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Last Saturday was Sesquicentennial Day at my high school alma mater, Lowell High School in San Francisco. Yup, that’s one hundred fifty big years, making it the oldest public high school west of the Mississippi.

I got the invitation to the event from the Alumni Association but I couldn’t make it. It was the 3-year death anniversary of my wife’s mother and we had a little get-together. It would’ve been nice to have gone though. One of my old friends said in an e-mail that it would be neat to show our kids where we went to high school.

Three years ago I lamented that Lowell didn’t make it to Newsweek’s 100 Best High Schools in America list. Well, this year it made #26. When I went there many years ago, I believe it ranked #7 (not on account of me, btw!).

Lowell is a magnet school that has produced three Nobel Prize winners (more than most countries), several captains of industry and many other alumni of note. Among them are:

• William Hewlett - yes, of Hewlett-Packard
• Carol Channing - of which our auditorium was named after
• Charles Ginsberg - “The Father of the VCR”
• Donald Fisher - founder of GAP
• Dian Fossey - she who paid the ultimate price protecting the gorillas in the mist
• Bill Bixby - yup, Dr. Banner himself
• Naomi Wolf - feminist writer
• Benjamin Bratt - one-time apple of Ms. Julia Roberts’ eye
• Daniel Handler - Lemony Snicket’s alter ego (previously blogged about here)

Even Lowell’s misfits manage to make a name for themselves. Margaret Cho is a Lowell drop-out. Adrian Lamo, a world-famous hacker, is a Lowell graduate.

Perhaps out of all the famous Lowellites, Rube Goldberg would be my favorite. (Notice how in the Lemony Snicket movie, a Rube-Goldberg contraption was featured in the opening scene?)

There are other notable alumni that didn’t get into the online lists. Here are a few of them:

• Paris - the Black Panther of Hip-Hop
• Emil Guillermo - Fil-Am columnist and former “All Things Considered” host at NPR
• Tess Uriza Holthe - Filipina author of When the Elephants Dance
• Carlos Villa - Filipino artist and educator
• Orvy Jundis - Philippine Comics historian, writer and martial arts instructor
• *just added* Alex Tse - screenwriter of the Spike Lee-directed Showtime movie Sucker Free City

Oh and how could I forget: the actress who played Teek in the 1985 Star Wars spin-off Ewoks: The Battle for Endor was in my class.

With an impressive roster of alumni like that, you’d see why I hadn’t gone to any of our reunions. What’s my claim to fame?

Dear Blog Reader,

Enclosed is a photograph showing the blog author and someone who appears to be Lemony Snicket within the same vicinity. The sea of young folk in the photograph is identified by The Daily Cornholyo as the Lowell High School Choir circa 1987. Mr. Snicket aka Daniel Handler was purportedly the student assistant director of the choir. The blog author, posing as a baritone but truly could not read musical notes, is shown sporting a mullet, a hairstyle fashionable among the clueless in the late 1980s.*

Watch the newly posted trailer of the upcoming movie adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events starring Jim Carrey as Count Olaf. Did you know I went to high school with the guy? Lemony, I mean. No, really! More later…

I suppose hell now is experiencing a prolonged ice age. Apple partners with Hewlett-Packard to produce HP-branded digital music players. Of all PC makers though, H-P I think is the most compatible with Apple. It has recently made a commitment to make products that are “sleek, not geek”. I’m actually impressed by their recent ad campaign. One of their commercials I particularly like is the digital photography one featuring The Cure’s “Pictures of You”. It was only a matter of time that a camera maker would use the song as a soundtrack for its commercials.

p.s. Mr. Bill Hewlett is an alumnus of my high school in San Francisco.

Here’s a high school batchmate reporting on the world premiere of Return of the King held this past Monday in Wellington, New Zealand where she now lives:

They had a parade before the premier of Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King. Pumunta kami ng anak ko sa parade, after coming from the hospital to have my stitches removed, kahit na masakit pa rin ang kamay ko, pumunta pa rin kaming mag-ina….hindi na kami nakipagsiksikan sa red carpet, sa parade na lang kami. And it was AWESOME!

They had an 11 minute parade with the stars, siyempre pakaway-kaway ako sa mga stars like Liv Tyler (Arwen)- she is really pretty in person, naku her skin was so fair and perfect looking kaunti lang ang make-up niya, Elijah Wood(Frodo), the one who protrayed Gandalf, Gollum, The Hobbits, Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) lots of cheers for Aragorn, Legolas (Orlando Bloom)- of course people cheered loudly for him, too. Gimli and many more…I probably don’t have the names of the stars correctly or their characters, but hey feeling nasa Hollywood ako, with the stars. They also had J.R.R. Tolkien’s great grandson and he was pleased that his great grandad’s work was captured in film by Peter Jackson. I enjoyed the part when they had people in their character costumes- hanep yung Orcs eh talagang nakakatakot- ang papangit nila, natakot nga ang anak ko eh; naakatakot din ang itsura noong mga black riders of course on horse back… yung ba ang tawag sa kanila; yung mga elf warriors-naku napakagwapo- ang tatangkad at yung weapons nila realistic talaga, ang the elves parang mga angel ang itsura, and the Hobbits from the Shire- those big feet and funny ears looked real, the Rohan warriors looked fierce, okay I could go on and on…

Kakainggit ka, Ruthie.