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In the first season of The Killing (the American version), the detectives question a school janitor who has the keys to what looks like the crime scene. We assume that the janitor character is Filipino because (a) His name is “Lyndon Johnson Rosales”, (b) His mother speaks to the detectives in Tagalog, and (c) There are lots of Filipinos who immigrated to Seattle where the series takes place.

However when the janitor is questioned, he makes reference to “El Diablo” (the devil) where a Pinoy would say “Demonyo” or “Ang devil”. Perhaps he has been hanging out with Spanish-speaking Americans. Or maybe the writers assumed—like the old Mac OS did—that Spanish is widely spoken in the Philippines.

We watched half of the first season of The Killing before we decided that the detectives annoy us and their police department is the most inept on television. What are they going to do, run down everyone in Washington as a suspect? Hey, don’t Edward Twilight’s vampire family and Jake Werewolf Abs’s clan live in that state? Why haven’t they been investigated?!

Detectives: Please get rid of that hideous sweater and that fugly hoodie.

If you like drinking games, The Killing will get you trashed. Every time the police are certain they’ve found their killer, take a shot. Every time they’re wrong, take a shot. Every time the lead detective misses her flight to California, take a shot. Every time her teenage son does something to get her attention, take a shot. This show should have a lot of liquor ads, they’d make a killing. Hah.

One look at Billy Campbell (He plays a city councilman running for mayor) and we knew he would be arrested at some point…because he is so handsome. Look at that!

So we watched the second half of the first season at six times normal speed and spoiler spoiler, etc. We’ve been assured that season two ends satisfyingly, but we have to build up our tolerance before we try again.

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

The Farglory Hotel seen from the cable car at the Farglory Ocean Park.

While trying to fall asleep at the Farglory Hotel (adjacent to the Farglory Ocean Park) in Hualien, Taipei, we found Fierce People playing on the hotel’s movie channel.

Based on a novel by Dirk Wittenborn, Fierce People is one of those Gatsby-esque stories in which an impressionable young man becomes enamored of rich people and is inevitably, unpleasantly divested of his illusions. It’s directed by Griffin Dunne (the star of Scorsese’s After Hours), whose father Dominick Dunne wrote fascinating true crime stories involving rich people for Vanity Fair.

Fierce People stars Anton Yelchin, looking and sounding like an abandoned puppy (If you’ve seen him more recently, in the Fright Night remake and in the achingly real Like Crazy, you’ll notice he’s gotten handsome. He returns as Mr Chekov in the next Star Trek), is a teenager looking forward to summer in South America with the father he’s never met. His father, the “Elvis of anthropologists”, lives among the (fictional) Ishkanani tribe known as “Fierce People”. His vacation plans go kaput thanks to his mother Liz (the always excellent Diane Lane), who has substance abuse problems. She resolves to clean up and start over by accepting a long-standing offer from the billionaire Osborne (Donald Sutherland) to become his personal masseuse.

Chris Evans and Anton Yelchin in Fierce People

So mother and son move to the Osborne estate, where everyone assumes that Liz is the old man’s mistress and Finn is befriended by Osborne’s beautiful golden grandchildren Maya (Kimberly Stewart before she started acting deader than the undead) and Bryce (Chris Evans who is following us around—his telekinesis movie Push was playing on the bus. Chris, we adore you, but this is so wrong. Our 5-year-old niece loves you. Go away. Get back here. Go away. Come here).

The movie’s conceit, which the director hits us over the head with every five minutes, is that the tribe of rich people is as vicious and brutal as the Fierce People of South America. (Seen constantly in Finn’s father’s documentary, lest you forget who the Fierce People are. Those reels are played so often they should’ve burst into flame.) Something horrific happens to Finn—if he’d been Ishkanani, he would have to get payback by ripping out his enemy’s heart and displaying it to the village. Around this point Finn has a dream in which an Ishkanani shaman appears to him…speaking Tagalog (“Manggagaling sa puso mo…”)

Does this mean that the Ishkanani are not in the Amazon but in the much more ferocious jungles of Balic-Balic or Leveriza? And are these the same jungles where the Ewoks of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi live?

The movie is both overworked and undercooked (Wittenborn adapted his own novel for the screen) and it never really comes together, but it’s got such interesting actors—Lane, Sutherland, Stewart and Evans (We have to say we’ve never seen a bad Chris Evans performance, and no we’re not blinded). If you watch Fierce People, bear in mind that Captain America doesn’t really exist, but the evil rich do.

Speaking of Gatsby-esque…

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.

Barung, swords made in Mindanao. Photo by Jay Ignacio.

History tells us that when Ferdinand Magellan sailed onto these shores in 1521 not all the natives who would later be called Filipinos were impressed at his global circumnavigation project. Nor were they lining up to get baptized. Instead of saying “Mabuhay!” and hanging garlands of sampaguitas around the foreigners’ necks, the tribal chieftain Lapu-Lapu said “Hell, no”, except that being pagan he was not burdened with visions of souls getting stir-fried in subterranean ovens by cackling demons.

Magellan, thinking he was invincible because all the other native chiefs had thrown parties for him, announced that he would teach this Lapu-Lapu a lesson. That didn’t happen. Lapu-Lapu and his warriors beat Magellan’s troops so hard the survivors fled back to Spain and reported that their captain had been eaten by a giant fish. Seriously, why is the first Filipino hero named for a fish (or the fish named after him, with the same effect)? How are we going to instill respect and awe when the mention of his name makes people think of a delicious escabeche in sweet and sour sauce?

Going back to the Battle of Mactan, some believe that Lapu-Lapu and his warriors used the Filipino martial art called arnis to vanquish the Spanish invaders. This information is unverified, but so are the facts in the life of Lapu-Lapu. It is certainly not implausible.

Filipino Martial Arts Grandmaster Dan Inosanto taught Bruce Lee how to use nunchaku. That is beyond awesome. Photo by Jay Ignacio.

The Filipino Way of Whoopass appears in my column, Wide World of Pain, in the November issue of Esquire. It’s somewhere in the middle pages. If a table of contents exists we could not find it.

Jesse Eisenberg, Camille Mana, Remy Auberjonois and Justin Bartha. Photo by Sandra Coudert in Playbill.com.

Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, The Squid and the Whale) has written a play about “a college kid consumed by white guilt, his multiculturalism-obsessed pothead mentor and roommate”, and how “their relationship is complicated by the sudden arrival of Edgar’s new sister-in-law of Filipino descent”. Asuncion opened the other day at the Cherry Lane Theatre Off-Broadway. Of course Jesse plays the kid consumed by guilt.

Read the interview in Vulture.