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My sister made me watch The Expendables. She did not mention that it was an action-horror movie. Every time there’s a close-up of Stallone or Lundgren: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Cautionary tale about mixing steroids, botox and cosmetic surgery. Or very white people not wearing sunblock in LA. (We’re Stallone’s eyebrows tattooed on?)

The Expendables opened in the US on the same week as Eat, Pray, Love. So the question was: What would you rather watch, action has-beens (except Jason Statham) killing an entire South American country, or a rich American woman finding herself by traveling to countries beginning in ‘I’?

The answer: First time in history that an Eric Roberts movie outgrossed a Julia Roberts movie. (How Julia’s reps can spin this: It took Stallone, Statham, Li, Schwarzenegger, Willis, Rourke, Lundgren, Austin, Couture, et al to beat Julia Roberts.)

Stallone co-wrote and directed The Expendables. The one-liners are flat, the action scenes cliché and eardrum-busting but passable. It’s the dramatic scenes—and there are lots of them!—that made me hide under the seat. Please let them be over, I can’t bear to look. (When Mickey Rourke begins his monologue about the girl in Bosnia, stuff your eyes with popcorn it’s less painful.)

It’s so Retro! It should be called D’Expendables. The cast should fly to Manila and go straight to Master Showman Walang Tulugan! Except Jason Statham, who should go straight to my house.

They forgot Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal. (Or they weren’t invited, which must really hurt.)

Stallone was never the most intelligible speaker, but now he needs to be subtitled. Still, he has proven that there is room in youth-obsessed pop culture for post-prime action stars flexing their leathery muscles. Cue theme from Rocky. Up those stairs, Sly!

* * * * *

Correction from my sister: Van Damme was invited to join the cast but he declined because he felt the story was not strong enough. Obviously it did not have the depth of Bloodsport or Double Team.

Miss Philippines Venus Raj has gotten more worldwide notice for the mistake that may have cost her the Miss Universe title than if she had given a perfect answer and won the crown.

More attention, in fact, than the contestant who was proclaimed Miss Universe.

Perhaps not the kind of attention we would’ve wanted, but when does the Philippines get noticed on a worldwide scale? It usually takes a calamity that leaves thousands dead, or a revolution—but only if it involves Imelda Marcos—for the Philippines to make the world’s headlines.

And this week, Venus Raj was bigger than Imelda Marcos.

Who, by the way, was also a beauty queen—Miss Manila—and whose win was also controversial (an earlier decision was overturned). And who also has the upswept hairdo.

Filipinos will accept anything of their chosen “representatives” to the world, as long as they are beautiful. Basta maganda! (Di niya nga sinagot, pero maganda siya! Nangurakot nga, pero maganda siya!)

Because Pinoys view life as one endless beauty contest. Nagmamaganda.

The roundup:
On ABC News with Diane Sawyer: No Major Major Mistakes for Miss Philippines
On CBS News: Miss Philippines stumbled on question
In the Washington Post: Miss Philippines: A life of no ‘major major’ mistakes
In the Huffington Post: The Philippine Bus and Miss Universe

Mockingjay, the highly-anticipated final novel in Suzanne Collins’s post-apocalyptic dystopian Young Adult science-fiction trilogy The Hunger Games, is now available at National Bookstores at a special introductory price of P530 (one-third off the regular price).

Be among the first to read Mockingjay, for free!

If you have read the first two novels in the series, Hunger Games and Catching Fire, tell us how the trilogy should end. What would you like to happen in Mockingjay? What would be the most satisfying conclusion? Who should live, who should go? Does Katniss live happily ever after? With whom?

Write your ideal Mockingjay plot in 500 words or less and post it in Comments by Friday, 3 September 2010. Your version of Mockingjay need not resemble Suzanne Collins’s Mockingjay, it just has to be compelling. While sticking to the basic narrative and characters of the Hunger Games books, of course.

This Special Edition of the Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by National Bookstore.

Where is our explanation? Preferably one that does not point to the misdeeds of the previous government.

I do not give my support casually, and I will not withdraw it lightly, but I need an explanation.

P.S. As long as you’re apologizing to the whole wide world, what about an apology to your own people? More than 15 million of them are feeling like giant idiots right now, and it doesn’t help that we have to hear irrational hypotheticals (“If you had voted for xxx instead, this wouldn’t have happened”).

Rooftops by Edward Hopper. No reason, I just like this painting.

Read this, I guarantee it’s worth it.

Waiting for the Barbarians
by C.P. Cavafy

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city’s main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don’t our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard
(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)

Hopper, Soir Bleu.

I do not take the bus. Buses bring out my natural paranoia. I’m worried that the bus will get mugged. Also, I always fall asleep on the bus and I might miss my stop. Most of all I fear that the perceived lack of discipline among Metro Manila motorists is not so much unruliness and a lack of consideration for others as a basic ignorance of traffic rules. The number one traffic violators are bus drivers; traffic violations lead to accidents.

My bus-related anxiety may seem irrational, but in the last few weeks it’s been entirely justified. There used to be a bus service inside the UP Diliman campus, but the bus company’s permit was revoked because the speeding DM buses had figured in several accidents. We took to calling them Death Machines.

That’s what buses have been lately: Death Machines. If they’re not falling into ravines, killing dozens of passengers, they’re crashing into cars, killing beauty queens, or getting involved in bloody hostage dramas (which is not their fault but there it is), or as one irate texter to an AM radio show pointed out, causing Miss Philippines to lose the Miss Universe pageant. (Hindi tuloy makapag-isip si Venus dahil sa lintik na hostage dramang yan! She couldn’t think straight because of that bloody hostage drama!)

Taxis aren’t much safer, either. Do you get the feeling that a lot of today’s cabbies arrived in Manila yesterday and learned to drive a car this morning? Today I hailed a cab along Ortigas Avenue and told the driver to take me to Rockwell. He said, Where is that? I gave him directions, and that’s when I noticed the driver. He looked like the novelty singer Vincent Daffalong circa 1988 with a mullet, if Vincent Daffalong had been buried for a week and then exhumed.

Where is Edsa? he asked. If a cabbie asks you where Edsa is, you should immediately get out. Even if you have the patience to guide the taxi, the driver’s lack of familiarity with our congested streets increases the probability of accidents. I said, Turn right at Julia Vargas, then go to Shaw. At Shaw I kept saying Turn right! Turn right! but he waited until the light had changed and then turned right, and then the cops stopped us and the driver had no idea what he’d done wrong.

Now cops—there’s another current cause of anxiety. Between the cops accused of torturing suspects and the cops who force-feed meth to traffic violators and the cops who take tour buses hostage, we don’t want to go near any cops at the moment. This traffic cop seemed nice, he was doing his job and declining the bribe openly offered by the cabbie. As in, Magkano ba? How much? It turns out the cabbie didn’t have his license because he’d already been stopped for another traffic violation this week. That’s when I decided to get out of the cab, and when I paid the fare the cabbie said, You’re leaving? Why?

Panoramic photos by banahawtext.