The Internet has a habit of defying expectations. You subscribe to The New York Times and find yourself reading it in a browser window instead. You sign up for Netflix and along comes BitTorrent. You pay for long distance only to discover Skype. What could possibly be next?
. . .Sometimes drinking becomes an act of self-preservation, for instance
if you are at an excruciatingly dull gathering full of people you
detest. Then you must drink or fall into a coma, which should never be
mistaken for drinking yourself into a coma. Drink allows you to be a
buffoon, then later claim that you only acted that way because you
were drunk. . .
Where Philippine politics is concerned I try not to keep up with the news because it’s all Theory of Eternal Recurrence to me, or as Ate Vi put it, “Been there, been that”. However I must admit that the term “Con-Ass” (constituent assembly) brings joy to my vestigial heart because in French conasse means “stupid bitch”. So when our esteemed politicians utter the syllables “Con-Ass”, I hear them calling each other “stupid bitch” with bad accents.
I was all set to watch A Good Year, the new film by Ridley Scott starring Russell Crowe, then I realized I didn’t want to. It’s based on one of those Peter Mayle books about yuppie scum who decide to abandon the rat race and buy a farm house in Provence or Tuscany or someplace rustic, charming and full of eccentric locals. Then they go into rhapsodies about the wine, cheese and fresh produce, which somehow leads to their discovering the true meaning and purpose of life, at which point they should be force-fed their books in hardcover. How I know all these without having read any of those books, I have no idea. I avoid that genre because it promotes envy, and my envy will be pointless because if I had to live in the country for long periods I would start skinning people out of sheer boredom. I don’t care how pretty those Mediterranean countrysides are, the quiet would drive me bonkers. I once spent 24 in a little Tuscan town called Camaiore, and at bedtime it was so quiet I could hear the refrigerator humming three floors below my room. In fact I could hear the refrigerator in the neighbor’s house a mile away, and I had to sleep with my iPod on to drown out the tranquillity.
Then I asked myself, Do we really want to see a movie starring Russell Crowe in which he doesn’t kill anyone? A Beautiful Mind was ridiculous. Finally, why would I watch a Ridley Scott film that does not involve swords, acid-spewing life-forms, or poetic replicants (“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe/Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion”)?
So I ended up lurking in the bookstore, where I found a new translation of War and Peace by Anthony Briggs, a very nice Penguin Red paperback at an extremely reasonable Php249. I’m serious about reading the Russians in 2007, but only in recent translations. And I mean the gloom and doom doorstoppers, none of that cheerful Nabokov. It helps that I’ve stopped watching television. (If you’re a tennis fan you must read Dostoevsky’s The Gambler—you will begin to grasp how Marat Safin’s mind works.)
The amazing Dino Ignacio (all our friends should have adjectives) pointed me to the work of Tom Decker, a San Francisco-based ceramics artist who is having a show in Manila next month. Decker makes vessels, facejugs, and sculptures. For some reason they remind me of cave trolls.
1. Little Miss Sunshine opens on Wednesday. Steve Carell plays suicidal gay Proust scholar. Genius.
2. And the Tenacious D movie! Anything with Jack Black. He’s also in a romantic comedy with Kate Winslet and Jude Law. One of these things is not like the others—
3. Bend your mind a little, see Rico Maria Ilarde’s Sa Ilalim ng Cogon, opening Wednesday at Robinson’s Galleria’s Indiesine. You can not predict where this story is going, and that’s a good thing.
4. Get cracking on shorter Dostoevsky novels before launching major assault on his doorstoppers (the new translations). Hugh Aplin’s translation of The Gambler is riveting. And it’s short!
5. Buy silver and metal polish, shine earrings.
6. Do your podcast for crying out loud. May have to kidnap Adel, Budj and Jobert for this.
7. Watch everyone frantically scurrying around with their Xmas shopping. Plan to flee the country for the holidays, preferably someplace without Xmas. (Reminder: Always bring reading matter and iPod. Traffic (vehicular and human) horrific.)
8. Annual reading of my favorite Xmas novel, The Catcher In The Rye.
9. Avoid the crowds in restaurants. Dine at your friends’ houses.
10. The usual deadlines, which you will meet but no one else will.
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