Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 86

Oliver Sacks’s latest dispatch from the edge of death

Oliver Sacks illustration by Aidan Koch In February the neurologist, writer and all-around super-nerd Oliver Sacks wrote that he had metastatic cancer and did not have long to live. He sounded more serene and cheerful as he awaited the end than many people with decades and decades ahead of them. Last week he published an […]

Everyday sights in Miami

Our friend went to Orlando for a tech conference and then proceeded to Miami to look at Art Deco. And saw these common sights in Miami traffic. Shirtless guys on bikes: banned in Manila. And then guys in tricked-out cars blasting music stop in the middle in the street, people gather round and a party […]

Earworm: Devil May Care

Woke up the other day with this playing in our head. Why, we have no idea. We read the chapter on earworms in Oliver Sacks’s Musicophilia, but he doesn’t know what causes them, either. Earworms are also known as “last song syndrome”, but in this case we hadn’t heard Bob Dorough in years when he […]

SWOT Analysis: PNoy’s Last SONA

Strengths The play of words in lines like “May pumapasok nang madilim pa, at may umuuwing madilim na—pero lahat sila, naiiwan sa dilim dahil hindi sapat ang oras ng pag-aaral” (Some went to school when it was still dark, others went home when it was already dark, but everyone was in the dark…) gave it […]

In Southpaw, Jake Gyllenhaal punches his way out of a bag of cliches

Jake Gyllenhaal is so good in Southpaw, so terrifyingly committed to the role, that we were prepared to overlook the deficiencies and absurdities of the movie. We were so impressed at his physical transformation (after the skeletal Nightcrawler), his movement, the way he spoke like a guy who’s been hit on the head constantly since […]

Is kung fu dying?

When we were kids in the 1970s and early 80s, Bruce Lee movies clobbered Hollywood flicks at the box office, David Carradine walked the earth every week on TV’s Kung Fu, and Ramon Zamora punched, kicked and yelped his way to stardom. Martial arts masters, male and female, flew across the screens in lush historical […]

You are not cool, and other things we learned from the movies.

1. From Almost Famous: Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman) gives young rock journalist and Cameron Crowe stand-in William Miller (Patrick Fugit) advice to live by. (Rock journalist: a job description that barely exists anymore.) We should commit this speech to memory. You made friends with them. See, friendship is the booze they feed you. They […]

Handmade leather notebooks for fountain pen users

Papers & Tschai Studio in Cebu produces beautiful hand-stitched leather notebooks with unlined pages. The paper is heavier than Moleskine’s so you can use a fountain pen without the ink bleeding through. This notebook, 11.5cm x 17.5cm, Php850. Contact Papers & Tschai at papersandtschai@gmail.com or text 0927 126 3933 or 0925 886 2598.

Manananggurlash: Transgender, trans-species, trans-dimensional

In the scary tales of our childhood, the manananggal was a bisected monster with an insatiable craving for human bopis and dinuguan. In the daytime, the manananggal assumed the guise of a woman who lived alone in a hut in the woods. At dusk, she would rub herself with magic oil that caused batwings to […]

Sense8: The Wachowskis invite you to take the red pill again

You have to hand it to the Wachowskis. The success of their film The Matrix and its convoluted sequels bought them the freedom to do whatever they want, and they have used this freedom. Critics sneered at their post-Matrix movies, and audiences stayed away, but they will not abandon their vision. What this vision is […]