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Actual conversation

– Could you please tell Maroxas that his pedicab TV ad is really awkward? Looks like he’s about to expire from the effort of pedaling, and his passenger is a small child.

– Hahahahaha.

– Never mind the marriage proposal on Wowowee, I’m guessing the voters love that. But they can tell that he’s never driven a pedicab in his life. Mukha siyang hinihingal. He should look comfortable, not ‘Yaya I’m tired na’.

– But because of that ad he is now up 16 percent in the surveys. Only he and Chiz are rising in the surveys. The rest are going down down down.

More proof that I know squat about how the audience thinks.

And why did they drop the Mister Palengke image when it was so effective in his last campaign?

The traveling exhibit Portraits Of Shoes, Stories Of Feet just opened at the Yuchengco Museum at the RCBC Plaza on Ayala. Organized by the museum and Alliance Francaise, the show features shoes from the 18th to the 21st centuries, from peasant footwear to designer shoes to shoes as art. It’s a motley assortment—too few historical shoes, but some interesting designs that probably won’t be seen on human feet outside of a fashion show or a sex shop. There’s a whole section of beautiful bakya.

19th century Turkish ladies’ shoes

Fishy Fishy Fishy. This would’ve solved my sister’s problem finding someone to feed her pet goldfish while her family was out of town. She couldn’t leave it with me because my cats would’ve found a way to take it out of the bowl (including breaking the bowl). With these shoes, she could’ve taken Wanda everywhere she went.

Bakya Mo Neneng, mukhang Ferragamo.

My favorite (because they’re the only pair I might actually wear): Shaq sneakers in organdy. Look at that craftsmanship. Could’ve been lit better, though.

When Nick Joaquin coined the term ‘bakya crowd’ I don’t think he was referring to these.

For details call the Yuchengco Museum, tel. 8891234. The place is closed on Sundays and holidays.

Economists have suffered a collapse in credibility since the global financial crisis began. Faith in the efficiency of markets and the invisible hand is out; “behavioral economics,” which stresses that humans are fundamentally irrational actors, is in. We are blind to risk; we make decisions on a whim; we prefer consuming now over saving for later. Human fallibility seems to be the perfect explanation for an unfathomable crisis. Here’s how—after years of being considered a quaint subfield—behavioral economics has finally stolen the limelight.

Anthropology of an Idea: “Behavioral Economics” by Elizabeth Dickinson in Foreign Policy.

Generally spoiler-free Wolverine preview! (From SRO media screening–I don’t think we were all from the media. Then again, anyone with a blog or a Facebook account is media.)

1. X-Men: Alright, although Magneto was more interesting than any of the X-Men.

X-Men 2: Better. I liked the evil mutants, and the ending with Jean Grey was quite moving.

X-Men 3: Crap.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Director Gavin Hood (Tsotsi) and the writers do a good job explaining the Wolverine character and laying the groundwork for the X-Men cycle. Action scenes well-executed. Crowd-pleasing. May confuse some viewers with no prior knowledge of X-Men. The latest addition to the ‘If you have special abilities the US government will hunt you down and weaponize you’ genre.

2. Huge Ackman solid playing a character who looks like he’s had a life-long migraine. It helps that he is beautiful and sculpted, and yes there is a nude scene. Message to Hugh: Wag kang tatabi kay Liev Schreiber, magaling yan! Been a Schreiber fan since the HBO movie RKO 281, in which Schreiber captured the charm and megalomania of Orson Welles. Since then he’s become one of the finest actors in the American theatre. Yes, Hugh has a Tony too (for The Boy from Oz), and he has the advantage in the beauty department, but Liev has sheer presence and a great voice. Hey why are there Canadians in an American black ops unit? Shouldn’t they be in the Foreign Legion?

3. So that’s how to make Ryan Reynolds menacing: give him swords.

4. You could feel the fanboys vibrating with joy each time a mutant appeared. “Omigod it’s it’s it’s Cyclops! Gambit! (faint).” I myself got weak when Wolverine put on a tartan shirt and became. . .A lumberjack! Leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia. . .

5. Merry! Merry! Where’s Pippin?

6. There are really only a few plots in existence. Wolverine uses the Cain and Abel story, Frankenstein, and throws in a bit of Oedipus.

7. This will make sense after you’ve seen the movie: “Yikes, his mutant power is, his face injects itself with botox.”

8. Almost forgot: Pay attention to the opening credits are they are crammed with back story.

9. Wow, Wolverine would kill as a contestant on Top Chef.

Postscript. A few days later, you don’t remember what happened. Just like Wolverine.

Bibliophibians—those of us who live partly in the world and partly in books—are divided on the issue of ebooks, those handheld gadgets which allow you to read entire books on their screens. The usual bibliophibian argument against e-books, apart from the fact that they’re hard on the eyes, is that they do not give you the full experience of reading.

There are two main components to the reading experience: the book as a physical object, and the book as a portal that transports you to another place and time. There’s your physical relationship to the book, and your mental relationship to the words.

The argument against ebooks has to do mostly with the physical part. With a book, you hold the entire text in your hands so you get a sense of the whole. You feel the weight of the printed matter, you smell the ink and paper, and you flip through the pages with ease. It is, how shall I put this, sexier. With an ebook, the whole is broken down into accessible bits: you only see a portion of text at a time. You’re holding cold, lifeless plastic and metal. You don’t flip the pages, you scroll down. We won’t even start on what your library would look like. . .

Emotional Weather Report today in the Star.

Meanwhile, With Kindle, Can You Tell It’s Proust? in the NYT.

It’s just occurred to me: If people read Kindles instead of books with cover art, I won’t know what they’re reading so I can’t judge them. Hmmm.

Crank 2 is more my kind of movie, but Zack was in the mood for 17 Again. When the movie opens, it’s 1989 and Mike O’Donnell is a 17-year-old high school basketball star played by Zac Efron, stretching his range after High School Musical. Yes, he’s definitely definitely distancing himself from the role that made him famous: at half-time, when cheerleaders dance to Bust A Move (a song I haven’t heard since…1989), he joins them in an enthusiastic rendition of that ancient dance step, the Running Man.

“Uh. . .do jocks do that?” I asked Zack, but he was already asleep. Later he would blame the ensaymada we ate before the movie. Sugar + Zac Efron = Coma.

Mike O’Donnell’s girlfriend appears at the game and tells him that she’s pregnant—Excellent timing, dear—causing him to abandon the game and his chance at a university basketball scholarship. He marries the girl, and the next time we see him it’s 2009 and he’s Matthew Perry. Mike O’Donnell is unhappy because he used to be Zac Efron and now he’s Matthew Perry and seems to be retaining water. He’s unhappy because the wife for him he abandoned basketball and college has thrown him out of the house and he’s living with his best friend.

Then in one of those plot devices that’s part-It’s A Wonderful Life and part-those 80s movies where teenagers swap bodies with their fathers and part-the one where Jennifer Garner goes from 12 to 30, Mike O’Donnell becomes Zac Efron, 17, again. He goes back to high school and ends up in the same class as his eldest daughter, the actress who was Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s sister.

Wait wait wait. Mike was 17 in 1989 when he knocked up his girlfriend. If their eldest child was born in 1989 or 1990, and it’s 2009 in the movie’s present (They refer to his high school photo being 20 years old), then the daughter should be 19 or 20 years old and already in college. In the movie she’s a high school senior aged 17, 18 at most. Ha! Looks like someone flunked math. (Or the Efron-child just takes longer to gestate, like an elephant.)

There’s a subplot involving Mike’s best friend, a geek who pursues the high school principal in the present-day. They go out to dinner and realize they both love Tolkien. Then they start speaking Elvish to each other, only the subtitles call it ‘Elf’. Booo fake geeks.

At this point Zack woke up with a start and said, “Who’s that? Wasn’t she in the other place? I’m confused.” So we left.