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.
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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.
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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.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>