There’s a Wikipedia entry for Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim- lim-bus- stop-F’tang-F’tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel. The name of a character in Monty Python’s Election Night sketch, it was adopted by a candidate in a parliamentary by-election in the UK. I learned about it from Scary Duck the blog.
Mr. Biscuit-Barrel lost, but placed ahead of four other candidates. Yet for sheer silliness this does not compare to Philippine elections.
Mahal ko ang Paris. Ang mga Pranses, hindi masyado. Kung nasa Paris kayo, huwag kayong pupunta sa Salvador Dali Museum, yung nasa Espace Montmartre na malapit sa Sacre Coeur. Mabubwisit lang kayo. Unang-una, ang mahal ng bayad, mas mahal pa sa tiket sa Louvre. Pagkatapos, pagpasok mo, wala yung mga importanteng Dali. Lahat ng laman ng museo kuno, late period—nung matanda na si Dali, malapit nang mag-retire, at para nang cottage industry ang trabaho niya. Bawa’t artwork, maraming kopya. Ewan ko kung bakit pumasok pa ‘ko doon, e sinabi na ng kaibigan ko na hindi sulit. Doon kasi sa front desk, may pusang natutulog. Paggising ng pusa, antipatika pala. Parang sila.
Yung pala, ang “museo” ay bentahan ng print at sculpture ni Dali. Lahat ng naka-display, puedeng bilhin. Commercial gallery pala, naningil pa ng admission. Asar na asar ako. Ang daming nakalagay na bawal daw kumuha ng litrato, kaya panay ang kuha ko ng litrato at gumamit pa ako ng flash. Pagkatapos, pinuntahan ko yung sales staff na mukhang masungit, itinuro ko yung mga print na naka-frame sa dingding, at tinanong ko kung magkano. Konti lang ang alam kong French, pero marunong akong magtanong kung magkano. Yun lang naman ang importante. (At kunyari lang na hindi sila marunong mag-Ingles. Meron silang English subject sa high school.)
Bigla siyang bumait at sinabi ang presyo ng lahat ng ituro ko. Sabi ko, talaga? Hindi naman pala mahal. (Talagang hindi ganoon kamahal, hindi nga lang ako bibili.) Kung anu-ano ang itinuro ko. Puede ko daw dalhin sa carry-on baggage, or for tax purposes, puedeng ipadala na lang ng opisina nila sa Switzerland. Talaga? Tinanong ko siya, Bukas ba kayo pag Sunday? Oo daw, at binigay niya yung card niya at tawagan ko daw siya pag papunta na ako.
Siempre wala akong intensyong bumalik. Nung papalabas ako, nag-irapan kami ng pusang antipatika.
We were wandering around Power Plant after the Fashion Week thingy (Checked pants! Man-bags!) when we spotted a Blackberry on the floor outside Women’s Secret. I don’t know how long it had been lying there, but people were giving it a wide berth. Either they didn’t want to seem interested in other people’s property, or they suspected a TV show prank.
Riccardo had read the complete Hardy Boys and I had read all of Nancy Drew. So we picked up the Blackberry and played boy/girl detective. (Hardy Girl and Nancy Boy)
“Looks like it was clipped onto someone’s belt and it fell off,” I said, examining the faux leather case. “That means the owner is a heterosexual male.”
“It could’ve fallen out of a handbag,” said Riccardo. “That means the owner is gay.” (In a parallel universe Riccardo is the child of Madonna and Sean Penn, abandoned inside a Goyard handbag.)
“I do not approve of wearing gadgetry on one’s belt,” I declared.
“I approve of handbags,” said Riccardo.
“What if the owner is cute?” we chorused.
Ha! Something to write about in my column!
Since it’s too hot to go out and there’s nothing showing in movie theatres that I care to watch, I’m having my own Spring Equinox Film Festival at home this weekend. This is the selection.
Opening film: Band of Outsiders by Jean-Luc Godard
Le Samourai by Jean-Pierre Melville
Love and Death by Woody Allen
Viridiana by Luis Buñuel
Duck Soup, The Marx Brothers (Preview of our Marx Brothers film festival on Holy Week. Special guest feature: Monty Python’s Life of Brian.)
Pepe Le Moko by Julien Duvivier
Les Amants by Louis Malle
Closing film: Videodrome by David Cronenberg
The selection is based on what I found at our local DVD dealers’ last Friday. By the way if you see La Ronde and The Earrings of Madame de… by Max Ophuls, and A Matter Of Life and Death by Powell and Pressburger, give me a holler.
So I’m watching Bande a part, and I never understood Godard, but suddenly something clicks in my brain and I think I get it! It’s about people who think their life is a movie and regard real life as unreal. My people!
“This news item had come to him not as rare and refreshing fruit but more like a buffet on the base of the skull with a sock full of wet sand.”
“She looked like something that might have occured to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments.”
“He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”
Here’s an extract from Ian McEwan’s new novel On Chesil Beach, out in April.
The first McEwan I ever read was Amsterdam. It’s about two old friends who make a pact to euthanise each other. They had been in love with the same woman, and at her funeral something happens. I bought the paperback at Powerbooks, then I went home and flipped through the pages. Before I knew it I’d read the whole thing (It’s short). In fact I remember where I was and what else I was doing when I read each of his books. Enduring Love in a bookstore cafe in Melbourne during the 1999 Australian Open. In Between The Sheets later that same year in a dormitory in Yale while watching the clothes go round the washing machine. Atonement while proofreading the first issue of Flip (Many errors escaped me; my mind was at Dunkirk). The Child In Time right after my mother died. It’s about a guy who loses his little daughter in a supermarket and is consumed with grief. A couple of years ago I was reading his post-9/11 novel Saturday when I heard that a bomb had gone off in a bus on Edsa.
There have been several film versions of McEwan. The Comfort of Strangers (Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson, Christopher Walken) was very creepy. Haven’t seen First Love, Last Rites or The Cement Garden. I liked Enduring Love, in which Rhys Ifans stalks Daniel Craig (I understand perfectly). The movie of Atonement will be out later this year—it stars James MacAvoy, who is lovely, but slighter than the Robbie Turner I’d imagined.
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