Marlon’s World

I am no fan of Pinoy Big Brother, and I have made a mental note not to watch it. Ever. But recent talks (imaginary, fabricated or real) to censor the ABS-CBN reality show have convinced me to re-open a rather sordid complaint against censorship.

Even when I was still in UP MassComm, I have have always debated against censorhip. I really just don’t believe in giving up one’s right to choose his media product freely. I mean, I pay for the electricity and I pay for cable TV. Why does Government have to mind what I watch, what I read and what I listen to? Poverty, terrorism, graft and corruption, these are the things that should be solved first before the State peers into the private confines of my dinky ol’ room and choose for me the things to enjoy (salacious or otherwise).

The reason, I guess, for the proposal to censor Pinoy Big Brother is the show’s propensity to show the housemates in the skimpiest outfits or in a blurry au naturelle. Which is odd, considering that we take a pee everyday, we bathe ourselves everyday, we change our clothes evaryday. Unless one housemate has three dongs or five boobs, I really can’t see anything offensive with the human body. After all, if God created us in His image, shouldn’t we glorify Him by at least not being ashamed of the wonder that is the human body? And no one’s boinking on screen. Are bare male chests or shapely female butts enough to make me rape the entire neighborhood?          

Yes, there have been studies saying that TV violence is directly correlated to violent behavior among children, which mind you is remotely related to on-screen kinkiness. But, as any statistician would tell us, correlation does not imply causality. TV violence only has a mere tendency to make children violent and does not have the ultimate power to push us to take our cleavers out and murder the nearest person. I have great faith in human intellect, in parental guidance and in the capacity of people to make responsible decisions.

Unless we have a grand plan to make all Filipinos morons by the Year 2050, I suggest that we afford our countrymen the chance to practice their critical reasoning skills. Then again, that may be too dangerous since more people would begin bitching in their blogs by then. # 

The best that I could say about Paul Christopher’s book, Michelangelo’s Notebook is that it is a failed attempt to replicate Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. And I am still being nice here.

The book opens up with the young museum intern Finn Ryan finding what was supposedly a page from the notebook of the Renaissance master Michelangelo. This notebook has long been lost and finding it within the vaults of a New York museum would have been the talk of the town. That is, had Finn’s boss and museum curator, Alexander Crawley not fired the young lass who insisted that it was indeed Michelangelo’s and not a secondary Renaissance artist’s work as what Crawley suggested.

Hours later, Finn just freshly unemployed, news broke out that Crawley was murdered, an Arabian koummya sticking out of his mouth (Chest? I don’t remember.) As luck would have it, Finn’s boyfriend Peter was also murdered when the lovebirds returned to Finn’s apartment. Finn barely escaped the assassin. 

Delirious, she ran away and located the aging antiquarian Michael Valentine, the address of whom Finn’s mother gave her in case of a real emergency. In between Finn’s researches on the causes of the two murders in what turned out to be a hush-hush supercomputer center in the US and her very cheesy May-December liaison with Valentine (think Burt Reynolds and Katie Holmes), random murders of prominent art connoisseurs, traffickers and collectors were registered in various places in the country.

As Finn and Valentine began completing the puzzle pieces together, a parallel search was being conducted in a more sophisticated manner by a messenger sent from — lo and behold! — the Archivo Secreto Vaticano by the Cardinal Secretary of State.

The story ends with Finn, Valentine, the messenger from Rome, a New York detective, and the key to the secret finding themselves in a crypt beneath the busy streets of New York. What seemed to be a case of a multimillion-dollar art theft turned out to be a case of protecting one of the most illustrious and infamous personalities in recent Roman Catholic Church history and the Nazi connection.

What notebook?

The first issue that the author failed to resolve was the title. Why Michelangelo’s Notebook? Other than the fact that a page of a purported Michelangelo work caused a series of murders, the story didn’t dwell on how such an art find would have determined the subsequent events of the story itself. Yes, the connection could be made that this notebook had been part of the network of art thieves operating trans-nationally but it still was not enough to justify its use as title of the story.

In fact, that single page of a sketch was the only major Michelangelo work in the entire novel. Van Gogh, Gris and other masters from different art schools movements figured more prominently in the story. This is its biggest failure, to my mind, especially when a fan of The Da Vinci Code reads this novel: it lacks the substance and the tickling possibilities of a Leonardo Da Vinci conspiracy. While Leonardo was supposedly so obsessed with the Priory of Sion’s secrets that he incorporated them into his works, Michelangelo was just plain dead and decaying when a bunch of greedy people set off to smuggle art.

Unnecessarily saucy

The author Christopher also seems to be making a business out of Finn Ryan’s boobs. It pains me to note that the sex device employed in many trashy bestsellers found its way into what could’ve been a nice thesis on a Roman Catholic scandal.

The best reason I could think of to justify such a repeated description of Finn’s breasts (or Valentine’s and Kressman’s penis, for that matter) was that the author interspersed flashbacks into the narrative in so detached a fashion that the reader needed something to jolt him up from stupor every now and then. The boobs, in this case.

The novel also has the penchant to casually throw off phrases in Latin, in German and in military jargon that these became bothersome toward the end of the story. Christopher seemed to think that all his readers would have a ready guide to Nazi and World War history that he writes down the details in as-a-matter-of-fact tone.            

Loose ends

But the worst feature of Michelangelo’s Notebook is the collection of loose ends that the writer failed to tie up. It’s is not like the case of The Da Vinci Code where the ending lets the reader figure for himself a plausible conclusion. It is instead a classic case of too many facts, too little time. So who really killed all those people? Why mention that Finn’s would-be assassin looked Asian? How did it figure into the story? What happened to the Child (yes, with capital letter as this is the core of the mystery) between the 50s and the 90s? Did he find out who he really was? And that friggin’ page from Michelangelo’s notebook, where is it now?    

Unlike the amazing repertoire of research that has been undertaken on the Holy Grail and the Leonardo connection in The Da Vinci Code, Michelangelo’s Notebook has only one notable published resource to boast (I wouldn’t write the title since it would be a giveaway clue to the mystery). The description and narration went entirely without a human face. Why and how did the Father have an illicit affair with the mother of the Child? How was the Child born? How did the Father react?

These questions and more demonstrate a gaping hole in Michelangelo’s Notebook. It does not have the "a-ha" moments of a Sherlock Holmes, the fine blend of historical and artistic commentary and narrativistic development of The Da Vinci Code, the orgasmic whodunnit pace of Angels and Demons, and not even the human elements of Filipino FB Batacan’s Smaller and Smaller Circles. All it has is an unjustified page of a missing notebook at the beginning, an underdeveloped murder and conspiracy angle at the middle, an abrupt resolution at the end, and the unfulfilled promise of detective fiction all throughout the novel.

Let’s see how Donatello’s Doughnut, Raphael’s Razor (although Raphael already has Waking Raphael by Leslie Forbes) or The Lost Epistle of the Ninja Turtles fares. #               

Let it be known that this day, August the 24th, ranks among the worst days of my life. The good things that were happening to me for the last few weeks came to a screeching halt on this day and I wish that Congress would declare this day illegal from now until forever.

My Visa application for my scholarship has been one hell of a ride! It seems that every week I have to keep submitting the same documents to the same people. Worse, it seems that I am always pressed for time (as in, "Fax the papers within 15 minutes") when in fact, I have responsibly took care of all the documents way before the deadline. As proof, I was in Makati the week before and no one asked me to bring the documents. I was asked to bring ID photos which I did, even though I had already submitted the same to them before.

To add insult to injury, when I clarified some things, the task of faxing being a job outside my immediate concerns, I got the reply, "Why would you fax the documents to me? Fax it to the Consulate." Which was funny since months ago, when I asked the same person if I would have to submit 10 ID pictures, I was asked, "I only need five. Where would I use the other five?" Uhmm, just in case you lose the five I would submit? Just a guess. As I type this, it’s 8:00 PM already; I am still fuming mad.

Lest I sound like an insolent fool, I have to say that I am very much indebted to them for the scholarship for I would never ever be able to study abroad without help from anyone. An ounce of responsibility and respect is all I ask in return, which unfortunately seems so elusive.   

When I finally got all things fixed (hopefully), I came to know that my favorite Westlife member Mark Feehily has publicly admitted his homosexuality. Not that I mind. It’s just a shock, the same my classmate Nikki got after Boyzone’s Stephen admitted that, well, he is not actually a boy. Somehow, in an odd cosmic way, it’s something I’ve always known. My migraine reached new heights, by the way.

I consoled myself that at 7:00 PM, I would be able to watch my favorite "Complete Savages" over ETC. Just my luck, there were technical problems in ETC at the exact timeslot of "Complete Savages," which were later solved at around 7:30 PM when the end credits were ready to roll.

AARGGHH! Merde!    

I recently gathered from my cousin Jaq that my article in the city guide Click the City, The five people you meet in corporate hell, has been the subject of many a speculation among yuppie circles. I had never really imagined it was possible, until she forwarded me an e-mail she got from an officemate. It contained snippets of my article. I googled the name of my article and I could at least say for certain that two blogs had links to it. And the blogger’s own ravings, I have to add.    

With all honesty, I didn’t know how to react. Part of me wanted to be happy: Any writer wants to be read and I am not an exception. Part of the me, however, was screaming: I wrote that article! Kneel and worship me! Call it  writer’s angst. Unless your face appears on the pages of the dailies (like did Teodoro Benigno’s) or on the glossy spreads of magazines (like did Carrie Bradshaw’s), you’re essentially a no-body.

Then I think of all those people who write on the broadsheets, telling the world their travels abroad, their pets, their mobile phones, their movie reviews and I begin questioning why no one ever wanted me to write for his newspaper. Am I too caustic? Am I too unoriginal? Am I too frank? Am I took bland? Am I unreadable by the public in general?   

It is only when I have answers to these questions that I would be satisfied, I guess. Otherwise, what I have managed to do is to merely end up in a Google search and nothing more. Now that’s hell.

It has been my sinful indulgence nowadays to watch people wash their dirty linen in public. Politicians seem to enjoy it, to say the least, but what really baffles the mind is that of televangelists. And by televangelist, I mean the ministers of Iglesia ni Cristo and of Ang Dating Daan. I don’t belong to any of these groups; I am a proud Roman Catholic. I have two priests in my extended family tree and my grand-aunt (bless her soul) was a hermana de primera during her heyday.

For those not in the know, these two religions have been battling it out in the television. Each one interprets what the other had said, exposes what seems fraudulent, and promises heaven and earth and all those in between to its potential converts.

I am not a religious expert and neither am I the holiest Catholic. I have broken repeatedly many of the Ten Commandments. I have not performed the six commandments of the Holy Roman Church. I have done many things classified as the seven mortal sins. The last time I went to confession was in second year high school. And I ate balut on a Good Friday many years ago and I finished reading “Angels and Demons” during our visita iglesia.. But let me say my piece on this heated debate.

First, I believe that no person can impose his truths on somebody else. Lightning may strike me now but I think that we ourselves chart our own realities.

Second, no one can budge me from my faith. Not because I believe that it’s the “true-est” religion there is. Let me put it this way for the sake of argument: many say that salvation is awarded on the basis of membership to a particular church. If I would convert to the “correct” faith and be saved, what would I feel atop the heavens when I look down and see all my family and my Catholic friends suffering in hell? What would I feel atop the heavens when I see John Paul the Great, who had done far greater, nobler and holier things than I did, languishing in hell? I rather be damned with friends and great people than be saved by my lonesome.

Third, many people pride themselves on knowing the Bible and on swapping vitriolic verses at each other. But the One who inspired all these things said Himself that in His religion, the simplified rule is only (if I may paraphrase it) “Love thy neighbor, be they your enemies or your friends.” Elsewhere, He said that when somebody slaps you, turn the other cheek. These things are already hard to do as they are. I say before we burst an artery memorizing the Bible and hurl quotable quotes at the other camp, we first perfect our loving and our forgiving.

Fourth, we preach humility, charity, love, selflessness. But hasn’t anyone noticed that Christianity is fuelled by the antitheses of these virtues? I mean, we teach ourselves not to save on material things but rather save up for our place in heaven. Translation: it’s okay to be selfish for as long as you are saving the brownie points and not your tons of money. We teach ourselves to be charitable and reap the rewards of eternal life. Translation: Be charitable now because chances are, the rate of return is going to be much more rewarding in the afterlife. Therefore, it’s a misnomer to say that a good Christian is not greedy and selfish. A good Christian is greedy and selfish with the right things.

I say this, hence, with utmost conviction: My religion, like Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno’s, is to search truth in life. My own truths and not anyone else’s.

I voted for Raul Roco in 2004 because I believe that he got what it takes to govern the country. He did not have the political machinery of GMA, the star wattage of FPJ, the iron fist of Lacson, and the religious-charismatic flair of Villanueva. And yet, in his own intellectual way, he offered a glimpse of hope that this country desperately needs. He had a definitive platform, which for all other candidates seemed to be a mere mumbo-jumbo of promises pieced together whenever it was asked.

So inspired was I with Roco that I included in my valedictory speech in UP Mass Com his famous reflection: that when he was 20, he wanted to change the world and that as time went by – at 60 years old – he realized he only had to change himself first. I rather not repeat it entirely. Roco did it way better. It now makes me queasy to ponder on the various reasons why people did not vote for him. They said he used to flare up easily, which is contradicted by the fact that the current occupant of Malacañang is not that serene herself. They said he is an elitist, which is contradicted by the fact no other Presidentiable was masa himself despite the image he tried to portray. They said they did not understand what he was trying to say, which says a lot why election campaigns in the Philippines are laden with sexy stars cavorting in their lingerie while singing the inanest lyrics. They said he was sick, which begs the question “But who ain’t, really?”

I guess the best that could be said on why Roco didn’t win is that many still subscribe to the notion of traditional politics. That is, that governance of the Philippines is reserved for the macho, the proud, the strong, the popular and that we are still not mature enough to think beyond personal gain.

To this day, I wonder what the Philippines would have been had Roco won the Presidential Election. Would he be suffering the same political heat the La Gloria is trying to control right now? As I write this, I think that Gloria has lauded him for placing the welfare of the country over his personal comforts. I also hear that politicians from different persuasions have praised Roco for being an upright man with uncompromising principles, the President this country never had, the most prepared among the candidates, a great loss in Philippines society.

And this makes me wonder even more: why didn’t you support him then? Didn’t you want the country to be led by an upright man with uncompromising principles? And isn’t it a bit misplaced for the President to praise the deceased Senator for placing country over personal welfare when she herself has been asked to do the same by resigning but refused to do so?

Let’s cut the crap, please. This is the least we can do to honor the memory of Raul Roco. Salamat po!

It’s the first time I’d share this.