Even Santa Fell In Love

I have been a silent Lea Salonga fan.

I own only one of her albums (US album), and only 2 one of her soundtracks (The Little Tramp and The King and I).

I was recently given a copy of her 2001 Christmas album, Lea Salonga: The Christmas Album, under then BMG Pilipinas.

What I love about Lea's voice is that it's so so so so clear, malingis ika nga. As Ivy would put it, "upo kayo!", referring to how Lea hits the notes bullseye everytime.

The standout track in this album is the original song Even Santa Fell In Love by Jim Brickman.

It's nice how Brickman humanized Old Nick.

He brushes back his silver hair
And checks to see if she is standing there.
After years of traveling 'round
With the reindeer hooves above the ground
Never made the mrs runaway

Remembering the night they met
Figure skating, she played hard to get
In his red suit he slid past
Who can resist that charming laugh
He said he could teach her how to fly

Chorus
Even Santa fell in love
Everybody needs someone to come home to
After the longest day
Even Santa fell in love
And she's the only one he wants to come back to
When the toys are put away
Even on christmas day

She sees his eyes are all aglow
Anticipating children laughing in the snow
And with just his christmas touch
Under mistletoe before the rush
Mrs. Kringle feels the tingle in her heart

MACBOOK TOUCH?

Those of you clamoring for an Apple tablet may finally get what you've been waiting for. According to a MacDailyNews source who leaked wireless iTunes a week before its official announcement, we can expect a sort of "MacBook touch" in October. And the source wasn't light on the details, either:

Think MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like, but fuller-featured multi-touch. Gesture library. Full Mac OS X. This is why they bought P.A. Semi. Possibly with Immersion's haptic tech. Slot-loading SuperDrive. Accelerometer. GPS. Pretty expensive to produce initially, but sold at "low" price that will reduce margins. Apple wants to move these babies. And move they will. This is some sick shit. App Store-compatible, able to run Mac apps, too. By October at the latest.

In all honesty, we may have passed this story up, but we've heard vague reports from reliable sources that Quanta is busy building a touch product for Apple. This latest information seems seems to complement what we've heard. [MacDailyNews]

UPDATE: A post over at AppleInsider might have some more light to shed on the story. At the recent earnings talk, Apple promised a product transition by the end of September with "technologies and features that others can't match" at a profit margin that no one else can approach (read: cheaper stuff). The plot thickens!

THE NEW NANO

Say you’re listening to a song you really like and want to hear other tracks that go great with it. The Genius feature finds the songs in your music library that go great together and makes a Genius Playlist for you. It’s like having your own highly intelligent, personal DJ.

It’s even easier to find the song you want to hear. Now you can view your album art in Cover Flow. Or just press and hold the Center button to browse by album or artist. When you find the right song, press the Center button to add it to your on-the-go playlist.

Tilt or turn iPod nano on its side, and you’ll listen, watch, and play in new ways. You can flip through your album art with Cover Flow. Or, vertically speaking, see more albums and artists on the screen at one time.

Sometimes, we could all use a little unpredictability. And now you can shake to shuffle your music. Just give iPod nano a shake and it shuffles to a different song in your music library. You’ll always be surprised by what you’ll hear.

Pull hundreds of photos from your pocket and share them wherever you go. Hold iPod nano upright and see your photos in portrait view. Turn it on its side to see them in landscape. Your photos look beautiful in their proper aspect ratio on the vibrant, 320-by-240-resolution display.

Watching movies, TV shows, and videos is big fun on iPod nano. And the high-resolution picture looks crisp and vivid on the 2-inch widescreen display. So you can always have a little video with you.

Available in silver, black, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red and pink.

8GB at $149 and 16GB at $199.

STAND UP TO CANCER SINGLE FEATURES ALL STAR CAST AND BROADCAST

More than a dozen of the world's most accomplished female recording artists -- a cast that includes Mariah Carey, Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Rihanna, Fergie, Sheryl Crow, Miley Cyrus, Melissa Etheridge, Ashanti, Natasha Bedingfield, Keyshia Cole, Ciara, Leona Lewis, LeAnn Rimes, and Carrie Underwood -- have joined together for "Just Stand Up," an unprecedented charity single in support of Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), a new initiative to raise philanthropic dollars for accelerating ground-breaking cancer research.

"Just Stand Up" was conceived by Antonio "L.A." Reid, Chairman, Island Def Jam Music Group, after a powerful and inspiring meeting with the women who organized the Stand Up To Cancer campaign (whom Reid affectionately dubbed the "magnificent seven"). The song was produced by L.A. and Kenny 'Babyface' Edmonds -- their first creative reunion on record in nearly two decades. "Just Stand Up" will be released to radio and will be available to purchase exclusively on the iTunes Store starting September 2nd.

"Just Stand Up" is all about the singers and the composers banding together behind SU2C's mission: rallying the public around the goal of ending cancer's reign as a leading cause of death. The all-star television performance premiere of the song will take place live on Friday, September 5th (8pm EDT and PDT), when ABC, CBS, and NBC simultaneously devote one hour of commercial-free prime time to this nationwide event. This will be the first simultaneous cross-network broadcast ever to raise funds for the fight against a disease.

In addition to performances by legendary recording artists, the Stand Up To Cancer special will feature stars from film and television who will perform as well as present filmed content giving viewers insight into cancer. Various screening tests will be demonstrated in novel and entertaining ways.

Network news anchors Charles Gibson, Katie Couric and Brian Williams will report on potentially life-saving research, speaking with both patients and scientists. Laura Ziskin will produce the September 5th broadcast. Ziskin is a cancer survivor and her film credits include the Spider-Man trilogy, As Good As It Gets, and Pretty Woman, and she also produced the 74th and 79th Annual Academy Awards.

As of today, celebrities confirmed for the broadcast (both for personal appearances or answering telephone calls) include: Casey Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Christina Applegate, Lance Armstrong, Abigail Breslin, Josh Brolin, David Cook, Katie Couric, Dana Delany, Fran Drescher, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Kirsten Dunst, Elizabeth Edwards, Jon Favreau, America Ferrera, Charles Gibson, Neil Patrick Harris, Salma Hayek, Scarlett Johansson, Masi Oka, Danica Patrick, Christina Ricci, Robin Roberts, Homer Simpson, Marge Simpson, Meryl Streep, Hilary Swank, Charlize Theron, Goran Visnjic, Forest Whitaker, Brian Williams and Reese Witherspoon. Additional participants and musical performers are still to be announced.

Since its formation, SU2C has been embraced en masse by the entertainment community which is supporting a host of creative projects across a wide array of platforms on the web in order to ignite passion in the American people so they realize that significant advances in cancer treatment are within reach.

There is plenty to view and link to on SUTC's website including a variety of PSAs (featuring Jessica Biel, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman, Tony Hawk, Tobey Maguire, Sidney Poitier, Keanu Reeves, Susan Sarandon, Tilda Swinton, Christy Turlington Burns, and others); as well as videos on the SUTV channel (with the cast of The Daily Show, Larry David, Ryan Seacrest, and others).

Stand Up To Cancer is a program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, and was established by a group of media, entertainment and philanthropic leaders, whose lives have all been affected by cancer in significant ways. Stand Up To Cancer is bringing industry resources -- people, as well as mediums such as television and the web -- to bear in the fight against cancer as never before.

The full list of singers includes Leona Lewis, Natasha Beddingfield, Beyonce, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Fergie, Ciara, Melissa Etheridge, Sheryl Crow, LeAnn Rimes, Ashanti, Carrie Underwood and Keyshia Cole.

Listen to it here.

ROBO LOVE

Watched Disney-Pixar's new flick, Wall-E, last night at SM Megamall.

I never thought I would enjoy a movie with hardly any dialogue.

The Pixar Shorts were the pioneer for scriptless films, now Wall-E is a full feature version of that.

Didn't think it would work. Always thought that there was a reason why the Pixar Shorts were that short. Wall-E proved me wrong.

The animation is amazing, the storyline genius, and the characters endearing.

Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is a robot left on earth, which is already a wasteland, to clean up the humans' mess, after like 700 years. The humans are all in space, at a place called Axiom, where all the humans are overweight, where they sit all day as they hover from one place to another, sipping their 'meals-in-a-cup", and where no one ever dies.

Now Eve (Extra-Terrestrial Vegatation Evaluator) is sent to Earth from Axiom, to evaluate Earth in its current condition, in search of vegetation, as a sign that Earth is liveable again, so that the humans return to Earth.

It's amazing how Pixar humanized these two robots. From laughing, crying, panic, worry, and love, without any dialogue, you easily see what they're feeling from how their nuts and bolts move and tweak.

Can't wait for the DVD to come out.

Don't miss the short "Presto" before the movie.

FOOD IN A CLICK

Was at the mall today (as usual), and had a quick bite at Wendy's.

Saw this sign about their online ordering portal.

That's neat, I thought.

So, minabuti kong mag-research na din for everyone, especially sa mga laging puyat at mahilig mag midnight snack!

After one hour pa matutulog ah, baka bangungutin!

Wendy's http://www.hamburgers.ph/order.asp

McDonald's http://www.8mcdo.com/app/index/

Kenny Rogers http://kennys.com.ph

Pizza Hut http://www.pizzahut.com.ph/2007/order.php

http://delivery.ph
3M Pizza
Goto King
Hotshots
Pansit Malabon
Tapa King
Yoshinoya

THE BEST WAKE UP CALL

I am so not a morning person.

I go to bed at around 2AM the earliest, and like 4AM the latest.

Up at around 12NN the earliest, 2PM the latest. There was even a time I slept for 12 hours straight. Batugan. Haha.

So whenever I seriously need to get up early for a meeting, a shoot, an out of town trip, or just to run errands like going to the bank, I need the most effective alarm there is.

I hate the usual alarm clocks because they're not as noisy as they used to be. And don't get me started with them digital, battery operated ones. They break easily, and I just hate it when the battery's almost going, and the sound is next to nothing.

What I usually do is set my 3 cellphones to alarm all at the same time. Yes I can easily press on snooze and sleep for 5 more minutes, but my friend Dex gave me this tip: place your cellphones away from each other, and away from the bed. That way, you would have to get up and turn them off. And perking you up inthe process too. I put all of my phones in my bathroom, so the walk will surely wake me up, and the echo reverb will definitely irritate me.

But just a few days ago, I saw this alarm clock in Trinoma.

It's called The Flying Alarm Clock.

It's quite simple. When the alarm goes off, it sets off this very piercing sound of an airplane's engine. The propeller starts to spin, and eventually pops out of the base unit. The alarm will continue on until you find the propeller, wherever the hell it went, and snap it back in the base unit.

Genius no?

Grab The Flying Alarm Clock at Brookstone, 2nd Floor, Trinoma.