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All photos from Uro’s Abandoned Movie Houses series.

This LitWit Challenge is for people who love the movies. I don’t mean people who view the cinema as a two-hour escape from “real life” or something to do on their downtime, I mean those who regard the movies as extensions of their lives.

I’m from the last generation that had to go to the movie theatre in order to watch movies. It was always a major production. In the 70s and 80s movie theatres were usually standalone palaces with plush seats, velvet ropes, and red curtains. In Cubao there were theatres called Coronet, Remar, Diamond; in Greenhills Greenhills theatre; in Magallanes Magallanes; and in Makati, Rizal Theatre. Rizal Theatre also had coffee shops and an Alemar’s bookstore. It was torn down in the 80s. I think the last movie I saw there was Blade Runner.

Home video makes watching movies so much more convenient, but it also takes something away from the experience. I will always think of Cinema as sitting in the dark with a bunch of strangers and having the same dream.

Where was I? Right. Write an essay or story (maximum 1,000 words) explaining why you love the movies. Yes, you may concentrate on a single movie. No, we’re not interested in an academic treatise. Post your entry in Comments on or before Saturday, 28 August 2010 at 11.59 pm.

The prize is a copy of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. Also, we will draw up the guest list for the Anniversary Non-Event Movie, Book and Merienda Buffet from the readers who join the LitWit Challenges in the next four weeks.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by National Bookstore.

At noon I was sitting in a taxi, effectively held hostage by radio coverage of that hostage-taking incident.

According to the breathless radio reporters, a former police officer had taken a busload of tourists hostage. At first the hostages were thought to be Korean; later they were revealed to be from Hong Kong.

Apparently the former officer had been dismissed on corruption charges. He demanded that the Sandiganbayan decision be rescinded and that he be reinstated with back pay. And to prove his innocence, he took 25 people hostage.

Was he never required to take an IQ test at some point in his career?

Update, 2048hrs. And yet he managed to hold off dozens of police rescuers and SWAT, advancing retreating advancing retreating with no apparent strategy. They make the hostage-taker look smart and gallant.

According to a newsanchor: Good news! Some of the hostages survived!

Earlier the Palace announced: The Philippine situation is stable despite the hostage taking!

And the media was given total access to police movements, so everything the police did was broadcast live on television for the hostage-taker to watch on the TV inside the bus. Surprise!

IQ tests all around.

* * * * *

William Blake, Satan inflicts boils on Job

I remembered how a few months ago I got a strange (-er than usual) text message from my friend Maricon, who was in a taxi. Without any prodding, the taxi driver had started telling Maricon the story of his life, particularly his experiences as a member of a satanic cult. He started talking faster and faster, as if he were speaking in tongues or something. I told Maricon to record the rant on his phone, and he did. I’d been meaning to transcribe the rant, but you should hear it to believe it.

The cult even had a nickname for Satan: they called him Taning. Apparently prayer groups also use that nickname. It almost sounds like a term of endearment. Hah! John Milton never thought of that.

Here’s the mp3. This is part 1. Warning: May freak out some listeners.

Taning1(0)

Nobody. I didn’t care for the (very few) entries—not enough fury. My instructions must’ve been vague. Ah well.

We still have that copy of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 to give away, so stay tuned for LitWit Challenge 3.4, which starts at midnight.

Apart from the shot at the prize, your entry to LitWit Challenge 3.4 could mean a ticket to our Jessicarulestheuniverse.com Anniversary Non-Event Movie, Book, and Merienda Buffet, so get ready. Here’s a clue:

From the Abandoned Movie Houses series by Uro de la Cruz

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

Things I didn’t know were available at SM Department Store:

Betsey Johnson earrings at 70 percent off. Obviously not these ones, since I’ve bought them, but there’s more in the ladies’ section.

You can’t buy this yet, it’s still in development. Photo by Amit Zoran in Discovery News.

All the fuss about “molecular gastronomy” has somehow failed to address the most basic issue in food preparation and consumption: Who’s going to cook?

Despite the relentless Martha Stewartification of society, there are still some of us who cannot cook and haven’t the slightest interest in learning how. What, and deprive the Mario Batalis and Jamie Olivers of gainful employment and a few more millions?

I hear Ferran Adria is closing his famous restaurant El Bulli—there goes my reservation for the year 2013 (the year after the supposed apocalypse according to the Mayans). Ferran, you’re welcome to work in my kitchen, but you’ll have to make do with a one-burner electric stove, a frying pan, an oven toaster, and a blender.

I must point out that all these implements were gifts from well-meaning friends who thought that I would eventually pick up a spatula and cook something. That was 15 years ago. In that time I have eaten in hundreds of restaurants and ordered thousands of pizzas. I have had many mediocre meals, endured atrocious service, and emitted many horrified shrieks upon seeing the bill, but none of these have convinced me to take up cooking. It is too much trouble. Cooking is a labor-intensive activity whose results vanish down your gullet in minutes. My friends tell me that cooking is a form of therapy. I have too much therapy as it is; I am a columnist.

Continue reading Next Attraction: Push-Button Cooking in Emotional Weather Report in the Philippine Star.

We still haven’t visited the Maitum anthropomorphic jars, created around 110 BC by unknown artisans and used as burial vessels. These jars were discovered at the Ayub cave in Maitum, Saranggani Province.

A page from 10,000 Years of Art by Phaidon Books.

When at brunch I heard that former National Museum consultant John Silva had fired a broadside at the former (short-lived) board of the National Museum, and that the recently-resigned museum director Jeremy Barns had returned fire, I allowed myself to entertain the hope that we were in the midst of a real, all-out Culture War. There’s nothing like a Culture War—Verbal battles waged by smart people with large vocabularies! Polysyllabic insults unleashed! (I blow my nose at you! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!)

Naah, it’s still about politics.

John Silva vs Jeremy Barns.

Bert wants to know why the newspaper’s website is still Beta.