[Icons 03] Hulk Hogan.

Browsing through my blog, it would appear that I am quite a serious person. Well, I really am.

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But though I am rather serious, I am far from being square, a bore or a prude. I have a very affable sense of humor. I watch comedy shows and comedy movies. I appreciate art but I also adore popular culture. I laugh at David Letterman's top ten list.

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Perhaps nothing else demonstrates my lighter side than my appreciation for Hulk Hogan. Yep, I am a Hulk Hogan fan. Yep, I am a Hulkster.

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I must have been nine or ten years old when I began idolizing Hulk Hogan. It was the late eighties and it was at that time that WWF's popularity was on a steep ascend. The sport was also shown on local TV, albeit on a delayed basis. If it was already Wrestlemania 8 in the United States, it was still Wrestlemania 6 on our part of the globe.

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The show was aired very late on Wednesday nights, after the second evening news. As it was about 11:00 p.m., I was already done with my school assignments. As it was also already late, I had to fight off sleep just to be able to keep myself awake until the show starts. I usually slept at ten o'clock at that age.

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But all thoughts of sleep is easily forgotten once the show starts. The ring action was enough to keep me up and pumped in the next thirty minutes. I would watch with excitement the bouts of Randy "The Macho Man" Savage, Ted Dibiase, Andre the Giant and all the other superstars. Like all kids and the audience, I bought the idea that it was a real sport and a real competition. I am excited by the fights. I cheer for the winners and sometimes commiserate with the losers.

I cheered mostly for the good guys. I had a roster of my own favorite wrestlers that whenever they are in the ring, they could always count on my support. My favorites were Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior, Bret "The Hitman" Heart, Randy Savage and Jake "The Snake" Roberts. But even then Ravishing Rick Rude inspired lust in my young mind.

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Summer Slam and Royal Rumble were my favorite events. In Summer Slam, all the best wrestlers fight for the championships like the WWF belt, the Intercontinental championship, and tag team championship. Sometimes, I was made to choose between my guys, like when Hulk Hogan fought against Randy Savage. I parted ways with the latter. In Royal Rumble, thirty wrestlers are brought to the ring at intervals of a few minutes. Whoever gets to stand last on the ring when all the others have been thrown out or eliminated is declared the winner.

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Hulk Hogan is the most distinguished wrestler I have ever seen. He is unique. He is easily likable. He pumps up the audience from the very moment that they hear his music and now that he was about to march in. And when Hogan pumps his oiled muscle, dances for the crowd and tears up his yellow spandex jersey, the crowd is all his.

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Wrestling may not have been a real sport but Hulk Hogan taught his young audience about true sportsmanship. He taught us how to fight like a gentleman. To resist cheating even if it was the only thing that could hand us victory. That the size of our opponents does not signal the outcome (Hogan was able to carry and body slam Andre the Giant). To be gracious in defeat and magnanimous in victory. He taught us that walking away is sometimes the only way to fight.

.Sure, I could have learned these lessons from other people in other sports. But Hulk Hogan had his way of teaching these to the young kids. And see, I can still remember the lessons.

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[Icon 02] Whitney Houston.

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I am a child of the 80s. I grew up in that era when pop music ruled the airwaves and people sang along as the hits played on the radio. While punk and rock still filled the music landscape, it is no question that the decade belonged to the trio of Michael Jackson, Madonna and Whitney Houston.

The three music artists are very much different in their style. While Michale broke away from Jackson Five and popularized his creepy dance moves to the tune of Thriller and Madonna tested the moral boundaries with songs like Papa Don't Preach and Like a Virgin, Whitney was belting it out with All at Once and the anthem-like Greatest Love of All.

The genre was called pop music because, well, it was popular. Almost anyone with a mic and the melody playing in the background could sing the songs. It was also around this time that karaoke crossed the shores of Japan and became popular in the country. Minus-1 tapes were also in vogue. So it was not uncommon to hear ten versions of a Madonna song while one walks a street and passes by ten houses, all equipped with the unignorable karaoke or minus-1 cassette.

I remember myself entertaining members of my mother's clan during gatherings singing to my heart's content One Moment in Time, the theme from the 1988 Olympics. I even have one photo preserved in my album, my mouth was wide open as I sang "When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away...". It was shameless. I was shameless.

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I was between the ages of nine to eleven when my taste for pop music started. Iwas influenced, in part, by my sister who aspired to become a professional singer herself. She was enrolled in a voice school and she would sometimes do her rehearsals at home. Some mornings I would wake up to the blaring sound of Cyndi Lauper or the sweet voice of Tiffany. Among all the artists that my sister aimed to emulate, it was Whitney who made a lasting impression on me.

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I did not have money at that time and whatever cash my mother would spare me I would rather spend on toys and candies. Consequently, I had to wait for the radio stations to play Whitney's songs or play my sister's tapes to be able hear Whitney's powerful and commanding voice.

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When I was in high school, I bought my very first Whitney Houston album. It was the soundtrack to The Bodyguard, her movie with the debonair Kevin Costner (SpeciMen 05). As it turned out, I was one of the millions who made it the bestselling soundtrack album of all time.

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I must have played side A of the album at least three times each day. I played only this side because it contains all the six Whitney tracks. The other side contains the songs of the other artists featured in the movie. (It would take me about three years before I finally appreciated S.O.U.L. System's Lovely Day.) After that, I had memorized by heart not only the lyrics to I Will Always Love You, I Have Nothing, Jesus Loves Me, Run to You, I'm Every Woman and Queen of the Night but also the nuances of Whitney's renditions that made these songs exceptional.

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Since then I have been able to purchase her succeeding albums, including the soundtracks to Waiting to Exhale (one of my favorite collaborations), The Preacher's Wife, One Wish (The Holiday Album), My Love is Your Love, Just Whitney, and back copies of I'm Your Baby Tonight, Whitney and Whitney Houston. Each of them is a gem.

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Like most of her fans, I rued the fact that Whitney married Bobby Brown. I had no prejudice, however, at the start of the relationship. It was only after, when Whitney succumbed to a life of illegal drugs that i felt bad. For her and for me. Whitney became an unreliable artist. Even when the songs in The Bodyguard were nominated in the Oscar, the producers of the award show replaced her with Natalie Cole for fear that she will become a production liability. News also proliferated that she became the hindrance to the completion of her own solo albums.
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But no one sang a song the way Whitney did. No one even has a voice like she has. So whenever I have the opportunity, I relish hearing her songs and her voices. I give myself pause whenever an old video is played on MTV. I especially like her in When You Believe, wherein she shows Mariah Carey who between them is the real queen of soul and pop music. While Mariah strained to hit the high notes, Whitney was effortless.
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There is an ongoing rumor that she and producer Clive Davis of Arista are working on a new album. Rumor has it too that Whitney is causing the delay. Whatever, I am sure that I will be purchasing the album once it hits record stores. No matter what type of songs are in the album ---even if they be rap or grunge--- I am quite certain that Whitney would pepper it with brilliance and dash it with panache. After all, nobody sings the way she does.

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[Icon 01] Earvin "Magic" Johnson.
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This is my first blog entry in 2008. I wanted to welcome the new year by introducing a new regular feature in my personal journal. This portion is called Icons and it will highlight people whom I have looked up to as personal heroes, or in some way shaped me, or in any manner contributed to what or how I am now. In some instances, my Icons will take the form of things or events, but still it must have some influence on me as a person. I first conceived of this in November of last year (2007 being but 2 days ago) but held off writing any featurette until this year.

I have already made a preliminary list of about ten great persons that I'd showcase here. It was great to know that the world is not short of great people who are positive influences on other people as myself. I think it is something worth celebrating in a world that is now so unreasonably preoccupied with the faux pas of personalities such as Paris Hilton, Kevin Federline, Lindsay Lohan and the like.

It was quite an impressive list I came up with. The tougher task for me was to pick the first person to inaugurate my Icons roll of honor. It was an excruciating task but I am confident that I made the right choice.

-----oOo-----

Locked in such quagmire, I decided to solve my dilemma by relying on chronology. Among the ten equally deserving people in my list, I have decided to feature first the one I looked up to the earliest. Thus, I present my very first Icon: Earvin "Magic" Johnson.

This is how I remember my first encounter with Magic Johnson -

It was a hot Saturday afternoon of summer in 1987 and I was less than ten years old. It was scorching outside and I was forced to spend my day indoors. I got tired of playing with my GI Joes (which was then only about 5 pieces) and decided to open the television set in my room upstairs. Although I was hoping to catch some cartoons, I knew that my chances were nil. It was Saturday afternoon, as I said, and I was most likely to catch a tearjerker show.

Still, I needed something to spend my idle time on. So I channel-surfed, which back then wasn't an easy task to do. I had to stand from my bed, go to the TV lying on its rack and use the knob to actually switch from one channel to the next. As I flicked from one station to the next, a dazzling image instantly caught my attention: a black man in yellow jersey very ably dribbling a ball, quickly, low, between his legs and then lifting the ball with his right hand and with a flicker of his right hand shot it from his back to his teammate who was running on his left wing. The teammate scored an easy lay-up and there was pandemonium in the audience.

The black guy was, of course, Magic Johnson, it was an NBA game shown in the U.S. some one or two months before and because cable has not hit the country, was broadcasted in the Philippines only then, and it was the first basketball game I have ever enjoyed watching.

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Ten years old and I have never seen a magic trick performed in my presence ever before. I came from a low-middle class family and I have never been invited to a children's party where the celebrator's parents could afford a magician. That afternoon, that NBA game, that pass was the first magic trick I have ever seen in my entire life.
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I stopped my channel surfing and glued in to that game. I was anxious to see more magic. I was eager to see that same black guy get the ball again and perform another trick. Alas, it was already the fourth quarter and the game was nearing its end. There were slamdunks and mad scramble for the ball that followed, but no play was as spectacular as the behind-the-back pass by Magic, whether from him or any other of the players on the court.

I do not now remember the team that the Lakers played against that day. Or whether the Lakers won or lost. What I do distinctly remember is that from then on I religiously set 2 o'clock on Saturday afternoons as NBA watching time. Everytime I opened the TV I prayed to see Magic and the Lakers. It was a series of brief periodic joys and disappointments.

The second thing I remember from that experience is that I decided to pick up the basketball and decided to learn to game. My brother was an avid basketball player, most times he would take his ball with him to play with his friends around the block. We had our own ring in the backyard and I was homebuddy. Shortly, I convinced my mother to buy me my own ball. She complied and bought me one. The brand, as I still remember, was Michael and it was one of my most precious possessions in youth.

Every afternoon, after school and before I even did my assignments, I would play in our backyard for two to four hours straight. I would mime the moves of Magic Johnson. I practiced his behind-the-back passes and wrap-around lay-ups. I convinced myself that I would grow to six feet one 1/2 inches tall and would be the first tall pointguard in the country (pointguards in the pro league then stood between 5'6" to 5'10") just as Magic was the first and most prominent prolific tall pointguard in the NBA. I rehearsed my dribbling, passing, shooting ---all in the style of Magic Johnson as I saw him do on TV. Later on, I made it my dream to be the pointguard tandem of Alvin Patrimonio, just as Magic had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar by his side.

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When I eventually did play basketball with friends and classmates, I was always the designated pointguard. I was quite instinctive in play. My jumpshots were sharp and on target but as pointguard, my priority was always to set up my teammates, find the open person and make the pass. I would only shoot or drive as a last resort. I tried one-on-one plays on offense, with my back behind the board ---just as Magic would do during his match-ups with Larry Bird--- but it was not as effective. I did not get to the height I dreamed of.
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More than mimicking Magic, I imbibed his style of play. I aped his selflessness and never lost my cool during a game. I always considered it at just a game and never bore any grudge against my opponents even though being quite small, I was always elbowed out on rebounds. Win or lose, I was just glad to have played the game. And it never mattered to me how much I scored or how great I looked with the ball in my hand, what kept me going was the teamwork that our team was able to muster and display.

Now I consider myself to have been blest to have the opportunity to watch Magic, Bird and Michael Jordan at the height of NBA's showtime era. It was the best period for the league. Not only were there spectacular plays; the players who made the play were just as great. Something one can't say about the league since John Stockton retired. Today's generation of NBA fanatics are not as blessed to watch the game at its finest.

Until this day, long after Magic Johnson has retired and earned his five NBA championship rings, I still consider him as one of my idols. And whenever I pick up a basketball or actually play the game, I am always reminded of that lazy Saturday afternoon when I first saw magic played before my eyes.

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Time to Wash My Levi's. As I usher in the new year, my first order of business is to have my Levi's 514 washed. I bought the pair as a Christmas present for myself in 2006. I have worn it about 50 times from December 2006 until December of 2007 but it has never been washed. It is my way of breaking it in and giving it a vintage look.

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After a year of being deprived of soap and water, I think it is time to shove it down our washing machine. Better do it now before it smells funky. There is a very fine line between dressing vintage and looking like a hobo.

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And speaking of the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the best gifts I received during the past Christmas is this Adidas Superstar 1 sneakers with the LA Lakers jersey/logo design. I spent more than a month looking for my size. Luckily, on the eve of Christmas and before the malls were about to close, Leslie (who was doing some last minute shopping and knew I was gaga over this limited edition design) was able to find the size and bought me a pair. She gave me this plus a pink and purple combination necktie that I wore to the office today.

Copy and related rights to photographs and digital images appearing herein pertain to their respective authors, photographers and copyright owners. No commercial purpose or financial gain is intended by their inclusion in this blog. All accompanying texts are protected by copyright and related intellectual property laws in favor of saturdayconfessions.