JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

“In the film Fight Club, the real name of the protagonist (Ed Norton’s character) is never revealed. Many believe the reason behind this anonymity is to give “Jack” more of an everyman quality. Do not be deceived. “Jack” is really Calvin from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. It’s true. Norton portrays the grown-up version of Calvin, while Brad Pitt plays his imaginary pal, Hobbes, reincarnated as Tyler Durden.” Read Fight Club: The Return of Hobbes by Galvin P. Chow in Metaphilm.

Daniel Lieberman, chair of the newly-created Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, talks about the skull.

I’ve been interested in the human skull (and its contents) since I fractured mine at age eight. The headaches were horrific, but I had an excuse to get out of P.E. class. “My neurologist says. . .”

Jedi Master and I are inordinately fond of our respective brains and worry about protecting them from deterioration. He says meditation would help, but I cannot meditate—when I try, I am asleep in 30 seconds. On the other hand sleep keeps your systems running smoothly. It keeps your memory sharp and allows your new memories to transfer to the long-term memory bank.

I think the trick is to keep learning new things, preferably stuff you’ve never done. Like an alien language or a new sport or higher math problems. (This was also my excuse for buying two pairs of high-heeled shoes when I never wear heels.) Or learning to write with both hands. In college whenever I was bored unconscious at a lecture I took notes backwards or wrote with my left hand. It’s turned out to be a useful skill because now I can sign official documents in different ways nyahahaa.

Dr. Cuanang the neurologist says there may be something to this as it would encourage dendritic arborization in the brain. From what I understand the nerve cells in our brains are like trees and we should let those trees grow and branch out and form gardens of information.

Now I’m going to watch Steve Martin’s The Man With Two Brains. My favorite Steve Martin movies are:
1. All Of Me, with that virtuoso sequence in which Steve Martin impersonates Lily Tomlin impersonating Steve Martin)
2. The Jerk
3. The Man With Two Brains
4. Roxanne, his retelling of Cyrano
5. The Spanish Prisoner—technically David Mamet’s not Steve’s, but Steve made a great villain. Think of a menacing Edu Manzano.

Does anyone remember the serial killer Andrew Cunanan? If you don’t, then he has been justly punished. Cunanan killed to become famous. Lots of people kill for fame, but he did it literally, murdering several people on a killing spree across the United States to his most famous victim, the designer Gianni Versace.

Here’s the weird part. When Cunanan first hit the news, the American media did not mention his ethnicity. He was an American. If I’m not mistaken it was the Filipinos who came out and declared that he was of Filipino descent, his father being a Bulakeño. From then on he was a Fil-American. Even weirder: various characters in Manila claimed to have been his lover. Oh fame, what we would do to have it, even fake a connection to a serial killer.

* * * * *

We do that—find an ethnic connection to international celebrities. Even minor celebrities. So we’re coming up with an annual Did You Know They Were Pinoy? list to keep track of all the famous people we’re claiming as our own. Except that we’re limiting the field to persons of Filipino descent who have actually done something extraordinary. (Whether you think they deserve it or have a genius agent is beside the point.) Yes, people who worked for their fame (instead of killing or marrying it).

This being our first annual list we begin with the “classics”. We’re focusing on the entertainment industry to start, but will expand the list to include athletes such as Neil Etheridge in football and Craig Davies in rugby.

Why are Pac-Man and Charice not on this list? Because everyone already knows they’re PInoy.

Photo: Cinematographer Matthew Libatique and director Darren Aronofsky on the set of The Black Swan. Read Matthew Libatique’s interview in American Cinematographer.

Read the list while listening to this. N.E.R.D. & Daft Punk, Hypnotize U (Nero Remix)

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If you ordered a Jake Letts fan club T-shirt, you need to email brewhuh23 asap at angelagenevieve@gmail.com. The shirts cost P250 each and you have to confirm sizes.

One of our favorite books in high school was The World According To Garp.

Every time we think of Garp we are reminded of high school.

So this week’s assignment in the Weekly LitWit Challenge: High School.

Write a story of 1,000 words, preferably less, set in a secondary school. Could be autobiographical, could be fantastic, could be a musical, as long as it’s in high school.

Deadline for the submission of entries: Sunday, 16 January 2011 at 12 noon.

The prize: A paperback of John Irving’s latest novel Last Night in Twisted River, signed by John Irving.

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

The American author John Irving (The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany), with our host Dr. Joven Cuanang. Photos by JZ.

Dr. Cuanang hosted a dinner for John Irving last night at the fabulous Pinto Art Museum in Antipolo. I was invited, probably on the assumption that I’d read all the novels of John Irving. In truth I was a huge fan of John Irving in high school, but the last Irving I read was his sixth novel, The Cider House Rules, and he’s written six more novels since then. Everything I know about John Irving is from the early period, when his novels contained wrestling, Philips Exeter Academy, and bears.

The dinner guests were mostly John Irving fans, so if I faked familiarity with his work I would probably get caught. Then I remembered that Andy went to Exeter so I texted him in case he had any inside information: What should I ask John Irving?

Andy replied: Ask him what his win-loss record was in wrestling.

I did. And it was the best possible opening I could’ve used. Thanks, Andy.

You know how you can’t recognize most authors from the photos on the back covers of their books? John Irving looks exactly like his book photos.