Or, a lesser film by one of my favorite directors, shot by one of my favorite cinematographers, featuring a disaffected emotional cipher of a Don Juan who is unable to truly connect with people around him and is on a quest for something he is not entirely sure about, with laconic dialogue, strict attention to interior detail, and a series of stunning women who drift in and out of his life, all more interestingly wrought than the lead character.

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Been cramming in the extracurricular activities — okay, and getting work done too — before classes begin on Thursday. After all-day meetings on Monday — okay, followed by a big potluck dinner at the chair’s house, then Jim Jarmusch’s so-so Broken Flowers with my friend the Tokinawan (god I hope he doesn’t read this) — Tuesday was practically playing hooky.

Took Izzy to the PollyEggettes Experience, and she loved it. (Thanks to J-Lu, I would have never known the stores were so close to where I lived.) Pollyann’s is this amazing ice cream shop in the Outer Sunset to which I haven’t been to in years. It has since been renovated, and has lost a bit of its cramped, quirky charm, but the corny signs and the roulette wheel are still there, and so are the rotating 50 flavors. Izzy knew what she wanted: “just strawberry.” I had Batman — black vanilla (!) with lemon stripes. Eggettes.com is right next door — we didn’t get to try their flavored waffle-like specialties, because we headed straight for the toy machines in the back where, for a dollar, you could get a Disney Princess keychain in an egg, or Winnie the Pooh in a puppy suit, or Minnie Mouse on a rocking horse. Walked back home playing I-Spy, and then off we went to her open-house / orientation at preschool, where she saw most of her buddies.

And then the universe imploded that evening when the Two White Guys At The APAture Retreat, Turkey and 40, finally met, courtesy of me. (We were at the Gold Cane in the Haight, where the bartender carded me — the second time in a week. “You ought to capitalize on that,” he said. “You could pass for 17.” I didn’t know how to respond. There’s this mean woman out there who teases me for being old.)

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No doubt most of you Filipinos out there would have received the e-mail message (I’ve already received it four times) asking people to vote for the Coconet Project (I love the way it sounds like the Conet Project too), part of BBC World and Newsweek’s World Challenge, “a competition aimed at finding individuals or groups from around the world who have shown enterprise and innovation at a grass roots level.” Justino Arboleda’s project, which uses coconut husks to prevent soil erosion, among other things, sounds excellent; the landslides which kill dozens, if not hundreds of people, every year, would at least be prevented. (Though I would argue that the Philippine government should really be prosecuting the loggers, no?)

The e-mail message says:

“The World Challenge” already offers tremendous exposure and publicity to our flourishing Philippine coconut geotextile industry and to our Philippine coconut fiber exporters. But it would be great liberation for our country, which has been getting very bad publicity nowadays, to win this prestigious competition.

Fair enough. But I broke ranks and voted instead for Fat Chance, a project that enables the systematic collection of waste vegetable oil and converting it into biodiesel.

I didn’t vote for it because it was based in Malta — I know close to nothing about the country — but I’m not voting for the Filipino project just because I’m Filipino either. To me it seems more and more necessary to recognize what gas-guzzling SUV owners in the U.S. obviously ignore, despite the fact that prices are creeping up to $3 a gallon: that no amount of staying the course can make the oil crisis go away. People’s lives have already been sacrificed for oil. This is an issue that directly impacts everyone; indeed, in the Philippines, the crisis is getting worse and worse, with Macapagal-Arroyo talking of rationing.

The blurb on the BBC World website actually seems oddly written — for me, it’s not necessarily the clogging of drains and ocean pollution that’s most crucial, but the seeking of alternatives to fossil fuel. (You can read more on biodiesel in San Francisco here; that just happens to be my neighbor Ben Jordan in the photos.) And I like the fact that Shell is sponsoring the World Challenge (perhaps accounting for the tiptoeing around “reducing Malta’s dependence on imported fuels”); their logo is even above BBC’s and Newsweek’s.

Supporting a biodiesel project like this with $20,000 (the internet-based voting system is biased in favor of middle-class voters anyway) would at the very least mean greater exposure for biodiesel in general — something that, in the long run, has a more direct impact on the citizens of the world in any case.

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Soundtrack to an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track #7.

Lee Morgan was all of 25 when he released this absolutely infectious Blue Note track in 1963, on the album of the same name. “The Sidewinder” is one of those tunes that worms its way into your head; doesn’t matter whether it’s somewhat overplayed or can be found on all those roots of boogaloo / roots of acid-jazz type compilations (because you can certainly hear it), because it doesn’t dull its groovy vitality one bit. While I hate to say that it’s perfect as background music for parties or cooking or, perhaps, a Wes Anderson film (but it’s true), there’s also some damn fine trumpet playing from Morgan, as well as Joe Henderson on sax.

Hear it (m4a, 14.1 mb)

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Most Bay Area Filipinos would know exactly what Bienvenido Santos is crankily writing about here; I’d have to stress, however, that the newspaper in question has revamped itself and has, in the last few years, produced some of the most arresting, in-depth pieces of journalism on the Filipino American community. (Except for some of the stray issues from the late ’60s, and whatever else missing from the Berkeley archives, I think I’ve read almost every issue cover-to-cover, and still do.) The passages below, are from Santos’ wonderfully-titled 1987 novel What The Hell For You Left Your Heart In San Francisco, which would perfectly with Ver’s entry on great titles. (I still need to think of a snappy nickname for you, Ver).

What sort of material would they want the magazine to contain? Photos of beauty queens from the islands now in residence in this country, well groomed and heavily rouged and definitely past their prime if they had had any prime at all? Good looking tots of obvious Philippine descent in their Sunday best having a birthday party? A seemingly endless listing of names in bold type throwing parties of all sorts, anniversaries and bienvenidas not to mention despedidas? So and so has just arrived from the Philippines or leaving for the islands on a visit. This dull-faced youngster has just passed an exam where a thousand others have made it?

And more:

A cursory glance at a typical issue of two of the most widely circulated Philippine publications in this country showed practically everything my magazine should not contain.

Start with pictures: photos across an eight-column page of convention delegates…, Philippine-American community organization officers, their right hands raised in the act of being sworn into office, usually by a diminutive consul or ambassador of the Philippine embassy or consulate or someone pinch-hitting for them; men and women receiving plaques, trophies, ribbons, cups… usually surrounded by smiling relatives and well wishers…. Weddings where even the bridegroom smiles, lifting the bride’s veil for a not so chaste kiss, or the bride shovelling a piece of cake into the groom’s wide open mouth. A christening party where everybody’s name is printed, occupation, regional ancestry, from left to right.

Yes, they’re somewhat mean potshots, but it’s a sentiment that was shared by many of my Daly City interviewees as well. It’s also, unfortunately, accurate content analysis. So hey, I’ll quote myself here: “Despite its ambitions to a kind of transnationalism, the [name of newspaper omitted for now] also functions not unlike a small community newspaper, albeit one distributed nationwide. Nowhere else has the social life of the middle-class first-generation Filipino immigrant been so prominently on display.”

Okay, where was I? I bring all this up because Santos was a keen and generous observer of Filipino and Filipino American life, and something shifts in tone, it seems, after martial law. (I’m skimming through his 1992 memoir, Memory’s Fictions — which has now moved to the top of my must-read pile — and his San Francisco novel (which he started writing in 1973!) was the product of what he called “humiliating experiences.”)

But I bring it up also because the Poeta and I just saw “The Santos Trilogy,” which is still playing for another two nights at Bindlestiff (check ‘em out!). We’ve fallen into a fun rut, the Poeta and I: drinks (beer for me, single malt scotch for her), a quick bite to eat, a movie / play, drinks again, then a long-distance phone call somewhere in there. Oh, and she has a secret, and it’s not exactly a laughin matter. =)

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