Com-fashion in a bag

It could be easy to just lump Hiyasmin Neri and Kim Jona-Castillo among the breed of fresh, young entrepreneurs using their sense of fashion as a stepping stone to mounting a business. Their affordable, synthetic leather Bagellia bags are funky, trendy and unique, with new collections being pipelined every three months. Popular among high school and college students and young professionals, the exclusively online brand has created a name for itself utilizing bright colors, neon, and metallic hues for their casual carryalls, and day-to-night bags  with clutches in the works for the Christmas season. But there’s another aspect to their bag business that turned my head.

This happened when I received an invite for a “bag auction” for their new collection, with proceeds going to help raise funds for the Kasai procedure Joyce Pimentel is hoping to afford in either Taiwan or Singapore. Joyce is the Philippines’ longest living patient suffering from biliary atresia. Born without a gall bladder, Joyce is now 23, while most of those born with that condition, pass away by the age of three. Unfortunately, the condition has meant a deterioration in Joyce’s health  while full of life, and not one to hide her condition, she is oftentimes scared to look in the mirror; as her eyes have “yellowed,” and she bleeds severely. The operation costs somewhere in the region of P12 million; and while she has approached entities such as the PCSO, the sheer cost of the operation and that it’s such a rare disease, limit the kind of assistance that can be extended.

The relationship between Joyce, on one side, and Hiyasmin and Kim, on the other, is merely tenuous  the old “friend of a friend” connection. And yet, through Bagellia, and such efforts as a cupcake drive and a T-shirt sale, Hiyasmin and Kim have constantly tried to make some small dent in the financial wall facing Joyce. Hiyasmin is a Star Magic ABS-CBN talent, and it was that connection, we work in the same place, that had her inviting me to the auction. And sure, I was at first thinking “just another retail brand” trying to make a mark; but as I delved into the “why’s” of the activity, I was struck by the idealism and compassion of these young girls. On their own, there’s not much hope that they can raise the funds to successfully send Joyce to her hoped-for medical salvation, but that doesn’t mean they have to surrender to despair, and I know, the efforts they are making to have Joyce’s case reach many have made their bags worth its weight in gold a thousandfold over. Compassion such as this is heaven-sent.

Joyce Pimentel, who suffers from biliary atresia.

(For those interested to be of some assistance to Joyce, do contact her mother Corazon Pimentel at 0917-851-4220.)

From the menial to the absurd

The three novels today cover a broad range of themes and subject matter  what they have in common is potent story-telling. Christopher Moore’s delightful flights of absurdity take on a new tone as he tackles art and the Impressionists. Hector Tobar gives us a story ripped from today’s headlines, as he examines the life of a Mexican illegal working in an exclusive LA suburb. And Seth Grahame-Smith now trains his eyes on the Bible, with a fanciful version of the Three Wise Men.

Sacre Bleu - Christopher Moore (available at National Book Store). Spurred by the mysterious circumstances surrounding the “suicide” of their good friend Vincent van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and the fictional artist Lucien Lessard become amateur sleuths in this whirlwind of a novel by Moore. It’s very Tom Robbins in style, and with the cameos of such artists as Monet, Renoir, Seurat, Whistler and Manet, plus the brothels of Pigalle and Moulin Rouge as backdrops, we know we’re in for some absurdist, Impressionistic mayhem. There’s a suspicious character known only as the Colorman, who seems to be the villain of the piece, assisted by the Muse, a woman who’s both temptress and inspiration to all these artists as she enters the bodies of different women, over time and history. This is a mystery, fable, comedy and history lesson, all rolled into one rollicking adventure of a book. Who else but Moore would have Toulouse-Lautrec confuse Sisyphus with syphilis? With reproductions of artworks peppered through the novel, this is one zany take on 19th-century art, and Impressionism!

Novels that bring silly notions, and the menial, to literary dimensions.

The Barbarian Nurseries - Hector Tobar (available at National Book Store). Araceli has no papers, and she works  cooking and cleaning  in the upscale LA house of Scott and Maureen Torres. When the gardener, and the nanny who takes care of the two boys and one daughter, are let go due to the economic downturn, Araceli is the only one in the staff left standing. A quarrel between Scott and Maureen leads to them both leaving the house and thinking the other has stayed home. As a result, Araceli is left with the two boys for four days, and innocently takes them on a trek to downtown LA to look for their paternal grandfather. Upon their return, the parents mistakenly think she has kidnapped the boys, and lest they compromise their assessment of their own responsibility, this myth of a criminal act is perpetuated and taken up by the local DA’s office, for their own political mileage. How things go helter-skelter when the media is involved, how prejudices about immigrants still run deep, turn this into a Bonfire of the Vanities with a Spanish-speaking woman in the middle of the storm.

Unholy Night - Seth Grahame-Smith (available at National Book Store). Best known for his “vampiric” takes on Jane Austen and  Abraham Lincoln (Seth collaborates with Tim Burton a lot, and co-wrote Dark Shadows), here is Seth’s latest, a retelling of the birth of Jesus and the visit of the Three Wise Men. In this case, Balthazar is a notorious thief and bandit, known as the Antioch Ghost, and encounters Gaspar and Melchyor while in prison, from which they make an escape, to the chagrin of Herod. They assist Jesus, Mary and Joseph in their flight to Egypt, escaping Herod’s orders to kill all the newborn baby boys, as he’s threatened by prophecies of the New Messiah. Written like it’s some Revisionist Western, Seth manages to sustain his conceit, giving us a novel that entertains, while we suppress a grin. That we know the outcome of this story doesn’t really matter, as this is more of a juggling act we watch with fascination, aware that the sacrilege and blasphemy is all done in the name of harmless fun. Yes, it may border on the juvenile, but it is a guilty pleasure.