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Last night I went to a lovely birthday party where the swag included Sudoku books and the works of Richard Dawkins (I got The Selfish Gene!). When I got home I watched Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960), one of the most cynical of romantic comedies, i.e. the best kind. If you don’t want to read any spoilers, stop right here.

C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), an employee of a big insurance company in Manhattan, gets ahead at work by providing a special service to his bosses. He allows them to use his apartment as a fuckpad (they’re too cheap to get a hotel room and too old for drive-in movies). Baxter has a crush on an elevator operator named Fran Kubelik (Shirley Maclaine as the very definition of cute), and just when he thinks he’s getting somewhere, he finds that she’s been in his apartment.

Fran is having an affair with Baxter’s boss Mr Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), who always meets her at this Chinese restaurant; every time they come in, the resident pianist plays the movie theme. I think the pianist was the Filipino jazz musician Bobby Enriquez, who worked in Manhattan clubs in the 60s. Unfortunately my copy doesn’t have end credits, and the imdb page for The Apartment doesn’t mention the piano player. Can anyone confirm or rebut?

If you don’t feel like weeping at It’s A Wonderful Life again tonight, consider The Apartment, which also ends on New Year’s Eve, with fewer or no tears.

*****

The pianist playing “Jealous Lover” (theme song of The Apartment) in the Chinese restaurant, was, in my opinion, almost certainly NOT Bobby. At the time that movie was made, Bobby would have been 16 or 17 years old, and while he did start performing as a teenager, this was in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and later in Hawaii. He only arrived in mainland USA in 1967—at the invitation of actor William Conrad (”Cannon”; “Jake and the Fatman”, and many others). He first stayed for several years on the West Coast (playing, in particular with bop alto saxophonist Richie Cole’s group), and I don’t believe he played in New York clubs (like the Village Vanguard) until much later (70’s and 80’s). Hope this helps. Cheers, Patrick de K.

I’ve long suspected that books cost more at Fully Booked than in Powerbooks, and today I got empirical evidence.

The Loser by Thomas Bernhard:  P549 at Fully Booked
Same edition of Bernhard book:   P469 at Powerbooks

The Book of Other People, edited by Zadie Smith: P599 at Fully Booked
Same edition of The Book of Other People: P519 at Powerbooks

Price difference: 80 pesos. (With bookstore discount cards, 72 pesos.)

The big El Bulli book that costs P15,000 at Fully Booked costs P11,000 at A Different Bookstore.

I like hanging out at Fully Booked, but best to do comparison-shopping.

Twisted8, originally uploaded by 160507.

May you see the year through pastel-colored macarons.

Twisted8, originally uploaded by 160507.

I visited the bookstores in Ayala Center today to see if Twisted 8 is on the shelves.

National Bookstore Glorietta has run out of Twisted 8 copies. There are 6 copies available at Powerbooks in Greenbelt 4 (Philippine Publications, 2nd floor as you step off the escalator), 2 at Powerbooks in Glorietta 3 (bottom right of the Philippine Publications shelf), and 3 at National Bookstore in Greenbelt 1 (New Titles table facing the door).

Twisted 8 retails at P250. Discounts offered on orders of 10 copies or more; email zeusbooks.twisted8@gmail.com (Sorry, the zeus.books@gmail.com address is not working. Please email zeusbooks.twisted8@gmail.com). If your school organization or book club or group would like to organize a Twisted 8 reading and book signing, email me at zeusbooks.twisted8@gmail.com to schedule an event.

This was forwarded by Ilonggo friends. “Let me share with you this message from Senator Aquilino Pimentel, Jr: (edited from mobile telephone text language): “Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo film should rectify anti Visayan message. Lola to yaya: ‘Bakit pinapalaki ninyong Bisaya ang apo ko?’ Mom to yaya: Speak to kid in Tagalog ‘para Pinoy’. Visayans are not Filipinos?”

“Yes, in this movie the character of Juday says that it is necessary to speak Tagalog and not Bisaya “para maging Pinoy”. This is racist and discriminatory. Not fair to non-native speakers of Tagalog. The movie implies that the Bisaya are not Filipinos and Binisaya is not a language spoken by Filipinos.”

“The scrptwriter, director, producer and Juday should be disabused of their anti-Bisaya sentiments. The Bisaya - Cebuanos, Waray, Ilonggos, constitute a very large segment of the Filipino population and cannot be dismissed as not Pinoy.” From Decentralize Imperial Manila

Meanwhile, Budjette alerted us to Carlo J. Caparas’ wiki entry, uploaded 19 December. “He is the Great behind many Filipino superheroes and comic characters in comic books such as Panday, Bakekang,Totoy Bato. . .”

The Great behind?

Everywhere I look I see the Anya Hindmarch “I am not a plastic bag” bag. In the bookstore. In restaurants. In the queue at the supermarket. On the sidewalk, waiting for a taxi. In stalls at the tiangge. I’ve seen more Not A Plastic Bags than were actually produced by the Anya Hindmarch people. It’s so popular, so ubiquitious, any minute now the backlash will start. I already have a slogan for a bag: “I AM a plastic bag. Reduce your carbon footprint. DIE.”

A scene from Annie Hall, originally uploaded by 160507.

Found in Quiapo: Marcel Ophuls’ film The Sorrow and The Pity. Look at the top left corner of the front cover: Woody Allen Presents. How else do you market a four-hour documentary about French collaborators during the Nazi occupation?

In Annie Hall, arguably his best movie, Alvy and Annie are two minutes late for a screening of Bergman’s Face to Face, so he drags her to The Sorrow and The Pity. Later, he runs into her as she’s dragging a date to see The Sorrow and The Pity.

Just saw Annie Hall again. Here’s the ending: “This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken. The doctor says, Well, why don’t you turn him in? And the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. Well I guess that’s pretty much how I feel about relationships. You know they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd but I guess we keep going through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.”

Uro’s father died in his sleep on the morning of the 25th. He was in his 80s and had been ill for some time. Butch was thinking of driving to Lucban, Quezon for the wake. “On the way there, we could stop at Ernest Santiago’s restaurant for lunch.” The restaurant had opened about a month before Ernest’s death.

“Great idea,” I said. “Two wakes on the same day, way to spend the holidays.” I never met Ernest Santiago, but I’ve heard many stories about him and the Cocobanana era. Joey Reyes recalled how Ernest used to turn away would-be customers at the velvet rope by saying, “Go away, it’s not your year.”

“And on the way back, we could go to Adrian Cristobal’s wake.”

“Making it three wakes on Boxing Day,” I pointed out. “The Road Trip of Death.” I had met Adrian Cristobal, but never got to know him, much to my regret. He chaired the board of judges for the English short story at the Palanca awards the year my story won. According to Isagani Cruz, Adrian had championed my story over the second prize winner, which was perfect, the more accomplished work. Adrian said my story “grabs you by the neck”—very apt description, as that is how I try to write. In fact that is how I conduct my relationships, which probably explains why most of them run shrieking for their lives. So Portents got the first, and at the awards dinner Adrian broke about twenty fingers of my right hand and boomed, “You don’t look old enough to know what portents are!” That was as good as it got for me at the Palancas; I joined a couple more times and got two thirds, then I decided to quit while I was ahead.

The car’s brakes were shot, so the road trip was cancelled. Instead we had lunch with Tina at Szechuan House at the Aloha Hotel, where David Byrne stayed when he was in Manila, in case you’re a fan. When Dick Baldovino the photographer was alive, we would visit the Norte and Chinese cemeteries after Christmas. It was the best antidote to the enforced gaiety of the season: the reminder that we were mortal.

What was the major or most constant cause of your unhappiness in 2007?
(a) I loathe myself with a passion and wish I were someone else.
(b) I hate my job/I am not at all satisfied with the way my career is going.
(c) Money is always a problem.
(d) I worry about my health and have stress-related health issues.
(e) I don’t like the way I look, and when I run into exes or old classmates my first instinct is to hide.
(f) My relationship bores the hell out of me./ Every time I look at his or her face I want to smash my fist into it.
(g) I know there is something else I should be doing, but I’m afraid to take the risk.
(h) I know I’m meant for other things, but I don’t know exactly what they are.
(i) I can’t sleep and I am constantly anxious.
(j) I think the cosmos is out to get me.
(k) None of the above: Write your answer here.

“To the I.Q. fundamentalist, two things are beyond dispute: first, that I.Q. tests measure some hard and identifiable trait that predicts the quality of our thinking; and, second, that this trait is stable—that is, it is determined by our genes and largely impervious to environmental influences.

“This is what James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, meant when he told an English newspaper recently that he was “inherently gloomy” about the prospects for Africa. From the perspective of an I.Q. fundamentalist, the fact that Africans score lower than Europeans on I.Q. tests suggests an ineradicable cognitive disability. In the controversy that followed, Watson was defended by the journalist William Saletan, in a three-part series for the online magazine Slate. Drawing heavily on the work of J. Philippe Rushton—a psychologist who specializes in comparing the circumference of what he calls the Negroid brain with the length of the Negroid penis—Saletan took the fundamentalist position to its logical conclusion. . .”

From the New Yorker: Malcolm Gladwell’s review of James Flynn’s What Is Intelligence?

What was the best thing about your 2007? You can pick more than one letter.
(a) Every aspect of my life worked. My career has taken off in a major way. I am making tons of money. I look better than I ever have. My romantic life is the stuff of legend. Everyone adores me. I am in perfect health. Publishers have approached me about writing a guide to living, and Oprah’s people want me on the show. I’m very active in humanitarian and environmental causes, and I am in touch with Al, Leonardo, and Bono. Wha–what are you doing? You’re crazy! Don’t shoot! Call the guards! Nooooooo. . .
(b) I hit most of my career targets/I love my job.
(c) I make enough/more than enough money so I don’t have to worry about it.
(d) I’m in excellent health.
(e) I look good and radiate happiness; when I run into my exes they feel like killing themselves.
(f) My relationship is going so well I’m inclined to think this is The One.
(g) I have finished or am finishing the work for which I will be remembered.
(h) I have wonderful friends who love me no matter how insane I get.
(i) I am completely at peace with myself.
(j) None of the above: Write your own answer here.

How much of what we know as the Raymond Carver minimalist style is really the red pencil of his  editor Gordon Lish, who slashed some of the stories by 70 percent?

Personally I think the world needs more good, ruthless editors.

“Editing takes a variety of forms. It includes the discovery of talent in a relatively obscure literary magazine or in a “slush pile” of unsolicited manuscripts. It can be a matter of financial and emotional support in difficult times. And, once faced with a manuscript, an editor ordinarily tries to facilitate a writer’s vision, to recommend changes—deletions, additions, transpositions—that best serve the work. In the normal course of things, editorial work is relatively subtle, but there are famous instances of heroic assistance: Ezra Pound cutting T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” in half when the poem was still called “He Do the Police in Different Voices”; Maxwell Perkins finding a structure in Thomas Wolfe’s “Look Homeward, Angel” and cutting it by sixty-five thousand words. In the years after the publication of “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?,” Carver wrote a series of stories dwelling on alcoholism and wrecked marriages. They were eventually published under a title recommended by Lish: “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” According to the professors William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll, who, with the coöperation of Tess Gallagher, have been doing scholarly work on Carver, Lish mailed Carver an edited manuscript in the spring of 1980 containing sixteen of the seventeen stories that eventually appeared in the book. Lish had cut the original manuscript by forty per cent, eliminating what he saw as false lyricism and sentiment. . .”

Rough Crossings: The Cutting of Raymond Carver, in The New Yorker.