Sad, Sadder, Saddest
This last weekend Grungella and Ernie escaped the summer torment by hanging out at Gateway mall in Cubao. Grungella told Ernie about a Roz Chast cartoon she’d seen that morning. “It’s in three panels. Bad: Person over 40 with a MySpace page. Worse: Your dad with a MySpace page. Worst: Your dad’s band with a MySpace page.”
“Sad, sadder, saddest,” said Ernie. Little did they know that this would be the recurring theme of the day.
They wandered into a T-shirt store that was having a sale. Ernie bought two shirts. The salesperson informed him that his purchase entitled him to free tickets to a concert that same night at the Araneta Coliseum. “That’s terrific!” Ernie and Grungella chorused. “Who’s playing?”
According to the ticket the show was called “Lost 80s Live”, and it featured three New Wave acts from their distant youth: When In Rome, Real Life, and A Flock of Seagulls.
Sad: The show’s title made it clear that the performers were has-beens: “Lost” pretty much sums up their careers.
Sadder: There’s always an audience in Manila for bands two (more often, four) decades past their sell-by date.
Saddest: Ernie and Grungella knew A Flock Of Seagulls but weren’t exactly sure who When In Rome and Real Life were. Our apologies to hardcore fans of these bands; our characters were not hip in the 80s. Or today. In fact they disapprove of ‘hip’ as an adjective. (Continue reading.)
Sad, Sadder, Saddest in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
April 25th, 2008 at 01:45
harriet here, site comment virgin :). just wanted to say I loved this essay at Star Online. It was really funny, and kinda sad really, especially since I like “The Promise” (and that alone)… btw, here’s the long-overdue link to our impromptu kodakan at Old Swiss Inn last December with James. nice to bump to you again after all this time…
http://chinachix.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html
April 25th, 2008 at 06:55
This must have been the waking nightmare that Hugh Grant’s character was going through in that rom-com with Drew Barrymore.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:30
It’s really sad that our country is a popular destination for has beens. Sadder still is that we keep lapping them up like idiots. The saddest part of it all is that for a country that likes to live in the past, we have doomed ourselves to oblivion by repeating our mistakes–imagine Erap for president in 2010?
April 25th, 2008 at 12:39
Holy fish! Erap in 2010?! Perish the thought. Knock on wood. Light some candles to whatever saint will save us from that nightmare.
April 25th, 2008 at 23:01
‘I’m sorry but I’m just thinking of the right words to say/I know they don’t sound the way I planned them to be/but if you wait around awhile/I’ll make you fall for me/I promise, I promise you/I will… O’ di ba? When In Rome, yun na!
April 27th, 2008 at 12:02
When In Rome came back to my recent memory after watching Napoleon Dynamite a couple of years ago… By the way, there’s no good “hip” except “tragically hip”.
April 29th, 2008 at 09:06
surreal: actually watching and hearing these bands perform!