PNTCC rips one out

When it rains, it pours... And right now, I might as well be stuck in the middle of a typhoon.

I've been shooting in and out of Manila every couple of days as the demands for scripting 13 episodes of 'Slipstream' have kicked up a notch with the Philippine National Touring Car Championships (PNTCC) 2005 beginning its new season.

Yesterday was a red letter day for race fans and circuit racers in the Philippines as the first leg of the PNTCC races were let loose and we covered it in between shooting segments for 'Slipstream' at the Batangas Racing Circuit. (I'll post the results later.)

The race was thrilling in a big way... Just hearing the race cars roar out from the starting line, shifting gears out of tight bends, the drivers cutting each other and over taking, the spin outs, the nudges and fender benders...

Serously, if you have seen any kind of motor racing on TV, watching it live is far more exciting!

It is a bitch trying to get to the BRC, if you don't have a car it is next to near impossible. (Maybe some local government official can do something about that, its a seriously awesome tourist attraction and much better than staring at the wonders of nature in the Philippines.)

Our being there felt like a big to do, at least from where I am seeing things -- which is usually from a hunched position on one of the curbs trying to chisel out a few extra lines of script as they are taping some of the episodes.

We had the babes, not famous but we hope to make them famous... There was Martha Daniels, Xeah Atillano (and mommy), Liz Festejo... Karen Vicente wasn't there but that's quite okay, she's like a work of art like the Mona Lisa, better to be seen than heard.... The babes, in their umbrella costumes (which were reminiscent of anime cheer leader costumes) and high cut boots really turned some heads and gave a couple of drivers some pre-race whiplash. What really amazes me about women sometimes is the amount of time it takes for them to put on skimpy clothes... The skimpier the clothes, the longer it takes for them to emerge from the dressing room.

You should have been there... But what the hey, we're showing them at 'Slipstream' (catch it at Solar Sportsplus on September 14, our maiden airing date).

Over the course of taping Slipstream, I had a chance to see up close some really radical rides... Oh, like the 2003 Thunderbird (only two in the Philippines), a couple of Porsches (911/996 Carrera and the Cayenne), the 2005 Rangerover, a fully tricked out Honda vti with a bomex body kit (the only one in the world, I think), and a couple of others -- not to mention the handful our big boss Rich Santos was good enough to show from his own collection.

What I would ask people to look out for on Slipstream is the Porsche 911/996... I had a chance to sit in the cockpit of this beautiful car and man, I swear, it was like everything I imagined it to be -- this is coming from someone who has to commute to work everyday. Throttling the engine and feeling the powerhouse rumble through my seat was awesome. Too bad I wasn't able to driver it anywhere, not even around the parking lot.

Oh well...

More later!