atom in our midst

And so i get to watch the new ABS-CBN show, Mga Kwentong Kalye, which airs late after Bandila every Mondays. These are magazine features on street life with its hosts covering different slices of the street pie: Atom Araullo covers a family who literally lives and sleeps on the pavement by the Pasig River; Sol Aragones details self-defense and tips on how to deal with hold uppers and snatchers; Anthony Taberna takes up his delinquency piece on a group of rugby-sniffing vagrants in a Caloocan enclave.

A handsome face is always a plus as it invites viewers to tune in, thus this is Atom Araullo's advantage. Not only is he a compelling story-telling, he peppers his tales with streetwise and earnest narratives that readily hooks his viewers into following him around while he "sleeps" by the roadside with this family (he spreads his favorite malong on the road - a gift from his mommy, then uses his backpack as his pillow. he eventually gets to sleep at 1 AM then wakes up at 5AM to accompany the "man of the house" to sell cigarettes elsewhere).

Social immersion is always a famous technique of handling a documentary, and this particular segment effectively educates. In the process, we went from man-watching (guilty of enjoying watching Atom...hihi) to actually being interested with what he was saying).

Though Sol Aragones has a sincere method of delivery of her spiels, we were somehow turned off by her early 30-second features during commercial breaks where she says, "At the end of a day, what fulfills me is seeing the children smile after listening to me deliver my news". But hey, Sol's beat is either on street crimes or the hard news. And I cringe at the idea of children smiling their sweetest when they hear Ms. Aragones report a salvage victim's head found floating on a river bed. I dunno. That just seemed too stagey! Too pretentious. If that commercial ad was designed to perk up Sol's saleability, that idea backfired. Too bad - coz she otherwise looks real.

As for Anthony Taberna's coverage on a proud group of mendicants who shares a P50 rugby stash among a group of 12 mostly-minors, it somehow felt under-explored. Time constraint maybe? But there were interesting snippets that could have been explored more - such as that seemingly insane lady (who's rendezvous with the rugby seems to have been jumpstarted by the death of her mother). She would have been a perfect poster girl on why people should shy away from rugby and how it affects ones' sanity. Oh well.

All in all, it was a compelling piece of vignettes that made me sit up and stay awake way past my bedtime. As for Atom, gosh, he makes me blush big time. Let's see: educational attainment - Ateneo, Pisay, UP Diliman; relatively young (he will be 26 sometime mid-October); tallish at 5'8", an applied Physics degree holder, has been to Africa, and a really handsome face - now can i get a date? LOL


if that isn't a handsome profile, i don't know what is.
i obviously don't look that good when photographed from that angle.