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The Newsroom’s hero Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) starts out as a well-liked, inoffensive, Leno-like news anchor who gets goaded into an epic rant at a college forum.

The holidays are upon us, bringing tidings of horrendous traffic, congested malls, obnoxious cabbies, foul tempers, and eating and drinking binges that bring you no pleasure. At this time of year we like nothing better than to hibernate with our cats, laugh at the people who are giving themselves nervous breakdowns by trying so hard to be merry, read thousand-page novels, and binge-watch TV series we have missed.

Yesterday, having walked home from the mall—a pleasant, leisurely stroll but for the danger of contracting black lung from car exhausts—we cleaned the litterbox, showered, and huddled with the cats to watch Season 1 of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series The Newsroom.

The Newsroom has gotten mixed reviews and is reviled by many of the people who were expected to support it. We love it, but then we have spent time in newsrooms, print and TV—mostly on the sidelines, heckling like Waldorf and Statler on The Muppet Show. And we love the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s. (His Girl Friday happens in a newsroom.)

Which is not to say that The Newsroom is anything like our experience of journalism. That stuff does not happen in any newsroom we’ve ever seen. In real life there are no dramatic declarations of principle, except by people who intend to run for office or need new investors, and certainly not by people who want to remain employed. No one identifies with Don Quixote because he’s old and batty, that is assuming they know Don Quixote, if not from Cervantes then from the Broadway musical. And no one will call out the morons because said morons have followers and are backed by corporate interests.

The Newsroom is a romantic fantasy about what journalism could be—a world where people speak in complete paragraphs, where intelligent people rise up against the mediocrity and meretriciousness of contemporary media culture, where intelligent people are actually listened to. That’s why we got weepy: We’re nostalgic for something that never existed.

We do take issue with a common criticism of The Newsroom: “Nobody talks like that.” Of course there are people who are that smart and articulate. There’s just no place for them on television.

Video by Ricky Villabona

The praxinoscope, an optical toy invented in the 19th century, is a precursor of the moving picture. Several handmade praxinoscopes are featured in Mark Justiniani’s one-man show Tila, ongoing till 30 December at the gallery of the Pinto Art Museum.

Pinto Art Museum is located at 1 Sierra Madre St., Grand Heights Subd., Brgy. San Roque, Antipolo City. For inquiries, call (02)697.1015 or email pintoartmuseum@yahoo.com.

New York Public Library photos by Chus.

We had two missions for our friend Chus to undertake in New York: go to the Balthus exhibition Cats and Girls at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and take pictures of the card catalogue entries for our Twisted books at the New York Public Library. The last time we looked at the card catalogue, they had Twisted volumes 1 to 6, and Manananggal Terrorizes Manila.

The last time we visited the NYPL, they still had card catalogues.

“The card catalogue cabinets are no longer there,” Chus reports. “All their card catalogues have been digitized. Nilecturan pa ako nung matandang librarian na kung gusto ko daw kunan ng litrato eh mag-punta daw ako sa antique store at gumawa ako ng gaya ng sinaunang card file. (The old librarian told me that if I wanted to take pictures of card catalogues, I should go to an antique store and make facsimiles of ancient card files.)”

Haha, napagalitan ng librarian! (Haha, scolded by the librarian.)

“Twisted volume 6 is missing,” Chus writes. “Someone borrowed it. The call number is JFE 02-18102.”

Suddenly we really need to have an old card catalogue in the house. To organize our books. The “Don’t touch anything, I know where everything is” classification system has worked for us so far, but we like indexing stuff.

Photo from Poetic Home

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, Php899 at National Bookstores.

“But I don’t have time to read an acclaimed doorstop, I’m running around trying to get everything done, the holidays are so stressful aaaaaaaaaaaa…”

You have the time. In the next twelve days you’re going to be sitting in traffic for hours and hours. This should keep you anchored.

A taste:

Moody’s natural expression was one of readiness and attention. His grey eyes were large and unblinking, and his supple, boyish mouth was usually poised in an expression of polite concern. His hair inclined to a tight curl; it had fallen in ringlets to his shoulders in his youth, but now he wore it close against his skull, parted on the side and combed flat with a sweet-smelling pomade that darkened its golden hue to an oily brown. His brow and cheeks were square, his nose straight, and his complexion smooth. He was not quite eight-and-twenty, still swift and exact in his motions, and possessed of the kind of roguish, unsullied vigour that conveys neither gullibility nor guile. He presented himself in the manner of a discreet and quick-minded butler, and as a consequence was often drawn into the confidence of the least voluble of men, or invited to broker relations between people he had only lately met. He had, in short, an appearance that betrayed very little about his own character, and an appearance that others were immediately inclined to trust.

Moody was not unaware of the advantage his inscrutable grace afforded him. Like most excessively beautiful persons, he had studied his own reflection minutely and, in a way, knew himself from the outside best; he was always in some chamber of his mind perceiving himself from the exterior. He had passed a great many hours in the alcove of his private dressing room, where the mirror tripled his image into profile, half-profile, and square: Van Dyck’s Charles, though a good deal more striking. It was a private practice, and one he would likely have denied – for how roundly self-examination is condemned, by the moral prophets of our age! As if the self had no relation to the self, and one only looked in mirrors to have one’s arrogance confirmed; as if the act of self-regarding was not as subtle, fraught and ever-changing as any bond between twin souls. In his fascination Moody sought less to praise his own beauty than to master it. Certainly whenever he caught his own reflection, in a window box, or in a pane of glass after nightfall, he felt a thrill of satisfaction – but as an engineer might feel, chancing upon a mechanism of his own devising and finding it splendid, flashing, properly oiled and performing exactly as he had predicted it should.

Win a round-trip Tigerair ticket to Kalibo, Puerto Princesa, or any Tigerair domestic destination in this month’s Tiger Traveller contest. To join, read this.

Entry #7. “In my mind the Giraffe wants to eat the lady on top of the jeepney. Of course he’s not thinking of that because he’s vegetarian.” Taken in Calauit, Palawan by Charlemagne Fernandez in May 2010 with an Olympus Tough.

Entry #8. “My favorite transport while in Boracay is the Paraw. This boy was helping his uncle out that afternoon.” Taken by Charlemagne Fernandez in May 2012 with a Canon SX220.

Entry #9. “I love sunset photos. This is from Mt. Tapyas. Had to climb 700++ steps to get to the top of the hill and take this photo.” By Charlemagne D. Fernandez, May 2010, with an Olympus Tough.

Entry #10. “I’m Katrina Rodrigo and this was taken in the twin lagoon in Coron, palawan in 2006 with a disposable Kodak underwater camera. It’s of my brother and sister swimming in a salt (warm, bottom) and fresh (cold, top) water combo which explains the blurred picture. When you look at the lagoon overhead, it looks kind of like how water and oil swirls when mixed.”

Entry #11. “I am Dennis Santos Sabado. My entry is a photo of a Boracay sunset taken on January 16, 2012 using my Canon Ixus 12.1 megapixel digital camera. On the foreground is the landmark Boracay grotto.”

Entry #12. “El Nido, view from top of the mountain.” Taken by Denis Furmek with a Samsung Galaxy s4.

Entry #13. “On our way to Siyete Pecados in Coron, Palawan, we crossed paths with this father and son who were on their way back to their small beach hut for lunch.” Taken by Maurice Cordero on March 18, 2011 with a Canon PowerShot A495.

Entry #14. “Among the endless rock formations and pristine shores, I came across these wild mangrove sprouts at the far end of a small island in Coron, Palawan.” Maurice Cordero, March 19, 2011. Photo taken with Canon PowerShot A495.

Entry #15. “Kite surfers emulate flamboyant pterodactyls that dance with the strong winds at Bulabog Beach, Boracay.” Maurice Cordero, March 29, 2013, photo taken with a Canon PowerShot A495.

Entry #16. “Alleyway to the Big Lagoon. Taken during the low tide which prompted tourists to explore the passageway to the Big Lagoon on foot.” Benedict Raquel, El Nido, November 2012, Canon 50D.

Entry #17. “The stark contrast between the tour boats and the majestic black marble cliffs of El Nido, Palawan.” Benedict Raquel, November 2012, Canon 50D.

Entry #18. “View of Helicopter Island at sunset from Hadefe resort. Perfect end to a wonderful day.” By Suzanne Rona O. Bermudez, August 29, 2013 at El Nido, Palawan with a Canon 650D.

Keep sending your photos. The next set of finalists will be posted on Tuesday.

This contest is sponsored by Tigerair Philippines. To find out more about Tigerair deals and promos, follow TigerAir Philippines on Facebook and Twitter.

Speaking of promos, here’s the latest Tigerflash:

Get your tickets here.

It’s the time of year when we turn off the cynicism, loosen the protective armor of irony, regard strangers with something resembling affection, and wish peace and goodwill to all humans. We don’t mean the Christmas season, we mean the annual opening of a Tolkien adaptation directed by Peter Jackson. The tradition began in 2001 with The Fellowship of the Ring, and after a break of several years resumed last year with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Jackson, who reprises his cameo in Bree from FOTR, has already answered the obvious question: How can you turn a children’s book half the length of Fellowship into a trilogy as long as the entire Lord of the Rings series? You expand, you develop minor bits, you throw in the back story of the characters and the history of Middle Earth from the LOTR appendices and The Silmarillion. (Is The Silmarillion going to be adapted for film? Can we buy our tickets now?)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was a fun ride capped by the brilliant Riddles in the Dark sequence with Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and Gollum (Andy Serkis, who is in the Desolation credits as Second Unit Director). Lots of chase scenes, tomfoolery, pratfalls and singing. Free of the burden of exposition, The Desolation of Smaug goes to a darker place. This is no longer an adventure to steal a dragon’s treasure; it is a quest to reconquer the lost homeland—Exodus to Erebor—and the exiled Dwarf King Thorin (Richard Armitage) is prepared to sacrifice his comrades to achieve his goal. There’s a chilling moment when Thorin urges Bilbo on to almost certain death.

Thorin is no grumpy-but-lovable Dwarf, and the Elves of Mirkwood are not as benign and noble as their cousins in Rivendell. Legolas (Orlando Bloom) has always been a badass, but here, his younger self has a bit of a mean streak. You’d be mean, too, if your father was Thranduil (Lee Pace), the arrogant, opportunistic, preening Dwarf-King who tells the lovely Elf Captain Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) she is too lowborn for his son.

Meanwhile, Gandalf investigates the weird goings-on at Dol Guldur, and encounters a familiar foe. Well, familiar to those of us who saw the future first (But then Merlin in The Once and Future King explained that wizards live backwards). Was that an hommage to The Exorcist? Works for us. And we like the bits that connect The Hobbit to the LOTR movies: the medicinal properties of athelas, the behavior-altering properties of the precious, and so on.

We had many questions: Was Legolas in the book? (We haven’t read it in ages.) Was Thranduil so pretty and creepy? Was there a Dwarf-Elf attraction? (The Legolas, Kili (Aidan Turner) and Fili (Dan O’Gorman) love triangle you’ve been waiting for—kidding.) Were some of the Dwarves left in Dale? Was Sauron at Dol Guldur? Did Bard have a family and an ancestral failure to redeem? (Was Stephen Colbert in the book and are those his kids?) One of the strengths of The Hobbit movies is that they can veer away from the canonical Tolkien, and we don’t just keep our forked tongues between our teeth, we agree that the changes make for a more compelling movie.

Here’s a pressing question: Who’s the fairest? Is it Tauriel with her pronounced resemblance to Arwen, the lovely but creepy Thranduil, the more muscular Legolas, the intense Thorin, Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) or Kili the hot dwarf?

And we haven’t even mentioned Smaug. Let’s discuss.

Rating: You call yourself a Tolkien fan and you haven’t seen it yet? Fly, you fools!