Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 383

Christopher Hitchens, Topic of Cancer

Hitchens. Photo by John Huba for Vanity Fair. I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. Hitch on death and denial, in Vanity Fair.

Blessed are the cheesemakers.

The following day we went to Malagos Farm Resort in Calinan, Davao. Malagos has a bird park, a petting zoo, a butterfly sanctuary, gardens, and a waling-waling orchid forest. There are Abueva sculptures all over the gardens. You can buy flowers, fresh fruit, and Cheese! There's a herd of goats on Malagos farm, and they [...:]

Davao: Pearls, Orchids, Fruit, Eagles, Cheese

Friday I was in Davao for the launch of My City, My SM. (The PAL pilot shortage had been resolved, at least temporarily, so no stress there.) The endorsers for My City, My SM in Davao are Dr. Bo Puentespina, the veterinarian and wildlife conservationist who runs the bird sanctuary in Malagos, Olive Puentespina who [...:]

LitWit Challenge 3.2: Talking animals

The winner of the Weekly LitWit Challenge 3.1: The Staircase is noelz for the tale of the Angel Sevicent's fact-finding mission. Congratulations, noelz, you can claim your prize any day starting Wednesday, 11 August 2010 at the Customer Service counter of National Bookstore in Power Plant Mall, Rockwell. Just tell them you won this contest [...:]

Memories of space flight

Every day I visit NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day website to look at a picture of the universe. As I write this I am looking at a picture of M8, the Lagoon Nebula—brilliant filaments of gas and clouds of dust 5,000 light years away. Before today there were photographs of constellations, planets, solar flares, [...:]

My new old earrings

Reader Imma made these earrings for me out of earring parts. I thought they were interesting but lacked something so I rummaged among my old earrings for that something. That's when I found a favorite pair of earrings I hadn't worn in years. Now they're strange enough. Thanks for the earrings.

There are no poor people in the early Sharon movies.

Technically the servants in the Sharon/Gabby households might be described as poor people, but they're not so much characters as signifiers of wealth, part of the production design. Philippine cinema has always been obsessed with class. This is to be expected since Philippine society is extremely class-obsessed: everyone wants to look rich (hence the demand [...:]

John Sayles: It's kind of useless to resent Hollywood.

Photo: Maggie Renzi and John Sayles John Sayles is one of America's most illustrious independent film directors. His movies include Passion Fish, The Secret of Roan Inish, Lone Star, and the forthcoming Amigo, a film set in the Philippine-American War and shot entirely in Bohol with a Filipino cast and crew. Sayles is an Academy [...:]

My new old glasses

Paulo found these vintage eyeglass frames in a thrift shop in Brooklyn. Vintage frames should always come from thrift stores, flea markets, junk shops and rummage sales. It's not the same without the archaeological feel.

Sharon replay: the opposite of poverty porn

Today in anthropology we tackle a film from the early oeuvre of Sharon Cuneta: P.S. I Love You, her second team-up with Gabby Concepcion, directed by Eddie Garcia, yes, the actor. Look, up in the sky, it's a bird! It's a plane! A private plane bearing businessman Eddie Garcia in a white suit. He has [...:]