JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Studies show that naps make you smarter, healthier, and safer. Take a caffeine nap. That is not an oxymoron. Drink a cup of coffee before you take a nap. Caffeine needs 20 to 30 minutes to take effect, so it will kick in just as you’re waking up.

The Boston Globe tells you How To Nap.

Napping is not to be confused with sleeping all day. Ige has a theory about the etymology of jologs. Many believe that the word is derived from Jolina as in the actress Jolina Magdangal, but Ige thinks it started with tulog nang tulog, which may be expressed in baklese as jolog nang jolog.

You know you’re reading a great novel when everything about it feels urgent and vivid. . .and it’s about cricket. It makes you want to learn to play cricket. You could devour it in one sitting, but you force yourself to read slowly because you don’t want to run out of novel.

Paging every bookstore in the city: You need to put Netherland on your shelves. For now you’ll have to order it online or ask friends abroad to get it for you. If you’re going to read one novel this year, this is the one.

Each December, we ask a bunch of serious readers to name their favorite books of the year. While the committee members agonize over their choices, why don’t you list your best books of 2008?

1. Scented candles say “I’m not even trying.”
2. One bottle of wine says, “I got a case at a wholesale rate so whoopee-doo, you’re all getting the same thing”, which suggests you can’t tell your friends apart. Does not apply to rare vintages.
3. A book, because I might already have it. Gift certificates are alright, but they announce, “I can’t be bothered to think of an appropriate present for you, so go get yourself something.”
4. Refrigerator magnets, because there is no space left on the surface of the fridge to stick them on. (In my house the fridge is less a food storage device than a bulletin board.)
5. Perfume. I can’t stand strong scents and most perfumes give me a headache.
6. Cookies, because I hang out with a pastry chef and I’ve gotten snooty about desserts.
7. DVDs, see number 3.
8. Lined notebooks. I prefer plain unlined or squared.
9. Figurines and other cute bric-a-brac, because my cats hate them and kick them off tables and shelves.
10. Picture frames say, “I don’t really know you, but I feel obligated to give you a present.”

Elizabeth Peyton painted this “still” from Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of The Age Of Innocence by Edith Wharton, starring Michelle Pfeiffer as the Countess Ellen Olenska and Daniel Day-Lewis as Newland Archer.

The two wealthy, middle-aged widows from New York who are visiting Rome in Wharton’s short story Roman Fever might’ve been guests at Newland Archer’s wedding. While their marriageable daughters are off on dates with dashing Italians, they sit on a terrace overlooking the Forum and remember their first visits to Rome as young ladies. They recall how they were often warned about catching Roman fever or pneumonia when it became deathly cold in the evenings, and how one of them nearly died. As is always the case in Edith Wharton’s work, etiquette and politeness mask violent passions. (Scorsese of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull was a perfect fit for The Age Of Innocence.) One of the women confesses to something she did many years ago, leading to a stunning revelation. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.

Something amaaazing has happened. It’s one of those choices that are so obvious and right, we can’t believe it was actually made.

US President-elect Obama has named Steven Chu his Energy Secretary. He picked an expert for the job.

Chu is the head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for his work on supercooled atoms. He has pushed for research on solar energy and biofuels. He advocates controlling greenhouse emissions. And he’s an employee of the US Department of Energy!

Critics note that Chu is not a politician, so he might not survive Washington. What, you think someone can run a government laboratory without political skills?

Given that amaaazing things are happening, let’s allow ourselves to think that someone with all the necessary qualifications plus a well-developed conscience can become the next President of the Philippines. (Naturally we are assuming that the 2010 elections will go on as scheduled.) Who would you nominate for President of the Philippines? Someone qualified and viable—we’ll worry about “winnability” later. Yes, you love Manny Pacquiao, but he’s done enough for this country. No, seriously, you can’t nominate Pac-Man. Name your candidates.

Look at the nominations so far. Hope ticket, or Despair ticket?

Why did I bother to see Pride and Glory? Oh right, Colin Farrell and Edward Norton are in it. I figured that no matter how bad it got (the trailer is unpromising) I could entertain myself with the quiz question: Which one would you run away with, Edward or Colin? Edward is a marvelous actor, I’ve been a fan since he wiped Richard Gere off the screen in Primal Fear, he killed in 25th Hour, plus he’s not a bad writer-director although he has a reputation for being difficult and demanding final cut even when he’s not the director, and he did a good Woody Allen impression in Everyone Says I Love You. Colin, though wonderfully talented, has starred in mostly terrible movies, but has the rare distinction of appearing in a sex video that made him look sweet, and isn’t that the prime requirement for someone to run away with. 

None of these could comfort me as Chus and I sat through Pride and Glory. It is singularly awful, badly-written, cliche-ridden, incompetently-directed, overheated drivel. The good son, bad son-in-family-of-cops story was recently retold in James Gray’s excellent We Own The Night with Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg; why was this movie made at all? My guess is that director Gavin O’Connor has some truly horrendous dirt on Norton and Farrell—in the case of the latter it would have to be epically horrendous because we’ve seen Alexander and we know about the drinking and Britney Spears—and he used it to blackmail them into appearing in this piece of crap. Nothing they do can save this trite, lumbering mess—when the bad cop threatens to iron a baby, you feel not horror but “Whatever”, and when he goes to meet his death and his last words turn out to be “Tell her I love her”, the only proper response is, “Kill him, shut him up.” 

My eyelids began to feel very heavy during the movie, and when I got home after an early dinner I immediately fell asleep. You know how the brain protects itself by forgetting a traumatic occurrence? My brain was trying to protect itself by not watching this movie. Pride and Glory makes The Incredible Hulk and Alexander the Great look like masterpieces.