Merry month of May

We’re a people with short memories and our salvation from life’s vagaries lies in that national character. This month of May will not be one of continuing dismay from the agonies of deaths in April. On the contrary, we have just walked into the merry month of May.

Right on the first of the month, we sauntered into #AdoréSkinLaunch, a stone’s throw from the astonishing Pasig Rainforest Park (though the Adore Skin Clinic is at the corner of Scout Gandia St. and Mother Ignacio Ave. in Quezon City). 

The launch venue was at the rooftop of LPI Centre Two at Luis St. in Pasig. We immediately forgot the heat with a flood of beautiful women in fashionable white outfits that showed off more than enough smooth skin. In that bevy of beauties was ABS-CBN’s sweet morena actor Nikki Valdez as the clinic’s main endorser. And, oh, boy! Even the dinner was gorgeous, especially the roast beef and pork lechon. There was almost a flood of food and wine at the buffet table and the bar.

May might as well be the month of resurrection in the realm of entertainment for actor Jomari Yllana — resurrection from being a three-term councilor in Parañaque. However, Yllana’s entertainment turf these days is not the movies and TV. It’s car racing events for which he is a producer. 

He first did a grand racing event in Parañaque in August 2023 with Okada Manila as a partner. He is back with them in Motorsport Carnivale 2025, opening on 4 May. The event’s media launch was held on Tuesday at noon, 29 April, at the hotel’s Glass Ballroom.

Motorsport Carnivale 2025 opening event will be a super sprint at Boardwalk and Gardens, the seaside area just outside Okada Manila. This will be from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

At 7 p.m., there will be an exhibit of award-winning race cars. It’s dubbed “Grand Car Meet: Legends of the ‘90s.” On 31 May will be the Jom’s Cup, a 1/8-mile drag racing challenge.

On 21 to 22 June, Yllana reveals, Motorsport Carnivale will stage “the biggest rally event in the Philippines” and close down main roads in the area of Entertainment City, where a special stage will be built for the rally, similar to the style of Monaco.

“It will be a night race,” said Yllana, “Rikki (Dy-Liacco, his managing partner) is looking at 25 to 40 maximum participants. So, they will be the cream of the crop in a super special stage. We will have to close roads and end on the Boardwalk also, so spectators will see.”

Motorcar racing has been Yllana’s passion for nearly three decades, off and on. With his leadership in Motorsport Carnivale 2025, he intoned: “We have awakened a sleeping giant. Through this event, we are reminded of the passion that fuels our local motorsport scene — and we’re just getting started anew. We need this 2025 event to take off. When this one takes off, expect next year that we’ll do international events already.”

Since the time of the Gwapings, when Jomari was still a teenager and a young actor, he was among the brave ones who joined groups that would go to Greenhills and race for bets. They all knew that what they were doing was illegal.

In 1996, though, Yllana was picked by Toyota Team Tom’s to be a professional race car driver. “I learned a lot from that. That started my advocacy for road safety and to promote legal races. That was until 2002.”

His dad (Andres Yllana) urged him to retire when his eldest, Andre, was born. “Sabi ng dad ko, narating mo na lahat (You’ve achieved everything),” Jomari shared. “Hindi pa international, I told him. He said, ‘wag na. baka diyan ka pa ma-chambahan. May apo na ako. May anak ka na (Don’t do it. You might end up in trouble there. I already have a grandson. You already have a son)’.”

Yllana retired for a good 10 years. However, in 2011, he launched Yllana Racing Team, competed in South Korea and became the first Filipino podium finisher at the Yeongam International Circuit in 2014.

There are other entertainment events in Metro Manila and other cities and towns in the country to help us forget the sorrows of the unimagined passing away of idols and loved ones.

The merry month of May in entertainment will close with day one of SB19’s two-night concert Simula at Wakas at the Philippine Arena in Bocaue, Bulacan.

Tickets to the two-night concert must be the most expensive all-Pinoy show in the country. After all, SB19 is the first ever all-Pinoy solo group to afford to book the venue that can reportedly sit 55,000 people (a fact that the organizers of the Taylor Swift epic concert series last year ignored when they refused to book her here). Since the venue’s opening in 2014 July, only foreign acts had been booked there — with almost all of them fully sold out, including the two-night Coldplay concert last year.

An online Wikipedia report says Philippine Arena is legally owned by New Era University, which in turn is owned by the religious congregation Iglesia Ni Cristo. The only all-Pinoy show reported by Wikipedia to have sold out all 55,000 ticket seats was the Eat Bulaga! episode held live there on 24 October 2015. That was the afternoon actor Alden Richards was meeting vlogger-dubber Maine Mendoza in the episode dubbed as “Tamang Panahon.” It was a whole TV show top-billed by the trio of Tito Sotto, Joey de Leon, and Vic Sotto. The team-up of Richards and Maine was widely known as Al-dub Nation.

Simula at Wakas was originally planned to be held only on 31 May, as the launching of SB19’s third world tour concert.  But the tickets fully sold out within seven days after the sale opened. The show’s booking company thus immediately reserved 1 June for the concert’s second night. There are no reports yet about whether the second night has fully sold out, too.

Here’s how the tickets are priced: P15,000 (VIP Standing moshpit); P11,000 (VIP Seated); P10,500 (VIP Standing); P7,500 (Lower Box A Premium); P6,250 (Lower Box A Regular); P4,750 (Lower Box B Premium); P3,500 (Lower Box B Regular); P2,250 (Upper Box A) and P1,000 (Upper Box B GA).

What were previously reported as having also fully sold out just a few days after Live Nations started selling them a few weeks ago online were the package tours for foreigners and OFWs who would like to come home to watch on either of the two nights of the concert. It has an overnight hotel accommodation with breakfast for premium and standard twin beds at a maximum price of something like P55,000 per room. However, the tickets to the concert are for the premium lower box seats.

As far as we know, it’s the first time ever that a P-pop show at Philippine Arena had a tour package. That’s how remarkable an event in Philippine entertainment history the Simula at Wakas concert is by the ever gaily alive SB19. By the last week of May, we might have forgotten the sorrows of death. 

All the merrier we shall be this May if the new pope who will emerge from the Vatican conclave is a Pinoy.