The truth is, I don’t really look forward to reading e-mails to this column. Seventy percent of the e-mails are press releases from politicians crowing about their latest achievements, which apparently mean nothing until they have spammed everyone. Twenty percent are notifications that I have won lotteries I have no memory of joining, urging me to reply with my banking information so that I can collect my million-euro prizes immediately. Five percent are invitations to social networking sites. But the remaining five percent is interesting, even if it contains tearful denunciations, like:
“I’m so disappointed. I know you’re a big fan of Roger Federer, but why do you never write about Rafael Nadal when he wins?”
That’s what you call “answering your own question.” For the record I have written nice things about Nadal, just not as often as I’ve written about The Fed. Great, I suppose I’ll be hearing from the Novak Djokovic fans since I haven’t written about him.
Then there are the letters of the “Why don’t you agree with me 100 percent” variety, like: “Why did you say good things about Ploning and when I watched it I didn’t like it at all? Why do you hate Tagalog movies, don’t you want people to watch them?”
Um, Ploning is a Tagalog movie. That e-mail is actually about my blog, but you get my drift.
Here are the latest denunciations, surely evidence that I am the anti-christ.
“Kudos for this wonderful article! Truly tennis aficionados and aspirants will appreciate this. However, I can’t help but notice the photo you have pasted with the captions pertaining to Andy Murray, which upon closer inspection reveals that it is in fact Andy Roddick! I uttered to myself, ‘Oh my goodness, has Jessica Zafra lost her marbles?!?’ How can such an experienced and reputable media personality such as you overlook this simple but very critical detail? What has the world come to nowadays!? It seems even one of the most reliable publications in the country cannot be fully trusted anymore, etc. etc.”
And on the same day: “I’m very disappointed in you, Jessica. Why the picture of Andy Roddick with a caption saying it was Andy Murray? Shame, shame... and I thought you were thorough!”
Dear Readers,
Yes, I intentionally switched the photos of the two Andys in order to cause you grave emotional distress and insomnia. Yes, I personally lay out my column using letterpress, painstakingly lining up the movable type, inking each letter and pressing it against every sheet of paper.
All right! I admit it! I know nothing about tennis, I don’t even watch the matches so I can’t tell the players apart! Boris Becker is still playing, right?
Actually I’ve never set foot in the newspaper office, this being the age of digital communications (and terrible road traffic). I’ve forwarded your e-mails to my immediate editor, who sends her most profound apologies. This is the same editor who indulges my long, meandering prose about tennis instead of reminding me that tennis is already covered in the sports pages.
These things happen. Don’t take them personally. We will be more careful in the future.
Now on to more pleasant subjects.
“Since one of your columns leads me to believe that Sarah Palin is of some interest to you, I thought you’d be the right person to ask. Sarah Palin and the fundamentalists make me think that The Handmaid’s Tale is now shifting from speculative fiction to fact. I read it when I was in my early teens and I remember being seriously freaked out. It was like a nasty taste in the mouth, except I felt it in my chest instead, and strange fleeting thoughts would niggle at my brain.
“The question: Some years after the book was published, a film version with Faye Dunaway and Elizabeth McGovern came out, and I clearly remember that it was distributed in the Philippines under the title Slave Girls. (Chalk one up for subtlety.) I remember seeing the trailer — the usual technically polished Hollywood trailer — suddenly being spliced with its new title, a crudely designed sign that read Slave Girls in a faux handpainted logo.
“Can anyone among your readers or your circle of friends confirm or refute this? Did my brain just make that up? I would dearly like to know.”
Yes, I remember that The Handmaid’s Tale was retitled for the Philippine market. This is a common practice among the local distributors, presumably to increase their movies’ box-office appeal.
Who can forget how Jude, the film adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s gloomy Victorian masterpiece, suddenly acquired the new title, Bare?
Now there’s a bit of sexy stuff in Thomas Hardy — check out the Eustacia Vye character in The Return of the Native. Or the eponymous heroine of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, whose film adaptation directed by Roman Polanski somehow avoided being retitled Disgrasyada! The print ad for Bare featured an apparently naked (Did you just say “subtlety”?) Kate Winslet, fresh from the box-office bonanza of Titanic. The distributors managed to restrain themselves from throwing in a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio.
And finally: “I was reading your ‘Ode to the Walkman’ and laughing at the same time, remembering my younger and more foolish years back in the ‘80s. We had a Sony Walkman and I was wasting batteries every week listening to the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. I remember seeing the director, Ading Fernando, walking around Unimart in the early ‘80s. No he didn’t have a Walkman, but he was carrying a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder with these big expensive headphones plugged into the machine. I always wondered if it ran on three or six D-type batteries.”
The things we do and the loads we carry in order to have our own personal soundtracks. Thank you for your letters, and for writing this week’s column.
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Email your comments and questions to emotionalweatherreport@gmail.com.