Before anything else, Happy, Happy, Happy Birthday, Peter and Daddy!

Fire From Heaven is my first (and, at the moment, sole) Hunter X Hunter fanfiction.

It was conceptualized and initially penned in November 2002 but has been rewritten and revamped fairly recently. The fanfic is of a semi-epic scale and attempts to introduce Alluka Zaoldyeck, the mysterious child of the assassin family who is yet to play a role in Yoshihiro Togashi’s anime and manga series.

The devastatingly sexy and rather androgynous Illumi Zaoldyeck also figures prominently in the first chapter, where he drinks jasmine tea and clear wine and dresses in semi-formal dinner wear, contodos slacks.

Allow me to share with minna-san the lyrics to a song that is so very apropos for Fire From Heaven. Too apropos, in fact, it is creepy!

Lonely is the Hunter
by KISS

My eggs in one basket, but she threw me a bone
She was dealt a full deck, but she likes to live alone
Ain’t just talkin’ to myself, need a reason to stop
With a flower in her teeth, she drained the last drop
I said girls love money like bees the honey

But lonely is the hunter
You’re my one and only
And lonely is the hunter

Asked her for a refill, sweat flew off my face
She’s a legendary figure, kept me in a cage
She’s a torture chamber, when I seduced her in my bed
She gave a cold reading, success went to her head

In the heat of the battle
The heart cannot rule
I’m such a fool

But lonely is the hunter
You’re my one and only
And lonely is the hunter
Lonely is the hunter
You’re my one and only
And lonely is the hunter

More of my mostly animanga-related fanfiction pieces are available for your reading pleasure at Fuhen, my fic site.

This site is the repository of yours truly’s sundry fics written over the years. So far, I have works on Fushigi Yuugi, Hunter X Hunter and Virtua Fighter.

How quickly time flies, I must say! Nearly a year has passed since I first started my novel, the elusive one I shall only refer to as T3.

I posted my WinAmp playlist for writing T3 throughout February and May this year. This time, I would like to share my musical choices while I was writing throughout the summer.

T3 Playlist (June to October 2011)

· Heart, Alone (This my writing theme song. It conveys the fundamental mood of the entire series. Possibly a remake for the movie?)
· Three Doors Down, Here Without You
· Katy Perry, E.T.
· Paramore, My Heart
· Ricky Martin featuring Meja, Private Emotion
· Solid HarmoniE, Walk Away
· Sally Dworsky, Turning Circles
· Linkin Park, Iridiscent
· Neocolours, Hold On

I normally write my novel, which I will refer to henceforth as T3, to a playlist on my WinAmp.

That is, I am in an infinitely better mindset to bang out the words when I am listening to certain musical tracks. This being said, I must confess I also listen to these songs while I work out at the gym. Physical exercise actually makes my mind plot better and gives me the best ideas at the most unexpected times!

The songs are listed below in no particular order. Enjoy!

T3 Playlist (February to May 2011)

· Sara Bareilles, Gravity (If given the chance, I will choose this as the series love theme!)
· Sara Bareilles, Hold My Heart
· Ashley Tisdale, We’ll Be Together
· Sum 41, With Me
· Cheap Trick, The Flame
· Bellefire, Stay
· Evanescence, Lithium
· Bonnie Tyler, Total Eclipse of the Heart
· Trading Yesterday, Shattered
· Rihanna featuring Eminem, Love the Way You Lie Part 2
· A Fine Frenzy, Almost Lover
· Patty Smyth, Sometimes Love Just Ain’t Enough

Cueshe won the 2006 S.O.P. Pasiklaban Band of the Year award!

The winners of this year’s Pasiklaban were announced yesterday noon or thereabouts on a live telecast. The ceremony was held in conjunction with the 56th Anniversary of GMA-7.

To date, Cueshe has four hit singles to its credit. All these songs are part of their debut album, Half-Empty, Half-Full:
1. Stay
2. Sorry
3. Ulan (“Rain”)
4. Can’t Let You Go

Their fifth single, currently being subjected to heavy airplay, is 24 Hours.

However, my personal favorite out of all their songs released is Love Me Now, Hate Me Soon.

For more information on the band, visit the official Cueshe website, which contains lyrics, news, profiles and more!

A very Merry and Blessed Christmas.

This goes out to everyone reading this, whether or not you celebrate this holiday in your part of the world.

The coolest present I received this year is a musical album, from the coolest uncle in the world.

It was a tape of Voyage: The Essential World Beat Collection, which features hits by New Age artists such as Enya, Enigma, Kitaro and many others.

Following the first few rotations, my favorites of the bunch are Matsuri by Kitaro and Hong Ding Love Song by Middle Kingdom with Noel Quinlan. Nothing beats Oriental grandeur combined with heavy techno spice.

Uncle is definitely a music demi-god, or perhaps the Patron Saint of New Age rhythms.

Linkin Park‘s Reanimation is currently my heavy rotation album.

I must say that it is amazingly, delightfully innovative, even more electrifying than Hybrid Theory.

My favorite tracks are Enth E Nd (Kutmasta Kurt and Motion Man remix) and 1Stp Klsr (Humble Brothers and Jonathan Davis remix).

I practically melted when I heard Enth E Nd for the first time; I just loved the beat and Motion Man’s voice to pieces. The song is now number one in my street dance choreography wish list.

However, I am still madly in love with Korn’s Jonathan Davis and very nearly died when I heard his trademark fiery, grating voice in 1Stp Klsr. Imagine if they make a video for this track.

Here is an album review from Amazon.com that pretty much expresses my sentiments:

Reanimation is the evil twin of Linkin Park’s 2000 debut, Hybrid Theory.

While plotting their next studio album, the Southern California band enlisted some of aggro rock’s leading lights, as well as some of the more enlightened underground MCs and producers, to slice and dice all the songs on their debut (including a few bonus cuts that made it to their Japanese release).

Linkin Park allowed their special guests – including Korn’s Jonathan Davis, Staind’s Aaron Lewis, Orgy’s Jay Gordon, the Roots’ Black Thought, and Jurassic 5′s Chali 2NA – to run riot through their songbook, tweaking melodies, writing new lyrics, and sometimes changing the entire intent of the originals.

As a result, this collection of 20 songs is Mr. Hyde to Hybrid Theory‘s Dr. Jekyll.

Most of Linkin Park’s atmospheric and melodic moments have ended on the cutting-room floor – along with the self-consciousness that pervaded many of the songs – replaced with a brash impudence that’s more rap than rock.

Chali 2NA entirely changes the landscape on “Forgotten,” shape-shifting the song into an alien being dubbed “Frgt/10,” which takes you to a dark, desolate place with only your own disturbed thoughts and some electronic bleeps for company.

And that’s enough. This is a masterful art project that truly succeeds.

The song You’re So Sexy, a sultry, danceable, pseudo-techno beat by French Affair, has gotten quite popular in the Philippines, in radio and television alike.

It is a little like the “sister song” of Right Said Fred‘s I’m Too Sexy that was an international hit several years ago.

We wanted to make a blend-in of both songs, an idea that occurred, quite simultaneously, to several insane people at around 3-4 o’clock this morning. The end product would sound like a medley alternating between the two songs, with seamless transition. It starts with the Right Said Fred intro of “I’m too sexy…” and ends the same way with the final line “I’m too sexy for this song.”

An mp3 of You’re So Sexy could be downloaded here. I also found another rendition of the song, the extended club remix.

Lyrics to You’re So Sexy are found here. The words to the Right Said Fred song I’m Too Sexy are also available.

I have been so attached to my newly retuned clavier for about three days now and my ears seemed to have developed a permanent echoing ringing to them.

Too much headphones static, I suppose. I swear I could occasionally taste electricity running through my body, especially after drinking three cups of cappuccino without so much as a gulp of fresh air in between.

At times I feel like my ears are not there anymore, but some ugly sound wraith gobbled them up for gratification.

Recent Remixes:
· Isle of Capri, bosanova, reggae and polka versions
· Moon River, unaccompanied piano and disco remix with custom drummer
· Obladi Oblada, rock interlude
· Little Brown Jug, town fiesta march and kindergarten versions
· Beautiful Brown Eyes, horny slow rock and ballad
· Lovers’ Concierto, all tempos imaginable, up to and including my all-time favorite pipe organ version with vibrato/sustain that sounds like something straight from a 1950s vampire movie

Today, while listening to some rather old RAM files I found in an obscure hard drive folder, I was struck at how the theme of Jet Li’s Once Upon a Time in China series had so many versions.

I have seven of them at hand:
1. The original one, used in the opening synchronized forms sequences of the movies, with the heavy percussion and male choral voices
2. The instrumental one with the lead flute
3. The one with the Jacky Cheung vocals
4. Another instrumental dominated by a very heavy gong
5. The “pop” version, with a lead singer and some backup voices
6. The “Westernized” one, used in Once Upon a Time in China and America
7. Another Western rendition, less heavy, with a banjo for a lead

Shi’s suggested remakes:
1. By Rob Zombie, with the shrill voice of the White Zombie main man himself singing in Mandarin
2. Eminem remix
3. Charlotte Church and Andrea Bocelli duet
4. Westlife remake, as they are quite fond of coming up with their own remake of everything
5. N’Sync version, with the guys making a cameo in the next OUATIC installment
6. Shakira mambo, with Jet Li making an apperance in the video, riding charging horses (Ah-whah-whah.)
7. Carlos Santana acoustic
8. Elton John!!! Piano!!!
9. Linkin Park remix, to be included in their Reanimation album, with Jet Li to appear in the music video alongside Oriental members Mike Shinoda and Mr. Hahn
10. M2M squeaky, mellow number
11. Britney Spears version, with numerous “Uh!” gruntings in between instrumental refrains
12. By Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, love song style

For more information on the series, visit The Internet Movie Database.

How do I keep my mud on my feet
It’s wearing me down, can’t stay
I’m praying too deep
It’s hurting my sleep
I can’t let you go away
Too late, you tried
Too late, you died

I don’t understand
There’s blood on my hands
I can’t have you as my own
Your heartbeat has ceased
I’ll leave you in peace
But haunt me inside my dreams
Too late, you tried
Too late, you died

This song is entitled Mikaela.

It is one of those short and sweet yet undeniably unforgettable tracks off Oracle, the 1995 debut album of the Filipino band Sugar Hiccup.

Mikaela contains arguably the best combined use of Melody del Mundo’s ethereal soprano voice and the darkly passionate guitar riffs of Czandro Pollack.

I have been playing this song repeatedly since the previous weekend, along with Moden De and Little D, both also from Oracle.

If you still have not heard anything by Sugar Hiccup, go hunt for a song of theirs – something from Oracle is best.

Tracks off Womb, the second album, are not bad, but the sound no longer has the uniquely dreamy, almost otherworldly, touch so palpable in the first album.

I was rummaging through my old soundtrack tapes when I came across Batman and Robin, which contains the twin The End is the Beginning is the End and The Beginning is the End is the Beginning by the Smashing Pumpkins and the low-key ballad Foolish Games by Jewel.

The latter, I recall, has quite an interesting music video, wherein Jewel is singing against a backdrop of mostly hazy, drifty white and in the company of a few individuals dressed in flowing dark-blue kimonos and heavily made-up in the Kabuki style. Their movements, however, were slow and serious, as in the Noh.

Fascinating, the things one remembers when rearranging tapes.

The ending for tonight’s episode of Ikaw Lang Ang Mamahalin was quite the goddammit-don’t-leave-me-hanging-like-this type, as Lorenzo Diego (the uber-sexy character of the uber-sexy Mark Anthony Fernandez) was finally forced to pull the trigger on the heroine to save the life of his adoptive father. Mark will also be in tomorrow’s episode of Kakabakaba Ka Ba?, a weekly primetime suspense-horror series.

Come next week, my freshly retuned clavier electronique will be delivered to our house, including a new set of line-in wires that I had to move heaven and Middle Earth to acquire given the current rare and pricey status of the stuff in the sparse number of decent electrical-supply stores in Iloilo City.

Well, I have to be thankful I did not have to order them from another city and pay additional for shipping.

If you still do not have a copy of the Trainspotting OST Volume One, get one now.

It combines some of the best rock, alternative and techno tunes of the late 1990s. What’s more, the movie stars Ewan McGregor of Moulin Rouge and Star Wars fame.

I unearthed my Trainspotting album last week because I had to make a non-stop medley out of some tracks from said OST and the Mortal Kombat II: Annihilation soundtrack.

There were two choice tracks out of Trainspotting Volume One: For What You Dream Of (Renaissance Mix Bedrock vs. Kyo) and Born Slippy (Underworld).

The latter one has the heavy, rhythmic percussion beats that would make our local Dinagyang festival choreographers drool. If one is keen and has needle-drop-sensitive headphones, he/she can cut off the vocals at the intro and outro parts of the song and make the whole thing an instrumental (or should we say synthesized?) stand-alone.

I am currently obsessing over the music of Enya. I discovered her brilliant tunes through The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. She wrote and performed the theme song for this film, May It Be.

Enya’s music is just so soothing and beautiful. Her sound is very smooth, like a deep stream that never gets disrupted by the elements.

Her live performances, quite infrequent compared with most artists, are also a sight to behold. When she sang May It Be in the 2002 Academy Awards, it was an ethereal, unforgettable appearance.

Her songs that are on heavy rotation in my WinAmp are Only Time and Orinoco Flow, which I consider to be contemporary classics.

I was able to find a few interesting Enya remixes online, among them two discofied versions of Only Time. I also came across a particularly daring blend of Orinoco Flow and Eminem’s The Real Slim Shady.

I was searching for a 1998 MTV techno-music compilation earlier this evening when I stumbled across my tape of Solid HarmoniE, the group’s self-titled album. It was released circa 1997, with the fairly successful carrier single entitled I’ll Be There For You.

Solid HarmoniE is, rather not arguably, a more sporty rip-off of the Spice Girls, like some other girl groups in the late 1990s when the cutesy Fab Five was in its heyday. What attracted me to the former’s brand of music was the blending of their voices. I do not know, but I really like it when four different tonal levels mix in one disco beat. It is not all shrieking, rapping and ranting.

They really are good singers, these four girls: Mariama, Melissa, Beki, and Elisa. Mariama quit the group in 1999 and joined The Honeyz, a group with a more R-and-B feel. Melissa opted for a solo career. The remaining two persevered on and even found a new third member, but until now I still have not heard about them coming up with anything. Perhaps they are stranded in no-album (or no-career) limbo.

My favorite Solid HarmoniE song is Walk Away, a sweet ballad. The lyrics follow. Try to find an audio file of it if you can. It is one of those highly underappreciated good love songs.

For more information on the group, check out this site.

Walk Away
by Solid HarmoniE

Walk away
Don’t turn around ’cause you may see me cry

I’ve never known a feeling so sure
You came my way and opened the door
I think of us and the love that we had
With half a chance I’d bring it all back
But I know
I know things always change
So I guess I gotta let you go

Walk away
Don’t turn around ’cause you may see me cry
Walk away
Don’t turn around, don’t even say goodbye
Don’t turn around until you reach the other side

Looking back, I have no regret
I tell my friends that you were the best
And as I stand just watching the rain
I pray that you were here once again
But I know
I know things always change
So I guess I gotta let you go

I know it’s gonna be hard this way
‘Cause I’ll be missing you everyday
Now I know you’re leaving
And it’s such a lonely feeling
That I know I’ve gotta let you go
I’ve gotta let you go

Walk away
Don’t turn around ’cause you may see me cry
Walk away
Don’t turn around, don’t even say goodbye
Don’t turn around until you reach the other side

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.

I finally got to buy two soundtrack albums that I really wanted: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

I went to the mall this afternoon and was very glad to see that the music store people have already put up the newly shipped-in tapes and CDs up on the shelves.

The LOTR album sounds very grand, with powerful choral voices thrown in during intense bars, not to mention Enya’s fantastic theme song, May It Be.

The Harry Potter album sounds a bit tame, I suppose, but I think it goes with the territory. The movie was pretty much General Patronage in nature, unlike LOTR which was considered by certain Filipino religious groups as violent and not suited for young children.