smooth (?) escape

howdy from the city with the longest lockdown in the world! 

from gcq, good old metro manila was placed back in modified enhanced community quarantine. i'm not even going into the gory details on how it came to be. as i've mentioned in previous posts, not a day goes by where we don't get any news that would actually help uplift people's spirits in these trying times. each day is just one head-bangin' time and no, i don't mean doing that while listening to rock music. it's just all so frustrating that i find myself looking for things to escape into. 

definitely not books, much to my own great surprise. i haven't so much as opened one book ever since the beginning of the pandemic. the last book i held and read was the graveyard book by neil gaiman if i'm not mistaken. alexander mccall smith's retelling of jane austen's emma has been sadly gathering dust on my desk for months which is a big boo! it's literally sitting on my desk that also serves as my night table and it's just there, looking at me, looking at me as if i've done it a great disservice. and i know i have. 

especially since i did finish one online book a couple of weeks ago, something about a billionaire... 

but that's just it.

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music and movies have been my main sources of escape since march. music more so than movies, of course, but movies also do have that effect of drawing the viewer in, making them forget all their troubles even for just a couple of hours. i know watching home alone 1 and 2 had that effect on me. memories of christmases past just came crashing down on moi and of course those idyllic moments of childhood when you didn't care about anything else but play, go to school, watch cartoons, eat, sleep, play some more. rinse and repeat. sister act 1 had the same effect too. 

i used to say that i liked my childhood but i don't feel that wanting to go back to it. but in these times? i never wanted anything more than just that. heck, even january and february of this year seem like they happened years ago already, even if they themselves hadn't been a bed of roses either. 

so thank goodness for cable and the movies that allow me to forget. props to ready or not, that creepy movie where the protagonist has to survive the night playing hide-and-seek since her new in-laws would make surviving impossible for her. the dark humour there is enough for me to cringe in choice parts which is of course the intention of the filmmaker. i also like the premise of the movie. it reminds me of a twilight zone episode i watched as a kid where there was a boy or girl being chased by evil children. the kid was cornered in a hallway and if my memory serves, he or she falls out of the window and dies. i don't know why that particular episode stayed with me all these years and now i'm wondering how could a five-year-old been left alone watching tv shows not meant for kids. 

anyway, another movie that stuck with me was instant family, which is a true-to-life movie about the director's own experience in fostering siblings and eventually adopting them. i love how the story was told in this movie and it just cuts straight to the heart. another reason why this resonated with me is because i would like to be able to foster kids myself some time in the future when provisions would allow. fostering kids is not that popular in the philippines although there are some organisations here that promote it. i would have to research more on how this works here. 

one fun fact about instant family: the girl who played the eldest sibling also portrayed dora in that dora the explorer movie. haha! yeah, yeah, so i also watched that dora the explorer movie, which was aired a few months before instant family. i knew that girl looked familiar.

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in the realm of music, kat edmonson reigns supreme. i have discovered new music that made it to my 2020 playlist, revisited more oldies but goodies in the recent months, but kat lords over it all. it's really amazing that she produces her own live show on facebook straight from her living room! even now that she's moved from brooklyn to upstate ny, she and her partner aaron manage to put out a show every week for her fans, with something new almost every time. i think it's great that kat has guests in the show in addition to her singing her great songs and others from the great american songbook. it's also awesome how kat interacts with her fans, how she really makes an effort to remember requests, and of course the people who come to her show every sunday night (monday morning in my time zone). i haven't missed a show yet although i've been late to a couple since i fell back asleep after turning off the alarm that i set specifically for it haha!

so i sound very much like a fangirl here and no, not sorry at all. been a fan of kat edmonson since 2014 when i first heard her song lucky in the movie admission. i also wrote a bit about this song in this post. i think it's very sweet of kat to sing it every time someone requests it. 

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good night!