JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

I hope you got your print edition of the Philippine Star yesterday—it was the size and heft of a phone book—because it should become a collector’s item.

On the occasion of the 24th anniversary of the paper, our Lifestyle editor Millet M. Mananquil (MMM, like James Bond’s boss times 3) asked 24 columnists to write about 24 icons in business, politics, and the arts. Ideally the subject should be someone the writer has covered extensively, or know very well. When the assignment arrived I spent half a day considering my options. There’s my Jedi master, but I had just interviewed him before the elections; also, his daughter Bianca’s prize-winning essay on his father Teodoro Locsin, Senior would appear in the same issue. I could write about Jaime Augusto Zobel again, but Igan was already writing about his father, plus I know exactly what Jaime would say. (“Is this really necessary?”, then quick change of topic to rugby or books.) There’s Ely Buendia, but I have made too much of my association with the Eraserheads considering I was around for about five minutes (See, I just dropped their names for no good reason).

Then it occurred to me that I was approaching the assignment from the wrong angle, Prudence, when I should be coming from a position of Awe. Quandary resolved. I would write about an individual I do not know personally but whose career I have followed for the last ten years, whose tribulations and triumphs I have experienced with such intensity that they might have been my own. I would write about Roger Federer.

Genius is a dangerous idea. Genius is an affront to the principle that all people are created equal. But there is no denying that there are individuals who perform feats no one else can, and pull them off as if they were the easiest, most natural things in the world.

Roger Federer is a genius.

Continue reading this article in the Philippine Star’s 24th Anniversary Issue.

While looking at my photos of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London I realized that I had fixated on the bookshelves.

This is the bookcase of Samuel Pepys (pronounced “Peeps”), circa 1695. Pepys kept a now-famous diary of his life in London during a particularly turbulent time. You can read the daily entries here, or follow Samuel Pepys on Twitter . The feed is at the year 1667.

As for the rest of these beautiful bookshelves, I failed to take note of who designed or owned them. By this time my brain had gone into sensory overload and the taking of snapshots was purely a reflex action.

Next: Desks.

Salon notes that there are nearly 2,000 videos on YouTube of people walking their cats on a leash. I say HAH!

I have tried this. I have always wanted to walk my cats so they can get some exercise, but mostly so I can show off my superior felines. However, I fear that they will run off and get into fights, root in the garbage, eat maggoty rat carcasses, get kidnapped and forced to live in a household where the humans don’t know the difference between ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’ and misplace their apostrophes.

Then I had what seemed to be a brilliant idea: Leashes! Conventional wisdom dictates that cats cannot be leashed, they are too independent and stubborn, but one should question conventional wisdom when the need arises. So I went to Animal House and bought some harnesses—in the dogs’ section, since cat harnesses are unheard of.

When I showed the harnesses to the cats they sniffed at them curiously, the concept of walking on a leash being entirely alien to them. But when I put the harness on Mat, my best-behaved cat, he immediately sat on his haunches and refused to move. No amount of coaxing, bribing, dragging, could make him walk on a leash. Meanwhile the look on his face said, ‘I am going to report you to the SPCA, PETA, and the International Court of Justice in The Hague.’

I didn’t give up. I put Mat in his carrier, then my sister and I brought him to Greenbelt for a walk. Immediately he tried to run into the bushes. When he realized this was futile, he sat down and did his impression of a very large paperweight. I had to carry him home.

When I tried to put Koosi and Saffy on a leash they attacked me. To be specific, Koosi bit me, then Saffy scratched me and tried to shred the book I was reading. So the leashes were put away along with the expensive scratching post (They preferred the box it came in), filed under “Stupid Idea”.

After reading the Salon articles I thought I’d bring out the harnesses and see if the years had made my cats more tractable. The cats trotted over—they love string, cords, rope—but when they realized what the things were they evacuated instantly. Koosi jumped onto the top of the shelf, Mat crawled under a table. Saffy sat on my notebook with her claws out: ‘Try it and your notes are confetti.’

So thanks a lot, Cat On A Leash videos. Now my cats won’t speak to me.

Here are the winners of our Who Is Salt? Channeling Angelina Jolie as Evelyn Salt contest. We rustled up two more caps so we picked five winners.

Monique

Sam

Abby

Resty S

And Rogue. All the cats have the Jolie/Salt look, but Rogue is the right color.

Congratulations! Please post your Philippine mailing address in Comments (The addresses will not be published) and we’ll send you your Salt cap pronto.

Salt, the movie, opens in Metro Manila theatres tomorrow. See you at the movies.

After the breathtaking sweep and sheer abundance of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell I wanted something down to earth. Down to earth, short, set in a more recognizable era. Hence The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis.

The Rachel Papers is narrated by a 19-year-old shit named Charles Highway. Charles is full of himself, but unlike other 19-year-old narrators who are full of themselves he is extremely well-read and articulate. He analyzes and over-thinks every aspect of his life, keeps dossiers on the people closest to him, and not only plans each move but makes back-ups for any contingency.

It’s the early 1970s and Charles is living in his sister’s basement in London while he studies for his Oxford entrance exams. However, his primary goal is not to get into Oxford but to have sex with an older woman before his 20th birthday. That older woman is Rachel, aged 20. Amis’s writing is so sharp and vivid that we stick around to see whether this spotty, skinny, horny, possibly tubercular, repellent youth will score.

Have I mentioned that it is hysterically funny? It goes into my list of favorite funny books:

Anything by P.G. Wodehouse, especially if Jeeves is in it
Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, and Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh
The Catcher In The Rye, which is funny and furious
The Pursuit of Love and Love In A Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
The short stories of Woody Allen collected in Without Feathers and Getting Even
The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary Shteyngart
Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson

After Japan in 1800 and London in 1970 my next stop is the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s.

My Jedi master calls Blood Meridian “a fucking great book” and a snob with a massive vocabulary he is. Thrice I have attempted to read Cormac McCarthy and failed: I found myself getting more and more depressed as the novels went along, and my faith in humanity, never at a high, was getting whittled down to nothing.

This time I think I’m ready for McCarthy, but just to be sure I listened to these lectures on Blood Meridian that I downloaded from iTunes. You can watch the first part here and the second part here.

After Blood Meridian, The Passage by Justin Cronin, which sounds like The Road with a vampire plague.

Speaking of Cormac McCarthy and The Road, every day since Friday David Cronenberg’s movie A History Of Violence has crept into our conversation from different approaches. Of course we need no excuse to bring up Viggo Mortensen, who unites us all in lust and admiration, but I wonder.

Rogue, submitted by human Deepa. “My cat has the slanty-eyed fuck-me stare, the sultry pout AND the lustrous black hair. Rogue is Salt!”

(Photo removed because we received an email from someone who says she’s the person in the photo and she did not send it in.)

Looks more pensive than vicious. Has to work on the motivation. Tip: Before snapping the photo, think: “Napapaligiran ako ng mga bobo.” There’s your motivation. Click!

Kristel. If that’s a ruthless assassin I’m assigning a bunny rabbit to black-ops.

The winners will be announced tonight.