Savoring socials
If we had our druthers, often we prefer to stay home to finish work that is never done, and mind a garden that is ever needful of heart.
But random, frequent calls for attendance in Metro M’s whirligig scene easily outpace the quick march of a morning sun of healing, the languor of afternoons (except when a basketball game is on), and the gavotte of evening through midnight and well beyond, when solo or one-on-one rituals are interspersed with sosi engagement in electronic media.
What’s sauce for the goose of shared photo albums is sauce for the gander of possible additional photo ops, and so, so sosi in virtuous reality can we get. Such as on the week that was.
Sweet Sunday we had to break the spell of home ministry to catch an experimental film that was adjudged as the best thesis in Peyups’ IMC. Titled Colossal, Whammy Alcazaren’s black-and-white endeavor (some parts subtly colorized) had its first public screening at the basement theater of Fully Booked on Bonifacio High Street.
We couldn’t NOT go. Whammy we’ve known since he was a young boy. In fact he graduated from Ateneo High in the same batch as our boys, was that half-a-dozen years back? Why, if memory serves right, he even had our daughter as a prom date one time, maybe in junior year.
But that was so long ago, and presently it’s made evident, in the 80-minute film he wrote and directed, that he’s matured right into gravitas’ ambit. The film starts with nearly six minutes of a blacked-out screen emitting white noise, before prolonged frames of shimmering seascape usher in a voice-over in Bisaya, with subtitles appearing in English.
It’s that kind of a film, okay? Explorations of self and issues light and dark, love and death unravel as a weighty procession of rhetoric that seems gravid with unease. We dare not interpret the gravity of meaning or message. Suffice it to say that the sudden incursion of a pop anthem as the end credits roll up reverts us to the bearable lightness of being.
And we congratulate the direk and his dad, our esteemed colleague, neighbor and relation, Paulo Alcazaren, who’s billed as E.P. or executive producer.
With common friends like Danton Remoto and Erwin Romulo hmmm, superstars in their own right as well as our daughter do we emerge into the last hour of daylight and saunter a couple of blocks to the venue for cocktails.
We like the Chamonix Sauvignon Blanc 2010 from South Africa, as well as all the finger food plus pasta. Good friends, wholesome broods, sheer conviviality cap off an appreciation of young cinema that, as the synopsis states, “explores the complexities of grief and the process of grieving as understood through the myth of a Man as he ventures through the shifting landscapes ruminating. ‘… Of men who do not die, of spirits caught in the hollows of trees, of love sheltered in the embrace of truth.’”
Then last Tuesday, a surefire bestseller was launched at the SM Megamall Atrium: Savor the Word, a compilation of the winning entries in the prestigious Doreen Gamboa Fernandez (DGF) Food Writing Award contest over the past 10 years.
Edited by author Felice Sta. Maria, food columnist Michaela Fenix, and Doreen’s niece Maya Besa Roxas, published by Anvil Publishing, the book also features excerpts from Doreen’s essays on food as well as recipes by Mol Fernando.
Sponsors for the launch were The International Wine & Food Society (IW&FS) Manila Chapter, SM Megamall, C2 Classic Cuisine Philippines, and National Book Store. A co-sponsor in a sub rosa way was our buddy Mol, who brought a bottle of the 17-year-old Suntory whisky blend Hibiki, which certainly went well with the platefuls of delights served by C2.
Joining the co-editors on stage to receive their copies were some of the contributors, the entire roster of which reads, alphabetically:
Ofelia Niña Reyes Abay, Diana Andres, Engracia Q. Bangaoil, Jun Belen, Eda Veniola Brojan, Elizabeth R. Calero, Nimfa Doroteo Camua, Clinia Franciselie G. Carandang, Mary Bianca S. Consunji, C. Ferdinand M. Cortes, Rodessa Dauigoy-Lachica, James Michael Gannon O. Deen, Amapola J. Española, Dely P. Fernandez, Yvette Fernandez, Marianne P. Gayangos, Viol A. de Guzman, Nicholas Y. Lacson, Lolita R. Lacuesta, Ma. Pia F. Luque, Paolo P. Mangahas, C. Horatius Mosquera, Philip Z. A. Nazareno, Elmer Nocheseda, Cheryl Chan Nolasco, Christine Nunag, Romel M. Oribe, Jenny B. Orillos, Jenny Lou A. Orro, Dexter Osorio, Carla M. Pacis, Liza Vida Cortes Paqueo, Jennifer L. Peña, Datu Shariff Pendatun III, Therese Desiree Perez-San Juan, Elizabeth Ann B. Quirino, Guillermo G. Ramos Jr., Regina Isabelle Jaimee Ranada, Maria Fatima O. Regala, Mercedes Tan Rodrigo, Margaux Marie Vargas Salcedo, Joy Subido, Herschel A. Tan, Marian Medina Umali, Amy Uy, Gina R. Ylaya, and Aritha Zel B. Zalamea.
That roster above already includes the winners for Year 10: 2012, the subject for which was “Himagas”: Ramos for “Haleyang Sampalok”; Quirino for “A Hundred Mangoes in a Bottle”; Zalamea for “Perfecting Leche Flan”; Belen for “Ano’ng Panghimagas?”; and Lacuesta for “The Day My Mother Learned to Make Leche Flan.” Those present among these latest winners received their prizes at the launch.
Co-editor Sta. Maria writes in her prologue, “A Taste for Words”: “The DGF Food writing Award has contributed to a growing recognition of Philippine cuisine as a vital ingredient in how Filipinos live. It is the classic recipe to spark literary innovation and culinary achievement.”
And of course the lady honored by the yearly contest and now its offshoot, this wonderful book, is quoted: “The writing done about food must be worthy of its subject. It should not be left to newspaper food columnists, or to restaurant reporters. It should be taken from us by historians of the culture, by dramatists and essayists, by novelists, and especially by poets. For it is an act of understanding, an extension of experience. If one can savor the word, then one can swallow the world.”
Our next social was a glittering affair, the 9th Best Dressed Women of the Philippines awarding for the benefit of the Philippine Cancer Society, held last Wednesday at the Rizal Ballroom of Shangri-La Makati.
We were invited by our former Ateneo student in Fiction class, Sheree Chua, whose outstanding short stories subsequently gained her a fellowship in the Silliman University National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete, thence allowed her entry into the Creative Writing program at City University in Hong Kong. Well, who says writers can’t be as fashionable as they come?
A conflict of commitments for the evening had us breezing through an hour of cocktails before the sit-down dinner. But it was enough to allow us to hobnob with the ritzy and famous, among them Apl de Ap (see photo, heh heh).
Told you socials are a terrific source for FB entries in the realm of the enviable. We also had photo ops with our other buddy, former Prez FVR, who assured us that his spectacles were still all rim and no glass. Then there were Ching Montinola, our Philippine Star colleagues Johnny Litton and Mayenne Carmona, Tootsie Echauz Angara whom we assured of all-out support for her fine hubby Rep. Sonny Angara for his Senate bid, and several other glamorous ladies whom we all had to avoid to effect our quick getaway.
You will understand why. We had to hightail it to a more modest gathering, but one of fellow writers, and more importantly, souses.
Savor we did the occasion billed as Chivas and Esquire Whisky Appreciation Night at Chops Chicago Steakhouse on the fourth floor of Greenbelt 5, where Darren Hosie of Chivas Brothers and Pernod Ricard Asia, flown in from Hong Kong, delivered a mini-lecture on our beloved Scotland’s spirits, much to everyone’s enlightenment, especially at every sip of so much more than just wee drams.
The feted bottles included single-malt Glenlivet 12, 15, and 18; and the blended Scotch whiskies Chivas 12, 18 and 25; Ballantine’s 12, 17 and 21; and Royal Salute 21. Don’t ask us, don’t ask me which one I had the most of. We/I just recall starting off with Glenlivet 15 and working our/my way up to Royal Salute 21. That’s usually how spirited boys do it early in life, right?
The sterling solids served at Chops went exceedingly well with the liquids. For starters, wowowee! “The Bone Marrow” roasted beef marrow, toasted crostini and parsley salad. And “Charbroiled Slab of Bacon” homemade smoked bacon, pomegranate honey mustard and black pepper.
After hearty soup and salad, the main course was the “Chops Tomahawk Steak” 100-percent grass-fed USDA certified and graded dry-aged beef; plus “USDA Certified Angus Beef Porterhouse” with assorted sidings, thence a grand dessert of “Dark Chocolate Cigars” dark chocolate cannoli, Bourbon mascarpone cream filling and white chocolate ash.
Whew. And so we all felt we had to wash all that down with more of the golden water of life we here including some of the best and lushest poets and writers our country belches 24/7: Pete Lacaba, RayVi Sunico, Charlson Ong, Marne Kilates with his muse Pam, Andrea Pasion-Flores, Sarge Lacuesta and Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta, Gang Badoy, Lourd de Veyra, Joel Pablo Salud and fiancee Chen Sarigumba, Erwin Romulo, Philbert Dy… Did we miss anyone? Did I? Well, I’m still trying to figure out who we are, or who I am, days after that last lush glass.
