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Frida Kahlo month, originally uploaded by 160507.

To mark the centennial of Frida Kahlo’s birth, Instituto Cervantes is holding a series of Frida-related events throughout July. On Friday, July 6 at 7.45pm, I’m reading a piece I wrote called Frida Kahlo and the Order of Pain. It’s about the artist’s posthumous international media celebrity and its emphasis on her suffering. Admission is free; come over and bring everyone. Monobrows not mandatory, but if you really want one so you can express your solidarity with Frida, my friend Chus will bring his eyebrow pencil and help you.

Instituto Cervantes is on 855 T.M. Kalaw Street in Ermita, next door to Casino Español, between Taft Avenue and San Marcelino. If you’re driving, look for Masagana Department Store on Taft. If you’re taking the train, get out at the United Nations station. For more information visit http://manila.cervantes.es.

Thpectacleth, originally uploaded by 160507.

Conversation overheard by my optometrist.

“What do you think of my new glasses?”

“They look Zafrish.”

Hmm, my name’s an adjective. I think it should be spelled with two f’s: Zaffrish.

Zaffrish, huh? Well try these on! Vintage Geoffrey Beene optyl frame, mint condition, found in a drawer under the counter at Nella Sarabia’s shop at UP Dilimall. Apparently it had been lying there since the 1970s, unsold, waiting for me to come along. Since my traditional evil librarian look has been coopted by frame manufacturers, I’m switching to giant frames. Very Henry Kissinger, and you need a big face to carry them.

Warning: Spoilers. It’s about alien robots that turn into cars! The thing they’re looking for, they find somewhere! Somebody dies!

Ten minutes into Transformers: The Movie I realized something unusual was happening: I hadn’t winced or rolled my eyeballs once. I was enjoying a Michael Bay movie! The last time this happened was over a decade ago, when I saw The Rock (the one where Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery break into Alcatraz to take out hot Ed Harris).

Transformers is silly, fast, funny, loud, and happy mayhem. Shia LaBeouf— sounds like a badly-spelled menu item—who really does look like a high school junior, carries the movie despite strong competition from the special effects. The transformations are smoothly done, the robots have fluid kung fu moves. Your inner eleven-year-old will be pleased to know that the line “More than meets the eye” is uttered two or three times.

I didn’t follow the cartoons, but I can tell you the movie is less traumatic than the Transformers full-length animated movie at which my sister wept buckets. It’s also not as scary as its trailer suggests. Sure, Michael Bay’s fetish for fighter pilots running to their planes (in show motion, by the water) is in evidence (Does he have some kind of deal with the US military to produce recruitment videos?), but the sappiness is under control (The boy doesn’t yell “I love you man!” to Optimus Prime). Shia’s parents are hilarious, Josh Duhamel—who looks like Ryan Seacrest as a man—makes a strong impression, and it’s always good to see John Turturro. The girl characters actually have something to do besides look good; they’re more comfortable with machines than the guys are. (I wish the guy from Elephant had more to do than climb a tree.)

True, I couldn’t tell the difference between the Autobots and the Decepticons (as far as I could tell, the colored ones were good, the plain ones bad), but I still had a good time watching mass destruction. I predict a surge in sales of vintage Camaros. And the toys, of course, because Transformers is really a very long ad for Hasbro—that we in Manila can see a full week ahead of nearly everyone else. It seems unfair that a being from an advanced civilization would end up as a monster truck on earth, but that’s just my inner adult quibbling.

Last year at Wimbledon, Roger Federer turned up for his matches wearing this cream blazer with his monogram—a very nice retro touch. For his first match at the All-England this year, he ambled onto the court in a white blazer, white V-necked sweater, and white trousers. Did he intend to play in long pants? Would he take the pants off courtside? He’d have to remove his shoes first, which would be too fussy. Would the ballboys have to hold up towels the way they do when players change shorts? The solution was brilliant in its simplicity: stripper pants! The trousers have buttons/velcro on the sides, so he can just tear them off. And look, a matching (enormous) handbag! This made me happy.

Federer’s third round opponent: Marat Safin, my precious, who was demoted to Court 18 for complaining about the prices at the players’ restaurant.”For a plate of pasta, it’s costing around £10, right? For £10, which is $20, you can have a great pasta at Cipriani in New York,” Safin said. “Everybody knows this restaurant. I think it’s one of the best restaurants in New York. In Moscow, in one of the most expensive restaurants, we have better pasta for 20 bucks, that’s for sure.” (from the Guardian) To recap Marat’s litany: He hates Wimbledon, he hates the grass, he hates the food especially the pasta, he hates himself.

Update: Marat loses to the Fed, but launches new career as revolutionary.

First full day out of my sickbed, joy joy. The fever and muscle pain were gone, but I had these awful sinus headaches that made me want to pound my head against the wall. I suspect the medication I’d taken was preventing the gunk in my system from coming out. I tried sleeping on a stack of pillows to keep my head elevated so the gunk could drain, but all I got was a stiff neck. In desperation I googled ‘congestion headache cures’, and found all sorts of home remedies (cayenne pepper, salt sprays, Vicks Vaporub). I read on Earthclinic.com that apples cure sinus headaches; I ate an apple and before I even finished it the pain was gone. Apples cure congestion! From now on I’m eating an apple a day and keeping a permanent supply of apple cider vinegar in my kitchen.

“Whatever its actual merits, Tina Brown’s Diana Chronicles has been the most talked-about book of the season and Sarah Bradford’s its most talked-about review - even though, until today, it had not been published. It remains unclear why the Spectator refused to print Bradford’s piece, given that she is widely considered to be (Britain’s) foremost authority on Diana. But here it is, abridged and edited.” From the Guardian.

And here’s the digested read.

Finally started on War and Peace. The hard part is getting all the names right because there are dozens of major characters, most of them are related to each other, all of them are counts and princesses, and they’re all named Anna, Vasily or Nikolay so you have to remember their patronymics as well. And just when you think you know who’s what, someone starts using a nickname. I think I know why vodka was invented. Lots of drunken mayhem in the early chapters. A policeman is tied to a bear.

One minute I’m ignoring my symptoms, the next minute I’m flattened by the flu. I’m now aware of how many muscles the human body has, because I could feel each one aching. The real danger of being confined to your room is death by boredom, so I kept myself entertained. I figured some dumb fun would hasten my cure so I turned on the television, but after half an hour I realized that it was not fun, just dumb. Our entertainers are now paid to look like they’re having way too much fun, and when you consider how moronic the material is, it’s hard work. Fortunately they are way past embarrassment, or they’d be hurling themselves under oncoming trucks for shame.

TV made my headache worse so I watched DVDs instead. I watched four Claude Chabrol movies in a row: Les Noces Rouges, La Femme Infidele (remade as Unfaithful), Le Boucher, and Les Biches (The Does, not The Bitches). They’re all very Hitchcock—psychological studies of murder, except that they’re French and not suspenseful. Stephane Audran in very mini skirts and false eyelashes stars in every one; turns out she was sleeping with the director (she married him). Then I saw Boudu Saved From Drowning (remade as Down and Out in Beverly Hills), which was funny. Not laugh out loud funny, but funny as in “Oh the bourgeoisie, such soft targets, and I’m so clever to get it.” The tramp Boudu tries to kill himself by jumping off the Pont des Arts, which is just not fair. Why must everything be more picturesque in Paris, even suicide? I remembered walking along the Seine with my friend Jeffrey on a gloomy afternoon, and it was so romantic that I tried to convince him to jump in so I would remember the moment forever. He wouldn’t, which just killed the mood.

Supervillain spectacles.JPG, originally uploaded by 160507.

I’d been feeling wonky and under the weather lately, so I decided to give my immune system a boost by watching The Fantastic Four: Chris Evans in Tights. It’s the entirely unnecessary sequel to the completely pointless Fantastic Four, and its redeeming qualities are all parts of Chris Evans’s anatomy (chest, arms, eyelashes, lips). As Mr. Fantastic Ioan Gruffudd, a Welsh actor, simulates an American accent by moving his mouth as if he were constantly chewing. Jessica Alba as Invisible Woman has blond hair, a tan, and pale lipstick—she looks like those overbaked Miami matrons addicted to plastic surgery. As a couple these two have less chemistry than Michael Chiklis’s The Thing and Chris’s Human Torch. The frequently-postponed wedding of the Fantastics is the movie’s human plot; the superhero plot involves the Silver Surfer, an alien who looks like an extra-large consolation prize Oscar. It’s jarring to hear Lawrence Fishburne’s voice come out of a giant Oscar; I feel like he’s about to make me choose between red pill and blue pill. The Silver Surfer explains his cosmically fatal mission using his stomach as a screen—I’m thinking this Galactus doesn’t sound so tough, I’m sure some lactobacilli Shirota strain would fix him. To complicate matters Dr. Doom, who was presumed dead, returns with plucked eyebrows, hairpiece, and the mannered acting of a contestant in an Evil Diva pageant. The movie leaves many questions unanswered, like Who’s Galactus anyway? and What happened to the Silver Surfer’s genitalia? but it’s cheesy and cheerful, and I’m not arguing with the sight of Chris Evans in a towel.

HATOYAMA, Japan (AP) — Forget the clicker: A new technology in Japan could let you control electronic devices without lifting a finger simply by reading brain activity.

The “brain-machine interface” developed by Hitachi Inc. analyzes slight changes in the brain’s blood flow and translates brain motion into electric signals.

A cap connects by optical fibers to a mapping device, which links, in turn, to a toy train set via a control computer and motor during one recent demonstration at Hitachi’s Advanced Research Laboratory in Hatoyama, just outside Tokyo.

Here’s something I picked up from Nancy Mitford’s comic masterpiece, Love In A Cold Climate. The secret of flashing a brilliant smile is to say “brush”. “It’s a thing I got out of an old book on deportment and it fixes at once this very gay smile on one’s face,” says a very gay character, although at the time “gay” meant “happy”. Ige and I tried it today, and it works. Right after you say “brush” the corners of your mouth turn up in a rictus. It’s much more effective than saying “cheese”. So if you want to conceal your true feelings, or if you have a meeting with someone you loathe, say “brush” just before you enter the room. They’ll think you love them, or that you’re on drugs.

Afterwards we discussed the vital question: Who are your movie parents? Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes (though technically it was Satan) in Rosemary’s Baby? Catherine Deneuve and whatsisname in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg? I decided on Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Sleeper or Love and Death. Ige claimed Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in In The Mood For Love. For the absent Chus, I picked Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale in 8 1/2. Ricky refused to acknowledge Madonna and Sean Penn in Shanghai Surprise as his parents, preferring Sue Lyon and James Mason in Lolita.

From the Guardian: “Personal DNA sequences will become a routine tool in the diagnosis of diseases within 10 years, according to the father of genetics, James Watson. He said that, as the costs of the sequencing technology tumble, doctors will be able to use the information to plan more effective treatments for conditions including mental illness, cancer, obesity and diabetes. . .”