Want something weird? Here’s a bizarre little story by Anton Chekhov called The Black Monk.
For your Xmas reading, Tina recommends Memoirs of the House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who did time in a Siberian prison. You could read it in a double-bill with The People’s Act of Love by James Meek. My favorite holiday reading is still The Catcher In The Rye. After I finish A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines.
treeofsmokefellapart2.JPG, originally uploaded by 160507.
This is not the prize, I just wanted to show you this book. Butch passed me his copy of Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. He bought it new, a first edition, from Powerbooks about a month ago, and it literally fell apart while he was reading it. (Correction on previous post on Tree of Smoke: Johnson was not a consultant on Apocalypse Now, but he’s spent time in the Philippines. By the way, does anyone know if William Boyd actually came here to research The Blue Afternoon?) Maybe the good people of Farrar Straus Giroux need to check their binding. I don’t mind having the book in pieces, though—this way I don’t have to lug the entire doorstop-sized volume around, just the chunks I’m reading.
Now the contest. The prize is. . .a copy of Stars and Bars by William Boyd, which was adapted for film in the 90s. Mediocre, but it stars Daniel Day-Lewis. The book goes to the first person who answers all these questions correctly. Thanks to Chus and Ricky for thinking up the items.
1. In which movie does Rita Gomez tell her daughter in her distinct Rita Gomez enunciation: “Why don’t you traahvel? Go to Yooh-rope.”
2. Name the movie in which Ricky has one line: “O, tapos?”
3. Noel and I suspect we are the only people who have seen all the movies by this American writer-director whose first movie contains an extended argument about Mansfield Park.
4. What movie contains this bit of dialogue:
– Mag-ko-confrontation scene ba tayo?
– Wag na, nakakapagod.
5. Stefania Sandrelli and Dominique Sanda do the tango in which movie?
10.52am. Ha! No entries yet, and in this instance googling will not help you! Okay, item 2 is too specialized, as in only Ricky’s friends would know, so here’s a clue: Sharon Cuneta stars in it.
21.21. Ha! Only one entry posted, with a score of 2/5. The answers:Â 1) Ina, Kasusuklaman Ba Kita? 2) Crying Ladies by Mark Meilly 3) Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan; his other movies are Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco 4) Salawahan by Ishmael Bernal, a treasure trove of great lines, and 5) The Conformist by Bernardo Bertolucci.
No one wins Contest #3. The prize will be given out in Contest #4.
R. Crumb’s NO HOPE diagram, originally uploaded by 160507.
Here’s something to think about as you do the rounds of Xmas parties.
R. Crumb’s diagram presents incontrovertible evidence that there is No Hope.
Let’s have another contest tonight. I’m thinking of an essay question that would at least be complicated to google.
Chapter 5 of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is set in Manila. The Pakistani narrator and his fair-haired, light-eyed American colleagues are in Manila on a business trip. He finds himself attempting to act and speak like an American because the Filipinos they work with seem to look up to his American colleagues. One day, on a busy street:
“I was riding with my colleagues in a limousine. We were mired in traffic, unable to move, and I glanced out the window to see, only a few feet away, the driver of a jeepney returning my gaze. There was an undisguised hostility in his expression; I had no idea why. We had not met before—of that I was virtually certain—and in a few minutes we would probably never see each other again. But his dislike was so obvious, so intimate, that it got under my skin. I stared back at him, getting angry myself—you will have noticed in your time here that glaring is something we men of Lahore take seriously—and I maintained eye contact until he was obliged by the movement of the car in front to return his attention to the road.
“Afterwards, I tried to understand why he acted as he did. Perhaps, I thought, his wife had just left him; perhaps he resents me for the privileges implied by my suit and expensive car; perhaps he simply does not like Americans. I remained preoccupied with this matter far longer than I should have, pursuing several possibilities that all assumed—as their unconscious starting point—that he and I shared a sort of Third World sensibility. Then one of my colleagues asked me a question, and when I turned to answer him, something rather strange took place. I looked at him—at his fair hair and light eyes and, most of all, his oblivious immersion in the minutiae of our work—and thought, you are so foreign. I felt in that moment much closer to the Filipino driver than to him; I felt I was play-acting when in reality I ought to be making my way home, like the people on the street outside.”
So why was the jeepney driver glaring at the narrator?
Press release from my friend the BLB: The Salcedo Community Market and the Provincial Government of Ilocos Norte will host an Ilocos food and crafts fair on December 15, 2007, showcasing the finest fresh produce, specialty food items and indigenous crafts from the Ilocos region. Specialty items on sale will include popular products such as Ilocos garlic, shallots, cornick, linga (sesame seeds), miki and tupig, sugarcane wine (basi) and sugarcane vinegar (sukang Iloko) – all of which will be on sale from 7:00 am to 4:00 pm. Other items on sale will also include Ilocano delicacies such as bagnet, empanada and longganiza. Among the non-food items are woven textiles and cotton fabric, as well as dried tobacco leaves – a traditional household insect-repellant and garden pesticide. Also on sale at the event are traditional Abel Iloko – or woven cotton fabrics – as blankets, runners and napkins. Included among the regional crafts are handcrafted baskets and mats that are renowned for their tight, intricate weaves.
The Salcedo weekend market is held in Salcedo Village, Makati, near the Makati Sports Club.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>More
