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Movie #19: Don Jon by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays a porn-addicted Guido and is still adorable.

Snow is coming, fan art by Bego

Mount Vesuvius destroyed the city of Pompeii and its neighbors when it erupted in 79 AD, annihilating the population with extreme heat and burying everything under twenty feet of ash. (This kept artifacts perfectly preserved and allowed archaeologists to make plaster casts of the citizens caught in the cataclysm.)

Kit Harington is gorgeous and his Celtic gladiator Milo kills nearly as many people as the eruption-earthquake-tsunami (Pompeii is directed by Paul—NOT Thomas—Anderson of the Resident Evil series, which specializes in this stuff), so we’ll call it a tie.

Kit shows greater range here than he does in Game of Thrones, and by “range” we mean abs, pecs, quads and glutes. Just about our only complaint Thrones-wise is that Jon Snow is always wrapped in furs when he’s with the Night Watch on The Wall or undercover in Mance Rayder’s army. (In the love scene, Ygritte took everything off and Jon Snow was still covered in fur. Booooo.) Kit Harington is so pretty, if he shaved his facial hair he could be the hero and the leading lady.

Yeah, the movie is stupid fun, but it was intended for stupid fun and not historical accuracy. There’s plenty of swordplay and carnage: nothing looks real so know they’re not really dead. Emily Browning plays the aristocratic young woman Cassia who falls in love with the gladiator, which is perfectly understandable because she has eyes. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje reprises the noble Woody Strode role in Spartacus, and speaking of Spartacus, we’re disappointed that there is no dialogue like this in Pompeii.

Our friend Ruthie always used to misquote this as “Antoninus, do you prefer oysters…or salami?”

Carrie Ann-Moss and Jared Harris play Cassia’s parents, and Harris always looks like his guilty embezzler in Mad Men. Kiefer Sutherland has some fun as the eevil Senator Corvus. In the tradition of Resident Evil, Pompeii plays like a video game in which the hero must battle other gladiators, then the Roman champion, then the eevil senator while rescuing the damsel AND escaping from the giant ash cloud and the earth opening up millimeters from his feet. The dirtier and more battered Kit gets, the lovelier he looks—if the war for the Iron Throne were a beauty pageant, Jon Snow would be King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm and Daenerys would be first runner-up.

Verdict: Watch if you have nothing else to do and you can’t wait for GoT Season 4 to begin.

We suddenly remembered The Last Days of Pompeii, a book we borrowed from the St. Theresa’s library and devoured on the school bus. It’s available online at Project Gutenberg, and we just realized that it was written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, author of the immortal opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night”.

Every single day in grade school we brought a trunk-like bag of books and notebooks on a trolley, a shoulder bag, and a lunchbox. It was like training to be a llama.

We carry less stuff these days, but still more than we need, and we know exactly why: We’re paranoid, and we like to be prepared. We don’t want to get stuck in traffic without a book to read, with a backup book in case the first choice bores us. If we are surrounded by noisy people over-sharing intimate details of their lives, we have to have our own music to plug up our ears with. If an idea strikes, we have to have the right notebook to record it in: one for fiction, one for columns, one for bits we don’t know what to do with yet, and a separate journal for appointments. We need sunglasses, lip balm, a scarf, at least three pens, and don’t forget an umbrella. The fact that we never have reason to use all of these each day does not mean we can leave them at home. Everyone knows that on the one day you leave your Swiss knife at home, someone will produce a bottle of wine and you will need a corkscrew. (At least we don’t carry two terabyte drives like our friend does.)

The solution is to have a large, lightweight bag with many pockets. Leather looks and smells great, but it’s heavy. Cloth bags are portable, until it rains. Right now our favorite bag is this rectangular sac from the French brand Bensimon.

We found Bensimon bags and their famous sneakers at Common Thread on the second floor of Greenbelt 5 in Ayala Center.

It was either the Bensimon sac or these waterproof canvas messenger bags by the local brand Gouache. In the end we went for the lighter bag.

Common Thread carries an assortment of brands and products: Hoola sunglasses, K-Way waterproof folding jackets, Praiaz all-terrain shoes, Thread 365 tees, (ugh, Hipster Guide),

Allegrina ballet flats, the ever-popular Havaianas, including neon espadrilles,

and headphones and accessories, such as these portable bamboo speakers. These should keep us from accidentally eavesdropping on the private lives of random strangers.

Boboy directed us to this POYKPAC Comedy video in which a couple break up in a conversation composed entirely of movie titles. “Would be fun to have Talong and Engkantadang Kangkarot in there,” Boboy said. Great idea!

Your LitWit Challenge is to write us 30 or more lines of dialogue using only the titles of Pinoy movies. We’ll leave the situation up to you: breakup, courtship, argument, revenge, knock yourself out. Between Bukas, Tatakpan Ka Ng Diyaryo and Huwag Mong Buhayin Ang Bangkay, the possibilities are endless. Between Talong, Kangkong, Itlog, you’ve got salad.

Post your entries in Comments; submissions will be accepted until noon on 2 March 2014. Our Writing Workshop participants are disqualified from this contest.

The winner will receive these two books: Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel Bleeding Edge in hardcover, and an omnibus edition of the Smiley novels by John Le Carre, probably the greatest spy novels ever written.

This LitWit Challenge is brought to you by National Bookstores.

Ghosts of the Highway series by Mariano Ching

Noel Orosa is the author of the chant we recite whenever we look at art, especially conceptual art.

Kaya ko rin yan
Ba’t di mo ginawa?
Kaya ko rin yan
Ba’t di mo ginawa?

I can do that, too
Then why didn’t you?
I can do that, too
Then why didn’t you?
(Repeat until you exit)

Clearly we could not chant that in front of this painting by Orly Ypon.

Ruma-Raft of the Medusa, we said. If Gericault had not died young, Delacroix might not have been as important, Leo pointed out. Yes, teacher.

Paintings of architecture by Jay Ticar. Umi-Inception, we noted. I’d prefer sculpture, said Noel.

The main attraction of Art Fair Philippines is the sheer number of recent works gathered together in one place. There’s so much stuff to see that we missed a lot on our first visit. Such as these intricate Alice in Wonderland sculptures by Daniel de la Cruz.

Detail from the procession of cards

Cheshire Cat

Summit by Benjie Torrado

Curtains by Impy Pilapil

Angel by Geraldine Javier

That concludes this year’s edition of Art Fair Philippines. We hope you found the time to check it out and make up your own mind. Now go forth and ask yourself the questions we’ve been mulling over in light of the local art boom:

How good is the art? Are you impressed by the quality of the work, or by the popularity of the artist? (Do you want it because it’s in now?) Are you buying it on the dealer’s word that it’s worthwhile because you don’t know what is worthwhile? Are you looking at it as investment that promises to quadruple in time? Are you buying it as your ticket to the social subset also known as the art collectors? Go.

Help save the endangered Philippine Eagle by getting your eagle toy at the Library of Babel.

The trumpet is literally smoking.

Thanks to Jackie for the alert.