‘It’s a crazy planets!’

I recently had a dream that Susan Sontag came back from the dead and raped Camille Paglia. After a six-hour sex marathon, the author of Against Interpretation said to the Sexual Personae scholar: "A star is luxuriating in patience towards the world that will take a long time to understand all her meanings. A starlet is always in a hurry because youth is all that she’s got to offer."

I talk in my sleep, "possessions" of icons such as the two above included in the dream repertoire. My cousin, a UCLA magna cum art scholar who came to the Philippines a few years ago on a Fulbright grant, slept beside me in bed on her day of arrival. Next morning she told me what I mumbled that night:

"I shall give you my love if you give me your language."

Playing psychoanalyst and fortuneteller at the same time, she advised me on the traumas of desire, logorrhea and snooping on the fates.

Overheard during the New Year’s presentation of Inday Badiday’s See-True:

Ate Luds: O sige, ano na ang inyong prediction para kay Stella Strada?

Madam Auring: Lalo siyang sisikat sa darating na taon at malalampasan niya ang kasikatan ni Alma Moreno!

The next day, the news headline went: "Stella Strada commits suicide!"

This is what Stella Strada wrote on her suicide note: "It’s a crazy planets!"

Grammatical error, or a desperate plea for help? Could it have been a conscious artistic attack on language, or was she just in a hurry and forgot to proofread? Did she run out of correction fluid? Did she think that planets is singular, or, if plural, could pertain to multiple insanities? Citing this error now, could it have been the revenge of hysteria on the unsuspecting masa? Would we have preferred it written any other way?

Pretend the first conjoined word "it’s" is substituted by its homonyms (homo names would just be too queer for words).

"It’s" sounds like:

1. Itch

Was Stella Strada itching to off someone, perhaps a rival in starletdom such as Pepsi Paloma, who at one time pressed charges against Tito,Vic and Joey for alleged rape, and who later on took her own life a year after Stella Strada’s tragic death? Is the suicide itch infectious or limited to the sexually active or the cinematically challenged? Can this itch be cured apart from committing suicide or appearing in soft-porn films?

2. Eight

Was eight a bad number for Stella Strada? Wasn’t eight really enough, or did she want more? Dick Van Patten of the popular sitcom Eight is Enough was fat, a double o = loser = 8. Did Stella (whose name is near Œstellar‚ minus the r, for "-rated") hate/ate/eight to gain /lose weight/fame? Despite having appeared in sexy films, Stella Strada is plump. Pretty much like Elizabeth Taylor, who is some sort of a progenitor for the millions of hot babes prancing behind our television screens. Could the eight in "Eight’s a Crazy Planets" then be a foreshadower of today’s otso-otso phenomenon?

3. Each

Who were the "every one" in Stella Strada’s movie career? What does "each" of her two films, Kirot and Hapdi, mean?

• Dennis Roldan – former bold star and congressman; now in prison for kidnapping

• Edgar Mande – former hottie with a funny accent; currently a politician

• Artemio Bautista – director of Kirot and Hapdi

• Pepsi Paloma – softdrink beauty who also committed suicide

• Dr. Rey dela Cruz – talent manager of several bold stars and Kuya Germs’ arch-rival in fashion; was once whacked by former bomba star Divina Valencia in the head with a microphone in See-True (for more starlet connections, check out John Water’s drag queen superstar Divine)

• Coca Nicolas – another softdrink beauty like Sarsi Emmanuel and Pepsi Paloma

Kirot in English means ______. Hapdi means _______. Both signify pain, evidenced by wounds, scars, blood and tears. But the titles of these two films also connote a different kind of pain, one that is derived from sexual pleasure. Thus Stella Strada’s body of work is her own different bodies, "each" suffering and ecstatic. Mahapdi and makirot.

* * *

Isang panelist sa See-True: Paano mo nabibigyan buhay ang pag-bobold?

Coca Nicolas, starlet: Pinaiinom ako ni Tito Rey de la Cruz ng Fondador.

* * *

What is it with starlets, tragedies and amazing wordplay?

To suggest that Coca Nicolas was being perversely ironic and intellectually bold in Inday Badiday’s talk show – via subtle advertisement of a famous brandy (drink Fundador and watch your libido fly) despite her "softdrink" beauty status – is, well, plain crazy.

To posit that Stella Strada might have deliberately committed a grammatical error in her suicide note is as outrageous as it is brilliant.

* * *

You are having a bad day. Your teacher berates you and calls you stupid. Your classmates laugh and spit at you. Your boyfriend dumps you. Your parents refuse to give you allowance. Your teddy bear is missing. Your imaginary friend is not responding to your telepathic calls.

You want to kill yourself.

You look at your reflection in the mirror one last time. You notice that behind you there hangs a quilt with a patchwork of words echoing your queen Stella’s infamous last hurrah:

"It’s a Crazy Planets!"

You dispose of the gun and retain the funny suicide note, alive again and not wanting to obliterate your starlet-self ever. Thanks to Stellar Stradar (a starlet radar – her proximity is especially close to you in dire times), you sleep wounded but smiling.