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Here’s something trawled from the net by the Lifetime Underachievement Awards frontrunner. His lead may be Federeresque, but I have a few decades in which to catch up. For starters, I’ve never read Jack Kerouac, and have no intention of reading him soon.

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language &knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under,
crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

“Vodka martini.”
“Shaken or stirred?”
“Do I look like I give a damn.”

Wow it’s like they read my blog. Venice, the fabulous Eva Green, and a bloodthirsty thug. The new Bond movie Casino Royale works for me. Here’s a 007 who enjoys killing (What’s the point of having the license if you don’t use it?). Unlike other Bonds who seemed more concerned about not wrinkling their suits, this one gets down and dirty. He runs and runs and runs, beats people to death with his bare hands, and looks naked even when fully-clothed. Every review I’ve read notes how it’s Daniel Craig’s Bond, not the girl, who recreates the famous Ursula Andress rising out of the ocean scene in Dr. No—here’s to objectifying the male body, and let me tell you, he doesn’t need a bikini top. When the scene plays you can hear the old ladies in the theatre crossing themselves—Daniel Craig is an occasion for sin. (The men in the theatre got girly; the gays got so girly they broke on through to the other side and became hetero.)

The Bond franchise has become a joke post-Connery; this year’s model brings it back to Ian Fleming. And we’ve always liked Daniel Craig or as Ige and I call him, Craggy. The French have an expression for those looks: jolie-laid, beautiful-ugly. Loved him as Ted Hughes in Sylvia; as Gwyneth suffered we said, “Get out of the frame, woman, go stick your head in the oven.” Ige has memorized Layer Cake, and while viewing Munich I was distracted by Craggy’s perfectly-formed ass (which Eva Green’s character notes in Casino Royale). Craggy’s Bond sweats in the line of work, and we would pay to watch him sweat.

Here’s The Guardian getting giggly over Craig, and The New Yorker getting all girly.

Dorski alerted me to the six-page spread on Roger Federer in the December Vogue (Nicole Kidman on the cover). In the photos by Mario Testino he models a white Paul Stuart tuxedo, a black Dior Homme tuxedo, and an Yves Saint Laurent suit, and he looks edible. Off-court he is a bit of a fashionista. Urgent message to Mirka Vavrinec: Satan wants your boyfriend. True, many of us do, but we’re not Vogue. In her letter from the editor Wintour even has to mention that she and Roger are chummy. She calls him ingenuous, magical, truly great and humble, and that’s just in two sentences. “When I told this to Roger. . .” means “We’re close”.

Critics and audiences can go hang. I love Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. Then again I have a thing for siege warfare and plotz at the sight of a ballista. Crusades, swords, Edward Norton as Baldwin the leper-king of Jerusalem, Brendan Gleeson as the nasty Templar Reynald of Chatillion, Liam Neeson in yet another mentor role, the wonderful Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud as Saladin—what’s not to like? As with many Ridley Scott movies there are scenes that shock and awe—the pilgrims gathered at the port of Messina, the vast armies emerging from the shimmering desert. The real villain in this movie is religious fanaticism, embodied by the sanctimonious Patriarch of Jerusalem. There really was a Balian of Ibelin (the hero played by Orlando Bloom), but he was married to Baldwin’s father’s second wife Maria and not to Queen Sibylla (Eva Green). Balian did defend Jerusalem for 13 days, and then Saladin gave him terms and he went home.

The theatrical version of Kingdom of Heaven left many unanswered questions, which Ridley Scott addresses in the director’s cut DVD. Why does Balian the blacksmith know so much about siege engines? Because even before his father Godfrey returns to France, he has built siege engines for a local lord. He has done military service and knows hand to hand combat. The director’s cut includes all the back stories. The priest Balian kills is actually his brother. Godfrey’s brother is plotting against Godfrey, so when he sends soldiers to arrest Balian for murder, they have other intentions. The heir to Jerusalem is Sibylla’s young son; she discovers that he too has leprosy, and she has to make a terrible choice.

The DVD—original, not bootleg—features Tagalog subtitles which I suspect were written by a computer program. There are bizarre idiomatic lapses. During the siege Sibylla pretends to be a nun caring for the wounded. The gravedigger-turned-soldier tells her, “You are not a sister.” The translation: “Hindi ka isang kapatid na babae.” The battle dialogue is inadvertently funny/sexual when rendered in machine Tagalog. “Fire!” becomes “Paputukan!” “Let them come” becomes “Papasukin sila”, and when Balian says, “Rise a knight”, the words that appear are “Tumayo ang kabalyero.” Mr. Scott, I do translations, call me.

Got interviewed by Bulletproof Vest.

Our favorite tennis player/madman had a pretty good year—ranked 104th before the US Open, he finishes the season ranked 26th. Not bad for a two-month spell, unless you consider that he could’ve won the US Open (yes, beaten Roger) if he hadn’t flaked out in his match with Tommy Haas, whom he’s always owned, and whom he was trouncing handily until the brain went somewhere else. But we’re not complaining because we love the nut, plus the ranking could just as easily have been 226th. Here’s the updated Marat “slambook”.

Favorite color: Still black.
Favorite film: I have seen so many movies of all types I can’t determine one as exceptional.
Favorite director/actor: David Lynch. Martin Scorsese—I particularly like his last film The Departed. Edward Norton.
Favorite drink: Still Coke.

Born Michelangelo Merisi in 1571; Caravaggio is his hometown. Moved to Rome in his teens to be a painter, and after years of abject poverty began to secure lucrative commissions. In an era of idealized representation his subjects were shockingly real, alive in a swirl of color and motion. The way he captured the light. The sheer immediacy of the work, the violence and beauty. In The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, the doubting apostle looks at the resurrected Christ and plunges his fingers into the gaping wound below his chest. Caravaggio frequently got into trouble because his paintings were deemed disrespectful to their religious subjects. For instance, his Death of the Virgin was rejected because the model for the BVM was a known prostitute. Caravaggio was a brawler, a bleeder, a rebel who liked girls and boys, a genius. He was sentenced to death for murder. The sentence could be carried out by anyone, and in his last years he was constantly on the move. Men believed to be relatives of a man he killed caught up with him and sliced his face. In 1610 he was hurrying back to Rome, where his influential admirers had arranged a pardon. En route he caught a mysterious fever and died. He was 39. Almost instantly his reputation went into eclipse. For centuries he was regarded as a minor painter, and his work derided as cheap, vulgar, “base imitations of nature”. In the 1940s he was rescued from obscurity by art critics. The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr (A Civil Action) is a riveting account of how two students and a restorer stumbled upon a Caravaggio that had been lost for three centuries.

Emotional Weather Report # 12. My parents named me after a character in The Merchant of Venice. That makes me Shylock’s daughter.

Church of Saints John and Paul, Venice, April 2004. There are few tourists inside the church, and they’re all craning their necks at the paintings. I’ve stepped inside many Venetian churches, and I’ve never actually seen anyone praying. Except once, when I wandered in during mass, and the service was in Italian but everyone in the pews was Filipino. Not that everyone who goes inside a church should drop to her knees and recite ten Hail Marys. It might actually be better for everybody to go to church to look at the art. No sermons, no condemnation, no cringe-making attempts to woo back the strays. Just look at the art. Let the pictures blast your eyeballs and pierce right through to your soul. What three-hour homily is more effective than, say, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

You can’t say this aloud because “good people” are required to adopt pious poses. Politicians are always being photographed in church with their hands clasped together and their eyes closed. Ten to one they’re trying to cut deals with God: Make these corruption charges go away and I’ll donate ten hectares of prime land to a religious order. Even movie stars have to be religious. In awards ceremonies the winner thanks everyone from her producer to her manicurist, “And of course, the Lord God Almighty.” Don’t forget to give a shout-out to the Heavenly Father. Good for you if you really believe, but if you’re only doing it to perfume your reputation, then you should be struck by lightning.

Inside that tomb are the mortal remains of Marcantonio Bragadin, the governor of Famagusta. Famagusta was in Cyprus, the edge of the Venetian Empire. In 1570 the Turks laid siege to the city. Bragadin and his men held their defenses for months, waiting for reinforcements from Venice. Help never arrived, and the fort surrendered. The Turks offered him terms, and when Bragadin and his officers came to deliver the keys to the fort, the officers were all hacked to pieces. Bragadin was forced to kneel. Three times the executioner raised his sword to cut off Bragadin’s head, but the death blow never came. Instead, Bragadin’s ears were lopped off. Then a basket of stones was strapped onto his back and he was paraded around the city. He was made to carry baskets packed with earth for ten days, and each time he passed in front of the Pasha’s tent he had to grovel and kiss the ground. Then he was hoisted up on a ship for everyone to jeer at. Finally, he was tied to a stake and flayed alive. His skin was stuffed with straw and mounted on a cow. The cow was led through the streets of Famagusta bearing its grisly trophy. Bragadin had been turned into his own scarecrow. Inside this monument is his skin, which was retrieved in a raid and presented to his family. What were they thinking as they viewed the sheet of human leather? Their pain could not be worse than his. No matter what poets and artists say, there is no pain greater than physical pain. There is no unrequited love, betrayal or grief more excruciating than a migraine or an abscessed tooth.

In religion class we were taught that martyrdom is a kind of fast-track to sainthood—the highest goal we can aspire to, the nun reminded us as she measured the distance between our skirts and our kneecaps to ensure that it did not exceed three inches. Every other day she repeated the tale of the martyrdom of Maria Gorretti. Maria was an innocent peasant girl. One day a neighbor attempted to rape her. She looked at the knife he was holding and told him she’d rather die than lose her virginity. So he stabbed her dead. With her dying breath she forgave him, and she was canonized by the church. Every other day we heard it. Why?

Another, more complex road to sainthood is to be a Marian visionary. Complex because you can’t volunteer, you are chosen, and because lots of visionaries also happen to be nuts. Which doesn’t automatically disqualify them from sainthood, but still muddles the issue. In the early 1990s a young boy named Judiel Nieva in La Union claimed that he was getting regular visits from the Blessed Virgin Mary. These visits coincided with the “dancing sun” phenomenon in which the sun appeared to swirl and change color in the sky. The media descended on his town, closely followed by Marian devotees, apocalyptic cults and assorted kibitzers. In an interview the boy declared that his dream was to be in the cast of the daily teen variety show, That’s Entertainment. He was filmed in an apparent state of ecstasy, kneeling before an unseen entity and sticking out his tongue to receive the holy host. Witnesses claimed that the wafer materialized on the boy’s tongue just before he swallowed it. Then he listened in rapt silence as the unseen figure spoke. Sometimes he took dictation. Meanwhile the faithful swore that the sun did indeed dance in the sky, which tends to happen when you stare at the sun too long. Every weekend for months the road to La Union was jammed with cars. Eventually the divine visits were declared a hoax. Apparently the messages dictated by the Mother of God contained grammatical errors inconsistent with omniscience. Also, people were warned about seared retinas. Judiel was forgotten, displaced from the tabloids by a woman who gave birth to a fish, who was herself displaced by a hermaphrodite who claimed to be pregnant (I don’t recall whether he had knocked himself up). Judiel reappeared some years ago as aspiring singer slash actress who looks and sounds like a woman. He/she would not directly answer questions about sexual reassignment surgery, but he/she still plays the role of the Virgin Mary in Lenten passion plays. It’s kind of like Vertigo if James Stewart had played both the acrophobic detective and the mysterious blonde.

Mat with football

Originally uploaded by Koosama.

Matthias Eomer Octavian Federer-Urban

Saffy pensive

Originally uploaded by Koosama.

Saffron Sassafras Zafra-Safina