In the realm of the senses

Craving for mint chocolate chip ice cream so close to midnight, we beat a path to Mooon Cafe at the IT Park, only to be told that they no longer carried our favorite brand. So we made our way back to Ayala Center, although not before Therese raised a minor stink. “You can’t not have Blue Bell! I’m telling the owner! I know the owner!”

“Name-drop all you want, dear,” I said, “but Gelatissimo closes soon so we better get going.” That’s what I like about the place: it closes late and could be counted on to have at least one gelato with mint in it.

Not this time, though. I had something with rum and Therese had the chocolate with chili. Another nice thing about Gelatissimo is that they encourage customers to sample their gelato. If all establishments did this I would be spared a lot of heartache. That was why I didn’t go for the chili: I couldn’t detect any, even after multiple tastings.

“Do you smoke?” the lady manning the counter said.

And how is that any business of yours? I started to say, but my friend was quicker. “Like a chimney,” she said. “Million-million.”

“Ah.” As if that explained everything. Or perhaps it did. When people talk of spiciness, it is usually taken as a matter of personal preference. Hardly anyone thinks to say, “Oh, maybe you have a dull palate” (from smoking too much, say). Try telling that to someone with hemorrhoids. They prefer to think they suffer for liking spicy food so much, not because their taste receptors are presumably impaired or below par. That just doesn’t sound romantic.

We went to see Chris Martinez’s The Gifted the next day. I enjoyed it. “I hate to say this,” my mother said, “but I didn't.” Now there’s taste. She prefers Nicholas Sparks adaptations and only came along because she didn’t want to be left alone at the hotel.

I like Anne Curtis. This is the first movie of hers I’ve seen and she does a decent job of channeling Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her (1992). She even manages to feign genuine contrition when the script calls for it — something that true psychopaths are apparently good at. I’m not sure whom Cristine Reyes was channeling, if at all; she reminded me of Mizoguchi’s women with their look of perpetual consternation (I learn later it is her default expression). Here — who wants to bet Reyes even knows who Kenji Mizoguchi is?

As for Sam Milby playing a high-school student — really now, my palate may have been dulled from decades of smoking but my eyesight’s fine (I’m farsighted, not blind). What redeems him is that he is clearly having fun that it is hard not to play along — or to forgive that atrocious Visayan accent that no one speaks with outside of a Pinoy production, not even Mommy Dionisia. If you ask me, them Tagalogs have something seriously wrong with their hearing.