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A video by Jim Hansen, written and performed by Drew Droege.

What would you like for your birthdee?

Tanong ni Noel: Sino ang mas deadma, si Chloe Sevigny o si Jaclyn Jose?

Sale 2228 Lot 206

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT SALINGER, J.D. Typed Letter Signed, to Elizabeth Cordova, declining to speak at her high school graduation, explaining that this is because he must attend his son’s eighth-grade graduation, stating that talking writers are a scourge, and offering a two-sentence graduation speech intended for her alone. 1 page, 4to, folds. With the original envelope. Windsor, 14 May 1974
Estimate $3,000-4,000

See the details here.

My column last Sunday in the Philippine Star.

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Triptych by Leo Abaya

At the Philippine Star-National Bookstore event F. Sionil Jose wondered why Willie Revillame is famous. It can’t just be the cash handouts—there are other TV personalities who give money away. The controversy that he generates—from suspensions for offensive behavior or language to sexual harassment charges to his ongoing legal battle with his former network—has not only failed to alienate his core audience, it seems to have made him more popular. His long, rambling speech before he went on leave from his show, pending yet another MTRCB review, may offer some useful clues.

Willie Revillame assumed the role of victim as he had many times in the past. He asked why he was being persecuted. He took issue with show business personalities who had criticized him on Twitter over the episode of the dancing 6-year-old boy. He was particularly offended by the statements of former child stars Lea Salonga and Aiza Seguerra. “Why are you doing this to me?” cried the “victim”, whose current network contract is said to guarantee him billions.

These are familiar statements because we have heard them from many mouths. They are the stock defense of every sidewalk vendor arrested for not having a permit, every policeman suspended on graft charges, and every politician caught stealing. “Why are you persecuting me?” and “I am the victim here.”
(more…)

It’s Wednesday, time for our weekly Jock With A Book. We were going to put up a photo of a rugby player in his underwear, but we received this hologram from our Jedi Master Teddy Boy Locsin in New York:

Dear Jessica, I have a near-naked photo of myself in football shorts though I can’t play the game for the life of me. Let me look for it and send it to you. Thank you for taking the trouble to send me these questions to answer. I just finished Pilates with my pretty but very firm Japanese sensei and needed to wind down after all the contortions she made me do. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Breathing out until I can feel my tummy touch my spine. 

So we will put off our regular Jock With A Book to give Teddy-Wan Kenobi time to locate his football photo, assuming it does not disintegrate when it makes contact with air. In the meantime here is the continuation of Ted’s answers to your fascinating questions.

Photo: Teodoro Locsin Jr at the Daily Globe.

Stella: How do you personally feel about President Noynoy breaking up with Shalani?

Ted: Devastated. She deserved a Palace wedding. But relieved because now I have a chance in my imagination. Her gums are pink, her teeth are pearls, her skin like shot silk, her face could launch a thousand ships. If he had married her, I might have joined a military conspiracy.

brainchild: How do you personally feel about President Noynoy going out with Liz Uy?

Ted: Good. Now I can dream of being with Shalani Soledad. But only dream because of my extreme old age. His face was getting in the way of my fantasy. She is luminous. Her face should be on the commemorative medal for the French Revolution, right after Deneuve. 

brainchild: More Filipinos work abroad as skilled workers, including the young labor force. Is it good for the country and its citizens?

Ted: Every person owes his first allegiance to himself, to make the best of his talents, to study hard to that end, and to get the best job wherever it is that allows him to show those talents and rise in the world. The rest is just crap.

Pacquiao did not become the greatest boxer of all time by thinking of his country. He did it by fighting to the best of his ability and when he became champion he included Filipinos in his glory. Do the same. If you amount to nothing by staying in the Philippines, nobody will want to be a part of you.

You owe your parents for your education and not your goddamn country, not even if you came from UP which is partly subsidized because what made you a good student was not the subsidy but your study. All the more so if your parents paid for your entire education. Kiss their feet. You owe it all to them and only to them. The country can go to hell. 

samutsari: Like some men I know, do you also have what we call “gaydar?” How do you find gay people in general?

Ted: Nothing, like heteros. Some are dumb, some are smart, a handful are talented and, like heteros, some are nice and the rest are assholes. My hero is Alexander the Great a great homo himself, followed by General Rundstedt who mastered the art of the rear-end attack or attack -and-withdraw, whereby he punished the Allies more severely as he retreated from the Bulge than he ever did attacking the Bulge in the first place. Rear action is a difficult thing to do well. I don’t think of people as homos or heteros but as nice or nasty, talented or dumb.

Juan: Is Tilda Swinton everything you thought Orlando would be?

Ted: No. I read Orlando on a ferry visiting the 1,000 Swedish islets in the dead of winter and Tilda Swinton never came to mind but I find her very attractive because of her small breasts. 

Juan: What’s on repeat in your iPod these days?

Ted: What’s an iPod?

Juan: When and how did you quit smoking?

Ted: I never smoked except when I was writing an article when my father forced me to write for the Free Press. Smoking gave me diarrhea which forced me to stay in one place so I might as well type my article since I don’t like relieving myself in strange houses or public toilets, not to mention the noise it makes either way. I outgrew the need to retch before settling down to writing very quickly.

Juan: What was your final club at Harvard?

Ted: Although my name appears after Kennedy’s as a donor to the Harvard Fund, I never joined a club. I hung out with the sons of Argentine junta generals so we went around soliciting support for Argentina during the Falklands War. A worthy cause but the junta fell, so we dropped it. One of them held up the Argentine parliament during Cory’s time and another was the nephew of Colonel Flying Nun who used to throw nuns out of helicopters. He said their habits kept them airborne momentarily. 

Juan: If James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard were in a fight, who would bitch-slap whom?

Ted: I love both but only the early Leonard.

Juan: Do you have facebook and/or twitter? Please pass judgment on people who do/don’t.

Ted: I do but cannot access either. I will learn when I come around to them. Great ideas.

ruth: Anong libro ang hinding-hindi mo babasahin?

Ted: I will never read anything written by a motivational writer like Og Mandino because it is so baduy.

the chronicler of boredom: Sir, a young lawyer started her career in the judiciary and her training is geared towards research, issue-spotting, and issue resolution. As a next step in her career should she: a) pursue advance studies in law; b) go into litigation; or c) entrench herself in the judicial system as a court officer? The lawyer concerned is predisposed towards research and more inclined towards learning legal theories. She also has a heart for advocacy and argumentation.

Ted: There is time in a day to do everything she says she is interested in but nothing beats litigation experience from what I see. Theory can be acquired by private reading, though the close kind, and interaction with those to whom philosophy comes naturally. Sadly they don’t talk to just anybody.

avignon: If you were presidential speechwriter and part of the official delegation to a leaders’ summit hosted by a neighboring country, how would you say “The wine sucks” without committing a diplomatic faux pas?

Ted: I would say, after taking a tiny sip, “Interesting.” And if the occasion gets really boring, I would say, “Give me more, no, no, leave the bottle. Jesus, I may commit suicide if I hear another speech and miss out on seeing this beautiful country and its lovely women”–or handsome men as the case may be. I would never criticize the food or the drinks because that is just plain bastos and not just a mark but a big billboard of bad breeding.

avignon: When you went ballistic at the Smartmatic guys right after the May 2010 election, some of us feared you would suffer an aneurysm, judging from the ferocity of your fury. Which literary or film character were you channelling at that moment?

Ted: Mel Brooks.

* * * * *

The final batch of birthday questions.

sirius black: Is it possible for a yuppie enslaved in a very taxing job to write a novel without self-imposed confinement or is he just a lunatic for wishing for the impossible?

Ted: Look at Kafka and Eliot, they worked in insurance, or Wallace Stevens or Louis Auchincloss, or Thomas Macaulay, or Edmund Burke, or Bernal Diaz who was out most of the day killing Aztecs. There is always time to write. Confinement is not necessary. Sometimes just a table at a quiet corner at Taormina with Etna looking down on you. All gentlemen and gentlewomen should write well as part of the equipment of their humanity. My aunts in the convent never wrote professionally but wrote in French (I cannot judge) and impeccably in English; my grandma only cooked for us in Spanish. 

sirius black: Any two cents on writing?

Ted: Yes. My father said that no matter what you do in life, if you don’t write, you die as nothing.

Ariel: What books you enjoy reading and who are your favorite authors??

Ted: Mann, his brother Mann and his son Mann, Gide, Roger du Gard, Tolstoy, Spengler, Hitler, Malraux in the original Psychology of Art, Macaulay, Gibbon, Runciman, Burke, Boswell, Sassoon, Conrad, Nussbaum, Kant, Rawls, Kant, Cather, all of Henry James again and again and again, Kant (who is a favorite of Viggo Mortensen), I can’t go on, all I have ever done is lead many lives by reading many good writers. If you want to live one full life, join the resistance in any country but if you want to lead many lives, read. My greatest fear is dying because I will not be able to read.

arlsjr: Your top 10 movies and books of all time please??

Ted: One great movie, Wild Bunch. Nothing better. Books, see above and more I cannot mention.

arlsjr: I have it on very good authority that you have the whitest, softest and smoothest feet! How do you keep them that way?

Ted: Yes, my feet are more beautiful than those of any woman I know. Genetics. My mother’s feet were the same, she was also one of the most beautiful women in the world. My father had to keep an eye on me because I was always hovering around her feet and she preferred me to be her escort at state balls than him because I looked infinitely better in a tux though I couldn’t dance as well as he.

jeffwar314: Mag-uusap ikaw, si Jessica, si Kris at si Boy Abunda…anung topic…at kelan kayo matatapos?

Ted: Kris, Abunda, Jessica and me? One day, privately, at a dinner.

angus25: It’s not yet Wednesday, but there’s a handsome man reading a book. Happy Birthday, Mr. Locsin! I have no questions, but I will wait for your response.

Ted: A handsome man reading a good book is a sight to behold. I often look at the mirror for that purpose.

Onyx: How would you answer the question posed by Maria Ressa to Pareng Bill? We need an honest assessment.? “You’ve been a long-time observer of the Philippines. You know first-hand each Filipino’s ability and potential. Why do you think our nation hasn’t yet, after People Power, after everything we’ve gone through, why haven’t we been able to fulfill that potential?”

Ted: Maria Ressa is wrong, Bill Clinton didn’t even know Cory Aquino and showed no interest in EDSA history. We have fulfilled as much of our potential as is possible; if not it is because we don’t get the opportunities that, say, an imperial Philippine policy might open up to us. Macapagal wanted to invade Sabah for that purpose but we were discouraged. Sayang. We are smarter than Americans because we don’t vote for people who hate the poor openly, unlike Americans who are desperate for medicare and jobs and out of Iraq and yet voted out the Democrats who gave them all that. Tell us, which is the dumber nation?

Plus, we belong to the One True Faith and they are heretics strictly speaking though nice people just the same. Hope God takes that into consideration on the Last Day but by then it is every soul for himself. I know where I am going as a Catholic–not a good one but a devoted one to its political causes. The rest will fry.

Onyx: Are you sure that was Tina Fey at the diner and not Sarah Palin? If it did turn out that the the lady was Sarah Palin, what’s the first thing you would have told her?

Ted: I would say nothing to either one because they don’t understand Spanish which is the language I speak here in New York. I turn to the waiters who love me and I say, “Sal por favor. Quien es esa mujer.” “Creo que is Tina Fey pero quien sabe, they all look alike.” “Verdad. Un poquito mas cafe.”

avignon: When you were with the House of Representatives, who was/were the congresspersons with whom you could discuss books and films? ?

Ted: When I was a congressman I talked mostly to Ronnie Zamora who talked only to God.

yorkie85: When will we see you in a cowboy costume again?

Ted: I had a nice cowboy costume but I have outgrown it. Next summer I will go to a dude ranch. 

rph_kat: We all know your nickname, Teddy-Boy. Do you have any other nicknames? Can you please tell us the backstory for each nickname that you have?

Ted: Teddy Boy came from my dad but my baptismal name is Alberto, after Albertus Magnus, Aquinas’s teacher. When I passed the bar, I had to go to court to be enrolled as a lawyer because nothing in the records corresponded to Teddy Boy Locsin, Jr., only Alberto Locsin son of Rosario Lopez and Teodoro Montelibano Locsin, Jr. He didn’t care. When he saw me with Herodotus in the Rawlinson translation at age three as my toilet reading, he called me Teddy.

rph_kat: Enjoy your Autumn in New York. Have you gone to see the “leaves”?

Ted: The leaves have turned and dropped. The branches are bare. The weather is sharply cold but the sun is often out, bright and dazzling even, the air is clear. I love New York. 

Chus: What advice can you give President Noynoy’s speechwriter Carmen Mai Mislang?

Ted: To Miss Lang, as I prefer to call her in my fantasy that she is Jessica Lange, all I can say is stay as fetching as you appear in your facebook photo. If you can’t be smart be pretty. I understand you sing well, too. A beautiful throat to match the face. What more can the world ask for.

Jules: Who are your top 5 female writers?

Ted: Willa Cather, George Eliot in Romola only, Martha Nussbaum, the Brontes, Austen, Emily Dickinson, above all, Margaret Yourcenar who taught me to look in the horizon for the profile of my death. Wow, shet! That’s writing. 

* * * * *

That’s it for your questions to our Jedi Master. Thank you for joining our mass consultation with Teddy-Wan Kenobi. We regret that questions posted after the 15th were not included in the hologram to Dagobah. However, we will make the Q&A with Teddy Boy Locsin a recurring feature on this site. Judging from your questions, he is desperately needed.

Photos from the book, Heroes.

My Jedi Master, publisher and surrogate parents (both of them) Teodoro Locsin, Jr is 62 today. Happy Birthday, Teddy-Wan Kenobi!

I was leading a quiet, one might say idyllic existence, plaiting my hair in Naboo or chasing whomp rats in the deserts of Tatooine, when I met the Jedi Master. He had returned to civilian life after rendering faithful and unswerving service to the Queen in the war against the Empire. He had helped to blow up the Death Star. But he could never ignore the call of battle, and once more he picked up his light sabre and declared war on the forces of stupidity.

One day the draft of my column about a bad burrito was returned to me emblazoned in red pen: Who wrote this? The Force is strong in this one.

So I became a Padawan and learned the ways of The Force.

Today you may address the Jedi Master. Do you have a question for Teddy Boy Locsin? Post it in Comments. Mr Locsin will answer your questions from New York, where he is on vacation. Pertinent issues would include the writing profession, the legal profession, politics, books, movies, food (especially food), travel, who should play him in the movie, why Southland Tales by Richard Kelly is a masterpiece, and his late cat Tommaso.

We will kick off the Q&A with this question: What percentage of the House of Representatives would you consider “intelligent life forms”?

* * * * *

Sunday, 14 November 2010

Text message from Teddy-Wan Kenobi: Had breakfast with Tina Fey.

Jessica: Really?! What did you talk about?! Email me photos!!

Teddy-Wan Kenobi: Well, photos a bit of a problem. Technically we had breakfast. Together at the diner, beside each other. But not at the same table. But those are just details.

Quick, post your questions.

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Excellent questions. I just sent R2D2 with a hologram to the Dagobah system, and Teddy-Wan’s answers should reach us in a bit.

Keep the questions coming. Here’s one from Stella: How do you personally feel about P-Noy’s breakup with Shalani?

May I say how glad I am to be getting rugby guy-like stats for a post about my Jedi master? Ted will be so pleased.

* * * * *

Dispatch from the Dagobah System: Teddy Boy Locsin answers your questions.

dear_prudence: Do you also bring your tiny rice cooker with you when you travel?

Ted: Yes. I leave one in every apartment we own, the small Panasonic good for one. I don’t share. The rice is jasmine, top grade, or Japanese, the most expensive. If I have to get carbs, I may as well get the best. Always rinse the rice 15 times until the water is crystal clear and you have stripped off all the nutrients. You can get those from vitamin supplements. The result is separated but soft, sparkling white and glossy rice that reminds me of Ho Chi Minh’s sparse beard as it did Jean Lacouture. I refuse to identify him.

ifrico: Ang gwapo niyo po pala, lalo na noong kabataan niyo. Has Jessica showed you her novel draft? Do you think she’ll ever get (or want) it published?

Ted: Yes, I was good looking but not delusional even as a child. I knew good looks when I saw it: twins in school who were the really handsome ones and there were two of them perfectly identical. Blond and luminous and too good for any of the girls that fawned on them.

I haven’t seen the draft but she is the finest writer in the English language with perfect taste. Some of our writers are essentially baduy or pander to popular, low-brow prejudices about what Americans think we are like. I prefer to chat at restaurants with Spaniards abroad, like a couple at the French Culinary Institute, who also took Latin in high school and regret its elimination from the curriculum, the extinction of Catholicism in Spain and the death of Francisco Franco which my wife still mourns.

Did you hear about Franco’s last days when he heard weeping outside his window and he asked his valet what that was? The valet said, It is the people. What are they doing? he asked. They have come to say goodbye, the valet answered. Why, where are they going, Franco said. What a guy. Spain had no porno under the Phalange. 

kurokuroko: Would you consider doing a TV show again?

Ted: Am waiting for a generous offer. I am proud. There are many things I won’t do–although I can’t think of one if the money’s right.

Akyat-Bahay Gangster: You’ve already lived through very interesting times and have been a direct participant in many crucial episodes in our history, yet you’re only 62. What else would you like to accomplish or get involved in, before the “last call”?

Ted: Only 62?! In 6 years, I will be 68 and two years from Alzheimer’s or a dirty old man with a private nurse, and in 20 years I don’t want to see myself. Old age is a shipwreck said De Gaulle and there is nothing to salvage from it. You will find yourself less analytical and more anecdotal. Oh, God. I am dyeing my hair but this last time, the stylist made it red. It will grow out before I return and get a proper dye from Robert Remchi, the master of disguise. Before the last call, which I won’t answer, I want to reread all the impeccable literary choices I have made. I just finished all the novels of Joseph Conrad for the third time. The Dostoevsky experiment with Jessica barely panned out but we delivered a joint lecture on it to a very select audience because we didn’t want to share our insights. I wanted to free Aung Saan Suu Kyi all by myself and be her speechwriter when she recaptures Burma for freedom but it seems she has forgotten that she once worked for me as a newspaper columnist at the Daily Globe. I fired her for failing to meet the deadline three times. Turned out the Norwegian who smuggled out her copy was captured and tortured to death but that is no excuse.  

blueboy: I want to write for Rogue Magazine. I understand you’re the Editor-at-Large. What do I need to do? Also, What does Editor-at-Large mean? I honestly have no idea.

Ted: I am as clueless as you are. I don’t even get to attend the near-naked photo shoots but I have put my foot down about being there when Rogue does Shalani whose beauty and manner are, as Chuchay Fernandez said, luminous. I would be in love with her if I weren’t old enough to be her grandfather. To write for Rogue you just have to write well and I will take care of the rest. The photos have to be good, too, or a photo shoot can be arranged. Jose Mari, the King of Rogue, is open-minded.

Juan: You seem to have escaped the kalbo curse. What’s your secret?

Ted: I barely escaped the bald curse and the secret is fighting baldness for 40 years without letup–resorting to everything from Kaminomoto in the 60s, to iodine in the 50s, to laundry soap courtesy of Winnie Monsod, to my own version of a purple soap bar, to Minoxidil, to more Minoxidil, without fail, day after day, until I stumbled on Propecia which posed a riddle to Ronnie Zamora and I.

It works. You get to keep your hair and new hair grows but you get erectile dysfunction. On the other hand, if you don’t take it, you get an erection but where will you take that if you are bald? It is a conundrum.

As usual, I found the answer since I am a genius: alternate Propecia, so that it is up and down, up and down, up and down and just make sure it is up when the occasion presents itself. The alternativity could be more emphatic if you took Viagra but get a flush, don’t know if you’re tumescent or have the plague as Thucydides described a key symptom, and your vision gets clouded and you get a headache.

Juan: Who in Congress and the Executive branch looks/sounds smart but is actually dumb as heck?

Ted: Sim Datumanong and Rudy Albano, pere and fils, Joker Arroyo and Juan Ponce Enrile are the real thing. They look as smart as they are. The rest are cursed with candid faces.

P.S. I just want to make it clear that I meant that these three are the genuine article, smart and the best in the business. Sim is the oracle on parliamentary procedure without whom I would have been lost in Congress, Joker is my guardian and is the only lawyer who can argue like Spader in Boston Legal before the Supreme Court and win, and Johnny is always right on technical aspects of the law like tax and therefore agrees with me.

The rest I said have candid faces, which is an allusion to Robert Bolt’s screenplay for Lawrence of Arabia where Abu Abu Tayi, scimitar in hand, tells an English officer, “Thank God that when He made you a stupid man He gave you a stupid face or you would be dead at this moment.” Am rereading Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Each time shows it is not as great as my father thought. Doughty improves constantly on repeated rereadings.

* * * * *

I will post the rest of his answers later because it’s nearly 3 am and I’m cracking up at his Propecia method.

Text from Ted: Why do you laugh? Two of the smartest guys thought that up.

Me: No, I laugh because genius it is! The Heisenberg of hair you are!

* * * * *

16 November, 1121h.

In love with my Jedi Master/Vader you now are.
My step-Mater you want to be.
Only one thing to do there is.
Bribe me.

* * * * *

THE CONTINUATION

Juan: What’s the stupidest quote/idea/thing of 2010?

Ted: “The wine sucks.” I want some of that, saves having to chat up a person to get the service. You just uncork the bottle and it sucks you. Only Miss Lang has experienced it.

Juan: What’s the best restaurant in Manila located in a mall?

Ted: The expensive steak place at Rockwell owned by my good friend, whose prices are so steep they crush all memory of its name, leaving only the recollection of its inimitable taste. I say this so he will invite me.

Juan: What happened to the Supreme Court gig?

Ted: I got four votes, actually five, but the fifth decisive vote required personal attendance to be formally cast again and my supporter wasn’t really interested in helping so he voted for me when it didn’t count and didn’t when it did. Now I owe him for nothing. 

besotted13: I would have asked you to marry me despite the 35-year age gap but a little bird told me that you’re happily married (sniff). Perhaps in the next lifetime.

Ted: I can still marry you but we shall have to hide. Since I lost my stomach because of my heart surgery and drastic exercise regimen, we can now hide behind the pillars in Rockwell so my wife won’t catch us. I am now a size 32 when I was once a 36 at the Gap.

charlieblue: May pag-asa pa bang maibalik ang Today newspaper?

Ted: Today, as Young Frankenshtein put it, is dead, dead as a strand of fettucini. It wouldn’t have survived in the Internet Age. So it might be revived in Cyberspace. Let me think about it. Meanwhile, I am trying to interest Mari Ugarte in a black and white semi-glossy magazine with the best writing–to come out with a few copies in print and on the Web.

Ronnie Zamora wants to put up a blog but with access limited to those with a particularly astronomical IQ because he said he doesn’t want to insult himself by communicating with total strangers who aren’t even as smart as he is. The messages will be censored for intelligence, he said, because he doesn’t want to stumble on remarks less than sterling.

isaak: What do you think of Kindle and other e-book devices?

Ted: The Kindle is the best way to read a fat book like the War on Civilization or The Kindly Ones or Savage Detectives or Vollman’s Imperial. Also all of Conrad because you are forced to read every phrase and consider its felicity or lack of it and its place in the general architecture. Great idea and it will not be replaced by the iPad which has other features that distract from pure reading.

kumagcow: Who is the lamest politician in Philippine history?

Ted: Legion. Hate to say it but the smartest was Ferdinand E. Marcos who jailed my Dad, which is neither here nor there.

mak: This question has been burning in my mind for the longest time and this will be the first time I will ask this question: Paano sa Ingles ang “Pang-ilang presidente ng Pilipinas si Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo?”

Ted: GMA is what president of the Philippines? 9 and 10, the only one and thank God because she was there when the country needed extreme brains to survive the global financial crisis. That’s over and we don’t need her anymore.

humptydumpty: Do many people tell you that you look like a cuter version of Gibo?

Ted: Seriously, it is George Clooney. That’s what they say, not me.

samutsari: Do you think Manny Pacquiao will become Philippine President someday?

Ted: Manny Pacquiao will be elevated to a Roman god one day like Caesar because he is the greatest boxer of all time. If he becomes president, we shall have Dionisia as First Mom which is not a bad prospect. She has a sense of humor and, like her son, can laugh at herself. 

samutsari: Pahabol: What makes Jessica Zafra tick?

Ted: The prodding of her intelligence and talent which won’t let her rest. The only cure is a lobotomy or to be born someone else.

wenkebach: What book will you recommend to an average Pinoy to help initiate his love for reading?

Ted: Nothing. If you are not born with it, you can never acquire it.

wenkebach: Do you have children, and if you do, what will you tell them if they ask how our dear Manny Pacquiao is doing in Congress?

Ted: I have children and if they watch TV they will see that Pacquiao is more attentive to his congressional duties than most of his colleagues. 

brainchild: What is the secret of success?

Ted: Wealthy parents, native intelligence and taste in the arts, taking drugs but never selling them.

* * * * *

We are publishing Teddy-Wan Kenobi’s answers in installments to allow you to grasp his Jedi mind-tricks or recover from having food shoot out of your nose.

More later.

Former US President Bill Clinton’s talk at the Manila Hotel was entitled “Embracing Our Common Humanity.”

Granted, some humanity is more embraceable than others. (I am channeling Noel. And how.) One of the Winklevii Ayala Corp president Fernando Zobel arrived carrying a large umbrella—because he drove himself. No bodyguards (unless they were a crack ninja team), no retinue. That’s cool.

Doreen Yu noted the red string around his wrist and asked if he was into Kabbalah. He said no, it was just something his daughter gave him after they’d finished a run.

Are there other countries besides the Philippines where people will overthrow a regime one day and then line up for photos with the deposed strongman’s wife the next? On the other hand you can’t fight charisma.

Here’s one of the Jessicii, Soho, with Tim Yap who is totally ripping off my look. Odd juxtaposition, no? But they’re at the same network.

I hitched a ride back to Makati with Melo Esguerra, who told me an amazing story. Recently he took a taxi very late at night, and he didn’t have change so he asked the driver to stop at a convenience store. The driver seemed trustworthy, so Melo left his gadgetry in the cab—iPad, laptop, cellphone—and dashed into the store to get change. This took two minutes. When he came out of the store the taxi was gone. Vanished. Split. Melo thought his stuff was lost forever; he was just hoping to get his IDs back. Three days later the taxi driver called his brother, who was listed on Melo’s ID as the “in case of emergency” contact. The driver apologized profusely and returned all of Melo’s stuff.

Here’s the giant head with designer Frederick Peralta, whom you may have seen on the hit telenovela, Magkaribal. “Everyone was crying at the wrap party. I think there’s going to be a second series.”

I owe Frederick a tuxedo. This is what happened. Years ago, Abe Florendo my editor at Today assigned me to interview Robin Padilla. We were going to take photos, so I suggested we make him wear a tux. So Abe borrowed a tuxedo from Frederick. The interview and shoot went very well. The tux fit perfectly. Then Robin Padilla said, “Can I keep the tux?” and I was so mesmerized by his tattoo of a hand clutching a heart wrapped in barbed wire I said, “Sure!” When we got back to the office Abe said, “How did it go?” I said, “Great.” He said, “Where’s the tux?” “Uhhh…I gave it to Robin.” Abe sighed, rolled his eyeballs, and called Frederick. I love Abe, no one is better at managing nuts.

Where are the pictures of President Clinton? I’ll post the video later.