10 Terrifying Things in Contemporary

Pinoy Pop Culture Plus One

1. CREEPY CRAWLY: BABY JAMES
Confirmed: the horror has started early! He has inherited that terrible genetic predisposition
to blab and the propensity to annoy without even trying. "I don't like Dingdong!" the brat
growled into the microphone that he grabbed from his mother. Even without the pain of a
Supreme Court order, Mom was prompted a few days later to explain at length (of course!)
what the baby really "meant" by, "I don't like Dingdong." Suffice it to say, Planet Earth
shuddered.

2. SUCKERS IN OUR MIDST: IMORTAL

Vampires--in the Philippine context. Who all look like they have stylists. Suddenly, Pinoy
vampires don't look like George Estregan and Eddie Garcia anymore. And women are
stretching their soft, smooth necks as offering to John Lloyd Cruz, even though Ruffa claims
he's an invertebrate. In which case he belongs to the subclass Hirudinea and his relatives, the
leeches. But when it comes to pure terror, nobody comes close to...

3. THE MANAGER FROM HELL: ANABELLE RAMA

Nobody dares not to renew a contract with her--lest you, 'Day (or 'Dong), be accused of being
talentless, washed out, and too greedy for money. Ask Heart Evangelista.

4. THE K-POP INVASION

The ghastly hair and the unimaginable vats of hair wax and makeup! The vaguely gay
costumes! The confusing androgyny! The impossibly precise, assembly line-like
choreography! The choruses we can't understand!

5. JUSTIN BIEBER
You know that scene in Total Recall where a fat lady's face squirms and breaks in half and
out emerges Arnold Schwarzenegger? That is what that blasted "Baby, Baby Ooooh" song
does to me. Coming in February: a spine-tingling biopic titled Justin Bieber:
Never Say Never, which includes-gasp-never-bef0re-seen home footage. Ah, the travails of
living to a long, remarkably fruitful age.