Didn’t get to work on that ethnic studies porn script — but I did find this:

[The heretofore unpublished fragments below are from the remaining archives, long thought to be lost, of historian Ricardo Tubero; they comprise the only surviving historical work regarding Agapito Flores. It is altogether unfortunate that the middle portions of the manuscript are destroyed, for they presumably cover his productive vocational education, his fateful meeting with President Quezon, and subsequent checkered career. It is undated and unpaged.]

Much rumor and speculation has swirled around the life of the eminent Filipino scientist and inventor Agapito Flores, the unheralded creator of the fluorescent bulb, which has given Light to countless homes and fine establishments. It is nigh time that such unconscionable errors be placed to rest by the swift sword of History, to reduce the tower of Unreason to a pile of smoldering rubble, and to restore Flores to his place as one of the finest scientific engineers the Western and Eastern world has seen.

The facts are these, to wit: Agapito Flores was born in 1898 in the town of Guiguinto, in the province of Bulacan. It was said — now since proven erroneous by the diligent efforts of the Japanese scholar Susumu Kuraba — that he was the offspring of an itinerant mambobote (an buyer of empty bottles) and a seller of bibingka in the Guiguinto Public Market. Nothing could be further from the truth: little Agapito was born the eldest son of Bulacan’s postmaster general, Tiburcio Flores II, and his godfearing spouse Agapita. Surrounded by a dark cloud of mystery — no-one seems to have made the acquaintance of this forbearing mother — she is pictured in the single extant family portrait with an uncommonly haggard visage, tightly clutching a rosary in a wizened hand.

About the early family life of our wunderkind little is known, though there is no doubt that it was a immensely prodigious one, surrounded as Agapito was with nine other siblings, to wit, Consorcio, Demetrio, Eleuterio, Felicidad, Geronimo, Horacia, Inocencio, Jimena, and Tiburcio III. (A younger brother, Benito, perished in an unfortunate kitchen accident involving an egg beater, a gift from a visiting tradesman from Ohio, in the United States; Jimena, the most famed of his siblings, was the winner of amateur singing competitions and famed all over the province for her rendition of “Winter Wonderland.”)

Countless historians and amateur psychologists have speculated on the reasons for Flores’s pursuit of the chymical arts. One academic, whose name will not sully this treatise, has even ventured — in print, even! — that unrequited affection between him and a middle-aged neighbor was responsible for lighting the flame of Inspiration. Such scurrilous items are truly worthy of disdain, for the truth is far more prosaic.

A chance school excursion to the Manila Zoo — chance because such leisure activities were often quite dear, and beyond the fiscal capabilities of any provincial educators — provided young Agapito with the impetus for his life’s work. Gazing into the murky, silty depths of an ill-kept aquarium — the Bureau of Zoology was suffering a reduction of funds as a result of the fiscal panic of 1909 — Agapito was startled to see a fish of the Myctopidae family swim before his field of vision. So taken aback was he, in fact, that he gave out an uncharacteristically effeminate-sounding squeal. The peals of derision from his classmates, whose cruelty your hapless scribe involuntarily remembers with similar agony, rang in young Agapito’s ears, but this was of no consequence to our budding scientist: he was entranced, nay, converted, much as Saul was pierced by Our Lord on the road to Jerusalem. And it was through the light of that piscine angel, like the beacon of Science held aloft by the Muses themselves, that our young Agapito, infinitely blessed by the Lord –

[The rest of the manuscript is missing, presumed destroyed by fire when a water buffalo accidentally kicked over a gas lantern in a barn, which led to the fire that consumed historian Ricardo Tubero's home and library. Below is the only surviving scrap of paper, almost blown away by the wind and lost to the world forever were it not for the perspicaciousness of Tubero's colleagues who searched through the ashes.]

– interviews with Flores’s neighbors in his rooming house in Tondo remember a garrulous but bitter man, regaling his listeners with tales of his Paris days and amorous conquests then, of which I shall spare the listener, lest I be accused of impropriety, though it has also long been speculated that his cantankerous manner, no doubt a result of the gross fraud perpetrated upon him, was exacerbated by a lingering, shall we say, social disease, acquired from unconscionable habitual dalliances with a certain woman of ill-repute in Place Pigalle and other amateur historians have ventured forth with the name of the woman, and her other unusual proclivities besides, suggesting that such mental and physical trauma that Flores suffered directly accounted for his particular genius, but once again, such salacious trifles do not bear repeating, and are not worthy for the gentle and genteel ears of the reader, and merely aggrieve further his already estranged descendants.

Dear Reader, there is little more tragic than the events I am about to relate, but Flores’s apparent demise from neglect, scorn and wantonness should serve as a caution not merely against the wages of licentiousness, but also against the price of gullibility, for there are those whose unscrupulousness, in particular that American electrical company which I am loathe to name again –

[section of manuscript damaged by fire]

– scandalous details such as Flores staggering, in the manner of a man given over to drink, by a sari-sari store, ordering two bottles of that potion of Satan, Ginebra San Miguel, and consuming one as he stood, are not the sort of anecdotal details that serve Clio well, and only besmirch –

[large sections of manuscript damaged by fire]

– and when his dissipated, lifeless body was finally discovered in his death bed, all one could hear inside the tomb of his room was the audible flicker of his invention, a filthy, cobwebbed fluorescent bulb, suspended from the water-stained ceiling, emitting an electrical buzz long after Flores’s soul had quit his –

[section of manuscript damaged by fire]

It is my hope that my efforts to chronicle History, and rectify Injustice with Justice, will not be in vain, and that the name of Agapito Flores be returned to the pantheon of Philippine heroes — nay, as another Pride of the Malay Race, along with the esteemed Doctor Jose Rizal — and be praised endlessly on the lips of students young and old.

Popularity: 32% [?]

You will inherit a large sum of money.
You will be surrounded by many friends.
Your persistence will be rewarded.
You will have great successes in life this year.
You will give up and ask for a fork.

Popularity: 1% [?]

My department chair is all over the news that Lucy Liu is heading a project to make a Charlie Chan film — with Liu as Chan’s granddaughter (also named Charlie) in the lead role. Some “pro-bono” advice from the AAS department, as he wrote: “lots of sex and violence; but to acknowledge the Asians, with lots of hoisin sauce and sesame oil (Lee Kam Kee can be the corporate sponsor) for body rubs.”

I have a better idea: incorporate the sesame oil rubs into a sequel to (or better version of) Darrell Hamamoto’s Skin on Skin. That way it can really be porn with a wink. (I was joking yesterday with some fellow professors that writing a script could be a collaborative faculty project over spring break.)

I mentioned Hamamoto’s film to one of my grad student classes today — I had briefly mentioned Richard Fung’s article on Asian men in gay porn — and got a frighteningly enthusiastic response. Here, our previous scholarly discussion devolved very quickly from the life of the mind to the gutter.

One of my students, W., hated the little snippets of Hamamoto’s film he saw: “If you’re going to make porn, then you have to make real porn.” (Let’s just say that my student clearly liked his porn a little, uh, raincoaty, since he mentioned bukkake — a word I never thought I’d use in this blog — and not, as I put it, “couples” stuff.) “Real porn, not ethnic studies porn.”

That got the class laughing. We disagreed: “Ethnic studies porn, that sounds great,” said one. “Conscious porn!” said another.

Broken down into a series of vignettes, “ethnic studies porn” might work; adding something genuinely theoretical to the mix (and not just a CNN-like crawl running underneath the action) would be at once pleasurable and, well, pleasurable. I thought a flashback to the Third World Strike (“Make love not war, baby!”), complete with bushy-haired activists would be one possible vignette. W. had some scary ideas of his own, too: one scenario involved a Fu Manchu character and his coterie of enslaved white women (“This one’s called ‘Heathen Porn’,” he said). (I mentioned this to Madeline and she said, “That just sounds vindictive,” which I think was the point.)

The first vignette that comes to mind would be the one with the Chinese food delivery guy and the bored housewife:

He: “…and with the pork buns, that comes to $32.69.”

She: “Oops! I seem to have dropped my change. Let me pick it up.”

[or]

He: “…and with the pork buns, that comes to $32.69.”

She: “I like that.” [slowly] “Pork. Buns. 69.”

But that isn’t ethnic studies.

Guy: “…I mean, it’s still an extremely Eurocentric curriculum once you come down to it.”

Other guy: “I totally agree — the students get to read nothing but the narratives of the dominant people in power.”

Guy: “Of course, the students don’t have to be all submissive about it.”

[pause]

Other Guy: “Have you ever been handcuffed?”

Or:

Woman: “…and the additional problem with ‘straight’ and ‘white’ being the unmarked categories is that it forces you to retreat into these smaller, divided facets of your identity! Why can’t I be Filipino American and lesbian and Asian American and second-generation immigrant all at the same time? I’m really, really sick and tired of having to perform all this ‘identity management!’”

[pause]

Other woman: “Looks like you need a massage.”

Or:

She: “…and so he argues that Blacks and Asians have been exchanging ideas and lifestyles for centuries.”

He: “Which is why talking about hybridity is problematic –”

She: “– because it presupposes two existing cultural purities.”

He: “I guess that’s related to why sociologists have been fascinated with interracial sex for decades.”

She: “Well… there are other more obvious reasons for that fascination, no?”

[pause]

He: “Looks like you need a massage.”

Anyhow, spring break starts tomorrow, and the whole family (except Shelby the dog) is taking off for Philly, Manhattan and Boston. I’ll be mostly on babysitting detail, with maybe a couple of conference panels on the side. But ethnic studies porn… hmm…

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tuck under
thumb
   and hold firmly.

Add second chopstick
   hold it as you hold

a pencil.

Hold first
chopstick
in original
position.

Move the
   second one
up
   and
down.

Now you can pick up anything.

Popularity: 1% [?]

My favorite new website is called CINEMA, a Philippine-based website that stands for “Catholic INitiative for Enlightened Movie Appreciation.”

It should be clear, once you get to their website, what this is all about: it’s a movie review site where films are judged on “the basis of their TECHNICAL and MORAL strength and weaknesses.” A handy-dandy “moral assessment” legend on the left-hand column, ranking movies from “abhorrent” to “exemplary,” provides the viewers information as to whether to leave the kids at home or to watch it late at night — or rather, not to watch it at all.

What it inadvertently provides, though, is a guide for skin fans, as it tells you most of the naughty bits. There’s something oddly funny about how it’s described in Tagalog, too — here’s a description of a segment in Mel Chionglo’s Xerex:

Sa “O” naman ay malapit ng ikasal si Marge (Aubrey Miles) na naguguluhan kung siya ay tutuloy pa sa pagpapakasal sapagkat hindi niya naranasan sa lalaking kanyang pakakasalan ang rurok ng ligaya o orgasm. Naranasan niya ito sa isang estranghero (Kalani Ferreira) na kanyang nakaniig ng limang magkakasunod na araw. Ito ang lalong nagpalala ng kanyang pagkalito.

In Armando Reyes’s Tumitibok… Kumikirot — jeez, you’d think they’d know that their moral assessment would be “disturbing” from the title alone — the reviewer takes pains to say something good:

Bagama’t may mabuting saloobin ang pelikula ukol sa pagmamahal at pagpapatawad, hindi maitatangging higit nangingibabaw ang mga nakababahala nitong mensahe sa mga manonood. Una’y malinaw na karamihan sa mga eksena ng hubaran at pagtatalik ay ginawa hindi dahil sa mahalaga ito sa kuwento kundi upang pukawin lamang ang makalaman na pagnanasa ng mga manonood. Pangalawa’y naging napakasimple ng pagtrato ng pelikula sa buhay may-asawa na umiikot lamang sa dalawang bagay: pagtatalik at pag-aaway.

The Tagalog has such a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

And their review of Joven Tan’s Eskandalosa — which they brand as “abhorrent” and “not for public viewing” — makes you want to put it on your wantlist right away:

Ang Eskandalosa ay namumutiktik sa sex at pilit na ginawang creative art pero bastos pa rin ang dating! Totoo namang napakaganda ang mga piniling tanawin para sa setting at maganda ang inilapat na musika, pero ang editing ay nakaka-dismaya. Nasunod na naman ang gusto ng prodyuser na busugin sa eksenang sex ang pelikula para maibenta ito!

It’s two hours, they write, full of nothing but “sex; hubaran, bawal na pagtatalik sa iba’t-ibang lugar, pang-aakit na makamundo ang dahilan, at lahat ng bagay na may kinalaman sa tawag ng laman.” (Yeah!)

(By the way, while there’s the clear temptation to snicker at the descriptions, it’s also a very comprehensive website, with capsule reviews of a good slew of films released in the Philippines. To their credit, the reviewers never turn preachy, and instead have a wholesome open-mindedness about the films, unlike U.S.-based fundamentalists.)

Popularity: 2% [?]