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Mat with notebook, originally uploaded by Koosama.

from My Life in Accessories, monthly in Metro

It seems disrespectful, calling my notebook an accessory. Better to call it “medium” or “materials” or even “means of livelihood”. My notebook is my memory, downloaded and preserved in hard copy. I could leave the house without, say, a watch or a pair or earrings. My wrist or earlobes would feel naked, but I’d manage to get through the day. If I left the house without my notebook I would be incapacitated. I wouldn’t be able to think, for fear that something earth-shattering would occur to me, and I would have nothing to record it in. And since this earth-shattering idea would not be written down, it would vanish for all eternity, and I would spend the rest of my life trying to recover that lost idea. (”The proof of the Riemann hypothesis came to me in a flash. . .but I forgot it!”) The fact that no idea of galactic import has actually occurred to me when I have my notebook in hand only proves that the idea will pop into my head when I am without my notebook.

Then why don’t you write it down on the back of a receipt or a table napkin or whatever blank surface is available, you point out, thoughtfully adding, you neurotic geek? Because, unsympathetic reader, the proof of Riemann’s hypothesis would not fit on the back of a receipt. Plus it would be an affront to the scintillating idea/ mathematical proof to be recorded on a roll of paper spewed by a cash register. No, you need a medium worthy of your ideas, and the proper medium is a notebook.

I have a very smart friend who is constantly scribbling observations on bits of paper, which he then crams into his pockets. Over the years I have presented him with pocket notebooks to encourage easy filing of his wisdom. He insists on writing on bits of paper, which is probably why he hasn’t gotten round to producing a book-length manuscript. His insights are scattered across countless bits of paper, probably tossed into a drawer which will inevitably be emptied in a fit of house-cleaning.

The one thing that is never discussed in writing workshops is the actual writing–the dragging of pen across paper. I think the true romance of writing lies not in the suffering that’s supposed to inspire it or the drinking and debauchery that’s supposed to fuel it, but in the physical act of forming words with ink. The blank sheet stares at you, mocking your fear and dread. The emptiness weighs on your soul like an anvil. You take up your pen and defile that blankness. You say no to oblivion. Many prefer the convenience of a keyboard and monitor, but I like to feel the words in my hand, on the dent where my thumbnail bites into my index finger. The notebook is an extension of my hand; I am what I write.

Publisher #4 sent me the first issue of Tyler Brule’s new magazine Monocle, “A Briefing On Global Affairs, Business, Culture & Design”. First impression: Strange, like The Economist had sex with the original Wallpaper. (Also, the title “Monocle” calls to mind the New Yorker’s mascot Eustace Tilley.) The cover story is on Japan’s advanced, “non-existent” navy, and there’s an interview with a hot older guy who turns out to be the finance minister of Chile. Something to read! Because Claire Messud’s rapturously-reviewed novel The Emperor’s Children just isn’t doing it for me.

Publisher #1 sent me a DVD of Let’s Go To Prison starring Will Arnett. This is our typical conversation:

Publisher: It stars that guy!

Me: What guy?

Publisher: From the dysfunctional family!

Me: Little Miss Sunshine?

Publisher: No, on TV.

Me: Six Feet Under?

Publisher: The one where the dad goes to prison and the son has to look after everybody.

Me: Arrested Development!

Publisher: That’s the one. It’s a masterpiece!

Me: Arrested Development?

Publisher: Let’s Go To Prison.

Joe Queenan watched all 38 films by Ingmar Bergman and lived to write about it.

Jonathan Lethem has a new novel. It’s reportedly smaller and less ambitious than Fortress of Solitude, but I’ll read it anyway. It’s about a young band on the verge of a breakout hit. According to a review in Esquire, “reading You Don’t Love Me Yet is a lot like discovering a band — picking up the Yeah Yeah Yeahs first EP, or Radiohead’s Pablo Honey. You’ll want to tell your friends to run out and buy the book. When they love it you can take credit for “discovering” Lethem first.”

From the Guardian: Kenya sets world first with money transfers by mobile.

I thought we’d been doing this for years with G-Cash and Smart Padala.  Or is their service different?

Marcel Proust. Pere Lachaise cemetery., originally uploaded by Koosama.

- Joshua as he is washed ashore on Temptation Island.

The film director Joey Gosiengfiao died last Friday at age 66. Any retrospective of his films should include these masterworks.

Nympha. No man is safe from lust-crazed rich girl Nympha (Alma Moreno); her paraplegic father is reduced to hiring only ugly houseboys. Whenever she sees a guy she starts to shake and cough just like the old man in that book by Nabokov. Meanwhile her actress stepmother (Rosemarie Gil) is carrying on with her father’s assistant Albert (Ricky Belmonte). The two rendezvous at the Hyatt.

“Are you decent?” he calls from the door.

She emerges from the shower in a towel. “Do you mean my morals, or my outfit?’

“One never questions the morals of the rich,” he says.

“I’m so rich,” she cries, “But you make me feel so damn poor!”

Pure Gorgonzola.

Bomba Star. Alma Moreno, Gosiengfiao’s muse, plays a barrio lass who wants to be a movie star, much to the distress of her seamstress mother Celia Rodriguez. Unknown to Alma, her mother had once been a promising starlet herself. The domestic conflict escalates until Celia is forced to chase a naked Alma across the rice paddies. Alma is discovered by photographer Ricky Belmonte, displeasing his actor-lover Eddie Gutierrez. Alma’s meteoric rise to stardom angers the reigning diva, Marissa Delgado, who plots to assassinate her at the movie premiere.

Temptation Island. During the evening gown competition of the Miss Manila Sunshine beauty pageant on a yacht on Manila Bay, the yacht catches fire and four of the beauties (Bambi Arambulo, Jennifer Cortez, Azenith Briones, Dina Bonnevie) are washed onto a desert island along with Cortez’s oppressed yaya (Deborah Sun), bitchy gay socialite Joshua (Jonas Sebastian) and his photographer boyfriend (Ricky Belmonte), a waiter (Domingo Sabado), and Dina’s stowaway suitor (Alfie Anido). Arguably Gosiengfiao’s masterpiece, the film has fantasy sequences involving electric fans and a giant fried chicken, insights on the class struggle (”Na-shipwreck ka lang, naging komunista ka na!” or words to that effect), an hommage to the Mexican film based on the real story of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes, and a tearful sing-along of “Somewhere” from West Side Story.

let your gonads pick the movie you’re going to watch: Pathfinder blows.

But we still love Karl Urban and stuck around till the end of the movie, in case spring arrived and he took off the winter furs.

Diana Ross was not the best singer in The Supremes but she was the prettiest and most marketable, so she went on to solo stardom. The story of The Supremes was the inspiration for the Broadway musical Dreamgirls, which made a star of Jennifer Holliday in the role of the singer who gets shunted aside for the Ross character, and which was recently adapted for film, with another Jennifer H—Hudson—getting an Oscar for that role (and the cover of Vogue, a rare feat for a big girl). Some years ago Diana Ross had a concert in Manila. My friend Michael was in the audience. According to Michael, Ms. Ross noticed two very enthusiastic female fans in the front rows. They had been standing on their seats throughout the show, screaming their lungs out at every number. Ms. Ross decided to invite them onto the stage to help her sing her hit, “Endless Love.” She sang the first verse, then handed the microphone to the first woman. Who, unbeknownst to her, was the singer Ivy Violan. Who sang the hell out of the second verse. The crowd went nuts. Ms. Ross was taken aback—she had not expected to be outsung at her own show. But she praised Ivy’s Violan’s singing, and passed the microphone to the second woman. Who was the singer Dulce. Whose voice has the power to launch rockets. Who blew out the back wall and brought the house down. Ms. Ross was not pleased. She exited the stage for a costume change and returned for the finale, but by then the audience had slipped from her grasp. A Dreamgirls moment, live in Manila.

The drug UO126 can erase a single, specific memory while leaving others intact.

In mice. For now.

The Independent reveals likely cause of 31-year feud between literary giants (in its excitement misspelling “feud”). At a Mexican movie premiere in 1976, Mario Vargas Llosa walked up to his (up until then) good friend Gabriel Garcia Marquez and punched him in the eye. They haven’t spoken since. Of course it’s about a woman, a biographer says. When the great men patch up their quarrel and renew their friendship I suggest they have two of their grandchildren marry each other. This would produce the formidable hyphenation: Vargas Llosa-Garcia Marquez.

Women’s Month. I don’t get it. What about the other eleven months, aren’t they ours too? Why should we settle for just one? Me, I just assume the millennium is mine. So please stop with the invitations because I’m probably not the right speaker on the subject. For one thing, I’ve never felt oppressed in my life. In my observation, people don’t discriminate against you because you’re female or gay; they do so because they think you’re poor and weak so you’re just going to sit there and take it. [I've been poor, but I never felt I was less of a person. Arrogance helps: My account may be empty but I'm smart. And if anyone says, If you're so smart why ain't you rich?, the answer is: Because I don't measure my worth in currency, you dumb shit.]

Remember that flap about the canon of literature and how everything in it was written by Dead White Males? Never had a problem with it. I didn’t need strong female characters to identify with; I just identified with the hero. If he happened to be male, fine. So I saw myself as D’Artagnan, Wart, John Carter of Mars and Moses. Which may mean I’m psychotic, but I definitely didn’t feel left out of whatever I was reading. I don’t think men are the enemy, stupid people are. I love men. It occurs to me that most of my friends are men, masculine and feminine. I do have a masculine air (with the matching ineptitude in matters feminine). I’m like a guy, but with boobs. Service personnel don’t call me Ma’amsir or Sirma’am, they just call me Sir.

Manananggal, originally uploaded by Koosama.

Collage: Steph Palallos. Text (and handwriting): mine.

In the BBC police drama Messiah:

Patient in hospital: Did you see the night nurse?
She’s Filipina! She’s gorgeous!

Thanks to Budj for the alert.