A newspaper reader doesn’t usually expect anything big to read on a Monday. Sunday is normally a lazy day for journalists, except for some occasional landslides that for some unknown reason mostly happen on weekends, in which case the next day’s front page photos will have politicians looking mad at nature for making the lives of their constituents difficult.

“We will rebuild, we will survive. Let’s show to the world the resiliency of Cebuanos,” they would be quoted in the captions as saying, as they stand tall among ruins and debris.

But this paper’s issue last Monday (March 16) was different. Its banner story talked about the Commission on Election’s plans to make next year’s automated elections credible. Really? Credible? Wow!

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Let’s start with word definition. What is “staphylococcus aureus”? Like many words in the medical profession, the root word of staphylococcus aureus is Greek until it evolved into a phrase used by doctors today to make us lay people understand less our illnesses. Why can’t they just tell us that we have these nasty bacteria that look like a bunch of grapes under the microscope and are poised to invade our bloodstream until we die of acne?

Seriously, when the ancient Greeks mentioned the word “staphyle,” they referred to a “bunch of grapes,” not the bacteria that can cause pneumonia, meningitis, gastroenteritis and other potentially serious infections in man, like addiction to noontime shows.

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I have two confessions to make. But we’ll go to them later.

It took me weeks to decide to mention in this column the most puzzling singing group of all time: Village People. The mere mention of the group here will alienate younger readers who didn’t have the misfortune of enduring songs like “Macho Man” in their childhood. On the other hand, failure to do so will disappoint older readers who look up to Village People as the personification of their gay fantasies. They’ve been emailing me to please write about George Michael too.

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I’ve been accused of writing about things that shouldn’t merit a space in the  Main Opinion pages of a respectable newspaper such as the one you’re holding now. Serious opinion readers — meaning those who can understand the content of a Michael Rama speech – emailed me that I should be transferred to the Entertainment Section where I would write pieces like “Why Kris Aquino is the Most Irritating Personality in Philippine Showbiz.”

So for a change, I’m now going to talk about something that is really political: Menstruation and Sanitary Napkins. Email me if you’re happy now.

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AMONG the many reasons I don’t last in a relationship beyond three months is that I don’t give flowers to my girlfriends during Valentine’s Day. I can’t understand how flowers mean the world to girls on this very special occasion.

One Valentine’s Day years ago, I tried giving flowers for the first time to a girlfriend. I sneaked inside her room while she was out, placed the flowers on her table and hid behind the door to observe her reaction once she’d seen the deepest expression of my affection. My plan was to spring up from behind and kiss her while she’s smelling the flowers, just like in the movies.

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FOR those of you who haven’t been back to any college campus after graduation, here’s an update: they now teach ballroom dancing there. This means education officials were not singling my generation out after all when they forced us to choose between ROTC and the Campus G-string Cultural Ensemble, which was funded by the campus-owned Wear the Silly Bahag Scholarship Foundation.

I mean, what academic benefit is there to gain from dancing naked with only a piece of cloth barely covering your pubic area? As a rule, a male college student is lanky in a funny, angular way, such that when you ask him to execute body movements, like the Igorot dance, all educational and cultural benefits he is supposed to gain from the experience is offset by the embarrassment brought about by an exposed underdeveloped butt.

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WE FILIPINOS are suckers for noontime shows. Noontime shows are the biggest daily event in our lives. A carenderia, a clinic, a bus terminal, a barbershop, a police station, a barangay hall that doesn’t have a TV set on at noon has a PR sense of a toad. We wonder how dull life would be without noontime shows to make us laugh, cry and look stupid.

Surprisingly, of the thousands of self-help books in the local market today, there’s not one on how to create a top-rating noontime show. So as a sucker for noontime shows myself, I wrote this initial draft on a book I will call “Act Stupid, You’re On Some Noontime Show.”

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( Last of two parts )

THE story of Arnel Pineda (pre-YouTube years) is typical of rock musicians who are in a band for economic rather than artistic reasons. Playing originals doesn’t put food on the table, while doing certified Bon Jovi monstrosities can at least land you a contract in Japan.

This is understandable, especially in the case of Pineda, who spent two years of his childhood out on the streets of Manila collecting empty bottles and metal scrap, and discovered his voice as his only way out of this poverty. Thanks to his mother who taught him Barbara Streisand songs when he was a little boy. (I’m not kidding.)

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(First of 2 parts)

IF you’re a fan of Charice Pempengco and Arnel Pineda, you might think I’m making fun of your heroes; so to be safe, skip this column and proceed to the Horoscope section.

If you’re still there, it’s nice to know we share the same irritation with anything that devours talents like it’s the Great Famine. It’s double the annoyance when you see the talents yielding like dumb sheep. It’s thrice the exasperation when you can’t change channel without seeing them being interviewed by Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah, Boy and Kris, Sharon Cuneta, Korina Sanchez, and the President of the Philippines.

What’s next, Charice on Al Jazeera?

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In elementary, I was a member of a children’s choir that performed only during Christmas. We were different from other choral groups in that we didn’t sing the usual Christmas carols. Instead, we performed a number that was almost 30 minutes long, complete with choreography that required a lot of stomping of the feet and prancing around.

The song was like a gozos, only that the stanzas were recited instead of sung. It was a narrative of the first Christmas, and we played the role of shepherds telling each other hey, come on, let’s follow that star and visit this child in a manger. What about the sheep? To hell with the sheep!

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