it takes eight to tag

MY PILLOW MAY be too hard for your head, but you can call me anything but a wet blanket. So it's as good as tickle when I got tagged by Isolde Amante.

Here are the rules for “8 facts”:

• In the 8 facts about [name], you share 8 things that your readers don’t know about you. At the end, you tag 8 other bloggers to keep the fun going. Each blogger must post these rules first.

• Each blogger starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

• At the end of the post, a blogger needs to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
So, take it or leave it:

Fact 1: My original birth certificate carried a mythic name--Hector--but my mother said I was sickly and blamed it all on that name. And so when I was baptized a month later, she took her cue from the daredevil portrait of an archangel in our altar. I have never been hospitalized ever since, thank God and my guardian namesake. Then again, the protracted state of non-existence about a certain Michael Obenieta in the files of the national census was like a sick joke. It was only last year, 38 years after birth, that I set the record at the NSO straight and became legit.

Fact 2: I sold newspapers during my elementary days because I envied my best friend and classmate--the late Gerry Almin--whose pockets were always full from his earnings as a newsboy. Of course, I read the papers first before I hawked them out in the streets, shouting again and again short of Eureka: "Bulletin, Journal, Express..."

Fact 3: As a reader, I'm obsessed about closures and continuities, and so I can't and won't read a book without first reading the last page. As a writer, I find the article "the" too imposing if not taking itself too seriously, thus I advertently avoid beginning my sentences with such as much as I can.

Fact 4: I have a life-long crush on Nora Aunor since I gawked at her way back in the 70s in the anthology "Makulay na Daigdig ni Nora" and the Sunday variety show "Superstar." My love affair with the movies started from my fondness for her films, the best of which have become hallmarks in Philippine cinema. From her humble beginnings, she amazes me with her larger-than-life gifts no less than her iconic persona, nothing short of phenomenal in Filipino culture, as well as her survivor's spunk. And I've been getting the hang of my friends' jokes since I cross my Noranian heart.

Fact 5: When going to funeral parlors, I always have the urge to take a peek at the faces under the coffin glass and often wonders if they're not yawning or rolling their eyeballs while we're not looking.

Fact 6: Among my fantasies, nothing's more recurrent than singing like Sting, James Brown, Andrea Bocelli, Michael Crawford, Jamie Cullum, and Yoyoy Villame. Poor me, reality check started early: I was eight when my mother, nudged by our neighbor next door, accompanied me to an audition for an amateur singing contest sponsored by Darigold (a brand of milk now extinct). Among the wannabes, my name was called first and I just stood there in the middle, petrified by the first guitar strain of "Bato sa Buhangin," my mouth gaping wide as I groped for the lyrics and wondered how my tongue turned into stone.

Fact 7: My dream jobs: film reviewer (I'd give an arm if I could write like Pauline Kael, Noel Vera, and Richard Corliss), carpenter (God knows I'd only end up hammering my head on the nail, but it's nothing short of miraculous that I actually earned my first 35 dollars here in America after five-hours toil as a carpenter's assistant, ha ha!), gardener (because I don't have a green thumb and the secret life of flowers and weeds fascinates me), librarian (because it's erotic to be privy to all that body of knowledge), lighthouse keeper (ah, solitude and the horizon), psychiatrist (because what's cooler than getting paid by those who are not sane enough to presume that I knew better?) and police detective (because nothing's more life-affirming than the hunt and the cloak-and-dagger thrill of it all.) Talking of the last dream job, I actually took year's worth of Criminology in college and dropped after realizing that my instructors were teaching me no more than how to scratch my head and have a big tummy.

Fact 8: Preemptive measures suits me perfect, as when a lady agreed to go out on a dinner date with me and before we could eat, I proposed marriage to her even before I formally made it known that I'm courting her. To prove that I was not joking, I later asked the lounge singer to dedicate the Beatles' "I Will" for her, and I had to go to the toilet when the singer started mentioning her name in the prelude. Lest she had the urge to slap me, I stayed in the toilet throughout the duration of the song. What's next? Well, she has been my wife and the mother of our two children. But up to now, she's still convinced there was potion in her plate.

Enough said. Gotta move on, and pass the tagged ball to these 8 bloggers: John Biton, Jeremiah Bondoc, Januar Yap, Niza Mariñas, Marlen Limpag, Lorenzo Niñal, Cathy Perez and Noel Villaflor.