JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Teodoro L. Locsin, Jr started writing for the Philippines Free Press in his teens. He has been the Secretary of Information and presidential speechwriter (for President Cory Aquino), publisher and editor-in-chief of the Daily Globe and then Today, presenter of the television shows Assignment and Points of View, and a member of the House of Representatives. Having completed three terms in the House, he is figuring out what to do next.

Teddy Boy’s list.

The ship in Ridley Scott’s film Alien was called Nostromo after the novel by Joseph Conrad. In the sequel Aliens by James Cameron the ship was called Sulaco, after the fictional South American setting of Nostromo. Photos from denofgeek.com.

Ten best books of 2010 I have read. First, Monsoon: The Indian Ocean…blah, blah, blah by Kaplan who has exploited the Balkan Wars and everything Middle Eastern and South Asian that Dalrymple does infinitely better is not one of them. The idea that backwaters in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal will be anything in the next 1,000 years but curry and papadom is absurd.

Now the good stuff: I told you that I am rereading all of Joseph Conrad and have finished Almayer’s Folly, Outcast of the Islands, Gaspar Ruiz, Secret Agent, Shadowline, etc. All fabulous and they will tell you, by the way, that Mindanao really doesn’t belong to us but is part of another world altogether–Muslim, feudal, honor bound.

The Stories of John Cheever

The Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Erotic science-fiction, the best kind.

The Mexico City Reader by Ruben Gallo, one essay at a time.

The last volume of The History of England by Thomas Babington Macaulay again, because he says there that crooks may in the end make good public servants because they steal to get to public office and once there may actually find themselves more interested in public service than serving themselves—but then Macaulay never met a Filipino politician.

The Bourgeois Virtues by Deirdre McCloskey

Dante’s Divine Comedy in the Longfellow translation which sings.

This Time is Different by Carmen Reinhardt, a book of statistical economics arguing against building up public debt because paying it off is usually done by inflationary measures.

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, a novel of the Vietnam War, will blow your mind, sorry to descend to cliché, and so will The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell, which shows what I have always suspected that there can be a good in the sense of sensitive Gestapo officer bashing in skulls with some though not as much angst as having sex with your sister or did you just imagine it, but then what are those twins she takes care of in the luxury provided by a proper but sterile, impotent though aristocratic husband?

For Love of Country? by Martha Nussbaum is a collection of essays in response to her unanswerable one arguing for a Kantian cosmopolitanism as opposed to nationalist and otherwise parochial values which should be read with McCloskey (above) and Nusbaum’s Own Upheavals of Thought, arguing for emotions as a mode of perception, judgment and expression distinct from reason and sensory experience–or the heart has reasons the mind needs to supplement its own cogitations.

Some Henry James, especially The Aspern Papers.

Apologia Pro Vita Sua in type so small I am going blind but what beautiful thoughts.

The Shanghai Moon, a police procedural by Rojan, was a total waste of time.

And best of all Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilization. Sure he tries to bring it down to earth by relating it to his taciturn (and why shouldn’t he be, he was so undistinguished, a complete English nobody who was one of a million in the trenches of World War I) father but with it he unrolls the whole tale of the Middle East since the whites went there to fuck it up at the turn of the century.

Also Slavoj Zizek who is interesting for the occasional insight, and because it is nice to lose oneself in all that density, but never attempt to use any of it in your own writing like some idiot editorial writer in the Inquirer. There are thinkers you just immerse yourself in–Zizek is not one of them but I can think of another who is–like swimming 100 laps in 50-meter pools in midtown Manhattan all alone with just a Peruvian life guard with whom you can speak critically of the other swimmers, especially the V-shaped hunks with close-cropped hair who cannot swim longer than 15 minutes anyway, because they don’t know Spanish. I hate competition, especially from six-footers with 24-inch waists and blond hair. Not that I’m envious or anything like that. Shet them. Why couldn’t God make me taller? I am starting to read up seriously on ballet and dance in general.- TLL

* * * * *

After Thewinesucksgate, pundits noted that previous presidential speechwriters had done much ruder things than denigrate the wine served at an official dinner in a foreign country. Of course the example they cited was Teddy Boy Locsin, who had given the finger to the employees of San Miguel who were on strike. No, there is no comparison. Ted did give them the finger, but

(1) the employees on strike were supporters of Danding Cojuangco, whose shares had been sequestered by the first Aquino administration. At that moment they were his adversaries, not his hosts.
(2) there were hundreds of them but he was alone. He was rude, but brave.
(3) most importantly, he did it in their face. He wasn’t sitting at their table feigning politeness while dissing them in the social media. Rude, but forthright.

I remember this episode because I saw it on the TV news, where the rude gesture was repeated forwards and backwards in slow motion. At that moment I knew I had found my Jedi master.

We don’t have to wait 20 years for the next Terrence Malick movie: Tree Of Life is out next year. The gap between his films is down to 7 years.

This one looks beautiful but aren’t they all.

Everything that happens has already happened; we’ve seen it at the movies.

Umberto D by Vittorio De Sica

The train picks up speed as it leaves the station. There’s an old man standing on the tracks, clutching a little dog named Flag. The man is a retired professor who has nothing left in the world but his hat and his dog. And his dignity, but it’s hard to hang on to that when you’re hungry. So Umberto is standing on the railroad tracks waiting to die. Flag must die with him because he cannot be left alone. As the train draws near, Flag yelps in terror and jumps out of Umberto’s grasp. The old man gives chase, abandoning his death.

I Vitelloni by Federico Fellini

Moraldo watches from a window on the train. For months he haunted the station, watching the trains arrive in their small town where everyone he knows and has ever known has lived all their lives. Then he watches the trains depart for places he only dreams about. No one ever leaves their small town, but this morning Moraldo got on the train and now he’s sick with fear and excitement.

It Happened One Night by Frank Capra

A pretty woman in expensive clothes walks into the train car, holding a delicate hand out to keep from stumbling. She settles into the empty seat next to Moraldo and nods at him. She is the daughter of a fabulously wealthy man; she has just run away from home to go to the man she loves. Or thinks she does, until she meets the broke but dashing journalist who wants exclusive rights to her story. She will detest him at first, but that’s the way these romantic comedies go.

North By Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock

Across the aisle, his face concealed by a borrowed newspaper he’s pretending to read, sits the adman Roger Thornhill. Who is wanted for a murder he did not commit, framed by people he does not know. His life has taken a very strange turn: one minute he’s meeting people for drinks at The Plaza, the next minute he’s being chased down the highway by a cropdusting plane. He’s a little old for this, and for dangling off a rock face on Mount Rushmore, but charm is a more powerful weapon than his tormentors suspect. Thornhill scans the passenger’s faces for a certain cool blonde, then he sees something that causes his eyes to pop out of his head like a cartoon coyote’s.

Some Like It Hot by Billy Wilder

Sugar Kane sashays through the train car, her hips describing figure eights, her bosoms a marvel of cantilevering. No, not that blonde, that one spells trouble. Sugar sings in an all-girl band and she likes the drink a little too much. Behind her, tottering on high heels, are two of the ugliest women Thornhill has ever seen. One of them drops her purse right on his foot; he retrieves it and hands it back to her. “Thanks, bub,” the woman says in a low, manly voice. “My pleasure,” says the startled Thornhill, and he notices the other woman repeat the words in his accent. These unprepossessing women are in fact men. They are also on the run, from the law and the mob, but their strategy for staying alive requires being in drag.

The Palm Beach Story by Preston Sturges

The not-quite all-girl band lurches through the coach and ends up in the wrong car. Much to the delight of its occupants, the Ale and Quail Club, a group of eccentric millionaires on a drinking and hunting vacation. Showgirls and rich old geezers, it’s the perfect combination: a party breaks out in the private car, the drinks flow, guns are produced and the windows shot out.

Casablanca by Michael Curtiz

The steward flees this hilarity to summon the conductor, and runs past Rick, who is standing in the door of the moving train, reading a letter. Rick’s loyal sidekick Sam the piano player tugs at his sleeve saying, “Boss, we have to go inside.” Big drops of rain pelt Rick’s hat and roll off the brim onto the paper he’s holding, blotting out the words as he reads them. Ilsa has just dumped him.

* * * * *

The Locomotive Montage is in Twisted 9, now available at National Bookstores.

for 2010, don’t panic.

In September we started our extremely popular, only slightly controversial weekly feature Jock With A Book with a photo of national rugby player Matt Saunders reading Poetry for Dummies. Today we’re bringing Matt back to close the first season of Jock With A Book. Here he is in uniform:

And leafing through the collected short novels of Anton Chekhov.

Tune in for the next season in 2011. Jocks With Books: We make reading sexy.

* * * * *

We have received a few objections to this weekly feature, from senders who fall into these categories.

A. Readers who do not consider good-looking men reading books an “intellectual” enough subject for this site. (We are mortified to find that we were once considered “deep”. Clearly the educational system is in a dismal state.)
B. Readers whose standards of racial/ethnic purity are violated by our subjects, most of whom are only half-Pinoy.
C. Readers who do not approve of the open and humorous discussion of human sexuality.

It is unfortunate that we disagree so vehemently, but the net is vast and there are many, many sites that meet your standards. Happy reading, Buh-Bye!

* * * * *

A message from last, last week’s Jock With A Book, Chris Everingham.

The readers loved discussing my bigote (lol). In Australia in November we have a project called ‘Movember’ which is a charity fundraiser for men with prostate cancer. Men are encouraged to grow their bigote during this month, and some even get sponsorships depending on how well the man brags about how big or elaborate it may become.

I’ll see you in April! Cheers, Chris.

* * * * *

Apart from using visual stimuli to rewire our readers’ brains and trigger their desire to read books, we’re organizing a book drive for schools in need in the Philippines.

The plan is to collect book donations from all over the world and, with the help of National Book Store Foundation, locate the beneficiary schools and send them the books.

First we need volunteers in other countries who can contact charities, non-profit organizations and socio-civic organizations in their areas to request book donations. These volunteers will collect the books, coordinate with our team to determine which books to send to schools, and work with us to arrange the shipments. It’s a lot of work.

Jara has offered to be our coordinator in Sydney. We need coordinators from everywhere. If you’re interested in volunteering, drop us a line in Comments and let us know which part of the world you’re in exactly.

But first, An Ode to Mark Wahlberg.

When Mark Wahlberg first burst into our consciousness as Marky Mark, burst being the word, abs, pecs and attitude exploding out of his clothes and onto Calvin Klein underwear billboards, we were mesmerized but not convinced that his career would outlast his ads. (We conveniently ignored the fact that he would’ve been in New Kids On The Block with his brother Donnie.) We figured that he would move on to D-list celebrityhood like so many underwear models before him and be forgotten until the obligatory D.U.I. or arrest for sticking up a convenience store.

He was a mediocre rapper, even in the white rapper category—perhaps not as laughable as a Vanilla Ice, accent on perhaps (“I wanna see sweat coming out your pores”?), but without the literary breadth of an Eminem. Consider his hit single Good Vibrations, which is distinguished by his giant man-boobs and the vocals of Loleatta Holloway.

Yet he surprised us with his transition to the movies—not with a bang, but gradually building up momentum. Sometime in the mid-90s my druid and I caught a screening of the movie Fear, and when Mark Wahlberg walked into the frame we sat bolt upright in our seats and cried, “Sino yan!?” (Who is that?!—a reliable gauge for cinematic electricity as we also had Sino Yan moments when we beheld Russell Crowe in The Quick and The Dead and Edward Norton in Primal Fear.) He was so good in that movie, so compelling that we questioned Reese Witherspoon’s ability to make decisions. (Okay he’s scary but. . .)

Then came Boogie Nights where in the midst of Paul Thomas Anderson’s killer ensemble he blew us away. Even without the famous final shot. Sure there are Huh?! moments in his filmography—I’ll never get back the two hours I wasted on Rock Star, and the remake of Charade (Charade!) was unforgivable. But that was a brilliant performance as the foul-mouthed cop in The Departed, where he stole scenes from Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson. He has established himself as a canny producer—We Own The Night, the HBO series Entourage and Boardwalk Empire. And now he has produced and starred in The Fighter, directed by his David O. Russell (Three Kings).

In short Mark Wahlberg has proven us wrong, and we are happy to be wrong. Thank you.

If the word “dysfunctional” had been in use in Tolstoy’s day the famous first line of Anna Karenina would’ve been different. Consider the family in The Fighter, based on the story of the boxer Micky Ward. (This is the project for which Mark Wahlberg studied Manny Pacquiao’s moves.) The mother (Melissa Leo) is a domineering harpy who favors her eldest son Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale) and refuses to accept that he is a crackhead.

The father—of two or three of the nine grown children—has no say in anything. Dicky, once a promising boxer, is a screw-up who keeps talking about his comeback. The younger son Micky, also a boxer, is literally bloodied by his mother’s and brother’s stupid decisions. His girlfriend (Amy Adams) helps him get out of his family’s clutches, but then he finds himself pulled between his crazy family, his girlfriend, and his own need to make something of himself.

This holiday season as you spend mandatory time with your families, fielding intrusive questions and raking up old issues, take comfort in the family drama of The Fighter. (As The Royal Tenenbaums ad so wisely put it, “Family is not a word, it’s a sentence.”) Micky Ward has the advantage of being a boxer—he can work out his emotional turmoil in the ring, absorb punishment and dish out pain. You can only drink too much, lock yourself in the bathroom, and scream.

A lot has been said about the performances in The Fighter. Yes, they are stellar. Melissa Leo is both hateful and sympathetic. Amy Adams who is wonderful at fragile-but-strong roles demonstrates that she can also be sexy-tough. (We wish the filmmakers had also found characters for Dicky and Micky’s seven sisters, a cartoon Greek chorus with bigger hair.)

Christian Bale (whose Sino Yan?! moment came earlier, as the child in Empire of the Sun—I am still terrified by that scene where he drops his toy plane and lets go of his mother’s hand) has the showiest role as the crackhead Dicky. This could have been the ultimate reaching for the ham-and-cheese acting prize, but Bale finds the humanity in this loser held together by bluster and fake mama’s boy pride. When Dicky comes face to face with what he really is, you forget that this is the big acting moment—you almost look away because it’s too real.

Christian Bale in The Fighter reminds me of John Cazale. John Cazale only appeared in five movies, but those movies were The Godfather 1 and 2 (“Freddo you broke my heart”), The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter.

Finally there’s Mark Wahlberg as Micky Ward. Mark Wahlberg stands at the center of this emotional tornado and calmly holds it together. It is a quiet, understated performance—he lets his body speak for him, which makes perfect sense because it was the muscles that drew us in the first place.

The Fighter is not The Raging Bull—nothing is, maybe not even The Raging Bull. But David O. Russell has a light touch and an energetic style that transforms this standard melodrama into a contender.