Pinoy Wasteland

I saw episodes of The Wonder Years sometimes on the Hallmark channel.

In the episode I saw, Kevin Arnold is partnered with weird girl Margaret, the unpopular type that we all have in school. He realized she’s pretty cool even if “She asks too many questions, has a pet bat, and wears her hair in three pig tails (because you never know when you’re going to need a hair tie)”¹ .

OK! He was not a role model here, but there were episodes that he was, he was more like an asshole. He usually isn’t and I hated him here (coming from the lower end of the social chain in HS), but this episode teaches us something. He wants to be secret friends with her, which hurts Margaret, and his inability to do anything haunts him.

It really affected me. Maybe because I watched The Wonder Years as a kid. Teenagers now have Miley Cyrus, Bella Swan² and Gossip Girl³ characters as role models, which is really no surprise that kids are the way they are now.

They don’t make TV shows like that anymore. Bring on the sex! So I hear those producers say.

Moving on. Tayong mga Pinoy (or sila lang), ina-idolize si Pacquiao. I ask people, do hitting people bring honor to our country? Gumanda ba ang ekonomiya, may tinulong ba yan sa buhay ng maraming tao? I still maintain that I hated TV news that dedicated 30 minutes of airtime to him, while during that time, Reynaldo Punongbayan⁴ died just about the same time in 2005. He has been offered jobs abroad but he loved this country.

And how come we don’t give credit to people like Dr. Amador  Muriel, now that’s someone we can be proud of. He has a molecular theory in “Quantum Disturbance.” Di ako physicist, but it is something to be proud of. And I am proud.

Oh well.

1. Progressive Boink [↩]
2. the Twilight girl with the very weak personality and predilection for creepy and possessive vampires and werewolves [↩]
3. TV show with promiscuous teenagers with little time to study but has a lot of time fornicationg than some twenty-something people I know [↩]
4. he was then the head of PHIVOLCS and saved thousand of lives when Mt. Pinatubo erupted with his foresight about the situation, despite the skepticism many had [↩]

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.