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Stupid city children stories:
Me: When I was a kid I thought daing na bangus was a two-headed fish.
Carlo: When I was a kid I thought daing na bangus was naturally boneless.
Me: I know someone who thought coconuts grew under the ground like kamote.

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Finally someone explains the difference between envy and jealousy. It takes two to be envious and three to be jealous.

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Saw the Stalingrad episode of The World At War at last. It is by far the best documentary I’ve seen on that pivotal battle: more historical background, maps, insightful analysis. Hitler’s Sixth Army was confident about taking Russia, having just conquered France. Didn’t anyone read War and Peace? Even the Cliff Notes would’ve done. Thanks to farmer_jay for telling me where I could get the old TV series.

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Telly Monster and I discovered that we share a weird admiration for super-villains who construct complex, detailed plans for destroying the hero and taking over the world. True, their success rates would be higher if instead of explaining their complicated strategy they just shot the hero on sight, but can you blame them for wanting to make their opponent see the beauty of the plan? The direct, business-like approach is efficient, but boring. Super-villains think of themselves as artists. Clearly, they’re more in love with the means than with the end. And that’s why they lose.

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If you’re looking for Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog (reviewed here in January), I just spotted several copies at Fully Booked Highst and at National in Rockwell. They also have stacks of the Watchmen anthology.

By the way if you were planning on seeing Watchmen on iMax, I just called the iMax theatre at Maul of Asia and learned that they will not be showing Watchmen. Their screenings have been cancelled. Drat.

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Wandered into Powerbooks Greenbelt. The coffee shop is gone, there are fewer shelves and benches. There are fewer books and hardly any new titles. Depressing.

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Anything to make conversation. Every time I run into this casual acquaintance he always says something annoying/presumptuous. Like, “Depressed again, huh?” and “Shopping again, huh?” I used to reply as politely as I could. “No, unhappy writer is a tired cliche.” “No, I just eat and walk, I cut my credit cards years ago.” Aah, what’s the point. Now I just give him the testicle retractor look. Silence is good.

For the generation that grew up in the Seventies and early Eighties, the primary source for movies was not video shops but a television program called Sine Siete. It aired every afternoon after the lunchtime variety shows, when good children were supposed to be having their siesta. Summer vacations were a daily retrospective of Fifties melodramas and war action flicks, Sixties musicals and romantic comedies, and Seventies parodies and teenybopper romances. While we were “sleeping”, we were taking courses in cultural anthropology. The sleep we lost may have ruined our chances of growing to be six feet tall, but we learned the right way to profess undying love: in an earnest stream of metaphors delivered with a straight face while standing under a mango tree in the middle of an open field, followed by a duet with the beloved. No wonder romance is dead: try finding a mango tree in the middle of Edsa.

The Archives of Your Mind in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.

Last night while looking for a reference book among the shelves I spotted my old Tintin books. I opened The Calculus Affair and completely forgot what I’d been looking for. Then I read Tintin in Tibet.

Today I had intended to watch a movie, but as I considered the choices—The Changeling (Not in the mood for lost child drama), Yes Man (Maybe this weekend, with company), Bride Wars (Only if there’s nothing else)—there was nothing I wanted to see more than I wanted to re-read Tintin. (Love Me Again (Land Down Under) was no longer showing, so I’d have to go to another mall if I wanted to figure out why it needed a parenthetical title. I know Star Cinema uses pop songs for its movie titles and I remember a Vernie Varga song called “Love Me Again”. Does Piolo Pascual sing it?)

So I went home early and read The Broken Ear, The Black Island, King Ottokar’ Sceptre, and The Red Sea Sharks. Billions of blue blistering barnacles, that was a blast.

Nicholas Lezard writes that “Tintin only really comes fully alive with the arrival of Captain Haddock. Broadly speaking, Tintin represents Hergé’s ideal self, the perfect boy scout, idealistic, brave, pure-hearted; but there is more to people than that, so enter Haddock, the alcoholic, irascible, foul-mouthed (in a cartoonish sense: his insults are interpreted as bad language because he uses words that others do not understand) ex-sea captain.” True, the books are more fun when Haddock is around to yell, Coelecanths! Filibusters! Bashi-bazouks! Lezard’s best three Tintins: The Crab with the Golden Claws, Tintin in Tibet, The Castafiore Emerald. (Incidentally Tintin and Snowy first appeared on January 10, 1929. Happy 80th Birthday!)

So far I have kept my new year’s resolution. I haven’t bought any books since December 30, but I may be tempted to get some Tintins. (My two-year-old niece could be my excuse. I could hang on to the books until she starts reading.)

Two women were highly influential in my upbringing (and maybe yours), and until recently I didn’t know their names.

Joan Ganz Cooney was the creator of Sesame Street.

Sesame Street turns 40 this year. The Complete History of Sesame Street was published recently. It details how the show was conceived as part of a grand social initiative. High and low culture mingled—educators, the ad industry, game show producers and New York intellectuals developed a TV series aimed at the urban underclass.

The book tracks down every Sesame Street personality. Remember Mr. Hooper the storeowner? When Will Lee, the actor who played the character, died, the producers decided to address the concept of death directly. There was that episode in which Gordon explains to Big Bird that Mr. Hooper is not coming back. The book also covers the sad story of Northern Calloway, who played the storekeeper David; he became manic-depressive and died in a psychiatric hospital.

In the 90s, the show’s ratings dropped because Sesame Street was seen as a reminder of urban decay. The audience preferred clean suburban schoolyards and. . .Barney.

I always get on the wrong train, and a couple of times I wound up in Harlem. It looked like Sesame Street. If I hadn’t been late for meetings, I would’ve sat on a stoop for hours. Come to think of it, this must be where I got my fondness for steps. I like meeting people on steps—the New York Public Library, the Met, the Museum of Natural History. In college I read entire books while sitting on the steps of the UP Main Library.

Mildred Wirt Benson was the original “Carolyn Keene”, ghostwriter of the Nancy Drew books.

Nancy Drew was the first character I ever met who could go wherever she wanted and stay out late without getting a scolding. Not to mention that we always knew what she was wearing (She threw on a fetching yellow cardigan, etc) and she was perfectly-coordinated. The thing that boggled me: If Nancy was always 18 and there were 52 mysteries (at the time), then she solved one case per week. When did she have time to go to school? Or to the salon to maintain that flip.

 

One day in the fifth grade, our substitute English teacher used the word “motel” in a sentence. “Girls, do you know what motel is?” she asked our class.

“A small hotel?” someone ventured.

“No,” the teacher declared with a furious headshake. “A motel is where your father plays hide and seek with his number two.”

I still didn’t know what she meant.

Later that week, I was in the car with my parents when we passed a “Motel” sign. “Oh look, a motel,” I said. “That’s where fathers play hide and seek with their number twos.”

My father slammed on the brakes and my mother threw a fit. “Where did you hear that?” they shrieked.

The next day my mother demanded a conference with the school principal. I don’t recall if we ever saw the substitute English teacher again.