JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

When the review copy arrived the cynical reviewer thought, “Not another teen novel in which zombies attend a posh private school and plot to eat each other’s boyfriends.”

Cynical reviewer turns to first page. Hmm, set in a post-apocalyptic world that rises out of the smoldering ruins of what was once the USA. Cynical reviewer is always interested in the Apocalypse. And the narrator: Katniss, a 16-year-old girl who has to support her family because her father was killed in a mining accident and her mother is too depressed to do anything. She regularly violates the law to hunt and forage in the woods around District 12.

And then she ends up in the annual Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is a brutal contest which celebrates the victory of the Capitol in the rebellion of the Districts. Each district has to send two teenage “tributes” to compete in a televised reality show: a battle to the death. There is only one winner.

In short, this is Not Another Teen Novel in which zombies attend a posh private school and plot to eat each other’s boyfriends.

Imagine an amalgam of Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery, the TV show Survivor, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, the first Terminator, Running Man, Logan’s Run and other science-fiction stories set in repressive regimes in a dystopian future, but written in such vivid prose (with action sequences that shout, Hey James Cameron!) that it feels fresh and original.

And since it’s for the teen market, it’s got romance. Not the sappy “I would die without you” kind, but the tough “I will kill for you.” So there exist teen novels that are not about shopping and dating! That actually denounce turning teens into commodities! I’m cracking open the sequel Catching Fire, so do not disturb me.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is available in hardcover at all National Bookstores.

This is me, livid. You can tell I am thermonuclear with rage because I am smiling but my teeth are not showing. If my teeth are showing, it is a real smile. This smile says, “I am going to dismember you and feed the chunks to your children.” Yes, I am going to go Titus Andronicus on your ass, and I don’t care that you don’t know what a Titus Andronicus is.

I am catatonic with fury because not only has my schedule been disrupted by my futile attempts in the last 12 hours to connect to the Internet using a prepaid Globe Tattoo portable broadband gadget, but a total of P430 which I loaded onto the Globe Tattoo prepaid SIM has disappeared into the ether. Which leads to the inescapable conclusion: GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID IS A WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP.

I had intended to review the Globe Tattoo Prepaid in my Gadgets column on Sunday, but blogging is faster and I do not have to wait three days to say that GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID IS A WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP. Do I sound unnaturally calm? I always sound too calm when I am incensed, my voice drops an octave, and I talk twice as fast as I usually do, which is FAST. Unlike the slow, inefficient, unreliable, and now thieving GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID, A WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP.

From the time I acquired a mobile phone five years ago I have been a postpaid subscriber. This is my first experience with a prepaid SIM, and I say to you prepaid mobile users: You’re getting screwed. We postpaid subscribers don’t get billed until we’ve used the service, and if the service fails we do not get charged. You have to pay before you get the service, and if you don’t get the service, the provider is not compelled to address the problem because hey, they’ve already taken your money. Whoopee-doo.

Consider this little experiment. The SIM of the GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID, THAT USELESS PIECE OF CRAP, could connect to the Internet easily enough, but its speed did not exceed 2 kbps. The unit still had a load of P100, which I know because I saved all the confirmation texts and balance reports. On the chance that the prepaid SIM was damaged, I took it out and replaced it with the postpaid SIM from my phone. Holy Cannoli, it worked perfectly. It achieved speeds I never knew were possible on GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID, THAT USELESS PIECE OF CRAP. Hmmm. Postpaid, fast. Prepaid, so slow as to be nonexistent. Draw your conclusion.

I know how these problems are always solved. You complain to someone you know high up in the Globe hierarchy, and the problem goes away. It is as if the problem never occurred, everyone is charming, and Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala will say, “Hey, how about that new Stieg Larsson book.” Guess what, I am not calling the overlords. This is not about friendship. Globe, you’re going to deal with me as a consumer. A very loud consumer. I blog every single day, and I enjoy it. For starters, explain to me how the balance on my GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID, THAT USELESS PIECE OF CRAP, can go from P308 to P142 in 12 minutes of surfing at 0.00 kbps, and where the P100 from last night went. Now.

This entry was NOT POSTED USING A GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID because GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID IS A USELESS PIECE OF CRAP.

Just what we need in these dark times: a bland, flavorless movie about a famous chef and a blogger she inspired. And while Meryl Streep is compelling even when she’s just chopping onions or boning a duck (What a naughty phrase), a ton of butter, butter, butter will not make Julie & Julia better.

The basic problem is that the heroines of the two parallel stories have no real problems. I’m sure it’s terrible to have to leave Paris for a diplomatic posting in Marseilles, but one must be brave. And how awful for Julie Powell to be married to a nice editor at an archaeology magazine who supports her plan to go through every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook in one year and blog about it, but at least she got a book deal and a movie out of it.

Let’s run through some of the earth-shattering crises our heroines must deal with.

1. It’s 2002, Julie is employed at a government agency which helps the victims of 9/11, and she has to take a lot of angry phone calls. Oh the poor girl, she has to listen to the relatives of people who died in the towers. Why are they so angry.

2. Her husband insists that they move from a tiny flat in Brooklyn to a 900-square meter apartment in Queens. The horror, when she could be living in Provident Village, Marikina, or Cainta, or Benguet.

3. She’s on the cover of New York magazine as an ex-promising writer who hasn’t finished anything so far. . .and she’s almost 30. Yeah, euthanize her now.

4. Then she starts a blog and no one reads it. (I almost yelled, “Wala ka bang stat counter?” in the theatre, but I remembered it was 2002 so maybe they didn’t exist yet.) The ignominy! To put yourself out there and be ignored! I’m telling you, in this century, obscurity is the fate worse than death.

5. She feels that people consider her blogging self-absorbed and narcissistic. Wherever did they get that idea? Everybody knows that bloggers are selfless, modest, and devote their lives to others. They don’t want attention. Really.

6. The reporter from Christian Science Monitor cancels their interview because it’s raining hard. How can he shirk his journalistic responsibilities so casually when the world remains ignorant of the fact that someone is blogging Julia Child’s cookbook? No wonder there’s a recession.

7. Julia has nothing to do. In Paris. The most boring city on earth.

8. The nasty manager of the Cordon Bleu won’t admit her to the professional class, and the other students look down on her because she’s slow at chopping onions.

9. One of Julia’s collaborators in the writing of the cookbook isn’t doing anything. Amaaazing. We all know that when you work in a group, everyone does exactly the same amount of work.

10. It takes Julia a few years to finish her manuscript. And then it takes a while to find a publisher. What torture. A first-time author who writes a 700-page manuscript about sauces and poultry should be able to find a publisher in a snap.

11. OMG Julie has to bone a duck, like, stab it with a knife! How scary! Now if she had to put the bone back and reconstruct the whole duck, that would be a challenge.

And so on, you get my drift. Writer-director Nora Ephron does. In one scene she has Julie and her husband watch Dan Aykroyd’s Julia Child sketch on Saturday Night Live—in its entirety. Because the movie really needs it. We knew it didn’t belong there because it was actually funny.

This is an artwork by Leo Abaya.
It is part of his one-man show next month at Utterly, an art gallery in Singapore.
The exhibit is part of the Philippine Art Trek, now on its second year.
The Philippine Art Trek is sponsored by the Philippine Embassy in cooperation with art galleries in Singapore.
Images of the artworks will be printed in a catalogue to be presented to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo when she goes to Singapore in mid-November for the APEC Summit.
The Philippine Embassy in Singapore has asked Utterly, the gallery, not to show this particular work.
No reason was given for the request.
It is assumed that the Embassy does not approve of the use of the image of the President’s face in the artwork.
It is against the gallery’s policy to censor the works of its featured artists. Yes, a gallery in Singapore.
The gallery stands by its artists.
Leo Abaya’s show will be moved to November 19.
It will not be part of the Embassy event.
Perhaps the kind reader will help us figure out what is so objectionable about this artwork.
Our definition of “objectionable” is “official ineptitude in the face of a catastrophe exacerbated by corruption and incompetence”.
If there are other meanings, do enlighten us.

* * * * *

Update, 23.10

Official word from the gallery in Singapore: “The facts were that the Consul General, after finally viewing the image,caught on that it was PGMA, and hence called to say that ALTHOUGH the Philippines is more democratic, and unlike Singapore in that they don’t censor work, that is they support freedom of speech and it would be no problem to present the work OUTSIDE of Art Trek, the Embassy here could not be seen to be presenting and supporting the image.

“They asked if we could pull the work, and I said we could not: we would rather withdraw from Art Trek, and we had actually done so for a few hours. But we came to a compromise when we realized that we could substitute The Chinoy Connection as the Art Trek show instead.”

If you are voting for the first time in 2010, or have voted in the past but quit for some reason, or see no point in voting at all, this should help you make a decision.

Witty, hilarious, excellently-acted and utterly singable, Juan Tamad et al is the rare advocacy play that does NOT make the viewer feel like she’s been clubbed with a rolled-up newspaper for two hours. During the intermission we ran out to buy the Cast Recording CD, only to find that there is none. We demand a cast recording!

Si Juan Tamad, Ang Diyablo, At Ang Limang Milyong Boto is the theatrical component of PETA’s voter education campaign “Casting Call: The Virgin Voter’s Campaign—I Want My First Vote To Count”.

Inspired by PETA, we lapsed voters have decided to launch our own voter campaign. We’re calling it “Like A Virgin Voter: Make Me Feel Shiny And New.”

You can catch the play on October 15 at 7.30pm, and on October 24 and 25 at 2.30pm and 7.30pm at the PETA Theatre Center, 5 Eymard Drive, New Manila, QC. Tickets are P300 each. For more information contact PETA at 7256244, 4100821, 09178044428, or email petampro@yahoo.com.

Do you love Meryl Streep? How much do you love her work? How many times has she been robbed of the Oscar? Which movie lines of hers have you memorized and used in daily conversation? Have you told her?

Write Meryl Streep a fan letter and post it in Comments.

The authors of the three letters we like will receive this:

The official Julie & Julia movie poster.

Julie & Julia opens in Metro Manila theatres on Wednesday, October 14.

Deadline for submission of fan letters is Sunday, October 18.