OF WAKES AND FUNERAL PYRES

The cliché goes that there are only two certainties in life, death and taxes.

The Lord knows, together with the dreaded Internal Revenue Service (IRS), that I have had enough trouble with taxes in my lifetime. I am chagrined to admit that at one time, I owed the IRS a six figure amount. I am filled with glee to realize that my death will constitute my final protest to the IRS. It will be my final refusal to be productive, and hence, taxable.

Yes, I have been mulling the reality of my mortality and the details of my funeral arrangements. Here are some scenarios that I have been tossing around.

A VIKING FUNERAL

There is an old movie aptly titled “The Vikings” starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine about a Viking saga. Of course there are the usual battle scenes including a castle siege, but there are several other scenes that stick to my memory.

Ernest Borgnine dies by leaping into a pit full of wolves or dogs, Tony Curtis is punished by having his left hand lopped off with a sword, and Kirk Douglas dies in the end and is buried with full Viking honors. His body is cast adrift in a Viking ship and archers shoot flaming arrows into the boat. As the movie theme song plays plaintively in the background, the boat slowly disappears in the horizon, swathed in flames, the Viking warrior’s spirit rising into the heavens together with the smoke.

Romantic, no? This appealed to my warrior spirit, since I am a martial arts and weapons master. When I broached this to some family members, my little nephew Martin piped up, “Can we just shoot you now with flaming arrows and put you out of your misery?”

A PRIVATE CEREMONY

I have always been alternately peeved and amused when I go to some relatives’ or friends’ funeral, and tons of friends and relatives show up who have not bothered to visit or say hi to the deceased the past years. So why take the effort now to show up at the funeral? Why are you saying goodbye when you never bothered to say hello or how’s it going when he was alive and lucid and probably lonely?

When I die, my funeral will be by invitation only. Only relatives and friends who have stood by me, put up with my idiosyncracies, lent me money and visited and humored me in my old age will receive invitations.

I hope there will be at least enough mourners to push my casket out the church.

A CONCERT BENEFIT

I want a big raucous party with several live bands alternately playing right next to my casket. It will be a concert benefit, with hefty admission charged. Since there will be thousands in attendance, the net proceeds will go to charity.

I would like my son Mike to sing one of those vein-popping, gut-busting unintelligible heavy metal songs he sings at concerts. Some mosh pit dancing would be all right with me, and I would not mind a whirl around the pit myself.

I have already made known some songs I would want sung during this event. This includes the “MASH Theme” from the movie “MASH,” “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Sweet Child of Mine” by Guns and Roses, “Knights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues, “This is My Religion” by REM and “Light My Fire” and “This is the End” by the Doors.

I do not want any sadness and tears and wailing at this event, unless it is Mike’s heavy metal freaks howling a funeral dirge for me, or their reasonable facsimile thereof.

AN ARNIS TRAINING CAMP

My brothers-in-arms in martial arts might probably want to throw a final workout in my memory. After all, I have sponsored many a seminar and training camp under the banner of my organization called Tipunan International (Gathering). I want them to bring their favorite real and training weapons, bang sticks and steel and afterwards bring out the beer and pulutan (finger foods). Here, everybody gets to reminisce about their favorite war stories, of warrior days long gone and past, and of warriors who have preceded them.

In the final analysis, I want to my funeral arrangements to be just like my life—unapologetic, slightly disheveled, mildly chaotic, with some mild glitches here and there, but always full of family and friends, goodwill and joy, laughter and banter, and with a warrior spirit and a bon vivant’s flair.

Ave atque vale. See you in the afterlife.

A SHOCKING RETRO DEVELOPMENT AT A SCHOOL

The school is called the Mary Erskine and Stewart’s Melville Junior School in Scotland, with approximately 1,200 students. It is teaching a subject that is actually reviving two lost arts at the same time.

The two lost arts are handwriting, and handwriting with a fountain pen.

I find this a shocker, albeit a positive one though, because I actually had this subject when I was in grade school. During my time in grade school, there were probably as many fountain pens as there were ball pens, and we learned to use both equally well. I remember submitting homework written with a fountain pen, and actually bringing fountain pen ink in my school bag along with other requisite school supplies.

This is in stark contrast to other recent developments in other schools, like a school district in another country allowing students to use “text-speak” in their exams.

Now mind you, the Scottish school does not disdain modern technology and actually teaches a full range of computer lessons. Students are not forced to use fountain pens in all school work, but may use ball pen and even pencils for math work, for example. Surprisingly, most parents support the school in this particular approach, which may appear outmoded to some.

Is this just a revival of an ancient, lost art, or is there some academic benefit to this subject, other than of course having beautiful penmanship?

The school principal claims that the fountain pens have helped boost academic performance. The pens force the students to write more carefully, thereby improving the quality of their work. He makes a final point that proper handwriting is as relevant today as it has ever been.

I doubt if this “new” subject will catch like wildfire in the academic world. The tide of course is going the other way, swept by the ubiquitous use of computers, hand-held gadgets, cell-phones and texting.

But it is encouraging and even heart-warming to read that there are still some educators with old fashioned values, and more than that, have the gumption and the conviction to implement and impart these values to young students.

May their tribe increase.

TEXT-SPEAK

Like a bad movie, this is a sequel up to my blog on the assassination of the King’s English in the internet.

I read today in the news that school officials in New Zealand just issued an announcement. New Zealand’s high school students will be able to use “text-speak” in national exams this year. “Text-speak” is of course the mobile phone text message language started and used by teen-agers. As I have decried, it is now gaining common usage, including in the internet.

I am fortunate that I have an ex-teenager (now in his early twenties) and two teen-agers with whom I have on occasions exchanged text messages, so I am vaguely familiar with this new language. It is composed mostly of abbreviations, contractions, acronyms, made-up shortcut words and alpha-numeric type of shorthand that is evolving into common usage.

In my previous blog, I gave several examples of all this. I have also begun to see words I have never seen before, like “prolly” for “probably” and many shorthand conventions like “brb” for “be right back,” “ty” for “thank you,” and “yw” for “you’re welcome” or the now acceptable “your welcome.”

I am highly disturbed by this turn of events. I can understand the use of text-speak creeping into the internet. After all, isn’t the internet a reflection of reality, distorted though it may seem?

But the classroom is a different story. I thought we sent our children to school to learn. I would assume that includes learning proper English.

For example, are they allowing the use of text-speak in English composition or grammar or literature? I remember my English subjects. Nothing would earn us a huge deduction more than wrong spelling or wrong syntax. I remember that even in History classes, we were penalized for wrong spelling and atrocious English.

Okay, I realize that this is happening in New Zealand, and I must profess some ignorance in the New Zealand educational system. So I will try not to get too agitated. I just dread to think something similar happening in the United States.

You can be sure I will be checking my children’s English composition assignments a little bit closer from now on. And I already have my hands full with the new math.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY HOLIDAYS

The holiday season is upon us, or have been upon us for a while now. I have just been ignoring it.

I just want to wish you and yours a merry but blessed Christmas. If you are one of those offended by the word Christmas, have a happy holidays.

For some of you who read my blogs, we have some tenuous connection—martial arts, Modern Arnis, the Philippines, internet networking, etc. Some of you are probably surfers. But our common bond is really belonging to the human race. Deep down, we have the same aspirations, same fears, same needs.

So enjoy Christmas and good will with your family, loved ones and friends. But try to celebrate it with the whole human race as well. We need some tradition of peace and inclusion, even for such a short period of time.

God knows there is enough strife and ill will the whole year round.

THE ASSASSINATION OF THE KING’S ENGLISH AT THE INTERNET

I am an immigrant to the United States, which means I learned my English in a foreign country. Fortunately, I matriculated at a school, or several schools to be exact, that emphasized being able to write and speak good English, so I was not handicapped in that respect coming to the United States.

I came to the United States as a young adult. I was gratified to find out that my spoken or verbal English was slightly accented, lightly sprinkled with archaic words but articulate enough for use in both the business and social world. Even now I still speak with a slight accent which others, especially ladies I am delighted to mention, rather like.

But I was really heartened to find out that my written English was even above average. Early in my corporate career in the United States, I found myself being asked to write documentation, reports and even manuals over native born Americans simply because my English was a wee bit more grammatically correct, concise and precise.

So with just some slight adjustments, including getting hep on slang and colloquialisms and other nuances of American English, I was not hard pressed to utilize my re-tooled brand of English here in the United States.

Now I find myself having to make slight adjustments again, upon joining up with myspace.com and other internet cyberstations . While visuals, graphics, and pictures make up the bulk of websites, straining its bandwidth, one still has to communicate with the written word. It is a hoot reading some of the comments and remarks in myspace.com and other websites.

Instead of being concise and precise, the idea nowadays seems to be more of abbreviating and coming up imprecise but creative words or phrases to convey a paragraph full of innuendoes. Misspellings are either tolerated or are now accepted for what I will call cybercation or cyberspace communication.

Abbreviations are probably the legacy of texting, and they are now part of both texting and cyberspace communication. “u r” of course is much faster to write than “you are” and even the uninitiated can figure out what “u r”
stands for.

Misspellings now run rampant, and they are the result of both economy of keyboard strokes and just sheer wanton lexicon disregard. The most egregious examples are “you’re” and “your” with the latter word winning about 99% of the time, as in “your hot.” Other examples include “their” and “there,” “were” and “where,” “bare” and “bear” and many other synonymous words.

I love the creative contractions, like “waddup” which I believe is a progression from “what’s up?” to “wassup” to “waddup.” Is “waddup” the past tense of “wassup?”

The word “very” has been banished from some people’s vocabulary and has now been replaced by the word “fuckin” or “friggin” to give it a more superlative kick, as in “fuckin hot” to convey the idea that the lady in question is not just “very hot” but “fuckin hot.” Even the sexually uninitiated should be able to get that picture.

The saving grace of all this is, as I have pointed out in previous blogs, is that myspace.com is a microcosm of the human universe. The young and the restless and the cool are entitled to their colorful, unique and contemporary version of written English.

For now, I am happy to report that the addled purists like myself, decrying the death of the King’s English in the internet, are still permitted their concise and precise, albeit old-fashioned and archaic brand of English to exist side by side with the new cybercation (internet or cyber communication, remember?) See how many strokes I saved? I will get the hang of this yet.

A NIGHT OUT ON THE TOWN

Last night, Saturday, I did something I have not done in quite a while. I went out to town in downtown Los Angeles.

To be exact, we meandered our way around JapanTown or Little Tokyo. First we had a simple but filling fare at a Los Angeles landmark, the sandwich place of Philippe. As it was dinner time, the place was packed. I had a pork sandwich and pineapple pie. Then we browsed around some shops at the JapanTown mall. Finally, we ended up at the venue for the entertainment of the evening.

The venue was the Japan American Theatre, and the entertainment was the band Hiroshima. It was their fifth annual “Spirit of the Season” annual concert.

Hiroshima is described as a jazz fusion band with Japanese or Asian influence, based in Los Angeles. They have been around a while and have enjoyed a loyal following all these years. They announced that they were working on their 16th CD. The current members include
June Okida Kuramoto, koto
Dan Kuramoto, saxophone, flute
Danny Yamamoto, drums
Kimo Cornwell, keyboards
Shoji Kameda, taiko

Guests artists for the evening included StuccoRainbow, Mia Doi Todd, Terry Steele and Roy Firestone. Yes, that is Roy Firestone the sportscaster and he turned out to be funny (as a comedian) and can really sing.

I enjoyed the show. I like Hiroshima because their “hardcore” songs have a mild martial arts, Japanese timbre to it reminiscent of a “Black Rain” or “Rising Sun” movie score. I would have preferred Hiroshima performing their regular songs versus the Christmas numbers they performed but it was understandably a Holiday performance. The near-capacity crowd was very appreciative and the atmosphere, festive.

All in all, it was a decent show and a fun evening. With the pulsating thump of taiko drums and the plaintive notes of the flute still echoing in my ears, we walked out into a slight drizzle. There is still life in downtown Los Angeles, the City of the Angels.


Copyright, Jay de Leon 12/10/2006

DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON IN DAGUPAN

The two protagonists squared off in the center of the ring. They were of equal build, armed with blades and presumably of comparable skill. One could feel the animosity and tension between them.

At a pre-arranged signal, the combatants lunged full-tilt at each other. Flesh, bones and blade clashed in violent fury. In just a few seconds, one of the combatants lay dead on the dirt floor of the arena, its white and black feathers now streaked with red. Another fighting cock had bit the dust in the arena at the Dagupan City cockpit arena in Dagupan, Pangasinan.

A cockfight in the Philippines is probably one of the most organized chaos you will see in the world. After some ritualistic presentation of the fighting cocks, the betting starts. It consists of bettors placing bets against each other with hand signals, yelling, whistling and clapping to catch somebody’s attention. None of the bets are ever written down on paper. At the bloody conclusion of the cockfight, bets are quickly and quietly settled with money being tossed at or passed down to the winner.


This is an excerpt from “Philippine Odyssey 2006” by Jay de Leon where he chronicles his “Balikbayan” trip to the Philippines, including attending the 3rd World Filipino Martial Arts Festival in Manila and Cavite, sponsored by the International Modern Arnis Federation of the Philippines (IMAFP).

The e-book “Philippine Odyssey 2006” is now available from the online store at www.filipinomartialartsmuseum.com .