deebeedee

• Poplicks.com: L.A.’S FILIPINO INV(ASIAN)? Critique of LA Weekly article on Filipino domination of the Hollywood club scene.

• Electric Kulintang electronica + kulintang

• Liwayway Marketing Corporation - linkfilter.net A link to a Philippine company that manufactures food snacks has been posted at linkfilter. But why? Is it because of its cool but not uncommon Flash splash page? Is it the fact that their “Oishi” brand of products is exported to Japan? I doubt it’s because you expect Liwayway to publish komiks instead of make snacks.

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?

Gerry’s Grill in Union City and a UFO. I didn’t notice the hovering speck until I d’nloaded the pic from my camera phone.

There’s now a Gerry’s Grill on this side of the Pacific. It’s a welcome addition to the selection of Filipino restaurants here in the Bay Area. It’s a little bit more upscale than the average Pinoy hole-in-the-wall turo-turo diner. Decor and choice of furniture are decent. One wall is lined with capiz-adorned panel doors. A nice little water fountain is built into the wall to the right and a bar occupies the front-end of the restaurant. I was greeted, however, by a familiar smell when I entered the place. It’s that certain scent you smell when you enter a Filipino grocery store or when you first crack open a newly arrived balikbayan box. It sort of smells banig-like, you know what I mean? (Some Thai restaurants have it too.) It definitely adds to the authenticity. For sure though, you won’t see any “Hello, Garci” pre-paid phone card posters or Philippine government-issued calendars stapled onto the maitre d’s podium. Which brings me to the staff — they’re mostly non-Filipino of different stripes, sort of what you’d see at the local TGIF or Chili’s. Oh and the food? It was okay, I guess. I’m not much of a gourmand so I’m not going to elaborate on it further. I just remember having kare-kare, pancit and sisig. It was quite filling.