Sports, I've realized, makes me happier than, say, masturbating (not that I do it anymore). You see, I've never been anything other than the intelligent obedient son that I was made to believe. For years, I'd watch the school jocks knead their balls in their rough hands before exchanging hard sweaty rounds of strength display. One time, one of the boys invited me over to observe, having noticed me all starry eyed watching them play. So, I obliged with such tingling eagerness, it was as if the world has just turned into a candy store. The following day, I dropped by the changing room to see if that boy was there to teach me a few kneading techniques. Indeed, he was. In his navy sweatpants. Just the sweatpants.

It must have been due to this profound encounter that I've carried over to this day, a fixation for navy sweatpants. The boy was natural with sports clothes as he was with teaching dorks about the great many ways to hold a ball. For three languidly momentous, joyous, earth-shaking hours, he taught me, not just how to throw a ball with maximum speed, but how to hold a bat as well. He'd position himself in my back, raising my arms to the level of my chest and gently guides them from side to side. In the minutes that we were skin to skin, I could feel his musk rubbing into me, his pelvic sinews firm on my skinny ass. His hands were rough as they were gentle. So was his voice.

Too bad it had to end. The corps commander cannot just be seen too privately that way with another boy. But from that time on, my fierce determination to hold a ball, and anything that remotely resembles it, has taken peak. There was just a bit of a downslide in college after a classmate unintentionally hit my face with a ball during PE--twice. Once on the face and another, on my abdomen. I thought, to humiliate myself like that is simply not worth it.

Shuttlecocks, however, are an entirely different affair. Learning to strike them as they drop on my zone is adrenaline rush like no other--especially if the guy on the other side is wearing navy sweatpants. Badminton's a test of both strength and quick calculation. Each time a shuttlecock swooshes in, I'd swing on it as though I were that boy in highschool, swinging his baseball bat to the loud cheers of the bystanders. Sigh.

Now, into my 6th game, little rookie (that's me) has improved quite remarkably that the members of the club has coined a term in my name--the "james technique". That is, as the shuttlecock begins to drop, tiptoe, raise the racket, allow the wrist to take power from the forearms then, strike. And it's not only my measly skill in holding rackets that people have noticed. Lately, they've taken a fancy at making quick glances at my legs as well. Honestly, I dig it. Hihihihi! It's mostly the only reason I feel victorious even after a round of misses and faults.

There is nothing more tragic than death in food. To drown one's children in a sudden pang of dementia is worth a year's wrath. But the abrupt demise of say, 30 Boholano children after downing cassava cake is pure inconsolable grief. How, in the innocent of gesture as filling hunger with food can innocence itself end too soon? It is, according to a friend, not only tragic, it's ironic. Unforgivably ironic, I added. People, especially those in famine-stricken countries such as the Philippines, live entirely by food. It is therefore, ironic that in yesterday's bitter events, eating had brought not life but death. 30 of them.

To rub salt on their wounds, the grieving families whose children have perished in the food poisoning face slim chances of remuneration. Vindication is futile, unless poisoning the culprit itself becomes an option. The woman whose cassava cakes had poisoned the children was in no better state than most of the victims and their families. In fact, her's has just dipped even lower. As a result of yesterday's unfortunate mass poisoning, she now faces prolonged famished times ahead.

Indeed, there are no happy endings here. As is the common fate in god forsaken places such us ours. We are lucky if we live the years, weather storms that often last a lifetime and wake up seeing the light of day.

I have very recently engaged-- and lost-- in a wager over who's to bag this year's Oscar Best Actress trophy. Eric, who, of late, has texted me over the 5 peso I owed him for losing the bet saved his hopes for Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry) while I rooted for Annette Benning. I was quite certain over Benning's chances this year, having been robbed once before for her performance as Carolyn Burnham in 1999's stark suburbian tragedy, American Beauty. Of course I was proven wrong. As if by deja-vu, Swank, still playing to her strength in Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby as a 32-year old boxing hopeful, took poor Being Julia's Benning by the chin to her inevitable sanguinous knockout.

Not that Swank deserved it any less. She put on a realistic performance as presuasively as she had put on that Guy Laroche dress to dazzle us into believing that she had the right pulchritude to hang that dress over. As Maggie Fitzgerald, a woman whose drive to knock down life's punches took her to the boxing ring, kocking off other women's teeth, she was divinity personified. Sublimely, she carried all her character's pains, hopes and little joys to the hilt without so much as faltering in her fake midwestern accent. Like Daniel Day-Lewis (My Left Foot, Gangs of New York), Swank possesses the magic to dissolve into her character, fitting into her character's skin as though Maggie has been someone she knew all her life. Thus, she had us wincing as she cushioned her opponent's punches with her face or applauding as she swung the final blow to her opponent's mandibles. And ultimately, she had us welling with grief as she faught her paralysis by asking Frankie ( Clint Eastwood) to perform euthanasia on her.

Never has acting been so sincerely done since 1988's The Accused. It was by her earnestness in seeing Maggie Fitzgerald come alive that I applaud Swank. The same reason probably, why the Academy picked her for the second time over Benning. And certainly, the same reason why I bow down to Eric's chosing Swank as this year's sterling consort to the golden statuette.

Eric, drop by the house sometime and claim the loot.

1. My impish desire to be CA’s Andy Rodick has me limping for 5 days running. Last week, in an effort to bulk up some pecs for the summer, I took what’s left of my hardihood to the badminton court and challenge my officemates with a game of racket-and-shuttlecock. It was heightened euphoria! Unfortunately, I must have twisted my ankle at some point in the game (didn’t notice it) because my right foot had begun to hurt and swell so badly I could hardly place it firmly on the ground. So, Andy Rodick’s back to sitting on the bench while the rest of the gang gets to display their stems in court and I can’t. I swear, my almost hairless legs were a pair of whopping hit!

2. Jamie Foxx’s portrayal of music legend Ray Charles may have wowed the critics into hailing him best actor at this year’s Oscars but the statuette should have aptly gone to someone else. While staying faithful to Charles’ idiosyncratic vocalizing, Foxx’s portrayal is far less complicated—and easier--than those played by actors whose characterization had to be culled from scratch. Foxx only had to view past footages of Charles and impersonate him with controlled consistency while others take it from pure sensitivity and skill. My choice: Don Cheadle, for Hotel Rowanda.

3. I’m feel sorry for Annette Benning for having lost twice to Hilary Swank. This year’s tense bout was déjà vu to 1999’s equally taut race between Benning then playing a diva-esque lordly wife in American Beauty and Swank who played the gender-bending Teena Brandon in Boy’s Don’t Cry. As if by tragi-comedic fate, Swank, this time playing a boxer (for Million Dollar Baby) drives an upper-cut to Benning’s Callas-like theatrical farce in Being Julia. Sadly however, even if Swank was to lose it this time, the Oscar would still be handed to someone else. To Imelda Staunton for her moving performance in Vera Drake.

4. Brad Silberling’s adaptation of the children’s gothic book series, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events attempts at becoming the new face of the Tim Burton genre—movies that are dark as they are quirky, harrowing but fun. In this movie however, Silberling misses the target by a long shot. Snicket’s was often deadpan, gothic in feel but was almost devoid of humor. The supposedly sinister Count Olaf becomes all too looney owing to Jim Carrey’s attempt at putting his plasticky brand of humor into the character. In fairness however, the movie offers panoramic sets and admirable visual effects.

During the 80s, we were a genetic anomaly blamed largely for the proliferation of AIDS. Now, more than 20 years later, we’ve progressed to something even worse. Devils. So the Pope thinks. And thus, on with the hunt.

Ours is a society of circus freaks. Of labeling and of judging. We spend hours yakking about the person next to us, labeling him according to his color or speech and idiosyncrasy. Anything strange about him, whether interesting or otherwise, is always treated with either disgust or amusement, as though he is a two-headed dog. Years of evolution have made man out of apes, and yet, as if by irony of nature, we’ve remained as apes as we once were. With our Pope as the alpha male, that is.

But then again, to be human is not without its farts—err--farce. None but God has the thorough understanding of things. Thus, occasional lapses in judgment such as homosexuality being a genetic disorder deserves a bit of a blind spot. But to reignite another mêlée on us is nothing short of unforgivable. What's next? Hamleting? We've had trouble with the church once before but none surpasses the malignity of this one. Hah! Like the church can't use a little dusting off themselves. What with all those men garbed in black caught vigorously sucking joysticks in backalleys. Not to mention that priest (whatsisname) who have just won himself jailtime for molesting a child every after congregation! And they have the nerve to call us Devils?!

Poor us. With the Vatican’s hateful opinion of homosexuals everywhere, we have officially been lowered to the level of the banal, the perverse and the debauched. To say that we are evil is to justify the Larami killing and a host of others before it. To tag us as un-Christian is to animalize faith. If there was anyone in the world who should bestow sympathy on us, it should be the Pope himself. After all, he personifies God and embodies his soul. Is bigotry of God’s. It’s of the devil’s.

Sideways is bereft of physical grandness, yes, but what it lacks in wide locales, it compensates in complex characterization bouncing off claustrophobic zones, which in this case, works effectively well. Not that a poignantly intimate story like Sideways needs lofty sets or ostentatious costumes in order to work. Like all small-scale visionary ideas told in taught narratives, Alexander Payne’s allegorical ode to male-bonding and fine booze stands firmly on its creative pizzazz without necessarily having to harp on malignity and pretentious criticism (remember Fight Club?).

In fact, putting his characters in a microcosmic environment works remarkably well with his audiences, at least, on the intellectual level. Emotionally, the film does little to invoke it until the story catches up on the characters’ undoing in the end. Payne’s greatest gift is after all, not in melodrama, or in dragging the character’s drudgery until the audience is too incensed to sympathize. On the contrary, his genius is in spinning metaphors and ironies into fine jabs of acerbic storytelling.

In Sideways, as in Election¸ the characters take centerstage. In the former, Miles, played sensitively by Paul Giamatti, is an introvertedly depressive failed author with a knack for fine pinot noir. Thomas Hayden Church, on the other hand, plays Jack, a derelict television mainstay who at present does voice-overs for commercials. As Jack’s impending marriage looms closer, Miles takes him on a drive down California’s winery for a week of booze and golf.

Here, Payne moves us closer to his characters as they alternately nurse their follies, pretenses and in Jack’s words, “plight”. Miles is hopelessly conflicted. He equates well with pinot, that species of wine grapes which in his words “are very hard to grow” but sweetens as it ages. He desperately wants to relish life’s sweet aftertastes but has lost the drive to do so. As a result, he plunges ever deeper into his depression.


Jack knows he’s a loser. But unlike Miles, he chooses not to apologize for it. So, he drinks to it, without finicky distinction or selection. In his mind, all wines are the same. They are painful to swallow but trickles down in rushes of sweet streams down his throat. So, he stays afloat. This is where Payne draws the distinction between his main characters. The one who elects to embrace life as it truly is, reaches the finish line first and gets to live it at the same time.

But Miles, for all his paroxysms, deserves our sympathy as well. Thus, Payne steers the movie up the garage with Miles a lot wiser than Jack. The latter’s incorrigible skirt-chasing gave him a broken nose and his disgracefully naked sprint home has Miles’ guiltily guffawing. For once, Miles feels sorry for someone who fares better at all of life’s endeavors than him. He is whole because in Jack’s words, “you had your seatbelt on”.

Thus, Payne. He’s Sideways had us raving, gleaming with sympathetic wonderment. Such a small film with enormous soul is tragic when missed but jubilant when imbibed, since it crosses between fluid forthright introspections. Between the characters’ frailties and those of ours. This does not happen in Phantom of the Opera.