JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Koosi my eldest cat used to be quite scrawny. Here she is in 2006, aged 7, with our voodoo doll for World Cup. She was finicky about her food, rejecting several brands of kibble outright. We asked our vet Mayem (at Pendragon Veterinary Clinic in QC) what we could give Koosi to improve her appetite; she recommended any children’s vitamins that contain Zinc. Every day for months I put 1 ml of vitamin syrup into a dropper, held Koosi by the scruff of her neck, and when she protested, squeezed the vitamins between her fangs. She hated it, but her appetite did improve.

Cats usually put on weight after they get spayed or neutered; the photo above was taken a year after she had her hysteria taken out. (Saffy and Mat have never been skinny. Even when Mat was a street cat he was regularly mistaken for a dog.)

This is Koosi today, aged 12. As you can see, she is assuming Garfieldian proportions. She’s so heavy, she now jumps up from my work table to the top of the bookshelf in two stages—first she leaps onto the books (the spines of the top row have been shredded by her claws), then she pulls herself up over the edge.

Recently I noticed a cockroach in the kitchen. It was skittering about three feet away from Koosi, who ignored it completely.

Aren’t you going to catch that? I asked her.

You want me to touch a cockroach? she said. It’s vermin! Disgusting!

But you used to catch and kill every insect that strayed into the house.

The idea of me touching a cockroach! With these paws, that I have licked for hours so they are immaculate. The nerve!

We never used to have roaches!

This stress is making me hungry. Fetch me some kibble and be quick about it.

So I went out in the pouring rain (after I had served Her Majesty), bought a dozen cockroach traps and planted them all over the kitchen. There will be no ipis in my apartment.

Dear Auntie Janey,

I’ve been been dreaming of my 2 ex-boyfriends. I have not spoken to them for so long. I have been single for more than 3 years. Thoughts of them linger with me every night and I hate that. I don’t want them in my dreams. But somehow, sometimes, I do miss one of them. One is married and the other is in a long-distance relationship. I don’t want to interfere with any of their relationships but I want to speak with them. Like, How are you’s, what’s-going-on-in-your-life-now. Can I initiate the first conversation? But what if they don’t say hello back? What do I do?

Thank you very much.

Regards,
Ex-Girlfriend

Advice from Cher via Moonstruck. (The context is different, but listen to Cher.)
(more…)

Jose Antonio Vargas is a former reporter for The Washington Post and shared a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. He founded Define American, which seeks to change the conversation on immigration reform. He also wrote that New Yorker profile of Mark Zuckerberg that we linked to here.

My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant
By JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS
Published: June 22, 2011

One August morning nearly two decades ago, my mother woke me and put me in a cab. She handed me a jacket. “Baka malamig doon” were among the few words she said. (“It might be cold there.”) When I arrived at the Philippines’ Ninoy Aquino International Airport with her, my aunt and a family friend, I was introduced to a man I’d never seen. They told me he was my uncle. He held my hand as I boarded an airplane for the first time. It was 1993, and I was 12. . .

Read the article in the New York Times.

Even more interesting than the written confession are the comments posted in the many sites that picked up this story. Snapshot of the American mindset.

Those with a sensitive disposition should look away now: Spider-Man is set to meet an unpleasant end in a new comic.

Writer Brian Michael Bendis told USA Today that he wrote the story “with tears in my eyes like a big baby”…

Read the full story in the Guardian.

The original cast of Temptation Island: Bambi Arambulo, Azenith Briones, Jennifer Cortez, Deborah Sun and Dina Bonnevie.

In April I got an email from Erwin Romulo about Temptation Island. “I’m currently writing an article about ‘Temptation Island’ and also its planned remake,” he said. “While doing interviews with several people, your name kept cropping up as being responsible for its popular resurgence. Your movie review in ’97 was cited as having sparked renewed interest in the film. I hope you don’t mind answering a few questions.”

Wow, there’s my place in the cultural pantheon: popularizer of Temptation Island! What an honor. I was only too glad to answer Erwin’s questions.

1. How did you first become aware of ‘Temptation Island’?
(more…)

We’ve been friends with the filmmaker Jeffrey Jeturian since we interviewed him in 2000 for Today newspaper. The Movie and TV Review and Classification Board had just given his film Tuhog an X-rating (which was hilarious actually, because Tuhog is a satire on bomba movies), but that’s not the reason Jeffrey was fuming mad. He was furious because unbeknownst to him his producer Regal had chopped the movie to get a kinder rating.

There’s nothing like a common crusade to cement a friendship. The following year when Tuhog was accepted to the Venice Film Festival—making it the first Filipino movie in competition since Manuel Conde’s Genghis Khan—I tagged along as Jeffrey’s entourage. At the time Filipino movies were not getting the sort of international attention they’re getting today, much less the financial support; we paid our own expenses. Gladly, because it was Venice (and I kept going back).

Jeffrey’s latest movie Bisperas will screen at Cinemalaya on July 17. Last Sunday we spoke to Jeffrey over brunch at M Cafe (Cheese! Mimosas! Jazz trio!). We’ll let him do the talking from here.

Why haven’t you made a movie since Kubrador in 2005?

(more…)