Review: The Best of This is a Crazy Planets

If Bob Ong were to write in English, it would look and sound like this.

via Summit Media

Some of you may know him as the voice behind cult hits “Ayoko ng Baboy”, “Astro Cigarette” and “Gin Pomelo”, or as a TV personality dishing out his opinions on the latest issues and events in the country. But what most people don’t know is that Lourd Ernest de Veyra happens to be a writer and an extremely good one at that.

In The Best of This is a Crazy Planets, we are treated to a collection of some of the three-time Carlos Palanca awardee’s best essays that appeared on SPOT.ph.

Putting his no-holds barred commentary in writing, de Veyra offers his insights to Pinoy pop culture and society in general with a touch of humor.

Though most his works are in English, in The Best of This is a Crazy Planets, de Veyra also demonstrates that he writes just as good in Filipino. This is a guy who uses local expressions, foul language and Taglish in the same manner as Bob Ong, only with more references, articulateness, intellectuality and straightforwardness.

Composed of 30 essays, the book will help you notice things that go unseen in our daily lives, and if already aware of such things, then perhaps, see them from a different perspective – the Lourd’s perspective that is.

Here’s a rundown of my personal favorites and a brief description of each.

Attack of the Killer Buses – An essay on just how fucked up the Land Transportation Office is and why traffic jams will never go away.

Taxi Drivers from Hell – Similar to Bob Ong’s “Uri ng mga Jeepney Drivers”, this time, with cabs and in English.

Attack, Jejemons, Attack! – Lourd’s take on jejemons and why they’re not that bad.

The Toilet Paper: Enough of This Sh*t – Toilet (pun intended) humor.

Ang Tunay na Lalake, Walang Abs* - Lourd backs up the popular adage with a very good explanation.

Public Enemy No. 1: A Tribute to Paquito Diaz – An essay on why Diaz goes down as probably the greatest villain in Philippine cinema.

Sa ikaayos ng mundo, ‘wag mag-sando! – Just don’t.

Save for Tikman ang Langit, I don’t read forewords. I’m the type who likes to get straight into the action when reading a book, so expect me to skip introductions. However, I made an exception for The Best of This is a Crazy Planets. Though aware of his accolades, I have no knowledge of de Veyra’s works, so I wanted to find out what I was getting into before going on to read The Best of This is a Crazy Planets. And after finishing reading it, it happened to be one of the VERY few books that I read from cover to cover. It’s that fun and interesting!

But even if it’s such a good read, I felt like a sucker shelling out Php 195 for something I could get for free (visit SPOT.ph).

However, I haven’t heard of SPOT.ph prior to reading The Best of This is a Crazy Planets, so it’s still a good buy. If you really want to get to know the Lourd and share my experience, this book is a good place to start. Text size in the online version is a lot smaller than the printed one and because of this essays appear to have more words than it should, turning away potential fans to haters who don’t have a thing for lotsa words.

And who’s to say SPOT.ph is going to be around forever? If ever they have to take said website down, you’d be glad to have a copy of the book to pass down to succeeding generations to show just how goofy and screwed up our country and people are.

The Best of This is a Crazy Planets – poking at everyone, yourself included, has never been this fun.

Rating: 

4 and a half out of 5 middle fingers (Fuck, yeah! Get yourself a copy of this book!)