july '23 wrap: X marks the spot
hey friends, how are you? thanks for dropping by. how was your july? are you on threads? are you still on twitter? or are you—like me, chronically and perhaps terminally online—now on both? haha! here’s looking back at you, july! hope you find something useful/interesting here. -k
Personal updates
Sir Doro, 95. Veteran journalist and columnist Amando Doronila passed earlier this month in Australia; he was 95. I used to run a lot of editorial research errands for him back in the day when I was younger at the paper; he’s a staunch supporter of the Inquirer Library, and definitely one of our favorite “clients”, hehe. A titan, definitely. What an honor it has been to have crossed paths with him.
That thing about the Inquirer building. Talk is rife on social about bidding adieu to the historic Inquirer Headquarters on Mascardo and Yague on Chino Roces, my home for roughly a dozen years. The paper is moving out of the building and moving into a nearby building, the same one that houses Inquirer’s sister companies. I’ve been seeing a lot of former colleagues taking photos at the facade—and feeling a bit of FOMO hehe. In any case, I do hope we get a chance to say goodbye to that place—witness to history unfolding, and home of many many journalism greats, both past and present.
Korean visa update. I recently re-applied for a Korean Visa and finally managed to get a multiple entry one—after three single-entry attempts (two for this year!) guess the third time’s the charm and what better way to spend it than with Jihyo’s solo debut. (This trip would probably make up bulk of the August update—if the August update comes out on time at all given how tight our Aug-Sept schedules are looking!) In any case—if you ever need a cover letter, hit me up! I have mine on file :) Sa sobrang dalas kong magpagawa ng bank certificate, naaalala na ako nung tagagawa sa branch of account namin :(((( also our HR officer in charge of making those COEs will be happy to know she won’t be hearing from me in a while HAHAHA
ANYWAY SPEAKING OF KOREA. lol segue.
TWICE updates
The Atlanta Concert. Okay so their last US stop was in Atlanta earlier this month and what a way to cap their US tour! (The Ready to Be Tour is pausing for a bit make way for MiSaMo unit activities in July and Jihyo solo activities in August and will resume in Singapore in September.) It rained toward the end of the encore—resulting in very captivating photos. (i mean.) Anyway, that set is on YouTube because Onces are all about sharing:
MiSaMo’s “Masterpiece” finally unveiled. TWICE’s Japanese sub-unit MiSaMo, composed of Mina, Sana and Momo, finally dropped their mini-album “Masterpiece”! Title track “Do Not Touch” was released two weeks ahead of the full album, and my god, what a sexy banger. About consent, at that! I implore you to watch its gorgeous music video—we had to pause at every scene change because the entire video is so beautiful—choreo, costumes, everything.
The MiSaMo album also features three member-written songs—TWICE’s J-line are not only dancers and singers, they’re writers as well! It’s so hard to choose a favorite among the three—they all have their different flavors. Momo’s “Funny Valentine” spawned the most violent choreography (which we watched during their last showcase in Tokyo, as streamed globally on BeyondLive), while Mina’s “It’s not easy for you” is about, well—being addicted to her. Sana’s “Rewind You” talks about the helplessness in an always-ending relationship and is unsurprisingly the crowd-favorite.
(Though my personal pick is Mina’s self-confident, straight-to-the-point “It’s not easy for you.” Because for real, Mina gets me. It truly hasn’t been easy for me, and it’s through no small fault of hers and her eight other bandmates istg)
Jihyo’s 1st mini album “ZONE” dropping 8/18. This is it. The teasers have begun dropping, and we have never been the same since haha. As of writing, Jihyo has released two spoilers—wherein she does a musical striptease of sorts, revealing layers of production and instrumentals. I love it; I think there’s more to this album than just the concept photo shoots (though those are going to be a super big part of this solo, of course) and Jihyo wants to get that across at the get-go. This is music, her music, and I’m hoping she gets to have control over as much of this solo album as possible.
Recent Media
Revenant on Disney+ - Stumbled upon this, because it’s Kim Tae-ri haha. It’s an ongoing horror series on Disney+—I don’t usually go for horror, but man Kim Tae-ri is so good in this!!! Heavy content warnings however: suicide, gore, jumpscares every so often. The suicides, particularly, are at the core of the horror of this show, so it’s not a warning that could be taken lightly. But overall—it’s been a journey so far and we really look forward to the weekly drops.
Barbie - Managed to catch Barbie at the cinema, and man, the place was packed! It was fun to see people all dressed up when they went, too! It’s definitely a fun romp, with some points to think about (“She called me a fascist!” lmao) and so much Discourse going on. I understand the FOMO haha it’s all people online could talk about lately, whether they love it or hate it. Personally, I think… expecting the movie to be the bastion of feminism in 2023 is kinda proving the movie’s point. Haha. I teared up during America’s monologue (this is her movie as much as Margot’s, I think), and of course that montage to Billie Eilish. What joy and what despair, indeed, to be a woman.
Miscellaneous things
AO3 was down for ~48 hours and we didn’t know what to do with ourselves - The internet’s largest fanfiction platform Archive of Our Own (AO3) suffered a massive DDOS attack that made it inaccessible for days though let’s be real, the downtime felt so much longer lol. It’s already been remedied, and it’s back up, and apparently people were over at Downdetector’s comments section making fanfic while waiting for the outage to be resolved, and I think that’s beautiful haha.
Instagram launches Threads - At the peak of Elon’s mishandling of the platform he still couldn’t figure out how to run or make money off of, Zuckerberg’s Instagram launched its equivalent—Threads was marketed as a Twitter replacement, and it had millions signing up in the first 24 hours (100 million in five days)
Am I on Threads? Yes I am. Do I know what I’m doing there? Well, not really, but the absence of hashtags and trending lists so far makes the experience feel like early Twitter (which I am digging a lot). I’m using it mainly to post photos of food (like early Instagram) and photos of TWICE (because I have an Agenda to further). But yeah the lack of any semblance of organization on the feed so far (well they have recently added functionalities where you can finally view posts from people you follow ONLY + for you tab hallelujah) makes it impossible to do metrics on it for anyone who is on social for work or influencerism or whatever — and I’m really into it. I hope there are more spaces that are devoid of order to a degree that it makes it harder to start a grift on it lol. Also, also I may be alone in this private joy, but I also find it fun to mute influencers I see on my For You page. I CAST YOU OUT SATAN etc etc
Twitter? X marks the spot. Elon’s series of mishaps now also includes an actual rebrand of Twitter to… um, X. Whatever that means. It’s so generic it makes me want to cry. Bro really think he did something seismic here. Well, he is wiping out billions in brand value so I guess he’s just as successful running it to the ground as anyone.
Am I still on Twitter? You bet I am.
Wow I actually finished this within July??? Who am I??? Hahaha. If you’ve reached this far, thank you as usual for indulging. August is looking to be huge—see you then!
XO,
K