Ballad of a thin man

The thin man is gone but it’s like he never left, merely disappeared into the newsroom. And Ballad of a Thin Man could be playing but the truth is the thin man never liked Bob Dylan, preferred instead the melodic crooners of the old folk rock school, e.g. James Taylor and his flying machines in pieces on the ground.

During his last days the thin man had lent out a good number of DVDs, some going the rounds, to wit: Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac though the reproduced pirate’s jacket read Nymphomaniac 2, Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine starring Cate Blanchett during the height of controversy on the director’s alleged abuse of his child, Martin Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street that had such a frenetic manic pace complete with office workers banging each other at the office, and the Korean chestnut Miracle in Cell No. 7 that had us wishing a similar miracle would save the thin man.

There were others, too, not necessarily through the thin man but by way of him lent by the entertainment and foreign eds, Blue is the Warmest Color (Kechiche) that won the Palme d’Or at a recent Cannes festival, this one not only a clear copy or DVD quality but the real Macoy, yes the graphic lovemaking hetero or otherwise was clear as day.

The last time I saw the thin man when he was just about flat on his back in hospital bed, I brought him my copy of Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac 2 which I had purchased from the Moslems underneath the Boni MRT. I told him I finally understood the film, which coupled with Nymphomaniac 1 there was a complete picture, with each one referencing the other.

This was what he wrote down on a piece of paper:  Itago mo muna.

I also told him that I was still looking for a copy of Lav Diaz’s one-hour film Butterflies Have No Memories, a rarity buried under the stacks of books, DVDs, CDs, assorted papers and junk in the apartment. Lav Diaz, in an interview years ago, said that he and the thin man were once together in a Ricky Lee scriptwriting workshop, and their culminating activity was to shoot footage based on a script they finished. Lav said, give my regards to the thin man, who would have loved to watch his films, only problem was he might have died before they finished.

The thin man himself experimented at times with his phone camera, turning on the video record while riding a calesa from Sta. Cruz to Port Area in the midst of typhoon and flood, the sound of the horse’s hooves a fitting ambient soundtrack against the wind and rain. And who can forget how the thin man led a power trio plus one at the desk during the nightmare of Ondoy in 2009, to put the paper to bed with less than a skeleton staff?

How the thin man walked into a holdup robbery in a Commonwealth Avenue store is part of newsroom folklore and has been written about, though versions vary whether it was a bakeshop or a wine store. But what really takes the Red Ribbon cake is how the thin man’s driver left him at his Fairview home on the way to office, the driver only noticing that the thin man wasn’t there when he stopped at a gas station and told the attendant to ask his nonexistent passenger how many liters.

The thin man also had his wards visiting the office every now and then, and one Christmastime the younger girl saw fit to drop paper clips into the toilet bowl of the story conference room’s restroom. Much to the horror of the higher ups was this experiment in water displacement. Or the time the same girl drew abstract pen-and-ink art on the backrest of the night editor’s chair. Which made the thin man push the chair flush against the desk.

Blue Jasmine ends with the Blanchett character slowly unraveling into mental illness, perhaps well on her way to a vagabond existence in the streets of America. The wolf of Wall Street gets his comeuppance and after minimal time in jail becomes an inspirational speaker and bestselling author. The Miracle in Cell No. 7 is that the feeble-minded good man gets justice years after his death. The lesbian babe in Warmest Color winds up a teacher of primary school but still conflicted. And the nymphomaniac at end becomes desensitized to the sex act, which becomes the springboard to the sequel where she tries to revive her interest, including a ménage a trios with black men and sessions with a sadistic therapist.

To disappear into the newsroom, that in itself is a gift if not a talent worthy of the best magicians. Just as some writers are said to disappear into the classroom in the groves of academe.

Soon Anda Circle might also disappear much like the thin man. For all the presumed traffic it causes, when viewed from above it resembles a main cog of an intricate clockwork in Port Area of which this newspaper is part. But things have a way of falling into place and adjusting, even the thin man in pieces on the ground in search of his clockwork orange (Kubrick). We always thought we’d see him again (Taylor), but not yet, not yet (Gladiator).

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For Antonio Paño, 1960-2014.