JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

It is vital that you start the year with the right book and movie combination. The wrong choices won’t necessarily ruin your next twelve months, but they won’t get you thrilled about the possibilities, either.

On New Year’s Eve, amid the fireworks, I watched Rocco and His Brothers (1960), directed by Luchino Visconti. It’s about five brothers who leave their dirt-poor village in southern Italy to try to make a decent living in Milan. They endure great hardship, their small-town values are corrupted by big-city greed, and their mother (Katina Paxinou) overacts everyone off the screen. Good brother Rocco (Alain Delon as an Italian Alyosha Karamazov) and bad brother Simone (Renato Salvatori) both fall in love with the prostitute Nadia (Annie Girardot), leading to one of the most melodramatic sequences in cinema. The movie is often overwrought and histrionic, but its grandeur is unshaken even when the brothers, wailing and leaking tears and snot, fall on each other like an operatic rugby team.

In this movie Alain Delon is so beautiful, I expect everyone he meets to shriek and cross themselves. Visconti puts that beautiful face in the boxing ring to be bruised and bloodied: the struggle to survive in the city is a literal violation. I suspect Rocco and His Brothers was a major influence on the movies of Lino Brocka.

First book read in 2009: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. It is a heartwarming philosophical discourse—sounds weird but it is possible—on the power of art to elevate lives. There are two narrators who hide their true natures. Outwardly not much happens, but inside they’re whirling. The first narrator, the 54-year-old concierge of an elegant Parisian apartment building, describes herself as ugly, short, cranky, and typical. It’s all an act: she’s one of the most beautiful characters in recent fiction.

Buk-buk, coconut, computer virus, flip, flat nose. These are among the ethnic slurs for Filipinos in this encyclopedia of offensive terms per nationality. Thanks to Noel for the link.

I’m disappointed: the terms are quite innocuous. Is that all the racists can come up with? “You…you…coconut!” or “Beat it, computer virus!” just doesn’t sting. True, the average racist is ignorant and can’t be expected to invent something literary. Shakespeare had some good ones, but he lived in a more hostile, less difference-accepting world; the fact that he isn’t what we now call politically-correct does not diminish his greatness one whit.

More recently the writers of The Simpsons concocted a good one for the French: Cheese-eating surrender monkey.

Kano is listed as an offensive term that originated in the Philippines. Offensive? It’s the short form of Amerikano, which is neither complimentary nor pejorative. The insult derives from the context.

You want to compile ethnic slurs? Talk to more Pinoys. How many of us had yayas (nannies) who routinely scared us by saying, “Hala ka, kukunin ka ng Bumbay/Inchik!” When my friend’s sister first went to Hong Kong as a child and saw a Sikh doorman, she became hysterical and had to be pried out of the taxi.

No doubt some sensitive government official will lodge a protest against the compilers of this encyclopedia.

This cake contains ethnic slurs: Pineapple Coconut Chocolate, from Ricky’s birthday.

I am strangely wistful about the end of the holidays. “Strangely” because my schedule during the holidays was no different from my schedule the rest of the year. (If you like your independence, I suggest freelancing: the pay is unsteady, but the schedule is fantastic.) Metro Manila is so much nicer when nearly everyone is out of town and the road traffic is fairly light (three taxis stop the second you step onto the sidewalk). There is a lower stress level when people aren’t killing themselves and each other to scratch out a living; you can feel it in the air. However, I will be happy to get my usual haunts back minus the hordes of shoppers and strollers.

Last year, on New Year’s Day, Ernie, Bert, and I made a solemn oath to radically decrease our book backlogs. We each had dozens of books we had not yet read (or finished reading), and we knew that we would never get to them if we kept buying new books. (It’s not just avarice or bibliophilia. If you see a book you want and you don’t snap it up immediately, it will probably be gone by the time you come back. Unless it’s a bestseller.)

Therefore we resolved that we would allow ourselves to buy only one new book for every five that we finished. Then we went to dinner. Then we went to the bookstore, and Ernie and Bert immediately broke our New Year’s resolution. At least I managed to hold out for a week, although I had the advantage of being broke.

Because I have what Kierkegaard calls “the despair of possibility” (what I understand of it anyway), the fact that I didn’t keep last year’s resolution does not prevent me from making an even tougher new resolution! I will not buy a new book for the next three months. Instead, I will read the books I already have, and there’s at least a year’s worth on my shelves. Let’s see how long this lasts.

Purslane and Swiss chard, two superfoods that contain lovely antioxidants, are available locally as alusiman (or kulasiman) and kaylan, respectively. Look for them in your neighborhood markets and in Chinatown.

There are fashion victims, and then there is our friend Guy Smiley, science victim and antioxidant junkie (Is that an oxymoron?). “Blame it on the biggest evolutionary oversight!” he declared. “The by-product of sustaining life is aging. Dang mitochondria. Wait, maybe that’s what intelligent design means.”

If only evolution had gone for immortality over sexual reproduction. See what we humans have given up for sex. Those of us who don’t reproduce should live forever! It’s only fair.

Idea for science-fiction story: Humans discover that they are immortal. . .as long as they don’t have sex. What to choose, what to choose.

Essay question: Would you rather have Sex or Immortality?

Cio e un romanzo meraviglioso, ma dove e i gatti?

Tutti i caratteri sono gatti, essi soltanto sembrano umani.

Translated by widget.

Read The Great Gatsby here.

A few months ago we started feeding two stray cats who live in my building. I can’t let them in the house because there’s no room, my three cats would freak out, and there will be war. So I give the outdoor cats Janko Jarndyce and Jarko Jarndyce (names out of men’s tennis and Dickens) regular meals outside my door. Mike, who is too traumatized by the loss of his cat Mingming to adopt another cat, provides the kibble. Jarndyce & Jarndyce are no longer scraggly and Jarko no longer hisses when approached. In fact Jarko has indicated that he (or she) wishes to go inside the house, and is attempting to manipulate me with soulful looks.

David Fincher’s movie of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button should get a few people interested in the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Does anyone feel like reading/rereading The Great Gatsby? Sign up, we could have a discussion group.

Painting: “View of Toledo” by El Greco

West Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house—the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares.

Original book cover by Francis Cugat

At the very first Metro filmfest in the 70s, Vilma Santos starred as a striptease artist in Celso Ad Castillo’s Burlesk Queen. I was in elementary school at the time, and my parents were not about to accompany me to a movie with “burlesque” in the title, but I remember the furor surrounding that movie.

“Burlesque” is “a theatrical entertainment of a broadly humorous, often earthy character consisting of short turns, comic skits, and striptease acts”. It’s been around since Aristophanes wrote his comedies thousands of years ago. In Tagalog, “pagbuburles” meant “to take one’s clothes off in public”. It was something to be shunned by respectable people. Apart from its subject matter, the film was controversial because it starred superstar and former teen idol Vilma Santos, it was directed by Celso Ad Castillo, self-proclaimed messiah of Filipino cinema, and it contained a truly shocking dance sequence. Burlesk Queen climaxes with Vilma bumping and grinding in front of a wildly cheering audience; her gyrations cause her to have a miscarriage. Lurid, yes, and not likely to be forgotten.

The Filth and The Furor, in Emotional Weather Report today in the Star.

P.S. Kaboboyan (see comments) is probably right: Burlesk Queen was from the third, not the first filmfest. I remember that it came after Ganito Kami Noon; my source was a little hazy about the year. Then again, the video I watched began with a list of the awards the movie won at the First Metro Manila Film Festival. Hmm.

Two women were highly influential in my upbringing (and maybe yours), and until recently I didn’t know their names.

Joan Ganz Cooney was the creator of Sesame Street.

Sesame Street turns 40 this year. The Complete History of Sesame Street was published recently. It details how the show was conceived as part of a grand social initiative. High and low culture mingled—educators, the ad industry, game show producers and New York intellectuals developed a TV series aimed at the urban underclass.

The book tracks down every Sesame Street personality. Remember Mr. Hooper the storeowner? When Will Lee, the actor who played the character, died, the producers decided to address the concept of death directly. There was that episode in which Gordon explains to Big Bird that Mr. Hooper is not coming back. The book also covers the sad story of Northern Calloway, who played the storekeeper David; he became manic-depressive and died in a psychiatric hospital.

In the 90s, the show’s ratings dropped because Sesame Street was seen as a reminder of urban decay. The audience preferred clean suburban schoolyards and. . .Barney.

I always get on the wrong train, and a couple of times I wound up in Harlem. It looked like Sesame Street. If I hadn’t been late for meetings, I would’ve sat on a stoop for hours. Come to think of it, this must be where I got my fondness for steps. I like meeting people on steps—the New York Public Library, the Met, the Museum of Natural History. In college I read entire books while sitting on the steps of the UP Main Library.

Mildred Wirt Benson was the original “Carolyn Keene”, ghostwriter of the Nancy Drew books.

Nancy Drew was the first character I ever met who could go wherever she wanted and stay out late without getting a scolding. Not to mention that we always knew what she was wearing (She threw on a fetching yellow cardigan, etc) and she was perfectly-coordinated. The thing that boggled me: If Nancy was always 18 and there were 52 mysteries (at the time), then she solved one case per week. When did she have time to go to school? Or to the salon to maintain that flip.

From Dead Caulfields.

90 today. Still no new book. But Axl Rose wrote a song called Catcher In The Rye.

When all is said and done
We’re not the only ones
Who look at life this way
That’s what the old folks say
But every time I’d see them
Makes me wish I had a gun

The original source of the title: “Coming Through the Rye” by the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796)

Coming thro’ the rye, poor body,
Coming thro’ the rye,
She draiglet a’ her petticoatie
Coming thro’ the rye.

Gin a body meet a body
Coming thro’ the glen,
Gin a body kiss a body -
Need the warld ken?

I like New Year’s Day so much, I celebrate it three times a year: on the first day of the Gregorian calendar, on the lunar new year, and on the vernal equinox. This leaves room for more resolutions, which should be viewed not as iron-clad restrictions, but recommendations and minor edits. There’s no point in imposing rules that you know won’t be followed, i.e. “Stop eating meat”, or in stating resolutions in such general terms that they can be stretched, i.e. “Eat only foods that are good for you.” Having just champagne and chocolate for dinner is also good for you, in a way.

So here’s a very specific and more importantly, painless New Year’s resolution: Add the following antioxidant-rich items to your diet. The Ten Best Foods You Aren’t Eating.

1. Beets. Contain folate and betaine, which “work together to lower your blood levels of homocysteine, an inflammatory compound that can damage your arteries and increase your risk of heart disease.”
2. Cabbage. I was always told that cabbage has no nutritional value. Apparently my parents were wrong. Cabbage contains “sulforaphane, a chemical that increases your body’s production of enzymes that disarm cell-damaging free radicals and reduce your risk of cancer.” Easy: just have a side of kimchi with every meal.
3. Guava. “Guava has a higher concentration of lycopene—an antioxidant that fights prostate cancer—than any other plant food, including tomatoes and watermelon.” A cup also contains 688 mg of potassium, more than a medium banana, which means tennis players should be eating guava between sets.
4. Cinnamon! Contains methylhydroxychalcone polymers which boost your cells’ ability to metabolize sugar. Controls blood sugar, triglycerides and LDL cholesterol. Just sprinkle it liberally on your coffee the next time you go to Coffee Bean or Starbucks.
5. Pomegranate juice. With daily consumption, decreases systolic blood pressure and improves bloodflow to the heart. Lots of vitamin C.
6. Dried plums, a.k.a. prunes. Contain “high amounts of neochlorogenic and chlorogenic acids, antioxidants that are particularly effective at combating the “superoxide anion radical.” This nasty free radical causes structural damage to your cells, and such damage is thought to be one of the primary causes of cancer.”
7. Pumpkin seeds. Magnesium, magnesium, magnesium.
8. Goji berries. High in antioxidants, reduce diabetes risk factors.
9. Swiss chard. A Mediterranean leafy green—anyone know where we can get this? Contains carotenoids which protect your retinas from the damage of aging.
10. Purslane. Contains “the highest amount of heart-healthy omega-3 fats of any edible plant…has 10 to 20 times more melatonin—an antioxidant that may inhibit cancer growth— than any other fruit or vegetable tested.” It’s a popular vegetable in China, anyone know the local name?

Non-diet health suggestion: Hang out with people of good cheer who regard difficulties as temporary. Limit exposure to people who depress you. Don’t go looking for suffering, it finds everyone anyway. Screw the old cliches: Suffering doesn’t make you an artist. Your ability to process torment into something beautiful, that’s the art part.

How To Make A Bigger Earring Box

Materials: One obsessive-compulsive personality; one large Royce Collection tin; lots of earrings, including hoops

Procedure:

1. Cheer the fact that Royce the chocolate company has opened a store in Manila.

2. Get worried that you will spend a fortune on Royce chocolates and put on weight.

3. Head off the problem through aversion therapy. Buy the big sampler box with all the chocolates and finish it by yourself as quickly as possible. There, you feel woozy from having ingested so much chocolate and sugar. Naughty, naughty. You now associate chocolate with wooziness and guilt.

Congratulations, you have taken positive, drastic action. If you still have the overwhelming urge to consume Royce chocolates, you obviously need a stronger dose of aversion therapy. Repeat step 3.

4. Give the empty tins to your friend who has lots of earrings. Remember not to throw away the plastic dividers! See, the compartments are big enough for giant hoop earrings.