.:An Open Secret:.

Something good is up. I won't jinx it by not identifying it here, but when it's final, expect a nice post on it...

.:Cruising Along Two Rivers At Once:.

This gets interesting.

I decided to drop by DWLS yesterday morning just to see how things are actually going. Things were pretty fine at the station, truth be told. I arrived there a bit past eight, and I was sitting around, observing John Hendrix do his boardwork. I took one look at him frantically researching on the Internet for Infopop while looking around for the appropriate carts for his next commercial break, preparing the AOB's, and cueing the next songs, and I realized that he is really doing a hectic job compared to Chico and Delamar. At least the latter are a tandem. Chico can do the portions and man the textline while Delle does the boardwork. And unless I'm mistaken, the LS commercial load is a Hades of a lot, at the very least as much as the peak hours of RX, but likely more than theirs. I guess being the flagship station of GMA-7 gives you quite a ratings spike... I'd be the first to admit RX isn't as top-rating as I'd like to think it is.

I was just quiet there for John Hendrix's show, and I saw why they really train you intensively with the console and let you work on talking on air first. There were way too many buttons on that console for me to keep track of... at least not on my first observation.

Still, all was fine. I was listening on my Walkman to Chico, Delle, and Brad while I was in the LS booth, and most of the time, if John Hendrix wasn't busy on the console, he'd be trying to put LS over this or that station, although I can understand why. There's little room for innovation in the industry, so if they come up with one and everyone else copies it, they can really rag the copycats on it quite a bit.

Yes, pot. Meet kettle.

Not that he himself is guilty of it, but GMA-7 has a new kuwelaserye, a fantasy series spoof of Marina, one that they call Marinara, soon to replace Twin Hearts. Funny thing is, even before this show, Studio 23 already spoofed Marina for one of its Tad Jocks in Wazzup, Wazzup, and guess the name of this girl?

If you said “Marinara”, here. Have a cookie.

.:And Then I Meet A New Jock:.

One of the relatively new LS employees is someone named JayBee. She's a Comm Arts graduate from DLSU, and she was Batch 1 of the Campus Air Checkers. The thing is, the reason she really made an impression on me was because she apparently knows who I am from RX. She's been listening to Chico and Delamar in between John Hendrix during the mornings, and she heard me already on RX as Marcelle (While in transition, I'm using “Marc” as my on-air name. It's my nickname, obviously. I'd rather use it than “Marcelle” because hearing “Marcelle” is very conspicuous if you listen to both RX and LS... trust me. They'd know it's me even without changing my name, so I'd rather not attract attention to the fact...), though she thought it was “Marvelle”. The moment I told her I was taking up Masters, she put two and two together and realized that this guy she was introduced to as Marc was the guy she heard with Chico and Delle as Marcelle. That was flattering to me...

We were talking and we more or less immediately hit it off. She was listening intently to my stories of how I botched the extro on the Jimmy Bondoc song by saying it was sung by Paolo Santos, and so forth, as well as the requisite comparisons between RX and LS, whether facility-wise or DJ wise. When it was her turn to board as she comes after John, John then held her arm which made her shriek because John's hand was cold as Hades. That threw her off the loop for most of the show, eating her words, mixing up sponsorships, forgetting announcements, and so forth. It came to a point where she asked me to go on the air and keep her company to keep her in line. That's when the stickiness ensued.

Essentially, I went on air with her, and she introduced me as Marc. That's good. That's pretty okay. And then...

JayBee: Hi, Marc!

Marcelle: Good morning!

JayBee: You know I was off to a bad start on this show, you know how it went earlier. I just have to share that last Saturday, I really didn't have a good ending to my show, I made lots of boo-boos, and I promised to myself that it wouldn't happen today, but I guess I was wrong. But it happens. It happens, right?

Marcelle: It happens.

JayBee: You should know.

Marcelle: Yes.

JayBee: We won't tell you why he knows, but he just knows. So I take it you're taking graduate studies?

Marcelle: Yes. In ADMU, to be exact. I'm hoping to get started on a teaching career.

JayBee: Oh, yeah. I heard you one time, you said you wanted to teach. Oh, no, I said I heard him one time. You guys guess why I heard him one time.

I'm sorry, but that deserves a markout moment from me right here, right now... :) I really found that funny, because if Louie D were monitoring LS at that moment, even if Chico and Delle knew about it, I'd still be in trouble...

Soon enough, Gene “The Machine” Lavigne showed up, one of the Batch 2 Campus Aircheckers who was being heavily joked about his maids... he just dropped by, and then he ended up seeing my RAW Deal cards when I brought out my binder to show the RX sticker on it. You see, after I went on air, Pocholo, one of my RAW Deal players who knows I'm in RX, texted me and asked me if that was me who went on the air at LS. I was scared it'd be Louie D, but I guess I'm lucky it was just Cholo. Anyways, he asked me if I'd take off the sticker on my binder, which led to that part of the conversation...

The three of us went on air after a while, and JayBee told us she was lost with all the card game talk... heh. Even funnier, she tried to introduce me as an aspiring Campus Airchecker but paid special attention to the word “aspiring” as she knows I might suddenly show up the following day on some other station... funny stuff, and I'm glad she's exceptionally nice.

For her two hour shift, Triggerman comes in to do one hour with her on the show, and I saw the tailend of game 5 of the Pistons vs. Pacers series, which saw the Pistons blow the Pacers out of the water, thereby putting the Pacers' backs against the walls. And no, voting has barely begun, contrary to morning reports and bannings of certain terminologies like “silly” and “stupid” in Congress. This is getting more and more ludicrous. Triggerman asked me a bit about my status with RX and LS, and I explained how I was in transition and all. Same old script. You know the drill. Triggerman does have this larger than life aura around him, though. I used to listen to him for the longest time...

Soon enough, JayBee and I left together as we both took the MRT to our respective destinations. That makes the third person I know with JB as their name. Though her name is spelled differently, it's pronounced the same. I'm glad I got to know her, and it's been nice talking to her. I don't think I'd stop dropping by LS now even if I get a job in some other station. Same goes for RX. More so for RX.

.:Tutorials Galore:.

My enrollment will be on Friday. I stayed around Hobby Haven for the most part, though I did drop by Ma'am Sining and told her about my job possibilities. Thing is, she spoke to sir Bullet recently. Where is that guy? I suppose they don't want me working for them anymore?

While I was in Hobby Haven, I was handing out a lot of tutorials for RAW Deal, though. I suppose things have been going really well for RAW Deal lately, assuming I get quite a few new players into the game. Maybe not in the tournament scene just yet, but into the game is fine. I could help them out here and there, tweak their decks a bit, and then lead them into their first tournament or two. If I come up with eight people in Hobby Haven, there goes my tournament base in HH. Chico (Quema. Not Garcia.) would have to procure RAW Deal at that rate, preferrably Survivor Series II.

I was teaching a bunch of people about the game, a new acquaintance by the name of Quinito, someone I met for about the third or fourth time, Mikey, and Francis, a former ADS member. What's fun about all that is that I was teaching them the non-Backlash game at first and they had a pretty easy time, but when the Backlash deck came into play, they started having a lot of problems with the cards. Still, how can they expect me to win a game without a Backlash deck while I'm using my Los Guererros, neh?