BANNED FROM WAL-MART…

Dear Mrs. Samsel,

Then Stepen Yan came.  Great cook, amazing showman. Though halting and a tad broken, he spoke good English…and he was funny. He entertained while he cooked, blabbering his mouth like a market vendor, and jabbing his spatulas flamboyantly.  In spite of all the showbiz he flashed, his recipes looked as appetizing as can be. Manila simply raved for Stephey Yan and his Wok With Yan show.  Everyone wanted a Wok in their kitchen. That Yan was the Man! 

When cable TV was made accessible to almost any home, cooking shows became a dime a dozen. The Food Network made a killing with all these chefs that showed off what they can show off.  Various chefs who were funny, had panache, or was simply snooty, all vied for cable viewers’ attention. They exuded differing degrees of confidence and sometimes a bit of elitism.  

Then Nigella came. All the qualities of a TV chef I have seen, viewed, critiqued, lambasted, and even cherished have hit a hard and high yet invisible wall.  I was dumbfounded.  She’s neither funny nor flashy. Truth is, I see no need for her to be. She had a face suited for royalty, eyes that saw through the camera and direct-hit any viewer, a body like a Greek goddess (Oprah calls her a Domestic Goddess), and a smile that could melt butter in a walk-in freezer.  One episode I watched (and attempted to comprehend), she was mixing this and that, and preparing a bevy of ingredients. In the end, she showed a cake. I was staring too much! No wonder the TV show did a lot of close ups on the ingredients and the utensils.  It is sooo hard not to stare at her! After every show, I’d end up feeling torn. I don’t know whether I’m hungry or turned on.

On occassion, I’d have the initiative and energy to prepare the cuisine I recently watched. Not with Nigella’s show. I can only gawk.  My wife finds it amusing that I have a crush on her.  Besides, she blushes everytime I tell her she looks like an Ilongga version of Nigella…but prettier.

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Ventriloquists are hilarious people.  I’ve always thought their sense of humor bordered on the perverse and twisted since they represent themselves as individuals who could make a conversation work even if the conversation is between him and another inanimate puppet made animate by his talent.  You get what I mean, I’m sure.  You’ve seen ventriloquists since you were a kid. I you haven’t, then you must have lived under a rock.

The hilarity of ventriloquism took on a new meaning when I saw Jeff Dunham on YouTube.  I thought, this guy is in serious trouble for his racist jokes which he projects on his character Achmed the Dead Terrorist. True, the jokes are racist but I think it made fun of racism and attempted to transcend the stupidity of racial prejudice. Consequently, it also somehow diffuses apparent tensions across ethnicities.

I’ll shut up now…I might over analyze this and defend humor for humor’s sake.  Twisted? Maybe…maybe not. I think I’ve outgrown the naivete of Sesame Street.

Sunday noons are usually set for family lunches. These lunches are made more special whenever somebody is celebrating a birthday, an anniversary, or simply a special get together with family and friends wanting to touch base…or test a new dish.

Banana leaves do the trick. We collect dahon ng saging (banana leaves) from the neighbors’ backyards…and..voila!… we have “plates” to put the food. I heard somewhere that the banana leaves actually stimulate appetite. No wonder, we all pounce on the food, dig in, and not talk till the chow is obliterated by hungry adolescents and famished adults. Nobody gives a fiddler’s fart if it’s impolite not to converse on the dinner table. It seems so much more delicious primitively competing with everybody. The satisfaction is so primordial.

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The first time I visited Manhattan was when I was 10 years old. My mom had to constantly remind me to close my mouth and walk faster. I didn’t care if I looked like an ignorant buffoon who in true to form klutz fashion bumped in to people and said ‘excuse me’ like a broken record. I didn’t even look. Quite rude that was. Being a small town boy from the Philippines, I was in awe of the tall buildings that hurt my neck every time I tried to look up to the peak of the gigantic structures. The people walked so fast I felt like a Lilliputian in Gulliver’s hometown. The folks on the street were so interesting I had to stare. Which of course was rude, too. My uncle who resides in New York was amused with me. He knew my eyes were taking in a lot of stimulus and paid no mind to the information overload that could potentially give me culture shock. I need to dig old pictures of that visit.

Two years ago, my brother Jun and I visited. When our plane approached Newark Airport, the buildings of Manhattan and the 5 boroughs of New York were very visible as it was a clear day. I nudged my brother to look at the small plane’s window. He smiled like a little boy. It was his first time to see NY. My smile was bigger…much bigger…I felt the same in 1982 but it’s a lot more exciting now. I felt such a rush, a tear rolled from the corner of my eye.

I had to tell my brother: “Kuya Jun, Sinatra is singing in my head. New York, New York!” He gave me a hearty laugh and said, “Sa akin din! (Mine, too!). We were laughing our heads off. The flight attendant looked at us as if she knew that Frank Sinatra was belting away inside our brains. She probably heard that hundreds of times.

“IT’S… UP… TO… YOU.., NEW YORK …., NEW YORK!…papapa dadam papapa dadam papapa dadam…!”

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