defy gravity!

the object of my lust arrived the other day. in a sleek grey box, covered in a fabric sachet,the john varvatos-designed jack purcell slip EV was finally mine.

a day after, i found the first signs of wear and tear…well, more like the first stain on the immaculate white. the indigo dye from my Viktor jeans bled into it, and i was crestfallen. i’m the type who goes home to change shirts should even a dollop of spaghetti sauce make its way onto mine. sigh, slightly OC.good thing noel arrived today and invited me to lunch at the Marco Polo.

asi was digging into my dessert (a most delicious pastry and sauce), I bit into an unexpected surprise. i thought it was a cinnamon sprig. not! good thing the manager waived my bill, so i set off in a good mood nevertheless.

i finally finished my palawan article. check it out this thursday (www.sunstar.com.ph). max limpag,our online editor, offered to make me my own website. whooopeeee!!!! at least now i can consolidate jude facts, the better to sell myself to clients. time to bring this to the digital age
can’t wait to blog, finally, on judebacalso.com. whoopeeeee!!!!!!

we’re turning TWO!!! gawd, celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the show end of the month. yes, time does speed past like a bat out of hell if you are having fun. and i still am, we all are. loads of it! i asked favorite reggaeton group CDMC to update the theme song, and work their magic on it. can’t wait to hear what the guys come up with!

last weekend, wenwen and i judged the Mr. and Ms. Pinamungajan pageant. i’ve been going to every single fiesta for the past five years (except the other year when i was in Australia), and it has always been a blast. i had TWO personal favorite among the guys, one looked so rough…made me wanna polish him up

i’m boycotting Chowking Fuente, by the way. really hideous service! i’ve been patronizing that branch for three or so years now because i’m addicted to their takeout, but they can never get my orders right (even if i practically do not deviate EVER from my sweet and sour pork lauriat, side of siomai, kangkong with bagoong, wanton noodle soup snack size, and pineapple juice). i always ask for toyomansi, since i cannot eat without ( i drizzle it on the pancit and dip my siomai in it), and ALWAYS remind the order taker to bring me some. of course, they never do. and i have to be the biatch and ask the rider to come back for it. well, last saturday was the straw that broke the camel’s back. i can’t wait for the Redem branch to get their motorcycles, since I have completely shifted loyalties. the manager did call to apologize (only because i vented on Regional head and my good friend Vo), but it came, as my mother would put it, TWO late the hero.

so i’m scratching them off my list, up there with Loft who wouldn’t let me in because i was wearing a cap ( i fail to see the logic, my conclusion: pretentious rules…when one of the owners chased after to me to say: "Jude, ok ra kay ikaw bitaw na," I went ballistic: "Where is the logic?" He goes: "Di lang mi ganahan mga mag kalo gud, hiphop kaayo." I was wearing a beret dears, and it was part of my whole ensemble…if the deformed, fashionably-challenged owners can understand that).

so that was my week. i run the whole gamut of angel to demon, eh? here’s to TWO…faced.

this is how green lanterns must feel.

two days ago, i helped raise almost 600,000 in pesos to help build a new S.O.S. Children’s Village. and all i did was show up in makeup! well, ok, i also sang ang hosted a dinner featuring legendary comedienne and rock and roller elizabeth ramsey (philippine queen of soul jaya’s mother).

as the evening progressed, i also found out that she was my aunt (my very supportive lolas…the lebumfacil sisters lourding (fernan) and angeling (cortez) were there, and traced our shared lineage to elizabeth’s own mother, who was their cousin!). elizabeth and i observed that… this weird quirk i try to suppress or hide is a talent that could (borrowing from wicked!)…do a lot of damn good.

"Father forgive me for what I am about to do," she warns the priests in the room (after all, the show was at the Pope John XXIII Seminary) before she proceeds to lift her skirt, showing her panties, and fans herself with her hem in front of a delighted crowd.

"Pinalaki ko ang mga anak ko sa kawalanghiyaan ko," the half Jamaican-half Bisaya (by way of San Carlos city) "unggoy"…her own desciption…deadpans. How apt. I completely related to her at that point. I’ve sent my brothers through school by donning a wig and wearing heels, and by being quite a vision as an, ahem, large woman. God bless our abnormalities.

i cried in one corner at the childrens’ finale. house lights off, black lights on…their white gloves floated in front of us in an illusion of sea, birds, and words. they spelled "thank you to all", pouring their appreciation to the folks who clapped ceaselessly after every hula number, song, karate presentation, and modern dance and paid a thousand pesos per plate that night. abandoned and orphaned children. but not a trace of sadness. no, not one dollop. they were all smiles, as we were all tears.

the stupid folks who left them at doorsteps did that one good thing, at least. as i weaved among them after the show for photos and kisses and pats on the back, i thanked my Father for his hand in their lives.

"I trust enough to never need the why, You can take me to the where."

and so this green lantern trudged home. the others have their rings; i had to recharge the wig

tomorrow is my last stop on my whirlwind “i love the philippines” summer tour. dumaguete. ahhh, one of my favorite places on earth. last week i was in iloilo (quite the hectic but gastronomically satisfying experience), the week before that, i experienced palawan for the first time, and a week before that…boracay
i’m too pooped to write in detail about the trips, since i have to for the paper anyway (check it out online at sunstar.com.ph for those when they do come out and past articles).procrastination, my gift and curse.

i’ve decided to sum up each trip with just a few words, chosen phrases, a cryptic paragraph. so until the full review comes out, munch on this:

BORA- nothing beats travelling for sheer pleasure, with people you love dearly (anne marie, tita skatski, tashi, bingbing and my three boys of summer: carlos rafael, antonio luis, and joachim renato…gawd i adore all of you). i grossly underestimated the island, and all it could offer. even its sheer size (there’s more to stations 1-3, hop on to the “other side”…puka beach!) and pleasures: melon shake at Jonah’s, Italian at Aria, stagefright at Bombom’s, and clubbing at club paraw! oh yes, a goodlooking bloke built so fine almost bought us drinks at Pier One. sigh, we were such snobs, hahahaha. perhaps next time we’ll let them have their fleeting, non commital way

PALAWAN- summer flings are the best! next to it? underground river boatman humor (funny and crass); that silly monkey running off with alden’s sandwich (he looked so adorable when hapless); the Legend Palawan chef’s extra special attention to me; Jollibee Puerto Princesa!; rainmakers; salty wind in your face; dolphins in the wild (unbridled fun!); making new friends (shout out to the PDI, Manila Bulletin, and Philippine Star crew…you rock y’all). and oh, did i mention summer flings? hahahaha. effervescent. impermanent. indelible. a good memory kept.

ILOILO- glorious food!!! i hear roberto’s siopao is the bomb,but the ugly old man who owned it was such a major bitch we packed up even before we began shooting. his loss,the sorry bastard. when i return, i’ll sneak a taste of it and the glorious feast that awaited right across the street (look up, it’s Paraiso, hahahaha). i rode my first horse (i was tense the whole time, can’t afford to break my spine again) and whispered an inner shout of hurrah for sturdy, hunky, shy and sexy stable boys. yikes, that dennis was such a dish! that’s what i call ilonggo bonggo
now what will Dumaguete/La Libertad hold for me?

i can almost smell the salt water.

wait, that IS saltwater…from my brother’s soggy laundry. he just came in from his easter break in bantayan, where everyone was (from what i hear) over the weekend. but i’m imagining a different stretch beach. boracay here i come! i haven’t actually gotten down to packing yet, although i am all set in my mind: coordinating the outfits and accessories and the toiletries ( i get major bummed when i leave behind a part of my, er, regimen).

my flight’s at eleven tomorrow, plenty of time to panic
i squeezed in some work today, finished my pages until thursday so i don’t have to lay that on someone else ( hate it when that happens to me, and it always does, so i don’t intend to encourage that cycle). anne already has massages and parasailing planned, she’s always been our feisty leader anyway…so whatever she says goes isn’t that cute? cattski and i are significantly older than she, but we do whatever she wants, haha. the dynamics of this friendship are wonderfully twisted. tashi’s neck-deep in wedding preparations (hers, darlings), so this should be an interesting trip.

can’t wait to get on that plane!

but first i gotta pack update you from the impossibly white shores of bora. excited about living at hey jude, too…i hear the place is as damn fine as the, ahem, native delicacies of the island
me

p.s. i hope i run into paolo and the planetzips guys there. can’t get that hottie out of my head!

two days ago, a dream came true for me.

photographer jon unson shot me in his studio for the cover of story magazine, a manila publication. the graphic artist, my friend stephanie de la cruz, pitched an idea to have a drag queen on their cover and voila, decked in my jun escario finery and wenwen zaspa makeup (and a new wig, too), i was primped and styled to covergirl perfection.

i’ve been wearing gowns and wigs for years now, but have never been photographed beyond wenwen’s trusty camera phone. i’ve never kept any, except for photographs sent to me by those who took them (like the ones by bob lim on my friendster photos), so this experience was quite the treat…more for my fave makeup artist, since it was professional immortalization of his own professionalism.

after that, i walked in my salo heels to have veggie pizza with cattski and anne at handuraw, to talk about our bora trip this week (9-12).i’ll be living out of my overnighter (stretched a few days more,of course) the whole month. i just got in from a wonderfully stress-free holy week getaway in balamban (thank you tom evangelista for taking us in),where i met one that could be the summer affair of the season! hahahahaha…i love summer flings! they are the best! effervescent, yet altogether real. tell you all about it next time.

for the moment, here is the schedule: anne, cattski, tashi (the quad!) rendezvous with bingbing and the three little boys in bora on monday. due to the horrendous service (and all around assholeness…yes,that word should be invented for them) of the asian spirit people, i’m joining them a day late. we stay til friday (or extend to watch bonnie bailey,perhaps?).we fly in just in time for jamaican,and i leave for palawan on monday til wednesday. the week after, we shoot a week in iloilo for the summer getaway special of the show,counting down to our 2nd anniversary (isn’t that sweet?).then we do dumaguete for a paid segment (swee-ter!).

by the time summer winds down, i hope to have broken my heart once again (summer flings have a tendency to fizzle out with the season), gotten a nice tan (rashes notwithstanding), and perfected the art of traveling light (gauze, shorts, and my topshop tees!).

i do hope everyone has as much fun. i laughed nonstop in balamban (that ren manabat is a hoot!),and will carry the kilig of (quite literally) a passing fancy for a while
ah, summer lovin…

i’m still alive. so gleefully alive! will update this blog soonest. soon as i find out why it suddenly conked out and why i can no longer open it
till then…take my word for it. i’m alive
me

overnight i seem to have developed a crush on someone. well, that’s not entirely correct…since he and i have known each other for six years now. he’s an amazing guy: works for IBM, drives a BMW, has an MBA, and…well, he has all the right acronyms he’s also gorgeous: in a Spanish-German way (his ancestry), but has that Alabang boy swagger and mien that, initially, i so hated. Pure Zobel

two nights ago, he called me up to say that he was missing me. well, missing the conversation and, ok..here’s how he put it:

"Eeeeeeey! Been a while. Am I bugging you?"
"Not really ( I was in the middle of writing an article AND reading the guest background for the show, but hey…this was a call from a swell guy, so there), watsup?"
"Make me laugh."
"What?"
"I miss the silly jokes you crack."
"Ha, ha. Clown duty again?"
"If you won’t do it now, I’ll fly over and bug you over the weekend."

i don’t remember what funny antic i pulled, but he ended up laughing so hard he was half-crying by the time his asthma kicked in. we talked for an hour and i put him up to speed with my life (and vice versa), he had been in the U.S. on a long vacation, moving from one state to another that all he could muster between that was just an email of him and Joey Mead (his best friend) cavorting in Los Angeles.

"Did that make you jealous?"
"As if!" (it did, a little…but i was on a roll, so what the heck)
"Uyyyyyy, and I thought you were stone-hearted."
"Nope, I just hate coño mestizo types."

again,that sexy sound of a man’s unbridled laughter. precious.

so for a week now, it’s been a rush of good mornings and good nights between us. and a whole lot of laughter. i don’t wanna do this again so soon, my heart is still a little bruised, so i really am taking it easy. he asks, out of the blue just last night: "what if i finally moved to cebu and found a job there?"

in my mind, i respond: "why don’t you, that would be a nice move."
outward, i blurt out:"boang! what would your dad say?" and went on about impulse decisions and their consequences.

it really is nice to have someone think of you this way. even if there are speed limits and roadblocks. i prefer it like so: i know where he’s coming from and what he wants. no limbo, no wondering, no illusions.

and just this morning, the last straw: "if you were a girl, i’d marry you right this instant."

a lifetime of these damned ifs.

i turned the Barenaked Ladies’ Some Fantastic on full and let my eardrums bleed.

there’s a lot i would never do, some fantastic i know it’s true…but not as much as my want to be with you.

I don’t quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They’re not enough

If I lay here
If I just lie here
Would you lay with me and just forget the world?

-snow patrol, "chasing cars"

in the aftermath of a reality that bordered on some lurid fantasy, one doesn’t quite know what to do. good thing i have the radio show (we’re streamed online…y101fm.com, then click on "listen live" to join in on the "roomates" action, 4-8 on sundays). june and i always have a blast feeding off each other’s energy.

it’s a new escape for me. well, in a way it has become one. for in truth, what am i really running away from?

me

p.s. i miss lying there, and just forgetting the world.

there was a different, frightening tremor in noel’s voice when he called me this morning.

"nalunod si obet sa zambales."

and just like that, mortality slammed into me like a suffocating wave. obet, his best friend and neighbor, was swimming with his officemates when he got caught in the undercurrent. he was found a day later, lifeless at 28.

i first met obet at one of my visits to manila. noel and he were waiting for me at the starbucks at the gloriette cinemas, all smiles and anticipation. apparently, my boy made sure my reputation preceded me and we were off to a good start; it is important for noel for the people in his remarkably varied life to get along.

i thought he was hot. two hot guys around me, and you could feel the girls’ stares bore into my thin layer of tropical clothing. i wasn’t the only one who thought he was scorchin, too…between the two of them, these two could have half the population of women on the planet (depending on taste, yes) down on their knees. and someone in our intimate group, in hindsight, was also in a deep state of like with the adorable boy.

a few months ago, noel called, perplexed because obet’s mom was dying of cancer. she passed a few months ago, quite peacefully, leaving obet, his father, and one brother. the three boys had just lost the first lady of their lives.

how is the brother taking it, i ask noel. "at the shoreline, he says: what is God trying to tell us?"

i would never presume to know; much less assume what can be divined. "at least he’s with his mom now," was the flimsy wrap of comfort i could muster. "yes, mama’s boy pa man din yun," noel agrees.

can one send a hug over the electronic connection? a tight one, to squeeze out the last of those tears from my brave one. his loss i shall pray never to feel in this lifetime; i wish i go ahead of all those that i love. i am the fragile one.

who do i pray for now? the ones obet left behind. those whose empty spaces, left in his wake, will not be filled again in quite the same way.

is life too ridiculously short to keep harboring ill will? even an ocean and degrees of affinity away, God seems to be telling me something, too.

i don’t want to wait til our lives will be over; i want to know right now what will it be. will it be yes or will it be

…sorry.