IF we strictly follow the Chinese Almanac, the Year of the Rat will officially start at 8 pm on February 4, 2008. Ergo, January, today, now, still belongs to the Year of the Pig.

Feng shui experts regard the Year of the Pig as the time to save up or deposit money. If we’re going be literal about it, it is better symbolized by, well, a piggy bank.

But in the local entertainment scene, the biggest stars had “deposited” mostly lawsuits and saved up on anger and retaliation. Only few took “saving up” on a positively literal level.

Before the year comes to a close, money definitely poured into the coffers of Angel Locsin, who flew back to ABS-CBN obviously for a bigger paycheck. I say “flew back” because she was among ABS-CBN’s original talents under the now-defunct Star Circle before she transferred to GMA, which made her into a star.

And then there’s also our cover girl Marian Rivera, whose product endorsements and TV-movie offers keep coming in just six months after she was catapulted to national consciousness via GMA’s Marimar.

Let us mention the achievers who made it big in international circles despite the odds they encountered in the local setting.

We have Charice Pempengco on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Before the 15-year-old Filipina singer became what she is now, she was known as a mere third placer of a local talent contest (ABS-CBN’s Little Big Star) whose future was as bleak as an album contract signed on ice.

It may be a weird comparison, but remember Alyssa Alano, whose reentry in local showbiz was via her unique rendition of “Kiss Me” posted by some wacko on YouTube?  In Charice’s case, it was the FalseVoice channel of YouTube that posted her Little Big Star performance of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.”

It caught the attention of viewers all over the world. Charice’s rendition was—to use a local term—plakado, almost perfect, even better than the original because she’s just a kid. Millions of viewers thought her singing was fake and that she was only lip-synching. Another video of her face-off with America’s Got Talent winner Bianca Ryan followed. A record company based in Sweden called Ten Songs Production became interested in the then-13-year-old Filipina who can sing like Houston. She was invited to record an album. The videos also reached a talent show called Star King of Seoul Broadcasting System. And the rest led to The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Talk is that she’s recording an album for a local music outfit. Tsk, tsk...from Sweden to Korea to New York to Manila? Still, it’s good news.

In cinema, we have the likes of directors Brillante Mendoza, Jeffrey Jetturian and Lav Diaz, whose independently funded opus are being shown abroad, winning awards in prestigious film festivals in Venice, Cannes, Toronto, Los Angeles, Hong Kong—the list goes on.

Still, their works are yet to be patronized by the greater Filipino masa viewers.

But going back to the word “deposit,” some good news came out, literally, from the wombs of a few entertainment celebrity moms. Middle of 2007 had Kris Aquino, Claudine Barreto, Barbie Almalbis-Honasan and Meryll Soriano, among others, giving birth to healthy new members of showbizlandia. Notwithstanding the denials and protestations of a few, many will agree that having a child—with the right man or the once-right man—is the best thing that could happen to a woman. 

Now some of the controversies that made the headlines in 2007.

Angel Locsin’s alleged sex video. It turned out the girl in question was some cheap Thai porn star. The adult video actress apparently has a striking similarity with the former Kapuso queen who is now a Kapamilya.

Kris Aquino gave up hosting The Buzz, which used a considerable amount of its airtime reporting on...well, Kris Aquino. She promised to devote her weekend to family. Ruffa Guttierez then replaced her for good and quickly embraced the genre, revealing how her husband beat her up like a pig, so unfit for an international beauty queen. Kaloka. As Kris’s marriage to James Yap got stronger despite the alleged infidelity of the much younger man, Ruffa’s crumbling married life became tabloid fare, involving even the national police as volunteer-escort-protectors against her fiery Turkish husband Yilmaz Bektas.

As 2007 drew to a close, we were bombarded by the cheating controversy involving Willie Revillame’s show Wowowee, specifically in the quickly dumped “Wilyonaryo” segment, wherein the results could be manipulated and everything was rehearsed—as seem in a stolen video that was posted on YouTube.

It was followed by the ABS-CBN, AGB Nielsen and GMA legal battle over allegations of cheating in the ratings surveys, the ugly details of which we have already reported.

Much earlier, cheating was a welcome guest at the birthday party of Rufa Mae Quinto, where the photographed and much-Bluetoothed kissing scene between actress-socialite Gretchen Barretto (who is, of course, big-shot Tony Boy Conjuangco’s significant other) and very much matulis bachelor John Estrada occurred. If there was a deposit that took place there, it’s probably the alcohol-flavored saliva that illicitly exchanged between drunken lips. Yuck!

Still on cheating, the Bunevaczes—David and Jessica—were booted out by their business partners in the high-end aesthetic clinic Beverly Hills 6750. The controversial couple, now still on vacation in the US, promised to return anytime this week to answer the charges against them.

Cheating was reportedly present before Carlene Aguilar gave birth to a healthy baby boy, whose father is certified national heartthrob Dennis Trillo. Our mole in Trillo’s life exclusively revealed to us that bombshell Kristine Reyes and, once, Rufa Mae Quinto had made their “presence felt” in Trillo’s condominium. As in, they had breakfast there on separate occasions.

Our mole even partook some fried eggs and hotdogs in those particular morning repasts. But it was just breakfast, our mole insisted. No proof that they tried to make babies. People with dirty minds will think they had sex the night before, but that’s just people.

Almost simultaneously as Dennis tried his best to settle the score involving a triad of women, there was Piolo Pascual and Sam Milby, the national allegedly gay heartthrobs (NAGHs) who were reported to have had a labing-labing (sweet) moment at a poolside open-air restaurant in a five-star hotel fronting the Manila Bay.

The NAGHs slapped a libel suit against the whistle blower, Lolit Solis, who wrote about the alleged incident in one of her tabloid columns. Wait, pardon the word whistle blower. Solis mentioned that the NAGHs were whispering—or were they whistling?—in each other’s ears. Or was it the waiter who tipped off the scene to Solis—by whistling? Whistling or whispering, damn, it’s mind-blowing.

Next comes Manny Pacquiao doing Ara Mina and Valerie Concepcion while they were shooting the now-showing and predictably cliché-laden Anak Ni Kumander for the Metro Manila Film Festival. The price reportedly was a multimillion mansion for each babe. Wow, and we thought Erapesque a forgotten cliché!

At this point, don’t you wish the Year of the Pig were over? No doubt, more piggy events will take place before the Year of the Rat officially kicks in. Hopefully, it’s not going to be a rat race year for intrigues and negative “deposits.”

On with the Marian year

’TIS the time when most hot-blooded Filipino males wish they were talking dogs. And this is because of one woman. But we’re getting ahead of the story.

Gab Fab: Angel’s significant other speaks up

BECAUSE of his stint in Magandang Umaga Pilipinas, Lui Villaruz has become known as Señorito Lakwatsero. Kids, meanwhile, know him as Papa Picolino due to his acting gig in Princess Sarah. Fans of Sakal Sakali Saklolo know him as one of the friends of Ryan Agoncillo who taunts him about being tied down already.

The year of bad deposits

IF we strictly follow the Chinese Almanac, the Year of the Rat will officially start at 8 pm on February 4, 2008. Ergo, January, today, now, still belongs to the Year of the Pig.

Fermentations: Gifts from the Vine

THE salmon marinated in crushed ginger, minced scallions, sesame oil and sake was warm and fragrant from the grill pan. My take on sushi rice with chopped parsley and green olives was not a disaster, thank goodness.

City cowboys, pig out and drink

JUST for the name itself, it is but right to have Texas Roadhouse Grill in El Pueblo Real de Manila right at the center of the Ortigas Business District.

Learning Curve: New Year, new life

‘I THOUGHT at your age, people would just be partying. But now, I realize we’ll always have issues—and that makes you, us, human.”

Jaded Buddha, my twentysomething friend, and I were having our pre-Christmas get-together.

Something Like Life: If I believed in New Year’s Resolutions...

‘SO what’s your New Year’s resolution?” my ex-classmate H. jokingly inquired. We hadn’t seen each other in a while as she had been working abroad for a time, and I bumped into her—of all places—at the mall just a couple of days before New Year’s Eve.

Will Smith, The Omega Man

GLOBAL superstar Will Smith is Robert Neville, the only survivor of a devastating, manmade plague that has decimated the world’s population in Warner Bros.’ new sci-fi thriller I Am Legend.