workshop. His book Writing Naked: A Memoir is available at National Bookstore.

VANNI DE SEQUERA wrote the cover story of Rogue’s first issue back in July 2007, and was with the team as an editor for the magazine’s first years. He returns to tell the tale of the neardisaster behind his interview with Winnie Monsod.

PHOTO OF RAFFY LERMA BY CARLO GABUCO; PHOTO OF PATRICK DIOKNO BY CHESCA GAMBOA

JACOB LINDO works in the areas of drawing, collage, and sculpture.

He’s always found himself attracted to things that feed his curiosity, from obscure movies to thought-provoking literature.

ISABEL SANTOS comes from a family full of artists.

She’s been going to museums since the age of two, and has been drawing since childhood.

In this issue, she pays tribute to her grandfather, Mauro “Malang” Santos.

DEX FERNANDEZ is a multimedia artist who lives and works in Caloocan.

You may know him for Garapata, the character he paints based on the fleas that once took over his childhood home.

The “infestation” continues in paint on walls all over the metro.

P A R T N E R

P R O M O T I O N

Feast Your Eyes Elevate the dining experience with Garden Barn’s top selections, ranging from cutlery to interior decor

IN THE ART of serving a great meal in good company, presentation may just be as important as food

preparation. With more than 60 world-known brands under its name, few know that better than Garden Barn HORECA (Hotels, Restaurants, and Caterings) & Project Gallery, which has equipped its high-profile clientele—from five star casinos to the finest hotels and resorts—with pieces that add sophistication to the dinner table. Their newly opened showroom, featuring top brands across various categories, demonstrates how fine dining can be more than just the satisfaction of one’s palate.

Keep cooked meals warm and fresh with Brabantia’s design-friendly food warmers. Make use of Robert Welch’s stainless steel cutlery to feast on meals served on Legle’s durable porcelain and Serax’s ceramics. Schott Zwiesel’s sommelier-approved glasses will hold your wine well; for those going easy on the alcohol, make coffee or tea with Bodum’s coffee makers and teapots.

Decorations add a visual element to dinnertime. Dress up the dinner table with linens from Rivolta Carmignani. Take a piece or two from LSA International’s decorative vases or Serax’s tealight candleholders. For bigger dinner set-ups, consider FLUX’s innovative and foldable furniture options; or if you prefer al fresco dining, pitch in a sturdy designer parasol from Jardinico. —GELO DIONORA

Clockwise, from top left: LEGLE bespoke porcelain ware, Brabantia food warmers, Serax plates, Robert Welch stainless steel cutlery, Kevala ceramic ware, Schott Zwiesel crystal glasses, Revol culinary slate, LSA International decorative vases, and FLUX foldable furniture.

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J U LY 2 0 1 7

T H E

R O G U E

A R E N A

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Lean Cuisine

Sapporo collaborates with Chef Sheilla Lopez to create healthy noodle dishes

SAPPORO PRODUCTS INC. has

been at the forefront of quality vermicelli production since 1990.

The brand conducts extensive research and utilizes technology to create its noodle products: Long Kow Vermicelli, Pancit Bihon, Misua, Spaghetti, and Pancit Canton. The Long Kow Vermicelli is the brand’s premier product, enhancing the taste and texture of any noodle dish. Sapporo recently collaborated with Chef Sheilla Lopez to come up with new vermicelli dishes. The chef has worked in the kitchens of many five-star restaurants in

London, and with her expertise, she is able to transform these simple noodles into festive, healthy meals.

Her Black Sesame Tofu with Vermicelli Stir-Fry is a dish rich in complementing tastes and contrasting textures. Sliced tofu is breaded in corn flour and black sesame, then fried to a crisp in sesame oil. The Long Kow vermicelli is stir-fried with a savory mix of ginger, green onions, and shiitake mushrooms, simmered in chicken broth, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, and chili garlic sauce.

Completing the dish is a serving of

steamed asparagus.

The result: a feast that is a good source of vitamins and minerals.

Sapporo long kow noodles are fat-free and low in sodium, while the tofu provides a boost of protein, iron, and calcium.

The complete recipe for this dish, as well as another Chef Lopez creation, the Salmon Burger with Broccoli, Kale, and Vermicelli Noodle, is available on the Sapporo website. —GELO DIONORA 562 Banawe St. Quezon City; 742-6722; sapporoproducts.com.ph

Black Sesame Tofu with Vermicelli Stir-Fry by Chef Sheilla Lopez

July 2017

Edited by

JEROME GOMEZ

AGENDA

F O O D + E N T E RTA I N M E N T + C U LT U R E + T R AV E L

A year after her contested victory in the vice presidential race, Rogue revisits Leni Robredo to talk trolls and good samaritans, vision and division, and the state of the nation as seen from the sidelines INTERVIEWED BY PAOLO ENRICO MELENDEZ PORTRAIT BY GERIC CRUZ

Issue

111

R

AGENDA POLITICS

T

he 2016 Philippine presidential election was one of the most divisive in contemporary history. All one has to do is look at the numbers. Even the massively popular Rodrigo Duterte won the presidential seat by a mere plurality, and hardly a mandate.

One can argue that winning vice presidential candidate Leni Robredo barely secured a mandate, either: her two-way race with Bongbong Marcos went right down to where wire met ground. Her victory is contested to this day.

With the volatile campaign rhetoric and lack of definitive results, it is no surprise that the political atmosphere remains contentious. Nowhere more so than in Robredo’s immediate space.

Eased out of official functions before being pushed to give up her Cabinet appointment altogether, Robredo cannot function these days without critics giving political color to her every move. There is no better proof to that than her approval rating, which has been steadily dipping.

To those who have been following the newbie politician, however, her response has been wholly characteristic. Running with what she’s been given, Robredo now focuses her energies on social rather than political engagement. And with an anti-poverty advocacy on the upswing—a spiritual successor to her former pro bono legal org—Robredo may have just proven that the worst way to marginalize her is to return her to the margins.

THE VP WAS HERE

Robredo in her office at the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council from which she resigned last December.

What word best describes the past year?

Siguro two words. For the first phase of it, “Tumultuous.” In the sense that every step of the way to the inauguration had been paved with roadblocks.

The other half of it, “Fulfilling,” because despite those roadblocks, we were able to accomplish our goals.

I think we were able to define, and redefine, the role of the Vice President’s Office.

Traditionally, the Vice President is given a Cabinet post. But if you will recall, even before the inauguration, the President gave a statement that he did not intend to give me one. So we prepared for that. That is why we were able to come up with a core program for the office, called Angat Buhay. I was later appointed to the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) but we still decided to go on with our own program. Which was a good thing because my appointment was very short-lived.

Angat Buhay is an anti-poverty advocacy program. Ang maganda dito, nagagawa namin ang gusto naming gawin without depending on government resources.

You still seem to be drawing on your grassroots experience, where everything is always up to you.

It is my life’s work. Although medyo iba kasi siyempre ang ginagawa ko sa dati was as a lawyer. But I have been working for these communities for a very long time kaya iyon din ang kinasanayan.

We’re not depending on government resources. We have partnerships with the private sector. So wala masyadong bureaucracy, mas mabilis.

That also moves your work from under a political lens to a more social one.

Totoo. And we were able to discover so much. One such discovery is that there are really so many people who want to help. They just don’t know how. At ang opisina namin, naging paraan para iyong mga tao ay magkaroon ng pagkakataon, even in their private capacity.

Did you ever foresee this development?

No. Back when the [Liberal] party members were still trying to convince me to run, everyone was saying that there’s nothing to be afraid of, it’ll be a breeze. But after we won, and the President started making some statements, I got a glimpse of what the next six years would be like.

And your response has been pragmatic.

It all turned out to be a blessing, actually.

Now that you have a more macro view of the country, what do you think has been the biggest change in the past year?

The way people engage with government. The constituency is very polarized, it’s either you’re black or you’re white. And I don’t think that’s correct. Because in so many instances, you can be supportive of some of the government’s policies but not of others. These days, parang may stigma if you criticize. Everything has been given political color. And you end up having to defend everything you believe in.

Even if you try to correct false information, it seems you can only reach a certain audience.

Hindi namin kaya ang reach nila.

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Do you think it’s more divisive now than during the elections?

Yes. Because once you become critical of a single policy, you get branded.

Tingin ko mahirap iyon. For people who are not willing to be controversial, baka mag-detach nalang rather than engage more. If people will decide to be more detached, mas mahirap for democracy to thrive. And if this drags on, it might be difficult to bring people together again.

From a procedural point of view, has the polarization made it difficult to get work done?

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that, especially for new politicians like myself, it would have been easier kung same formula siya. Pero ngayon, you have to

IMAGE COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT

Do you think that the election rhetoric set the tone for that?

Oo. Pero we also have to be aware that it’s not happening only in the Philippines. Elsewhere in the world, ganito ang tenor ng engagement.

tread by yourself. But again, I think we can also use it as a blessing in disguise.

So right now, I just follow my instincts.

Sa akin lang, basta sigurado ako of my intentions, I will do what I feel is best, and most of the time that works.

STRANGER IN THE PALACE

IMAGE COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT

Late last year, the Vice President was told to desist from attending Cabinet meetings. She would resign from the Cabinet in early December, saying “This is the last straw, because it makes it impossible for me to perform my duties.”

You said that the President’s early statements prepared you for the first couple of months. Going to the flipside, what has been your biggest surprise so far?

One, that they appointed me despite the earlier pronouncements. While I was there, I honestly thought that we could work together. We have some major differences in the way we look at things. But when I was starting, I had the impression that he would be giving me a free hand, that he would be supportive.

When I was forced to resign, ang daming regrets dahil nakita ko na what needed to be done, at mayroon na akong plano on how to do it. Pero ngayon, with the way things are going, baka mabuti na din na nangyari iyon. Ngayon, buwelo.

Buwelo in the sense that, what we want to do with Angat Buhay, we are able to do without feeling restricted.

Have there been any surprises that have made you think, “Oh, that’s great”?

Most of the economic policies. Unanguna, the President decided to continue with the macroeconomic policies of the previous administration. I think that’s a good thing. Nandiyan iyong tax reform package, which even if it isn’t perfect, it’s for the greater good.

Pangalawa, iyong decision to beef up on infrastructure. Iyong peace process, nakukulangan ako, especially in regard

to Mindanao, but the fact that it is one of the more urgent things that this administration identified, I’m all for it.

Maraming hindi ako sang-ayon, halimbawa iyong death penalty. The manner in which the drug problem is being handled. The push for federalism, I have reservations about it.

Pero iyon nga, sana you’re allowed to agree on some, and allowed to disagree on others.

A lot of the pushback against dissent happens on social media. How have you and your staff been engaging?

From the very start, my instruction has been to take the high road. Huwag pansinin.

But I think that to a certain extent, we were also wrong.

There was so much fake news coming out. And lies repeatedly said become the truth.

So by the beginning of this year, we decided na susubukan naming sagutin ang mga mali.

And we have been doing that. Pero mahirap dahil sobrang dami talaga nila. And even if you try to correct false information, it seems you can only reach a certain audience.

Hindi namin kaya ang reach nila. So it has become a challenge.

Mas conscious na rin kami sa comms.

Dati, basta ginagawa mo ang trabaho mo, okay na. But these days, you will be accused of not doing anything. Kaya ngayon, we document things, we make known our initiatives. It’s a continuing struggle for the office.

You mentioned the move to federalism a while back. I don’t think that would have gained traction if the lower house supermajority wasn’t formed.

As an LP insider, why do you think so many in the party switched sides?

It isn’t surprising if you look at the history of the party.

Before President Noy [Aquino] became president, there were only a handful of LP members. Nag-swell lang naman sila after the elections.

Para sa akin, this should be seen as an opportunity for the party to, pangit ang term, but maybe cleanse. Ang idea sa isang party, you stand for the same principles, the same values. Parang ngayon na kakaunti na lang kami, sinasabi ko na gamitin na natin ito na pagkakataon para yayain ang mga likeminded namin, to make sure that those who will stay will be staying for the right reasons. Kaya mas excited ako.

There are so many opportunities now to reinvent the party into something

We have gotten in touch with individuals who only have the best interest of the people in their hearts.

If we are only able to harness all of these, marami talagang puwedeng gawin.

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in touch with individuals who only have the best interest of the people in their hearts. And I’m not just talking about politicians. Maraming mga tao na kahit hindi politiko, they are willing to help.

Marami rin na mga politiko na very firm on their convictions and views. If we are only able to harness all of these, marami talagang puwedeng gawin. And Angat Buhay is one proof of that.

What do you mean by reinventing it?

Because it does seem like the criticism against the party is louder than ever.

What should the party be, and what should change?

Ideally, the membership would be composed of people who believe in the basic principles of liberal democracy.

But after President Noy won in 2010, parang ang daming sumali na hindi naman na-internalize iyon. Of course it’s a good thing that you’re there because you’re loyal or supportive, but loyalty to one person is not the essence of a party.

Iyong sinasabi kong reinvent, ibalik sa kung ano siya noong umpisa. Because if we don’t do that now, the same thing will happen in the future. If another liberal wins the presidency, dadami ulit kami; kung matalo sa sunod, mababawasan na naman.

We had the opportunity to visit South Africa and look into the Democratic Alliance, which is like the sister party of the LP there. And it made us hope that we will be able to convert the party into something like it.

Where even if you’re the minority, the members are still those who really believe in the essence of the party.

Otherwise, parang sumilong ka lang nang hindi mo naiintindihan kung ano ang sinisilungan mo.

That again is a very different position from the majority, which believes that the only way a lawmaker can function is by joining the incumbent.

Yes. There can always be alliances with other parties. Pero sa akin, iyong alliances dapat per-issue basis. So that you retain your essence [as a party]. Kung sumali ka kasi gusto mong makinabang, or sumali ka kasi ayaw mong ma-marginalize, I think you’re joining for the wrong reasons.

If you retain your essence, parang 22

kayang i-convert din ang buong electoral process, so that mas pag-uusapan ang paniniwala. Magiging mas thought out, mas policy-oriented, hindi ang kung kanino ka kakampi. For the longest time, ganoon tayo. Politics of convenience.

Are you in touch with major party figures? Have you talked to your running mate, former Secretary Mar Roxas lately?

Hindi eh. I think he’s been out of the country. I don’t recall the last time I saw him pero medyo matagal-tagal na. But from time to time, I seek the counsel of the former President. Lalo kapag may hindi ako naiintindihan. His counsel has been very valuable for me to understand a lot of policies, not just of the former administration, but of the present. Siya ang nagbibigay ng lalim: bakit ito ginawa, bakit hindi ito ginagawa.

At this point, what do you think makes a proper opposition?

One that doesn’t oppose for the sake of opposing. Mas magiging relevant siya kung malalim yung discussion on the issues. And not rushed. Mas organic dapat. It forms by itself. When you brand yourself as the opposition and just look for whatever issue to oppose, tingin ko hindi iyon malalim. And when you do that, you become irrelevant.

It’s very important that you be able to communicate the reasons why you are opposing. Kasi kung hindi, kahit ang lakas ng boses mo, walang makikinig.

Opposition is essential to a democracy, but it has to be relevant.

In terms of outlook, would you say that you are more realistic now? Are you even more optimistic?

Both. We now understand how politics work. I think what pushed us to understand is the bleeding of the party. It made us understand that there are so many political considerations that play into everything.

Optimistic because we have gotten

STANDING STRONG

President Rodrigo Duterte was unable to attend the Independence Day event at Rizal Park last June, prompting the Vice President to lead the ceremonies.

One last question. You came from Iligan to visit Marawi evacuees, just less than 24 hours ago, in fact. How was your visit?

Okay naman. We weren’t allowed to go inside. They locked down Marawi. They opened it already for a few days pero parang three days ago, may sniper attack na naman.

So it was closed even for relief agencies?

Hindi. Parang yesterday was the second that they locked it down again and that - yun talaga yung request ng mga taga-dun if they can lock down only a portion of Marawi. Kasi parang they locked down the entire province.

How were the people there?

Yung conditions sa evacuation center is very good pero gusto na talaga nila bumalik eh. Yesterday was day 35. Even the workers, yung mga volunteer workers, mga employees of government agencies who are there, they already feel spent.

IMAGE COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT

that it should have been from the very start.

Can you give us an overview of Angat Buhay and its direction?

Angat Buhay is an anti-poverty advocacy program. Our plan is to select a few local government units who really need help.

We do not see ourselves competing with services that the government already provides. Pinupunuan namin ang hindi napupunuan ng gobyerno.

In the beginning, we determined the 50 poorest provinces, and from there we selected the towns with the highest poverty incidences. But because we knew we would not have access to government resources, mahalaga sa amin na ang local official, maayos. Those who are proactive, and with a proven track record.

From 50, we are now working with 127 communities. Our dream is to meet all our targets by the end of six years.

Because we have very specific score cards. Halimbawa, hunger and food security. And every year, iba ang metrics.

I think we’re achieving much more than what we envisioned at first. Napakarami pala ng gustong tumulong. ‘Pag nalalaman nila na may programa na ganito, “Uy, gusto ko din!” Social media is a big help also.

We set aside three days every week to visit our poorest communities and when we visit, we bring along our partners.

Ang pinakaresulta nito, mas malaking tulong ang binibigay nila. Mas dumadami ang engagement nila. Mas nagyayaya sila ng mas maraming kakilala to be part of it. Kasi na-immerse.

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FUTURE RITUALS A rare summing up of Norberto Roldan’s life provides a new way of considering the confession box that has become the device through which the artist tackles religion and politics WORDS BY DODO DAYAO PHOTOS BY GERIC CRUZ

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orberto Roldan, Peewee to most of us, is telling me how he almost became a priest. This is the first of many such curveballs he throws the afternoon we sit down to talk: how he spent eight years in the seminary, only to be lured into taking up advertising in the same university he was also supposed to spend the last four years needed to fulfill his priesthood. Of course, as curveballs go, aspirations to priesthood probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to me or to anyone familiar with his oeuvre. The profuse, fervid appropriation of religious icons has been a constant and prominent aspect in his work, albeit often

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“If I hadn’t gone to Bacolod, I’d probably still be in advertising. If I hadn’t gone to Australia, I would’ve gone up to the mountains. Either way, I wouldn’t have become a visual artist.”

situated in rather dichotomous junctures that re-direct its spiritual and anthropological charge into more subversive political sentiments, with a predilection to tease the overlaps between sacred and profane, religion and revolution, anthropology and metaphor, that they are from time to time misconstrued as bordering on sacrilege, which he insists they aren’t.

His exhaustive Vargas Museum retrospective in September, Rituals of Invasion and Resistance, endeavoring as it does to curate 25 years of installations, is fraught with examples, including a third iteration of his confessional box, first exhibited in MO_Space, which simulates the solemnity of confession while tangentially critiquing how the Spanish friars used the sacrament as tool for both interrogation and sexual exploitation. Yet, as much as Roldan and the Church have long since parted ways, particularly when it comes to celibacy, same-sex marriage, and contraceptives—issues he doesn’t think the Church will reverse its stance on during his lifetime—he remains a severely lapsed believer.

“I don’t think I can become a regular Catholic because of this,” he says. “At least the new Pope has rejected the creation myth.”

He is also quite critical of the Church’s increasing political conservatism. “The Church used to be one of the staunchest allies of the revolution. When I was in Negros, three of the NPA’s strongest cadres were ex-priests.” He’s talking about the seven years he spent in Negros, seven years that were pivotal to both his life and eventually his art, seven years that started with the birth of his firstborn and the decision of his then-wife to migrate to Bacolod, which forced him to cut short his first incursion into corporate servitude, determined now to start over and raise a family in a new place.

Two turns of events changed his life when he got there: he returned to academe for livelihood and his wife inherited her family’s 60-hectare sugar farm. In the confluence of becoming a

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teacher, where he met and befriended activist artists like Charlie Co and Nuni Alvarado, and becoming a landlord, where he was confronted with the social condition at eye level, the bourgeois careerist he used to be had his most crucial awakening. “When I came to Bacolod, I was politically naïve. No activist blood in my veins. But I was slowly politicized.”

Tiempos muertos could very well have been the trigger. Dead season is what they call the two months of every year where work on the sugar farms stops and workers would borrow money from their landlords to feed themselves and their families, then spend the rest of the next working year paying it off.

The burden of having to dole out for their farm’s workers for the rest of their lives hit him with all the brunt of enlightenment and the impulse to activate change. “When you inherit a farm, you also inherit its workers and you inherit them for life. I understood their plight. But there’s a whole system in place that prevents you from fixing the problem. It’s a vicious cycle.

Here was real poverty. Here was real hunger.” He tried to buck the system by carving out a patch of land for his workers to till and harvest, but this only earned the ire of their neighbor farms, whose workers demanded the same from their landlords. Despite setbacks, his empathy for their condition ultimately spurred him into a streak of activism that lasted from 1980 to 1987, in what may well be one of the most turbulent periods in our political history, as a dictatorship crumbled and a new regime installed itself. Before those seven years came to a finish, he got his workers unionized, turned his house into a sanctuary for wounded warriors, and saw his marriage all but dissolved. By the end of those seven years, he had exiled himself to Australia. By the end of those seven years, too, he had found his calling. “If I hadn’t gone to Bacolod, I’d probably still be in advertising. If I hadn’t gone to Australia, I would’ve gone up to the mountains. Either way, I wouldn’t have become a visual artist.”

PORTRAIT: GERIC CRUZ; GROUP PHOTO BY GIL NARTEA; ARTWORK IMAGES COURTESY OF MO_SPACE

THE SHADOWS OF HIS PAST

From top: Roldan behind prototypes of his confessional boxes; a young Roldan (first from left) in 1991 with some of the Bacolod artists that form Pamilya Pintura: Nunelencio Alvarado, Jojo Regollo, Dennis Ascalon, Boysie Imperial, and Charlie Co.; from his Altars of Chabet.

Opposite: two pieces from the MO_ Space show In Search of Lost Time.

As much as he is known for his art, Roldan is known for Green Papaya, the independent artist’s space he has been running with a succession of different collaborators since 2000, after retiring from a second incursion into corporate servitude that managed to last longer and finish up relatively more lucrative.

“I consider Green Papaya an extension of my practice, the impact it had on my own development as an artist is indelible, but it’s also an extension of my activism in Bacolod.”

After returning from Australia in 1990, he helped start Black Artists in Asia with the activist artists who had broken away from the underground after the regime change, then under their aegis, subsequently founded VIVA ExCon. Green Papaya will be curating the forthcoming 2018 edition of VIVA ExCon in Roxas City, which has become one of the longestrunning biennales in the country and the world. The irony of it is that Green Papaya will be closing its own doors forever in 2021. Funding has been a constant issue, pushing the space to the brink of closing down many times, but Roldan also wants Green Papaya to end on its own terms, and there is something empowering about curating your own destiny. Besides, there are other things that need doing, not least being the exhaustive documentation of the immense Green Papaya archives, but also books Peewee wants to publish down the line, not to mention his own practice. He plans to retire to Bacolod after Green Papaya closes but he has no plans to stop working.

There’s an insidious sense of symmetry in play as the conversation winds down, echoing as it has the thrust and sentiment of his recently concluded show at MO_Space. Named after the Marcel Proust heptalogy that he admits to never having read, In Search of Lost Time somehow manages to look forward by way of looking back, breaking down his own narratives in a sort of reverse nostalgic reflex that fulfills the terms of what Proust qualifies as the only real voyage of discovery, the fitting of one’s self with new eyes to see everything afresh. These past lives Peewee has lived have remained unmentioned in even the most exhaustive appraisal of his work, mostly out of how he has never talked about them in public.

But they’re a fresh vantage point from which to look at his body of work, ultimately nuancing and illuminating whatever I think I know about the man and his art. As talk turns to things coming full circle, it becomes tinged with melancholy but also with anticipation, a pervasive sense of looking forward by looking back, of being fitted with new eyes to see things afresh.

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RANGE OF VISION As he celebrates 25 years of creating some of the most moving images in cinema, cinematographer Neil Daza sheds light on the making of the pictures while Rogue reflects on their impact WORDS BY PHILBERT DY

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or over 25 years, Neil Daza has been shooting some of the most memorable sequences in Filipino cinema.

And he’s been doing it at all levels of the industry. He is Chito Roño’s preferred cinematographer, working with him in 2000’s Laro sa Baga, and then joining him on Spirit Warriors. On mainstream TV, he had a key role in the smash hit Be Careful with My Heart, shooting the popular television series in high definition format. He’s also a mainstay in the independent movie scene, his veteran eye bringing a sense of polish to several low-budget features that made a splash in the early days of digital filmmaking.

An exhibit of his behind-the-scenes photos runs in the Cultural Center of the Philippines from the entire month of August to the second week of September, and the images tell a story of an artist who explores all corners of his craft, never getting comfortable with just doing one thing.

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DEKADA ’70

SEROKS

Dekada ’70 was the fifth film that Daza had worked on with director Chito Roño.

It’s striking when you list them all down and see just how different they were from each other. Laro sa Baga was a sexy coming-of-age film. Spirit Warriors was a fantasy adventure. La Vida Rosa was a romantic crime film. Yamashita: The Tiger’s Treasure was a huge adventure production, best remembered for its heavy use of visual effects. At this point, Daza hadn’t really shot that many films yet, but he was already proving to be one of the most versatile cinematographers in the industry. In Dekada ’70, Daza muted the colors of this prestige drama, the interiors capturing the spirit of the times—political turmoil invading this typical Filipino home.

NEIL DAZA: Dekada ‘70’s story connects on a very personal level. I grew up during martial law and it was my own experiences which became the motivation in lighting the film. It was also a minimalist approach.

I didn’t want any fancy lighting or camera work that would distract the audience from the political drama happening on screen.

In 2006, digitial filmmaking was just on the rise. Both Cinemalaya and Cinema One Originals had just started, and no one was really sure if this whole independent film thing was going to work out. It’s really amazing to think how much cameras have improved in the last 10 years. The digital movies back then were generally grainy, low-contrast pieces of work, few able to transcend the limitations of the technology. But Daza took on the challenge of shooting film noir with the cameras of the time, and the results are nothing short of miraculous. The movie looks good, even by today’s standards, Daza’s neon-soaked compositions really bringing the film’s world to life.

ND: While doing research for Bayaning 3rd World in 1998 (I shot for 11 days with Mike de Leon for this movie), we watched a lot of 1940s and 50s black-and-white noir films. So when Ed Lejano told me he wanted a noir-ish look for Seroks, I just went back to that noir-feel research and made it more modern by using color and camera movement in the narrative.

2002, CHITO ROÑO

2006, ED LEJANO

LAST FULL SHOW / GOD ONLY KNOWS

2005 AND 2008, RESPECTIVELY; MARK V. REYES Daza worked on these short films with Mark V. Reyes, a Filipino filmmaker based in the US. Both shorts explore the underbelly of Filipino life, so the visuals are a striking contrast to Daza’s mainstream work. By this time, he had already shot Feng Shui, and had just come off a Diether Ocampo romcom, both created with a certain level of gloss. But Daza seemed to have no problem finding the odd beauty in a rundown theater where illicit things happen, or a motel where a mother makes a very terrible choice.

ND: These were shot during the transition from film to digital. LFS was shot on 35mm film and went to the bleached bypass process in the lab, giving the film the desaturated colors and really rich glossy blacks. GOK’s visual treatment dictated that we shoot the film on digital format so we could just “linger on” and “observe” Angel Aquino’s character.

SAMPAGUITA, NATIONAL FLOWER

2010, FRANCIS XAVIER PASION At the time, Sampaguita, National Flower was touted as one of the first Filipino films to be shot completely on a digital SLR. Daza, who at this point was a revered veteran of the industry, was still exploring the technology, learning to use new tools. Daza would take advantage of the light weight of the cameras and their ability to shoot in low light to capture scenes of street kids running around at night, with nothing but the street lamps to light the scenes.

Daza would later work again with the late Francis Pasion on Bwaya, refining visual and narrative sensibilities in a more rural setting.

ND: I shot Sampaguita like a documentary.

I actually felt the film was more of a documentary than a feature film.

Daza took on the challenge of shooting film noir with the cameras of the time, and the results are nothing short of miraculous, his neon-soaked compositions really bringing the world of Seroks to life.

THE FINEST FOUR The best photographed films, according to Neil Daza

APOCALYPSE NOW DOP: Vittorio Storaro

RAISE THE RED LANTERN DOP: Lun Yang and Fei Zhao

THE TENANT DOP: Sven Nykvist

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN DOP: Emmanuel Lubezki

BADIL

2013, CHITO ROÑO

MOVING PICTURES

Dick Israel sells votes in Chito Roño’s compelling Badil. Above: One of the scenes Daza worked on in Mike de Leon’s Bayaning Third World. Opposite: A scene from the musical Emir.

Badil was shot on a low budget as part of a now-defunct Film Development Council of the Philippines project that gave grants to the “masters” of Filipino cinema. This was actually the second time Daza and Roño produced a film with money sourced from the government. The first was 2010’s Emir, a musical extravanganza partly shot in the Middle East that had the express support of the Office of the President.

Again, Daza seems comfortable working at either end of the budget spectrum, but it’s when he encounters limitations that his talent really shines. Between the two, Badil has more personality, its restrained, desaturated images of a small-town election creating indelible impressions on everyone who saw them.

ND: We didn’t have budget for lights so we made our own practical lights from ordinary bulbs. Which was fine since I wanted Badil to be dark. Just like living in a remote island where three to four brownouts happen in a day and power is out by 8 p.m. and the people are awake and are used to moving around in the dark.

“NEIL DAZA 25 TIMES: IMAGES FROM BEHIND THE CAMERA” RUNS FROM AUGUST 5 UNTIL SEPTEMBER 10 AT THE PASILYO VICENTE MANANSALA IN THE CCP.

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THE PERSISTENCE OF EXCESS Food imagery has become a snoozefest of late. Thank heavens for the return to print of Salvador Dali’s Les Diners de Gala, a fantastical culinary journey from the great surrealist, inveterate host and frustrated cook WORDS BY JAM PASCUAL

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OUR DALI BREAD

The banal concern of physical nourishment is taken to a different plane altogether in this cookbook, with sections on eggs and seafood, snails and frogs, and aphrodisiacs.

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mountain of lobster crowned by a body bleeding fountains.

Choice cuts of meat spread across a vast plain like ancient monuments. A cube of earth and sky, sliceable and consumable.

If circumstances were different, these surreal portrayals of culinary indulgence would’ve faded into obscurity. For a time, Les Diners de Gala, a cookbook conceived by Salvador Dali for those who didn’t give two shits about counting calories, was extremely hard to find. Only a few hundred copies existed when it was published in 1973. Lucky for us, Taschen (taschen.com) has reprinted the book in all its distinctly Dali-esque weirdness.

Those who only know of Dali through his The Persistence of Memory will find it surprising that the mustachioed master of the surreal was deeply involved in the culinary arts. In fact, Dali designed the logo for

Chupa Chups (no joke, ask Google), embraced commercial work (see the short film Destino, his collaboration with Walt Disney), and hosted lavish dinner parties with his wife Gala.

According to Hank Hine, executive director of the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, Dali was a child when he expressed his desire to be a cook. Not exactly a standard case of cause and effect, but who are we to question the artist on how dreams manifest?

The illustrations of dishes in this book look like the kind one might see in Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, or on the pages of the so-called world’s strangest book, Codex Seraphinianus, had its author Luigi Serafini graduated from culinary school. Believe it or not, the 136 recipes in Les Diners de Gala have their basis in the actual world, with meals by chefs from Parisian restaurants such as Maxim’s and

TASCHEN

AGENDA BOOKS

MAD EATS Other bizarre cooking compendiums that the uninspired chef may have never known he wanted

TASCHEN

ROALD DAHL’S REVOLTING RECIPES “It’s a great idea, but God knows how you’ll do it,” Roald said in a note discovered weeks after his death.

Felicity Dahl would later accept her husband’s challenge, affectionately compiling and recreating the absurd yet familiar foods that had appeared in his children’s books, from Willy Wonka’s Nutty Crunch Surprise to Mosquitoes’ Toes and Wampfish Roes Most Delicately Fried.

WILD RASPBERRIES A parody of every haute French cuisine cookbook of the 50s, Wild Raspberries was written by socialite Suzie Frankfurt, illustrated by a young Andy Warhol, and transcribed by Warhol’s mother. It includes favorites like Omelet Greta Garbo (made without eggs, to be eaten in a candlelit room) and Dorothy Killgallen’s Gateau of Marzipan (which requires a portable refrigerator from Abercrombie & Fitch).

70S DINNER PARTY: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE DOWNRIGHT UGLY OF RETRO FOOD Anna Pallai knew she’d struck gold when she found her mother’s old greasestained cookbooks.

However, 70s Dinner Party isn’t actually a cookbook—but it is a hilarious exploration of a glorious era that taste forgot, serving up photos of mildly horrifying sandwich cake, piquant meatloaf, and aspic.

So much aspic.

Believe it or not, the 136 recipes in the book have their basis in the actual world, with meals by chefs from Parisian restaurants like Maxim’s.

Lasserre. You’ll find in the table of contents 12 chapters dedicated to a variety of dishes and ingredients. There’s a section for eggs and seafood, snails and frogs, and even for aphrodisiacs, which is quite unsettling. Still, you wouldn’t be interested in this book if you weren’t amenable to exploring other dimensions of sensory pleasure.

Appropriately, the recipes are written in a way that reflects the outlandishness of the whole project. For example, the recipe for Young Turkey with Roquefort begins with “Pick a tender and wellfleshed young turkey. Clean it and pass it through a flame; we are going to stuff it.” Lead the way, Mr. Dali, sir.

Reviewers of the book believe that the reprint of Les Diners de Gala will impact the world of contemporary cooking—though how is anyone’s guess. Perhaps this cookbook from another world and time might find a new home in an age of hybrids and hodgepodges, of Cronuts and cheeseburger bombs and ube-flavored donuts sprinkled with gold leaves. Or it might just blow all these gimmicks out of the water, and redefine the job of the chef—to make the unfamiliar appetizing, and the appetizing unfamiliar.

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FULL STEAM AHEAD

The Mabantas open The Shipyard in Manila, and we can’t help but wonder: Is this the makings of a gentrified Malate?

WORDS BY JACLYN CLEMENTE-KOPPE ILLUSTRATION BY VINCENT QUILOP

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T

hat evening, rain poured over Manila. The Uber driver aired his concerns in the form of small talk over strains of Air Supply.

This area gets flooded, he said, as we traversed the traffic on San Andres Bukid going toward Jorge Bocobo Street.

I’m aware of the soggy possibilities; these are my old stomping grounds, having done the rounds of Atienza-era Malate when Italian jeans-clad collegiate types roamed Julio Nakpil and Maria Y. Orosa Streets. Yes, clogged drains are a perennial problem here, and judging from the flooded sidewalk in front of The Shipyard (578 General Malvar Street, Malate, Manila) things have not changed much.

We jumped over the substantial puddle and made it into the dry, open foyer of the two-month-old industrial space. It’s owned by Dixie and Jaco Mabanta, the father-and-son team that brought you El Chupacabra, Señor Pollo, and Crying Tiger in the now-hip Poblacion, Makati. The two are widely credited for turning the red-light district into the formidable

dining and drinking destination it is today. Jaco now runs Señor Pollo and has also taken the reins of their freshest venture.

The Shipyard was built using old container vans connected and piled over each other to make the two-story structure that stands on the lot of business partner, Johnssen Li (or Jansen Li?). Upon entering, you see the bar in front and two counters on either side—one offering chicken dishes and sides, the other döner (Turkish kebab made of meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie) and grilled meat on sticks. Cocktails here are cheap: the priciest appears to be a Don Papa rum-based drink at P200. At P290, a bucket of beer is sure to draw in the college crowd.

Nineties grunge blared out of the speakers, perhaps a little too loudly for my sensitive, late-thirties cochlea.

We sought refuge within the confines of the air-conditioned bar and grill that houses a few tables, choosing the one closest to the window with a view overlooking the street.

The rain stopped and the food

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THE NEW OLD FASHIONED

JUST DOCKED

The two-level structure, located in Bocobo Street near Malvar in Malate, is made up of shipping containers, the latest in a series of open-air food haunts from the Mabantas.

arrived. Chicken crispers over fries were a good start, so were the assorted grilled barbecue on sticks, which came with salsa verde and spicy sauce. The grilled pork tenga was crispy and on the right side of chewy; both pork and chicken isaw were flavorful and cleantasting. Pork barbecue is a bestseller here, and for good reason—the meat is tender and tasty and the glaze is sweet.

My companion was surprised that the sisig was made of chicken; too good to be other than pork, she noted.

But it was, and the perfect texture achieved with the use of crumbled crispy chicken skin. Señor Pollo’s fried chicken is served here, too. Opt for the jalapeño mac and cheese and garlic mashed potatoes for sides; they are decadent and delicious. To prove that The Shipyard’s chicken game is just as strong, we were made to try the döner with lemon rice. The grilled chicken thigh fillet is marinated with Middle Eastern herbs and spices, and they were not stingy in flavoring the turmeric-yellow rice, either.

Like other Mabanta eateries, the food here is well-researched and properly executed. Which is why I pitied the two young girls who sat near us drinking their beer sans pulutan. It’s really such a shame.

Since the rain stopped, people slowly trickled in, and I watched the crowd outside our capsule as they chatted over Eddie Vedder’s throaty growls. I wondered if they got it, if this hard-working, middle-class Manila crowd understood how this quality of food at these prices is a freaking godsend in an area teeming with fast-food joints and tea houses.

I interviewed the elder Mabanta years ago when Poblacion was just booming, and he dropped that famous quote from Field of Dreams (or Wayne’s World, for the people of my generation). “If you build it, [they] will come,” he said. That was exactly what he and Jaco did in the squalor that was once the armpit of the business district. Perhaps it was something they wished to replicate for the dank streets of once-glorious Malate.

As the puddle of rain in front slowly receded, passersby curiously peered at The Shipyard’s splashy murals and chalkboard menus. Some enter the place, others will come back another day. They certainly will: the Mabantas already called it.

Why are more and more people ordering the Negroni? It’s sweet.

It’s simple. And we need a drink WORDS BY JEROME GOMEZ

Jaco Mabanta’s Malate Shipyard’s main man points us to personal haunts that make the area still worth the drive

1 CAFE ADRIATICO Their pork adobo is easily one of the best in town.

Also the quaint, rustic atmosphere is really pleasant.

TEL. NO. 5237294

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TANABE Nice, authentic environment with a Japanese sushi chef and Japanese clientele. Their bento meals are incredibly good and complete.

TEL. NO. 5284689

3 SHAWARMA SNACK CENTER Best Arab food in the city. This branch in particular, their flagship.

Excellent lamb and chicken biryani.

TEL. NO. 5212121

4 THE OARHOUSE PUB A nice, quiet place to have a draft beer with a couple of friends. It’s a Malate institution with plenty of history.

TEL. NO. 5167296

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here’s a complicated history to it but we’ll keep it simple. The Italian count Camillo Negroni was in Florence and fancied a stiffer drink. So he ordered an Americano but with a healthy measure of gin—and asked the bar to hold the soda. Thus was born the Negroni, a name that’s been slipping out of drinkers’ mouths of late, although its revival has come earlier in the West.

The cocktail figure Gary Regan, who wrote The Negroni: Drinking to La Dolce Vita, With Recipes and Lore, has undoubtedly contributed to the renewed allure through his research on the drink’s evolution, as well as its illustrious associations: Italian cinema’s golden age; Andy Warhol’s staff at Interview (it’s said to have been their favorite); Fiat titan Gianni Agnelli (who was said to have introduced it to Jackie O on a sailing trip).

So why are we warming up to the drink? Perhaps for the same reason we started cozying up to the Old Fashioned a few years back, when mixology became a buzzy word: we like it simple. We were being bombarded with all kinds of bitters and cocktail jargon that we opted for the easiest taste to grasp.

Like the Old Fashioned, the Negroni is mostly sweet, but textured enough in its mixture to give it character.

“I think it’s possibly cool to drink a Negroni now because it’s fashionable,” says Geoffrey Canilao, the Filipino mixologist of Copenhagen’s Balderdash. “But it probably goes deeper if you think about it. Filipino food is typically sweet, salty and acidic. Adding an element of bitterness from Negroni is coming up with a perfect aperitif or digestif to the habit of eating all the time with friends and family—without knowing they are fulfilling the structure of an umami.”

Recently, he makes his Negroni thus: 25ml Hepple Gin (for that taste of fresh green juniper, pine, and green apple), 30ml Campari, 35ml Drapo Sweet vermouth— on the rocks with fresh pine and sliced grapefruit. But if you consider the 50 to 100 different botanicals and spices that go into these ingredients, the Negroni may not be so simple after all.

Adding an element of bitterness from the Negroni is a perfect aperitif or digestif to the habit of eating all the time.

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SWEET ECSTASY To celebrate a decade of Rogue, we asked pastry chef Miko Aspiras to create a decadent indulgence WORDS BY JEROME GOMEZ PHOTOS BY MIGUEL NACIANCENO

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his is not the first time Rogue has collaborated with Miko Aspiras, the name behind the FrenchJapanese bistro Le Petit Souffle, the cookie specialist Scout’s Honor, and Freezerburn, the gelato and snack combo outlet. “This is actually the third year I’m making special ‘Rogue’ desserts for Rogue, and I couldn’t be more excited,” says the pastry chef who in the past created a cookie creme brulee out of pig’s blood for this magazine, and the Rogue Magnum for the now defunct Magnum Cafe—a dessert composed of half a bar of the famed ice cream stick immersed

THE ROGUE EXCLUSIVES

Right: The Carte D’Or Gelato Sandwiches come in Pistachio, Double Chocolate and Salted Caramel.

Opposite: The cake especially created for Rogue’s 10th year is called Strawberry Balsamic Basque Cheesecake. Below: Aspiras who is set to launch new Carte d’Or flavors later this year.

in a heady cocktail of meringue, fresh strawberries and mascarpone mousseline.

The abovementioned creations, Aspiras says, have served more than these pages; the desserts were, in his own words, “pleasantly received and patronized by many dessert lovers” when he carried them in his dessert joints. And so he’s back, indulging this magazine’s editors once again to a challenge, this time to make a special cake to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Rogue. We told him that we wanted something that speaks of the brand’s love for history, but that we also want it very contemporary. We told him we wanted something that is decadent but the sort expressed in a way that is refined. The rest of the thinking we left up to him. The guy knows exactly what to do. He’s worked in some of the best hotels in the country, and has aced international dessert competitions. In his short career, he has achieved that twofold success of earning the respect of his peers in the culinary community, and making a successful brand of himself.

And we couldn’t be more pleased with the result. “I made sure that it was extra yummy and special,” Aspiras tells us of the cake for Rogue. “First of all it is called Strawberry Balsamic Basque Cheesecake. The design is heavily dependent on the flavors that I added to (the bespoke bakery by Le Petit Souffle) Workshop’s best seller.

The cheesecake itself is inspired by my recent trip to Spain in the Basque country where I fell in love with this

cheesecake by a restaurant called La Viña [a quick Google search would have you know that some people refer to the dessert as the best cheesecake in the world]. My version is rustic and charming with a slightly burnt top. To make it more ‘rogue,’ I added tons of fresh strawberries and drizzled some balsamic honey syrup.”

As an added favor, the pastry chef—who recently also celebrated a landmark occasion through his marriage to partner JV San Juan last June 30—created another dessert for us, one incorporating the Carte D’Or Gelato of which he was tasked to develop new flavors to be launched later this year. “It’s called Carte D’Or Macaron Gelato Sandwiches,” says Aspiras of the sweet treats pictured

above. It comes in Pistachio, Double Chocolate and Salted Caramel varieties, which are actually existing flavors of Carte D’Or, the gelato brand recently launched in the local market. Apart from the three flavors mentioned, the gelato also comes in Chocolate Hazelnut.

Carte D’or claims to be made from real cream from Australia, with other ingredients sourced from different parts of the world. It’s known to be the leading premium ice cream brand in the UK. The Rogue anniversary cake will soon be made available at the Le Petit Souffle in Mega Fashion Hall’s 3rd Level. We’re already predicting that just like his past creations for us, this one will be a hit.

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A Moment, Please The Moment Group continues to be one of this generation’s driving forces in the Manila restaurant industry. Here, we lay down some numbers that made their last five years.

served in a week in Manam

3.4 TONSOFSHRIMP hand-peeled in the Central Kitchen every month

4forCONDIMENTS every Phat Pho bowl

Guests are willing to wait

37 MINS for a seat in OOMA

OVER 1000 EMPLOYEES 5 YEARS LATER

calories enjoyed from Mess Hall cookies weekly

from Linguini Fini HK to Linguini Fini Manila

on the Manam menu

23K+

1123 KM

DISHES

over 500 bottles displayed at Bank Bar

burgers served since 8Cuts Burgers opened

1.4 MILLION

94

HOUSE CRISPY SISIGS

longest tuna delivered

made daily in Din Tai Fung

4000 xiaolongbaos

OVER

1300

to Mecha Uma

establishments strong

THE MOMENT GROUP 5 YEARS LATER

5ft

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5 ORIGINAL EMPLOYEES

July 2017

Edited by

JEROME GOMEZ

SPACE

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DESIGN + INTERIORS + ARCHITECTURE + TECHNOLOGY

CHARACTER BUILDING After swearing he would never design again, Joseph Rastrullo went on to become one of the most promising names in Philippine interior design WORDS BY MARIE ANNABELLE MARQUEZ PHOTOS BY CZAR KRISTOFF

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“

I

want my furniture to be used,” declares Joseph Rastrullo.

The designer—just shy of 30 years old and dressed in a suit—is giving me a tour of Acceler8, a co-working space along Paseo de Roxas in Makati. His chairs are set around tables and along hallways, cradling their occupants: entrepreneurs in jean jackets and scruffy freelancers winding down for the day. It’s a functional showroom—the first of many, Rastrullo hopes.

Most of the pieces are from Manolo Living, Rastrullo’s interior design brand that celebrates Filipino heritage.

“Manolo Living came out after my grandparents died. That’s why the brand is so connected to people. Some of our pieces are even named after my staff’s grandparents,” he shares.

Each Manolo Living piece is linked to a person, tradition, or memory that evokes nostalgia and familiarity, executed in a design that suits today’s homes. Clean lines, simple shapes, and varied materials reflect regional and historical Filipino and Spanish influences, resulting in modern heritage pieces. “I think what identifies Filipino design is who we are today and, even more so, where we came from,” Rastrullo enthuses. “We want to tell stories through your home.”

IN ITS PLACE

Rastrullo sits on the Remedios, which is based on traditional butaca chairs.

Opposite (from top): Detail of the Remedios; the Farfalla and Ragno chairs, inspired by butterfly wings and spider webs respectively. Previous: Remedios, Manolo, Farfalla, and Ragno.

RASTRULLO.COM; FACEBOOK.COM/MANOLOLIVING

“Once we passed by a barangay in Quezon City with very commercial designs. Budji suddenly said, ‘Joe, I see your work here, and I thought, ‘Shit!’”

Rastrullo recalls with a laugh.

Telling stories comes naturally to Rastrullo, whose journey as a designer is underpinned by many memorable moments.

“In grade school, I thought I was going to be a lawyer,” he confesses.

High school shop classes in industrial drafting led to the happy discovery that he had a knack for drawing with the computer. “Ever since then, I realized you could create interiors, spaces, architecture, and products inside homes. That’s when I knew I was connected with design,” he says. He went on to study industrial design at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB).

In 2009, he embarked on a two-year, unpaid apprenticeship with Philippine design legend Antonio “Budji” Layug.

“I thought I would be helping his studio, but you cannot help a company if you don’t have the same process, mindset, or standards as them. My two years of working with Budji were really for me to grow,” he says.

Rastrullo worked at a small desk back-to-back with Layug, who sat before a larger desk with the rest of the architects. “That’s how I would pass him my work. I’d just turn around and hand it to him. Then, he’d be like, ‘Nope.’ I would draw a hundred sketches a day, and I would get rejected. Once, we passed by a barangay in Quezon City with very commercial designs. As a designer, you want to be known for a certain style. But Budji suddenly said, ‘Joe, I see your work here,’ and I thought, ‘Shit!’” Rastrullo recalls with a laugh.

Rastrullo also credits Layug for his decision to take up his master’s degree in Business Design at Domus Academy in Italy. “He told me that if I wanted to grow as a designer, I had to look at things differently. He told me to go to Milan. I didn’t even ask why. I just tried to make my way to Milan until I got accepted,” he recounts.

Despite completing his degree in a

city renowned for design, Rastrullo returned to the Philippines very frustrated. “I was so disappointed because I was coming back without anything I was really proud of. At the time, I had nothing—no money and no job,” he says. “I told my mom, ‘I’m never going to be a designer. I don’t want to be one anymore.’ But destiny just pulled me back.”

Destiny came in the person of Joey Yupangco, an architect and dean of DLS-CSB’s School of Design and Arts (SDA), who invited the fledgling designer to join Smart City, a program to redesign the urban development of Manila. “I was with big names like Tina Periquet, Toby Guggenheimer, Dom Galicia, and Ed Calma. I didn’t know who they were because I was away,” Rastrullo recalls. “I got so much mentorship from them.”

After Smart City, Yupangco asked him to apply as a professor in SDA’s Industrial Design program, where Rastrullo still teaches.

It was also after returning to the Philippines that Rastrullo reconnected with Layug for a magazine interview. “After the interview, Budji told me, ‘Joe, I have a program I want you to get involved in. Yun pala he wanted to feature me in Manila FAME,” he recalls with an incredulous shake of his head. Rastrullo has since been a mainstay of the country’s premier design event.

His stories are a series of lessons he shares with his students. “I had a lot of ups and downs, and I still have them, but that doesn’t stop me from dreaming and creating,” Rastrullo says. “If people ask me how I got here, I’ll tell them straight, ‘This is what I had to go through. I want you to go through the same thing, or even worse.’ It builds character.

At the end of the day, character is the most important thing you need to succeed.”

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SET IN STONE emblem, which I think is really good.

Mine was like a personal curiosity, like how you could take things further, the things we learned from Mañosa. He does Filipino architecture, but stops at the bahay kubo. So the next step is the bahay na bato. It is Philippine architecture, but we’ll make it more modern. You can look at that as the genesis of the idea.

Dan Lichauco’s modern bahay na bato builds up on the lessons he learned from Mañosa, catching the eye of the first NCCA award for architecture WORDS BY GELO DIONORA INTERVIEW BY PATRICIA CHONG PHOTOS BY CZAR KRISTOFF

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t may only be a source of nostalgia to some, but for acclaimed architect Dan Lichauco, the traditional Filipino home remains a source of inspiration, a dependable concept on which to build and create a structure for contemporary times. It is such a structure that recently won him and his team the Haligi ng Dangal award from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). It is the first award of its kind from the NCCA, honoring achievement in architecture and its allied pursuits. The winning house is the Arnaiz Residence located in San Lorenzo Village in Makati, constructed by Lichauco, a principal partner of Archion Architects. The Arnaiz residence takes inspiration from the design and construction of the bahay na bato, the predominant housing style in the Philippines back in the 19th century. Glass panels and steel ventanillas add a modern touch to the house, complementing traditional elements like narra floors. The awardwinning residence operates with natural ventilation, and the top floor’s glass windows give access to natural light and treetop views, creating a cool provincial atmosphere within an urban environment.

Rogue: The house is based on the concept of the bahay na bato. How did you settle on that?

Lichauco: I’ve been in Francisco Mañosa’s firm for about six years.

He really pushes the Filipino design

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BREATHE EASY

The residence’s design introduces modern elements such as large glass windows (above) and stainless steel ventanillas (below) to the structure of the traditional bahay na bato.

Opposite: Lichauco’s favorite room in the house is framed by ventanillas and features a ceiling done in rattan.

So, it’s a mix of both old and new.

Where did you decide to introduce modern elements?

Everything we do is sight-driven. As an example, if you’re standing in a room, what do you see? A lot of the things on the ground floor are glass, which is the anti-thesis of a bahay na bato because traditionally, the ground floor is basically stone, opening up to the garden and to the landscape.

So one side is glass and on the other side it retains the kind of stone-like appearance, but then you go up.

What’s interesting in the bahay na bato is that the living room, which is on the second floor, opens up to a lot more, giving you more rooms. One of the things we wanted to do was full-length floor to ceiling ventilations. When

you look at [the ventanillas], it actually protects people from falling over, but allows the air to circulate for the entire length of the room. So you can actually open everything up.

You said that you’re really driven about what you feel and what you see. What do you want people to feel when they enter the house?

Hopefully, they’ll see it’s new but familiar. But at the same time the bahay na bato is interesting because it’s a blend of stone architecture and stick architecture. The nipa hut is stick architecture and traditional European houses are made of stone. The difference is that the bahay na bato is stone-based and not structurally based. Traditionally, there’s a post inside that carries the second floor. So it’s like you got a nipa hut, and you put a stone skirt. The construction is uniquely Filipino and then from there, it just allows us to look at that particular drive or sensibility.

But the differences in the way it looks are its heavy base and lighter top. As we go higher and higher, we wanted it to be lighter. And the general idea is that even if you’re in the middle of the city, we wanted you to feel like you’re in the middle of the province.

So you get this kind of rural feel in an urban environment.

“He really pushes the Filipino design emblem. Mine was a personal curiosity, how you could take the things we learned from Mañosa further.”

You said earlier that your firm doesn’t have a particular look—but would you say it has a signature?

Yes. One, our work is clean and angular.

Some friends would call it boxy. It’s very masculine, but at the same time, the style is really open air, comfortable, and tries to use the least amount of energy possible. It’s something that can be sustained.

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HOPE SPRINGS An Italian who calls the Clark Freeport Zone his second home challenges the wanton development of the once charming landscape by opening a members-only club that harks back to a genteel, dressed-up past WORDS BY DEVI DE VEYRA PHOTOS BY MILO SOGUECO

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tefano Occhipinti, a gentleman of taste engaged in the business of fashion and design, is an anachronism in Clark Freeport Zone, Pampanga, the former American military base that is currently undergoing commercial transformation.

There, remains of the idyllic life led

by American soldiers, officers, and their families still stand alongside later additions sanctioned by Clark’s succession of administrators.

Bordered by majestic trees, the stately parade grounds invite joggers, strollers, and dreamers. From a certain vantage point, the mountains frame the scene. Toward sunset with the skies ablaze in hues of yellow, red, and purple, the view grabs and holds fast.

Then you turn around and walk to a nearby enclave of new eateries. The dreamy vision you were holding on to starts to fall apart as you wander into Clark’s present and foreseeable future.

Matam-ih is a few steps away. It’s a challenge to pin down the resto’s design, which resembles a crossbreed of a safari lodge and a country house from an 80s edition of Better Homes & Gardens. Aetas garbed in khaki safari shorts and matching tops serve authentic Kapampangan cuisine alongside a few exotic dishes, like fermented carabao beef tapa, croc sisig, and the de rigueur crickets.

There’s a gazebo with a life-size, neon-lit carabao sculpture pulling 40

REMAINS OF THE DAY

In the enclosed bar, members can leave unfinished bottles in specially designed lockers. Right: Occhipinti remains sympathetic to the cottages’ past. Opposite, from top: the formal dining area decorated with Sydney artist James Dignan’s drawings; blinds bordered with copper define the spaces while maintaining a sense of expanse.

The club’s name is a nod to Renaissance-era Venice, a city that fascinates Occhipinti. He saw the similarities between Clark and Venice’s previous life as a prosperous commercial center that drew merchants of various nationalities.

a cart filled with various crafts.

Somewhere in the area you’ll also find a miniature version of the Eiffel Tower.

This is Clark unfolding its reincarnation in the hands of its present administrators and anointed developers, a place Occhipinti calls his “first home.”

Right after finishing his studies in law and communications, Occhipinti started a company in Pampanga’s Free Port Zone, a usual move at a time when most manufacturers were shifting to countries with lower wages and better incentives for investors. “It’s a secondgeneration family business with headquarters in Rome,” Occhipinti explained.

Clark was kind to Occhipinti, and his affection for Clark hasn’t waned, 13 years later. Occhipinti just signed a lease on another industrial sprawl in preparation for expansion. In April last year, the Italian also opened The Foreign Merchants’ Club, a membersonly restaurant and bar patterned after the exclusive and highly successful Salon 10 in Hong Kong, which Occhipinti co-owned until five years ago. “I wanted to do something fun,” he admitted.

The club’s name is a nod to Renaissance-era Venice, a city that fascinates Occhipinti. He saw

the similarities between Clark, a manufacturing hub-cum-resort and leisure destination teeming with modern-day traders, and Venice’s previous life as a prosperous commercial center that drew merchants of various nationalities.

Just like Clark, Venice at one time was famous for its courtesans and lax prostitution laws. And just like the ancient city, “Clark also had its own version of Venice’s ghettos,” said Occhipinti.

He envisioned a place that evokes the elegant ways of the Old World, where guests can dress up for cocktails and dinner and have real conversations. Occhipinti realized his fantasy in a cottage built just after the turn of the 20th century, one from a row of similar structures facing the parade grounds. Unlike most of his neighbors (which include a local government office and a day care center) who showed no respect for the structures’ heritage, the Italian responded to the cottage with tenderness.

Repairs were made to preserve the cottage’s architectural character and to restore its structural integrity. For the interiors, the Italian invited family and friends to collaborate. Occhipinti proudly gave credit to “the beautiful

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LOVELY BONES

Occhipinti carefully preserved the cottage’s architectural character and restored its structural integrity.

Top: The lounge features low-slung leather seats and tables made in Occhipinti’s factory.

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mind of my twin brother, Fabrizzio.

He was able to come here several times and added something different from what I was thinking.

“The last time he was here, 10 days before the opening, actually, Fabrizzio suggested major revisions—the brass details, ceiling fans—we made it for him. That was his fantasy, and we gave it.”

Most of the furniture and décor were made in Occhipinti’s factory.

The overall design echoes his discreet and laid-back elegant style. There is a formality to his arrangements, but he created a cozy, relaxed mood by choosing low-slung leather lounge chairs and soft lighting set against a calm palette of earthy tones and ivory.

The generous spacing also added to the leisurely tenor of the space.

Unlike other private clubs, The Foreign Merchants’ Club does not require a membership or joining fee; one simply sends a letter of intent, or gets invited. And it’s not for everyone.

It is, as stated in the house rules, “strictly for well-mannered guests only.” The dress code forbids flip-flops and slippers, baseball caps, sleeveless shirts and shorts for the gentlemen, office uniforms, sports attire, and “extreme leather get-up unless with the express permission from management.” Meaning, it’s not a place for conversations with Hells Angels bikers and their chicks, unless granted

a special waiver. Just in case some gentlemen need to know, hustling and solicitation are not allowed either.

“It’s not about the money,” Occhipinti declared. He hopes the club can be a venue for discussing issues that he deeply cares about, such as the plight of Pampanga’s underprivileged and preserving Clark’s heritage. Last May, he opened the club’s doors to non-members for a series of charity dinners benefiting Tuloy Foundation’s Angeles City chapter. Given the Italian’s philanthropic leanings, there will be more of such events in the future.

Occhipinti is also busy renovating another cottage down the road from his club, which he says will be a studio for collaborations with artists and designers. The heritage structure will have a work area as well as sleeping quarters for resident creatives.

The Italian laments the wanton development going on in Clark, with old buildings and trees being bulldozed for new structures that are not even thoughtfully designed. The Foreign Merchants’ Club alongside the creative studio, with the parade grounds before it and a new, massive hotel looming behind, encapsulate Clark’s precarious state. They also serve as a gentleman’s elegant act of protest that hopefully sparks a longing for Clark’s vanishing soul.

THE FOREIGN MERCHANTS’ CLUB, BUILDING 2091, CARDINAL SANTOS STREET, CLARK FREEPORT ZONE; + 63 (0) 45 499-0573; INFO@FMCPH.COM

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TALE OF THE GRASSHOPPER For his latest collaboration with Knoll, Piero Lissoni draws inspiration from the animal with six precision tools for legs WORDS BY GELO DIONORA

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iero Lissoni’s collaborations with American furniture maker Knoll display his penchant for geometry, minimalism, and understatement. Behind their simplicity, however, lies a complex design process.

Educated at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy, the Milanese architect, designer, and art director maintains a holistic work ethic. He begins his projects by taking what he calls a “classical, European approach: working around the individual and the context, to respect the nature in which [I] design,” he once said in an interview. This sensitivity to context and culture is evident in his previous work in the Mamilla Hotel in

Jerusalem, where he complemented traditional architecture with pared down interiors. In designing the Ritz-Carlton Residences in Miami, Lissoni was struck by the quality of natural light in the city, a detail that compelled him to opt for pure, clean, and expansive open floor designs.

This process carries over to his latest collaboration with Knoll.

Inspired by “the animal that has six precision tools for legs,” Lissoni’s Grasshopper table collection features tables with four legs of equal length made from steel elements available in chrome, and burnished, and lacquered finishes.

The tabletops are either circular, or rectangular with rounded corners, made in Ruby Red marble, glass, and

heattreated or fossil woods.

Practically weightless, making them work well with the chairs of the Knoll range, Grasshopper tables are designed with the notion that major decisions, as well as conversations both casual and professional, are typically conducted at the table.

That they stand a little bit lower than most standard tables reflects Lissoni’s foremost design principle: to create not just for a specific function or purpose, but for the human being.

THE TABLE IS SET

The Grasshopper table was designed with the activities around it in mind.

Inset: the designer Piero Lissoni.

WWW.KNOLL.COM

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July 2017

Edited by

JACS SAMPAYAN

THE EYE

Issue

111

FA S H I O N + S T Y L E + G R O O M I N G

As a child, George Clooney was already a big fan of space exploration and wanted to become an astronaut when he grew up. In an unprecedented encounter, the Academy Award-winning actor, director, and producer meets his real-life hero, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, to exchange stories of space and screen WORDS BY PAM QUIÑONES

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orty-eight years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wore NASA-issued Omega Speedmaster Professionals when they boarded the spacecraft that landed them on the moon. As fate would have it, Armstrong left his watch inside the spacecraft on the day they stepped on the lunar surface while Aldrin wore his on his wrist, making it the very first timepiece on the moon. On the 60th anniversary of the Speedmaster, Omega named Aldrin a brand ambassador and released a commemorative edition of the chronograph that has earned the nickname Moonwatch.

Award-winning actor, director, and producer George Clooney was only eight years old when Apollo 11 touched down on the moon. Like most children of his generation, Clooney

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equated astronauts with heroes and considered space travel the ultimate dream. “It was the most exciting time to be a kid. We knew all the astronauts’ names,” he recalls.

For the 60th anniversary of the Speedmaster, Omega brings these two legends of space and screen together for the first time to talk about the heady days of the Apollo program, the pathway to Mars, and a short stint in Dancing with the Stars.

George: There he is!

Buzz: Oh my goodness, I get to meet George! George the man!

George: Wow, you look good. Let me ask you something. When I was growing up, everything was about the space program. Everything was about the possibility of the imagination. Did you understand, at the time, that all of

SPACE RACE

Omega celebrated 60 years of the Speedmaster by bringing two legends together. Previous page: Aldrin in 1969, wearing the Omega Speedmaster inside the Apollo 11.

our hopes and dreams were right there with you?

Buzz: Yeah, the program was progressing. It sure was. I didn’t know where I would be in the progression, but that all changed in favorable directions, fortunately. But let me ask you, what were you doing when we first landed on the moon?

George: I was at home watching the landing on television with my mother and father and my sister. We went outside, and we had this rinky-dink telescope that we bought. I was eight years old and we looked through the telescope and I explained to my parents that I could see you guys walking on the moon—which, of course, was impossible. It was such a huge thing for so many people.

Buzz: It brought the world together.

The pact that we left on the moon was

very appropriate. It said, “We came in peace for all mankind.” And as we were going around in parades, occasionally you’d see a sign that said, “We did it.”

Not “You did it,” but “We did it.”

George: And there was some discussion that you might have been the first on the moon.

Buzz: All the previous space walking was just one person, so the commander stayed inside because there was a lot of experiments to do and a heavy training workload.

Especially on a lunar landing. So there wasn’t a clear history as to what you should do. The symbology of the commander being the first, without a doubt, that has to be done first.

George: And now you want it to continue. You want people to go to Mars.

Buzz: Of course, yeah. But we have to do some things at the moon and bring some nations together. We need to build partnerships. It should be a coalition of nations. Not a couple of wealthy people. It may look that way, because some people are doing some very nice pioneering work. But this should be a world effort.

George: I heard some funny stories.

I heard you were the first person to urinate in space. Is it true?

Buzz: Ah... yeah. In the suit. Usually we don’t do that. It gets a little messy. But when you’re outside for a long time, you know, someone always has to test something ahead of time (laughs). But I have to tell you, I was really jealous of you in Gravity, when you went moving around. Because I was supposed to fly the real maneuvering unit, but at the last minute it was removed. And I was real sorry about that. I had to live my life through you.

George: Yeah, but in the film I ended up not making it. So that was probably better for you. People come up to me all the time and tell me it’s not very realistic in Gravity and I say, “Well, we didn’t really go to space! It was just

a movie.”

Buzz: Well, it was very realisticlooking, especially when the space station started tearing apart. But Sandra [Bullock] really did a beautiful job. Amazing.

George: Isn’t she great! She’s a wonderful actress and an old friend.

We’ve been friends for about 30 years so we had a good time. But overall, I mean, if you think about that century, the 20th century, it really has to be the most amazing century we’ve ever had.

Buzz: My mother was born the year that the Wright brothers first flew.

Marion Moon was her name. Then as a teenager I saw the world in conflict.

That was quite an experience to see.

Then I had a chance to get involved with the military, in the Korean War. I came back and lobbied my way into NASA and ended up on the first landing. And now I’m trying to help other people to land on Mars.

What a time in the Earth’s existence for an individual to be alive. I’m so fortunate for all the things that have come along.

George: You’ve been on the front line of some of the most amazing experiences in our history.

Buzz: It’s not a sense of duty. It’s because I love thinking about how we can do things better.

George: And I like the tux you’re wearing.

Buzz: This tux is from Dancing with the Stars.

George: How did you do?

Buzz: It was an exercise. A really bad exercise. I was kind of happy when I finished.

George: You want to give me the names of some judges you want me to hurt? I’ll take care of them for you.

Buzz: (Laughs) It’s a little late to be changing things. So when are you going to retire?

George: Me? Right now. We’re going to retire to the bar. You and me. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.

“It’s not a sense of duty.

It’s because I love thinking about how we can do things better.”

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47

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THE EYE STYLE

COMMON PROJECTS ORIGINAL ACHILLES SNEAKERS

HIGHER GROUND With streetwear taking a stronghold in high fashion, the sneaker has been kicked up to top-of-mind status PHOTOGRAPHED BY JOHANN BONA ART DIRECTION BY MARK SANTIAGO PRODUCTION ASSISTED BY PATRICIA CHONG AND EUSELA LANDRITO

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July 2017

Edited by

PAOLO ENRICO MELENDEZ

THE SLANT

Issue

111

OPINIONS + IDEAS + PERSPECTIVES

“When the topic turned serious, those same eyes would squint then glare then turn steely, and my posture would involuntarily straighten. I was transfixed.”

As Rogue celebrates its 10th year, we asked three voices to speak of their most memorable work with the magazine. Here, Vanni de Sequera, Philbert Dy, and Paolo Enrico Melendez write of formidable women, irreplaceable rock stars, and once in a lifetime TV shows.

01

Paolo o Enrico Melendez on writing AlDub

ORLD ACCORDING UB, REVISITED “Write what you know” is advice often given to writers. But what happens when that well runs dry? An editor shares how writing about a popular noontime show for Rogue bookended a pivotal phase in his life

I saw w a fully-grown

56 J U LY 2 0 1 7

dislodging even those related to the recent Papal visit. And there were daily updates on multiple YouTube accounts that detailed AlDub-related AlDub related minutiae. minutiae Which was good for me. I hadn’t consumed any significant amount of popular media in a while. And I knew nothing of the series and its stars. I suspected the jumping into a topic this huge would be a kind of freefall.

I was smack in the middle of burn out, you see. I had left a crushing corporate job the year before, had been seeing a shrink since, and continued to be scared pantsless of going out. The simple act of buying groceries, for instance, involved a string of mental warmups meant to convince me that stepping out of my condo didn’t mean certain death.

When I got the invitation to write for Rogue about AlDub, I felt a rapid change of emotions, which was not unlike emerging from a cold airconditoned mall walkway to a packed MRT station.

There were more than enough reasons for me to turn it down. My confidence was shot. My byline, moribund. I didn’t want to admit it, but my knowledge of the larger culture was handicapped by an insulated five

man wave w at Yaya Dub a sketch labeled with her name, although the likeness did not bear any resemblance at all.

years of marketing collateral development— an insulation which is a death sentence for any writer.

There were of course many reasons for me to say yes, too.

I was excited to hit the field. Curious to see how well I could pull the article off. And writing for Rogue had been sort of the last thing that I did before disappearing into the maw of legal content writing: around five years before the AlDub invitation, I had been asked by Rogue to submit a short story for what was then a regular fiction section. I had done so, but quite late, and to my estimation of a quality already hinting at my disconnect

ART BY PAULINA ORTEGA

t was the height of typhoon season.

Somewhere south of the country, a signal three howler took its time moving upward inland inland, like an underhand slash of a long blade. I was somewhere in Caloocan and while Manila was spared the force of the storm, the metro was weighed down by proximity. Gray skies. Humid air. The kind of stillness that predicted nothing. Or at least nothing propitious.

It was also the height of “Kalyeserye,” that Eat! Bulaga subsection and media phenomenon that saw two bit personalities, Alden Richards and Maine Mendoza (the latter more popularly known as Yaya Dub), explode into full-blown celebrity. The kind of celebrity that crossed and recrossed the often arduous border between television and internet. And I was there to write about it.

What began as a slow, quiet stroll around the Caloocan neighborhood turned into a complicated navigation through a heaving throng.

It was, after all, about half a month before the climactic “Tamang Panahon” show at the Philippine Arena in Bulacan. Hashtags relevant to AlDub numbered in the millions,

with the larger cultural context. Wouldn’t it be funny in a nice way if writing for the magazine got me back on track?

The handicap was a formidable fear, however. So I told Rogue about it. “‘Sus,” editor Jerome Gomez replied to my texted misgivings, before giving me the details of the field work. I guess I didn’t have a choice. I hit the mental calisthenics like a dieter struck insane by sugar guilt.

So there I was that humid morning, finally outdoors at an early morning hour that I hadn’t subjected myself to since leaving my day job, witnessing the pop culture conundrum that was AlDub. Good thing it wasn’t an interview.

There was no mediation from the stars. No imposition from the producers. It was just pure observation and immersion. I saw the abrupt change in the cast as they went from dancing joyously out in the open to a certain kind of business-as-usual grim as soon as they got backstage. I saw a crowd moving like water toward the lowest point in a plane. I saw

02

a fully grown man wave at Yaya Dub a sketch labeled with her name, although the likeness did not bear any resemblance at all.

Looking back, it was all momentous to me, because being there woke me up from my larger mental stupor. In seeing the dynamic between media and its consumers, I felt a tentative return to the connection, the groundedness that any culture industry worker needs in order to produce anything of relevance.

It helped me regain confidence that I had both the eye and the tongue to witness and articulate. And it gave me the insights that would inform my later work, with Rogue itself as it happened, as one of its full time staff.

The assignment also killed my instinct to gatekeep. AlDub transcended class and politics, and to have seen it firsthand was to see how such phenomena thrive, and die out. I felt a defibrillator jolt to my process of objective data gathering—witnessing the man and his Yaya Dub drawing—and subjective interpretation—that his drawing looked

nothing like Mendoza, and how that speaks of how we idealize the media we consume.

More than anything, it restored my confidence. The world wasn’t out to kill me, after all. “Are you still there?!” was Jerome’s text much later in the day. I was having a blast.

I think I’m good now. I still get the occasional anxieties, still sometimes hear the voice that tells me to stay in. But I’m loving the fieldwork, every chance to reconnect to the pulsing bottomless source of all cultural work, which is reality. Because that’s the biggest insight I got from writing about AlDub and its subsequent decline.

“Kalyeserye” is just another sideshow now, a demonetized piece of pop culture currency.

The big concert in Bulacan had killed the willthey-won’t-they narrative tension. Even the elections have contributed to its irrelevance.

“Dadalhin ko ang AlDub dito,”” was an actual campaign promise. And that’s pretty much the end for any cultural phenomenon. I’m just happy I was there to witness its height.

Vanni de Sequera q on writing Winnie Monsod

BREAKING IT DOWN, REVISITED Every feature writer has a dream assignment.

For a former editor, it was to interview a singular broadcaster, respected economist, and beloved professor. Here is a look behind that story, which was nearly disastrous, but always guaranteed to be a hit

I

prefer to remember what happened seven and a half years ago this way: I strode, straight-backed with an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of my lips, toward that Lucky Strike smoke-filled editorial meeting and announced to then Rogue Associate Editor Mela Mari, “The main feature article of next year’s first issue will be about Winnie Monsod, and I will write it.”

What more likely happened was that I had weakly suggested the names of other writers we could assign to this story, but the Rogue crew saw right through me. Of course, they knew of my fandom. And the trembling respect I have always accorded this wonder woman.

FIRE WATER WOMAN

The feisty Solita CollasMonsod, appearing on the cover of the Philippines Free Press a year after she quit leadership of the National Economic Development Authrority in 1989

J U LY 2 0 1 7

57

ROGUE’S GALLERY

Rogue’s 2010 feature on Monsod, who gained a reputation for in-yourface rationality, initially among her students, and later across the entire country. Opposite, A photo of Karl Roy as Advent Call’s vocalist

Okay, I realize this will make me sound like a gasbag—I have interviewed a wheezing president, several senators and Cabinet secretaries, humorless Armed Forces of the Philippines chiefs of staff, raconteur tycoons, silver-tongued artists, and some of the hottest women Filipino bloodlines have ever produced.

But c’mon, man, this was Marengg Winnie.

I ARRIVED AT her sprawling Dasmariñas

Village house, which is diagonally across Manongg Johnny Enrile’s, and hear it: that “trademark raucous, sonorous laugh.” (Yes, I just quoted myself.) See, it is not a cackle and not even close to sounding diabolical, but holy hell, is it unsettling. “Vanni de Sequera! Bwahahahahaaa! Are you related to __________? I know her, you know.

Bwahahahahaaa!”

She made sure I had a pleasant-tasting beverage before we sat down on a poolside table to begin the interview, and it remains the most tremendous first-time conversation I have ever had with another human being.

It rambled sometimes, but Solita CollasMonsod, the economist who writes her Philippine Daily Inquirerr and BusinessWorld op-eds with an in-your-effing-face economy of words, always reeled it in to connect the anecdotal dots.

She told me about the painful fallen arches she endured as a girl, how she daydreamed of being an orphan after seeing Eva Perón in Argentina, her romance with Christian, the failed senatorial bid that (literally) gave her a heart attack, and the web-like network of grateful former University of the Philippines students who willingly supplied her with information for her newspaper columns and TV show.

I observed how her eyes would glaze over at decades-old remembrances. Then, when the topic turned serious, those same eyes would squint then glare then turn steely, and my posture would involuntarily straighten. I was transfixed.

I TURNED OFF the voice recorder of my cell phone, assured I had gold waiting to be transcribed. It was time for the photo shoot.

Photographer Steve Tirona, that reticent genius portraitist, along with his even more maddeningly diffident assistant, tried in his stammering, stop-start manner to guide Marengg Winnie’s poses. “Aba, I’m not a mind reader!” she bellowed. “Tell me naman exactly what I should do, hijo!”

My job done, I gleefully soaked in this spectacle. . . Lord almighty, this woman is fabulous!

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My laughter is always a soundless one, seemed, a million moments longer than that but when Marengg Winnie said this to the two first time, which was fair enough. There are Fil-Americans, whose collective treasury of sins, after all, you must atone for. The winter Filipino words they perfectly understood frost took a while to thaw, but when it did, would leave a baul only half-full, “Alam niyo, I had a laptop, tablet, and cell phone ready guwapo pa naman kayo, kaya lang may sinasabi this time to record my stay of execution, ba kayo sa mga girlfriend niyo?” I guff ff wed as well as Winnie Monsod’s garrulous so lustily I thought a tales retold. lung collapsed.

I left that Dasmariñas P.S. SOON AFTER the She told me about Village residence issue came out, I heard the painful fallen deliriously happy and from the redoubtable couldn’t wait to put down Mareng Winnie again, arches she endured on paper Marengg Winnie’s this time about the glorious, recorded quotes. apparently gauche as a girl, how she I clicked on play and heard choice of one particular silence. Click, rewind. photo that accompanied daydreamed of Click, rewind. Click, WTF? the article. (Naturally, I am so dead. I am going my knees turned to being an orphan to die. jelly.) It was an achingly tender black-and-white after seeing Eva NO DIN WILL ever leave snapshot, supplied by Perón in Argentina. one of her children to the me as paralyzed as the stillness of that audio, not magazine, of her resting the wail of a banshee who her sleeping head on her in the dead of night decides to share my bed, husband’s shoulder as they rode a train. or the snarl of a honey badger that suddenly “Vanni! We look dead in that photograph! emerges from the bottom of my toilet bowl as Are you trying to kill us before our time I take my morning dump. is up?”

“Mrs. Monsod?”

P.P.S. Every single time since writing this “Susmaryosep, Vanni! Are you serious? Ano article, whenever I think of Solita Collasba ‘yan?”

Monsod, I still ask myself: have I finally I rang the doorbell and was made to wait, it grown a pair as big as hers?

033

Philbert Dy y

on writing Karl Roy

LUST FOR LIFE, REVISITED Advent Call. P.O.T. Kapatid.

Few vocalists have a CV like Karl Roy’s. His was a constant presence from the early 90s to more than a decade later.

His death left a void that took on an inescapable gravity

“WAIT FOR ME,” he says to his fans. “I’m coming back.” And for all the uncertainties in the world, these words ring unmistakably true.

T

hat’s the last line of the feature I wrote about Karl Roy, published all the way back in May of 2008, in the very first year of Rogue’s existence. The quote was a direct answer to my asking him if he had a message for his fans, something that he wanted them to know in the wake of the trial that he had just faced.

I believed him. He was going to be back.

If you were sitting in that same room with him and his wife Dena and their cat, you’d believe him, too. At that point in 2008, Roy had already defied the odds. Words were still a struggle, but he was speaking. He was told he might never walk again, but he was making it happen. The stroke, it seemed at the time, was just the opening chapter in the story of Roy’s glorious, inspirational return.

It did not turn out that way. In March 2012, Karl Roy went into cardiac arrest and died.

He was 43.

I did not have any contact with Roy following the interview, beyond a couple of greetings and follow-up questions sent through SMS. I was told that he really liked the story, but he never told me that personally. This is how it is with interviewers.

To borrow a phrase from reality TV: we’re not here to make friends. It’s a nice bonus if it happens, but the only real goal should be to get a story.

It’s strange, because this is all couched in the niceties of conversation. An interview is a lot like the regular way of getting to know someone, except it’s put into a very specific transactional context. The relationship is built on little more than the output, and it should end when the work is submitted. The interviewer moves on to the next subject, and the subject goes on doing the remarkable things that warranted an interview in the first place.

But in the moment, it can be friendly. It can be warm and intimate. It can feel like something more than an interview. I brought oranges to the interview, because growing up I was taught that if you’re invited to someone’s home, you should bring a gift.

And it felt appropriate: for all intents and purposes, I did feel like a guest in their home.

I had been warned that Roy and Dena could be difficult, but they were nothing but nice to me. We talked on their couch for much longer than expected. We had the oranges and chatted idly about authors. Before I left, they gave me a collection of Dashiell Hammett stories. I flip through that book sometimes,

J U LY 2 0 1 7

59

A year after Karl died, Rogue republished my story on the web.

It was the first time I had read it in years, and

PIECE OF THIS

Roy was perhaps one of the country’s last true rock stars. His music projects matched the tenor of their time, from the grit of the late 80s, the bash of the 90s, and the commercial polish of the Aughts

60 J U LY 2 0 1 7

and I’m brought back to that humid afternoon in Wack-Wack.

But it ended there. I came out of that interview having shared a lot more with Roy than the average person did, but it was still just work. I certainly didn’t feel like I could call him up to ask if he wanted to see a movie or something. I generally feel uneasy about even approaching people I’ve interviewed when I see them out in the real world. More often than not, I found in those days, they don’t even remember who I am. I was just another face in an endless parade of people who want to get stories out of them.

And so, some time later, when I saw Roy across the room at a music venue, I didn’t say hi. I didn’t ask how he was doing. I don’t know if he saw me, too, or if he did, if he recognized me. I did look different at that point. I had cut my hair and lost weight and was trying to dress like an adult. He looked different, too.

He was unmistakably Karl Roy, but he wasn’t quite the same guy I had a genial conversation with that one afternoon.

In writing one of these stories, you have to extrapolate. If you aren’t just publishing the transcript of the conversation, you have to imagine things about life beyond the things that the subject is saying. Everything I wrote about Karl Roy was the truth as I saw it.

Everything he said was the truth as he saw it. In that synthesis, we told a story of a man who lived hard, paid the price, and was on the

verge of a comeback. That did not pan out, but for that afternoon at least, that was the truth we both had to offer.

A year after Roy died, Rogue republished my story on the web. It was the first time I had read it in years, and it hurt. It hurt more than hearing about him dying, to be frank.

His death struck me as a fan, as someone who once danced to “Yugyugan Na” at the Xavier School fair. Reading the article again summoned forth the illusions of that afternoon: the warmth and the optimism that made writing those words feel so right. I remembered the hope in his eyes, and the joy he exuded in just talking about being alive.

It made me imagine the Karl Roy that could have been. It brought me back to the extrapolations that I made while writing the piece, the stories that had yet to be written about the rock hero’s triumphant return to the scene. I thought of all the songs that hadn’t been written, or the songs that had already been written but hadn’t been recorded. I imagined Karl Roy following through on going to culinary school, and opening a restaurant later in life, when the rigors of rock star life would become too much. I imagined him and Dena and their cats, growing old, recounting all the amazing things they managed to live through.

“Wait for me,” he says. “I’m coming back.”

This is how I remember Karl Roy, and I think part of me will always be waiting.

PORTRAIT BY JUAN CAGUICLA

it hurt.

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T H E

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Oscar A. Reyes, Jr., Eric R. Alberto, Brandon Amber, and Sherwin Dela Cruz

IN LINE WITH innovating entertainment for Filipinos, PLDT Home partnered with Roku Inc. to launch the first-ever Roku Powered TM TVolution in Asia. American company Roku is a pioneer in the field of streaming for television, servicing over 14 million monthly active accounts as of March 2017. In 2016, Roku customers streamed over nine billion hours of video and music.

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The Roku Powered TM TVolution hopes to “change the way Filipino families enjoy entertainment together,” says PLDT FVP and Home Business Head Oscar A. Reyes, Jr. Instead of watching or streaming individually through their own devices, family members can now bond over their favorite TV shows on one convenient screen. Reyes considers this “another milestone for internet TV, not just in the Philippines, but also in the region.”

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Andrew Wolff, Tweetie De Leon, Franco Laurel, and Pia Wurtzbach

After leaving his embattled post as Palace spokesperson in March, Martin Andanar went head on to the task he intended for himself when he joined government: running the show from behind the scenes and dusting the cobwebs off government media. Patrick Paez interviews a former colleague on dealing with the mainstream press from the other side of the fence, the unorthodox leadership of his boss, and the life that awaits when all the noise is done PORTRAITS BY GERIC CRUZ

I read sometime ago that the President’s spokesman must be the antithesis of the President. Current Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella, a former evangelist, is.

Martin Andanar isn’t.

The spox needs to be a polar opposite to keep things balanced and to hold off an instinctively adversarial media. The Martin I know and worked with for a good 10 years was in different ways equally unorthodox as Rodrigo Duterte: an odd sense of humor and a candor that sometimes led to unintentional backlash.

When the bosses at the old ABC 5 demanded a news program that would appeal to teenagers, Martin wore Chuck Taylors and jeans with his coat and tie, and ended the nightly news telling viewers, “Relax, chill.”

The old guard found the attire and tone (Taglish!) offensive to a sacred profession.

But we got 15-year-olds watching. How did we know? We were on Facebook—long before anyone thought of socializing the news.

Commenting on a story in the morning news about the lack of toilets in public schools, Martin joked that poor kids didn’t eat breakfast so there was nothing to defecate. Or the quick way to solving the low water level at the Angat Dam was to drop a huge boulder in the water.

At a time of rigid political correctness, I admit I found those comments original and refreshing, and was guilty of condoning his “questionable” ability to deliver serious news. (Then again, I’ve always felt that most anchors take themselves too seriously.)

Martin never did these to rant, nor was he out to demonize like so many in media do with religious zeal. Like the President, Martin simply doesn’t hold back his strangest thought. Many in the newsroom saw him as off. I thought he was just not with most of us at given moments. His mind was elsewhere (which was a problem when reading the news with a blank stare). Everyone at work agreed Martin was a nice guy, yet he never tried hard to please. So it’s easy to see why as spokesman he quickly went down that slippery road with mainstream media.

Martin didn’t chase stardom unlike so many easily seduced by the bright lights and cameras. On radio, he was content being a sidekick to an alpha dog like Erwin Tulfo. You see, before fake news there were fake stars in news, those who cultivated and relished that larger-than-life image of a newsman as superhero.

Yet he alone can be credited for bringing

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government media to the digital age (if you don’t count the Twitter fights of his predecessors). Old media outfits like the Philippine News Agency, PTV-4, and the Philippine Information Agency are being heard and felt again. It helps that they have one of the biggest stars in all-day TV—Duterte. The live streams of his speeches on Facebook have raised the engagement levels of PTV-4 close to the big networks. The wrong picture from PNA (where a photo from the Vietnam War was captioned as a scene in Marawi) and that gadawful script and animation in the agitprop for martial law are some of the risks to beating a dead bureaucracy back to life.

In a Cabinet dominated by septuagenarians, he counts Christopher “Bong” Go of the Presidential Management Staff as his closest peer. They’re both Bisaya and fortysomethings. It matters that Co has the eyes and ears of the President; on occasion, he’s also the “mouth” of the Commander-in-Chief.

Martin is a dreamer, not a fighter. In this interview, I found him to be exhausted from all the entanglements, but bright-eyed about the things he still wishes to accomplish.

Patrick Paez: Do you miss speaking? I’m asking because for most of your professional life, you’ve been in front of the camera as a broadcaster, and you’ve just ended your stint as a spokesman.

Martin Andanar: You know, Patrick, when I started this job and when I took the job, the President and I had a clear agreement that I would be running the show from behind the scenes, meaning I would be the operations guy like what I used to be in TV5. Partly.

Because I was more comfortable—and I am more comfortable—behind the scenes. It just so happened that, when the administration started on June 30, Ernie [Abella] needed help during that time. Number one, we just started. Number two, it was Ernie’s first foray into media work. So we had an agreement that I’d cover for him from 5 to 10 in the morning.

But you know how it is, Pat, even when I’m only interviewed on radio, it gets echoed and multiplied through social media as if I’m interviewed on television and you see my face there. But really, if you go back to the tapes, if you go back to June 30 to about the time that

I relinquished all my speaking engagements to Ernie, I would say that about 90 percent were radio interviews. When we [referring to him and Paez] used to work together—and you know me personally—even if we’re here talking, and if we’re in a crowd talking, I’m not the most loquacious person. (Laughs) I’m quiet, actually. I don’t really enjoy talking. I just like to listen and when [I have] an input then I talk. I’m not the life of the party. So, the job being on cam over at TV5, it’s a job because I needed to feed my family.

PP: So now it’s all Secretary Abella.

It’s all him. No more two shifts. Tell us what happened.

MA: So, going to 10 months of operations, I started to realize that the agencies under PCOO [Presidential Communications Operations Office] were not running as ideally as I wanted them to run. The plans that I had were not being implemented, or being followed because of the lack of leadership.

If you believe in the left- and the right-brain analogy—that the left brain is your analysis side and the side that orders everything, that actually takes care of your speaking—if you’re so engaged in answering and talking on behalf of or around the President, then there’s a tendency to neglect your right brain, and the right brain is your imaginative sphere. This is your creativity. This is the area where you become creative and then you can think of out-of-the-box ideas that will help you push the envelope.

So, therefore, what I’m saying is napabayaan ‘yung right brain, ‘yung creativity side. So the things that we used to do at TV5, that I used to do there, that’s really my strength.

So sabi ko kay Ernie, it’s about time that ‘yung focus [is shifted], tutal 10 months na naman.

So I assigned to him the content division.

Being the person who has a background in the newsroom and running content, sabi ko, “Okay na ‘tong content group natin. Pasa natin kay Ernie.” So [since the] support group is okay, now I’m behind running the hardware.

PP: Still, that remark from former President Fidel V. Ramos must’ve stung. I guess you remember that. It was during the EDSA anniversary when he said, “This guy doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

IN HIS ELEMENT

Andanar being interviewed

by Paez on the set of RTVM Radio Daily, a small cube inside Malacañang.

MA: Davao, yeah.

PP: But the rest of the nation isn’t. So in the meantime, you still have a lot of explaining to do. I mean, most Cabinet members…

MA: I think 80 percent of the nation understands how he speaks, and I think 80 percent of the nation knows his style. I think that the translation of what he’s actually saying is only targeted to the [remaining] 20 percent, and maybe the international audience.

PP: I guess. Mainstream media’s part of it, right?

MA: I believe that mainstream media understands, but then again, mainstream media should be in the middle. So mainstream media should act as if it doesn’t understand to be able to serve everyone. You know what I’m saying? Mainstream media can’t assume that the audience understands. If mainstream media assumes that the audience understands then it would be marginalizing the audience that does not understand. That’s why it’s important for mainstream media to be objective in what it says.

MA: You know FVR, he says so many things.

One moment, he’s very entertaining, very good, and the next time, he also criticizes.

And no one can take away the fact that he was President of this country and he has so much wisdom. It didn’t really sting (laughs). I mean, it’s up to you to believe it completely or not because I know I’m doing my job.

mindset, and I changed my mindset so I’m not having a hard time. Over 16 million Filipinos believe in what he says. And my only problem now is how to explain that to the rest of the people who don’t support the President. But then again, 80 percent of the population supports the President. I’m in that mindset.

So I don’t see that as a problem.

PP: It must not be easy handling presidential communications for a President whose communication style is very unorthodox, to say the least. It’s almost as if it’s by design or deliberate that he means to provoke with his words.

MA: It’s a question of mindset. I’m a very flexible person and I think that what the President is doing. His style, it’s a style that he was accustomed to over the last 24, 25 years. It worked for him in Davao. It worked for him during the campaign. It made him the President and he continues the same style.

PP: When do Cabinet members try to explain, spin, or justify some of the President’s more provocative statements? I mean, how do you pedal back without sounding like you’re contradicting the President?

Because we’ve seen that happen with many of the pronouncements or the reactions given by Cabinet members.

MA: Well, personally, I don’t. I don’t spin it.

I just say it as it is. If I say otherwise, then I would be contradicting what he’s saying. But the President has a certain rhetoric that every Filipino, or maybe the Davaoeños during that time, would understand, if the President means what he says or if he was just joking.

PP: So you’re not about to question that?

MA: I’m not about to question that.

PP: But it’s not making your job easier. Or...

MA: Again, I’d like to say that it’s a question of

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PP: So you’re saying Davaoeños are used to that.

PP: You can probably divide members of the Cabinet to Davaoeños, San Beda alums, the leftists, and ex-generals. Where do you fit in?

MA: I fit in the Mindanaoan. The Cabinet from Mindanao.

PP: And what mold is that?

MA: Well, that is the Mindanao that’s been neglected for the last few—for the last century? The President said before that he has a few friends and acquaintances in Manila and most of the people that he appointed were people that he already knew from before. So if there are generals being appointed, most of them are generals who served in Davao.

And maybe if there’s a media person he appointed—that’s me, whom he already knew.

The President knows my father and he knows that I’m from Mindanao. He knows that I’m a supporter. He has known that since 2013.

During our radio program, Radyo Singko, he knows that I’ve been supporting and I’ve been suggesting that a President who can solve crime or criminality in the Philippines is Duterte. That’s exactly the reason why we met, because some of the supporters of the

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President back then in 2014 sought me out in Manila because, yun nga, naririnig nila na kaming dalawa ni Erwin [Tulfo]... (Laughs) Erwin’s from Davao and I’m from Cagayan De Oro so we speak in Bisaya, and nagkataon that 92.3 [Radyo Singko] was simulcast in Davao.

PP: You’re a constant companion in foreign visits. I see you a few chairs away from the President in Cabinet meetings. Are you inner circle?

MA: I think everyone’s inner circle. There are members of the Cabinet who are really senior by age and I see them working with the President and I see them all the time when there are important decisions to be made. I don’t want to say that I’m inner. Parang ang kapal ng mukha ko ‘di ba? But what I can say, Patrick, is that when I suggest, when I say something, the President listens. And when I do have an idea, the closest man to the President, Bong Go, listens. I’m close to Bong.

PP: That’s a literal “closest man,” when you say Bong Go. MA: We’re friends. Apart from being both Cabinet members. We get along. Probably because of the language also. Because in the Cabinet, siyempre may Tagalog, may Bisaya.

And also the age factor, because Mark [Villar, Public Works Secretary] is the youngest at 39.

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I’m 42 and Bong Go is 43. But, Bisaya si Bong, Bisaya ako.

PP: Si Mark hindi. (Laughs) MA: Si Mark kasi, anak mayaman eh. (Laughs) Kami ni Bong [are from] middle-class families.

We have similar hobbies, like singing.

PP: It’s different when you say closest man to the President si Bong Go because that suggests a physical closeness, right?

Because he’s always on hand for the President, right? But would you say that also equates to influence on the President, being that close?

MA: Well, the President mentioned that during the interview with Luchi [Cruz Valdes of TV5, who had an interview with the President in Malacañang last December].

The President said in that sense that he and Bong Go are always together. In the sense that Bong Go is the conduit to the outside world.

Conduit to the outside world in terms of information, communication, even in cellphones.

In that sense, Bong is very powerful.

PP: Probably the most powerful?

MA: Yeah. The most powerful.

PP: What are those Cabinet meetings like?

Because there are times when Duterte makes policy statements on live TV that his

Cabinet men are hearing for the first time.

Case in point [the President rejecting $280 million aid from the European Union] is just one example. So what are those Cabinet meetings like?

MA: You must understand that the President is a man who’s always five steps or 10 steps ahead of everyone. And he’s been like that for maybe his entire political career and he’s been successful at doing that. It’s a very Art of War-Sun Tzu practice. The element of surprise. So I guess it’s also good. Not I guess, but it’s good because that means your enemy can’t really read you. At the same time, in The Art of War, you should be like a river, a creek, where the water just adjusts to where the rocks are and just flows, so ganun rin sa Cabinet. We have to be flexible. We have to

MA: No, not really. I consider this as part of the narrative, as part of the experience and in life, whatever you feel during that time, if you can no longer control your emotions at a specific time—and considering you’re one of the few who have patience—then you just have to release it.

At the same time, things happen. In the heat of the moment, be that in the court room or maybe inside your home, your office, minsan hindi talaga kayo magkakaintindihan. You just have to go with the flow. There are times when you have to protect the President, and my job is to protect the President and when I feel that it’s too much then I’m ready to challenge. So there are no regrets. I don’t want to go into detail but I have my reasons too.

The case of Marlon Ramos [the Philippine Daily

“Mocha can defend herself. She’s old enough. She has more followers than I do. She is actually the face of the President on that side of the market that are rabid supporters of the President. So I don’t have to defend her. She can defend herself and she’s been doing that.” adjust to the style of the President and it’s worked for him until now.

PP: Aren’t you torn every time Duterte launches his by-now-familiar attacks on media? I mean, being a former member of media, aren’t you torn whenever he does that?

MA: I’m not really torn, Patrick, because I know who among our colleagues are crusaders. I know the organizations that are just working to get the news out there and I also have an idea who among the media are not crusaders, so I’m not torn. I know the majority of the media. If we go to the spread every day, I know that majority of the companies are objective. There are just a few, but you know, it’s part of the vibrancy of our democracy. We have to respect opinions and editorials. That’s why we have freedom of the press.

PP: Frankly, Mart, I thought reporters would be the least of your problems. I always told myself, “You know, Martin can easily charm them.” Kasi naman ‘di ba, you’re very non-confrontational as a person.

You’re a nice guy. So what went wrong with those two press corps, Malacañang and the Senate? Looking back, was there something you now feel you should have done?

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Inquirer reporter who had a heated exchange with Andanar last February regarding the former spokesperson’s earlier statements on destabilization plots against Duterte], I had a reason to say that. I don’t want to get into detail because the guy may also have a family to feed and it’s his job. The same way people question me, I can also question the integrity of other people.

But you don’t want to burn the house down, right? (Laughs) You know, kumbaga, magkainitan kayo, sagutan kayo. At the end of the day, we’re all friends. At the end of the day, the most important thing is we know we can feed our family.

PP: Mart, we live in very interesting times when the battle lines in media have hardened. They’re very hard now: it’s Dutertards versus Yellowtards, bloggers versus mainstream media. Everyone is busy trying to be right and trying to prove the other side wrong. What are your thoughts on this now? These are very exciting times to be head of government communications.

MA: I believe all of us have to embrace this.

We have to enjoy the ride. We all have to learn from it, and we all have to be better people at the end of the day. As far as government media is concerned, we are rebuilding

government media. We are rebuilding PTV Radyo ng Bayan. We’re rebuilding Philippine Information Agency and we’re rebuilding the Philippines News Agency. If given the chance to serve until the end of the President’s term, then PCOO will be a better PCOO once we step out of this. PNA will get back its luster, same with PTV Radyo ng Bayan. If given the chance, God willing, we should all embrace this, especially now that we have a very unique moment, having martial law in Mindanao, and with social media abuzz, bloggers who are being heard, watched like never before.

Exciting times, as you mentioned.

PP: You do feel that you are more or less on the upside, or at least winning, in social media, but that has come at a cost with support from mainstream media. You’re aware of that?

MA: You know, Patrick, us in the news, we live in an eight-day news cycle. On the eighth day, you will forget about the news.

My job is to protect the President. My job is to leverage what we have in government. My job is to get the message out there. You’re saying that we’re losing the mainstream and we’re winning social media. Yes, we’re winning social media and I would say that if you quantify the number of newspapers out there, like what I said earlier, if you do that on a daily basis, you would see that about 90 percent is objective, neither pro nor anti—and then you have the other 10 percent that is anti-Duterte. But it happens in every administration. I wouldn’t say that we lost [mainstream media]. Because if you go to China, we’ve won. If you go to Russia, we’ve won. Maybe we’ve lost the Western media.

PP: Okay. You’ve made new friends. (Laughs) Okay, two questions on Mocha. The first is, how do you defend her? And the second, how do you use her?

MA: Number one, Mocha can defend herself.

She’s old enough. She has more followers than I do. She is actually the face of the President on that side of the market that are rabid supporters of the President. So I don’t have to defend her. She can defend herself and she’s been doing that. The second one?

PP: How do you use her? How do you deploy her?

MA: The Presidential Communications Operations Office’s main responsibility is to present, to explain, to communicate the policies of the executive branch to the entire country. The entire country is divided into class subsets, you have the ABC, you have the CDE, you have the masses, you have the middle class. Mocha’s work is to ensure that

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“I’m not the most loquacious person. I’m quiet, actually. I don’t really enjoy talking. I just like to listen, and when [I have] an input then I talk. I’m not the life of the party. So the job being on cam over at TV5, it’s a job because I needed to feed my family.”

the message of the President gets across the class CDE, the masa class on social media.

That’s clear. If you look at the numbers in the recent Social Weather Stations or Pulse Asia, there’s a slight dip in the class CDE. So I believe that we need a messenger to explain these policies to them so they would understand. And there’s an increase in the trust rating in the ABC, so I’d love to believe that our strategies have been effective so far in getting the message across class ABC. And if Ernie is the ABC guy—baritone voice, good English, magaling magsalita, and Mocha is the CDE girl. . .

PP: I’m just wondering if Mocha isn’t more effective being out there more than being in the government machinery, because this takes me to Mr. Nic Gabunada who apparently is being credited for whipping up the social media army for Duterte during the campaign. He remains out of government but apparently remains very active still for Duterte.

MA: Mocha’s only been here for a few weeks.

It’s the President’s wisdom to appoint Mocha and there’s only one way to find out.

PP: In time?

MA: In time, we’ll find out.

PP: So how does Nic Gabunada fit in this whole government communications strategy?

MA: Nic helps out in other departments.

I think he helps out in explaining the tax reform program. He helps me out. You can call Nic a consultant.

PP: Kumbaga sa military, military contractor. (Laughs) Mercenary.

MA: I like to work with Nic because Nic understands the President. He’s Davaoeño, he can speak to him in Bisaya.

PP: But why not join government then?

MA: He probably has other priorities.

PP: Mart, you come from a political family.

Your father was undersecretary of the interior government. Your in-laws, the Aguilars, are the kingpins of Las Piñas. I know that you tried to hold off running for office. I mean, you’ve been asked to but you held out. But isn’t running inevitable for you?

MA: I’m married to a political wife, and I’ve always told her and our friends, there can only be one. You can’t have two politicians in the family. One should keep the household sane. (Laughs) And the other one can go really outside the box and become a politician. So

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I think I’m more effective as a non-politico, as someone who can just improve things, implement institutional reforms. I’d rather be a technocrat than a politician. It takes a different kind of courage, a different kind of patience to be a politician and I’m not that guy.

PP: So, after Duterte, it’s most likely back to media rather than onto politics for you?

MA: Well, it’s back to my podcast. Do my own thing at home and just do a podcast.

Set up something with old friends, like you.

I don’t know. I’ve always been amused with China, Beijing. So maybe do something with our new friends in Beijing.

PP: Mart, you like to imagine things, that’s how I know you. You put up the first news video portal in the Philippines and when things went digital and videos went online, you put up a podcast, which, in a way, suggests this renaissance of radio, right?

So how do you imagine the future of media in the Philippines?

MA: When I talk to the entire crowd working for PCOO, including the line agencies, attached agencies, this is what I tell them: When we communicate the message of the President, we should always think of on air, television, and radio. On print, create a newspaper. We don’t have a newspaper; now we have, Mula Sa Masa Para Sa Masa, from the NPO or National Printing Office. This is the first government in the Southeast Asia, or in Asia, that partnered with Facebook. First government to stream the messages or the speeches of the President live on Facebook— that’s online. And I always tell them that we have to reposition the Philippine Information Agency. That was a bit—I wouldn’t say lost but it did not have a clear direction when we came in. So I said, if there’s on air, there’s online, there’s on print, there’s going to be on ground.

I believe the future of communication will go back to face-to-face communication.

It’s very important for us. When we are lost in the maze of social media or on air or on print, we’re all forgetting that what is most important is for you and me to talk, face to face, to be able to shake hands, and to be able to communicate. I believe that that would be the future. The future is the 360 degrees of media that we’ve been talking about in TV5— you have to add one more aspect. That’s on ground. Because that’s what’s lacking. That’s probably the reason why there’s so much fighting in social media, because they don’t really get to see each other.

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Martial law has not helped Mindanao. This is the claim made by various think tanks, such as the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research. Indeed, it has been a month since fighting broke out in Marawi and the fighting continues, with the city locked down to all but military personnel. In surrounding cities, ripples of the conflict continue to be felt. Here, two witnesses lay bare the confusion, internal contradictions, and firm resolutions characteristic of experiences shrouded in the fog of war. From memoirist Arnie Quibranza Mejia in nearby Iligan, and photographer Raffy Lerma on ground zero in Marawi, here is a retelling of the first 30 days of martial law in Mindanao

“You don’t belong here anymore. You’re not Pinoy na kasi,” were words that spewed from my mouth like sewage, as my kuya and I had a heated argument over martial law in Mindanao. I immediately regretted saying them.

There were no such regrets before that. My brother, who attended the Philippine Military Academy, was sent to the US Naval Academy, and served our country in more than one tour, was, in my estimation, no longer one of us simply because he believed that martial law was a desperate attempt to maintain order, and completely unnecessary since proper military coordination was more than enough to deal with the conflict in Marawi.

Of course he was wrong. He didn’t live in Iligan anymore. I’m the one who has to deal with the tight security, the bomb threats, the barrage of helicopters flying above us residents every day, while he works all the way in Sweden as a professor at the World Maritime University. What did he know about securing Iligan? He only worked as an officer in the Philippine Navy before being transferred to the Coast Guard where he retired as commander, only to return years later to serve as the administrator of the Philippine Marina during President Benigno Aquino III’s term.

Of course he was against martial law since he no longer works for the government.

Kuya wasn’t even in Iligan when martial law was declared. He was only in Manila briefly to attend his second daughter’s high school graduation. His heart wasn’t beating overtime with worry over the conflict possibly spilling over to Iligan. After all, Iligan is only 44 km away from ground zero; Iligan must 72 J U LY 2 0 1 7

remain peaceful by all means necessary. He didn’t suffer from sleepless nights over the possibility that we could also be invaded.

The stress I felt from the announcement of a citywide lockdown was almost too much to bear.

The official Facebook page of the City of Iligan (LGU Iligan City) announced that a lockdown was in effect and that no one could enter or exit the city. I wasn’t the only one who felt like a prisoner in my own home, since thousands of netizens reacted to the post, asking for more clarifications. The post has since been taken down, but not before I felt the anxiety of not being able to leave Iligan and fly to Manila to be with my parents.

I felt the impact of martial law in Mindanao from Day One. Local news announced that a 10 p.m. to 5a.m. curfew would be enforced immediately. My office team and I gathered around one of the desktop computers to watch the local news online. I could sense everyone’s worry and concern. On top of that, I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get back to the city with the added security measures. So I allowed everyone to leave work early.

Our office is on the outskirts of Iligan; to get into the city proper we would now have to go through at least two different checkpoints.

The influx of cars, trucks, public utility jeepneys (PUJs), buses, and pedestrians going into the city resulted in a traffic bottleneck.

It would take us over an hour just to get past one checkpoint. But the sentiment among my friends and employees was a resounding support for martial law since it meant

securing our borders from terrorists. Faceless men waving black flags and semi-automatic weapons became the real-world versions of the bogeymen of our childhood. These terrorists didn’t belong to our city and just like the villagers in Beauty and the Beast, most Iliganon rallied behind our Gaston to storm the castle to keep the Beast from eating our children.

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ven though my political family supported the Liberal Party during the last presidential election, I had started to develop a loyalty for our controversial President. Most of my friends and employees felt safer having a tough guy lead the nation, believing that President Rodrigo Duterte could fix the problems we had been dealing with for many years. The President’s tirades and cussing were not so shocking to us anymore, and the people around me didn’t seem to mind as long as he took care of crime and corruption. These days, my aunt who serves as governor for our region and my cousin who serves as congressman, seem to support our President.

Despite having lived in the city for 11 years, I never truly considered myself an Iliganon, since my parents live in Luzon most of the time. They stay at our home in Iligan for a few days every month, while I in turn fly to Manila and stay at our home in Cavite or at my condo in Makati for a few days out of every month as well. I’ve always felt as if I was just a part-time resident of either Luzon or Mindanao. I never truly identified with one or the other.

CONFLICT BY THE NUMBERS

As of June 30, the death toll of the Marawi clashes was at 438.

Of that total, 317 were terrorists.

More than 40 were civilians.

The possibility of a conflict in Iligan suddenly changed my sentiments. Just like the time I was living in New York during 9/11 and New Yorkers rallied behind each other in rebuilding downtown, I now felt a kinship with my neighbors since we were all going through this threat together. Most of us were feeling anxious over the conflict being so close to our doors. We would receive several forwarded text messages from friends warning us Iliganon to stay away from public places since members of the Maute Group had infiltrated our city and were hiding in plain sight among our Muslim brothers and sisters.

Alarming texts or private messages from friends were now sent and received on a regular basis. One read: Intercepted text: Translated from maranao to English text: june 04, 2017. “Tell our muslim brothers and sisters evacuated from Marawi to iligan that not to go near Malls, near christan churches, check points. It is our primary target within this week we will bomb iligan city...Cuz paki 4ward sa mga paryente labi nasa duul sa cathedral church” or “From SM Officers: Hi guys! Just an update, we just got a call from abusayaf right now asking SM for $15million! Or else they’re going to bomb the mall. We have 1 week to do that. We are on high alert now. Tell your love ones, friends and co workers better avoid any SM branch for the mean time. Better be safe than sorry. We are doing close security after receiving the call this morning. Don’t post on your walls as per request of the officer. But do inform relatives and friends. Please private message only. (this is frm : BCD SM ADMIN .

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- Frm : Kyla Avonahceh . please don’t post it on your wall . kindly pass this on your friends . Thankyou.”

I even got a text from a concerned aunt who told me to call her right away since it was an emergency. She immediately shouted, “You must leave Iligan now! The nuns at Mercy Hospital have all evacuated since there’s a bomb threat!” Mercy Hospital was just down the street from our house. Thankfully, her information was false and the nuns did not evacuate their posts at the hospital. I was

Faceless men waving black flags and semi-automatic weapons became the real-world versions of the bogeymen of our childhood. grateful that my aunt was concerned for my safety, but I felt unsettled as I tried to get a good night’s sleep.

“Okay lang ‘yan, martial law na ‘yan!” one of my management-level employees voiced out during one of our lunch breaks. Everyone at the table supported his sentiment and even offered more drastic measures to ensure our safety. Some suggested that all the mosques in Iligan be checked for any hidden insurgents and weapons. The image of the Maute Group destroying the inside of a church in Marawi was still fresh in our minds as we

discussed how monstrous the members were for destroying a statue of the Virgin Mary. How could they tear up a picture of our beloved Pope Francis?

The same topic was raised in conversation with our local bank manager. Being a prominent businessman in a small city has its perks, such as enjoying preferential treatment at the local banks. I never have to wait in line; I just hand over my personal transaction to the manager, and we sit in her office and gossip over freshly brewed coffee.

“They attacked the Christian schools and beheaded the teachers,” the bank manager whispered to me. She also told me about a religious convention allegedly held in Marawi a week before the conflict. Apparently, the convention was just a smoke screen for ISIS supporters to infiltrate the city by blending in with the religious delegates. The information she shared with me was distressing and there was no way I could confirm its accuracy. I just shook my head in disbelief that the Maute Group could be so barbaric. But her information—or misinformation—had already been circulating among Iliganon before she even shared it with me.

She was not her usual cheery self as she explained how, at a meeting with all bank managers in Iligan, they decided that with the curfew in place, banking hours would end at 3 p.m. instead of 4 p.m., and that Saturday banking was suspended until further notice.

About the beheading, she described her source as reliable, since the news was from one of the managers in Marawi, who was able to evacuate to Iligan before the height of the conflict. She 73

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE

Nearly 400,000 people have been displaced from Marawi. Over 70,000 are housed in government-run shelters. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees noted that the humanitarian situation is improving, but stressed that a protracted conflict will make it difficult for residents to return.

explained how, on the second day of martial law, there were understandably less people, especially her beloved customers from Marawi, who mostly dealt in cash.

Although the banks were suffering from fewer transactions from their customers in Marawi, locally owned retail stores such as Shelves and Hangers and Streetshop were not as affected. During one of my shopping errands, I noticed that they seemed to still attract a healthy number of customers.

According to the owners, their sales were only slightly affected despite the announcement of martial law and the consequent curfew.

The logistics business I manage with one of my other brothers has remained unaffected, for now. The only adjustment that we have had to make so far is the travel times of our trucks. They now leave and return much earlier due to the curfew, but the number of goods we transport and deliver has remained unchanged.

What I see being affected the most are the bars and restaurants that rely on the nighttime crowd. With the curfew being enforced, Iligan is pretty much a ghost town by 8 p.m. The Iliganon are very sociable people. We love to eat out, go drinking, and sing karaoke until the wee hours of the morning. Iligan has some of the best live bands in the country and I shudder to think that these musicians are now out of their regular paying gigs. How unfortunate that the conflict fell during Ramadan and its consequent curfew has led to diminished sales for food establishments that were relying on

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Muslim customers who make up the bulk of their business after sunset.

My experience with martial law in Mindanao wasn’t limited to Iligan since we also manage a warehouse in Dipolog, which is about 200 km away. During one of my visits, I observed how it was mostly business as usual. There were several checkpoints, but its well-known beachside boulevard was still enjoying the usual crowds, even late at night. The major difference I saw was tighter security in the form of a bomb-sniffing dog assigned where the crowds congregated. I felt a little jealous of the freedom the people in Dipolog enjoyed as I looked at my watch and saw that it was 11 p.m. A huge crowd was cheering for an amateur singing contestant as she belted out a Celine Dion ballad. Evidently, curfew was not implemented in all the cities of Mindanao.

Two hours away from Iligan is Cagayan de Oro where we also manage a huge warehouse for our principal. Just like in Iligan and Dipolog, checkpoints were also in place all over the city. A curfew was not implemented in Cagayan de Oro and the nightlife remains vibrant, according to some colleagues, although I have yet to see it for myself since I usually leave our Cagayan de Oro warehouse by 3 p.m. so that I can be home in Iligan before curfew.

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artial law must be working since Iligan has remained free of conflict since the month following the

eruption of fighting in Marawi. I was right for defending President Duterte’s decision to declare martial law in Mindanao. Other than the implemented curfew, I haven’t personally seen nor heard about any infringements of civil rights or of anyone defying martial law.

So why was my kuya so against it?

After all, we were raised to be proud “loyalists.” We grew up under martial law and our father, Colonel Maximo A. Mejia, Ret., was a high-ranking officer during President Ferdinand Marcos’ regime. I’d always thought of my father as the right hand to the right hand of the President since he worked directly for General Fabian C. Ver. “It’s overkill to declare martial law for the whole island of Mindanao. If truly necessary, maybe declare martial law only in the city of Marawi. But even for just the city of Marawi I am skeptical that martial law is necessary because the situation does not meet the criteria set by the constitution for declaration of martial law!” Kuya said with his voice raised to a louder decibel than his usual soft and gentle tone. Even his body was shaking as he pointed his finger in the air, trying to explain to me why the conflict in Marawi could not be classified as an invasion or rebellion.

“The operations carried out by the military and police do not require the cover of martial law, but rather are justified by the specific mandates of our military and police forces, and within the powers of the President as commander-in-chief, with or without martial law. The success of the air and ground operations do not depend on the suspension of civil

liberties that accompany martial law.” Kuya sounded like the professor that he was. I could imagine how engaging he must be during his lectures and why he has succeeded in his career. There was nothing I could say to refute the facts that my highly educated brother stated. His words made sense, but I couldn’t get past the fears I felt about the possibility of a similar conflict in Iligan.

The conflict being so close to where I lived and worked had scared me into survival mode. Like most of my friends and employees, we were all ready to give up our civil liberties to feel secure in our own homes. Waking up to the sound of the blades of the helicopters go chakk-chackk-chakchak had become a part of our day. I started to associate military presence with security, and living under martial law had started to feel normal. I felt like a small child seeking comfort and protection from his strong and capable parents. But was martial law the only solution? Were our mayor and other local authorities no longer able to govern Iligan?

I had started to think that maybe Kuya was right and that martial law was not necessary to accomplish the operational objectives of the military action in Marawi.

But I kept thinking about the possibility that the fighting in Marawi could make its way to our city. I started to live in fear of things that may or may not happen. It was this fear that clouded my judgment and closed my mind off to the valid arguments my brother had against martial law. I even felt guilty for having to fly back to Manila

to attend my niece’s graduation from high school. I was all smiles as my lovely niece, Maxine, walked up the stage to receive her diploma, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about my family, friends and employees who remained in Iligan.

There is a high potential for absolute power to be abused, but all I could think about was my personal safety and the safety of my family, friends, and employees in Iligan.

I didn’t care about the fact that checks and

The conflict being so close to where I live and work had scared me into survival mode.

Like most of my friends and employees, I was ready to give up my civil liberties to feel secure in my own home. balances are necessary for a democracy to work. It didn’t matter that under martial law there is no clear division between the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary, resulting in the elimination of civil liberties. All I cared about was that the conflict would be resolved.

Then I thought about how much I looked up to Kuya and how much I idolized him as a kid. One of the highlights of my childhood is when my family and I attended his graduation at the United States Naval Academy in Maryland. Oh, how proud we all felt that he

represented the Philippines as he walked up the stage to receive his diploma from one of the world’s most respected institutions. How insensitive and cowardly of me to say that my brother wasn’t Filipino anymore, just because he didn’t agree with the masses. He is more Filipino than I ever will be, since he has proudly and selflessly served our country. He loves the Philippines so much that he envisions our society to advance to the point where education is free for everyone and poverty would cease to exist. And there I was caught up in my emotions and ready to support an all-out war against the insurgents by any means necessary.

I felt like a fool for operating in fear and acting like a coward by looking down upon my brother who thought more clearly than I did.

I had felt such a closeness to Iligan since the conflict in Marawi erupted that I was deeply moved by the sight of PUJs and private vehicles with a Philippine flag attached to their antennae. I had suddenly felt extra patriotic living in Iligan that I purchased my own flag.

I too proudly attached it to my car. As I taped the wooden stick with the flag stapled to it on my antenna, I thought about our National Anthem and how all this fighting was for our country. And in my mind I saw the images of our soldiers bravely facing the insurgents in Marawi, risking their lives to preserve our way of life. I thought about the soldiers whose lives were lost while in the battlefield. It was for them that we raised our flags in unity, and suddenly singing the last words to Lupang Hinirang, “Ang mamatay nang dahil sa ‘yo,” hit closer to home than it ever had.

UNEASY REST

Evacuation centers struggle to manage overcrowding, language barriers, and the outbreak of illness among those who have taken refuge from the ongoing siege.

Opposite: The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that there are 50,000 children caught in the crossfire between government and terrorist forces in Marawi. The agency also expressed concern over the children’s long-term psychological well-being.

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A RUMOR OF WAR

As of July 4, a total of 410 firearms have been recovered. The military has rescued 1,717 individuals, while hundreds remain trapped inside the conflict zone.

In art as in his life, Mauro “Malang� Santos was proof that artistic angst can be grossly overrated. Alya B. Honasan, whom the painter commissioned to write about his works for his 1997 retrospective, pens a final homage to a former publishing colleague and friend, while a new generation of artists pay tribute to the exuberance of a master

Before he died last June 10 of pneumonia at age 89 after a long illness, artist Mauro “Malang” Santos—modern Filipino master, pillar of the Saturday Group of Artists, the last of the mighty quartet he had formed with fellow artists Cesar Legaspi, Ang Kiukok, and Romulo Olazo—had been out of circulation for some time. He had faded quietly from the art scene of which he had been such a prominent part, both as mover and naughty observer. I hadn’t seen him in years.

At his wake, daughter-in-law and artist Mona Santos, wife of Malang’s son Soler, said wistfully, “Ten years din niya tiniis ‘yan, yung inaalagaan siya.” It broke my heart to think that the ever jovial Malang would have had to endure anything (other than art charlatans and politicking administrators, whom he would have attacked with ill-concealed glee in his younger days).

It certainly was no burden to his children Simon, Sarah, Steve, and Soler and their spouses, and Malang’s numerous grandchildren, to take care of their ailing Tatay. It was, however, a painful idea that this once tireless fount of creativity had reached a point where he could no longer make art. Though he passed away wrapped in the love of his family—to join his much-missed wife Mary, who had died years ahead of him, and after whose passing, I think, he was never quite the same—it made me infinitely sad to think that wild flowers, explosions of color, and unabashed expressions of his uncomplicated joie de vivre had not emanated from those hands for a while. He left a formidable body of

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work and an important legacy—but somehow, I felt that I had said goodbye to Malang even before that.

If there was anything I learned from Malang as an impressionable young writer daring to cover the Philippine art scene in the 1990s, it was this: angst is overrated. You don’t need to be screwed up to make good art, and happiness is as valid and powerful a motivation to create art as pain and suffering.

Nobody actually told me that art had to be serious, but understand, I was in college during EDSA. My first serious exposure to Philippine art—aside from the Spoliarium and Amorsolo’s sun-drenched rice fields—were the social realists and their protests against the sugar monopoly, political detentions, martial law. I tip-toed around bullet shells scattered on the floor in front of Nuneluncio Alvarado’s anguished sakada; I winced at the hungry faces on the stark canvases of Antipas Delotavo. I thought it was the only way to go.

The first time I met Malang, I was a 24-yearold staff writer at the original Lifestyle Asia magazine group, owned by the late Exequiel

A LIFE WELL LIVED

These private photos of Malang paint a portrait of an artist whose personal life was as inspiring as the work he left behind.

Below: Red Sky, oil on canvas, 1972.

“Syke” Garcia. It was a posh Makati office, and I read with curiosity the single name “Malang” in the editorial box under the title “Creative Director.” When he first sauntered in—that unhurried, calm walk I learned to recognize a mile away—I thought he was a rich Chinese businessman with a cold, because he carried only a box of tissues, and had a red nose. Yet Mr. Malang smiled cheerfully, looking immaculate and smelling great.

He would announce his presence with a highpitched “Halloooooooo,” wave to our editors, Jullie Yap Daza and Nestor Mata, and proceed to a back room to confer with the magazine art directors.

He would tell us how he started as a cartoonist, creator of the country’s first English comics, Kosme the Cop, and showed us some of his pen-and-ink doodles on paper napkins—“Bored na kasi ako, naghihintay sa duktor,” he would say with a laugh. He talked to the artists comfortably, kindly, like a groovy neighborhood uncle. Once, after I had interviewed a young flutist named Tony Maigue, I was having him photographed by

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DAN MATUTINA

This Week 2017 Digital Illustration 2017

I thought he was a rich Chinese businessman with a cold, because he carried only a box of tissues, and had a red nose. Yet Mr. Malang smiled cheerfully, looking immaculate and smelling great. He would announce his presence with a high-pitched “Hallooooo!” my buddy Manny Goloyugo in Lifestyle Asia’s small studio, a tight portrait of Tony playing his flute. Malang walked in, and asked Tony to take off his shirt. “Parang si Pan, may flute— pangit kung naka-polo yan.” Tony was flustered, but complied—and we ended up with a lovely head shot that was both innocent and powerful.

In fact, my good friend and then Lifestyle Asia editorial assistant Joy Rojas and I would get so comfortable with Mr. Malang, we’d greet him in a sing-song voice to match his “Halloooo”: “Mr. MAAAAlaaaaang!” We would brazenly kid him, “Sir, pahingi painting,” especially after any gorgeous new framed works would be delivered to the office (and after we learned how much they cost!). One day, he called me to the back room, doodled one of his ubiquitous oil pastel woman vendors, and clad her in high-cut sneakers, my footwear of choice at the time. “O, ayan,” he said with a chuckle. The sketch remains in my scrapbook of memories. For my 25th birthday in 1989, I finally got my little Malang—a gouache bouquet of organic, sharp-edged blooms

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shooting up from a delicious lilac background: “To Alya, Happy Birthday — Malang.”

Ironically, it was only when I started working for newspapers that I would truly come to appreciate the breadth and depth of Malang’s work and influence. He would visit often at the Manila Chronicle—the first time he saw me there, his “Halloooooo!” was longer and more delighted than usual—and it would be no exaggeration to say that he provided much guidance as I navigated the art world to find stories.

When I wasn’t interviewing him for this exhibit or that issue, he would suggest subjects. “Isulat mo naman si Ben,” he asked, referring to often-overlooked Saturday Group stalwart Ben Francisco, an interview which entailed two jeepney rides and a long walk before meeting Mang Ben outside a church, and then taking a tricycle to his hard-to-find home. He introduced me to businessman Dante Silverio, who joined the Saturday Group and became a wonderful artist on his own. He found me a nude model when I asked him to, for a feature. He referred me to his colleagues

JACOB LINDO

A Change in Weather Collage 2017

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“If you keep fighting people, they’ll never make you a National Artist,” we would kid him. Malang would just cringe, laugh

JEONA ZOLETA

I’m A Rainbow Who Poops Cute Colored pens and pencils on 9 x 12 paper 2017

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Olazo and Kiukok, both of whom I had the pleasure of interviewing in depth in my early days of art coverage.

He wouldn’t mince words if he didn’t like my latest subject, either. “O, bakit nagpabola ka diyan?” he asked me once, after I featured a very vocal artist. “Remember, just because maraming sinasabi yung artist, that doesn’t mean may sinasabi siya.” It was a memorable lesson on giving up the over-analysis often mistaken as a sign of erudition. (I quit asking artists about their “statements” after that.)

He would also drop by the office to hand my boss, Thelma San Juan, his latest letters to the editor, ranting about anything from fake art to, in his opinion, stupid choices for public art administrators. “If you keep fighting people, they’ll never make you a National Artist,” we would kid him. Malang would just cringe, laugh loudly—and saunter unhurriedly away. We wondered then if he was really pissed, or just wanted to rock the

boat and keep the art scene a little more interesting.

I would get to know him better in those years. I learned about his early days, his public school education and single semester of fine arts studies at the University of the Philippines, how he loved Picasso and Klee and hung around with a foul-mouthed Vicente Manansala, how he adored his grandkids, how he became a born-again Christian and once exhibited beautiful abstractions inspired by biblical passages.

We would meet up at McDonald’s on Quezon Avenue, his favorite haunt, or in restaurants in Megamall, which he frequented to visit the West Gallery branch, or to drop in at friends’ galleries like Finale or Crucible. One Christmas, he gifted me with a Mont Blanc ballpen, the most expensive writing instrument I’ve ever owned (and which I use to sign, uhm, important stuff to this day). When I told him so, he retorted, “Eh yung magaling na

loudly —and saunter unhurriedly away. We wondered if he was really pissed or just wanted to rock the boat

DEX FERNANDEZ

Garapatized Mother and Child Acrylic on A4 size paper 2017

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PATRICK CRUZ

Blood ornament 1, 2, and 3 Digital image made in mobile phone 2017

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For the first time in its esteemed history, elections were held for the Saturday Group’s new leader—a chaotic development that saw Onib Olmedo winning (and resigning soon after), art critic Dr. Rod ParasPerez walking out, and writer Jack Teotico engaging Malang in a publicized word war

writer, dapat magaling din yung pangsulat!”

Later on, Malang would pay me a huge compliment, an expression of trust I will always be grateful for. He asked me to write about his works for a milestone retrospective in October 1997 at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, for a book, The Art of Malang as Filipino, published in 2002. Soaking up the works one entire day, I was flabbergasted upon seeing, for the very first time, in one place, his incredible range, in artworks dating from 1955 to 1997, from cartoon figures and graphic barong-barong, to unlined abstractions of bold, swirling colors with no beginnings and no ends.

I remember being summoned to a book meeting at Malang’s neat, sunlit studio and office at the top floor of the family art complex on West Avenue, and seeing his good friends, the writer and editor Johnny Gatbonton, and the dean of copy editors, Arnold Moss. I was also floored to know I would share the book’s byline with Mr. Gat, at my ripe old age of 31.

It was also then that I truly appreciated Malang’s simple, straightforward approach to his art. “I cannot paint an unhappy painting,” he was famously quoted as saying. As he told Johnny Gatbonton once, “Can I help it if I had a happy childhood?” Even Malang’s concessions to social realism—the barong-barong of the poor—were happy. “His engaging optimism—his art without angst—is one secret of Malang’s commercial success,” wrote Gatbonton in the book. “He refuses to take the world—or himself—seriously.” His art philosophy seemed to echo his generous view of life. “Kung puwede, let’s try this, or that,” he would say. “Walang masamang tinapay.”

It was a worldview that would be tested for my next commission, when he asked me to write the history of the Saturday Group of Artists, of which he had become the de facto moving force. I insisted on including

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the historic mayhem after the death of Cesar Legaspi in 1994. For the first time in its esteemed history, elections were held for the Group’s new leader—a chaotic development that saw Onib Olmedo winning (and resigning soon after), art critic Dr. Rod. Paras-Perez walking out, and writer Jack Teotico engaging Malang in a publicized word war. When the dust settled, Malang was left heading what was widely considered a diminished gathering. To his credit, Malang recounted the details slowly and carefully, and asked me to get other opinions.

My account of the “gulo,” as we called it, was printed in full.

The same critics who had long labeled Malang predictable, commercial, or even shallow again jumped at the chance to call the Saturday Group a collection of art amateurs and socialites. Still, the group soldiered on, and so did Malang, unflappable, still smiling and doing his thing long after the bashers had run out of steam. When my own nephew, Martin Honasan, began attending sessions to learn from the masters, Malang welcomed him warmly—“Kaibigan ko Tita Alya mo!”— and dispensed tips to help him find his way. (Shameless plug: My nephew is now a full-time artist with quite a few exhibits to his name, and counts Malang as an early mentor.)

Now that Malang is gone, I don’t know if critics will have much else to say when his name does come up (as it should) for nomination as the next National Artist for Painting.

I’ve long stopped covering the art scene, but I will always remember Malang with the greatest affection. He was a kind, happy man and a happy artist; he painted joy with no excuses and no explanations, and gave this joy to those who allowed themselves to relish the undeniably uplifting experience that was his art.

In the end, good art is about what’s in your heart. Walang masamang tinapay.

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ISABEL SANTOS

Art is Like a Mistress Acrylic on canvas 2017

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PHOTOGRAPHED BY BJ PASCUAL

STYLED BY PAM QUIĂ‘ONES

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It’s been 10 years since Bea Alonzo went from upand-comer to breakout star. Her performance in One Last Chance alone continues to be the stuff of quotes and references. And with an unbroken string of successful projects, she may yet emerge as one of the greats. Mariah Reodica talks to the actress and discovers that, despite the formidable status, Alonzo likes to keep it simple

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THE NUMBER ONE LESSON THAT BEA ALONZO HAS LEARNED ABOUT MEN IS THIS: “YES IS YES AND NO IS NO. NO COMPLICATIONS. THEY’RE SIMPLE THINKERS.” SHE LAUGHS. WORK IS PROBABLY MORE OF A CHALLENGE. It’s been a long week for Alonzo. The day before, she was in a grand outdoor marriage scene for her current television series, A Love to Last. It happened at the time of the year when the only sure thing about the weather is that you can never be sure about the weather.

And so, when it rains on your wedding day— whether real or reel—the show must go on.

It’s all in a day’s work of television shoots, which are notoriously grueling. The pressure is high, the days are long, and still, every minute counts. It’s all part of the job.

At 29 years old, Alonzo has been in the industry for half her life. Starting at the tender age of 14, she became a household name as the star of romantic comedies and light dramas. She grew up on screen as a reliable object of affection for some of the country’s biggest actors, often a young woman put through a series of melodramatic trials on the way to an inevitable happy ending. But even within this limited context, Alonzo always stood out for the strength of her characters.

“It’s all about creating a relatable character more than plotting. The genre doesn’t really matter. It’s really about how you create a relatable character, and how the character reacts to different situations,” she says. The happy ending doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for nuanced characterization and a good story.

“Mas gusto ko complex characters,” she says. One of her most iconic roles was Basha, fiancée to John Lloyd Cruz’s Popoy in One More Chance, directed by Cathy Garcia-Molina.

“That was kind of experimental on my

part at the time. I thought it was going to be our last movie as a love team. It was kind of brave,” she says. Released 10 years ago, One More Chance remains a career-defining film.

Aside from being one of the highest-grossing Filipino films of all time, it endures as a pop culture phenomenon, its famous lines figuring in the most casual of conversations.

It might be Basha’s tearsoaked lines that people remember, but to create a compelling drama, it takes more than tears. Many believe that the mark of a good actress is her ability to cry on command, but Alonzo has her misgivings.

“Pinaka-hate ko iyan: ‘Ang galing mong artista, ang galing mong umiyak!’ Iniisip ko, ‘My god, ang tears? That’s just what I feel.’” While crying when your director tells you to isn’t a walk in the park either, tears are part of the means, not the end. “Ito ang driving force ko: Nasaktan siya kaya dapat mararamdaman niya ang pain.

Ang iyak, side effect lang ng nararamdaman mo.

“You don’t go to the set and say, ‘Iiyak ako dito,’” she continues. “Kung maiyak ka, hindi mo sinasadya iyan.”

“All emotions are equal: pain, love, happiness, fear. . . it’s a product of how your body reacts to the emotions. Hindi siya ang intent na maiiyak ka. ‘Pag nararamdaman mo ‘yung emotions, katawan mo sumusunod lang.”

Like real life, emotions get complex. “There are emotions kung ‘di mo alam kung ba’t ka nagagalit, ba’t nararamdaman mo. When I accept a character, normally para siyang love or a relationship para sa akin.”

To Alonzo, a script or being pitched a potential show is equivalent to being wooed.

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“IT’S ALL ABOUT BEING ORGANIC. FOR ME, WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET. I DON’T GIVE ANSWERS [THAT ARE] AGAINST MY VALUES.”

Makeup by Cristine Duque Hair by Brent Sales

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If the thought of playing a role leaves her smitten, that’s when she decides that it’s meant for her.

“I exert effort, and I really jump para malaman ko kung ano ang journey ng character, and I create. I make it so real,” she explains.

“Afterwards, I realize ang dami palang naturo sa akin ng character. Iyan ang magic.”

“You are the character and you are what you see,” she adds. It’s here where the lines blur between Alonzo and who she is on camera. “I get hungry for that kind of moment na nawawala ka, hindi mo na alam ‘pag nagtataping ka.”

It’s harder to get lost out in the real world.

Details of her love life are often splashed all over the tabloids. But Alonzo manages to strike a balance between being a public personality—a necessary function when you’re a celebrity and sex icon—and keeping certain things private. “It’s all about being organic. For me, what you see is what you get.

I don’t give answers na ‘di ko talaga mapapanindigan o mapapaniwalaan against my values.”

It helps that she isn’t one to post every little thing she does on social media. “It really doesn’t come out naturally for me,” she says.

“It’s really up to you kung hanggang saan mo lang sila papapasukin.” Younger actresses may be comfortable with the idea of sharing their lives with hundreds and thousands of followers and fans, but for Alonzo, “it’s not me.”

Her work may seem like a fantasy, but it’s still just her work, just one aspect of her entire person. Alonzo has always had a clear perspective of who she is.

“You should know who you really are inside show business or outside show business,” she says.

Through years of experience and hard work, Bea Alonzo has learned how to make every second onscreen count. If her tears are real, then so is her joy.

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ALL EYES ON ME This season is all about making—and wearing—a statement, be it a snap button detail, a mixture of print with texture, or a built-in scarf. Here are spring/summer ‘17’s greatest hits PHOTOGRAPHED BY PATRICK DIOKNO STYLED BY DAVID MILAN

Shirt, Robert Mapplethorpe Ă— Raf Simons

Beach stripe shirt with scarf, J.W. Anderson

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Printed button down shirt, Junya Watanabe

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Silk tunic, Rick Owens

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ALLAVAILABLE AT UNIVERS, ONE ROCKWELL EAST TOWER, ROCKWELL CENTER, MAKATI; 553-6811

Long sleeve shirt with snap details, Maison Martin Margiela

Grooming by Don de Jesus of MAC Cosmetics Hair by Jay Aquino Model Moon Bhati of Mercator

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TH E DA Y O FF ILLUSTRATION BY KRISTINE CAGUIAT

Luis Katigbak was, everybody says, the best writer of his generation. It’s hard to write ‘was, and painful to refer to him in the past tense.

Luis passed away a little over a year ago, just a little bit after David Bowie, his favorite musician.

This was the last story he wrote before he was admitted to the hospital for the last time. It’s short but striking, a hallmark of Luis’ writing.

It’s a reminder that life is fleeting, and is also an insight into the psyche of the pizza-loving, frisbeeplaying literary (and literal) giant who may not be with us anymore, but whose presence lingers in his precise, skillfully chosen words —YVET TE TAN

I’m not sure how they did it, how many chickens they had to slaughter or how many hours they had to shave off the ends of their own lives, but my friends got me a day off.

For one day, they said, your limbs will be free of pain, and your breathing will be easy.

You will walk, you will ride, you can run, if you like. For one day, your eyes will be clear, and you will know the true taste of things on your tongue. For one day the memories of your departed will not weigh on you like heavy stones. Sounds great, I said.

The day came. We walked around the treelined paths of our old campus, reminiscing noisily about our youth. I laughed a lot even as every little thing made me want to cry.

How could I have had so little appreciation for all of this, I wondered. The sun, the shade, the breeze, the very feel of my legs moving me along unhindered and unaided.

We found a street vendor and I ate a truckload of fishballs and squid balls and kwek-kwek, all dripping from the deep-fry and slathered in gooey spicy sauce, then chased down with a Mountain Dew. At the Sunken Garden, we tossed a Frisbee around. Out of practice and out of shape, we sucked at it, and didn’t care. The running and jumping and grasping at nothing and cursing and insulting each other was everything.

There was talk of the beach, but there was no time. No one wanted to waste any hours of my one day off stuck in traffic. We ended up in a friend’s swimming pool instead, splashing around as the day drew to a close.

I ate pomelos and mangoes and mandarin oranges and seedless grapes and most of a large juicy pineapple.

Soon it will be time, my friends said sadly.

You’ll go back to your wheelchair and your apartment and your highly restrictive diet, back to your therapy and your memories and regrets, and hopefully you will draw strength from the events of today, and continue to work towards a better existence, bit by bit.

Fuck that, I said. Fucking kill me instead, I said. Let this be not just my day off, but my last day, period. I’m happy right now. I’d like

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to die happy, and not struggling through a goddamn bowel movement. Let this be my last day.

That’s not for us to decide, they said. Then I’ll decide, I said, climbing out of the pool and picking up a knife from the nearby buffet table (I believe it had been used to slice the pineapple). I held the blade against my neck.

I’ve had a good life, I said. I say it’s time to end it. I’m so tired.

Every day I’m so tired. What would the younger you have said? my friends asked. The you that we first met, back in high school, the you that wanted everything, who was going to be a rock star and an author and an awardwinning CRPG programmer?

I don’t care, I said. That me is long gone.

But he’s right here, my friends said, and they stepped aside, and so he was. Hair a little mussed, jeans a little too baggy, there he stood, with the strange magic of the day apparently as yet undissipated, looking at me uncertainly.

I grabbed him and held the knife to his neck. Everybody back, I hissed.

I dragged him out to the driveway. Still dripping from the pool, I threw open the door to one of my friends’ cars. Knife to younger self, I cried out for the keys and my friend reluctantly handed them over.

Younger me and I got in. If you never pick up the bad habits or make the same mistakes I made, I told him, my free hand gripping his shirt, my face three inches from his face, we’ll never end up in this mess. We can be anything. We can still be rock stars and authors and award-winning CRPG programmers. I started the car, built up speed, accelerating while grasping the wheel with pool-slick hands.

Younger me watched me with something that might have been a shadow of admiration.

Eventually he said, maybe I should drive.

I smiled at him. Maybe you should, I said.

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111

PHOTOGRAPHED BY JAKE VERZOSA AND MM YU

Last month, worlds collided as celebrities, artists, journalists, and the fashion crowd gathered for a party unlike anything high society has seen, bidding farewell to an art community’s beloved hangout, and raising a toast to another year of John Lloyd Cruz

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t w as 10pm in 70-D 18th Avenue in Cubao, the workshop of art impresario Jeremy Guiab, and already the outsize cooler— not to mention a number of guests—was crying out for replenishment. “Parating na,” the evening’s celebrant told me, smiling, his face the most unworried I’ve seen it in years.

And true enough, in a matter of minutes, men carrying beer cases snaked their way into the packed crowd, and all was well in the universe. There was no need for concern; John Lloyd Cruz, the just-turned-34 celebrant pulled all the stops for this one. He brought out the crown jewels that comprise a part of his art collection, and tapped Poklong Anading to help him curate it to serve as party backdrop among Guiab’s collection of designer chairs and animal skulls—with Kawayan de Guia’s disco missile Bomba and Lady Liberty bust looking down at the gathering. Cruz flew in Count Kutu and the Balmers, the Calypso and Mento band from Davao, and Goodleaf’s frontman Edy Varde from Bicol. Arnold Morales from the Urban Bandits was there, too—thanks to Cruz’s friend Erwin Romulo—and when the 80s punk stalwart started singing classics like “No Future Sa Pader” and “Manila Girl,” artists de Guia and Gaston Damag—who was leaving for Paris the next day—made their way in front of the stage to dance on top of a thick bounty of what seemed like just-landed confetti. In between performances, Lourd de Veyra was on hand to spin from the workshop loft, dishing out everything from Brasilia to UK jungle. “But always,” as per Romulo, “at the right moment.” The crowd is a merging of Cruz’s three worlds: his family, his colleagues from show biz (Bea A, Maja S and Angelica P in one room—and it’s not even ASAP!); and the art community that had embraced him as one of their own since the actor sparked a deep interest in art and collecting about three years ago. No wonder the guy looks like the happiest kid on the block. Guiab’s Bespoke workshop, throwing its last hurrah with this party to move to El Nido soon, was not only the epicenter of cool that June evening; there was no other place one would care to be. Just ask Nona Garcia who came all the way from her Baguio HQ. “Last night was like a dream,” she would say the next day. Posting a photo on Instagram of Romeo Lee’s golden sculptured likeness suspended over what looks like a grave site sprinkled with kalachuchi, I asked her if there was a ritualistic burial that I missed amidst all the drinking and the dancing. ”Wala namang libing na naganap,” she replied promptly. “He just rose from the grave.” And so it seemed did everyone who came out that night to bid a beloved party place farewell, and raise a glass to everyone’s favorite good time guy. —JEROME GOMEZ

THE GANG’S ALL HERE

Clockwise from left: artist Romeo Lee flanked by Kate and Denise Teng; Poklong Anading, Johnny Manahan, Mariole Alberto and Cruz; Lourd de Veyra; Mara and Nicole Coson, and Maria Taniguchi; Guiab surrounded by members of Count Kutu and the Balmers; collector Rico Quimbo and Soler Santos; Carlo Katigbak, Maja Salvador, Angelica Panganiban, and Bea Alonzo; Camille Malapas and JP Anglo; The Sleepyheads.

“I can describe the party as five star!

‘Yung pag set up ng mgaa artworks better than Art Fair o ano mang art exhibit.

The best!”—Romeo Lee

FREE HUGS

The birthday boy gives close friend Ronnie Lazaro a tight one. Opposite: Gaston Damag who had just met Cruz that evening, and attended a Bespoke party for the first time.

“That party was a real party. I was very tired that day but as soon as I started enjoying the company of friends, people I just met, the drinks. . . That was better than a massage to boost my energy.”

—Gaston Damag

CULTURE CLUB

Romeo Lee with Ryan Villamael, Luis Santos and Veronica Peralejo. Opposite, clockwise from top left: David and Mawen Ong; Erwin Romulo, Audrey Carpio and Rogue’s Jonty Cruz and Jerome Gomez; a Jojo Legaspi stands guard; Isa Lorenzo, Taniguchi and Nona Garcia; Tesa Celdran and Junjun Poblador with friend; Rene Navas, Nilo Ilarde, Olivia Yao, Sleepyheads’ Erick Encinares and Art Informal’s Tina Fernandez. Next spread: Kawayan de Guia and John Lloyd Cruz

“It was a reunion. Everyone from the last thirteen years, when I started Silverlens, was there. Thank you Idan. THANK YOU JEREMY.”—Isa Lorenzo

ISSUE 111 ARS

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July 2017

In celebration of Rogue’s 10th year, we revisit our past issues to bring back previously featured personalities, this time as Famous Rogues.

Rene Knecht was featured in our very first issue in July 2007.

“Someone told me: You may have lost a lot of property but you haven’t lost your hair. I said, ‘That’s right. I’d rather lose my property than lose my hair.’”

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he age of golden boys has long passed among the upper crust, but high society saw one man rise to its summits in the 60s and will always remember it. Millionaire playboy and man of the world Rene Knecht was, after all, the envied toast of the social elite for nearly three decades. He spoke four languages and was well-read, traveled and partied with the international jet-set, and did it all while owning the Tower Hotel and its famous Velvet Slum discotheque.

Combined with his sophisticated charm and dashing good looks, many said he was too good to be true, too glamorous for a corrupt town like Manila—and they were right.

From the moment the Marcos administration seized his property, Knecht’s life was a fight against the law, heading into a vicious tailspin of savage court battles, gradual impoverishment, and even hard jail time in his vindictive quest to regain his fortune. Picking fights with everyone, from affluent families to every Philippine president since Marcos, he has become a dangerous enemy of the state. “I don’t care if I die,” says Knecht, now holed up on the fringes of society, the gardens of Satan to the lavish heaven his life once was. “I will never stop, even though I don’t know if we’ll succeed because the law is bullshit—and all this bullshit has basically consumed my life.”

PORTRAIT BY JUAN CAGUICLA

Rene Knecht, rake