This newspaper exists.



Plaridel Post started in the minds of people in a newsroom called Beltran in Wing A of the College of Mass Communication. It was born in Antipolo and Quezon City, one month in the making, from fiction to reality. It was parented by three college girls, all tired but optimistic: Elsie had colds and dishevelled hair, Claire's gastrocnemius was already hard from all the driving, and Mimi was the one who breaks down from less than 7 hours of sleep.

Regardless of their weaknesses, they fought. And they fought hard. Against sleep, hunger, thirst, jadedness, dread, 3 a.m. insects and that icky, stinky feeling. After more than 26 hours of hard core editing, layout work, cropping, ranting, x-marking paragraphs, hypnic jerks and microsleeps, they still drove from the mountains back to the city to the University to the Journalism department to make it before deadline. Alas, they failed. They were still late. Too late.

But as some song goes, "The shortest distance between two people is a smile." It worked. One smile and they convinced the great and famous secretary to print their four-page publication.

Finally, the Plaridel Post was born. From mere imagination to paper. It's crude, and partly unfinished, but what the heck. For they saw everything they had made, and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the the free day.

Postscript:
PLARIDEL POST is the dream project the College might want to dream about, even a University whose students have long been searching for alternatives.

Next attraction ...
another alternative student paper from dreamland:
"Iskolarium"
Where change starts with i

is an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Here is a director who thinks in visuals. Well, all directors should, but this one's different. The press calls him a "visual visionary," and for me that's the greatest title ever. Ever. As in it's greater than "king" or "prime minister" or "president" or "summa cum laude" or "beauty queen."

A friend said I'm a very visual person, and I think this generation in general is, especially with the Internet and mass market digital cameras and colored cellphones. The most attractive way to do something nowadays is to do it in the best visuals imagined, like when reporting in class or designing projects. But it's not just a now culture, it has been for a long time. Only we have more opportunities now given the available technology. Like suddenly everyone's into photography and web design and Photoshop. Crude art, they usually are. But with the burgeoning (naks!) of this hilaw kind of art, there would be more, and it would improve tastes and standards. It could soon be a beautiful world, not that it isn't yet.

And Michel Gondry represents that generation. Look at the things he does. Think Eternal Sunshine when the memories of Joel, the lead character, are being erased one by one, and when the beach house breaks into pieces and fades. Think White Stripes' "Fell in Love with a Girl," with its use of groundbreaking Lego animation. He's almost a genius. What else can I say?

Gondry is hybrid imagery's Salvador Dali, and a younger Luis Buñuel. Surrealism. Scenes of Eternal Sunshine are set in Joel's dreams. His recent feature, The Science of Sleep, is also one such work. Its very title describes the kind of photography that Gondry is the master of. His works also remind me of the art of Leonardo Sonnoli, the poster guy.

One thing though, I think it would be ideal if he could use his art and his visions in advocacy work engaging the youth. His talent is perfect for that. A guy like him is needed with the Force, to battle against the Dark Side. #