Le bubbly Bublé

When Michael Bublé came to town last year, he was a walking bottle of Cali Shandy. He is back for another round of concerts (tomorrow night, Jan. 30 at the PICC in Manila and on Saturday, Jan. 31 at the Waterfront Hotel in Cebu), and he seems to be as effervescent as ever.

At a press conference at the Conway’s Bar in the Shangri-la Makati, wearing a simple gray and white striped shirt, Bublé answered questions–the intelligent, the insouciant, but especially the loaded, gamely alike. Asked what had happed to him between his visit and now, he replied, "Are you talking about me getting fat?" When someone made the mistake of assuming that he was of French descent, he said, "I’m Italian, but I can kiss in French." His parting shot was, "I look forward to coming here, and although I am not a Filipino citizen, I will run for President." Bublé has obviously learned the language game of showbiz well.

Cute is one word to describe him, and being cute has gotten him into trouble. Luckily for him, it also gets him out. At the airport, he was asked whether or not there was an actress he likes. He answered Kristine Hermosa, and now the local showbiz world is salivating over driblets of gossip fodder. "I put my foot in my mouth," he said at the press conference, "I thought I was trying to be cute." He then asserted that he is single, but added, with the swiftness of a pro, a postscript: "But Kristine Hermosa, if you’re listening or watching..." When the issue was brought up again, he said, "I should have told people I was dating Martin Nievera." (Some of us may recall how effusive he was about Nievera last year: "Before I met Martin, I thought only women were sexy.") The third time was the best:

Question: What stage are you in now with Kristine?

Answer: There really is no stage, and I wish there was. She’s really hot, but no, she’s not my girlfriend.

To deny and yet to adumbrate the possibility–isn’t that an equivocation most cute?

Bublé admitted, or at least did not deny, dating Jenny Santi when he was in town last year. When Maurice Arcache asked him about that relationship, Bublé’s answer was, "She’s a beautiful sweet girl. She’s too good for me, actually, and I don’t deserve a girl like that." Such self-effacing modesty easily got the ladies sighing. He didn’t elaborate, but about Santi he is right. Even when she was still an Interdisciplinary Studies major at the Ateneo, we knew that she had the gifts–brains, beauty, and determination–to make it big, in showbiz or elsewhere. (She speaks excellent French, too.)

The charmer that he is, Bublé didn’t run out of ambassadorial remarks, a number of which he said them last year and, therefore, are likely to be more than showbiz shtick. Listen:

1. "I’m thinking of maybe having a little place here and living a bit here...in Manila. I love it here."

2. "I want to thank all of you very sexy people for coming here."

3. "You guys have such a beautiful country...So many of you are very warm and very sweet and family-oriented people, and I’ve a lot of respect for you and the way you carry yourselves."

4. "If you read the foreign press, whether I’m in the UK, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, America, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, or Japan, and they ask me where my favorite place has been, I say the Philippines."

Bublé is also doing charity this time around. The proceeds of his special appearance at Joey Jives Five, a musical event to celebrate the fifth year anniversary of the NBC Tent at the Fort Bonifacio Global City, will benefit a number of charitable institutions, including the Canadian Fund (for handicapped children) and Bantay Bata.

After all that, it was, therefore, something of a shock (a refreshing one, actually) to see him take umbrage. The cause was the release of an album carrying his name but without his or his record company’s imprimatur. The songs in that album were intended for his part in the movie Totally Blonde. "I was told that I’ll be singing these songs for the movie, so that when I was acting in the movie I’d be lip-synching to them...Lo and behold, Michael Bublé had some success, and, wow, all of a sudden, there’s a CD out there." What’s getting his goat, he explained, is that he thinks the CD doesn’t live up to his standards. He is not stopping his fans from buying it, but "if you’re disappointed, it’s not us. . . . If it were up to me, it wouldn’t be out."

The official release is still his self-titled debut CD (one of the top-selling albums in the country last year), which he is currently promoting (a little belatedly) in Europe and other parts of Asia. In the works is a DVD, which he hopes is going to feature a bonus track. A new album is also being planned, although the song list isn’t final yet. (There will definitely be no version of People, though, a song he ridiculed: "people who eat people..."–more evidence that even though Buble is bubbly most of the time, he also froths in the mouth some of the time.)

Bublé’s last words are the same (99 percent verbatim) as last year’s: "I think that good songs are good songs. I don’t care when they’re written, whether it’s 1930 by George Gerswhin or 1991 by George Michael. If you have a great melody, nice lyrics, and a groove, you got yourself a timeless song."

Expect timeless songs at the concert. Expect, too, a few new numbers–he might even do the ocho-ocho ("Is that a sexual position?" he asked). Expect, finally and above all, Bublé being his "same loony self." When the final curtain falls, you’ll know why it’s not easy not to like people like Bublé, even if he doesn’t like People.