JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Scott Garceau is having an art exhibit. We asked him some not totally unrelated questions.

What are you reading now?

Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Great, great book!), Collected Stories of J.G. Ballard.

What music are you listening to these days?

Cornelius, Field Music, Talking Heads’ live album The Name of This Band is Talking Heads, Trent Reznor’s soundtrack to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

What are the movies you watch repeatedly?

The ones on my iPod: Lost in Translation, Waking Life, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Some Like It Hot.

If you could enter a painting which one would it be?

That’s a strange, strange thought. I’m not sure I’d like to enter an unnatural world that someone else has created. All kinds of physical/metaphysical implications.

Who will direct your biopic?

Me.

Happy Birthday, Saffron Sassafras Saoirse Sigourney Schmitz Scorsese Zafra-Safin!

We are not doing the annual advice thing because Saffy says all human problems are the same—Boring!—and humans should just get over themselves.

Instead of playing the Oracle, Saffy has consented to hear your wishes and grant the ones that please her.

You may petition her in Comments.

On the occasion of Kermit’s…25th birthday, we took 11 of our favorite people to Impressions, the French restaurant at Maxim’s Hotel in Resorts World Manila. Chef Cyrille Soenen prepared an excellent dinner that lives on in our memory but not on our hips—the portions were just right, and while we dined in splendor we were able to stand up and walk afterwards.

We started with an amuse bouche: an intense tomato soup that set our taste buds to tingling.

Then came these dramatically-covered dishes. “Dramatic” as in “Smoking”.

The covers were simultaneously removed to reveal—amidst wisps of smoke—the duo of salmon demi-deuil: marinated salmon in truffle sauce, and smoked salmon and herring caviar. Those dots near the edges are mashed green pea hummus.

There was porcini cream soup served in two parts. First, the duck liver flan and crispy chestnut…

then the truffle cappuccino.

It required great discipline to refrain from licking the dish when the soup was gone. Fortunately it was time for the main course. We had a choice of

Salmon confit in black olive oil, mashed spinach and saffron risotto (There were crayons on the table, so Bert decorated his table setting) and

Pamora farm chicken with sautéed vegetables for our friends who declined red meat, or

this tender, succulent US beef tenderloin, Rossini style, with cappuccino of truffle mashed potatoes for the unrepentant meatatarians.

Dessert was introduced slowly, with mignardises.

Our apologies for the blurred photo; when one’s eyes are glazed with delight, taking pictures is the last thing one wants to do.

Then the dessert: chocolate souffle with a molten core.

In the words of Molly Bloom in the final chapter of Ulysses—yes, the reason for that ridiculous obscenity trial—Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!

And because you can never have too much chocolate, we finished with a chocolate truffle birthday cake by Big Bird.

Fabulous.

Impressions is on the 3rd floor, Maxims Tower. Call (02)908 8883 for reservations or inquiries or email impressions@rwmanila.com.

from the H.P. Lovecraft story The Call of Cthulhu. (Yes he was racist but he lived in more ignorant times.)

Rene got these in Malaysia: Earrings woven out of Pandanus by a Hma’ Meri craftsman. The Hma’ Meri are an indigenous community in Peninsular Malaysia. “Despite rapid development,” says the literature, “they have managed to retain much of their arts, cultures, social mores and traditions.”

They also made this beautiful woven bookmark.

On our last night in Taipei we were too lazy to go back to the night market so we asked Chal and Happy to find us some weird earrings. What’s the weirdest pair of earrings you own, they asked.

It’s just half a pair since we lost its partner a long time ago, but this is still the weirdest.

Angry Bunny at the Mirror. We bought the pair at a street market on Washington Square in 1999. What would Henry James say? He would say “Taroush!” then write 200 pages about it. How do we know the bunny is angry? Look at his face.

The runners-up include

Earrings made from plaster casts of our ears by Leo Abaya.

Recycled metal combs by James Reyes.

Reconfigured key chains by Ricky Villabona.

We made these out of hoop earrings and scrapbooking ornaments.

Recycled superglue tubes that Raymond Lee found at Cubao X.

So you see, we have a standard of weirdness to maintain.

Whether you like Prometheus or hate Prometheus it has made your head spin and that’s a good thing. Here are some books that tackle the themes in the Ridley Scott movie.

Ancient Astronauts
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
We’ll pass on the L.Ron Hubbard novels

Genetic Engineering
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
First and Last Men by Olaf Stapledon
The Star-Maker by Olaf Stapledon
Dune by Frank Herbert, which covers everything, basically.
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Artificial Humans
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, source material for Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.
The Electric Grandmother by Ray Bradbury
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, for the rules governing the behavior of robots towards humans.

Science and Religion, Comparative Religion
The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke
The Star by Arthur C. Clarke
The Book of J by David Rosenberg and Harold Bloom, on the transmission of ancient images.

Yes, this list is woefully inadequate. Help.

* * * * *

Din’s List:

“I guess everyone will recognize that Prometheus borrows a lot from H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, or at least they will when they read the article in The Atlantic. I read somewhere that Guillermo del Toro gave up on filming the latter when he heard what Prometheus’s story was. At any rate, I am considering re-reading the Cthulhu Mythos, maybe after I finish ASOIAF.

“Genetic engineering as a plot device has been around in science fiction for a long time. Naturally, there’s Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium/Empire of Man series might count, too.

“Again at a tangent, Clifford Simak won Best Short Story, Nebula 1980 and Hugo 1981, for Grotto of the Dancing Deer, where an archeologist finds some cave paintings, and also the painter, still living.

“More recently, there’s Beggars in Spain (1991 Hugo and Nebula best novella winner) by a favorite of mine, the brilliant Nancy Kress, though I think it’s really more of a discussion of “What do (genetically enhanced) productive members of society owe the unproductive masses, the beggars in Spain?” Ayn Rand vs. Communism! It’s off-topic, sorry, but one of my favorites, R.A. Lafferty has a nice answer to that question in his short story, Eurema’s Dam, Hugo 1974:

“–only the sick oyster produces nacre. Nothing rises without a leaven, but the yeast is itself a fungus and a disease. You be regularizers all, splendid and supreme. But you cannot live without the irregulars. You will die, and who will tell you that you are dead? When there are no longer any deprived or insufficient, who will invent? What will you do when there are none of us defectives left? Who will leaven your lump then?”

Post your recommendations in Comments.