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Stranger Than Fiction, in which IRS agent Will Ferell hears Emma Thompson’s voice in his head and realizes he is a character in a novel she is writing, reminded me of two short novels I enjoyed very much in college (They weren’t in the curriculum): The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh, in which the protagonist hears voices annotating his life, and The Comforters by Muriel Spark, in which the heroine hears someone typing out her life story and realizes she is in a novel.

Not that it required psychic powers to foretell this outcome.
40 - 0, Destiny
Emotional Weather Report, 26 Jan 2007
The tennis season is well underway, and the first grand slam event of the year is nearly over. Shortly we will know which players are to face each other in the finals. Unless there has been some great upheaval in the last couple of days, or his opponents have suddenly unleashed mutant powers, there is no reason to think that Roger Federer won’t take the Australian Open championship this year. The way he’s taken three of the last four grand slams, five of the last eight, and eight of the last twelve.
The only players who have stood in the way of total annihilation are Rafael Nadal, who’s won the last two French Opens, and Marat Safin, who won at Melbourne in 2005. As of this writing Nadal is still in the draw, having survived a strong challenge from Andy Murray (”Scottish tennis player” used to be an oxymoron; Monty Python even had a sketch about it). My favorite Russian was bounced out in the third round by a resurgent Andy Roddick. Roddick had surprised The Fed at a tournament in Kooyong earlier this month, giving Roddick fans hope that the era of the Federer-Roddick rivalry, awaited since 2003, has finally arrived. True, The Fed was uncharacteristically sluggish and out of it during that match, but maybe Roddick, with the help of his coach Jimmy Connors, has found the chink in the king’s armor. I think it was a confluence of factors: The Fed on an off-day, and Roddick aching for revenge after he was slaughtered in the fourth set of the US Open final.
The sport has always thrived on great rivalries: Borg v. McEnroe, McEnroe v. Lendl, Becker v. Edberg, Graf v. Seles (which had the added drama of an on-court knife attack), Sampras v. Agassi, Hingis v. Williams. Rivals push each other to greater achievement, and it is interesting to note how the retirement of one is often followed by the decline of the other (and not just due to age). The great rivalry of the past year was Federer v. Nadal. Nadal with his Popeye the Sailor Man arms and incredible energy rattled the usually unflappable Federer. Shots that should’ve been unreturnable somehow made their way back across the net, and with enough pace to nullify the Federer backhand. Last year Nadal denied The Fed the honor of matching Rod Laver’s Grand Slam (four slams in one calendar year). However, following his sizzling run at Wimbledon (where he negated the conventional wisdom that clay courters are useless on grass), Nadal faltered and was not much of a factor for the rest of the year.
Your “enemy”, someone said, is the instrument of your destiny, and Roger Federer’s destiny is to be the greatest tennis player in the history of the world. That is not exaggeration or fandom, just a fact. His main competitor for the title, Pete Sampras, has already conceded. So far The Fed has marched towards his destiny without a true arch-rival to push his game. He has no equal; he is so ahead of the field as to be in another galaxy altogether. His forehand is perfection, his backhand is a thing of beauty, the variety and placement of his shots is unparalleled. He can play from the baseline and he can serve-and-volley; his game is a graceful combination of the two. He doesn’t even have to chase the ball because he knows where it’s going the moment it makes contact with the racquet strings. I suspect that like dolphins and bats, he can pinpoint location from the way sound waves bounce. Amazingly, his game is still improving. His tennis computer-brain analyzes mistakes and automatically installs countermeasures in the software. He makes tennis look easy. On-court even his hair looks good.
By default, anyone writing about The Fed becomes a fan. What are you gonna do, complain about his dominance? Then he reminds us that he is, after all, human, by bursting into tears after a victory.
Like all sport the game of tennis is full of ritual and superstition, and by praising The Fed before the final I may be accused of hexing him through vicarious hubris. Fans like to believe that their allegiance has some impact on an idol’s game: by concentrating on the ball they can make it defy the laws of physics, by giving his opponent the evil eye they can cause him to double-fault. So now Federer fans are in a bind. The Fed doesn’t need them to smash opponents. He’s so good, they are reduced to wishing he would need a little help.

I know why the Philippines is rarely covered in the international media (unless the story involves Imelda Marcos or a ferry sinking). Banana republics are so ’80s. The Philippines got its 15 minutes in 1986, but like a spurned Dancing/Skating With The Stars contestant who insists on trundling out her old routines, we keep repeating ourselves. We’re like Flock of Seagulls on tour. We have to find some new schtick because the Latin American banana republics have gotten their acts together and moved on. Evil landlords, rebels in the hills, street demonstrations, how quaint. Now if the Philippines were a former Soviet republic no one had ever heard of, the foreign media would be all over Manila like drunken sailors. How about Philipstan?

Here’s a Guardian piece on David Byrne, Imelda: The Nightclub Years.

Peque Gallaga coined the phrase “Cinema of the Intent” to describe movies that are judged for the filmmakers’ intentions (taking on the important issues of the day blah blah blah) rather than what they’ve actually achieved. Babel is a prime example of the Cinema of the Intent. It’s supposed to be about how we are all connected, but all it says to me is, “Don’t go to Morocco, don’t go to Mexico, and watch out for them nasty Japanese schoolgirls!” I wanted to hurl my cellphone at the screen, then I remembered that I have a newspaper column. Life is good.

Children of Men, now there’s a movie.

Powerbooks Warehouse Sale

Originally uploaded by Koosama.

Powerbooks warehouse sale from February 2 to 17 (including Sundays). 30% discount on all regular items, up to 90% off on bargain books. Powerbooks Outlet Store, 25 Brixton St., Kapitolyo Subdivision, Pasig City.

Lito Lapid became a movie star in the late 70s by playing daredevil heroes in local westerns. Audiences looked forward to his dangerous, death-defying stunts. According to a friend who’d seen these movies, one trademark stunt involved a bullet and a bolo (big-ass knife). Lapid’s character has only one bullet left in his gun, but there two villains coming towards him. How can he shoot two men with just one bullet? Simple. He takes the bolo and holds it in front of him, the blade’s edge out. Then he aims the gun at the edge of the bolo and fires. The bullet hits the edge and splits in two, and each half puts out its intended target. Wow. If anyone else had tried that trick it might’ve been ruled a suicide. Then again, if the bullet had a velocity of X meters per second and it was made of pudding. . .

Today’s Emotional Weather Report in the Star: a column I wrote many days ago, in which I assumed that Roger Federer had already won the Australian Open. I am as superstitious as the next tennis fan, but face it, The Fed will win. In yesterday’s semifinal the only thing he didn’t do was catch the Roddick serve with his bare hand. And he could have.

For a detailed recap—lots of spoilers— see the official site. This is a temporary fix for the junkies.
The death of the gangster Erastes Fulmen leads to chaos in the Aventine. Vorenus is still in mourning. Octavian demands that Mark Antony hand over his inheritance so he can give the plebs what Caesar promised them. Cleopatra demands that her son by Caesar be recognized. Rome is on the verge of collapse. Antony orders Vorenus to pull himself together and reestablish order in the Aventine, which Vorenus does by being a complete madman. Octavian, whom no one takes seriously, wants to enter public life and angers Antony, who beats the crap out of him. Octavian leaves Atia’s house. We learn that Vorenus’ children are alive.
Carnage: Many thugs beaten, stabbed, thrown into sacks with snakes.
Nudity: Whores in the brothel
Sex: Suggested. Cleopatra, clad in Egyptian Versace, charms everyone at dinner.
Atia to Cleopatra: Die screaming, you pig-spawn trollop.

The Oscar voters will finally hand Martin Scorsese the statuette because
1. It’s long overdue.
2. It’s become too obvious to non-voters that they dislike him. They always pick an actor-director over him—Robert Redford, Kevin Costner (?!), Clint Eastwood. (Actors are the biggest voting bloc in the Academy. Also, most actor-voters are underemployed or retired.)
3. The Departed is Scorsese’s most “Hollywood” movie: star-studded, action-packed, crowd-pleasing, villains get their just desserts, “good” triumphs over “evil”. Ignore the irony that it’s based on a Hong Kong thriller.
4. No one gets an Oscar for their best work anyway, it’s acknowledgment or reparation.
5. They want to demonstrate that they are cooler than their elders who passed him over many times before.

The Oscar voters will not give Martin Scorsese the statuette because
1. They don’t like him. (Too New York.)
2. He never calls, he never writes.
3. The Departed is a genre film.
4. They will give it to Clint Eastwood, the All-American Hero. (He even looks the part: tall, lean, laconic, rugged. Marty is short, talks too fast, and is all eyebrows.)
5. “Where are the good old American values in his movies? Why do they have to cuss so much?” (Here’s an impression of Joe Pesci in Goodfellas: They fucking nominate him so they can fuck him over again.)

Cecile was just telling me about a dinner where the guests noted the sudden profusion of mangoes in supermarkets. Apparently mango season came early this year: mangoes don’t usually arrive till summer. According to a food writer, the mangoes were confused by shifts in the weather—they thought it was already summer, so they bore fruit.

Meanwhile, our correspondent reports that “Winter in Austria is the all-time damp squib. When I arrived last September the locals took great pleasure in warning me of just what was in store: Snow-drifts of one metre, heaping up in only 50 minutes…Birds falling lifeless from the sky like feathered bricks…Icicles of snot hanging from one’s nostrils…Well, that was last winter. This winter we’ve so far seen six snowflakes and the temperature has dropped fractionally below freezing on maybe ten nights since late October. The buds on the trees are beginning to burst and the birds are so fat they can barely screw each other, which they’ve already begun doing. Local sages and ancients shake their hoary heads and say ‘It isn’t over yet. I well remember in the winter of 1929…’ etc. It’s all rather cheering, and most of all that ski resorts are going broke. God knows they’ve done enough to disfigure the Alps in the last half-century. Maybe now the innocent mountains will be allowed to reclaim some of their ‘Sound of Music’ virginity, and bunches of Edelweiss will be back on sale and children in Lederhosen will pipe up ‘Doe, a deer, a female deer’ in marketplaces throughout the land. . .”

I heard from someone else that the migratory patterns of birds were changing suddenly, as if their instinctual clocks were out of kilter. Confused fruit and disoriented birds. Weird weather and ecological imbalance. What next: Snow in the tropics?

Sulk

Originally uploaded by Koosama.

“So, in corner number one there was Challah, alone, smoking, ashing; in corner number two we have a pair of engineering students, a heavyset and demonstrably gay Filipino practicing hypnosis on a very loud and impressionable man half his age (”You are Jim Morrison. . .I am Jim Morrison!”). . .” - The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary Shteyngart
(Photo: Saffy sulking after papy loses in 3rd round of Australian Open.)

deerman.jpg

Originally uploaded by Koosama.

“Tom Decker: Ignition”, an exhibit of recent sculpture and ceramics, will be on display at the Ayala Museum Artist’s Space, 2nd Floor, Glass Wing from January 25- February 8, 2007. Artworks in this solo exhibition include small scale figurative sculpture and ceramic tea bowls by California native Tom Decker.
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 25, 6pm-8.30pm
Entrance is free to Ayala Museum Artist’s Space, 2nd Floor, Glass Wing, Makati Avenue corner De la Rosa Street, Makati City.
Please pass through the 2nd floor pedestrian walkway. Pay parking is available at the Greenbelt 4 underground parking.
Exhibit is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm, Saturday and Sunday, 10am to 7pm.