Time space warp

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a shirt that said, "Time Space Warp, ngayon din!" It seemed just funny at the time, because it dated me, showing, in bright and glittery swirls, that I had grown up in the era of Shaider and Bioman, of Vic Sotto's and Alice Dixson's Orang Engkantada, and of Kuya Germs and his That's Entertainment! and GMA Supershow.

These days, however, it does feel like I'm in a time space warp, with various dimensions that can crush me or transform me or throw me back into someone I'm not... or, better yet, someone I was, a person I used to be.

My friends are still talking about the closing down of NU107, about how they switched on the radio as usual the day after the station last played "Ang Huling El Bimbo" and heard only static. In a couple of days or so, it would be alive again, this time blaring sounds that supposedly appeal to the masses.

Of course, I can't help but connect that to my generation's youth's protracted dying, with icons like Francis Magalona and Michael Jackson and many others saying goodbye. So, it does feel like I'm in a time space warp these days, given that while I am forced to let go of what used to be constants in my life, I am again face to face with things I'd already said goodbye to.

Noli de Castro and Korina Sanchez are back on TV Patrol! This throws me right back to high school, when the school bus would bring me home just in time for the early evening news. Noli's voice, of course, carries so much more memories than TV Patrol. There was his "Magandang Gabi, Bayan" and my favorite Halloween episodes and his other news and documentary specials. Korina, of course, has always been around, with her Rated K and her cable news show, which both took a breather when she married then top presidentiable and now former Sen. Mar Roxas.

And now they're back, supposedly for ABS-CBN to win a good chunk of the prime-time ratings war versus TV5, which, post-Tonyboy Cojuangco, is staging a comeback with all its guns blazing, courtesy of Manny Pangilinan's Midas touch.

Another comeback we may have to thank TV5 for is Batibot, which is going to be reproduced by the said channel. How faithful it will be to the original remains to be seen, but this early, I'm saying it ain't the real thing without Pong Pagong and Kiko Matsing. And Sitsiritsit and Alibangbang, Ging-ging and Gang-gang and Madam Bola. I can let go of Ate Sienna and Kuya Bodjie-people age differently than puppets, after all-but it would be really nice to see them again as well.

Of course, it wouldn't be a time space warp if not for something that really, well, warps my time and space. Willing Willie, the new show of Willie Revillame on TV5, the show he got after cutting his ties early with ABS-CBN, puts Willie and the former girlfriend of Pres. Noynoy Aquino, Councilor Shalani Soledad, together as co-hosts. The past and the present mix anew. One year ago, who would have thought we would see them together, Willie and Shalani.

Shalani, who had seemed so elegant and so pristine in her discreteness, is leaping into the open arms of the desperate masses.

Which may not really be a bad thing. Maybe.

Things change, and they don't.

Time Space Warp, ngayon din.

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