I’m lazy, so let me do this entry in bullet-points.

• Mahal, Paglutuan Mo Ako Ng Tahong 
• Pitasin Mo Ang Kamias
• Hinog sa Pilit
• Sinampalukang Manok
• Extreme Papaya
• Buko Salad
• Mahirap Buksan ang Bote ng Kaong
• Ube, Macapuno, Pandan
• Kita Mo Na?
• My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend
• My Boyfriend’s Boyfriend
• Kapihan sa Sulo
• Sana’y Muling Makasiping
• Darna Meets Xerex Xaviera
• Sinukat Ka Ngunit Kulang
• Eseng Balondo: Filipino Gigolo
• Ang Bilis-Bilis Mo, Babes
• Ang Tagal-Tagal Mo, Babes
• Ang Tigas-Tigas Mo, Babes
• Ang Laki-Laki Mo, Babes
• Amoy sa Dibdib ni Sugar
• Marami Ka Pang Babayuhing Bigas
• Balahibong Aso
• Babangon Ako’t Papatungin Kita
• Papatong Ako’t Babangunin Kita
• Huwag Mong Silipin ang Sugat Ko
• Kunin Mo Ang Ulo Ni… Machete!
• Butong Pakwan
• Ipinagpalit Sa Halagang P100,000 Ang Nilalaman Ng Bayong
• Kung Tuturbohin Mo Lang Ako
• Zaldy, Pulis Pangkiskisan

   In a report by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) entitled “Wowowee and the Women of 200 P. de la Cruz St.” (PCIJ iREPORT, March-June 2006; this article is also accessible here), Sheila Coronel writes:

The poor are a willing and captive audience of television.  In fact, poor people watch free television more, if only because they have few other alternative distractions.  In some poor households, the TV is on 16 or 18 hours a day.  The better off have cable TV, DVDs, and cinemas.  They visit malls, travel elsewhere during their vacations, eat out in restaurants, and look for nighttime entertainment in theaters and clubs.  The poor watch TV all day and all night. 

   It’s a small wonder why GMA-7 and ABS-CBN will fight like Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees not over the matter of killing a camp counselor, but denying the Filipino audience out of the freedom to choose.

   I’ve made my choice: screw them.

   For the past few weeks, both stations have been running long advertisements on tampered ratings: whether it’s on “24 Oras” or “TV Patrol World,” “Saksi” or “Bandila,” TV ratings are headline stories.  The two biggest free TV stations of the Philippines are demanding your undivided attention, ladies and gentlemen.  The media has polarized the country yet again into being either a “Kapuso” or “Kapamilya.”  It’s either you’re with them, or you’re against them.  This is nothing short of fascism: the kind of “us-against-them” mentality that threatens our freedom to choose.

   I made a decision today to quit watching free TV.  I’m boycotting free TV: I will no longer watch ABS-CBN or GMA-7.

   Tomorrow, I’m posting a manifesto.

   Just when I promised myself to quit writing about Manny Pacquiao, here comes another issue about him.

   Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I don’t hate Manny personally.  I have nothing to gain or to lose by writing anything about, for, or against Manny Pacquiao.  I’m entitled to a few opinions about him: one being that as far as one-dimensional boxers are concerned, he’s the best one-dimensional boxer in the world today.  Another being that he’s a first-rate patriot, a second-rate nationalist, and a third-rate politician.

   I think that getting fed up with Pacquiao - “Manny fatigue” - is not the reason why bloggers like myself are vocal in our contempt for him.  To be honest, most Filipinos would never tire of Pacquiao’s blazing speed and boxing prowess, and they will never tire of his indiscretions and excesses outside the ring ropes.  Manny gets himself into too much trouble: he digs too many holes and falls into them far too many times.  Manny, as a public figure, is a lot like a Britney Spears or a Paris Hilton or a Lindsay Lohan: far from being the national icon that he was then, Manny Pacquiao is now the new national embarrassment.

*     *     * 

   Glitchline and Tin Tinapay have already released the “Manny Pacquiao Scandal:” no, it’s not footage from “Anak ng Kumander” that involved torrid kissing scenes with Ara Mina and Valerie Concepcion (the latter appearing on “Entertainment Live” not too long ago in tears for whatever Pacman did to her), and Manny’s bad acting.  Instead, Manny - wearing a striped pink shirt I will never have the guts to wear - is seen dancing with some hot chicks at Embassy Bar.

   While you can’t really believe everything you see in the Internet, there’s just no denying that the guy wearing that hideous shirt (and gyrating with that girl clad in mucus green) is indeed the Philippines’ national boxing “hero.”  I do graphic design on the side, and there’s no way you can tell me that it is possible with current and available technology to “edit” that picture to make someone else look like Manny.

  Here’s the problem: Manny is idolized, if not venerated (without understanding, to invoke Renato Constantino), by the Filipino people.  In “Anak ng Kumander,” he portrayed a man of great ideals and fervent passion: in his “scandal,” he presents himself to be a lesser man of worldly passions.  Not that I’m preaching morals on Manny - who is more devout than I am - but is this something you would expect not only from a national icon, but from a married man?

   I’m not saying that Manny is unattractive: maybe, just maybe, some women have developed a taste for his looks.  But that’s a non-issue.  Had Manny been single, there would have been a perfect excuse for him to do some thinly-disguised philandering at a bar.  I feel for Jinky Pacquiao: being married to a hugely popular boxing superstar and entertainment icon is bad enough, and she had to put up with her husband being linked to so many showbiz personalities.  I don’t know what would go on in her mind if she hears about this.

*     *     *

   Besides, there’s no denying the allegation that Manny has already become so pig-headed.  Here’s a guy who slept in cardboard boxes as a kid.  In his early days as a boxer, Manny didn’t fight for glory: he fought for something to put in his stomach.  The soonest that Manny became this larger-than-life “superstar,” Manny was no longer the consummate pugilist: the decent boxer who did good, the kind of man who deserves a statue alongside the likes of Pancho Villa and Gabriel “Flash” Elorde.  The more that Manny commits self-imposed acts of character assassination, we who follow boxing become more exposed not only to his mistakes as a man, but his mistakes as a boxer.

   Make no mistake about it: no matter how many Magic Sing microphones are sold all over the world carrying a karaoke version of “Para Sa ‘Yo Ang Laban Na ‘To,” Manny is, was, and forever will be a boxer.  The soonest that Manny quit being a “boxer” and became a “superstar,” his boxing talent diminished.  What grandness, what pride would it have been if Manny took extra miles in his practice to legitimately knock out Erik Morales.

   You have rising stars like Boom Boom Bautista and AJ Banal who shy away from the glitz and glamor of entertainment, and are making shockwaves everywhere.  Not because of their “scandals,” but because they are honing themselves in the gym, guided by some hope that one day, they’ll be like Manny Pacquiao.  You have young men working out in gyms, fighting for loose change in rundown arenas with sunken canvasses and sagging ropes, hoping that one day, they’ll be like Manny Pacquiao.

   I beg to differ.

*     *     * 

   You might be telling yourselves that I’m just one of them gnat-like bloggers: pests who misinterpret the right to publicly-disclosed information.  “Pseudo-journalists” who don’t have editorial policies.  You might even say that we leech upon Manny’s popularity (or anyone else’s, for that matter) and destroy his public life because we have nothing better to do on idle afternoons.

   Of course I am, but at the same time, I’m not.  You see, like every Filipino, I once had the utmost respect for Manny Pacquiao.  I believed in Manny Pacquiao.  I placed bets not against Manny, but for Manny.  I overlooked every mistake he made in the ring and believed that this was going to be a short, exciting fight worth my bet.

   They say that the boxer must lord things over in two rings: the boxing ring that wins you championships, and the boxing ring that is life itself.  Manny is winning the first few rounds of the boxing ring that is life: he’s getting money, undivided attention, and indiscreet trips to Embassy.  But what of his public life, his family life, his place in history?  No one knows for sure.  But the history books right now are writing that one part of Manny’s history that we should all look forward to forgetting: Superstar Manny.  Rockstar Manny.  And when it all comes down, when all the lights go out and the fans start leaving, there really ain’t no such thing.

   That ain’t all that goes with being a rock star.  Ah, Cypress Hill.

   One of the reasons why I’m very tentative about cutting my hair is because I don’t want to be mistakenly labeled as “emo.”  Because everything you see and read in the Internet is true, I took an “emo test” in a Friendster survey and found out that I’m 90% emo.  Consider the evidence weighed against me:

• I love the color black.
• I always sit at the corner.
• I like listening to metal rock (sic) music.
• I have a lot of problems with my life.
• I’m not much of a loud person.
• I don’t talk much.
• I don’t have that much (sic) friends.
• I barely have fun.
• I barely go out with my folks or friends.

   Save for a single “emo-defining” characteristic - that one side of my hair does not cover one of my eyes - I am, by virtue of this very scientific survey, 90% emo.  Hmmm… is this the kind of defaming survey that could have me sue somebody for P15-million, and make me run 60-second TV ads demanding “the truth?”

   I can dispute “emo” claims leveled against me just fine.  For one, I don’t listen to emo music any more than I should: I’m through with my Lifehouse phase.  In fact, I have memorized many of Willie Revillame’s songs in “Wowowee,” and I sing along to it.  No self-respecting self-mutilator will ever sing “Sayaw Darling,” let alone dance to it with all the bravado of a lower ape with pronounced prognathism (my Anthropology training suddenly paid off).

   For two, if I ever cut my hair emo-style and wore checkered clothing, I would look more like Senator Ping Lacson.  Now that I wear urban cowboy boots, I’d fit more in the general category of a longtime Baguio resident sans the betel-nut chewing (pardon the stereotype).

   Trust me, I’m not emo.  I eat emo people for breakfast.

   In Portrait of Delusional Celebrities (22 December 2007), I wrote about MyHeritage and how people who use face-recognition technology in the Internet - and take it seriously - are “deluded.”  But “delusion” is not something confined to ordinary people: even celebrities suffer from their own intervals in lucidity.

   I was watching “Entertainment Live” this afternoon: and no, I don’t have a metering box installed on my TV and nobody paid me to watch it.  It’s an interesting week for Filipino showbiz: GMA-7 filing a civil case against ABS-CBN, Jennylyn Mercado pregnant with Patrick Garcia’s baby, and Jon Avila’s forced eviction from the Big Brother House.  These are all rather “important” happenings in showbiz this week: important things that have an extremely significant impact on life on Earth.

   But none more important than this: is Manny Pacquiao the next (gasp) John Lloyd Cruz?

   I’m sure that “Anak ng Kumander,” Manny’s first feature film, is a critical showcase of Manny’s (cough) acting talents.  Now that we hear less and less of Ronnie Ricketts or Monsour del Rosario, we have lost our local equivalents to Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme.  It’s not like Manny has become the local equivalent of Sylvester Stallone, much less Dolph Lundgren.  Manny’s acting talent, based solely on a trailer for “Anak ng Kumander,” is reminiscent of the local boxers beat up by Vic Sotto in “Rocky Plus 5:” the only difference being that Manny is a world-class boxer.

   But when I saw those photo shoots of Manny with Ara, I felt the urge to vomit.  Needless to say, I lost all respect for Pacman.  Sure, you can pass off Ara as a fattened-up version of Bea Alonzo, but there is no way in hell you can pass off Manny as John Lloyd Cruz.

   I’m sure that Manny feels a bit of embarrasment - if not outright shame - in being compared to John Lloyd (what’s with the “Lloydie” moniker, I do not know).  Playing on Manny’s popularity (or notoriety) is one thing, but do we really need a comparison between two completely different elements?

   OK, one thing they both have in common is they aren’t good singers.

   Roland Barthes, when he discussed semiotics (or “semiology,” to be faithful to his use of the term), expanded the traditional notion of Ferdinand de Saussure’s sign into two levels: denotation and connotation.  At the level of denotation, there is just the arbitrary and conventional relationship between the signifier and the signified.  At the level of connotation, there is the concretized and contrived relationship between the signifier and the signified: Barthes calls this “myth.”

   Advertisements are classic examples of “myth,” in that “subliminal messages” become part of the package, the marketing machine.  Think “Josie and the Pussycats.”  But to me, all this talk about “hidden messages” and “semiotics” surrounding certain aspects of a commercial is misguided analysis.  A class I took in my sophomore year comes to mind: a student said that there was a “sexist message” in advertisements for wristwatches, where the minute- and hour-hands of the watch’s face “represented the legs of a woman,” and the second-hand “represented the penetration of the penis.”

   But is it?  If my watch reads 10:10.01, should I then assume that the watch company has intended to do this to sell sex to me?  Obviously not.

   Marshall McLuhan comes to mind: the effect of media is not the content, but the medium itself.  McLuhan is often quoted and invoked for the phrase, “The medium is the message.”  There is no “pro-gay” message in rainbow-colored lights: the light bulb’s message is the expansion and the extension of waking, working, and leisure hours.  The medium that is the advertisement has served the purpose of extending “social realities,” but in truth, it doesn’t.

   In selling papaya-based skin whiteners, do I disregard a preference for the morena?  In advertising milk, am I in effect a racist because there’s no such thing as “black” milk?  Do I discriminate against curly-haired people by selling shampoo?

   If there is a “subliminal message” to any advertisement, it is that there is a different reading of truth, or a different truth altogether.  Advertisements “mythologize” truth: shampoo alone will not give you extremely smooth, straight and shiny hair.  Ice cream will not result in perfect scoops that won’t melt.  Washing clothes with a particular brand of soap will not result in a really old shirt looking brand-spanking new.  Herbal remedies are not substitutes to clean living and exercise, and there is no substitute to exercise.

   As such, all advertisements function at the level of connotation: not just soap, but this brand of soap.  Not just shampoo, but this brand of shampoo.  Not just a TV show, but this particular TV show.  There are no implicit messages about anything, but just an explicit message of the denial of choice, of signifying the signifier.

   Disclaimer: I’m not a sexual beast, nor am I sexually preoccupied. 

   Yesterday’s entry was about a hypothetical porno movie about lechon, and it makes me kind of rethink the whole idea of porn in general.  Even if pornography is a multimillion dollar industry, it’s still pretty much illicit.  “Immoral,” even.  The conservative right would rather have it that the mere possession of porn be made illegal and criminal: Sen. Loren Legarda, for example, made waves in shutting down BoyBastos.com.  “Investigative reporters” with weekend shows make headlines out of busting porn rings and nightclubs.

   Like marijuana and herpes, having porn is one thing: hiding it is more important.  DVD hawkers, for example, sell X-rated DVD’s behind displays of pirated martial arts movies that feature Jet Li or Chuck Norris.  In Internet shops, surfing porn means really small browser windows.  Internet-sourced porn are hidden in folder trees or in ZIP files.  There’s no shortage of gay and lesbian MPEG files in the Internet.  This basically means that if you really have to have porn, you have to hide it.

   Rather than talk about porn movies, I delimited this experiment to kinds of porn accessible to many people: novels, magazines, and Internet porn.

Smut novels

   Before the Internet, “porn” was more of “smut.”  This basically meant sexually-charged novels.  (Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” is not “porn” per se, but a classic piece of 20th century literature.)  Novelists like Harold Robbins and Irving Wallace, for example, became famous in discount bookstores for their very libidinal works that dealt with showbiz and sex: Robbins, for example, peppered his novels with sex on every chapter, and Wallace’s formula for sexing up his novels was to do it in each quarter of the novel.  Sidney Sheldon’s familiar solution was to put mild descriptions of sex in the beginning and towards the end, but puts graphic detail in the middle.

   But even before the romantic American novel, there were really “pornographic” novels that surfaced and made their marks in literary history.  The French are particularly famous for this, like Pauline Réage and Anaïs Nin are particularly good examples.  Réage’s “The Story of O” dealt with sadomasochism, and proved to be the quintessential model of hardcore porn films in the 1970s to the 1990s.  Nin’s “Delta of Venus,” considered by many literary critics as the most erotic novel of the 20th century, was basically a collection of short stories that talked about sex from a feminine viewpoint.

   While Réage and Nin are considered to be the mistresses (no pun intended) of porn, I think that “real porn” was “invented” at the turn of the 19th century by the Marquis de Sade, in his works “Justine” and “The 120 Days of Sodom.”  “Sodom,” in particular, would have even the most perverted of Literotica.com subscribers cringe with its graphic descriptions of torture, rape, and murder.

Tijuana bibles, “Heavy Metal,” and smut periodicals

   “Playboy,” “Penthouse” and “Hustler” are tame, and even classy: there’s nothing morally wrong with the photographic portrayal of nude women in my view.  There are, however, certain exceptions to the rule: in this section, I tackle a few of them.

   Tijuana bibles - or “Playboy of the 1920s” - are short pamphlets that tackle such sexual themes as bestiality and interracial sex, among others.  In “The Green Mile,” for example, a Tijuana bible is shown being read by one of the prison guards, concealed under a thick book.  Basically, a Tijuana bible is like a “Bazooka Joe” strip.  With the advent of glossy magazines, porn really came to fruitition.

   In the 1990s, the comic book “Heavy Metal” was the dirty little secret of many an elementary school kid: back then, some of my classmates were corporeally punished for having the magazine.  It’s more like hardcore sci-fi that involved muscle-bound women and machines.

   For the masses, though, P5 street tabloids became their dirty little secret.  Until now, sex tabloids represent a powerful force in shaping public opinion.  While “Bulgar” and “Tiktik” represent the archetypal smut tabloid, more and more tabloids have surfaced that serve the public right to be informed… about sex.  You have “Nightlife,” “Ang Playboy,” “Toro,” the list goes on.  National issues take fourth fiddle to the things that matter more to the readership: showbiz, sex crimes, and sex.  The reportage encompasses rape, sex scandals, and tips on sex.  There is no shortage of “news” in 75-year-old women getting raped on a news week.  “Xerex Xaviera” and “Roma/Amor” became part of Filipino popular culture for sex stories.

Internet porn

   With the Internet, porn became much more ubiquitous, even omnipresent.  Havoc was wreaked in flash drives and computers all over the world for viruses that came from searching porn.  With the Internet, porn became readily available and readily consumable: it’s no longer like an awkward moment in a drugstore to buy condoms.

   Internet porn made even illegal and morally-bankrupt porn readily available, raising global concerns on the proliferation of child pornography.  Global legislation and action made watchdogs like Cyber Angels and the End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT).  This raised - and continue to raise - debates on the matter of censorship and free speech (more on that next time).

Porn: quo vadis?

   The debate on porn raises so many questions: is porn the cause of sexual crime?  If we see porn as an effect, what causes porn?  With the Internet, new directions for porn have risen that it almost becomes a Quixotic struggle to battle pornography.

   As a passing “anthropologist,” I look at porn as not a dysfunction of society, but has become a function of it.  I did not define porn here because there is a certain stigma attached to porn: a moral stigma, an ethical stigma, a political stigma.  Sex, hidden from view for so long, has taken the character of the monster under the bed.

   Like I said before, if you have porn, you have to hide it.  Not because it is meant to be hidden, but because the function of it in society is to be hidden and deemed to have a corrupting value.  Porn is like many things we hide: corruption, Angst, among others, that contribute to how our society works.

   Eliminating porn, to me, is not only a matter of factoring out porn from the complicated equation that is society, but to reconfigure society in general to situate where porn belongs in the order of things.  This will involve a lot of critical assessments and debate: meaning we should take all sides into account.

   The dirty little secret that is porn will continue to hamper free and open communication.

Truthiness is “What I say is right, and nothing anyone else says could possibly be true.” It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.

- Stephen Colbert

Empirical reality is overrated. Santa Claus exists, because kids feel him on Christmas Eve. Elvis didn’t die, because we feel his presence. It’s not knowing, but feeling. Thank you, Stephen Colbert.

The talk of the Philippine entertainment blogosphere these days is the “Wilyonaryo scam:” in a YouTube video, it seems that the wheel in “Wilyonaryo” has two numbers in it. Which means two things, if you asked me:

• It seems that Willie Revillame cheats his contestants, and;

• It seems that this particular video is the most-watched YouTube video in the Philippines today.

Of course, Joey de Leon is pointing to YouTube to be the source of all truth and the font of all knowledge, as far as the “Wilyonaryo scam” is concerned. As it seems, you can - if not should - believe everything you see in the Internet. After all, if it’s in YouTube, it must be true.

There’s nothing wrong with this picture, ladies and gentlemen. You don’t have to actually know the truth: following the doctrine of truthiness, you need only to feel the truth. If it seems to be true, then it must be true. The question here is not a question of being, but a question of seeming. Seeming is believing, guys.

Now because it seems that you can’t edit a video and post it on YouTube, everything about “Wilyonaryo” - or cats playing piano - must hold true. Yes, Willie cheats, and all cats play piano. If you see it on YouTube - and if Joey de Leon refers to that on TV - then it must be true. It doesn’t have to be true, either: it only needs to be truthy.

Because everything is truthiness, we only need to feel the truth about things, regardless of whether or not they are true. Like, if I feel that Gloria Arroyo cheated or if Erap Estrada plundered the public coffers, it has to be true. The Senate need not launch full-blown investigations on whether or not Willie Revillame cheated in “Wilyonaryo” because it seems like he cheated. Seeming is believing.

Yup, it’s all about one thing: truthiness. It only has to feel like cheating.

   I’ve been checking out Friendster profiles, and found out how many people use MyHeritage to establish themselves as “celebrities.”  MyHeritage is the 21st century equivalent of deluded beliefs of looking like celebrities.

   It’s not that I’m immune from delusions: I take medication for delusions.  So to humor myself, I ran the MyHeritage face recognition on two of my better pictures (my yearbook pictures) and I was pleasantly surprised.

    And needless to say, my ego is inflated to the size of a scrotum stung by a thousand killer bees: the hypothesis being that all MyHeritage users are deluded.

*     *     *

Exhibit A: Me without glasses:

72% Mary-Louise Parker, 72% Lalaine, 70% Joshua Jackson, 68% Jonathan Rhys Meyers, 68% Andie McDowell, 67% Gary Cooper, 66% Richard Dean Anderson, 66% Ernest Hemingway, 64% Chew Chor Meng, 63% Keanu Reeves.

   I heart MyHeritage: I have a strong resemblance to Ernest Hemingway, McGyver, and Keanu Reeves.  It figures: I read a lot of Hemingway, I watched (to a certain extent) “Babylon 5,” and MyHeritage was not the first time I was compared to Neo (that distinction goes to Krissa).  And like Keanu Reeves, I can’t act my way out of a paper bag.

Exhibit B: Me with glasses:

63% Joey Yung, 62% Daviegh Chase, 61% Takizawa Hideyaki, 58% Megan Ewing, 58% Vivien Leigh, 57% Woranuch Wongsawan, 57% Siti Nurhaliza, 56% Son Ye-jin, 56% Michael Vartan, 56% Zsa Zsa Gabor.

   Save for a celebrity named “Takizawa Hideyaki” and Michael Vartan of “Alias” and “Never Been Kissed” fame, I find MyHeritage to be dubious: how in the heck do I look like Zsa Zsa Gabor?  I mean, I’m the first one to admit that I look like a woman, but this is ridiculous.  I don’t heart MyHeritage.

*     *     * 

   Because I don’t heart MyHeritage, I think that people who use face-recognition technology from Shockwave Flash objects in the Internet - and take it seriously - are fools.  Insecure, pitiful wretches.  Canker sores on the herpes-infested mouth that is the indifferent society.  Hemorrhoids in the inflamed anus that is the world.  Stray bits of feces in the rectal hair of stray dogs.  Vain souls who should be first in line at the purge of sinners at Armageddon.  Locusts on the fallowed fields of life itself.  People who should be rolled into the city square chained naked into wooden cages, hanged in the gallows, dunked in boiling asphalt, paved into a road, and ran over with a steamroller.

   Figuratively speaking.

   As it seems, a couple of my friends have posted MyHeritage-related stuff in their personal websites.  I don’t know about friends who look 68% like Matt Damon, or 74% like Charlize Theron.  He sure as hell doesn’t look like Matt Damon, and she looks more like Anne Curtis than Charlize Theron.

*     *     *

   But there really is no substitute to flattery: the kind of “MyHeritage” that does not require an Internet connection.  Take my dad, for example.  Here’s a 52-year-old man with a balding spot at the top of his head the size of a personal pizza, and he compares himself to Sam Milby and (goodness gracious) John Lloyd Cruz.  I love my dad and all, but I don’t see him in “Maging Sino Ka Man” anytime soon.  And oh yeah, his dancing skills are enough to win him P5,000 in “Wowowee.”

   On the outset, however, I did inherit the genetic trait of celebrity delusion from him, but of a different sort.  Last night, my friends jokingly alluded to me looking like Ryan Agoncillo in “Ysabella,” when he used hair extensions.

   Needless to say, I was flattered.  Go ahead, flatten me with a steamroller.

   Keeping abreast of the latest celebrity news is one of those things that keep The Marocharim Experiment going.  Last night at “Pinoy Big Brother Celebrity Edition 2,” Baron Geisler got drunk: apparently, the presence of alcohol at the Big Brother House was too much for Baron - a recovering alcoholic - to bear.

   I don’t know why the producers of PBBCE2 set up a place to drink.  Maybe the creative team had this brain-dead idea: “Hey, why don’t we put up a bar, and let’s see how the Housemates get drunk and get wasted.”  It’s funny at first, but eventually you have to take a long, hard look at Baron and admit to yourself: “Hey, this guy needs help.  What’s he doing in a reality show?”

   Step One of Alcoholics Anonymous sounds simple, but it’s far more complicated: admit you have a problem, that alcohol is ruling your life.  Understand that, and you’ll understand a bit more about the whole philosophy of AA, which is “One day at a time.”  It doesn’t matter if Baron was sober for two months or two centuries: once alcohol got a grip of you, it won’t let go.  There’s no such thing as a “cure” for alcoholism.

   I can’t help but have my heart go out to Baron: here’s a guy who is consumed by his excesses and addictions.  Here’s a guy who almost gave up a phone call to his mom for a measly pack of cigarettes.  But the alcoholism is something that hits hard: I had my own problems holding down my liquor before.  You can’t help but think why a reality show masquerading as a halfway house would have a 24-hour camera showing you how low people go whenever they get drunk.  I can understand an athlete like Gaby de la Merced, but Baron is (and I can’t emphasize this enough) a recovering alcoholic.  There’s just no way you can pass this off as a mere “challenge.”

   But that’s just it: another ploy at ratings.  I don’t know what’s going on in Donnie Geisler’s mind right now, much less their mother.  It’s hard to look at that drunken episode without understanding the effects of alcohol.

   I say it’s high time Baron was evicted from the Big Brother house.