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Hello, I am Koosi the cat columnist. You may be wondering what my qualifications are. Well I am a cat and my human is a columnist so cease your pointless questioning.

Cats not only love getting presents, we expect them to arrive constantly. For ten thousand years, ever since my ancestors moved in on human settlements, took up residence in granaries where they demonstrated their amazing pest control skills and got invited into people’s houses soon afterwards, this has been the nature of the feline-human relationship. You give us food, shelter and treats (and built temples to us in Egypt, but that’s another story); we receive them.

Cats have super-hearing so I can hear the gears of your brains shifting and forming the question: What do we get in return for the food, shelter and treats we give you cats? Aha! You are a dog person. Go play with Bantay, Spot, Fifi or whatever his name is. I’m sure you’ll get along wonderfully. Take him for a walk around the park, and don’t forget to bring the gloves and plastic bag for his poop.

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Koosi writes a column in Pet Life in the Philippine Star.

HTTP status cats

Be like Hitch.

The world has enough idiotic celebrities. Be a thinker. Read.

Christopher Eric Hitchens, 1949 – 2011.

Photo from Bookshelf Porn

Ah, how to organise one’s bookshelves? One of life’s central questions, and well done Alexander McCall Smith for raising it on Twitter yesterday. Perhaps not everyone would consider this a vital topic, but for me it is. Just as Casaubon in Middlemarch is trying to find “the key to all mythologies” (the title of his unfinished book), so I believe that if I can arrange my library properly, everything will be solved. Who needs the Higgs boson? The real key is where to file The Iliad. Poetry or history?

The importance of organising your bookshelves in The Guardian.

First we need two or three more bookshelves to get the books off the tables, chairs and floor.

Our favorite movie by Ishmael Bernal is not one of his acknowledged masterpieces like Himala or Manila By Night. They are brilliant, but the opposite of comfort movies: they are disquieting. For comfort we put on a “minor” Bernal work—the comedy Salawahan (Two-Timer) starring Jay Ilagan, Mat Ranillo III, Sandy Andolong, Rita Gomez and Rio Locsin.

It came out in the same year as Ridley Scott’s Alien. We didn’t see it in the cinema. Our parents would happily take us to a movie in which vicious extraterrestrial creatures rip out of their human host’s bodies, but not to a farce about men, women, and their convoluted relationships.

My sister and I finally saw Salawahan in the 90s on Cinema One, along with the camp classics of Joey Gosiengfiao. Is Salawahan camp? If it is camp it is meta-camp: a satire on modern romance, the way movies shape our perception of romance, and the movies themselves.

Whenever we despair at what passes for wit in today’s Tagalog movies, we watch this movie. (Please excuse the quality of the screen grabs; we’re happy a copy exists at all.)

Gerry (Jay Ilagan) and Manny (Mat Ranillo III, today best known as Krista Ranillo’s father) are cousins and best friends who agree on most things except their views on relationships. Monogamous Gerry takes forever to make a move on a girl. Polygamous Manny strikes instantly. The two agree to exchange styles: Manny will try to be the faithful boyfriend while Gerry will be the player.

Gerry is pursued by Sylvia (Sandy Andolong), a fashion designer who has just returned from New York. In Pinoy movies “from New York” is code for “promiscuous and jaded”.

Sylvia: Mas guapo ka pala kaysa sinabi nila sa akin.
(You’re more handsome than I’d heard.)

Gerry: Kaya hindi ako nakikinig sa chismis eh.
(That’s why I don’t listen to gossip.)

Sylvia: Ah yung kamay ko please. Ngayong nasa akin na ang kamay ko, pag-usapan natin kung ano’ng nasa utak ko.
(My hand please. Now that I have my hand back let’s talk about what’s on my mind.)

Gerry: Interesante ba?
(Is it interesting?)

Sylvia: Interesante. May trabaho ako para sa iyo.
(Interesting. I have a job for you.)

Gerry: Hindi pala interesante eh.
(Then it’s not interesting.)

Sylvia: Babayaran kita ng P5,000.
(I will pay you P5,000. It was 1979.)

Gerry: Ah interesante pala.
(Then it is interesting.)

Sylvia: Saan ka nagpapagupit? Ang ganda ng buhok mo ah.
(Where do you have your hair cut? You have nice hair.)

Gerry: Tinatapatan ko lang ng bentilador.
(I just air-dry it with an electric fan.)

The late Rene Requiestas appears as Sylvia’s shop assistant Dimples, a flamboyant gay man who speaks in movie quotes. (It’s a movie about the movies.)

Gerry: Good morning.

Dimples: Ikaw ang naglagay ng good sa morning.
(You put the good in the morning.)

(Sings) You’re not a dream, you’re not an angel, who are you?

Gerry: Gerry Izon.

Dimples: Guapo. Malaki lang ang butas ng ilong.
(Handsome. Large nostrils.)

(Sings) Someday he’ll come along, the man I love.

Ako nga pala si Dimples, pinangalanan ako after Dimples Cooper ang unang artistang nagkaroon ng kissing scene sa Philippine screen, although pinag-awayan ng nanay at tatay ko. Ang tatay ko gusto akong tawaging Atomica dahil sa atomic bomb, malaki daw kasi ang boobs ko.
(I’m Dimples, named after Dimples Cooper the first actress to have a kissing scene in Philippine movies, although my parents fought over it. My father wanted to call me Atomica after the atomic bomb, because they said I had large breasts.)

Sylvia interrupts Dimples’s flirtation with Gerry. Gerry pinches Dimples, who turns around and replies with another quote: “Inaalipusta mo ba ako? Dahil ba ako’y isang hamak na hostess lamang hindi mo na ako itinuring na isang tunay na kapatid? Bakit? Pinagpapawisan din ako, napupudpod din ang aking sapatos. Rosa Rosal in Anak-Dalita.”
(Are you mocking me? Because I am a lowly bargirl you can’t treat me like a real sister? Why? I sweat too, the soles of my shoes are worn out too. Rosa Rosal in Lamberto Avellana’s Anak-Dalita.)

Meanwhile Manny chases the “old-fashioned” Rina (Rio Locsin), a voluptuous ballet dancer. She allows herself to get chased but won’t surrender the goods. Every movie has a kissing scene; Salawahan has a contortionist kissing scene.

Gerry gets into the player lifestyle, carrying on with both Sylvia and the much older Marian (Rita Gomez), a sex anthropologist who claims to be 31. Marian and Gerry have a tryst in Baguio.

Her post-coital speech: “Gusto kong magwala. Gusto kong tumakbo sa Session Road na nakakumot lamang. Gusto kong manghuli ng tutubi. Bumili ng balloon at paputukin ang mga ito sa lobby ng Pines Hotel—pok pok pok pok pok.”
(I want to go nuts. I want to run on Session Road wearing only a blanket. I want to catch dragonflies. To buy balloons and pop them in the lobby of the Pines Hotel (which was destroyed in the big earthquake in the 90s)—pok pok pok pok pok.)

Every Tagalog movie features a confrontation scene in which two women recite pages of dialogue at each other. That’s bitchy? Salawahan has an anti-confrontation scene. Marian and Sylvia run into each other in Baguio.

Marian: Good morning.

Sylvia: Same to you.

Marian: Aren’t you going to wish me well?

Sylvia: I’m going to wish you what you’re going to wish me.

Marian: Foreign twang. Girlfriend ako ni Gerry.
(I’m Gerry’s girlfriend.)

Sylvia: Same to me.

Marian: Ano’ng gagawin natin ngayon?
(What will we do now?)

Sylvia: Wala.
(Nothing.)

Marian: Hindi ba tayo magko-confrontation?
(Aren’t we going to have a confrontation?)

Sylvia: Huwag na, nakakatamad eh.
(No, it’s so tiresome.)

Marian: Okay, I’ll see you.

Sylvia: See you.

There’s a big screwball finale in which the two men and three women converge on Gerry’s apartment in Greenhills. Marian has brought a cake because it’s her birthday. When the confusion is cleared up, the three women share the cake.

Rina: Happy Birthday, sis. Komedya, no?
(This is a comedy, no?)

Marian: Okay lang. Kanina pa kita inaawat eh, ayaw mong makinig.
(It’s all right. I kept trying to stop you, you wouldn’t listen.)

Rina: I’m very impulsive, I’m only 18.

Sylvia: I understand. Halos pareho lang tayo, I’m only 20.
(I understand, we’re almost the same age.)

Marian: Ako I’m hungry. . .

Rina: Bakit walang kandila? Ilan ba dapat?
(Why are there no candles? How many should there be?)

Marian: Masarap ang fried chicken, why don’t you try it?
(The fried chicken is delicious.)

Viewers go on about quotable movies—Salawahan should be transcribed and tweeted.

Beginners, in which Christopher Plummer is a gay man who comes out late in life and Ewan MacGregor is his son who has intimacy issues. The dog is brilliant.

A beard is a woman who gets involved with a gay man in order to make him look like a straight man. Like the facial hair she is named after, she conceals something that should be as obvious as the nose on his face, but which he pretends is not there. We will not go into the reasons why he denies that he has a nose, or why he thinks we would believe him despite the evidence of our eyes. That is the stuff of dissertations.

It is not for us to drag him out of his closet if it is a very comfortable walk-in lined with Gucci loafers and Hermes belts. Who knows what roles we would agree to play if we were offered even an empty but very well-made walk-in closet? You know how cramped today’s condos are. Although it is silly for him to go on pretending if the closet has glass doors (“eskaparate” as the filmmaker Joey Reyes put it) and we can see right into it. Our point is that everyone has something to hide, and our existence is not necessarily improved by bringing this out into the cruel light of day.

Read A Guide to Beards in interaksyon.com.

Of course the day our favorite books of the year list gets published we get started on three that would make the list in any year.

How do we choose what book to read next? We read reviews authors we read. The process is like chismis: “Sabi ni kwan ano daw.”

First Geoff Dyer pronounced Alan Hollinghurst the best novelist Britain has to offer, although he added that “for verbal pyrotechnics no one is likely to surpass the Martin Amis of Money.”

So we have to read Money.

Then Martin Amis published a review extolling Don DeLillo’s first collection of stories, The Angel Esmeralda.

So we have to read The Angel Esmeralda.

Meanwhile we saw J.C. Chandor’s riveting first movie Margin Call, which takes place in 24 intense hours at a Lehman Brothers-like firm at the start of the global financial meltdown of 2008.

Charles Ferguson’s excellent documentary Inside Job had explained how the meltdown happened; after seeing it we thought America’s financial managers should be lined up against a wall (Occupying their neighborhood is too gentle and passive). In Margin Call the crisis is told from the POV of the one percent (Chandor’s father is a retired investment banker), and it’s an achievement: we actually understand the people we want to line up against the wall. Greed is universal.

Margin Call is a quiet, realistic, low-budget movie about a real life catastrophe, and its cast is spectacular. Kevin Spacey turns in one of his finest performances in years, and Stanley Tucci—there is no bad performance by Stanley Tucci. We think Jeremy Irons was playing Rodrigo Borgia, and we snigger when Demi Moore says the math is correct, but we buy Zachary Quinto as the literal rocket scientist turned financial analyst (If he can play Spock, he can play a physicist). In recent years we’ve seen Paul Bettany as the archangel Michael battling the hordes of heaven, and as a priest battling hordes of vampires—we always believe him, but it’s great to see him play a human being.

Margin Call is one of the most thrilling movies we’ve seen this year, and the best Wall Street movie ever. It put us in the mood for a book about the economic collapse. Many year-end best lists cite Other People’s Money by Justin Cartwright, a novel about a banking family.

So we have to read Other People’s Money.

After the attack on the World Trade Center there was a slew of 9/11 novels: DeLillo’s Falling Man, Ian McEwan’s Saturday, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, among others. We’re expecting a raft of global financial meltdown novels, and they’ll have to compete with OPM.

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The other day we had to go to QC, which under present conditions is a cross-country crawl. We planned the trip like an invasion and brought provisions: The Angel Esmeralda and our shiny new tablet which goes by the name Tyrion Lannister (small and clever). While standing in line we read DeLillo’s short story “Baader-Meinhof” and all our hair stood on end, it is so creepy and sinister.

Cell, part of Gerhard Richter’s controversial Baader-Meinhof cycle. In the story two people meet at the MOMA exhibition of Richter’s work.

On the ride back to Makati we read “The Starveling” and were actually disappointed that the traffic wasn’t heavier so we could finish the story without interruptions.

You can listen to Don DeLillo reading portions of The Starveling here, and Chang-rae Lee reading then discussing Baader-Meinhof here.