Paper Cuts: Dodging Deadlines, Celebrity Run-Ins and Other Stories I Told the Internet

Paper

Cuts

dodging deadlines,

celebrity run-ins

and other stories

i told the internet

Pam

Pastor

Paper Cuts: Dodging deadlines, celebrity run-ins

and other stories I told the Internet

by Pam Pastor

Copyright to this digital edition © 2010 by Anvil Publishing Inc.

and Pam Pastor

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed

in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system,

without prior written permission except in the case of brief quotations

embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Published and exclusively distributed by

ANVIL PUBLISHING, INC.

7th Floor Quad Alpha Centrum Building

125 Pioneer Street, Mandaluyong City

1550 Philippines

Trunk Lines: (+632) 477-4752, 477-4755 to 57

Sales & Marketing: marketing@anvilpublishing.com

Fax: (+632) 747-1622

www.anvilpublishing.com

Book design by Ariel Dalisay (cover); Ani V. Habúlan (interior); Pam Pastor

(doodles and cover collage)

ISBN 9789712729553 (e-book)

Version 1.0.1

For my crazy family

for Jill,

who taught me how

to climb mountains

and for the Beckies,

the rainbow sprinkles

on my massacred cupcake

Contents

INTRODUCTION

MADHOUSE

Honeymoon baby

Oh no he didn’t

Siamese twins

Letters to my weird brother

One day I’ll nail him to a Cross

Grandpa thinks diarrhea should be public knowledge

My mother used my vibrator on her face

My Akyat-Bahay Gang audition

The house of freakiness

Supernanny lost the Spelling Bee

Inday is just her stage name

The Amazing Adventures of Inday

What’s big, blue, and looks like the Incredible Hulk?

If you’re looking for porn, my twelve-year-old cousin highly recommends RedTube

ON THE JOB

SARS scare

Father Amazing

Twenty-four-hour interview

A letter to my future offspring

It’s different on TV

Cocktails and Crackerjacks

Norah Jones called me

Effing flowers

Dying hard

Things I learned after shooting eleven restaurants in one day

A visit To Dr. Belo

All I want to do is add "CSI Corpse" to my resume

THE WEIRD FILES

Caladryl, Vicks and ammonia

Dear Mr. Cab Driver

Cowabunga

Seven hours in the salon

My bunny wants to kill me

Crazy cabbies

Sam Welby and another strange taxi ride

Bipolar speaker

BACKSTAGE PASS

I don’t care what they say, I think she’s a fairy

Racing with Geoff

My biggest regret is that I did not ask him to punch me

I saw Grissom and Catherine Willows and I wanted to lie flat on the ground so they can do their CSI thing on me

Not exactly a titanic moment

I can’t believe I almost forgot to write about Paris Hilton

Jesus had Three Kings, I have Ricky Reyes

CALORIES

One little two little three little donut

Diary of a workout

Channeling Pacquiao

Now I know why I’m fat

Now I know why I’m fat, part two

BUZZED

Diary of a TV guesting

Not quite Mariah

How our EP launch ended up on prime time news

A quick gig, semi-naked men and a hot soldier

Puking on the beach

I swear, I thought I was calling the driver

PASSPORT

Harassed by an Indian salesman

My life as a Korean popsicle

The elephant that copped a feel

Ghost in my hair

How to survive a fourteen-hour plane ride next to a fat pervert with an Asian fetish

Finding Yoda in Arizona

Monster on the Bund

Worst-case scenario

German Frank

If it is Japanese, it is OK

Ho Chi Minh and the powerful chicken skin

The adventures of Fangirl

The Wi-Fi Bandit

Sheltered girl goes camping

Notes from the back of a bus

It’s official, I’m turning into a grandma

Buffalo wings, subway-hopping and terrorism

Why I’m about to pay 160RMB for a hotel burger

Nothing but a mask

The man from Curaçao

Route 66

Five-star prison

My purple hair goes to Hollywood

Twenty-two hours of panic

Las Fallas High

Introduction

I cut myself on everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything.

Paper cuts are normal; they’re a regular part of my life. But I cut myself on my own hair. One time, I found four parallel cuts on my finger. I finally figured out what happened—I cut myself on my bag’s zipper.

I cut my thumb on ice while making Jell-O shots. I cut my thumb on crab while eating at Seven Corners.

I cut myself on envelopes, on notebooks, on pizza boxes, on aluminum foil. I cut myself on dilis.

One time, during a photo shoot inside a supermarket, a durian fell on my hand, cutting my palm.

And cuts aren’t the only problem.

I get bruises from everything—beds, doors, computer desks, cabinets, the fridge, even coat hangers.

I’ve accidentally kicked myself while wearing wooden sandals, bruising my own legs. This has happened more than once.

I have closed car doors on my own hip, leaving huge purple bruises on my body. I have closed car doors on my own hair.

Whenever thumbtacks would fall from the cork-board on my wall, it’s inevitable. I end up stepping on them.

Once, while eating, I got pork chop in my eye. It was painful.

Sometimes, while singing, I hit my mouth with the microphone, causing my lips to bleed.

I constantly find bruises on my body, not remembering where they came from.

Yes, I deserve an award for klutziness, which I’ll probably end up dropping on my toes.

But this book isn’t just named after my extraordinary ability to get injuries from the oddest things.

In 2008, I was given a column in a magazine. Although I wrote a list of possible column names, Paper Cuts was my first choice. When a friend said that Paper Cuts sounded bloody interesting, I was sold. That magazine folded after just a few months but my love for Paper Cuts lives on.

Paper Cuts is a collection of stories from my crazy life—snippets from my years as a newspaper editor, my strange family, celebrity run-ins, misadventures around the city, little tales you can find in chicken-scrawled notebooks, tiny dots hiding in cyberspace.

Thank you for holding this book in your hands. I hope it doesn’t give you a paper cut.

Madhouse

Honeymoon baby

I’ve always believed I was a honeymoon baby.

My parents were married in January and nine months later, in October, I said hello to the world. Simple math, I told myself.

I was proud of that fact, even rubbing it in people’s faces occasionally. I found the whole idea romantic. The thought that I was the fruit of my parents’ first official night together thrilled me, even when they declared their marriage an irreparable disaster thirteen years later.

But yesterday, I received an e-mail from my uncle’s wife. She said she was trying to build our family tree and wanted to know details about my family—full names, nicknames, birthdays and my parents’ wedding date.

I called my mom and asked.

And suddenly, the math wasn’t simple anymore. My parents got married on January 26, 1980. And I was born on October 14, 1980.

That’s less than nine months. That’s just eight months and 18 days—262 days to be exact.

Is it possible for me to be born on my birthday and still be a honeymoon baby?

I consulted my friend Wikipedia and he said that human pregnancy is approximately 266 days from the date of fertilization. If that was the case, then I was just four days early—definitely possible.

But I wanted to be sure.

And because my mom was still asleep, I asked my aunt. Am I a honeymoon baby? Because I computed and I was born less than nine months after they were married.

Silent subtext: Or was I the product of premarital sex?

You were born premature! she said.

What!? No way! I said to my aunt.

That sounded crazy to me. Aren’t premature babies supposed to be really tiny and fragile? I weighed 8.11 pounds when I was born. And I was way developed—I even had insane troll hair. In fact, my mom always says that I was so big that I looked like a one-year-old when I was born.

But my aunt was sure, really sure.

And that is how I regressed from being the Smug Honeymoon Baby to becoming the World’s Freaking Largest Premature Baby.

When my mom woke up, I tried to find the right and inoffensive way to ask her—I wanted to steer away from the whole premarital sex question. I narrowed down my choices to two. A: Was I a honeymoon baby? B: Was I born premature?

I went for B.

She was still bleary eyed when I asked my question. Ma, was I born premature?

"My god, hindi ho. Overdue ka," she said.

What?! I thought to myself. That made the numbers worse!

"Huh? Eh akala ko ba honeymoon baby ako?"

Apparently, my parents had a civil wedding on January 7 and a church wedding on January 26. My due date was October 8 but I came out almost a week later.

"Ah, okay, so honeymoon baby ako pero sa civil wedding?" I asked.

"Oo," she said.

Great, I said. ’Coz I thought I was the largest premature baby ever.

That had her laughing. And the thought really is laughable.

January 7, October 8. Now the math is simple again.

And now I know why I’m always late. I was just in the womb, just inches away from my destination, and I was six days late. How much more can you expect me to be on time when you throw outside forces (the horrible traffic, my stubborn hair, and total lack of cooperation from my wardrobe) into the mix?

Goodbye, Smug Honeymoon Baby. Goodbye, World’s Freaking Largest Premature Baby. Now I’m just the Really Late Honeymoon Baby.

August 27, 2006

Oh no he didn’t

Last week, while I was at a meeting, my father started texting me about my plan to host his belated birthday dinner.

He