Joker’s Wild

Everyone knows his own deck of cards. There’s the King of Diamonds, Queen of Hearts, Three of Clubs, the Ace of Spades, and of course, the Wily Jack. That covers all the face cards...or does it? More often than not, the Jack is lost among the fives, sevens, and all the others that make up the entire 52. to add to that, it has to take a backseat, the fourth or fifth place even, to the top cards in the deck. But this does not suggest that the Jack’s presence in the deck is trivial. In fact, it is anyting but. Every poker player knows that a royal flush cannot be completed without the Jack, and those who know Blackjack are well aware that being dealt a Jack cam make or break your hand in the game. Bottom line, the Jack is like a First Lady: inconscpicuous, but indispensable.

Twenty-two-year old Star in a Million fourth placer, Christian Bautista, tells me he wants to be a jack-of-all-trades. Funny he should say that, since Star in a Million’s deck, it was he that was the Jack: the fourth. Three others took the top spots, while someone else was brought in as the Joker. Being the jack that he is, Christian shot into showbiz limelight despite being quietly put back in the deck. Apparently, Warner Music wanted him in regardless of the place he won in the competition. His self-title debut album is selling like pan de sal, and his current single, "The Way You Look at Me," can be heard playing over thousands of radios nationwide while its video is aired on Myx and MTV practically every 10 minutes. It appears that the world is turning in such a way that it wants Christian to sing. Christian noticed early on that showbiz opportunities kept failing onto his lap despite his prepping for the corporate world, and decided to tackle the opportunities head on. His success as one of today’s top balladeers was secured from the very minute he was spotted by Carlo Orosa, now his manager, whle performing in Trumpets’ stage productions. Mr. Orosa liked what he saw (and heard) and offered to help him enter Star in a Million, and as that awfully over used saying goes, the rest is history. "I do believe that a career like this was meant for me, because I still got a contract even if I placed fourth," Christian recounts.

"My ‘losing’ was more like an opportunity that I thank God for." He explains how his making it to the deep end of the competition gave him the chance to showcase his passion and talent. " I really don’t mind that I placed fourth, because you have to be really good to get there in the first place!" Of coure, he has room to talk since he’s been singing for hte choir back home in Imus, Cavite since he was seven.

Singing isn’t the only thing that Christian does well. He does sports, and gardens. Darned good tropical plants too. He originally planned to be an architect; he graduated from UP Diliman with a degree in Landscape Architecture. "I like to compose things. In landscaping, you have to put things together in such a way that it’ll work in the way you want it to," he explains, "and since you love what you’re doing so much, in the end, much like a song, everything comes together beautifully."

Power ballads can make you break a sweat, but to really work the sweat up, Christian plays with balls: basketballs, table tennis balls, golf balls, paint balls, etc. Oh, and shuttlecocks and go-karts too. What’s more, Christian plans to dabble in acting once he"’s established himself as a singer. "I’d like to try playing the villain," he said with a shy smile, "because its more challenging than playing the main character, who’s usually a good boy who loves a clean life, and that is exactly what I am.

Throughout the interview, Christian sits and answers questions quietly and patiently (he proudly cites patience as one of his virtues). He is almost candid despite his cool demeanor, striking one as the ‘quiet waters run deep’ type. Within Christian’s calm exterior brews a fierce lust for life and everything it hurts his way. This ferocity may not seem so obvious, though, as it is masked by his stoic composure and genuine amiability, but it is the same fierceness that drives him to work on his versatility, to become the jack of all trades.

In spite of the staggering change in his lifestyle, he’s managed to stay grounded: "Before all this began, I already asked my friends to warn me once they noticed that things were getting to my head. I’ve kept my feet planted on the ground throughout this whole thing, and I plan to keep it that way.

In the game of all fours, Jack is the name of the point awarded for winning a trick containing a certain knave. Again, the Jack’s power lies in its ability to come up from behind and give the table a good shaking. As wily as the Joker himself, the Jack’s power lies in its unique cunning. At the moment Christian Bautista is playing all his cards right. He has been dealt a good hand, and he knows it. He isn’t pulling the ace from his sleeves just yet; the world will just have to wait. In the end, Star in a Million turned out to be a game of all fours after all, and what better trump could there be than the clever, indispensible Jack?