NEW YORK—A former mental patient’s note that his hands should be on Uma Thurman’s body “at all times” may be creepy but it is not criminal, a lawyer said Monday in defense of a man accused of stalking the Kill Bill actress.

George Vomvolakis told the state Supreme Court jury in his opening statement that defendant Jack Jordan, who is charged with misdemeanor stalking and aggravated assault, “does not think the way you and I think. He doesn’t know the boundaries you and I know. He thinks it’s romantic.”

But Assistant District Attorney Colleen Walsh told jurors that Jordan had tried to communicate with Thurman sporadically for more than two years, “with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten and alarm” her.

Walsh said Jordan used “emotional blackmail” to try to get to the Pulp Fiction star. She said he sent her family an e-mail saying, “I will kill myself if I do not get to see Uma Thurman within 24 to 48 hours.”

Walsh said Thurman’s family kept that and several other e-mails from the actress because they knew the messages would cause her fear. The prosecutor said Thurman, 37, and her family members will testify about the messages from Jordan.

Walsh said Jordan escalated his contact attempts by showing up at a Lower Manhattan movie set on November 8, 2005, where Thurman was filming My Super Ex-Girlfriend and tried to get into her trailer.

The prosecutor said Jordan also appeared at Thurman’s Greenwich Village home, where she lives with her two children, and rang her doorbell. At one point, one of Thurman’s employees came out and found him sitting on her steps, Walsh said.

Vomvolakis said his client had no intention of harassing or threatening Thurman because he loved her, and he said so in a letter to her.

“Creepy? Yes. Obsessed? Yes. Criminal? No,” the defense lawyer told the jury.

Jordan, 37, was arrested in October 2007 after being accused of following and trying to contact Thurman from early 2005 until just before his arrest. He is free on $10,000 bail. --AP

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Ninel Constantino at Boston Gallery

A SOLO exhibition of oil on canvas paintings by Ninel Constantino, Buntong Hininga…, was unveiled on April 26 at Boston Gallery, 72 Boston Street, Cubao, Quezon City. The show runs up to May 14.

Buntong Hininga...marks a new transition in Constantino’s profession from an art educator, graphic artist and designer, to being a painter as well. Her first solo show signifies, as the artist herself articulates in a statement, “the deep breath before the first step beyond one’s boundary; the deep breath before the plunge, the flight, the journey. The fleeting moment before the verge of discovery, the flash of comprehension; the deep breath of growth, of regret, of longing, of limitations, of memories, of feelings.”

The paintings in the exhibit comprise the artist’s attempt to capture those breakthrough moments through the allegorical union of imagery and spirit.

Also present in Constantino’s works are visual elements culled from product design: the intricate geometric patterns produced by native basket weavers in Philippine communities, for instance, are juxtaposed with images of toiling people’s hands in works such as Equilibrium, Ugat and Bahagi. Fused together as symbols, the patterns articulate modes of meaning beyond the beauty of form, extending toward the cultural and social as well.

Constantino is a faculty member of the College of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, as well as a design consultant and graphic artist.

She worked at the Community Crafts Association of the Philippines from 1995 to 1997, and at Karrot Design Ltd. in Hong Kong and Shenzen, China, from 1998 to 2001. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Industrial Design at UP.

For inquiries: (632) 722-9205, aceboston@yahoo.com.

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All systems go for ‘Penthouse 7’ reunion concert

THE Penthouse 7 gang, immensely popular during the ’70s, earning for the show the moniker “the dance party on air,” is back together to reminisce onstage the good old days of the Robot, the Bump, the Jacksons, the LA Walk, the New York Hustle, Swing, Pop-Locking, Locking, The Rock, Errol Flynn and dozens of other dance steps.

Archie Lacson, Tito Garcia, Poncy Quirino, Nini Morato-Borja, Susan Payawal, Rosie Garchitorena-Tan, Ronnie Henares, Pipo Liboro, Mike Monserrat, RayAn Fuentes, Sandy Hontiveros, Gina Valenciano-Martinez, Ida Ramos-Henares, Marlyn Feliciano-Lopez and Anna Garcia will take center stage at the NBC Tent at the The Fort, Makati City, tonight at 8, with their well-loved modern and Latin groups dance showcase.

Ready and raring to bring you back to “that glorious ’70’s dance show” tonight, the show, directed by Ronnie Henares, will be two hours of nonstop dancing, the way they know it, the way they did it back then.

The cast members confess that they have been having so much fun putting the show together and revisiting old friendships. Their only hope, they said, is that their audience will have as much fun as they are having doing the show.

Tickets to Penthouse 7 (That 70’s Dance Show): The Grand Reunion (priced at P2,500 reserved seating, and P2,000 free seating) are available at all Ticketworid outlets (891-9999, www.ticketworld.com.ph), the Manila Genesis office (721-4405 local 106, 722-7281), selected National Book Store branches, major Robinsons Department Stores, Greenbelt 1 and Glorietta 1.

The show is being presented by GMA, and sponsored by The Legend Hotel, Philippine Star, PLDT, Belo Medical Group, Merger, Tiellne, Gerry’s Grill, Goldilock’s and Cali Sparkling Fruit Soda. The beneficiaries of the show are the Arellano University School of the Performing Arts, the LighTomorrow Foundation Inc. and Ballet Philippines Foundation Inc.

Into the Zone

TECHNOLOGY juggernaut Google created a bit of a stir in 2005 when it was reported that the company would create a citywide Wi-Fi mesh for San Francisco.

The View: No country for old men?

LATE afternoon Monday saw me making a detour from picking out very expensive clothes for an upcoming fashion shoot, to Music One in Glorietta 3. I came to buy one CD and one CD only: no, not Janet Jackson’s Discipline, nor Mariah Carey’s E=MC2, but Madonna’s Hard Candy, which hit the shelves of music stores worldwide on April 28, a day earlier than its US debut.

Show &Tell: Heart now a Kapuso

AFTER being “inactive” in show business for about 100,000 years, Heart Evangelista comes back in a big way.

Why Matthew Broderick is naturally likable

WHETHER onstage or on the screen, Matthew Broderick is the guy you root for. It isn’t show-business law but it’s understood. Even by Broderick. “I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a lunatic, but I usually am likable to audiences,” he explains.

Home is where the artist is

WHEN artist Romi Mananquil left fame and a lucrative career in the Philippines for Canada in 1985, little did he know that he would return to the country of his birth in 2004 as a virtual stranger.

Briefs: NYC trial of accused Uma Thurman stalker opens

NEW YORK—A former mental patient’s note that his hands should be on Uma Thurman’s body “at all times” may be creepy but it is not criminal, a lawyer said Monday in defense of a man accused of stalking the Kill Bill actress.