JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

This is what happens when people know too much about movies and too little about botany. Carlo, Noel, and I are having coffee when I notice the vase of flowers on the table.

Me: That’s a fragrant plant. What is it?

Carlo: Oh they have that in funeral parlors.

Noel: What’s it called?

Carlo: I’ll remember it in a minute. It starts with a C…It’s the title of a Rosanna Roces movie.

Me: Curacha?

Carlo: No.

Noel: Machete 2?

Me: Patikim Ng Pinya?

Noel: Ligaya Ang Itawag Mo Sa Akin?

Carlo: No, I think it starts in A.

Me: Azucena! That’s not even a Rosanna Roces movie.

Noel: It’s a Carlitos Siguion-Reyna movie.

Carlo: Didn’t you love Ikaw Pa Lang Ang Minahal?

Noel: Yes, I saw it twice, then I realized it was a remake of The Heiress with Olivia De Havilland.

Me: Was Olivia De Havilland the sister of Joan Fontaine?

Carlo: Yes! But they didn’t get along.

Me: Joan Fontaine was brilliant in the Ophuls movie, Letter From An Unknown Woman.

Carlo: She reminded me of me. But I don’t like Vienna. Although they have good pastries.

Today. Lunchtime. The Mandarin cafe/jungle in Gateway.

Grungella: Why’d you break up with your boyfriend?

Grover: He said he was commitment-phobic.

Guy Smiley: You should’ve said you were breakup-phobic!

Grover: It wasn’t a huge surprise. He did say at the start that he wasn’t ready for a relationship.

Grungella: That’s what my last one said, too! But I never listen because I believe that an exception should be made in my case.

The Count: I ran into my ex. He used to be buff, but now he’s fat.

Everyone: That’s wonderful!Good for you!

The Count: A purely sexual relationship is really the best kind.

Kermit: But what about love?

Grover: I thought you were looking for a boyfriend, I didn’t know you were looking for romance.

It was pointed out to me recently that I am acquainted with someone who might be the next president. So I began searching my memory for anecdotes about Senator Mar Roxas. We had co-hosted a TV talk show called Points Of View with Cher Calvin and Mo Twister. Mar was pinch-hitting for Teddy Boy Locsin.

One Sunday, before a live broadcast, we were sitting in the dressing room looking over the sequence guides. Mar was humming a song under his breath, and then he started singing to himself: “And so you’re back/ From outer space. . .” Yes, he was singing the classic disco song, I Will Survive.

“Manong Mar,” I said, “That’s a gay anthem.”
“Naah,” he said. “You’re kidding.”
“It’s a gay anthem, I’m sure of it.”
“Really?” He did not believe me.

The following week I saw him at the studio and he said, “You were right!”

I once heard him sing You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling at a fellowship night. It was incredible. It was like that scene in My Best Friend’s Wedding where Cameron Diaz does karaoke.

Last Friday there was a 32 percent increase in the number of subscriptions to this blog. By Saturday the numbers had returned to their normal level. I haven’t analyzed the stats in detail, but I think the surge may be attributed to one or all of these factors:

(a) Carlo’s dates in the last two weeks all logged on to see if they were in his dream.
(b) It was a really slow day.
(c) Lots of people searched for “lithium”.
(d) Lots of people searched for “vitamin C”.
(e) Lots of people searched for “Jaime Augusto and Fernando Zobel”.

Let’s test the hypotheses beginning with (e). Last year I asked Jaime Augusto Zobel to write the foreword to a book. We met at the Starbucks in Ayala Tower One (the mothership). Jaime ordered a latte at the counter. The barista in the Starbucks in the mothership looked at the overlord and said, “Can I have your name, sir?”

I began shrieking with laughter, only silently. Think of all the possible answers to that question.

(a) “Steve Martin.”
(b) “Elvis”. Which is actually the name I use when ordering at Starbucks.
(c) “I am George Clooney’s father.”
(d) “Get out of the mothership! Out!”
(e) “Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala II.” Try writing that on a small latte cup.

But Jaime only said, “Jaime”, so this story has no punchline.
Now let’s see those stats.

1904. Checked the stats, no spike. Nope, it’s not (e).

Carlo and Ricky are walking by Greenbelt 5 when they see Jaime Augusto and Fernando Zobel posing for pictures with a group of men in suits. Carlo says to Ricky: “I’m going to run and stand between those two. You take a picture with your phone, and then I run away.”

Reason prevails and the plan is not executed. But Carlo is adamant. “I have to meet them,” he declares, “And have my picture taken. I have to compete with my mother’s pictures with famous people.”

“Do you ride a motorcycle?” I suggest.

“I had a scooter. A Vespa.”

“Uhh, maybe not. Do you play rugby?”

“I can bake them a cake.”

A few days later Carlo has a dream. “In the dream,” he tells me, “You introduced me to Jaime Augusto, and he turned to this long line of people and said, ‘You have to curtsey to him.’ Then everyone curtsied, including the actress who played Tony Blair’s wife in The Queen starring Helen Mirren. You know, that actress? She curtseys to the queen with this slightly mocking expression? She did that to me, too. And everywhere I turned, people curtsied to me.”

“What was I doing?” I ask.

“I didn’t see, you were in the back.”

“As long as I didn’t curtsey to you,” I say.

“I think not.”

“Are you on Lithium?” Ricky asks.

“No, vitamin C,” Carlo says.

I think we should do a TV show about nothing, except that it’s been done and we have too many Elaines.

Carlo the Dessert Diva arrives bearing a large cake box done up in black ribbon with a big bow.

Jessica: Dapat ba talagang naka-black ribbon yan?

Carlo: Yes, that’s their order. Why?

Jessica: Isn’t that how the NPA delivers death threats? Packages tied in black ribbon?

Carlo: That’s exactly what my mother said!

Ricky: Ganyan ba ang death threat? Ang Pilipino talaga, kahit death threat, over-styled! Masyadong madrama!

Ricky goes to a music store to look for a CD.

Ricky: Do you have the album by Feist?
Salesperson: Yes sir, the Sfice Girls.

Here’s a serious topic: Who was your first crush? I thought mine was Parker Stevenson of The Hardy Boys, but that was in a giggly, “Let’s braid each other’s hair” way. The crush who actually triggered puberty was Warren Beatty, whom I saw on TV in Splendor In The Grass. I had already seen a couple of Woody Allen movies by then, and I said, “Oy.”

My gay friends’ first crushes were: Matthew Laborteaux in Little House On The Prairie, a seatmate in the second grade, Joe Hardy of The Hardy Boys—the fictional character but not Shaun Cassidy, Shaun Cassidy, the guy in James At 15, and Johnny and Scott of Sigmund and The Sea Monsters, except that we couldn’t remember which one was Johnny and which one was Scott. Then Carlo remembered that he had a crush on Gulliver in the cartoon series The Adventures Of Gulliver (only loosely based on Jonathan Swift’s opus), and it turns out we all had a crush on Gulliver. Making a cartoon character everybody’s first crush.

“Didn’t he have a love interest in that cartoon?” Ricky asked. “A tiny Lilliputian girl? What was her name?”

“Flirtatia,” I said. “You know, I worried about that relationship. I mean, how were they supposed to even kiss?”

“Me too!” everyone cried.

Later someone walked past the restaurant carrying a tiny dog and Noel asked, “What happens if a Doberman mates with a teacup chihuahua?” And everyone chorused: “Gulliver”.

Our first crush explains A Lot.

I hadn’t seen my friend Michael in nearly a decade. We used to hang out in college. Rather, I used to hang out at his and Din’s lab in the UP Chemistry department while they worked on their graduate research project. As far as I could tell there wasn’t much work going on: I just assumed they were distilling liquor, but then I barely passed high school chem. (My lab partner Alec, whose chem grades were probably worse than mine, is now a partner at a big architectural firm in New York, so take that, periodic table of elements.) The one tangible result of my loitering in a lab was a short story that ended up in my first book, Manananggal Terrorizes Manila. It’s a fairly awful story, but I enjoyed writing it, and I used Michael’s and Din’s real names. (You cannot sue me, you haven’t copyrighted your names, haha.)

The last time I saw Michael he was teaching at a state university in North Carolina. “What are you doing now?” I said.

“I live in New York, I teach at NYU.”

“What!”

“I’m the Dorothy Schiff Professor of Genomics.”

“What! Who’s the most famous scientist you’ve ever met?”

“I met James Watson at a party.”

“The poor man.”

“And Francis Crick, and Jared Diamond who wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel.”

“Have you written any popular science books?”

“No, but I have a publisher. I have a groupie in New Zealand.”

“Whatever.”

“I got a Guggenheim fellowship.”

“What!” (Must break news to Vince, who used to be the only Pinoy Guggenheim fellow we knew of.)

Michael said he wanted to see I Am Legend because it was shot near his apartment. Filming took place in mid-2006. The special effects team torched a line of cars in Washington Square Park. When the cars were set on fire, giant rats the size of basketballs burst out of the bushes, hundreds of them, and they all ran to the south end of the park. In the morning the tourists would see the burnt automotive wreckage and wonder why the riot wasn’t in the news.

I said, “Are you insane enough to keep a car in New York?”

“Well I have my midlife crisis car, I can’t get rid of it.”

“What!”

“It’s a silver Mercedes roadster.”

“What!”

“I got it before my divorce.”

“What!” This is what happens when you don’t keep in touch with old friends: they overachieve and have midlife crises. This only reinforces my commitment to underachievement and immaturity.

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.

In which we do the opposite of our annual rants about evil cabbies growing horns during the holiday season, and document encounters with Nice taxi drivers. (But if you meet some orcs driving taxis, post your story anyway.)

All my usual sources of kitty litter had run out of stock, so I had to go to the pet shop on Jupiter. I was standing on the side of the road, hailing cabs at noon, six days before Xmas. Traffic was heavy, all the taxis were taken, and one driver pretended I was invisible. Then a guy walked up to me and said his taxi was in the gas station across the street if I needed one. A strange and wondrous occurrence in the middle of Xmas chaos. And the name of the taxi was Versailes (with one L).

Here is a video of Bob from Ohio riding a razor in the Greenbelt area while wearing an Igorot bahag. (I fixed the link.) What do you think?
A. That’s amazing! No traffic on the corner of De la Rosa Street?!
B. It’s a metaphor for the clash of civilizations, the collision of the traditional and the modern as expressed by Bob’s barely-covered ass.
C. Ano ba yan, may mga tao talagang walang magawa. What the hell, some people have too much time on their hands.
D. Kulang sa pansin ang lalaking yan. Ibigay mo sa kin ang number niya at papansinin ko siya. That guy clearly needs attention. Give me his number, I’ll give him attention.
E. Yucch, exhibitionist! Someone has to give him a lecture on proper decorum and etiquette. These foreigners think they can just come here and display their decadent ways, it’s a disgrace.
F. Same as E, plus Give me his number, he has to be taught a lesson.
G. Kainggit, I wish I had no issues about my body.
H. (Your personal reaction here.)

Went to Cine Europa at Shangri-La last night to catch the two French movies. I’d gone early, expecting a crowd, but there were fewer people than usual—I think the recent event has made people a little leery of malls, or maybe they were all crammed into Megamall for the weekend sale.

You know how many people mentioned the bombing to me today? One. Everyone else went, “That was awful” and changed the topic, cause what the hell are we supposed to do. No one claims responsibility for the blast, so we just assume the usual suspects. There’s a bit from Casablanca that sums up the state of things around here (Hmm that’s two references to that movie in three days). Police captain Louis (Claude Rains) orders Rick’s closed, ostensibly for gambling. “I’m shocked, SHOCKED that there’s gambling on the premises,” he declares, then the croupier hands him a stack of cash and says, “Your winnings, sir.”

I’ve seen The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on DVD, and I wanted to view it on the big screen with the lush colors and the big, swoony Michel Legrand music. Turns out they’re projecting from the DVD at the festival, but if you haven’t seen Jacques Demy’s musical, catch it anyway. Umbrellas addresses the basic absurdity of the movie musical—people bursting into song—by having the actors sing all their lines. So Catherine Deneuve and her mom are arguing in song, and the postman interrupts with the mail, and he sings as he hands it over. The mom sums up the movie thus: People only die of love in the movies. In other words, You may feel like love will kill you, but most likely you will go on living.

Next I saw La Mome, the Edith Piaf biopic (US title: La vie en rose) starring Marion Cotillard, who’s brilliant and will likely be Oscar-nominated. I sat with Ronald, Raymond, and the Lav Diaz, who recently won a prize at the Venice festival. Piaf: What a life, pink is the last color I would associate with it. I realized that Piaf’s songs must be played very loud in order to get their full visceral impact. She is not a crooner or a whisperer; she’s in your face, you can smell the wine on her breath.

Afterwards we got to talking about how Piaf’s life was so Extreme Nora Aunor, and how singing icons like Piaf, Judy Garland, and Nora Aunor have histories that rival the most outrageous movie melodramas. Apparently you have to plumb the emotional depths, get battered by life and endure the kind of shit that would kill a lesser mortal. You don’t just sing the pain, YOU HAVE TO BE THE SONG. Hmm, a Nora Aunor biopic produced by Ronald Arguelles, written by Raymond Lee, directed by Lav Diaz—there’s a 15-hour movie.

Then Raymond, Ronald and I ran into Eric Ramos, who’s setting up the local edition of Playboy, and I offered to write for him. That’s when we established definitively that if you’re thinking of potential Playboy covers, don’t ask two gay guys and a girl for suggestions. I don’t think a Temptation Island (Jennifer Cortes! Bambi Arambulo!) 30th anniversary reunion would work in a men’s magazine, although we had some spectacular ideas for Playgirl.

At midnight Raymond and I headed to Martinis Bar and gatecrashed Martin’s birthday party. Alright, I was invited, but gatecrashing sounds more fun. I learned that it’s best to show up late, when everyone is already hilariously drunk. I have to check with legal before I blog the party, but Manny, you gave us a blank cheque, don’t think we’re not going cash it as soon as we figure out how many zeroes.