Holiday autopsy

Planners, planners and more planners.

A big corporate logo embossed on the smelly, fake leather cover. Occupies space, has weight, but really doesn’t matter. Just saying, though.

In the era of smartphones synced to computers, watches and (pretty soon, time will come, just you wait) the cerebrum  — who needs a planner? Maybe someone who, upon waking up in the morning, needs to see what’s penciled in for the day. (For instance: Dec. 22, 11 a.m…see the dermatologist about a mysterious itch.) Or maybe those who love to lug around big, black or brown tombstone-size notebooks along with clutch bags and manila folders. (Either someone carrying papers to submit to city hall or a time-traveler from the ’80s.) Planners make you look like, well, a planner. In contrast to those of us who are planner-deprived, drifting in chaotic blind orbits day after day, week after week, year after fake-leathery year.

But remember how the best laid plans of mice and men go… etcetera. Still, we get planners as Christmas gifts — my own version of the highly dreaded fruitcake. (Not in the same category as red wine, mind you, which I prefer.) Planners need to remind you of upcoming events or birthdays, you say? The cell phone does that for you. I remember this guy who bought a cell phone from a niece. Months later, the guy exasperatedly complained about the unit sounding a birthday alarm every day.

Every single day.

The niece’s friends are legion.    

Penciled into that planner in my head is the Christmas gathering with relatives.  A clear indication that everyone’s getting old is by the topic of conversation. Usually centered on diseases, illnesses and afflictions. Uncle This suffers from gout. Sister That has an arid, Sahara Desert-like cough. Plus, something’s gone askew with her left knee’s anterior cruciate ligament (Derrick Rose, is that you?). Dinnertime is like an episode of The Dr. Oz Show. The doctor isn’t in, but the medical lamentations continue.

Talk around the dinner table is steered into the grab bag of predictions on the end of the world. Indian mystics said this, Norse seers said that; black plague here, major-major earthquakes there. Aren’t we supposed to be kaput as a planet a year ago as calculated by the Mayans? (Where were you last Dec. 21, 2012? I think I was in a karaoke joint listening to a customer and sidekick sing, “Why does the sun go on shining?” Yeah, don’t they know?) We’re still standing. It’s the same old song and dance, my friends.

Speaking of karaoke… One time, my officemates and I were in this bar in Malate when a man and his posse entered. One guy sported a bloodied head. Still they ordered drinks and sang the pop anthems from their homeland. All the while blood gushed forth from the henchman’s head: like red chocolate gangster fondue. Or red, red wine you make me feel so fine.

After three or four songs, they left. Mr. Hemorrhaging Head in tow. Into the other mouths of Manila. Curiouser and curiouser. The blood thickens. Like an Edgar Allan Poe short story drunk on a cocktail of soju and four seasons.

Things like that drive me out of my mind.

Got the Morrissey autobiography, love it to death (which to me is on the same level as The Real Frank Zappa Book, Life by Keith Richards, and the seminal Lester Bangs tomes). Although I had to skip the ugly, lengthy account of the litigation initiated by drummer Mike Joyce against The Smiths singer. The tirades against record label bosses Geoff Travis and Tony Wilson are sharp as knives. David Bowie’s cameos are amusing. I am sure Morrissey had to demand from his publisher that his book be put out as a Penguin Classics title. Makes a handsome addition to one’s collection of Oscar Wilde and a host of other dead Brit authors. Keats and Yeats on the other side.

Lou Reed passed away in 2013. In an article in Uncut magazine, Allan Jones recalls hanging out with the Velvet Underground leader in Sweden. Lou told him, “If they put me in Purgatory, I’d be the f*cking landlord.” I’d want to be the assistant to the assistant landlord, which would probably be one of The Strokes.

Lou, by the way, revisited and revaluated the works of Poe in “The Raven” album. And Morrissey released Reed’s Satellite of Love, ingeniously putting his own mopey stamp on it.

Bought The Dark Knight Trilogy Blu-Ray: The Ultimate Collector’s Edition (complete with a photo-book, collectible art cards and Hot Wheels vehicles — the Tumbler, Batpod and The Bat.) The movies come with a must-see disc of extras (including a conversation between Dark Knight brain-box Christopher Nolan and the ’78 Superman director Richard Donner). 

One cool docu is The Fire Rises: The Creation and Impact of The Dark Knight Trilogy, featuring talking heads such as Michael Mann, Zack Snyder and Guillermo del Toro, among others. Del Toro shares that Nolan was heavily influenced by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. (Fans of headf*ck movies were made aware of the connection even more when the director came out with Inception, dubbed by one critic as a Borges heist movie.) Synchronicity: every writer, says Jorge Luis Borges, creates his own precursor. Same with Christopher Nolan.

The Argentine wrote a story about infinite labyrinths, several futures and a garden of forking paths.

Try bringing a planner when you get to the garden.