JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

let your gonads pick the movie you’re going to watch: Pathfinder blows.

But we still love Karl Urban and stuck around till the end of the movie, in case spring arrived and he took off the winter furs.

Diana Ross was not the best singer in The Supremes but she was the prettiest and most marketable, so she went on to solo stardom. The story of The Supremes was the inspiration for the Broadway musical Dreamgirls, which made a star of Jennifer Holliday in the role of the singer who gets shunted aside for the Ross character, and which was recently adapted for film, with another Jennifer H—Hudson—getting an Oscar for that role (and the cover of Vogue, a rare feat for a big girl). Some years ago Diana Ross had a concert in Manila. My friend Michael was in the audience. According to Michael, Ms. Ross noticed two very enthusiastic female fans in the front rows. They had been standing on their seats throughout the show, screaming their lungs out at every number. Ms. Ross decided to invite them onto the stage to help her sing her hit, “Endless Love.” She sang the first verse, then handed the microphone to the first woman. Who, unbeknownst to her, was the singer Ivy Violan. Who sang the hell out of the second verse. The crowd went nuts. Ms. Ross was taken aback—she had not expected to be outsung at her own show. But she praised Ivy’s Violan’s singing, and passed the microphone to the second woman. Who was the singer Dulce. Whose voice has the power to launch rockets. Who blew out the back wall and brought the house down. Ms. Ross was not pleased. She exited the stage for a costume change and returned for the finale, but by then the audience had slipped from her grasp. A Dreamgirls moment, live in Manila.

The drug UO126 can erase a single, specific memory while leaving others intact.

In mice. For now.

The Independent reveals likely cause of 31-year feud between literary giants (in its excitement misspelling “feud”). At a Mexican movie premiere in 1976, Mario Vargas Llosa walked up to his (up until then) good friend Gabriel Garcia Marquez and punched him in the eye. They haven’t spoken since. Of course it’s about a woman, a biographer says. When the great men patch up their quarrel and renew their friendship I suggest they have two of their grandchildren marry each other. This would produce the formidable hyphenation: Vargas Llosa-Garcia Marquez.

Women’s Month. I don’t get it. What about the other eleven months, aren’t they ours too? Why should we settle for just one? Me, I just assume the millennium is mine. So please stop with the invitations because I’m probably not the right speaker on the subject. For one thing, I’ve never felt oppressed in my life. In my observation, people don’t discriminate against you because you’re female or gay; they do so because they think you’re poor and weak so you’re just going to sit there and take it. [I’ve been poor, but I never felt I was less of a person. Arrogance helps: My account may be empty but I’m smart. And if anyone says, If you’re so smart why ain’t you rich?, the answer is: Because I don’t measure my worth in currency, you dumb shit.]

Remember that flap about the canon of literature and how everything in it was written by Dead White Males? Never had a problem with it. I didn’t need strong female characters to identify with; I just identified with the hero. If he happened to be male, fine. So I saw myself as D’Artagnan, Wart, John Carter of Mars and Moses. Which may mean I’m psychotic, but I definitely didn’t feel left out of whatever I was reading. I don’t think men are the enemy, stupid people are. I love men. It occurs to me that most of my friends are men, masculine and feminine. I do have a masculine air (with the matching ineptitude in matters feminine). I’m like a guy, but with boobs. Service personnel don’t call me Ma’amsir or Sirma’am, they just call me Sir.

Manananggal, originally uploaded by Koosama.

Collage: Steph Palallos. Text (and handwriting): mine.

In the BBC police drama Messiah:

Patient in hospital: Did you see the night nurse?
She’s Filipina! She’s gorgeous!

Thanks to Budj for the alert.