Très funny

Oy, this book! I laughed myself silly. No wonder that everyone in the country wants to have a copy. Actually, the demand for this book is so huge that it sold its initial print run in just a few days.

Miriam Defensor-Santiago's funny book, Stupid Is Forever, is simply a compilation of all the anecdotes, pick-up lines, and jokes that made her a darling of the Filipinos. Who would've thought that senators would have a sense of humor?

Here are a few of my favorite lines from the book:

• “Miss, kutsara ka ba? Kasi papalapit ka pa lang, napanganga na ako.”
•  “Mag-exchange gift tayo? Akin ka at sa iyo naman ako.”
• “Ang sabi nila, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ Kung guwapo o maganda ang doctor, ayoko na ng apple.”
• “Good news: Wala ka nang pimples! Bad news: Dahil wala nang space.”
• “Question: What is the plural form of iced tea? Answer: Bottomless iced tea.”
• “Hindi lahat ng sweet ay loyal sa ’yo. Tandaan, sweet nga ang candy, pero nakabalot naman sa plastic.”
• “Mention – Ang laki ng bahay nila, parang mention.”
• “A smart wife is one who makes sure she spends so much that her husband can’t afford another woman.”
• “If you are in a relationship, stop trying to figure out who wears the pants between the two of you. Relationships work best when both of you are not wearing pants.”
• “Marriage is not a word. It is a sentence – a life sentence.”
• “Hindi naman ako mataba eh. In fact, I’m so sexy that it overflows.”

Yes, some of these jokes aren't original, but the senator doesn't hide this fact. I guess what's funny is when she gives these jokes her acerbic spin and witty delivery. I read these funny bits on the bus, and I have to tell you that I it was a pain to keep myself from laughing out loud.

Is stupid really forever?
The author thinks so, especially after looking at other politicians.

What didn't work for me was the inclusion of some of her speeches which she delivered to school during their graduation and other special events. Somehow, these speeches dampened the humorous tone of the book. Thankfully, these ran for just a few pages.

I love Stupid Is Forever. It's the kind of book that you pass on to your friends. It's the book you read after a stressful day at work. It's your proof that maybe you're misunderstood because the people around you are, well, stupid.

Read this book if:

1. You could use a good laugh.
2. You know that some politicians are not the smartest people on the planet.
3. You do believe that stupidity can't be cured.

Rhymes with a female body part

Whenever I encounter the name David Sedaris, I immediately think of the Seinfeld episode wherein Seinfeld couldn't remember the name of the woman he's dating. All he has is that the woman's name rhymes with a female body part. Mulva? Mreast? At the end of the episode, he does remember the woman's name, and it's Dolores. Well, Dolores rhymes with Sedaris, yes? Anyway, aside from that, both Seinfeld (the TV show) and Sedaris are dear to me, as they've never failed to make me laugh by making fun out of seemingly everyday situations.

David Sedaris's When You Are Engulfed in Flames has some seriously funny shit. I had an audiobook copy of this title, and it was great hearing David Sedaris himself reading his very personal essays. A few were even recorded live in front of an audience, as I heard lots of guffaws and heartfelt applause from people. What I would give to see and hear Sedaris! Probably an arm and a leg. Or 3 of my fat fingers and toes.

The essays in When You Are Engulfed in Flames are so personal that, if I were in Sedaris's shoes, I would've holed up in a remote town in Albania, or maybe just packed everything to live with Eskimos. The collection, released in 2008, features 22 essays. So that's 22 funny little pieces I listened to on my way to work, while queueing in the bank, and doing the number 2. Looking at the list of these essays, I am amazed at how Sedaris is able to see the humorous and the ridiculous in everything (e.g., while taking a taxi from La Guardia to NYC, strolling along the streets in Paris, taking train rides in Tokyo).

The essays are pretty candid as well. I cringed when his partner, Hugh, pricked his boil and out came tablespoons of pus streaked with blood. I felt a closeness to him when he described his preference for unstylish clothes. Sedaris is my cool gay uncle, the one everyone goes to for advice, the writer who doesn't mind being politically incorrect, the person who chooses to be the wallflower, the absentminded bloke in the corner.

A handful of essays have become my favorites. In "The Understudy," he talks about the babysitter who didn't really do anything till the last few days when his parents were to come back from vacation. "Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?" debunks the myth that gay guys are born with a fabulous sense of fashion. He talks about his undergraduate days in Princeton in "What I Learned" and his goal of majoring in killing one's parents. Bestiality is the highlight of the uber funny "Town and Country," where a cabdriver also attempts to discuss the importance of "getting pussy" with him.

My favorite would have to be the last piece though, which is entitled "The Smoking Section." This is also the longest essay in When You Are Engulfed in Flames and also the funniest. Sedaris chronicles his attempts to quit smoking by, goodness, moving temporarily to Japan. The title of this book actually came from a warning printed on a card in the hotel where Sedaris and his partner were staying: what should one do when one is engulfed in flames. You gotta hand it to the Japanese.

Sedaris never fails to bring in the laughs. I constantly had to keep myself in check, making sure that I don't laugh out loud while I was on the bus. Although, I think that really happened, twice in fact. I couldn't care less. I had my Sedaris and he was good company.

Read this book if:

1. You know that the best audiobooks are the ones read by the authors themselves.
2. You've quit smoking, and you know how hard it is.
3. Sedaris rhymes with Dolores rhymes with clitoris.

I fell in love with this book

It's been a while since I gushed over a book, and it feels great to be doing it now. Yes, I am seriously fawning over David Levithan's debut novel Boy Meets Boy, a novel published 10 years ago. As I closed the book last Friday night, I was swept away by the beauty of Levithan's story and his writing. I've now included it in my very short list of all-time favorite books.

The world that Levithan creates in this novel represents an ideal. If you're jaded, you'd think this would be speculative fiction. It's a world where teenagers, gay or straight, can date anyone they want to, without fear of being ostracized. It's a school where the star quarterback is also the homecoming queen. Parents, well at least the main character's parents anyway, do not think too much about their children's sexuality but shower them with all the love that they can give.

I found it very easy to relate to all the characters Levithan wrote about in Boy Meets Boy. Paul, the 1st 'boy' in the title, is so unlike in your typical teenager. He has no tinge of insecurity and knows what he wants. However, like your typical teenager, he becomes awkward when he meets 'Noah', a senior who just transferred to his school. Right from the start, I just knew that Paul should end up with Noah. If they didn't, I would just die. There's no hope for the world.

But hope isn't a concept that's wanting in Boy Meets Boy. Paul hopes that he ends up with Noah. He hopes to patch things up with Joni, one of his best friends, who's dating a schmuck. He hopes that he wouldn't bump into his ex, Kyle, who keeps popping up in all the wrong moments. In the latter part of the novel, Kyle makes amends with Paul and hopes that things turn out better for them as friends. And Paul hopes that the parents of his other best friend, Tony, would step down from their religious pedestal and see that there's nothing wrong with being gay.

If I knew that Boy Meets Boy would have memorable lines, I would have kept a highlighter with me while I was reading it. I just fell in love with the beautiful prose that Levithan wrote. Here are some of my favorites:

I find my greatest strength in wanting to be strong. I find my greatest bravery in deciding to be brave. I don't know if I've ever realized it before. . . I think we both realize it now. If there's no feeling of fear, then there's no need for courage. 

With some break-ups, all you can think about afterwards is how badly it ended and how much the other person hurt you. With others, you become sentimental for the good times and lose track of what went wrong.

Now, I don't believe in doing hugs halfway. I can't stand people who try to hug without touching. A hug should be a full embrace - as I wrap my arms around Tony, I am not just holding him, but also trying to lift off his troubles for a moment so that the only thing he can feel is my presence, my support.

Part of love is letting a person be who they want to be.

My only gripe is that the novel is too short! It's that kind of book that you just want to go on forever. You feel that you just need to know everything that happens to these quirky characters. You wish that there were a sequel. And it's the kind of novel that makes you want to write fan mail to the author and urges you to hunt for his other books. I love Boy Meets Boy, and I hope more people would love it too.

Read this book if:

1. You know that it's only a matter of time before we get to that ideal world.
2. You like boys meeting boys, or girls meeting girls.
3. You love LGBT fiction.

Spoof-y

Daniel O'Malley's debut novel, The Rook, took me by surprise. I wasn't expecting to like it that much, considering that I'm not really into the fantasy-action-supernatural genre. This was an impulse purchase. Normally, I Google the books that I've been meaning to buy, checking out what other people say about them. However, The Rook floored me. I was extremely entertained by it.

O'Malley, in the opening chapter of the novel, presents us his heroine, one Myfanwy Thomas. (The w is silent and the f hard, rhyming with Tiffany.) Myfanwy awakes with no recollection of her own self and with dead bodies in latex gloves lying around her. The opening statement is enough to arrest you:

Dear You,

The body you are wearing used to be mine. [page 1]

It turns out that Myfanwy's former self was anticipating this memory loss and has decided to write letters to her new self to explain what she is and what she does for a living. Through these letters she discovers that her official title is Rook Thomas and that she's part of an ultra-secret organization called the Checquy Group, which is made up of retainers, pawns, and the Court. The Checquy apprently handles troublesome supernatural cases. She also learns that she has powers to control the people around her, and that her touch can be fatal if she wills it. Nevertheless, the new Mywanwy is peeved to find out that, despite these powers, her old self was a meek persona who was more comfortable dealing the Court's administrative functions instead of doing 'field work'.

The concept of the Court is particularly intriguing, as it is rooted in the game of chess. We have pawns who do the dirty work under the supervision of the Court. The Court itself is made of 8 individuals with supernatural abilities: 2 rooks, 2 chevaliers, 2 bishops, 1 lady, and 1 lord. Reading each of the characters that make up the Court is a delight. Rook Thomas's counterpart, Gestalt, is 1 individual that commands 4 bodies. One bishop is a vampire. And the Court's very regal lady can enter your dreams.

As I was reading The Rook, I realized that it reminded me of many pop cultural references. The varied abilities of the Court alludes to the X-Men. The school were students are trained call to mind Professor Xavier's School or, at the very least, Harry Potter's Hogwarts. The cases that Rook Thomas gets involved in, with the many instances of slime and ectoplasm appearances, is like The Ghostbusters. Add to that the bureaucracy and the efficiency of the organization, and you also get James Bond or Mission Impossible. The apparent 'spoofiness' of the novel never goes overboard. It's a fun read, I tell you.

So back to Rook Thomas. It appears that the Court has been infiltrated and that the former Rook Thomas has unearthed it. It is this mystery, this unravelling of the conspiracy if you will, that propels the story. It's a wonder to read the various letters that the old Mywanwy wrote for her new self, which are interspersed into the main storyline. O'Malley's novel is also very funny. If you like wry British humor, you'll be hooked with The Rook.

I was initially turned off by the book's length. (The hardback is close to 500 pages!) But The Rook's taxi-meter pace works to the reader's advantage. It's hard to put down a novel when each chapter has an action scene involving a flesh-eating blob, a hatching of a dragon gone wrong, a house overran by a religious cult which is in turn overran by ectoplasm, among other things. Oh, the wonders never cease.

A caveat: The Rook might just be the first in a trilogy or a series. While the main story does come to a close, it isn't as clean and complete as some people would have it. It seems O'Malley has set the stage for the next novel. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it would be as enjoyable as his first.

Read this book if:

1. You know that there just might really be an organization that protects us from supernatural creatures.
2. You can suspend your disbelief for extremely outrageous stuff.
3. You like chess.
   

Smells like teen spirit

That's Andy's best friend above. Louie. That photo shows him shouting the P word to distract Andy from making the shot in a basketball game. Louie, however, isn't the main character in Daniel Clowes's Eisner- and Harvey-award winning graphic novel, The Death-Ray. Andy is.


The Death-Ray isn't about a superhero at all. It's a graphic novel about teen angst. Andy, the main character, somehow reminds me of Napoleon Dynamite. Almost every panel in this book depicts Andy as a loser. And it doesn't help that he's best friends with Louie, who is as much a loser as himself.


And so Andy and Louie go through their high school lives inconspicuously. Andy fancies himself to be the boyfriend of a blonde who he writes letters to frequently. The blonde lives next door. He also fantasizes about the African-American woman who takes care of his invalid grandfather. Things get a bit more exciting when Andy inherits the death-ray, a gun that zaps things to nothingness.



Of course, Louie tries to capitalize on Andy's weapon, urging Andy to zap the people that make their high school lives a living hell.

I was surprised to note that The Death-Ray is as much about a death ray than, say, The Da Vinci Code is about gay erotica. Andy is compared with Holden Caulfield in a lot of reviews. I haven't read Catcher in the Rye, but if HC is every bit as angstsy and introspective as Andy, then the comparison deserves merit.

Clowes's work is very episodic, with sections running at a page on the average. (The Death-Ray is a big book, so a page can have more than 20 panels.) There's plenty of space devoted to character development. By the novel's end, you see a part of yourself in Andy.

The drawings are very clean and a bit stiff IMHO. However, the stiffness works with Andy and Louie's apparent aloofness to the world around them. It's the kind of artwork style you'd expect to appear on a graphic novel that's more character centered than plot driven.

The Death-Ray has lots of panels showing faces and several lines of dialogue. The scenes involving the characters can be funny, though it isn't the usual in-your-face sort of humor. Again, it reminds me of the humor that's wonderfully employed in movies like "Napoleon Dynamite".


Daniel Clowes has earned a huge following, with his other works such as Wilson and Ghost World.

Read this book if:

1. You like unconventional graphic novels.
2. You identify with Holden Caulfield.
3. You'll read anything that won the Eisner and the Harvey.
   

Tuscany, LOL!

There are just a few places where I imagine spending my retirement years. The beaches of Boracay is one, and the rolling hills of Tuscany is another. The sumptuous food and wine, the glorious weather, the wonderful scenery! How can you go wrong with living in Tuscany! But in James Hamiton-Paterson's hilarious Booker-nominated novel, Cooking with Fernet Branca, Tuscany becomes the setting where everything goes wrong.

In Cooking with Fernet Branca, we meet two of the most hysterically funny characters in recent fiction -- Gerald Samper and Marta. Gerald, a Brit who ghostwrites celebrity biographies, has a fascination for a cuisine one might say is experimental. Marta, a native of the ex-Soviet republic called Voynovia, is a composer, working on the score for the film of a famous Italian director. Gerald and Marta are neighbors, much to each other's chagrin. Here's a sample of a dish that Gerald made for himself. Try not to be queasy. (There are a lot of these dreadful recipes in the book!)

Mussels in Chocolate

You flinch? But that's only because you are gastronomically unadventurous. (Your Saturday evening visits to the Koh-i-Noor Balti House do not count. These days conveyor-belt curry is as safe a taste as Mozart.)

Ingredients
2 dozen fresh mussels, shelled and cleaned
Good quality olive oil
Rosemary
Soy sauce
100 gm finely grated Valrhona dark chocolate

You will need quite a lot of olive oil because you are going to deep-fry the mussels, and no, that bright green stuff claiming to be Extra-Special First Pressing Verginissimo olive oil with a handwritten parchment label isn't necessary. Anyway, how can there possibly be degrees of virginity? Olive oil snobs are even worse than wine snobs. . . [page 15]

Hamilton-Paterson's novel is a comedy of errors in the craziest sense. Marta believes that Gerald loves the horrible alcoholic drink fernet branca so much that she lets him drink lots of it. Gerald, on the other hand, feels that his obligation to drink up as much as he can of that awful stuff, thinking that Marta likes the drink too. Now bring in coke-addicted drug stars, crazy family members, and a famed porn director and his son, and you've got a very rowdy mix of a story that Hamilton-Paterson expertly handles.

One feels that Hamilton-Paterson parodied the expat's life in this corner of Italy. It's a very successful attempt, with Gerald coming off as the stereotypical prudish Brit who feels entitled to the promise of solitude and beauty that Tuscany can offer. He has the habit of singing arias and other operatic pieces despite his little knowledge of the lyrics and the wanting quality of his voice. Marta uses Gerald's singing in the film. When Gerald first hears the score, he feels that the music is "vaguely familiar."

Cooking with Fernet Branca is a fun novel. It's the kind of novel that you read on a lazy Sunday afternoon when you think you can use a good laugh. And Hamilton-Paterson does bring in the gags. The novel is one comedic scene after another, with the reader relating to either Gerald or Marta. Read it, dear reader. You'll weep with delight.

Read this book if:

1. You like parodies of famous travel books (Under the Tuscan's Son!).
2. You're taste in food is also experimental.
3. You'll read anything set in Tuscany.

Happiness in these pages

   "It's simple," he says. "There's more than one path to happiness."
   Of course. How could I have missed it? Tolstoy turned on his head. All miserable countries are alike; happy ones are happy in their own ways. [page 400]

What happens when you take a self-confessed grump and you follow him in his travels across countries as he explores what makes people happy? The result is one funny book which is part travelogue and part a study in sociology. Such a blissful read is Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss.

So what does Weiner discover in his journey? Well, it turns out that there's no simple recipe for a country's happiness. It's a confluence of factors, some of which are quite surprising. Here's a summarized list of the places he visited, which have reported high levels of happiness among the citizens:

• The Netherlands -- Apparently, the place's permissiveness is a factor in making people feel happy. Prostitution and marijuana are legal.
• Switzerland -- Lots of rules and laws are in place. The Swiss can also be very "boring." And Switzerland is also extremely democratic; people vote six or seven times a year. The Swiss even voted to increase their own taxes! How crazy is that!
• Bhutan -- The government has put in place a program called Gross National Happiness. The hell with the gross national product!
• Qatar -- Well, sad to say, wealth is an important factor in being happy, but only up to a certain point. The Qataris are so rich that they can buy their own culture.
• Iceland -- This one was quite surprising. I couldn't imagine being happy in a country that has weird daylight patterns and in temperatures that are way below zero. But Icelanders seem to thrive in these conditions. Of course, it helps that the citizens drink a lot and seem to celebrate the importance of failures.
• Thailand -- Thais are too busy being happy to think about happiness. Their known for their distrust in thinking and for that famous genuine Thai smile.
• India -- The country's rich culture and tradition play a part in bringing happiness.

Weiner also made it a point to visit countries that scored way below the happiness scale. His trip to Moldova established why money is important, for Moldovans have little of it. He decided to travel to England to observe the stiff upper lip manners of the British. True, in England, outbursts of happiness are rare. Tony Blair is even rarer; he's a prime minister who smiled.

The Geography of Bliss is truly eye opening. Weiner is very thorough with his research, often stating the probable effect of reverse causality and desirability bias involved in happiness studies. It's also one very funny book that is hard to put down. Weiner describes the culture and the people of the places he visited in a very intimate way. I believe that this is probably due to his experience as a journalist.

So what does Weiner find out at the end of The Geography of Bliss? The paragraph below may be simplistic, but how can you argue with a man who has seen the evidence up close.

. . . I am no philosopher, so here goes: Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude. [page 400]

Read this book if:

1. You feel like relocating to some place happier.
2. You're into travel books.
3. You think of yourself as a grump.

Some people seem to have it all

Nicholas Sparks looks like this:
Yet I haven't read a single novel of his.

Still, I don't mind if authors aren't eye candy at all.

Since I know that they'll write beautiful works such as this:
Don't you agree, dear reader?

I love vodka

If there's one thing that I have in common with Chelsea Handler, it's that we both love vodka. That Russian liquor is my beverage of choice because it doesn't taste anything and it's potent. And since I've been watching what I eat lately, I'm comforted by the fact that vodka doesn't have that much calories.

Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea is Chelsea Handler's second non-fiction book. Her first one, My Horizontal Life, where she chronicled her one-night stands, was a gas. This second book, however, is a riot. I'm not even thinking as to how much of this supposed non-fiction work is fabricated; what matters is that every chapter, every situation in this book can literally have you ROTFL.

Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea is divided into around 10 stand-alone chapters. You can actually skip chapters if a particular topic turns you off, and believe me, there are plenty of topics like those here. From her hilarious English trip to her thoughts about re-gifting, these stories are just a treasure. If you think that Handler is funny on TV, she's even funnier in these stories.

One of my favorite stories involves her trip to Costa Rica with her father. To start off, her father pretends that he and Chelsea are on their honeymoon so that they get upgraded to first class. Then what follows is one unbelievable situation after another. In the end, they get stoned together.

In another chapter, Handler recounts her brief relationship with a redhead even though she's still occasionally sleeping with her apartment building's super. At one point, the redhead pays her a surprise visit to break up with her while her other guy is hiding under the bed. In another outrageous chapter, the guy she's seeing ends up as the object of affection of a male peekapoo. She also recounts how she was jumped by three female teenagers as she was on her way to pick up her friend from the airport. The details are just hysterical.

Read this book if:

1. Vodka is your poison too.
2. You love Chelsea Lately.
3. You know the feeling of waking up in a strange room with a stranger beside you.

I die laughing

I've been ego surfing a lot lately. Ego surfing is when you key in your name or website in Google or any other search engine and find out the results. Try it; the results can be quite interesting. Anyway, I discovered a site which was posting rewrites of my book reviews. The rewritten text is funny as hell.

Here's a sample taken from my review of Netherland.

Original:
It's a beautiful book about Hans van der Broek, a financial analyst from London who gets transported to New York with his lawyer wife and his son. The van der Broeks were in NYC when 9/11 happened. It is this event that causes a strain in Hans's relationship with his wife Rachel. When Rachel decides to return to London, Hans is left alone in the hotel where they were temporarily relocated after 9/11. It is during this time that he meets Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidad-born immigrant/gangster/philosopher who exposes Hans to a less-explored side of the immigrant experience. Hans and Chuck meet at a cricket match, one where Chuck served as the umpire and mediated between two arguing players. They become inseparable after that. Eventually, Chuck uses Hans as an unofficial escort in his betting operation among other immigrants.

And here's the brilliant rewrite:

Rewrite:
It’s a smashing hard-cover thither Hans van der Broek, a pecuniary analyst from London who gets transported to New York with his shyster trouble and his son. The van der Broeks were in NYC when 9/11 happened. It is this circumstance that causes a winnow in Hans’s relationship with his trouble Rachel. It is during this immediately that he meets Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidad-born immigrant/gangster/philosopher who exposes Hans to a less-explored side of the beginner dress. When Rachel decides to give back to London, Hans is bountiful unescorted in the New Zealand tavern where they were for the moment relocated after 9/11. Hans and Chuck deal with at a cricket event, entire where Chuck served as the ump and mediated between two arguing players.

I laughed my ass off reading that one. But wait, there's more. Here's the first part of my entry about Michael Crichton:

Writers rise from the dead, too
I'm not talking about writers reappearing as zombies, elegantly dressed vampires, or divine apparitions. I'm talking about their works. It appears that Michael Crichton, the author known for incorporating cutting-edge technology in his fictional works, has kept manuscripts of two novels (one of them unfinished) when he died at age 66. Unless there's a vault of unfinished manuscripts hidden in Crichton's estate, this will be the last time Crichton fans will get their fix.

Here's the very, very amusing rewrite (check out the title, it's priceless):

Writers board flight from the expired, too
I’m not talking hither writers reappearing as zombies, elegantly dressed vampires, or celestial apparitions. I’m talking hither their works. It appears that Michael Crichton, the originator known after incorporating cutting-edge technology in his storied works, has kept manuscripts of two novels (one of them unfinished) when he died at in good time 66. Unless there’s a vault of unfinished manuscripts masked in Crichton’s above-board, this require be the newest in good time Crichton fans require butter up a enquire manifest their mesmerize.

Should I be bothered by all these? I don't even have any strong feelings about them. This doesn't even compare to the incident last week when we discovered a site who's been stealing feeds. Now that is really low.

If there's one thing that I don't like about these rehashed articles is that they make me gassy from all the laughing.

I scream for Chelsea Handler

Chelsea Handler is probably the funniest person on TV right now. She's a rare breed -- a comedian who is also drop dead gorgeous. If you haven't seen an episode of "Chelsea Lately", you're missing out on a lot. That show is hilarious! You may want to turn a deaf ear on all the politically incorrect jokes though. They make fun of midgets, blacks, gays, Miley Cirus, and the Jonas Brothers. And courtesy of the Chelsea Lately lexicon, I learned new words that definitely increased my somewhat limited vocabulary -- words such as "shadoobie" and "koslapuss."

In her first collection of essays, My Horizontal Life, Chelsea chronicles all her funny one-night stands in her 20s, which are bound to make the most prudish of readers have a heart attack. Whether or not all these stories are true, the essays make for a very entertaining read. Also, I can vouch that she did write these entries. If you've heard her talk on her show, that's the way the book was written -- in your face, self-deprecating, judgmental, and unpretentious. When her father asks her if she were a lesbian, she replies: "No, Dad. I'm not a lesbian. I sleep with guys all the time."

My Horizontal Life can either make you cringe or induce a BOSMKL ("bending over smacking my knee laughing") fit. She recounts how she had a phase wherein she dated only black guys because of their large penises. She imagines being in The Bachelorette and she eliminates all the bachelors based on penis size and then eventually giving the final rose to a Tyrone, Leroy, or Jamal. One time while applying for a loan in a bank, she sees a poster with a man and wonders how she knows him. Then it hits her that it's that guy with the small penis (a thing so small that you might just mistake it for a piece of skin).

I can't help but think if Chelsea ever contracted STD. If you're a young and beautiful blonde who's into Ecstasy and several shots of vodka in a party, there's definitely going to be consequences "down there." While high on E at a party in Mexico, she invites a midget to her hotel room and then passes out. When she wakes up in the morning and sees those little midget feet in the toilet, she wonders if she had a baby during the night.

If you've seen "Chelsea Lately", you're familiar with all those racist jokes they casually at each other during round table discussion. Now I know where Chelsea gets her inspiration for all those jokes about Asians, blacks, Jews, and Latin Americans -- from her father. In My Horizontal Life, her father is a constant presence. Mr. Handler thinks that he's not racist and says that he has no issues talking to and dealing with blacks. When he spots the only black couple in a crowded bar, he walks up to them and asks whether they would be interested in cleaning his house. When he sees Chelsea's black date drive away from their house, he immediately thinks of calling the police to report a stolen car.

My Horizontal Life is one of the funniest books I've read this year. Although I'm not recommending it to people who have no sense of irony. Her second book, Hello Vodka, It's Me Chelsea, is reportedly even funnier.

Read this book if:

1. You love Chelsea and her nugget Chuy.
2. You ever had a nasty one-night stand.
3. You're not getting any.

A screwball comedy and a screwed up T-shirt

Yesterday I saw a delightful little movie titled Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, which stars the quirky Amy Adams and the brooding Frances McDormand. I love it! It's a romantic comedy set in pre-war London, a time when cabarets were in full swing and everybody smoked the hell out of their lungs. The art direction is simply wonderful. Every shot can be turned into a postcard. Just look at the set below.

I believe that this movie is an adaptation of an eponymous novel by Winifred Watson. Regardless whether the movie was faithful to Ms. Watson's work, the adaptation works primarily because of the fine performances of Adams, McDormand, and the rest of the cast. We all know that McDormand can act when we saw Fargo, a movie she made when she was really pregnant. Based on my experience being around with pregnant people, these women are always hungry, sleepy, tired, and irritable. (They seem to be constipated quite frequently too.) My goodness! I'm imagining what the Coen brothers went through when they were filming Fargo with the about-to-pop-any-minute McDormand.

Amy Adams remains one of my favorite actors. She isn't pretty like, say, Jessica Alba, Jessica Simpson, Jessica Biel, and all the models named Jessicas. (If I dig chicks, I'd stalk Amy Adams, get caught, and have my 15 minutes in the network shows.) Nevertheless, Adams is perfect in this screwball romantic comedy. Oh, and that dreamboat from "Pushing Daisies" is there too -- Lee Pace. I didn't immediately recognize him though; he seemed "chunkier" in the movie. When Pace first appears on the screen, I just knew that he'd get the girl in the end. You see, he plays a piano player, and no girl can resist a guy who's good with his hands.


It's seldom that a movie inspires me to seek out the novel it is based on and read it. The last time was when I saw Battlefield Earth, a movie so bad that the novel couldn't get any worse. I just hope that I see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day in bookstores soon, and I am praying that the cover wouldn't be the movie poster. For the mean time, I have to satisfy my craving for English comedies with my copy of The Collected P.G. Wodehouse. I have yet to see a movie inspired by P.G. Wodehouse. I know that I shouldn't raise my expectations when I do see one. The T-shirt below sums up all the feelings of book lovers everywhere every time they see a terrible movie adaptation of their favorite book.


Speaking of T-shirts...

My mother gave me this last week. I doubt if she knows what the print means. She's "all sugar and spice and everything nice." (The shirt is part of a spoofs line, so don't mind the typo. It's intentional.)

When she gave the shirt to me, I couldn't help but grin. Thanks, Mom! I could never have enough friends with benefits.

More crazy book titles

Sometimes the funniest things are unintentional. People really come up with crazy stuff without even trying. Click here for more insanely titled book covers.

Here's my favorite. Chapters include "How To Eat With Your Pussy," "Nursing a Sick Pussy," and "Exercising Your Pussy." This is a total gas. It'll make the perfect gift for pussy cat lovers.


I know that these books, despite having unbelievable titles, are real. I own one of them -- Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander. It's a memoir by someone who grew up in a very conservative religious community. Auslander comes off as angry and funny at the same time.


A note on the foreskin for my non-Filipino readers:

Summer in the Philippines, from March to May, is the time when pubescent boys have their foreskin removed. Those living in the city go to medical doctors, where the operation can go on without a hitch. Boys in the provinces aren't so lucky. They go to the village doctor or folk healer (the herbolario) who cuts the foreskin with a knife, chews guava leaves, and then spits them on the wound to "disinfect" it. This is all done without anesthesia. Wonderful.

Circumcision is a right of passage here in the country. Parents don't usually have their newly born baby boys circumcised. They have their sons undergo the operation when they're 11 or 12 years old, somehow believing that the ordeal would make their sons "more of a man" whatever that means. I was circumcised when I was a baby, so what does that make me? Don't answer that.

The dire complaisance

In case you're wondering about the title of this post, well it's an anagram of my full name (Peter Michael Sandico). I guess I just found myself bored out of my wits so I decided to find anagrams of some of the books I've read. Here are some of the books at my bedside table.

Confessions of a Shopaholic - Fool on son's cheapish fiasco
A Thief in the Night - Heathen if hitting
The Stolen Child - Shh! Do intellect
The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Eh! Egghead of the gentle echo
The Satanic Verses - Scares the natives
Silent to the Bone - Is not noble teeth
Sea of Poppies - If ape opposes
Apartment in Athens - Harm, penitent Satan

Let's take this a bit further with some of the supposed 100 best novels of all time. (I've always had a problem with lists, especially with this one. If the list were more focused, such as the 100 best novels about exercising, then I'd be more empathic.)

Crime and Punishment - Manic sinner thumped
Madame Bovary - O my! A mad brave
Love in the Time of Cholera - Cheerio! Malevolent if hot
The Old Man and the Sea - Hat lamented -- no shade
The Red and the Black - The black death nerd
Anna Karenina - A rank, an inane
The Divine Comedy - Hey! I'm decent void.

Create your own anagrams here. Perhaps you can post the anagrams of your name or your favorite book in the comments. Here's an example I really really love:

Rhett De Jesus - The stud jeers

Some weird stuff I stumbled upon

Today, I kept stumbling upon weird but interesting stuff about books on the web. I might as well share them, since they can be really hilarious.

The circular bookshelf. More cool bookshelves here.

Crazy book title. More insane book titles here.

Coordinated book jackets

The Hills Book Club (Or, "Yes, we can totally, like, read")

Four fashionable women in their early 20s meet at a trendy LA restaurant to discuss Bernhard Schlink's novel, The Reader. They're eating al fresco even though none of them smoke. This is LA after all, the city where ladies consider three bites of fruit and four sips of diet soda a full meal. Let's call the women LC, Lo, Audrina, and Heidi.

Just a brief background: LC is the "queen bee." Lo is LC's best friend. LC and Heidi are friends with Audrina. LC and Heidi used to be best friends, but right now they're just civil with one another. Heidi is engaged to Spencer (not appearing in this article), who LC hates. There's supposed to be five of them; unfortunately, Whitney is in New York. Let's listen in, shall we?

LC: I totally love this book! Schink, Schlik, Shilk, err, Schlink really wrote a good one.

Lo: I agree, LC. It is a page turner. Definitely! I read it in, like, just 5 months! I am so totally going BFF on Hanna.

Audrina (looks at the ceiling and takes a teeny bite of her tofu sausage): Uhuh...

Heidi: I just don't get it, LC. What's will all this making out with that guy? He's, like, so young! All that acne and those skid marks and that oily hair. Gross.

LC: She's using him, Heidi. She can't read so she's, like, using her body to get him to read to her.

Lo: Wait, the reader in the book isn't Hanna? It's actually the boy? I am so getting it right now.

Audrina (more ceiling staring): Mmmm...

Heidi: Didn't you go to UCLA or something, Lo? Shouldn't this reading stuff be, like, natural to you?

Lo: I didn't take up Literature, Heidi. So there. Audrina, you've been quiet. Whachu think about the book?

Audrina: You know what's weird? I saw a movie with that Brit girl from Titanic and it's, like, almost the same as this book. That Titanic chick was, like, so naked half the time!

LC: Hello?! The movie was based on this book, you stupid biatch.

Audrina: You think you're so smart, don't you? You with your blonde hair and your clothing line and your... ummm... never mind. I'll be, like, hanging out with Justin Bobby after this. At least I have a man, LC.

Lo: Ouch. That was just so uncalled for. Let's go back to talking about the book.

Heidi: What's the point of all this when there's no cameras around? Where the hell is TMZ? Those guys should be, like, all over us right now.

LC: They're probably trailing that trainwreck Lindsay. Does she even read -- like we do?

Audrina: Do lesbians even, like, read?

Lo: Don't be dumb. She's bisexual. She's into Jack Nicholson too, you know.

Heidi: So she likes her sushi and her aged ham. Big deal, Lo.

Audrina: Huh? What does sushi have to do with anything? And what about ham?


And so it came to pass that the girls quietly went their own ways, vowing never to discuss anything about books ever again.

Jagshemash! It's Borat!

I saw this book at a bargain bin and I knew I just had to get it. Borat: Touristic Guidings to Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is the funniest book I've read recently. The book is actually made of two parts, with the second one titled Borat: Touristic Guidings to Minor Nation of U.S. and A, which isn't as funny as the section on Kazakhstan. At 50 pesos (about a dollar), the book is practically a steal.

If you've seen the movie, you know that Sasha Baron Cohen's Kazakhstan is totally made up, similar to the real country only in name and geography. Although I doubt that I have readers in Kazakhstan, I just want to make it clear that I know about this; when I refer to Kazakhstan in this piece, I'm talking about the "third biggest country in the world" and the country where "the wheel was almost invented in 1824."

The book is so politically incorrect that it borders on being insulting. If you have no sense of irony, you would totally miss the point. It pokes fun and targets select groups -- homosexuals, women, pedophiles, children, etc. I got scared myself when I found myself laughing at the insensitive bits. How can you not laugh when you learn that the two most popular sports in Kazakhstan is Kokpar, which is similar to golf but the players are riding horses and use a dead goat instead of a ball, and Harusak, a race by men who are carrying women against their will. Swimming is also popular in Kazakhstan; people go to the lone swimming pool in the country that took 17 years to build (although finished 1 year ahead of schedule), has an 80% human solid waste filtration system, and has an average fatality of 17.4 per month (12.2 accident and 5.2 execution).

Also, in Kazakhstan, it's actually better to be a prostitute than to a wife. When they are at home, wives are chained by their husbands and are kept in a large electric pen with other wives in the Hueylewis Stadium when their husbands watch a ping pong game, another popular sport. Children are taught to play ping pong for 6 hours every day in school. Prostitutes, on the other hand, have it good. The wife of Kazakhstan premier is the country's #1 prostitute.

If you've seen the movie, then you would know about the festival of the running of the jew. In the book, there's more hysterically unbelievable instances of prejudice. One of Borat's hobbies is catching gypsies. And people have no qualms about selling children that "have much retardation." My friend told me that he saw copies of the book in Fully Booked. If you think that Cohen was a genius for creating Borat, then this book is a must-have.