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Chelsea flea market glasses.JPG, originally uploaded by 160507.

I went down to UP shopping center to visit my optometrist, Nella Sarabia. Hadn’t been to Quezon City in a while; I’d almost forgotten what foliage looks like. (We have trees in my neighborhood, but they’re far apart.) Nella has been making my eyeglasses since 1995. Her ancestor was the first Filipino eye doctor. Most of my vintage frames are from Nella’s antique collection. I’ve bought a few frames at flea markets and antique shops, but after a while the plastic warped, rendering the glasses unwearable by anyone who wasn’t drawn by Picasso.

First I tried on the new frames, most of them small, sleek, and squarish. They made me look. . .normal, as if I worked in a bank. (Here’s a favorite lyric from a Ben Folds Five song: “But you just smile/Like a bank teller/Likely telling me/ Have a nice life.”) I wanted large 70s-style glasses, the kind worn by Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, or Virgie Moreno.

So Nella brought out her stash of old glasses. They were so ancient that they lacked limbs, or required re-silvering, or had fused together “like the Titanic and the iceberg,” Nella noted. After trying out a pair that would’ve pleased Elton John in the Rocketman era (”We could add lightbulbs…”) and another resembling Hugh Hefner’s current glasses, I found exactly what I wanted. The first was a pair of black shades in odd rhomboid shapes with white stripes. The second was vintage Dior with big, roundish eyepieces from the Annie Hall period.

My new old glasses will be ready on Saturday. The lenses have to be ground, and the frames have to be cleaned, repaired, and exorcised.

How Antonio Taguba, the Filipino-American general who was tasked to investigate the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties. The General’s Report by Seymour M. Hersh.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

Here’s a really short story I wrote a long time ago. It’s based on actual events. Honest. Most of it happened to my friend Joy, who raises Parsons terriers and has a knack for hiring freaks.

The Boy Next Door
by Jessica Zafra

When Mrs. Cruz who lived next door died of cardiac arrest during a botched liposuction, her entire fortune including the house where her two children had been born passed into the hands of her dance instructor, Bhob. “The h stands for horrible,” said June as she shampooed her stinking Shih Tzu, Bill. Almost the minute Mrs. Cruz had been cremated—”to destroy evidence of foul play, I bet”—Bhob had gone to work on the house. The lovely old house which had survived the bombing of Manila in World War II would not survive his entrepreneurial ambitions: he had it torn down to make room for a row of apartments.

“Next he’ll want to build a karaoke bar,” muttered June. The dog had gotten loose and was running around the yard, yapping. “Come back here you moron!” she called. She said moron with added volume so the people next door would hear. Since the Bhob takeover, June had had no peace—all day and all night she was plagued by the sounds of construction. June had a horror of construction workers. When she was five her nanny had abandoned her to run off with a construction worker. When her mother arrived that evening she found June alone in the house, singing to herself, covered from head to foot in the flour the nanny had been making cookies with.

June was hosing down the dog when she saw the man standing at the gate. It was one of the construction workers from next door, a short balding man with no front teeth. She could tell he had no front teeth because he was smiling at her. “Yes?” she said. She walked toward the gate, dragging the hose.

“Hi Miss June,” he said. “I’m Pompeyo.”

“Yes?” she repeated.

“I love you,” he said.

For a few seconds June was frozen in shock. “Excuse me?” she said.

“I love you.”

She aimed the hose at him and drenched him in cold water. He threw up his arms and backed away. “If you bastards come near here again I’m calling the police!” June screamed, then she picked up the dog and ran into the house.

That night when her sister Perry got home June told her about the crazy man with no front teeth.

“You shouldn’t have hosed him down,” said Perry as she kicked off her shoes.

“What do you mean I shouldn’t have hosed him down the creep was bothering me. . .”

“There’s a water shortage,” said Perry. “Haven’t you heard of La Niña?”

The following day was June’s birthday and she was going out to dinner with her boyfriend Dean. Dean was a lawyer and he was always late. His pockets were filled with scraps of paper and table napkins on which he scribbled notes for court pleadings. Otherwise he was compulsively neat and hygienic and carried a bottle of rubbing alcohol in his briefcase.

In the kitchen June poured herself a glass of water and caught her reflection on the glass pitcher. Her lipstick was too pale. “I look like a zombie,” she thought, and she rummaged through her handbag for a darker shade of lipstick.

Just then there was a knock on the kitchen door. “At last,” she said. “Our reservation was for eight-thir. . .”

It wasn’t Dean standing outside the kitchen door, it was the toothless madman. What was his name, Pompeyo. He had changed his clothes. He was wearing a pink shirt and gray trousers. His sneakers looked newly-washed. He was holding a bouquet of red roses in one hand, and a box of Choc-Nut in the other. He was smiling so broadly she thought she could see his tonsils.

“What the hell do you want!” she shrieked.

“I heard it was your birthday,” he said. He held out the bouquet of roses, the box of Choc-Nut. “Happy Birthday.”

Without thinking, June grabbed the pitcher from the kitchen table and threw ice-cold water on him. “Get out!” she screamed. “I’m calling the police!”

The toothless madman slowly took a white handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and with great dignity, mopped his pockmarked face. “Why do you do this to me?” he said. “Why do you make me suffer? I know I am unfit to kiss your shoe, but don’t I have the right to love?”

“Get away from me!!!” June cried, slamming the door in his face. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it would rip out of her chest. She stood there for a long time, breathing heavily. Then, gingerly, she pulled up a chair and sat down.

“This is not happening,” she told herself. “This is not happening.”

Someone tapped softly on the door. “Miss June? Miss June?”

She stared at the door. The horror.

One minute you’re getting trounced in the Wimbledon final, then you’re being linked to Paris Hilton, and now…

(From the Sunday NYT) “On Monday NBC begins “Age of Love,” a dating competition like “The Bachelor” that divides the women into two teams: the Cougars, whose ages range from 39 to 48, and the Kittens, all in their 20s. The older women compete with the younger ones for the affections of a 30-year-old Australian tennis player, Mark Philippoussis. “He’s my son’s age,” Jennifer, 48, purrs on camera. “But I could definitely see myself falling for him.”

“Mr. Philippoussis, who was not warned ahead of time that half his bachelorettes were old enough to remember typewriters, looks stunned but not horrified.”

Thanks to Tina for the alert.

From Daily Film Dose: the greatest hits of the long tracking take, including the opening shot from A Touch Of Evil, Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco walking into the Copacabana in Goodfellas, and the opening of Boogie Nights starting from the marquee and ending on Marky Mark. No spastic edits, no cuts, no CGI. Warning: spoilers. Thanks to the Lifetime Underachievement Awardee. I’m not entirely convinced Russian Ark was a single 96-minute shot, but I’d probably be more impressed if I’d stayed awake throughout the movie.

“The existential catastrophe for Schopenhauer was not so much eating as munching. Schopenhauer railed against the aimless nibbling of peanuts and potato chips while one engaged in other activities. Once munching has begun, Schopenhauer held, the human will cannot resist further munching, and the result is a universe with crumbs over everything. No less misguided was Kant, who proposed that we order lunch in such a manner that if everybody ordered the same thing the world would function in a moral way. The problem Kant didn’t foresee is that if everyone orders the same dish there will be squabbling in the kitchen over who gets the last branzino. “Order like you are ordering for every human being on earth,” Kant advises, but what if the man next to you doesn’t eat guacamole?”

Woody Allen’s Thus Ate Zarathustra in The New Yorker. 

Saffy daffy, originally uploaded by Koosama.
Today is Saffy’s 7th birthday. I got her her favorite tuna treats, and I got me Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen (Yay!). It’s his first new story collection in 25 years. Janet Maslin notes that “Just as Mr. Allen brought his own New York with him when he recently began making films in Europe, so he has sustained a writing style that remains impervious to the changing world around him.” Oy vey, like a neurotic, less marriage-minded Jane Austen?
A funny fiction sampling:
All the Jeeves and Psmith stories and anything by P.G. Wodehouse
Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Black Mischief, and Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
Love In A Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
Getting Even, Without Feathers (contains The Whore of Mensa) and Side Effects (with The Kugelmass Episode) by Woody Allen
Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson. If you’ve ever had a shot of Fernet Branca, the joke’s on you. The sequel is called Amazing Disgrace.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
The Russian Debutante’s Handbook; Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart
Many writers from the former Soviet Union are producing hilarious books to make up for the lack of jokes in Tolstoy and Dostoevski.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Nearly everything by Kurt Vonnegut. In the darkest hour, you get chuckles.

Remember when the media and paparazzi stalked celebrities in order to allegedly serve their audience (Because they need to know the truth. . .about who’s boinking whom!)? I think it’s moved to the next level: celebrities are stalking us. They clog the airwaves with their confessions and revelations of the most intimate details of their personal lives. Don’t we already have way more information than we need about celebrities? I don’t even watch TV, but the oocky details of celebrity scandals still leach into my life and infect my personal space. I don’t deny that I enjoy watching the famous suffer, especially the famous who aren’t particularly good at anything and are just famous for being famous, but this is confessional ickiness overload.

Ever wonder why local celebrities are just clamoring to appear on TV to tell you how tormented they really are, and more importantly, to shed tears and snot in public? Why would the glamorous and overpaid want your pity and sympathy? Because pity (awa) is an artificial equalizer. When you feel sorry for a celebrity because her husband beats her/cheats on her/doesn’t love her, it makes you feel better about your own “ordinary” (as in “not covered by the major networks”) life. She may be famous, rich, beautiful, but she has problems too, just like you! You become more willing to overlook the massive injustice of the situation, viz. You study hard, work hard, and do the best you can, but you’ll never get that kind of attention or revenue. You forgive the famous their advantages because, sob, they’re people, too. It’s the classic “Us Folks” approach, made squishier.

Ocean’s 13. Cute. Mildly pleasant. Didn’t have to be made, but I’m guessing that fluff like this is what pays for more provocative projects like Good Night and Good Luck and Syriana. In the season of Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Ocean’s 13 is at least easy on the eyes. Tina noted that Clooney, Pitt, Damon et al are so pretty, they had to hire Ellen Barkin to provide the pugnacious (barako) element. Good Oprah bits, and the references to Sinatra remind us that they know where they came from. Saw the original Rat Pack Ocean’s 11 on TV once. Fell asleep.

Well that was a dud. That was the dullest men’s grand slam final I’ve seen since that one where Guillermo Coria had cramps and Gaston Gaudio crawled unnoticed to victory. But that one was unmemorable. This one is memorable for Roger Federer’s starring role in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He just didn’t seem to be occupying his own body. He was sluggish, committed way too many errors, and couldn’t string two good points together. A brilliant shot would be immediately negated by an unforced error. Worst of all, he just didn’t seem to be interested. It’s like his strategy was to bore Rafael Nadal to death, and it didn’t work. Losing is bad, but understandable. Blah-ness just blows.
Nadal didn’t exactly play brilliantly either, but he played less badly than Federer. No fond nicknames for you two today. You, Quentin, figure out what Wedgie Boy has on you. And you, Lou Diamond, try to win a major that’s not on dirt. Everyone else: that’s all you are, everyone else. You’re so completely dominated by the top two, you might as well not exist.

Put it this way: when the match started we were all drinking beers; after two sets we switched to coffee, it was that exciting. Plus my neck hurts because I’m used to looking down at the TV and in that bar I had to look up.

As long as my neck hurts: You. Marat Safin. You get away with playing like crap because you’re handsome and funny and everyone’s falling all over themselves to make excuses for you. Oh look, he’s so tortured, he’s like a character out of Dostoevski. Well screw that. You’re this close to being a joke and you know it. What the hell is your problem? The fact that everyone expects great things from you because you have the gift? Oh poor you, you’re so talented, how dare they burden you with expectations. Why can’t they leave you alone? Because you’re Marat Safin! You should be knocking Federer’s and Nadal’s heads together! How dare you lose to. . .to homunculi! Pull yourself together or get out!

Who else is there? It’s free awful truth day!

THEY CANNOT BE SERIOUS! Solar Sports stopped the live telecast of the Federer-Davydenko semifinal to air some taped car show!

When the telecast was interrupted Roger led 7-5, 7-6, 1-4. I just checked the Roland Garros site: The Fed won in straight sets, the last 7-6. Are they even going to air the Djokovic-Nadal match?

Again, the destiny question. Roger Federer is poised to take Roland Garros. Victory is so close I can smell it like champagne and napalm in the morning. It would be even sweeter if he beat Rafael Nadal for it. This would entail not just rooting for The Fed, but also rooting for Nadal to get past Novak Djokovic (Three Serbs in the semis, and Ana Ivanovic just kicked Maria Sharapova’s ass to make the final). Mike says we should root for Djokovic over The Nads because this would increase Roger’s chances of winning the whole shebang. I say we believe in Roger no matter who’s across the net (Rooting for The Fed has made me more generous. I used to bring out the voodoo implements for all of Goran Ivanisevic’s opponents). Oh pfft, says Mike, whose strategy as a fan is to wish for the elimination of all potential trouble spots (such as Cañas). Roger must win, period. We’re having a French Open men’s singles final dinner. Solar Sports says the telecast is on Sunday, 9pm-ish.