Category / Cool Things

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by Michael Janairo

Discover Filipino Material Culture Online

You never know what you might find online. This was from a Blogger site called Pinoy Kollector, which came up during some research.

I wondered if it would be possible for a character in the novel I am working on, a teenage girl from a wealthy family, would wear a watch or carry a pocket watch.

When I came across the Pinoy Kollector site, I was intrigued for a few reasons.

  • It’s an active Blogger site! It felt like a throwback (maybe all blogs are a throwback!)
  • What great closeup photos of these antique watches!
  • The post on pocket watches is numbered 120, and the most recent one from June 2024, is numbered 175—that’s a lot of collections and a lot of history!
  • The first post is from 2010—so that’s 175 posts in 14+ years (good job!)

I came away from the blog thinking that this is both a great way to see some of the material culture of the Philippines, but also to learn about Philippine history.

Highly recommend taking a look. Enjoy! Check it out.

by Michael Janairo

Predictions for 2022

This popped up on Twitter. So it’ll be more of the same.

by Michael Janairo

Figgis’s DNA results are in …

… and he’s a real mix. How real? Here’s the breakdown:

28% Miniature Schnauzer
16% Miniature Poodle
10% Pembroke Welsh Corgi
9% American Eskimo Dog
8% Bichon Frise
5% Chow Chow
5% Wolf
4% Catahoula Leopard Dog
4% Chihuahua
4% Rat Terrier
4% Coyote
3% Pug

by Michael Janairo

Who are you?

We don’t need a DNA test to tell us that our recently rescued pup Figgis Zlotsky Janairo is a fun and loving member of our family, but we did one anyway in case it can help tell us more about what to expect from our now-9-month-old.

We’re waiting on the results. We’re thinking he could be a Papillon-Chihuahua mix.

What do you think?

by Michael Janairo

Book review: “Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale” by Chuck Kinder

Michael Janairo

book-7121This review first appeared in the Albany Times Union (August 11, 2001)

Hilarious, loving characters in ‘Honeymooners’

Chuck Kinder’s first novel since “The Silver Ghost,” in 1978, “Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale” ($24; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 358 pages), is a hilarious, yet unflinching, eyes-against-the-windshield journey through years of booze, drugs, sex, friendships, lies and betrayals in the lives of a pair of promising young writers.

The freewheeling 1970s that Kinder recreates, mostly in the San Francisco Bay area, belong within the literary tradition of the moveable feast Hemingway created out of Paris in the ’20s. Kinder’s writers, Ralph Crawford and Jim Stark, live “like bold outlaw authors on the lam from that gloomy tedium called ordinary life.” Kinder both celebrates and sends up their bravura and recklessness.

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by Michael Janairo

Publication: ‘Slalom’ in The Sunlight Press

My short story “Slalom” has just been published in The Sunlight Press, edited by Beth Burrell and Rudri Bhatt Patel. Check it out.

by Michael Janairo

2018 Year in Review

I’ve had better. So see you later 2018.

by Michael Janairo

Happy #518Day!

Check out some of the great social media posts from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram celebrating the arts and culture of the 518 area code (more to be added as the day progresses):

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bi5a393HjMH/

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bi6s1QiD9zD/

Continue reading →

by Michael Janairo

The art of an approaching storm

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