JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Death is not an end but the beginning. . .of a new round of ridicule and mockery on mydeathspace.com. The site contains news of recent deaths, with links to the myspace pages of the deceased. Now friends and total strangers can sit in judgment on the departed. How can anyone rest in peace?

“When a person dies, his or her MySpace page and its assortment of photos, blog entries, songs, videos and other digital ephemera becomes a de facto shrine to the deceased — teenage life’s trivialities, dilemmas and existential crises packaged and displayed as a neat narrative. That narrative may continue well beyond death if victims have left their message boards open to the public, as friends, family members and even strangers add comments to the page. . .For some, it’s a form of reality-based entertainment, of the most morbid variety. MyDeathSpace’s avid fan base scours the news for recent tragedies and keeps the site current by submitting deaths for consideration.”

From the Department of Linguistics, Bahay Kubo in gayspeak.

Valer kuberch, kahit jutay
Ang julamantrax donchi ay anek-anek.
Nyongkamas at nutring, nyogarilyas at kipay
Nyitaw, nyotaw, jutani.
Kundol, jutola, jupot jolabastrax
At mega join-join pa, jobanox nyustasa.
Nyubuyax, nyomatis, nyowang at luyax
And around the keme ay fulnes ng linga.

The Swedish director of Smiles Of A Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, and Wild Strawberries died today at his house on Faroe Island. His last film was Saraband.

Bergman’s films are usually described as great, depressing, or great and depressing. We are allowed to admit that Bergman’s work is gloomy. In a Swedish television interview in 2004, he himself said: “I don’t watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry … and miserable.”

I must confess I thought he’d been dead for years. As a penance I will watch Persona without subtitles.

I’m sorry the Cinemalaya festival is over, not just because I won’t be seeing new stuff every day or hanging out with large groups of people inhaling gambas at Shrimps Ahoy, but because I enjoyed getting out of my neighborhood and going to the CCP, even if the atmosphere contains carpet mold, spores, and dust dating back to the Eighties.

At the awarding ceremonies last night, Tribu won the best picture, best actor (for the non-professional ensemble composed of Tondo gang members—excellent call by the judges), and best sound (after I’d just picked on it, ha ha) trophies. Endo got the special jury prize, best actress for Ina Feleo, and best editing. Pisay won for direction and production design; Kadin for cinematography and music. Tukso was cited for screenplay (I didn’t see it). Among the shorts, Rolyo was adjudged best picture, Eman de la Cruz was cited for direction for Gabon, and we were happy to see Nineball bag the special jury prize. Audience choice awards went to Pisay for the features, and Doble Vista for the shorts.If you missed the movies, you can catch them at the UP Film Center.

The most fun I had at Cinemalaya 2007 was watching the short film Nineball by Enrico Aragon. Gross, tasteless, and hysterically funny, Nineball is. . .a rumination on the Filipinos’ near-demented passion for billiards—which makes more sense than our demented passion for basketball, because we rule in pool. I have always maintained that every psycho-anthropological study should involve midgets, trannies, and booger jokes.

Was much impressed by Jim Libiran’s Tribu, a film about Tondo gangstas starring actual Tondo gangstas. Some of the film’s stars demonstrated their rapping skills in an extemporaneous performance before yesterday’s screening at CCP. The live show and the movie had the same problem: the sound engineering was awful, we could barely hear the words. A pity, as these guys are really rapping for their lives. I spotted Imee Marcos watching the show. Surreal.

Meanwhile, I can’t get “Spider-Pig” out of my head. The Simpsons movie—there’s a gut-busting work of staggering genius.

“American doctors are baffled by a cat that can apparently predict when nursing home patients are about to die.

“Oscar, who lives at a nursing home, curls up next to sick patients in their final hours. So far he has been right in 25 cases, leading staff at the home to alert relatives when he is seen settling on a patient’s bed. It usually means they have less than four hours to live. “He doesn’t make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die,” said Dr David Dosa, who describes Oscar’s uncanny knack for predicting death in the New England Journal of Medicine.”

Nice-looking cat, too, for a harbinger of death. My felines are more like identifiers of loathsomeness. When they show a marked aversion to a human, that human always turns out to be a creep.