Sydney Pollack, 73

WHILE Sydney Pollack has been known to be one of the best film directors of all time, with hits such as The Way We Were, Tootsie, Out of Africa, among others, he was also an actor.

The last time I saw Pollack onscreen was in The Sopranos – my favorite TV show; I almost busted by Ibook downloading all seven seasons of it via Bittorrent! — where he played an oncologist-turned-orderly in a medical facility for inmates. (Creepy that he dies of cancer in real life.)

Just watch how he explains how he became an inmate as well...brilliant understated acting by Pollack. Btw the other actor in this clip is Vincent Curatola who plays Johnny Sack, a mob boss.

Nausea

THIS is what I felt like after listening to Jun Lozada, the latest witness in ZTE-NBN Broadband scandal. His statements during a press conference at the La Salle Greenhills and at the subsequent hearing at the Senate showed just how far the illegitimate Gloria Macapagal Arroyo presidency will go just to protect its corrupt acts.

Smacking of Soprano-like Mafia tactics, Lozada was kidnapped, and only released after media became too nosey and noisy about his disappearance and Lozada signed, albeit forcibly, papers saying that he requested for security and protection from the PNP.

I don't know how the presidentita, FG Mike "Baboy" Arroyo and their minions - Environment Secretary Lito Atienza (fallen leader of a fake Liberal Party faction), PNP director-general Avelino Razon, and DILG Secretary and special ops expert Ronnie Puno can stand themselves lying with straight faces about the stunt they pulled. Do they actually think the public believes them?

How can these people especially retired Comelec (more like Kumolek) chairman Ben Abalos sleep soundly at night, knowing that we all know how crass and dishonest he is? He will supposedly file a libel case against Lozada. For what? For having the guts to tell the truth?

The man obviously could no longer live with himself, knowing what he knew about this nefarious deal with the Chinese. And no matter how the presidentita tries to steer clear away from this mess, ordering the DOJ to investigate the case, the grubby hands of her minions has stained her indelibly. (Take note, DOJ's Gonzales actually wants to investigate Lozada the whistleblower, instead of those who have been accused of enriching themselves in this caper. Magkano ba'ng sa'yo Sec?)

I empathize with Mr. Lozada. He is obviously someone with no political affiliations. He's just an ordinary man with a telecommunications and engineering background, whose expertise had been tapped by the government for what it felt was a vital broadband project. He has nothing to gain in coming out in the open with what he knows, and yet a lot to lose. I felt the pressure he was under and my tears welled up as well as he sobbed in frustration and fright at what he had done. He put his life in danger, also that of his family, just because di na nya masikmura ang pangungurakot ng mga tiga gobyerno. (I remember a foreign investor telling me once that under the Marcos regime, only he took 20 percent of any project as kickback. Today, under the GMA administration, kickbacks are par for the course from the lowliest civil servant until Malacañang, with bribes as much as 50 percent of the cost of the project. The punchline of course is, you can't even be sure that the project will actually be implemented. That's how garapal this government is! Yikes, there it goes, the bile up my esophagus...gotta barf folks!)

What's even more troubling about Lozada's revelations is that he confirmed that we are virtually living in a police state where Big Brother can just home in your conversation or intercept your cellphone text messages without you or possibly your telecom provider even knowing it. It's scary to live this way...you will always have to be careful about what you say or text, constantly look over your back even if you have done nothing wrong, because anything you say or do might be misconstrued by the powers that be and you will be picked up, kidnapped, possibly even tortured and killed. GMA's motto after all is, "If you're not with us, you're against us." Tony Soprano is that you?

As for you runny Romy Neri, how dare you even try to stop your friend from coming out with the truth. Bakit, tinanggap mo na ba ang P200M bribe ni Abalos? Why are you now sucking up to your presidentita? Hino-hostage din ba nya ang boypren mo? Nakakahiya at nakakasuka ka talaga!

No matter how Malacañang tries to play this, the public knows the presidentita and her ilk are the bad guys, the liars, the cheats, the corrupt, while Lozada and Joey de Venecia are the ones telling the truth. We are not fools.

It's about time we fight back and kick the shits out of these people in Malacañang.

Give it to me, baby!

WHAT a shame that there's no Rome Season 3 no? I just finished watching Season 2, although to be fair, the ending was really perfect. It could stand on its own and not have another season. But damn, HBO allowed The Sopranos to go on for seven seasons why couldn't it give the same lifespan to Rome? The latter is basically The Sopranos BC!

Still, I can't get enough of hottie James Purefoy who played Marc Antony so brilliantly in this drama series. (Actually even Ciaran Hinds who played Julius Caesar in the first season had some old guy appeal as well.) To this day, there's still an ongoing petition for HBO to revive the $8-million-an-episode series. With that kind of budget needed, la talagang pag-asa for us to see a revived series.Sayang talaga. Why Lord why?

Too bad James fucked up his audition as James Bond and now we're stuck with that ugly blondie Daniel Craig. Sexy James would've given Sean Connery, THE ultimate James Bond, a run for his money.

Anyway, check out this sizzling video of my darling on YouTube. It won best video last year in some obscure amateur awards in the UK or something.

More histrionics and drug-crazed musings

Something Like Life
June 29, 2007

INFLUENZA sucks.

I say this with the little strength I can still muster while I lie in my bed, half-upright, half-comatose, tapping on my notebook. No energy. No exclamation point.

My bones are all achy and creaky, while my breath is ragged and shallow, in between the hymen-breaking coughs that spare me no mercy throughout the day. My nose constantly drips, even as my sinuses are congested. I try to seek relief in sleep, but then I wake up tired and sluggish as if I’ve downed a whole bottle of Rivotril.

So too bad for you, dear readers, there will be no advice to the lovelorn nor intimations of other people’s slutty behavior. I shall bore you instead with ague-laden details of the past three days (I write this on a Tuesday evening) as I lie feverish and pained on my 100-percent jersey cotton bedsheet (yes, the kind that’s used for T-shirts and just what Oprah likes), surrounded by my fluffy pillows which, sadly, now hardly provides me any comfort. And as every sixth hour of my illness is marked by a round of paracetamol (1,000 mg), carbocisteine (500 mg) and antibiotics (625 mg), you can bet that this piece will be chock full of histrionics and drug-crazed musings.

I don’t remember the last time I had been downed by the flu. I’ve been pretty lucky. I hardly get sick despite my lack of exercise and a mostly unhealthy diet. I make up for that by eating lots of veggies now and then, and having seafood every chance I can, walking a distance, and downing loads of vitamins and minerals. Then, as you recall, I did go back to the gym. Which is pretty ironic. Now that I’ve decided on taking the path to a healthier lifestyle, I get the flu! A friend of mine thinks I could have picked up the virus in the shower. Ick! Remind me next time to take a bath at home after my workout.

The illness just crept on me, not giving me any fair warning at all. One day I was up and about doing my yoga poses at the gym, the next day my muscles were sore to the bone, my body wracked with the chills, a cough and the stuffy nose. Of course, in between all that, I had chomped down a whole bagful of cheese-flavored popcorn. And as is the usual, my throat got all scratchy the next day despite the glasses of water I guzzled in between the fistfuls I shoved in my mouth.

Normally, the scratchy throat goes away after I gargle with warm water and salt, and suck on two or three zinc lozenges for a day. This time, it didn’t. I started sneezing like mad, one, two, three blasts in succession. Then my scratchy throat gave way to full-blown hacking. Soon thereafter, my bones were groaning like an old lady’s and the chills started.

It’s driving me mad. I go under the covers for a few hours, trying to seek protection from the cold permeating through my entire anatomy. Then the next minute, I am sweating. I switch on the air conditioner to give me some relief from the mugginess that's making the dogs outside my window pant their poor little tongues out, but also because of the heat that running the course through my poor defenseless remains. Then I get the chills again. What’s worse is that my mouth is always dry, and my taste buds have given up the ghost. Despite the hunger pangs, it’s pure and simple torture not being able to taste any of the food I eat. So I quit after a few spoonfuls. I have no joy.

The last time I got this sick, I was bored out of my wits watching afternoon soaps and endless repetitions of HBO and Star Movies. My saving grace this time around is my torrent downloads of Little Britain, Entourage and Ugly Betty. (Yup, that’s Betty La Fea to you, telenovela fans of yore.) And, of course, I had just finished the much-talked about, endlessly debated finale of The Sopranos. Was Tony whacked or not? (I think he was; after all, that’s how mob bosses are supposed to go. And for someone who has suffered a whiny wife like Carmela, death would surely be a welcome release.)

If not watching my torrents, I am catching up on my reading. Not books, unfortunately, because I can hardly keep my eyes open while I’m shot up with all these drugs, but Vanity Fair. If there is any magazine that you must subscribe to in your entire life, it has to be VF. It has a bit of everything. Heavy investigative pieces of criminal or political activity (yes, crime and politics now seem to be synonymous with each other), lavish spreads of gorgeous celebrities with in-depth interviews, and lots of amusing sections and sidebars along with gorgeous photography.

(VF cover of US President George Bush and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Why couldn't I have gotten the George Clooney cover?!)

But here is a spoiler alert: get your copy of the July issue. It’s all about Africa and is guest-edited by Bono, who says he had always wanted to become a journalist. Now how cool is that? I just hope you have more luck than me getting a better cover. (VF shot 20 separate covers for this issue—Oprah Winfrey, Don Cheadle, Madonna, Barack Obama, Iman, Bono, of course, among others—with celebrated portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz at the helm.) I got George Bush, yes, a first on the cover of a usually anti-administration publication, with a prayerful Archbishop Desmond Tutu. You can guess who he’s praying for. (They have Condi Rice, too. Wipe that smirk off your face. You must understand, this is how Bono gets his philantrophic work done. He sucks up to the right people in power. I love Bono but he is human just like the rest of us.) All I can say is, I would have been happier with the George Clooney cover in my hand.

Okay, I’m off rambling more than usual. I just hope I get well by the weekend. My back is killing me from all this lying down. And I’m afraid my hard drive will give out from all this downloading. I’m also running out of VF issues to read. Mother! I need my drugs!

****

MY deepest condolences to the family of the late Renato Faustino, “Mang Ato” to all of us reporters who had covered the agriculture beat. Mang Ato was an old-time government publicist who endeared himself to the journalists who made it their business to investigate every piece of BS coming out of the mouths of his often lofty-minded bosses. (True, there have been one or two exceptional heads at the Department of Agriculture, the present dispensation not one of them, though.)

Mang Ato just did his job, disseminating information to the reporters, getting officials to explain themselves out of the messes they got themselves in, ringing up editors to ask for some support to the agency programs. Even when his beloved DA was dragged in the mud a few times in the last few years, Mang Ato never cast aspersions on the motives of the reporters or the columnists for the negative stuff. He knew they were just doing their job as well.

The last time I saw Mang Ato was last year, at a friend’s wedding. We had joked that he became teary-eyed because our friend was getting married for the second time. I imagine the buckets he would have wept if I had been the one who got hitched! But that was how Mang Ato was. He was always a softie, and I have never once heard him utter a harsh word about anyone or anything, even if he was the one put at a disadvantage. He was truly a friend we could always go back to for a few laughs as we reminisced about the good times at the DA.

Thanks, Mang Ato, for being the kind of person many of us can only hope to be.

(My column, Something Like Life, is published every Friday in the Life section of the BusinessMirror. Photo from BusinessMirror – nope, that's not my bed!)

The Sopranos finale

(Tony, Silvio, and Paulie)

I finally got to watch the controversial finale of The Sopranos. I have always been a Sopranos addict since Tony Soprano (played by the super-brilliant James Gandolfini), struggling New Jersey mob boss, first stepped into the office of psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi (return-of-the-comeback Lorraine Bracco). Anoh ito? A depressed Mafioso?

I was always so frustrated that our local HBO didn't carry the series. I don't know how true this is but our local HBO is a feed from Singapore daw, which supposedly has strict rules on blood and gore on TV. Merese! The Sopranos is more dark comedy than anything else. Truly funny...it's like Analyze This on downers. Who would've thought that mob bosses and their employees have lives we can relate to outside of the senseless violence they always perpetrate. Sometimes tuloy, you end up cheering some of the whack jobs.

(Hala kayo, gutom na si Bobby!)

Much of the acting was understated but very effective. Each actor managed to make his or her character, no matter if they had just committed bloody murder, very sympathetic. It's quite difficult to pinpoint who my favorite characters or actors were. Of course, Tony Soprano is definitely one of them, the alzheimerish Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese, a veteran of a number of mob films), Silvio Dante (a really different Steven Van Zandt! Who knew Bruce Springsteen's lead guitarist-aka Little Steven- could act?!), Bobby Bacala (truly nakakaawa being married to Tony's sister, crazy Janice. Underacting week after week by Steven Schirippa. I just love him! He's so zany on all the talk shows!).

Too bad the oh-so-gorgeous Federico Castellucio's character, Furio (Tony's import from Italy), disappeared after only a few episodes. Kasi naman he was falling in love with Tony's wife Carmela (Edie Falco...beyoootch!). But those were cool episodes, too. And of course, who could forget the superb late actress Nancy Marchand who portrayed Tony's loon of a demanding and whining mother Livia?! Like everyone else, a lot of Tony's problems stemmed from his impossible relationship with his mother. Sa inis ni Livia, she had plotted to have her son killed! can you imagine?!

(Yummy Furio!)

Anyway, thank God for Limewire and Bittorrent! I was able to watch the entire series just by downloading each episode. (Dang! I had to pray every night that my hard drive wouldn't give out!)

About the finale, it became controversial because it seemed like it was a hanging ending...as Tony looks up from the table in the diner where he and his family are eating, everything fades to black. The series' creator David Chase was heavily criticized for what appeared an unresolved conclusion (doncha just love indefinite endings?). Some felt they were shortchanged and Chase had set everybody up in preparation for a Sopranos movie. But after the initial..."What the....?", I thought it was an outstanding ending as well. It's a finale everyone will continue to talk about and have his own take on what actually happened. Gee, and I thought only we Pinoys wanted our endings to be really final and spelled out. Let your imagination work naman, noh!

(Livia and Uncle Junior out for a drive)

Personally, I think Tony was whacked. Like all mob bosses, how else could he go (unless he turned FBI witness), di ba? Sad pero, that's how it should be. Sure it's unfortunate the series ended. It had a great run and I don't think any other series after this will be able to match the excellent acting, well-written characters, and TV-defining episodes of The Sopranos. But as Tony always says, "Look at the bright side!" May the series live on in worldwide syndication and pirated DVDs forever.