The Best-Laid Plans Of Mice And Men Often Go Awry

My Saturday schedule was supposed to be simple: wake up late in the morning, leave after lunch to have a haircut at Ipe’s by 4pm, then leave before 6pm to go to either Alabang or Makati to duplicate some house keys, then home to hit the sack early. It was at Ipe’s that the schedule slowly unraveled.

While Ipe was cutting my hair, he and I were served San Mig Light. It’s a testament to the level of trust I have with Ipe and his scissors that I allowed him to cut my hair while he was drinking beer. The again I was also slowly getting drunk, which may explain why I was so cavalier about the whole thing.

Then they had me stay for dinner and more beer. I normally only have two bottles; by the end of the night I finished five. Luckily between bottles two and three dinner was served. But thanks to the spirit of alcohol we had a spirited, funny and free-wheeling discussion that touched on, among others, gay relationships, fag stags, threesomes, a feminine wash called Fem-tight (with tawas!) and Peni-fresh, the male version of a feminine wash—dare we call it a masculine wash?—with a very manly scent of Tutti-Fruity.

Then we watched this critical-and-commercial hit Korean monster movie, The Host (watch it, it’s fun). That’s when the text messages started coming in.

Phillip: “Malate gmik ba ang sangkabaklaan ngayon?”

A couple of hours later, another one.

Trina: “We’re in Malate. R u headed here?”

Both had a smiley face at the end of their messages. As in, “hehehe.”

Trina is a former officemate from the network; I haven’t seen her and the guys for quite some time. So I left Orlando in the office (parked beside a guard who unfortunately kept nodding off to sleep) and took a cab to Malate. Praning na ako.

Chatted with my former officemates at O. Then went to Bed where Jong was with his friends and Phillip was with his friends. I gave Phillip his free drink as prize for the McPromo. Then I proceeded to dance alone. I wanted to see just how long I can last; in fairness I danced non-stop for almost an hour. In the middle of all that dancing I suddenly had this idea of producing the movie version of the hit Broadway musical Wicked. What popped into my head first was the image of Hilary Duff as Elphaba, aka the Wicked Witch of the West, and Lindsay Lohan as Glinda the Good Witch singing “What Is This Feeling?” At first I thought Hilary should be the blonde Glinda and Linday the darker, more troubled Elphaba—but then I decided to counter-cast. Besides, Elphaba actually is a misunderstood do-gooder who became disillusioned, while Glinda is a do-gooder whose selfish motivation is to become popular at all costs. So turning the public images of the two singer-actresses on their heads would be an unexpected casting twist and a stretch for the two. Plus I made up my mind that Haylie Duff should play Nessarose, Elphaba’s crippled sister. It was when I was considering casting Justin Timberlake as Fiyero that I dropped that thread of thought and decided to dance like Justin instead. Well, tried anyway.

Dancing through life,
swaying and sweeping
and always keeping cool.

Life’s more painless
for the brainless.
Why think too hard?
When it’s so soothing.

Nothing matters,
but knowing nothing matters—
It’s just life,
So keep dancing through!

I ended up leaving Bed at around 4:30am. By the time I got home around 5:40am, I only had 3 hours of sleep then it’s off to Southwoods to visit our uncle and his family in their new house.

Zzzzzzz.