Big Mama legends

A big misconception in the Big Bang theory is that it all started with an explosion: That all matter, light and energy came from that explosion. Experts, however, say that there was no explosion. There was (and continues to be) an expansion. Rather than imagining a balloon popping and releasing its contents, imagine a balloon expanding: An infinitesimally small balloon expanding to the size of our current universe.

The human mind is a plastic balloon. One can lick, suck and blow it, and it expands. The fetus in the womb, however, all gooey but not too scandalous, explodes into the world with minimal erotics.

The origin of the Christian baby did not start with Eve but with the Madonna. No genre in Christian iconography has had a bigger fan base than the Madonna and her child. One Madonna and child, painted by the Italian master Fra Filippo Lippi (not the pseudo New Wave band) was rumored to have been once in the hands of Adolf Hitler. Another example, Raphael’s "The Madonna of the Chair" is claimed to be the most widely copied picture in the world, not Da Vinci’s "Mona Lisa," which was parodied by Marcel Duchamp with a replica of the famous lady donning a moustache not dissimilar to Adolf Hitler’s, entitled "Mona Lisa with a Moustache." According to legend, Raphael saw his real-life Madonna sitting while her child played with a stick and made it into a cross. This I learned from a security guard at the National Gallery in London where an exhibition of Raphael’s works was held last October. Lesson in museum going and celebrity watching: Pay attention to the staff.

Filipino masters also rendered the mother and child – Galo Ocampo, Vicente Manansala, Jose Joya. My mother owns a Tam Austria, although I am not sure if he is considered a master. Her neighbor, ER Tagle, the father of Positivism (intrigued by this artistic phenomenon once, I searched the web for more information, but did not find a single entry, but hopefully things are busier now) also made bundles of mother and child. I heard he was later accused of a sex crime or something.

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I went to see Madonna a few days before my graduation exhibition. My classmate-friend, daughter of Hollywood director Michael Mann, offered me a VIP ticket. Denim swimming in white paint was the perfect getup for the "Drowned World" concert at Earl’s Court. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a sighting of Lourdes.

Pilgrimage is good for the soul.

Starting with origins, my baby. The name is an oxymoron. Baby. Holy babyspeak… Ah. Okay. Wow. Really. No.

She is a cross between the two Rodriguez movie stars – Lolita and Celia. She has the sympathetic aura of Kuala in Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang and the venomous glamour of Valentina in Lipad, Darna, Lipad. Celia Rodriguez reminds me of the Joan Crawford character in Mommie Dearest, played by Faye Dunaway who is another famous Hollywood mother. In Darna, Celia/Valentina’s alter ego Amor was a pop star like Madonna. Lolita was also excellent as a gender bender in the original Jack and Jill.

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While waiting for collector John Silva’s talk on "The Homosexual Aesthetic in Acquiring Antiquarian Images," a female psychotherapist sporting an eye patch admired my Hermes snakeskin purse, but inquired if I was aware of the follies of mixing gender paraphernalia. For a while, I got worried and assumed the caution pertained to the mixing of fabrics. I told her that the snakeskin purse is more manly, and thus lethal than the Lacoste clutch bag my dad got me. I also told the psychotherapist – who was increasingly becoming flirtatious and self righteous – that my mom wanted the Hermes, but as it was a recent purchase, I couldn’t part with it yet, and that instead, I gave her (my mom, not Pirate MD) a Vivienne Westwood snake belt, which I used to hang around my neck like a silver boa-cum-bling bling.

I read somewhere that Celia Rodriguez complained of the plastic snakes stuffed in her turban on the set of Darna. Real ones, too, were apparently used for close-up shots. One cannot help but admire the sheer audacity of a woman who can trade reptiles with cheongsams in her portrayal of the Chinese villainess Mei Ling in Darna at Ding.

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Like most hardworking and happy mothers, mine dresses sharply and is very attentive to leather bags and cardboard collars. She even volunteered to fix a stranger’s neckline in church once. It is good to be alert and helpful when it comes to clothing and the faith.

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Alexis Carrington of the TV soap Dynasty also balanced motherhood’s generosity with the standing collars’ meanness. The collars of the ’80s were a force of mean couture. Standing in half attention, they were vigilant, competitive and weary of infidelities. Joan Collins’ collar could prick her numerous lovers or fly her to more corporate takeovers. The show’s producers’ theory was that Alexis was a nymphomaniac who couldn’t care less about her children. Yet despite her femme non-maternale persona, pedestrians and sophisticates alike lapped up the monster mom. Joan Collins’ shoulder pads could breast-milk her aborted babies (Alexis might have slept with half of the cast and crew) if she wanted to, but that is just not Alexis’ style. In real life though, Collins appeared very caring towards her son, a painter. I had the pleasure of meeting Sacha when he had an exhibition at the gallery where I used to work, but to be honest, I was a bit disappointed to see the Alexis impostor all so sweet and smothering. Are most male artists mama’s boys? Her real-life sister, novelist Jackie Collins, sells tales of equal sordid magnitude to fraught mothers who would probably think so.

Tips on how to smother a mother on Mother’s Day:

1) Run her errands. Do everything from breastfeeding your baby brother to buying groceries for the whole barangay.

2) Go to Mass every day as her stand-in so she can have the whole week off somewhere in Palawan while you try on her Catholic Women’s League uniform and brush up on the 15 mysteries.

3) Hire a stripper and a hotel room in Pasay.

4) Fix the head. Pump up the hair to hold more family secrets and then cover with Jackie O pillbox hats for armor-like solidity befitting a grand matriarch. Work the eye: Curl lashes, pluck brows and press cat’s-eye contact lenses. One look with the new look and haughty sales ladies will disappear.

5) Get her the new stun gun from Chanel, the number 1, plus a copy of Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, as well as the soundtrack of Mamma Mia!

6) Lend her your instructional videos, like John Water’s Serial Mom and Charles Busch’s Die, Mommie, Die. Fast forward to the scene where Serial Mom (Kathleen Turner) grabs a slab of pork chop from the kitchen table and pounds to death with it a saccharine homemaker watching the film version of Annie.

7) Take her out to dinner. Or host a lavish banquet in her honor. Be really vicious with the guest list and seat her enemies beside the door, preferably the kitchen, the toilet or the exit.

8) Leave the house but move right next to her. And make another cute and innocent grandchild as soon as the last one starts to answer back.

9) Give her elocution lessons. Teach her how to say G-O-T-O-H-E-L-L properly.

10) Buy her a beauty parlor with a recovery room.

11) Drive her to all the fruit stands, council meetings, and Marks & Spencer shops without hinting any sign of displeasure.

12) Write a scientific theory, a philosophical treatise or a film script inspired by her i.e. noble mothers and children.

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"Ang inyong anak ay hindi ninyo anak, sila ay mga anak na lalaki’t babae ng buhay; at bagama’t nanggaling sa inyo, sila’y hindi inyo. Mabibigay ninyo sa kanila ang inyong pagmamahal ngunit hindi ang inyong paniniwala. Mabibigyan ninyo ng tahanan ang kanilang katawan ngunit hindi ang kanilang kaluluwa, sapagkat ang kanilang kaluluwa ay namamahay sa templo ng kinabukasan na hindi ninyo madadalaw kahit sa panaginip." – Jules, Dekada ’70 (In memory of slain Filipino journalists)