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Out of print for years, Twisted will be published this year in a new edition! Stay tuned for updates.

It was not the best of times, it was not the worst of times, but it was the era of my youth and everything seemed golden and alive with possibility. Well not exactly, because we can only see how wonderful a time was when it is safely in the past. To recognize the good times while they’re happening is to curse the rest of your life: from hereon it’s downhill all the way.
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I’m so eager for the new year to begin that I’ve been going around asking friends about their plans for 2018. You have to have projects, especially if you feel that the world is going to hell in a hand basket; otherwise you may as well bury yourself. (This would be a really good time for aliens, as in extraterrestrials, to make themselves known).

Robert Alejandro designed the very first Twisted book. We had planned on a catch-up lunch in the new year, but even before we had agreed on the details, I ran into him. I was ten minutes early for a lunch appointment, his lunch appointment had finished fifteen minutes early, and my lunch appointment was thirty minutes late. In short, we had catch-up time! So I’m adding to my list: Make another book with Robert.

The next day I had my catch-up lunch with Ige Ramos, who designed Twisted 2 and nearly every one of my books after that. In the last decade Ige has become well-known food historian, for which I take credit because who do you think hounded him to write? Ige has designed hundreds of books, but this year, his first self-authored book, Republic of Taste: The Untold Stories of Cavite Cuisine, will finally be published.

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At lunch with my first workshop group yesterday (Nearly all of us finished our novels! Absent: Angus, who was out of town), I asked everyone to write down their big projects and pose for photographs: this way there is a record and a reminder of what they have to do. (Click photos to read the lists.)
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Available at National Bookstores, Php1580

By having ruled pages. I cannot write on ruled pages.

They’re called Oishi Mobsters Caramel & Cheese Popcorn. They’re salty and sweet, like a meal with dessert built in, and the challenge is to stop yourself from inhaling the entire bag in five minutes. Perfect snacks to take to the movies. Get one each, sharing is impossible.

Les Deux Magots

Many years ago, a friend of mine was diagnosed with a liver problem. It could be managed with medication and a proper diet, but it would almost certainly lead, decades later, to cirrhosis. It is not easy to find out that cirrhosis is in your future, and worse if you don’t even drink. “What happens when cirrhosis sets in?” my friend asked his doctor. Now his doctor is a wise if somewhat cranky man. He did not assure my friend that everything would be all right or that science would come up with a wonder drug before then.

“But what would you do if you had cirrhosis of the liver?” my friend pressed him.

“I would go to Paris,” said the doctor. “I would eat foie gras, drink wine, and live it up until the end.”

Since then, “Is it time to go to Paris?” has become my euphemism for “Are you seriously/terminally ill?” Some would argue that it makes death sound like something to look forward to, but it’s also more considerate towards the people who will be left behind. The dead feel no pain, it’s the living who must endure sorrow, guilt (“I should’ve done this, I should’ve done that”) and loss. It would be a final kindness to leave them with the image of their friend having a Pernod at Deux Magots than wasting away in a web of plastic tubes hooked up to machines. Death is terrible but inevitable, and humans make art so they can live with this fact. So much time and effort is spent warding off death and its advance party, age. The only way to prepare for death is to live fully, and maybe write a DNR, buy a memorial plan, and leave a playlist for the wake.

Read our column at InterAksyon.

Reviews of Set A.

Everyone’s looking forward to Nick Pichay’s Macho Dancer: The Musical. Get your tickets now at the CCP Box Office or Ticketworld, Php300 per set—just Php100 per play. Cheaper than a movie, but conversation fodder for days.