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Dinlloyd by brewhuh.

Dindo Fernando (left) was an actor who starred in many highly-regarded films in the 80s, including Langis At Tubig, Gaano Kadalas Ang Minsan and Nagalit Ang Buwan Sa Haba Ng Gabi. John Lloyd Cruz (right) is the star of many blockbuster romcoms and melodramas.

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After we posted this photo we got a note from Tita Adjette, Budjette’s mom. “It had never crossed my mind who John Lloyd looks like, but every time I saw him on TV he sort of nagged my memory about someone I used to know. I just couldn’t pinpoint who. Thank you for jogging my memory because now I know who he reminds me of: my very good friend Dindo Fernando!

“Flordeluna was the brainchild of my late husband, Buddy Tan.”

We did not know that! So the major characters of the Danny Zialcita movie Nagalit Ang Buwan Sa Haba Ng Gabi—Dindo, Laurice Guillen and Janice de Belen—were the cast of Flordeluna.

Mother’s Milk is a brilliantly vicious novel about a man (de)formed by his casually monstrous parents. This is the fourth novel in the autobiographical Melrose series by Edward St. Aubyn. It is so good, we had to stop reading at page 150 and read something happy until the acid had drained out of our soul. Even sentimental dreck would’ve been a relief after this razor blade prose.

Talk about the rich being different: the narrator was fucked over in every sense by his upper class parents, and as he enters middle age he lives in fear of fucking over his own kids. We tend to take a romantic/aspirational view of the upper classes—from Henry James to Evelyn Waugh, Edith Wharton to Downton Abbey. St. Aubyn, whose people have been aristocrats since the Norman Conquest, gives the insider view, direct from the bile ducts.

It is so horrible and so beautiful we don’t know whether to read the other books or run screaming from them.

Read with caution, but by all means read.

Our sister Cookie is nearing the third trimester of her pregnancy and complaining of being tired. Take a day off work, we told her. Are you insane? she replied. She’s already worried about work piling up when she goes on maternity leave. Obviously the only way to get her to rest was to lock her in a room. So we locked her in a room last Sunday.

The room was actually a Signature Suite at Maxim’s Hotel in Resorts World Manila.

Our sister, brother-in-law and niece took the bedroom; we camped out in the vast living and dining room. Territorial borders had to be defined or we would spend the whole time bickering with our niece. If you’ve ever bickered with a 5-year-old, stop. It’s exhausting.

Cookie with our niece, Mika.

Having woken up too late to catch the breakfast buffet (Niece had already gone off to school with her dad), we had an early lunch at the hotel’s French restaurant, Impressions. Their new Executive Chef Cyrille Soenen (His Cafe Cicou recently transferred to Greenhills) has redone the menu with fail-safe and fuss-free favorites like prime rib and lobster.

Good thing we missed breakfast.

We started with oysters, which were so fresh they needed no drama. Pick up shell, slurp, next.

Then a creamy seafood bisque which tests your table manners because you may want to lick the bowl.

The main course: Prime rib with foie gras and truffled mashed potatoes. The portion was just big enough to be filling but small enough to allow you to stand up after the meal.

Afterwards the staff brought a tray of chocolate whatnots that we mistook for dessert. It wasn’t dessert, it was the appetizer before the main dessert selection of profiteroles drowned in chocolate, flourless chocolate fudge cake, and mango tart. But the main course was so satisfying that to follow it with dessert seemed excessive. So we declined dessert. Incredible but true.

Impressions at Maxim’s is open for lunch and dinner daily. There’s a Sunday brunch buffet (Php 1,888) where you can enjoy prime rib till the cows come home.

Koosi, ano na lang ang sasabihin ng mga nagbabasa!

When a Hollywood actor appearing on David Letterman’s talk show a few days ago recounted his brush with airport personnel “in the Philippines”, the reaction from Filipinos was swift and vehement.

Some wrung their hands in embarrassment and called the incident “another black eye” for the Philippines.

1.1. We’re inclined to believe the worst about our people.

1.1.1. Since the story involved petty corruption and no one doubts that corruption is rampant, they assumed that the story did happen in the Philippines.

1.1.2. Expressing outrage is a way of saying “We’re not all like them.” They’re not like us. Who’s Filipino then—them or us?

1.1.3. Their readiness to believe the worst is not surprising when every day brings new reports of official corruption.

1.2. Considering how many previous incidents were considered “black eyes” upon our country, there should be no eyes here left to blacken.

1.3. This thinking assumes that the eyes of the world are constantly upon us, judging us, and finding us deficient in some way—ignorant, ridiculous, or the worst impression of all, cheap.

Not Only In The Philippines, our column this week on InterAksyon.com.

Hollywood’s new beefcakes in Slate.

Like all notebook fetishists we believe that the notebook we write in affects the quality of our writing. We know this to be untrue because James Hamilton-Paterson wrote his brilliant history of the Philippines America’s Boy on newsprint school notebooks with artistas on the cover. (Come to think of it we haven’t seen notebooks with artista on the cover lately.) But we like to think it anyway.

The Star Wars notebook is one of the best notebooks we’ve ever had in terms of output: we wrote copiously, met our daily quota of 1,000 words, and liked our penmanship. Plus this notebook got to travel a lot and it went to the Australian Open finals. There are 5 blank pages left so we’ll have to start a new one later today. We hope the Lego notebook is as “lucky”.

Steps at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Travel is especially conducive to writing in notebooks, travel and solitude. On our first trip to New York we filled up three Mead spiral notebooks. We spent a lot of time alone, walking up and down the city (We walked from the Metropolitan Museum to the Strand bookstore downtown more than once, which is not as insane or unusual as it sounds), getting lost in the subway and having fascinating conversations with strangers. We missed our cat (We only had Koosi then); we sat in the park and fed squirrels despite the admonitions of friends about encouraging the tree rats.

Periodically we would stop for a coffee and a Snapple (We loved Snapple, it was the Seinfeld era. A vendor in the park taught us the best way to open the bottle), sit on some steps (Having been raised on Sesame Street we love stoops), take out notebook and scribble. The great thing about New York City is that you could sit on some steps with a coffee and a notebook, next to bums with hangovers talking to themselves and bankers in Ermenegildo Zegna inhaling hotdogs, and no one would care. We hope Homeland Security hasn’t changed that.

Steps at the NY Public Library

Here’s Joan Didion On Keeping A Notebook, via The Electric Typewriter.