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No relation to the post, we just want to see the Spam sketch.

Consolata and I had a very late lunch at Toast Box in Greenbelt 5. They were all out of pork floss so instead of my usual floss toast, soft-boiled eggs and coffee with condensed milk I had the Hainanese chicken rice. Consolata had the same and pronounced it good, then proceeded to go into raptures over Tai Yuan’s Hainanese chicken. (Kermit had Hainanese chicken rice in Hainan. It was awful. Because Hainanese chicken rice is really Singaporean.)

We like Toast Box with its delicious reasonably-priced food and shiny white interiors, but their system for taking orders is terrible. You fall in line and give your orders to the cashier. Say you’re ordering Hainanese chicken, a floss toast set, kaya toast and Horlick’s. You say “Hainanese chicken” and she punches it into the register, then before you can give the rest of your order she moves away from the register to start preparing the Hainanese chicken. When it is half-done she goes back to the register and hears the next item on your list—floss toast set—then she moves aside again to start making the kopi for your order. Why she has to do it herself we have no idea, there are two other people behind the counter with her. And so on for each item, so it takes them thrice as long just to take your order.
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Thanks to Stella for the alert!

Tom Parker Bowles writes about Manila and Filipino cuisine in the August 2011 issue of Esquire (UK). Parker Bowles is the food editor of Esquire and stepson of the Prince of Wales. Friends warned him that Manila was a “cesspool, hellhole, armpit, dirty dive” but he came here anyway. And he liked it! Thank you.

Here is his description of balut. “Street food is not a big draw here, certainly when compared to Thailand or Vietnam. But then there’s balut, the pavement equivalent of Animal Farm—the porno version you saw as a teenager on grainy VHS. It’s fertilised duck egg, complete with embryo, and like the porno (and Manila, too), suffers from a wildly exaggerated reputation. . .I’m nervous. And have certainly thrown up over less. I’ve something to prove, though I’m not entirely sure what it is. But if not a delight, then balut is certainly a surprise. The broth is rich, tempered with a hint of shit and decay. But no worse than a decent Époisses cheese. . .A soft-boiled egg in mink cape, packing a gold-plated AK-47. One more Filipino myth destroyed.”

Get the hard copy.

Do you ever look at your reading backlog and declare that You Have Nothing To Read? You know you have stacks of unread books but you look at them and decide that there’s nothing there for you and you have to run to a bookstore, it’s an emergency. Fortunately I spotted the Orwell and decided that was it.

Reminder to the Blood Meridian Readers’ Support Group: See you tomorrow, 2pm outside National Bookstore in Shangri-La Mall Mandaluyong (Dome/Mercury Drug side).

Since posting the video for “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” on Sunday night I’ve been listening to the early Elton John, particularly the songs he co-wrote with Bernie Taupin. I realize that I’ve never really paid attention to Elton John and now I’m making up for it. When I was a kid he was the silly man with the glasses singing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” with Kiki Dee. We could never hear that name without being convulsed with laughter. Kids.

“Daniel”, “Your Song” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” were already classic rock radio staples and “Skyline Pigeon” was what one-legged one-eyed guitarists with screeching amps sang on overpasses and underpasses in Manila. (Along with “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin, which is no longer on the overpass-underpass playlist but which you can still hear live in London tube stations.) When I got my first Walkman and started buying my own music the Elton and Bernie partnership had split up and Elton was doing stuff like “Nikita” and “I’m Still Standing”. Which I did not care for. Then came “That’s What Friends Are For” (Uck) and what Ricky calls “the anthemic” stuff like the music for the Lion King. Pass.

Sir Elton’s music often turns up in movies—I remember a conversation about “Rocket Man” in Michael Bay’s The Rock. (All of Michael Bay’s movies are stupid but some I love and some I loathe.) “Your Song” was sung several times in Moulin Rouge (German Moreno staged better musical medleys than Baz Luhrmann) and “Tiny Dancer” has a key role in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. What else are you going to sing together on a bus? Crowe’s movie is also where I heard “Mona Lisas” for the first time.

In Scorpio Nights the drunken neighbors burst into the chorus of “Skyline Pigeon”, unaware of the events in the guard’s room.

Kermit reminded me of Two Rooms, the documentary on how John and Taupin worked together (never in the same room), which reminded me of that tribute album in which Sting did “Come Down In Time”. I looked up the original. Here it is.

Dammit.

We had a discussion on what the line “Come down in time” means. I think it means “Don’t be late” or “Show up at exactly the right moment.” Love, be it for a human being or a piece of music, is often a matter of timing.

“You listen in slack-jawed wonder — realizing that “Come Down in Time,” alone, could have established the legend of any lesser artist.” Read an appreciation by Nick Deriso.

P.S. “That’s What Friends Are For” is to Elton John as “I Just Called To Say I Love You” is to Stevie Wonder. Yiiiiii. Wait, Stevie co-wrote “That’s What…” As did Burt Bacharach. Aiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee.

I am a hopia monster. I love hopia. Hopia and Coke, hopia and coffee, I’m happy. Put a hopia under 20 mattresses and I’ll know it’s there.

Starting today we shall attempt to answer one of the burning questions of the age: Which hopia is the best? Is it Ho-Land or Polland? Eng Bee Tin? My friend who grew up in Ongpin swears by Salazar. Or is it some other brilliant brand of this mung bean pastry?

There’s only one way to resolve this issue: Try them all!

Today’s contenders:

Ho-Land and Polland. As the spelling indicates, they have nothing to do with Amsterdam and Warsaw. Ho-Land Hopia & Bakery is on Yuchengco Street in Binondo while Polland is on Mayon Street in QC. Hey, near my old school.
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Sali na sa paligsahan ng pagsasalin!

Translate Raymond Queneau into Baklese and win one of these.