JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

It’s John Lennon’s birthday. 

I’m from the generation of Filipinos that emerged from the womb knowing the entire Beatles discography. We were all automatically Beatles fans, we had very little choice in the matter: the music was in the air and you breathed it in.

I don’t know if anyone has properly assessed the impact the Beatles had on the 20th century, but it was huge. What would John say about the world today?

The Guardian reviews the new, definitive biography of John Lennon.

 

“Weighing in at around 500,000 words, John Lennon: The Life – note the definite article – tells a familiar tale in exhaustive but often illuminating detail. The book was written with the blessing of Yoko Ono and the tentative co-operation – by email – of Paul McCartney, though both are reported to be unhappy with the end result, which Ono claims is ‘too mean’ to Lennon’s memory. . .

“Norman is the first Lennon biographer to be granted access to the private papers of Lennon’s celebrated Aunt Mimi, who took the troubled youngster in when his parents’ ill-fated marriage finally imploded. He has also made good use of the notebooks the singer filled with his often scabrous musings and the cassettes on to which Lennon fitfully recorded his random thoughts, opinions and memories. The tabloids have already provided some invaluable pre-publicity for Norman’s book by homing in on the ‘revelation’ that John may have harboured secret homosexual longings for Paul. Imagine! Macca, though, is having none of it. ‘John never tried anything on,’ he said recently. ‘I slept with him a million times.’ Lest there be any doubt about their laddishness, he added that had Lennon had ‘a little gay tendency’, he would ‘have caught him out’.”

I think that if John Lennon were gay, he would’ve been open about it. And if he had been gay, it doesn’t un-write Sergeant Pepper.

There have been speculations of homosexuality attached to just about every great artist from Homer (who some say didn’t exist) to Leonardo to Shakespeare and after. Big Bird says: “We have to set minimum aesthetic and artistic standards for people to qualify as gay. Hindi puedeng kung sinu-sino na lang ang mag-claim na bakla sila! (We can’t have just anyone claiming to be gay!)”

For the first time in nearly two decades, I changed my hairstyle. In the early 90s I had long, curly hair which threatened to engulf any room it was in. After a shampoo, it would expand like the universe in the immediate post-Big Bang period. I attempted to tame it with an assortment of products: mousse, gel, leave-on conditioner. But not hairspray. If I’d used hairspray, global warming would be way more advanced today than it already is.

When the perm wore off after a year or so, I just wore my hair long and straight. Okay, straightish. My hair is naturally wavy and unruly; the technical term is “buhaghag”. It doesn’t help that I refuse to have it rebonded, relaxed, or even blow-dried. I am extremely attached to my brain, it’s my favorite organ, and I’m not letting any chemicals or heating appliances near its protective casing of bone and hair. True, when I was doing a TV show I let myself be convinced to have my hair blow-dried, but that was just once a week. I have so much hair it requires two stylists and an entire hour to blow-dry, and afterwards their arms are really toned. It’s good hair, I’m not complaining—the strands are thick and strong, you could floss with them. I went to the salon twice a year to have four inches lopped off the ends; otherwise it stayed the same.

Last week I realized I was tired of my usual hairstyle. I’d been wearing it pulled back with a headband and held up by a butterfly clip, which is practical but boring. However, I didn’t want one of those fussy hairstyles that would require waking up early and slathering on product. Ernie was going to the salon to have his hair relaxed and cut, so he suggested that I see his stylist after his appointment. Ernie has even more hair than I do, it’s amazing. Bert calls it “Hair that grew a bakla.” When I showed up at Basement after Ernie’s haircut, it looked like there’d been a massacre of tribbles. It looked like Cousin It had committed suicide. 

I had very little choice in what happened next—my glasses were off, so I couldn’t see what the stylist was doing. Ernie art-directed everything. The result is a layered late-70s cut that Ernie calls “All of Dolphy’s Angels conflated in one head.” (Children, Dolphy’s Angels was a 70s action-comedy ripoff of Charlie’s Angels starring Yehlen Catral, Carmi Martin, Liz Alindogan and Ana Marie Gutierrez. Now you can win a trivia contest.) 

 

The Glass Forest by Mario De Stefano. 1st Prize, Best Science Images 2008.

Recent scientific findings:

1. Coke is an effective spermicide.
2. Coke is not an effective spermicide.
3. Chips that are crunchier taste better.
4. Strippers make more money when they are ovulating.
5. Armadillos can scramble the contents of an archaeological dig.
6. Expensive fake medicines work better than cheap fake medicines.
7. Fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than fleas that live on a cat.
8. Plants have dignity.
9. Slime molds can solve puzzles.
10. Heaps of string or hair will inevitably tangle.

Winners of the Ig Nobel Awards, the annual prize given by the Annals of Improbable Research for oddball scientific achievements.

“In its broad strokes, McCain’s life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers’ powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives’ evangelical churches.

“In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.”

OW! Make-Believe Maverick by Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone, via 3QD. A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty.

Photo: Saffy with retired Captain Kirk with photo of her papy.

I asked Stephanie Jobs, my guru in all things Apple, for the correct way to clean my Mac.

“Take an old T-shirt,” he said, “Dampen it with clean water, and gently pass it over the monitor.”“What about the keys?” I asked. “Should I get a can of compressed air and blow the debris out from between the keys?”

“No!” he shuddered. “You could get one of those little vacuum cleaners for your keyboard.” That would not only solve my cat hair problem, but also remove the bits of my own hair and skin cells that have fallen onto the keys. Like Ethan Hawke in Gattaca. That way, if evil masterminds are planning to clone me illegally, they won’t get my DNA off my MacBook.The Crud-Free Keyboard in Emotional Weather Report, yesterday in the Star.

How DO you clean your keyboard?

Colm Toibin on the great American writer James Baldwin and the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, in the NYRB.

“It seemed important, as both men set about making their marks on the world, for them to establish before anything else that their stories began when their fathers died and that they set out alone without a father’s shadow or a father’s permission. James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, published in 1951, begins: “On the 29th of July, in 1943, my father died.” Baldwin was almost nineteen at the time. Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, published in 1995, begins also with the death of his father: “A few months after my twenty-first birthday, a stranger called to give me the news.”

“Both men quickly then established their own actual distance from their fathers, which made their grief sharper and more lonely, but also made clear to the reader that they had a right to speak with authority, to offer this version of themselves partly because they themselves, through force of will and a steely sense of character, had invented the voice they were now using, had not been trained by any other man to be the figure they had become. . .”