bambina writes

Read the Signs

If the guy you're dating had on his bedside table a self-help book by the likes of Osho or Dr John Demartini, would you think he was profound or a total loser?

Personally the warning bells would start clanging loudly in my brain. And I tried reading both books, believe me, but there was no breakthrough experience for me and I gave up after 30 pages. I would rather see, say, a hefty Yves Saint Laurent tome by his bedside; at least I'd know he's gay and we could spend the rest of the night watching Sunset Boulevard and taking turns acting out Norma Desmond's lines.

Things Go Better with Coke

The ongoing "high" society drugs-and-sex scandale in Manila as exposed by THAT blog reminds me of an incident - oh gosh - over 20 years ago or so. I was home from Paris for the summer and on a date with a well-known Man About Town. Intellectual sophisticate, smooth talker, connoisseur and collector of all things luxurious, from sports cars, aircraft, fine vintage wines, private islands and women...

Queen Bees and Wannabes

You gotta love our country. The land where Kafka wears a smile, while tripping on Zoloft in between marathon cocaine speedball sessions. And where the scandales keep on coming like the gift that never stops giving.

Forget the NBN-ZTE scandale. All of Manila - and beyond - is riveted by the ongoing revelations of the former Australian gay lover of some lifestyle columnist with a penchant for snorting the white stuff up his nose and defrauding boyfriends. His partners in crime - allegedly - are some of Manila's IT boys and girls collectively known as the Gucci Gang. Whether self-styled, self-proclaimed and self-advertised I won't say; you be the judge.

White Mischief

A few weeks back, my friend Mons Tantoco-Romulo asked me to answer the question of the week for her column in the Philippine Star. I'm flattered that Mons thinks of me every now and then despite my being away from Manila, but I'm afraid the replies I've given her over the years are rarely as profoundly introspective as everyone else's. Perhaps her respondents like to see her column as a chance to go all Deepak, but believe me, if your life the past four years has been anything like mine, with its never-ending circus of assessments and pre-trial conferences, you'd be Deepak-ed out.

So Mon's question, ironically put to me a week before Valentine's Day, was: "How do you move on after a heartbreak?"

Rhythm and Bruise

This was a question published recently in Parade magazine from a reader named Mike Waldo:

Ike Turner died of a cocaine overdose. Did ex-wife Tina attend the funeral?

I don't read Parade magazine, but California writer Tod Goldberg does, if only to lambaste the idiotic letters sent in by clueless readers. Tod Goldberg's blog, which I absolutely adore, is not for the faint-hearted. Punctuated with f-words, it seethes with his vicious brand of satire, aimed mainly at the inanity of pop culture. His main mission - admittedly futile and quixotic - is to rid the world of what he calls "fucktards". And for some reason, he believes, the readership of Parade magazine is awash with such fucktards.

Being There

If I were back home right now, I KNOW I would have been at the interfaith rally yesterday along Ayala Avenue in Makati, calling for the resignation of the Midget. Even if I was raised in a household where we ate politics for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I grew up largely apolitical. I simply didn't care. Men like Jose Rizal, Apolinario Mabini, Manuel Quezon, Ninoy Aquino and Pepe Diokno... to me they seemed to be freaks of genetics that our national DNA managed to produce every few generations through some fluke of history and chromosomes.