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Admittedly, I saw the movie because I expected it to be awful. In fact I wanted it to be terrible, because it’s fun to write reviews of bad movies, especially if they have legions of clueless, sensitive defenders. Now I wish it were awful, not just because it’s deathly boring, but because its core audience will probably agree with me. I am united with the 50 Shades fandom, Noooooo!

Even before the movie opened, media outlets had noted the lack of chemistry between the leads, Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan. Dakota, daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, looks very much like her dad, so if you have a Miami Vice fetish, the movie might work for you. However, she has none of her parents’ rude vitality. Okay, she’s a bit of a clod—Don Johnson as a manang—but that is the point of the book, that a plain-seeming, ordinary girl would have something that a hot billionaire cannot find elsewhere. Don’t ask me what it is, I skipped entire chapters.

Read our review at InterAksyon.com.

“Anastasia” made us think of the Prince song “Anna Stesia”, which is sexier than the entire movie we just saw. (We took out the thing that doesn’t stop playing, but you can listen to it here.)

As pretentious students we attempted to pronounce Leguin “le-GAHN” like Gauguin, only to find that it’s “le-GWIN” (Our classmate tried the Marquis de “shar-DAY” like the singer).

In Ursula K. Le Guin’s science-fiction classic The Left Hand of Darkness, there are no women or men, only people. The natives of the planet Winter possess both female and male attributes, but they only become one or the other at certain times in the biological cycle—mating season, which they call “kemmering”. Anyone can get pregnant and give birth, depending on their hormone levels. Sometimes, they’re female, sometimes they’re male. Once a month, people get into kemmer and get time off from their jobs to fulfill their biological urges. The rest of the time, they’re not interested in sex at all. Humans from earth (Terrans, us) with their permanent genitalia, who can have sex whenever they feel like it, are considered perverts. “Pervert” is not a condemnation, just a statement of fact.

Read our column at InterAksyon.com.

This is serious, not an April Fool’s Day prank.

Love is the paramount concern of most people, especially Filipinos. Everywhere we go we are reminded of it: in love songs blaring at the malls, in movies about “soulmates”, in ads that promise you will find true love…after you try their products.

But what exactly do we mean by “love”? Infatuation, companionship, sexual attraction, sacrifice, obsession…we might not be talking about the same thing. The result is confusion, disappointment, bitterness, rage, or worse.

Before we can love or be loved, we have to know what it is. Our personal concepts of love are shaped by our earliest interactions with parents, families, friends–relationships that, if we’re not self-aware, can end up defining who we are, or defeating what we want to become.

For something that’s supposed to be in the air, love is hard to pin down.

Professor of Psychiatry and Human Sexuality Agnes Bueno, M.D. invites you to delve into the meaning of love in your life, to understand your desires and expectations, and free yourself from the burdens of the past.

The Love Workshop is a combination of classroom discussion and group therapy. It consists of two intensive three-hour sessions. Each class consists of only five students, with writer Jessica Zafra as facilitator and Dr. Bueno as therapist.

The Love Workshop will be held at #13 Osmena St. Xavierville 3, Loyola Heights Quezon City. The course fee is Php5,000 per person. Schedules will be arranged according to the participants’ availability. To enroll, call (02) 723 0101 local 6501 or 2217 or visit Dr. Bueno’s office at:

Suite 1217 South Tower
St. Luke’s Medical Center
Cathedral Heights Bldg. Complex
279 E. Rodriguez Sr., Blvd., Quezon City

You can’t be loved till you know how to love.

Venus of Willendorf. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Dr. Agnes Bueno answers your questions on sex and reveals her favorite fictional psychiatrist. (Enjoy the information with some fava beans and a good chianti.)

Listen to our podcast, download it, or get it on iTunes.

Kristen Schaal of The Daily Show on sexy Halloween costumes.

Listen to Part One of our interview with pediatric psychiatrist and human sexuality expert Dr. Agnes Bueno here.