championship heart
Manila, 1 June—I suppose anyone may rightly assume that my old high school alma mater, now called San Beda Alabang, has always been some sort of basketball country (just like its NCAA-popular brother San Beda in Mendiola)—even when it was still Benedictine Abbey School, or when it briefly became St Benedict College—but I suppose every Filipino high school is some sort of basketball country, with their respective fair share of stellar basketball players.
I still see my batch’s basketball phenoms every now and then on Facebook, still on the basketball court—this time, as coaches to teams of younger boys. As a high school nerd, you could imagine how away from this players’ circle I was, but I’ve always thought about this specific group of guys as happy-go-lucky boys, always full of energy, laughter following them down the halls, etc. That they ended up being mentors is actually rather apt. (My cousin, who played ball for Beda in high school, years after I graduated, was amused at the fact that his coach and I were high school batchmates)
Anyway. I talk about them because they were on my feed lately, but for a semi-somber reason: One of them needs help raising funds to combat kidney disease. I don’t think Chico Tan and I ever shared a classroom; I remember him as a friend of a friend, and of course, as a stalwart on the court.
When I read what his close friend Teddy wrote about him, it was hard not to tear up a bit: They’d been playing ball together all their life, right from the proverbial kindergarten sandbox, so to speak, representing the school as varsity members from elementary to college. Afterwards, they ended up coaching scores of younger basketball players, and shepherding them through championships of their own. All that while, Chico battled Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and kidney disease, and in September last year, he started undergoing dialysis. He has a wife and two young sons.
They put up a Facebook page that would serve as the hub for Chico’s fundraising efforts, and along with over a thousand other friends and batchmates, we are all rooting for him. If you could spare a moment to donate, or if you want to witness this man’s will to live first-hand, do give his site a visit. Thank you.
Killing Eve Season 2 mini-review
We finished all eight episodes of British spy thriller tv series Killing Eve’s second season, so there’s bound to be some spoilers until the finale. This is your spoiler warning.
Some bullet-point thoughts:
I still haven’t got a very good capsule summary for plugging this show to non-viewers: Does this: the show where Sandra Oh is obsessed with Jodie Comer’s female serial killer character and they have murderous adventures labeled by fantastic typeface all around Europe together?—cut it? Maybe? Who knows?
Speaking of the leads: Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer are absolutely breathtaking in this. I mean, it’s as expected from Season 1, but jfc, I think in Season 2 the writers committed to the queer subtext we picked up in the first season, and oh how deliciously. Jodie Comer vacillates from smitten to murderous so effortlessly, and Sandra Oh is perfection each and every episode. Fiona Shaw as the dubious Carolyn Martens is also fantastic.
I do have a few nitpicks about this season, but they did not affect my enjoyment of the season at all.
Eve’s crew, for example, is not as interesting as Season 1’s Bill; I’m still on the fence re: sleeping with Hugo, but the whole implication of the scene (“Thanks for the threesome”) still has my brain ON FIRE. jfc writers, you did not have to pander so hard, we fic writers would have handled this just fine???
the main season’s antagonist Aaron Peele, obviously a reference to Zuck, is not really compelling or scary at all. Hard not to compare Aaron to the Big Bads in Person of Interest (also a show that looked at tech darkly), where we always cared about what was at stake, should the villains succeed, or should the protagonists fail. Here, not so much—so he was a perv with a taste for murder. So what? I somehow always knew Villanelle could kill him off easy.
I still do not understand why we have to suffer through Eve’s husband Niko.
Why were we so scared of Raymond again? Because of his chokehold?
But oh, that final scene with Villanelle daydreaming with Eve totally destroyed me. The soft lighting, Villanelle smiling, their matchy red x green outfits, the ruins all around them: I am incinerated.
Let’s not talk about the ending, because it was… expected? A symmetry. It’s fine with me, shocking but not at all unexpected, considering how we ended Season 1.
ANYWAY: Tl;dr - please watch this show. Fantastic complex women characters, dry humor, stabbing. Watch it for Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer using murder implements in their flirting. I kid you not.
Related readings
This valedictory address from Ateneo is half-tea and 100% truth. Congratulations, Reycel!
Writer Clinton Palanca has died. He was 45. My favorite piece he wrote was not about food, it was about press freedom: Can fearless journalism survive Rodrigo Duterte?
My favorite Substacks so far: the collected ahp by Anne Helen Petersen, griefbacon by Helena Fitzgerald.
Happy weekend!
xo,
K