Gone girls

Who says women like amazing amy are works of fiction?

by Nickky Faustine De Guzman
November 2, 2014

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He used to be sweet. But now… I’ve never seen him so angry. His eyes were bloody red. If looks could kill, I’d be dead right now. I’m scared. On the eve of Oct. 16, Friday, I tagged my aide Darlene Francisco along as we escaped from the house. Everything was planned—the car, the hotel, the media. A getaway vehicle burned to ashes? Let them think I burned myself inside the car. To hell with you and the girl you’re banging.

GONE GIRL NO MORE Josie, wife of Camarines Norte governor Edgardo Tallado (left) went missing but surfaced after five days.

This could be a scene ripped straight from Amazing Amy’s diary in Gone Girl. Camarines Norte Governor Edgardo Tallado’s wife, Josie, resurfaced and appeared on national TV five days after she went missing. The getaway Toyota Fortuner she was driving was found abandoned along Maharlika Highway in Camarines Sur. She fled, checked in at a hotel, and bought a secondhand car to Manila.

AMAZING AMY Screenshots from the movie Gone Girl

“I have no one rooting for me in Camarines Norte (Wala akong kakampi sa Camarines Norte),”Josie said. Her husband Edgardo is having an affair. Josie has seen the racy photos. They went viral online.

In Amazing Amy’s words, women should be hot. “Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry. They only smile in a chagrined, loving manner, and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl,” she says. Apparently, this rings a bell for real-life Gone Girls. Wait until they’ve reached their boiling point.

One year. Everything needs to be smooth. Each performer must play his role well: the police, the gunman, the TV reporters, the victim.

Take for example the murder of Enzo Pastor, whose story took a bizarre twist after police investigations revealed that the racecar driver’s death involved his wife, Dalia, who was allegedly having an affair with a businessman, Sandy de Guzman.

GONE GIRL… AND BOY Dalia Pastor, the alleged mastermind behind her husband’s death, Enzo Pastor.

June 12, 9:45 p.m. Enzo and his assistant, Paolo Salazar, were on their way to Angeles, Pampanga for a race. Enzo knew the route to Angeles like the back of his hand. But Dalia, according to his assistant, kept calling, instructing him where to turn, what road to take. In a carefully plotted murder, each performer must play his role well. Everything must go smoothly. Enzo was a good pawn.

At the junction of Congressional and Visayas avenues, Enzo stopped at a red light. Then a man appeared from Enzo’s side and shot him. He sustained three gunshot wounds in the head and neck. He was dead on the spot. Paolo was wounded.

Dalia, according to the gunman, was one of the master planners, the brains behind the murder that took months (even a year) to plot. In Amazing Amy’s words, “people who get caught are caught because they don’t have patience. They refuse to plan.” Dalia had a plan. And she was patient. The case, says the police, is solved. Dalia is a suspect. But no one knows where she is. Who knows, like Amazing Amy, she might have chopped her hair, dyed it black, and ate to her heart’s content to gain a few pounds? They say faking documents in Quiapo works like magic. You can have them overnight.

In Australia, another personified Amazing Amy has perfected the art of manipulation. She faked death in order to start anew. Natasha Ryan, then 14, ran away from home and hid in a cupboard for five years while her parents and the rest of the world were primed that she was murdered. According to reports, she lived in darkness, and only ventured out twice in the middle of the night to get some fresh air. She even watched herself on TV as the police searched for her and hunted down her supposed murderer. In 2003, the police found Natasha, alive, and married to his “captor,” Scott Black, a milkman she was banned from seeing when she was a teenager. The couple now has a son.

Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2012 that the novel-turned-movie was purely fiction, but she did see the parallelism between Amazing Amy and Nick and Laci and Scott Peterson, whose case was among those highly publicized and sensationalized in America.

GONE GIRLS: Laci Denise Peterson, found dead 90 miles away from home and Dorothy Arnold, still missing up to this day.

On Christmas Eve in 2002, according to the Time article “This Case is the Real-World Version of Gone Girl,” Laci Peterson, a schoolteacher, went missing. She was eight months pregnant with their first child. Like Amy and Nick, the Petersons were a beautiful couple, which drew more media attention. As in Gone Girl, Scott’s in-laws supported him—at first. As in Gone Girl, things changed when a massage therapist, Amber Frey, told the police she and Scott were having an affair. Months after Luci went missing, the police found her body, with a male fetus, washed ashore 90 miles from where the couple lived. Scott was convicted of first-degree murder for his wife’s death and second-degree murder for their son. Scott is currently on death row at San Quentin State Prison, California.

History is also hounded by missing persons, their true whereabouts as well as the facts of their cases shrouded in myth and speculation. On Dec. 10 1910, socialite and heiress Dorothy Arnold, dressed impeccably as always, left her home in New York City to do some shopping. She never returned. Her disappearing act was dubbed by The New York Times as the “supreme mystery of New York Police Department and perhaps the greatest missing person mystery in the United States.” Her disappearance was fodder for rumor, malice, and grim imaginations. Did she elope? Was she murdered? In 1916, six years after Dorothy vanished into thin air, E.C. Glenmorris, then in the Rhode Island Penitentiary, confessed he had helped bury a woman he believed was Dorothy. Alas, detectives could not find any trace of the body. Dorothy was 25 years old when she disappeared. She was a member of an influential family. She was the niece of former US Supreme Court Justice Rufus Peckham. Dorothy has since remained a Gone Girl despite her family’s government connections and power. Were you hiding something, Dorothy?

Cross-Stitch Rebirth

New age cross-stitchers sew reproductions of National Artists Fernando Amorsolo and Manny Baldemor paintings, all for a greater cause.

by Nickky Faustine De Guzman
November 3, 2014

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It’s back with a vengeance. The art of cross-stitch—which many tag as an old bridesmaid’s hobby and is so late 2000—is brimming with more life, more intricacy, more colors, more details. A new generation of stitchers, from as young as an 11-year-old to a seaman in his 30s, has been stitching and sewing and mimicking patterns and reproducing renowned paintings. They are the Proud Pinoy Stitchers, a group of 200 modern cross-stitchers. Now, cross-stitch artworks are infused with beads, flowers, metallics, and glow-in-the dark threads. Wow. Welcome to the new age of cross-stitch.

                                                                 BRING IT BACK The Proud Pinoy Stitchers members are sewing and mimicking art for a good cause. These new age stitchers reproduce the artworks of National Artists like Fernando Amorsolo’s Dalagang Bukid and The Offering. (Images by Rudy Liwanag)

In between her studies, Micah Angela Millare, 19, a member of Proud Pinoy Stitchers, sews and weaves colorful threads into patterns. She works with a variety of designs from flowers to food, Hello Kitty, and angels. But now she’s leveled up, sewing more intricate patterns like a detailed human eye. “I don’t have any friends who cross-stitch and they are interested to know the craft. Whenever I finish a pattern, I always take a photo and share it online,” says Micah. She says she finds peace and joy whenever she sews. She’s been cross-stitching since she was in grade four and finds no reason to stop. Micah apparently got it from her dad. Yes, her father (an engineer) loves to cross-stitch on his off day. Rene Millare is the master teacher of the Proud Pinoy Stitchers. By “master” he says he has the longest cross-stitching experience (he’s been stitching since 1991), the fastest stitcher (he can finish a 16×20 in one month), and has the cleanest back canvas.

Every month, the Proud Pinoy Stitchers meet up to trade tricks and secrets. So what’s the secret to a spotless back canvas? Rene says you should not immediately cross the thread—“it’s thread consuming and a mess,”—but do a slash first in one direction.

“The art of cross-stitch laid low back in the 2000s, but it’s coming back. It will always be in our culture, just like crochet and embroidery. Now, modern cross-stitch patterns are more realistic, unlike before when all we have were cutesy patterns,” says Proud Pinoy Stitchers founder Margaret Tipton. And while the craze that is loom bands have caught the hearts (and hands) of kids and teenagers, cross-stitching captures all ages and gender. Besides, you can display your work of art or give it as a gift. “It’s also therapeutic,” she adds.

Besides passion, the Proud Pinoy Stitchers are sewing, mimicking art for a better cause. They are mounting the exhibit “Karayon Masterpieces: Amorsolo, Baldemor, Atbp.” from Nov. 5 to 11 at LRI Bldg. N. Garcia St. Bel Air, Makati for the benefit of the Philippine Society of Orphan Disorders kids who need lifetime medical support.

On the exhibit are 22 paintings-turned-cross-stitched artworks of Fernando Amorsolo (like Lady of Flowers, Fruit Gatherer, Waling Waling, The Offering, Cooking the Noonday Meal) and four Manuel Baldemor (Season of Hope, Pahiyas, Fruits of Labor, and Good Harvest), and other   Filipiniana works.

Don’t worry about the copyright, DMC Philippines, their co-sponsor, has asked the permission to reproduce the iconic artworks of the National Artists.

If you couldn’t afford an original Amorsolo or a Baldemor painting, why not buy their cross-stitch version—and help kids in return? Or why not revive that old flame with cross-stitching that probably started in high school Home Economics?

Sembreak scare

Ready for a new adventure this school break? A trip to the unknown perhaps?

by Nickky Faustine De Guzman
October 31, 2014

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The Smallville strip, an entertainment hub in Iloilo City, is where the cool kids and yuppies hang out, well most nights at least. Rich in culture and history, people, especially the young ones, can create their own adventures in Iloilo. One Friday we did just that and went on a different kind of night out—we visited one of Iloilo’s “haunted” houses: Casa Mariquit.

Mariquit means pretty, but locals say the 200-year-old Spanish colonial ancestral home is far from being beautiful.

Standing proud along Sta. Isabel Street in Jaro, Casa Mariquit is home to Maria Mariquit Javella Lopez, the wife of former Vice President Fernando Lopez Sr.—the couple eloped when they were teenagers. The house was built by Mariquit’s father, famous banker Ramon Javella.  It’s a home of memories—apparently, even apparitions. Caretaker Morel Ferrer says the two-storey residence lodges “good spirits.”

Image courtesy of Megaworld

“Any old house has spirits living in it,” says Morel, who has revived and turned Casa Mariquit into a museum in 1997. The owners abandoned the house in 1984. Morel restored the casa, with permission by the great grandson Robert Lopez Puckett. He dusted off the furniture, swept the floor, and hung each vintage memorabilia. Lined up on the walls are photos of personalities who visited the former vice president. There was Richard Nixon, as well as Chiang Kai Shek, Emperor Hirohito, and King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The casa induces a trip down memory lane. There is an old grandfather clock, a huge dial up telephone, and a Polaroid camera among others. For history buffs, it’s a major #TBT experience, but for those with extra sensory perception, it can be a spine-chilling experience.

I asked Morel about his spooky tales. He says there’s only a handful, but all of them are hair-raising. The house apparently served as a base of guerillas during World War II. Casa Mariquit was a witness to a number of Japanese soldiers being killed during the war. It has two secret underground tunnels, now closed, which provided as camp outs.

Morel says he saw a white lady on his first day. Sometimes, he could see the silhouette of a lady in Filipiniana. “They’re harmless,” he says.

“Do you want to see an example, Ma’am?” he says with a sheepish smile. Game. I don’t believe in ghosts, anyway. Morel says we should look straight into the eye of Don Ramon Javella’s old (and creepy!) black-and-white photograph. Morel says Ramon’s gaze follows you wherever you stand. He says there are many old portraits that seem to follow you wherever you go.

The human brain is so powerful it can imagine things. For someone skeptical (and with no extra powers at all), every creepy story is only a figment of our imagination. Many people have a tendency, called apophenia, to find connections between two totally unrelated events. Some interpret mundane things as something supernatural. I believe there’s a psychological explanation to seemingly paranormal activities. Google them and there you find a plethora of explanations. According to Zawn Villines in her article Psychological Explanation for Seemingly Paranormal Phenomena, published on Good Therapy website, “suggestibility can fuel myths about ghosts and haunted houses, particularly in an environment that seems creepy.”

She adds that people can be primed to see ghosts if they are told that an old house is “haunted.”

She says: “This means you might interpret a strange noise as a sign that a ghost is present. Old and abandoned houses and locations that have a scary story—such as a hotel where someone was killed, or a home where someone committed suicide—can further prime your mind to ‘see’ ghosts, even when you might otherwise explain away unusual apparitions and sounds.”

True enough, my mind was playing tricks on me. I felt a jolt every time the big grandfather clock made its eerie sound. Could that be a ghost? I felt heavy. I tried taking photographs of every nook and cranny of the elegant house in hopes of finding an extra silhouette or a blurry vision of a white lady. Alas, I didn’t find any.

To see is to believe. I haven’t seen one so I don’t believe in ghosts—yet. But it’s up to you. Renowned spirit questor Tony Perez, on his blog Tony Perez Philippines Cyberspace Book, shares psychic exercises for the members of his group Spirit Questors. He says anyone can develop his or her psychic abilities including his psychic feeling, smell, hearing, and taste. But he clears on his blog that he designed the exercises to lead anyone to “become more sensitive, more creative, more spiritual, more mentally alert, more compassionate, and more responsible” intelligent human beings.

Casa Mariquit is charming, rather than haunting, especially in the morning when you can see its glorious beauty. It evokes sweet nostalgia, of the memories of our lolos and lolas fanning themselves after siesta, when life was still simple. Casa Mariquit is an open museum—feel free to visit it anytime and see (and feel the feelings) for yourself. Hey, it’s sembreak.

Eat like an Ilustrado

Good food, great ambiance, historical significance, now catered at your own home.

by Nickky Faustine De Guzman
October 30, 2014

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King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain, Gloria Stefan, Andrea Casiraghi of Monaco, The Bourne movie cast and crew, heads of state, dignitaries, and luminaries around the world have eaten at Ilustrado, the charming restaurant in the walled city of Intramuros. But some have come incognito. There are no mementos on the wall. “It will ruin the ambiance,” says owner Bonifacio V. Pimentel. Instead of a frame of Who’s Who on the wall, there are vintage paintings, movie posters, and sculptures that evoke the charm of old Manila.

Ilustrado restaurant, owned by father-daughters trio Bonifacio, Berniece (left), and Bea Pimentel (Images by Noel B. Pabalate)

“Besides, we’re not a commercialized dining place. We’re a dining foodie destination. You have to deliberately visit Intramuros,” he says. After all, Ilustrado boasts not of prestige, but of good old great food, hospitality, culture, and history. “Ilustrado means citizens of the world, the enlightened ones. Our customers are those with discerning tastes,” says Bonifacio. You don’t have to be a star to dine at Ilustrado, but you’ll feel like a star when you dine at this historic restaurant. All-time favorites are paella, callos Madrilena, lengua con setas, and Bonifacio’s own recipe, the adobong bagnet with prawns and crab fat in KBL (kamatis, bagoong, and lasona or shallot). Like any restaurant, Ilustrado also changes its menu (the all-time faves of course remain) quarterly. There’s baked Norwegian salmon in moringga pesto, baked eggplant with feta cheese, and crab soup, among others. Desserts are winners, too. Concocted by Bonifacio’s daughter Berniece, Illustrado offers pastries and cakes not even your Lolo can resist. Non-dessert persons will be converted to sweet lovers even just for a day, thanks to a variety of treats: a rich cheesecake on a chocolate bed, strawberry opera, and homemade ice cream flavors like sampaguita, pandan, peanut brittle, lemongrass, mango jubilee with flambé presentation, and the award-winning baked cheesecake.(The pastry corner offers buy one take one every 6 p.m.) Besides good food, Ilustrado has an ambiance that will bring you back to the old Hispanic era when bricks and wood and capiz windows were the designs of the times. It has a pretty main dining room, an al fresco courtyard garden, grand Sinagtala ballroom, and a casual Kuatro Kantos bar and café.

Norwegian salmon fillet

Strawberry opera cake

And now, 25 years after it first opened at General Luna Street, Intramuros, Bonifacio says nothing has changed. It is still a romantic place, a nostalgic venue for dates, weddings, and other Pinoy celebrations. Well, except, they’ve upped the ante. “If you can’t visit us, we’ll bring the food to you,” says Bonifacio. Ilustrado, apparently is not only a dine-in restaurant, it also offers catering services for events. It has banquets at Fernwood, NBC Tent, and SMX. It also caters for a sit-down, intimate date. Yes, you and your date can enjoy paella at the comfort of your home. It has its own private mobile kitchen to ensure the quality and freshness of each dish. After all, anyone can be an ilustrado anywhere, anytime.

Baked eggplant with olives and white cheeses in filo

Magic and Mexico

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco, and a lot more. Why this Mexican art exhibit is a must visit.

by Nickky Faustine De Guzman
October 27, 2014

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If the selfie queen Frida Kahlo (and her unibrow) is the only Mexican artist you know (and boxers do not count!), you have a hundred reasons to visit Ayala Museum and check out the “Mexico: Fantastic Identity 20th-Century Masterpieces” exhibit on view until Nov. 9.  Get to know other Mexican artists who inspired our own art. After all, our cultural relationship with Mexico dates back during the Galleon Trade.

“The influence of Mexican art in shaping the visual vocabulary of Filipino artists in the 20th century cannot be denied,” says Ayala Foundation senior director for arts and culture Ma. Elizabeth Gustilo. “Our sensibilities are similar. The story of the modern art in the Philippines wouldn’t be complete without the influence of Diego Rivera, the Mexican muralist who was the inspiration of our National Artist Carlos “Botong” Francisco.”

Alfredo Ramos Martinez, Casamiento Indio

The exhibit presented by FEMSA is one of the most important modern and contemporary Latin American art collections in the world. It has more than 1,200 art pieces in painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, and installation. Its exhibit at Ayala Museum, however, only displays 60 art pieces that illustrate the shared ideas and visual vocabularies of Mexican and Filipino artists in the 20th century. What was the context back then? Revolution, poverty, slavery, and a longing for a national identity. The similarities, in terms of style and aesthetics, is in our penchant for festive, vibrant colors, but the difference, says Mexican Ambassador Julio Camarena Villaseñor, is the “tone” of our colors because the “lighting in the Philippines tends to be hazy.”

“During the 20th century, Mexico had strong European influence, but after the Mexican Revolution between 1910 and 1920, we formulated a new strong Mexican art,” says curator Emma Cecilia Garcia Krinsky. “And this is why the exhibit is called ‘Fantastic Identity’ because we already have a concept of fantasy even before the concept of surrealism reached Mexico,” she says.

A chunk of the presentation showcases Mexican’s magical realism art, a technique that integrates fantasy with reality. This genre travels across Mexican’s literature and films and everyday living. There’s book author Laura Esquivel and her novel-turned-movie Like Water for Chocolate. And though Colombian, the late author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his One Hundred Years of Solitude (among his many books) were inspired by surrealism. “In Mexico, surrealism runs through the streets. It comes from the reality of Latin America,” he says in his interview in the “Origins of Gabriel Marquez’s Magic Realism” published on The Atlantic website (www.theatlantic.com).

 

COLORS AND CULTURE What do Mexican and Filipino arts have in common? Look at Angel Zarraga’s September (left) and Antoino Ruiz’s El Corzo (right) and you’ll get the answer—colors, culture, and context. 

The exhibit begins with Diego Rivera (again, the artist who influenced Botong Francisco) and his cubist painting Spain’s Great, which he completed during his stay in Europe. Painters Diego, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco are Mexico’s los tres grandes (the big three), whose works encouraged a national identity after the revolutionary movement. Their counterpart in the Philippines are Botong, Victorio Edades, and Galo Ocampo, the Triumvirate of Modern Art, who led the growth of mural paintings in the country.

Then, there are artists like Frida Kahlo (who married Diego Rivera), Antonio Ruiz, Agustin Lazo, Guillermo Meza, and Juan O’ Gorman, among others who composed fantasy related images. Frida’s My Dress Hangs There 1933 painting (oil and collage on masonite 45.4 x 50.5 cm) is the most buzzed about. Though there’s not a trace of a selfie, it’s still considered a self-portrait because her dress is in the painting.

Throughout the ’50s and ’60s, Emma says strong changes took place in Mexico. Young generation artists were able to travel to Europe after the end of the war, which enabled them to learn other expressions, which they took back with them to Mexico.

“Organized in seven chapters that review the key moments in the construction of the identity of a country under a revolution, the exhibit shows the nearly 80 years of artistic expressions of the most influential artists not only in Mexican art but also in Latin America,” says the curator.

Coca-Cola FEMSA Asia division human resources and corporate affairs director Juan Dominguez says that the exhibit “promotes greater awareness of the Mexican art movement by bringing heritage pieces including works made by Mexican National Artists to build a stronger bond with the Filipinos.”

By the end of this visit, you’ll realize there’s more to Mexican art than Frida Kahlo and her unibrow.