chokwang at the morongo on july 26th!

last saturday's star-studded star magic show at the citizens bank arena in ontario was nearly overshadowed by the funny antics of two of the philippines best stand-up comics, chokoleit and pokwang.

the crowd wildly received the duo's edgy brand of sarcastic humor. pokwang's studied imitation of manny "pacman" pacquiao's mom's southern accent was hilarious and so was her impersonation of tita annabelle rama, who was incidentally in the audience, much to the surprise of the comedienne.

chokoleit, the diminutive clown who is more known to filipinos in LA as the villain dugong in the hit tfc pioneering fantasy soap "marina", did not showcase much of his talent but i saw him perform before and he sure has a lot of character creations that can bring even the most grumpy individual to laugh really hard.

the duo performs live on july 26th at the morongo casino resort & spa. they will be joined by one of my favorite filipino performers, yeng constantino.

the past weekend was another busy one for me... i worked all day saturday. later that day, my friend ali and i had to rush to ontario to catch the star magic show, which lasted over three hours - and that is already minus diether ocampo! i wonder how long the show could have lasted had the actor not collapsed and rushed to the hospital? hmmm...

we weren't able to grab dinner on the way to the venue so, naturally, we were extremely hungry after the show. we were thinking we'd go to guppy's but it would still be a long way so we decided to just drop by in & out burger near the stonewood mall in firestone. it was already almost midnight and i was still having burgers and chocolate shake. whoa, how can i ever lose that extra "blank" weight? hahaha.

after in & out, ali dropped me off my apartment. he was supposed to borrow my dvd of juno because he was gonna study the costumes used in the movie for his thesis film at UCLA but he forgot about it.

as soon as i got in, my phone rang and my pretty friend dee (see pictures) called me and asked me if i was free the next day. she was going to ruffa's "a beautiful life" event, organized by monet lu (not a relative) at the cbs studios that sunday - and i was supposed to go, too, but it conflicted with another dinner invitation in alhambra that i already said yes to. i told dee i wouldn't be able to go to ruffa's event but i could perhaps make a run for toni gonzaga's show at the heritage forum in anaheim sunday night. we agreed that we'd be calling each other sunday.

sunday came and i was dead tired. i didn't get up until after 11am. heated the leftover lechon (yum! -- thanks jessica!) from camille's graduation, and watched wimbledon rerun on tv. federer was on - borrrring... so i switched channels to cnn headline news. all day, the news was about michael jackson. i must have dozed sometime after because i found myself waking up at about 4pm.

i immediately ran to the bathroom and showered. took out one red chinese lucky envelope, inserted a few $$ and drove to alhambra. i didn't have time to shop for a gift. (will post another story later with pictures of two of the most adorable kids i know! - excluding my nieces and nephews, of course, haha)

i was eating chinese until 9pm. no calls took place between dee and i at all. i will find out later that she was hobnobbing with the stars all afternoon --- see pictures courtesy of benny uy below...

(dee with cher calvin and ruffa)

the next day, i was told that both events were successful. ruffa blew her cake while mr. ernan ebreo, the producer of toni gonzaga's show, heaved a sigh of relief. congratulations!!!