Laitera

Mea culpa

2007-07-31T23:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I have failed you, my dearest darling followers, and did not keep my promise. But in penance, I will begin again from the date I have originally set, and will keep at it until I have paid for my sins, day by day, several times a day. There is nothing more hellish than having to behold bad fashion more than once a day. Once a day is fun, though, which was the original plan for this blog.

But I will grit my teeth and suffer through several a day.

On the other hand, why am I inexplicably filled with glee?

Scroll down.

Oh, the horror

2007-05-16T20:22:00.000-07:00

Here is further proof that Regine Velasquez is indeed living in a time warp.

In this video she is singing "Shine," an Ima Castro original, and passing it off as hers, as if Ima Castro, a better singer, had never existed, and she is wearing one bright glittery silvery metal-mesh glove. Just one glove. One just one hand.

Michael Jackson comes to mind, in his Thriller era. The King of Pop himself has evolved into a ghoul, an actual incarnation of the Thriller era.

Could it be safe to say that her Mariah Carey butterfly imitation days are over? To be perfectly honest, though, I don't know which is the worse horror -- that she is veering towards an era of Michael Jackson imitations, or that she had stooped imitating Mariah Carey so she could be herself.

Bad night

2007-05-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

Here we have another person who cannot seem to handle the idea of an unbroken black dress.

A photo of a different view of this dress does not exist, so I cannot be afforded a different perspective, but from this one lone photograph, I can say that there is nothing else I can ever see of this outfit that can make me change my opinion of it. Why the colordul sash, ala Beauty Queen? And, of all colors of the spectrum, why fuchsia and lemon yellow? I don't know what award she has won on that occasion, but she seems to be carrying a fancily-wrapped bunch of yoghurt cups, a fact that she seems to be trying to be happy about in her, ah, acceptance speech.

This was not a good night for Sharon Cuneta

Illiterates

2007-05-14T19:16:00.000-07:00

I wonder if all entrants to Pinoy Big Brother are required to read George Orwell's classic novel, 1984. But I doubt it. People who read good literature naturally make sense, in life and in dressing themselves whenever they go out in public. Pinoy Big Brother people, on the other hand, don't seem to be well-read to me. Just look at the ones from the first batch:

Left to right: A man in a white shirt and with hair that a toddler styled, man wearing a pink floral scarf, a girl wearing a pink formal dress and a black fanny pack, a man who can't sing, a woman with no eyebrows, Mad Max wearing eyeliner, a girl who overdid the push-up bra, a generic-looking nobody, a diminutive matronly woman wearing a curtain and slippers, and a very tall four year-old.

What a cesspool of bad taste and useless drama.

Time warp

2007-05-13T00:02:00.000-07:00

Regine Velasquez has got to stop fooling around with time. She has these strange long bouts of wearing the exact same dress over and over for years,
but sometimes, ever so rarely, as if in a flash of defiance, she decks herself out as if she were ten:

I'm pretty certain it's all to appear sweet and ageless, and, well, like a butterfly:

But she's almost forty, it's not sweet and ageless, but just so sad. Even Mariah Carey has stopped doing the butterfly thing half a decade ago.

Close call

2007-05-12T05:49:00.000-07:00

Phew! I was actually worried that Susan Roces would, in the heat of her seeking for justice for her husband's death by natural causes, actually run for the Presidency.

Thankfully, she didn't, and the elections are over, although I'm no less appalled at what she has descended into. From this kind of FAMAS Best Actress:

To this kind of FAMAS Best Actress:

Bad memories

2007-05-12T02:37:00.000-07:00

I'm aware that Vina Morales somehow has a concept for this entire look.

But it does nothing for me except to remind me about those overly made-up prepubescent majorettes from provincial public schools that I used to watch when I was a child, and wishing, wishing that I'd never be made to wear vinyl white knee-high boots, ever.

Subtlety works wonders

2007-05-11T02:37:00.000-07:00

Even if Loi Ejercito does, to some degree, represent the plight of all wronged women in the Philippines (wronged both by her husband and her facial care expert), I still cannot seem to feel any sympathy with her.

Maybe it's because she's too literal.

I mean, does she have to be so in-you-face about being "in chains?" I'm sure it's probably a designer outfit and all (though it does not exactly look like Versace to me), and she must be making a point, wearing it when she is standing in some sort of convention beside her husband, each of them reading a novel, of all things, her copy of which she has marked in two different places, but no, I still don't feel any sympathy for her.

Range

2007-05-10T02:37:00.000-07:00

This is supposed to be a wallpaper created by a Toni Gonzaga fan, but I doubt it.

It's such a bipolar portrayal of the actress herself. On the foreground, she stands there looking sleepily at the person using the computer (the puffy face isn't helping at all), while in the background she is in the throes of some kind of despair. Is this supposed to show her range of acting abilities? If it is, then I suggest the creator put in something more there, such as Toni Gonzaga brushing her teeth.

Advocacy

2007-05-09T05:49:00.000-07:00

Ok. It's still unbearably hot and Richard Gomez and Cesar Montano are still running for the Senate. I don't know how Sarah Geronimo fits into all that grand design, but she seems to be proposing a new flag for some movement or other.

Note the symbolic colors (red for bravery, blue for integrity, lavender for women's rights and teal for -- ah -- singing.) And the buttons! I can't make out what they say, but from what I can figure out, the could be promoting some sort of clearer vision, an advice that Sarah Geronimo could benefit from herself, especially when she's looking in the mirror.

The short and hot of it

2007-05-02T06:46:00.000-07:00

Ah, well. I'm back! Not fully yet, though, as jet lag, apparently, takes days to disappear. It also does not help at all that I have arrived back into my poor suffering country in the middle of perhaps one of its hottest summers ever, from a country across the Pacific that is just getting into spring. That, and to realize that Richard Gomez is still running for Senator, is enough to keep me makeup-less and in bed watching old Maricel Soriano movies over and over again.

But I have not been abducted and thrown to the lions by the people I have, er, okray-ed in this blog. I am still my fabulous free self, thank you very much, and the only things I am slave to these days are gallons of unsweetened ice-cold dalandan juice and my beloved two-horsepower airconditioning unit. Now if only I could find a way to cart around these two for the trip to the mall -- to buy all the new celebrity trash magazines I have missed -- and back...

But since that is impossible, I suppose I shall have to brave the sweltering city heat. In a week or so, or after it rains, whichever comes first, I am going to blog again!

In the meantime, there's Maricel Soriano and ZsaZsa Padilla fighting over Gabby Concepcion.

Maricel Soriano: Are you doing it with my husband?!

ZsaZsa Padilla: Minsan.

Ah, bring in the dalandan juice!

Edibility

2007-02-13T05:48:00.000-08:00

Blame it all on Celia Rodriguez for beginning the fad of wearing abstract fashion. With her, though, it absolutely works, as her face is so agelessly beautiful and always beautifully and glamorously made up and her bearing is so regal that she can wear a sack to a black tie gathering and still be lauded as the best-dressed person for the night.

Other people, though, just don't get it.

She looks like a badly done merengue pastry that had begun to melt under the bright and hot kleig lights. She is Goldilocks-bakeshop-slash-high-school-home-economics-first-attempt
-at-icing-slash-modern-art-disaster-who-did-not-even-do-her-makeup-right. If she was trying to imitate Celia Rodriguez, all she was able to ape successfully was, perhaps, well, the silhouette?

[Photo from S Magazine.]

Looks familiar

2007-02-12T05:48:00.000-08:00

Another starlet gone the way of Rosanna Roces. I can almost hear the printed flowers on her tube top groaning against the stretching.

And as the plot of the lives of these creatures (the women, not the flowers) go, I can almost see Katya Santos fifteen years from now, seventy pounds heavier, a grandmother to some b-rated philandering-husband-slash-politician's grandson, a bar girl, and some large man's partner on a sex video.

Yearning for the end

2007-02-11T05:48:00.000-08:00

She is wearing a long blond wig and a dark outfit with cream colored boots, and a messy-looking bagette with a little fish hanging from it. Her scarf looks like the tablecloth in that news clip I saw over TV Patrol lately, where a woman was being interviewed in the kitchen of her house in the Tondo district because her husband, high on drugs, climbed a nearby billboard and threatened to jump to his death. She was saying, "Di ko alam kung ano nangyayari diyan." ("I don't know what's been happening to him.")

I wish we could have been just as ignorant of Jolina. But she has been infecting us for so long. Till when are we supposed to bear with this anomaly?

Anatomy

2007-02-10T05:14:00.000-08:00

I wonder who it was that said that models should have long necks.

Because we sure need that person now, if only to tell Jomari Yllana that he has got no business being a model if he lacks a neck.

But then again, I suppose I could invoke that powerful phrase, "only in the Philippines," to justify why people who are lacking a body part can still be popular enough to gain mass appeal in doing the job that requires that lacking body part, as in the case of high school graduate Manny Pacquiao running for Congress without the legal brains.

Horror story

2007-02-09T05:13:00.000-08:00

Dinky Soliman has a streak in her hair and in her sensibility. I mean, it's one thing to have a red streak in one's hair when one is in her twenties. But when one is of the age that Dinky Soliman is evidently in, and of the physique that is definitely not twentysomething, and wearing fashion that is definitely not twentysomething, then the streak is simply off. Who can trust and listen to a woman who wears her hair like that?

No wonder this guy is looking at her with such a horrified look on his face.

Could not care less

2007-02-08T05:09:00.000-08:00

It's not that she's dressed like a Lara Croft wannabe and that her co-star in the movie is dressed like Indiana Jones with the hairstyle of Jacky Chan.

It's just that the way her knife is placed at her pelvis, she'd end up poking holes into her thigh when she runs.

Which only proves, I suppose, that movies that are copies of a series of movies that are: a.) based on a video game that is based on the mysteries of antiquity, and b.) a combination of various other movies and novel and other lessons of history, are getting more and more confused from the various levels of adaptation, so much so that they have failed to take into consideration the common sense behind the proper and non-deadly placement of knives in one's belt.

I'm not going to watch that movie. let me know if she ends up with gaping wounds in her thigh.

*Yawn*

[Photo from Yes! magazine.]

Cruelty

2007-02-07T10:56:00.000-08:00

Ah! Here's another incarnation of the vile bubble skirt, but this time with a twist. Apparently the eighties is back. The teased and hairsprayed hair, the 'closed-toe shoes,' the black-and-pink cocktail dresses with the Joey Albert skirt (but this time rendered as a vile bubble skirt). I find it perplexing. I never really liked the eighties because that is the decade where That's Entertainment ruled afternoon television and Sharon Cuneta got married to Gabby Concepcion and Raymond Lauchengco began wearing torn and patched denim jeans and jackets and Aga Muhlach was having sex with Janice de Belen and Jolina Magdangal was conceived. The way I see it, any person who would dress in fashion even remotely close to the fashion of the eighties is just being mean and hurtful to the rest of us who had suffered -- albeit survivied -- the bad taste of that decade.

The clowning

2007-02-06T23:02:00.000-08:00

I've always wondered why the Filipino masses have this constant nagging need to see the most popular personalities in the society look like fools. It's bad enough that our showbiz reporters for radio sound like dumb little illiterate escapees from the mental asylum, constantly yelling "odiba?" every single phrase or so, and calling every single male "Papa" before their names, as if it were a title like "Attorney" or "Professor," and referring to themselves as "ang lola moh." But to have actual news anchors dress up like misplaced adolescents and sign and dance like your regular entrant to yet another badly-done star search is a sign that the society has caved in on itself and is beyond extrication, even by the ever almighty United States government.

Ted and Korina have descended into the abyss.

[Photo from The Buzz magazine.]

History repeating

2007-02-05T22:50:00.000-08:00

This photo has so many levels. On one level it's just a modern couple badly-dressed in faux Filipiniana. On another level it's a parody of the classic Philippine marriage, where the man is a "high-ranking government official who is also a philanderer" and the woman is a home maker with half a dozen children and goes to church everyday yet still refuses to see that her philandering husband probably has another half-dozen children with about a half-dozen different women. And on still another level, it shows, in such horrifying detail, that we are still back in the 1800's, where women wore ternos and were blind and kept mentioning "God" twice in every sentence and refuse to see that a wedding and a marriage contract does not a happy marriage make, and men were, well, the kind who used pomades... and that's the least of it. I don't want to get started on that, really.

[Photo from The Buzz magazine.]

Variations on a theme: The chin-poking bow

2007-02-04T14:12:00.000-08:00

It must be true what they say. There must be something about winning that is particularly humbling. Why else would Sarah Geronimo and Yeng Constantino feel that they need to wear dresses with stiff bows in the bodice that would poke their chins and require them to stand proudly instead of bowing their heads to the ground in humility?

[Both photos from Yes! magazine.]

Give them a break

2007-02-03T09:06:00.000-08:00

I honestly think that if two people -- any two people -- love each other, then everyone else should pretty much just leave them alone. So we should pretty much leave these two alone. They are so obviously into each other.

Just look at them. They even do each other's makeup and share the same lip and cheek stain. If that's not love -- and proof of his being straight -- then I don't know what is.

So cut it out, people. You're just jealous.

[Photo from Hi! magazine.]

Still seven, I see

2007-02-02T09:06:00.000-08:00

The makeup is good, the hair is acceptable, her skin tone is remarkably attractive, the style of the dress is cute, and even the color is nice. But what's with the bow? And why put something so primary-school at the front of the dress, when every grade-schooler knows it should be at the back of their party-slash-Sunday-frills-and-lace attires?

I cannot understand Jolina Magdangal. I don't know her personally (of course I don't, or else she would have already tried to scratch my eyes out with her blue-painted fingernails and then the entire country would be watching me on TV Patrol World with deep gouges on my wonderfully and subtly rouged cheeks, being pointed at in a very angry manner by a polka-dotted and psychedelic-colored outfit that has Jolina Magdangal inside of it, with Mario Dumawal smirking somewhere around the frame) but I can perhaps safely say that she does have a penchant for large bows and ribbons, layering different-textured garments, putting together clothing with colors that clash, and other tricks of the seven year-old vying for Daddy's attention. I can also safely say that she must be twenty-seven or twenty-eight, so I'm thrown by the sincere and concentrated effort to look about twenty years younger, which I would be able to understand and sympathize with were she, in fact, fifty.

But she is, in fact, in her twenties. But maybe she really is seven. At any rate. I would never know. I don't know her personally, so I cannot ask, lest she put her blue-painted fingernails to my perfectly made-up face.

[Photo from S magazine.]

In repentance?

2007-02-01T21:58:00.000-08:00

Apparently John Estrada dressed like a confused fourteen year-old boy living in 1984 for a sort of awards show where he was lauded as the Best Dressed Male Artist or some such other honor.

I've always thought a Best Dressed Anything should be more because of a style that respects the rules of good taste and decency. But I also believe that, so some degree, it is also because of an original style that, though strange, nevertheless works, with the elements blending together so seamlessly that we don't notice the strangeness of each element at first and see, only after a few hours of staring, that the Best Dressed Anything was actually wearing 12 necklaces or something, but that they, well, work, and give the impression that the Best Dressed Anything had not su much grown into his or her outfits but had actually been born in them.

So I am confused as to why John Estrada had gotten the award, because that rosary hanging around his neck is just so glaring to me, even much more so than the hot pink brocade blazer over a red-brown t-shirt. Is he asking for forgiveness and redemption from the heavens and the gods of fashion because he is dressed like Madonna in the eighties? With perhaps another ensemble, the Chuck Taylors would have been excusable, but with the plea for forgiveness and redemption and the tribute to one of the Roman Catholic Church's mortal enemies, the shoes just add to the confusion. Is he hoping for plenary indulgence, or defying his atonement?

[Photo from Yes! magazine.]

Respite, despite, in spite

2007-01-31T21:25:00.000-08:00

I have gotten back from a week-long emergency business trip to find out that the Laitera has critics! I am being bashed. The most recent comments are rather spiteful, and I am one to speak because I know spiteful (imagine me saying this with my voice just dripping with irony). It really made my evening, because it means only one thing: I have arrived!

Perhaps a few thanks are in order. To my faithful readers who keep encouraging me to keep making lait, to the critics who have proven that sometimes sensible humor has truly flown the coop -- or perhaps they simply wished they thought up the idea for this blog first -- to my dear friends who keep leading me to online photos of people whose fashion sense and good taste had deserted them, to the piles upon piles of local celebrity magazines out there for the use of their terrific photos, and to the numerous fashion icons and non-icons, the real stars of the Laitera Blog, who keep giving me fodder for blog posts, without whom this blog would not have existed,salamat.

Whew! Nothing like vile reader's comments to get me going on to the even viler task of making lait to people dressed in the vilest thing of all, the vile bubble skirt.

Let me just sit down, catch my breath, finish my latte, and then I'll dive right into my pile of celebrity magazines -- which I sorely missed -- with gusto. This is a fabulous homecoming!

The protégé

2007-01-24T08:24:00.000-08:00

Kim Chiu is wearing a kindergarten student's fluffy puffy-sleeved white blouse over a Makati employee's pin-striped long-sleeved shirt, a long string of fake Baclaran beads from Aling Oryang the Quiapo fortune-teller, and a short-stemmed red rose grabbed from her boyfriend's ex hanging limply off her starched collar.

I do not know whether to laugh or to cry, because it seems like we have a new Jolina Magdangal, after the original Jolina has run off and gotten married, which I still have not gotten to accept by the way -- isn't she only thirteen? -- and so it is a lot for me to ackowledge the existence of yet another multi-layered, large-beaded, real flower-decorated dresser whose only talent is having been able to live with several other teenagers in a house with no cellphones, no television, and no dsl.

At least Jolina sings.

But then again, no. She does not sound nice. And I do not want any other younger incarnation of her.

[Photo from Hi! magazine.]

Variations on a theme: The bedsheet print

2007-01-23T04:42:00.000-08:00

It's not as if the print was so original, as I distinctly remember my parents having a bedsheet with the exact same print, but on a white background, and that was way back in the seventies. And it's not even that the print can be touted as "vintage," never mind that it had come from a seventies bedsheet.

It's just that using a bedsheet print for a dress for an awards night is quite appalling, an insult, even, to the award-giving body, even if it were the MMFA, which it wasn't, by the way, and to have two different women wear the same print on two different dresses, presumably -- and I fervently hope -- designed by different designers, is even more disturbing. Just like the direction that Philippine cinema is going, what with all the rip-off fantasy movies and the rip-off treasure-hunting movies and the rip-off psycho-suspense movies, everyone might as well rip off their couture and wear real actual bedsheets from Wamsutta twisted around their torsos, for all it's worth.

[Assunta de Rossi's photo from The Buzz Magazine, ZsaZsa Padilla's photo from Yes! magazine.]

Variations on a theme: The disaster bangs

2007-01-22T04:41:00.000-08:00

Lately I have begun to wonder if there was an army of craft scissors-wielding four year-olds let loose in Metro Manila to happily slash away at anything they can get their hands on. The bangs I have been seeing lately certainly look as if they have been cut by elements from this lethal army.

Rica Peralejo somehow seems like a likely target, as her flat moon-face could have been so bright, giving an irresistible invitation to the army, which I can almost see turning to her and murmuring, "Oooh. Shiny," and then charging head-on with their scissors with multi-colored plastic handles.

Ditto Lorna Tolentino, although she looks more like a formerly bald person now growing out her hair while wearing a wig, except that her wig somehow got off-kilter and so her real short hair is showing.

The horrific thing is that it's not a wig, but very very real. And what's even more horrific is that there is, of course, no army. These women actually chose to look this way.

[Rica's photo from The Buzz magazine. Lorna's photo from Yes! magazine.]

Variations on a theme: The flower dress from hell

2007-01-21T04:39:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if this is a fad. First, we have Kitkat dressing up like a badly-rendered origami tulip and ending up looking like a giant flower-like alien from a horror sci-fi movie at the Metro Manila Filmfest Awards, as shown in a photo from a previous post and reposted here:

Then we have Jennylyn Mercado looking like a giant flower that has already wilted at the Luna Awards, an image further encouraged by the wilted-flower color of her dress.

Furthermore, it seems like the petals have grown into her arms and have eaten most of them away, leaving her hands just hanging there, dead and immobile and ineffectual, and it was after this meal that they died, poisoned by something remotely reptilian in Jennylyn's blood.

Kitkat's petals shoot upwards, in fear of the ground that she has trodden on and has thus rendered barren, while Jennylyn's petals droop downwards, perhaps to try to get away from the face that had launched a thousand love triangles, with her always being the inevitably jilted one. It makes perfect sense, really. Fad or no fad, sometimes the clothes are more honest than the people that are wearing them.

[Photos from The Buzz magazine.]

Look who's (what's) back

2007-01-20T08:06:00.000-08:00

I cannot believe she found the shoes that one die-hard Faces Disco goer threw away when the eighties were over. Did she not find the large round white plastic earrings that went with those shoes? And the funnel-shaped acid-washed "Used Jeans" that had the words "Used Jeans" stamped all over them? And the bright yellow cropped jacket with thick shoulderpads that had neon-colored geometric prints all over it? And for the entire outfit to be age-appropriate, may she please carry a Trapper Keeper and a Walkman that plays a cassette tape of a Duran Duran album?

Almost

2007-01-19T11:26:00.000-08:00

At first I was afraid that Bubbles Paraiso was wearing a tan underblouse that did not cover her breasts and the blue satin overcropped mini-blouse was worn over it to cover her breasts and it was almost working until a photographer took the photograph from the wrong angle.

But then I looked closer and realized that the tan underblouse did cover her entire torso, and she was perfectly decent. Whew! That said, I'm picking a bone with that collar. I am afraid it's a sign that she is gradually going the way of people dressing up as animals. I can almost see it now. First she starts dressing up like dogs, then she starts dressing up like bejewelled dogs, and then she starts dressing up like bejewelled and overly frilly dogs, and then she starts dressing up like Jolina Magdangal.

[Photo from A-List magazine.]

Oh, the pain

2007-01-18T10:13:00.000-08:00

Rosanna Roces is wearing a dress so tight that the floral print has actually stretched across her breasts, creating the illusion that the dress is composed of two different prints, and her "shawl," taken from a hundred year-old cavan that holds moth-eaten doilies, is tied lopsidedly at her neck by a safety pin.

Sometimes I wonder why I still feel pain for her. The entire country should be immune by now.

[Photo from The Buzz! magazine.]

Bon appetit!

2007-01-17T10:14:00.000-08:00

Sandara Park deserves a panlalait post all to her own.

Determined to make an impact at the sham that is the Metro Manila Filmfest Awards, she came as a shiny poufy pink pastry decorated with circular merengue petals at the bodice , and with a skirt that also has a short train. Underneath her dress, though, in the area of her stomach, is not a growing fetus -- as she is not pregnant and even if she were, she is not likely to have the same sentiments about motherhood as Kris Aquino who wears baggy maternity clothes when she is barely three months along -- but a creamy whipped fruity filling. You have to hand it to her, though. Not being a Filipina, she thus knows how to dress appropriately for the occasion. Or it could be that she simply woke up in the morning and, in a rare spark of intelligence and prescience, thought, what better thing for her to do at a fake movie awards show than to go as fake diabetes-inducing food that eating too much of can actually can make one nauseous? At the end of the night, it looks like she had the philosophy of this year's MMFA right down pat. The entire awards season left a bad taste in the mouth.

[Photo from The Buzz! magazine.]

The legend lives on

2007-01-16T09:17:00.000-08:00

Ah! The Metro Manila Film Festival Awards. I am always delighted when it is MMFA season again, as there is always, always something going on there that is not nice. Who can ever forget that sorry "Take it! Take it!" episode in the early nineties when Gretchen Baretto -- not yet in her present status as Her Royal Colorum Consort -- and the overstaying Miss Universe loser from Mauritius, Miss Mauritius, stand on the podium and give the Best Actress Award to Ruffa Guttierez, and then in the middle of the affair Gretchen belatedly balks and announces that the name she saw on card inside the envelope was that of Aiko Melendez? And now here comes the hullaballoo over a criterion pertaining to box office earnings. That's not the worst of it this year, though. The worst part is that the man who had infested the entire Metro Manila with those hideous pink-colored foot bridges and male urinals is one of the judges.

But of course people in the MMFA would act quite base, especially if they have the aesthetics of Bayani Fernando, and if they are dressed like these:

She looks like she was wrapped in a badly done origami tulip, where her torso is the misshapen stamen that ends in a huge ball of blond hair decorated with a bunch of long red fur. In a tragic tribute to the twenties, a bow with uneven ends is tied around the area of her hips, and the stem of this horrific apparition that it Kitkat ends in a long flare that is being held up by a hand (another stem? a leaf?) that is clad in black ruched satin.She is making a statement that not all flowers are beautiful and not all origamis are meant to be done right.

In contrast, Rachelle Anne Go has decided to come as a belted altar cloth.

And then comes Tanya Garcia wearing the vile bubble skirt in a most unflattering length.

This is, by far, the worst length that anyone can wear the vile bubble skirt, as it makes the wearer seem dangerously close to looking like this:

On the practical side, though, the vile bubble skirt can probably act as a handbag. Just an adequate sized slit among those folds in the hips can allow the wearer to carry inside the bulbous hem a bunch of keys, a credit card, a wad of tissues, her compact and lip gloss, a hairbrush, two stained and linty scrunchies, old movie ticket stubs and crumpled Starbucks receipts, used-up wifi cards, a half-eaten chocolate bar, various candy wrappers, a broken pencil, a ballpoint pen stolen from either a bank teller or a sales person in a mall, a weekly planner, an iPod Shuffle, a moldy old id photo from college, assorted loose change, a cellphone and charger, and perhaps a small bottle of mineral water. It will make a whole lot of ruckus when she walks that red carpet, though. But then again, stranger things have been known to happen at the MMFA.

[Photos -- except for the cartoon -- from The Buzz! magazine.]

The powers that can't

2007-01-15T15:09:00.000-08:00

Ladies and gentlemen, the Laitera is proud to present you with a blow-by-blow account of the sartorial crimes of the President of the Republic of the Philippines at the recently held ASEAN Summit in Cebu City.

First, the Chief Executive arrives in Cebu wearing a seventies policeman's uniform.

She is wearing an oversized suit rendered entirely in khaki that creates an illusion of a FedEx cargo box bouncing along the red carpet. The untucked and superlong and oversized inner blouse have side seams that keep puckering, a trait of clothes that simply scream Baclaran. As she troops the line and salutes the colors she forgets that her handkerchief -- which dreadfully reminds me of Vilma Santos during her Vilma! days when she would scream "I love you, Lucky!" into the microphone that was wrapped with a white handkerchief -- should never be part of the salute.

The President is joined by Cebu Governor Gwen Garcia who showed her that khaki does'nt necessarily have to be drab:

Cebu Governor-Gwen wears a v-neck inner blouse that is several shades darker than her mocha cardigan, with a neckline that shows an elegant neckpiece. In contrast, President Gloria is paying a tribute to yet another Philippine institution, Manny Pacquiao.

Then, the duo of powerwomen proceed to inspect the Asean Summit site....

Gwen in sleek beige pantsuit (reminiscent of Ralph Lauren's all-American corporate chic), and pointed toe stilletos that give her a slim, elongated silhouette. And then Gloria in a rumpled bright bubble-gum pink pajama set patterned for the Teletubbies. Take note of her equally clunky suede clogs in a color that does not even match the outfit.

And then at the ceremonial unveiling where Gwen wears an hour-glass shaped terno, with flowing white drapings reminiscent of traditional Grecian attire.

And Gloria sings the blues in Mama Mon Chang's coordinates.

The country is in serious trouble. Only Cebu can save itself.

So this is what happened to...

2007-01-14T08:30:00.000-08:00

Nikki Coseteng. She has become a fixture for drapery.

Not only that, she seems to also have become a geisha gone fat and drab that no obi would fit her, making her acquire the shape of a Matrioshka doll that contains a smaller Nikki Coseteng who has become a geisha gone fat and drab that no obi would fit her and making her acquire the shape of a Matrioshka doll that contains an even smaller Nikki Coseteng who has become a geisha gone fat and drab that no obi would fit her and making her acquire the shape of a Matrioshka doll that contains an even smaller Nikki Coseteng who has become a geisha gone fat and drab that no obi would fit her and making her acquire the shape of a Matrioshka doll that contains an even smaller Nikki Coseteng, and on and on ad infinitum, and when you keep opening and opening these dolls you will get to the core of the entire elaborate nestling system, which is actually a speck of glittery, glimmery eyeshadow powder.

It's quite existential, really.

Possibilities

2007-01-13T08:28:00.000-08:00

I've always wondered what Lolit Solis was doing in front of the camera hosting tv shows. I'm sure her talent management agency is doing just fine, what with Gabby Concepcion and all in its heyday spawning even newer and newer controversies over her latest acquisitions. But this doesn't look like the person who has the right to be on television.

Maybe if she started wearing the vile bubble skirt and had her breasts augmented by Vicky Belo, and grow her hair longer so she can have it layered and colored and rebonded, and star in a movie that has her emerging from greenish river water in a white kamison and have a string of vile relationships with the likes of Bong Revilla, Andrew Wolfe, and that male model that supposedly keeps beating up Lara Morena, she could escalate to the status of Movie Star.

Separated at birth 2

2007-01-12T09:58:00.000-08:00

Ladies and gentlemen, let us all welcome the Ly-Na beauties.

It's apparent that it is their mothers who taught them the benefits of using the thick and greasy Chinese medicated face cream and how to slather it on their faces to create shading akin to the espasol. At least we all know that the mother of the male twin is a living example of how to use face cream and get to the Senate in coiffed and face-creamed-and-powdered splendor

Someone is going to be thrown into the dungeon

2007-01-11T21:42:00.000-08:00

Something is wrong with Queen Gretchen Baretto's face.

Note the nose in the close-up below, and scroll back up to the photo of her entire face.

She seems to be missing a left nostril. In Photoshopping her face, the Photoshop artist must have inadvertedly stamped some skin onto what should have been the small curve that would show that Her Royal Highness does have a left nostril in real life or else she would not have deemed herself too perfect for this world, an arrogance we all know to be quite unfounded anyway, as we all know that Her Majesty is not really Her Majesty but only Royal Concubine By Merit Of Her Sharing A Bed And An Illegitimate Daughter With His Royal Highness The Fat And Ugly King Which Actually Makes Her Not So Much Royal Concubine But A Colorum Consort, Which Is Even Worse. No wonder Queen Mother Imelda Cojuangco hates her.

But really, the Photoshop artist and the entire staff of the magazine that published this photograph should leave the country and seek asylum in Cuba, or else they will all feel the wrath of Her Royal Colorum Highness Queen Gretchen Baretto, She Who Has A Microwave Oven-Carrying Assistant Following Her Everywhere She Goes.

[Photo from Starstruck magazine.]

Wrong girl

2007-01-10T21:27:00.000-08:00

When I first saw this cover, I did not recognize any of these people. I honestly thought they were some sort of small wax figures that were made to resemble one another, as proof that this incredible feat, gasp, can be done.

But then after about four minutes of staring at the cover, because it did look a little odd, it dawned on me that these were real people, Photoshopped to resemble wax figures. And then shortly thereafter I realized that these were real people Photoshopped badly. And then, in an instant, I realized that these were the fab four of the famed shampoo commercial that had one of them (girl three in cover) displaying her entire designer wardrobe at the shoot with a small army of personal assistants carting them in designer luggage and then the other one (girl four in cover) seething with envy over all that ostentatious display and then the third one (girl two in cover) taking the side of the first one because she understands the sentiment as she herself is also married to a foreign millionnaire after having been a part of the harem of yet another foreign prince in a rich oil-mining country and then the fourth one (girl one in cover) keeping mum about the whole thing because she is just that flat and predictable and so unremarkably staid and probably un-opinionated because she had never been part of a harem of a prince and never slept with a lot of men and so it makes me wonder why she is there in that quartet of pretentious liposuctioned social-climbing women instead of, say, Rosanna Roces. Because those other three, are, well, not so different from our favorite liposuctioned social-climbing palengkera, save for the fact that they do not have sex videos.

Twenty years indeed

2007-01-09T18:40:00.000-08:00

Regine Velasquez, at the concert she held toward the end of 2006 to celebrate her first twenty years in showbusiness, was apparently an attempt to prove that she could change her fashion style.

Note the hair extensions, and the mound of densely-packed pink tissue paper that she seemed to have embedded herself in.

And below, notice the shimmering purple tights and a black lace mini-dress, accessorized with what looks like one of those flexible and stretchable headbands made of jointed plastic sticks, and what seems to be a several layers of gold chain necklaces, which we cannot see very well under the hair extensions.

And finally, the culmination of all that is bad in her twenty years of showbusiness -- bar Ogie Alcasid -- that somehow fills me with horror over what the next twenty years of her showbiz life would be like:

It looks like an angry puppy dog tore out a part of her skirt, which I suspect could be part of a plan, as she is smiling smugly, proud to be, ah, showing off parts of her anatomy that were meant to be kept hidden not out of modesty but out of shame.

I actually watched the concert in its delayed telecast on television, rapt with the ugliness of it all, and kept at the edge of my seat by the excitement over what Regine Velasquez would be wearing next, and the night ended with one rather horrifying thought in my mind: Does she, in fact, secretly wish she was more like Mystica? This would at least explain the fashion and the men.

[Photos from Starstruck magazine.]

Difficulty

2007-01-08T18:03:00.000-08:00

I honestly never thought Vilma Santos would make it to this blog more than once, and via a contemporary photograph, and I have taken much of the morning deliberating on this choice, but see for yourselves. Not only is she wearing the vile bubble skirt...

...she is also wearing an extremely large necklace made entirely out of clams.

Also, the shoes are quite off. I would imagine a veteran actress and a city mayor who is married to a senator and is a mother to one grown man -- plus one little boy -- would not wear open-toed shoes with hose. Pumps would have been more appropriate, but we understand how difficult it must have been to select the right footwear, as she is wearing the vile bubble skirt and her extremely large necklace, which turns out to be the collar of her dress after all, is made entirely out of clams.

[Photo from Yes! magazine.]

Innovation

2007-01-07T17:48:00.000-08:00

Wow. This photograph is proof that Carla Humphries has another talent other than smiling broadly at the camera to show her thirty-two bleached and polished and cavity-free teeth. Apparently, she has a natural knack for dress engineering, as when she has forgone the use of a push-up bra and has used her ruched red leather belt with a black shiny accent instead. which explained why said belt is not on her waist, as convention and the nature of belts dictate, but on the area right underneath her breasts. Notice, also, that it is not apparent how the belt is fastened, unless the aforementioned black shiny accent is a closure in disguise, which will go perfectly well with the entire theme of how the belt is used, specifically, as a breast support in disguise, and/or as a belt in disquise as a breast support. Although this makes me wonder if this belt-slash-breast-support is actually a headband from the eighties that had already enlarged and deformed itself from old age, and so if Carla Humphries makes a turn, we would see that the belt is actually clamped onto her midriff and not wrapped tightly against it, which in turn would also amaze me even more at Carla Humphries' fantastic philosophy of using things for purposes other than what they were invented for.

Victim

2007-01-06T10:24:00.000-08:00

She's been crying.

And for good reason.

[Photo from pinoyrickey.org]

Please

2007-01-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

And here we have another opportunity to make an anonymous lait, brought to us by our friendly global source of all that is young and tasteless, Friendster.

She must have been trying her utmost best to look pretty. Somebody please log on to IRC or Yahoo Chat and tell her to stop it before her skinny little neck breaks into two and her head plops onto the keyboard and presses the button to send spam and virus e-mails, or worsde, more photos of herself, to the rest of the world.

And to think this is what Google came up with when I searched for images of Cristy Fermin. Don't you just love Google? The thing has got such a fabulous sense of humor.

Friendly advice

2007-01-04T08:38:00.000-08:00

For a beautician, Ricky Reyes should know when a face is good enough to display brazenly for public consumption. If he keeps insisting on gracing his own giant billboards along Edsa, he should get his own beautician and Photoshop artist. I suggest he contact Angelica Panganiban for hers. And I also suggest that Bong Revilla have a look at Ricky Reyes' hairstyle. This might make the Senator realize what he might turn into after too much working of that "gigolo" image.

All hail

2007-01-03T09:26:00.000-08:00

I never fail to be amused by these three, and not in a good way. Kris Aquino, who keeps making a fool of herself as a person, made an even bigger fool of herself as a "talk show host" recently by not even looking up beforehand what a "blog" is and what this is for and how this is accessed, which is really really stupid, as the interview she was about to conduct with a top-notch female lawyer circles around a particular controversial blog entry. And all throughout the interview she kept saying things like, "I don't know what a blog is, I'm sorry, " and "How do you access that? Is there a password." Sheesh. Maybe she should be introduced to this blog.

Cristy Fermin, on the other hand, is just an unclassifiable creature. Not only does she appear to have no teeth and attempts to compensate for said lack of body part by getting another body part highly overdone -- specifically having mega-uber-super-tweezed eyebrows that make her look like Ursula the octopus in Disney's The Little Mermaid -- she also seems to dress in nothing but pantsuits composed of black trousers and tailored jackets with horrid prints.

Boy Abunda, on the other hand, is an egg.

But perhaps we can just hand it to ABS-CBN for putting together these three. After all, if the ABS-CBN could create a Jolina Magdangal and a Willie Revillame, why not the holy trinity of bad taste?

Tell me something I don't know

2007-01-02T09:53:00.000-08:00

There are some things in this world I will never know. Some of these are:

1. Why John Lennon had to die,
2. Where Tiffany (the singer, not the store) is now,
3. What vile creature invented the vile bubble skirt,
4. What a conversation would have been like between Lito Lapid and Melanie Marquez when they were still lovers, and
5. How Joey Marquez could still be on television even if he is doing practically nothing anymore. (Hosting, say you? Hah, says me.)

Lessons

2007-01-01T10:49:00.000-08:00

Both Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Senator Loren Legarda should go back to high school and relearn the following topics:

1. How to not be a sore loser.
2. How to never cheat.
3. How to find the right mate.
4. How to speak with the proper diction. (Slanging all your vowels doesn't cut it.)
5. How to manage people without blowing your top in front of the multitude.
6. How to understand macroeconomics, and the importance of crediting overseas foreign workers for helping bring up the peso value.
7. How to quit while you're ahead.

Or weren't they taught this at the Assumption in the first place? Tsk, tsk.

Somebody burst this, please

2006-12-31T03:39:00.000-08:00

The bubble skirt is one of the most disgusting inventions of mankind, ranking high up there on the list together with those tiny "Cleopatra" nose-springs that desperate pug-nosed women can insert into their nostrils to pull them upwards from the inside, Hello Kitty, and Britney Spears. The bubble skirt is not only ugly, it also greatly detracts from the dignity of the wearer by making her look as if she were wearing adult diapers underneath.

Just look at Maja Salvador. Now even Sandara Park looks more dignified than her, and that says a lot. Of course I do not credit the bubble skirt entirely for the gross ugliness that this photograph seems to be showcasing. To some extent, it is also the clownish, undignified dance move, which sort of makes me wonder if stylishly-dressed people would dance this way. Hmm. Probably not. So this takes me back to crediting the vile bubble skirt with everything vile in this photograph. It makes people act like clowns and incontinent adults, which is just the worst combination ever.

[Photo from The Buzz! magazine.]

Split

2006-12-30T10:22:00.000-08:00

Jennylyn Mercado should get her priorities straight, especially now that the new year is coming. Before running after boys who are already either attached or have already broken up with her or find her abhorrent, she should get her split ends treated first. Maybe the split ends are what's making her abhorrent to boys.

I wonder why some women value length of hair over quality of hair. Just because it's long doesn't mean it's pretty, and one is not automatically pretty because one's hair is long. See Jennylyn Mercado above. It only gives other girls more leverage when wanting to pull her hair off her head because she keeps trying to steal their boyfriends.

Justice

2006-12-29T08:12:00.000-08:00

I've always thought someone as rich and beautiful and insane and crooked as Imelda Marcos would become even more beautiful with age by sheer force of her pact with the devil, an aura made even more fascinating by her fabulous sense of style and the vast number of her shoes and the international fame she has gotten for her sins, and the fact that she will sing only that one same song for all the occassions of her life.

Here she is in 1954:

And then in the sixties:

And even in the late seventies:

Yet lo and behold, Imelda in 2006:

Note the puffy, sagging face that a million facelifts cannot fix, and the general deterioration of her sense of fashion. She now looks like a retired public school teacher selling shoes.

Mystery solved

2006-12-28T07:35:00.000-08:00

Whoever said that Filipinas do not know how to dress appropriately for any occasion? Case in point: Asia Agcaoili.

Note the tight, flowery tube top decorated with a fake flower which is in turn decorated with about two dozen silk ribbons that presumably hang to somewhere within the vicinity of her pelvis. Note, too, the two kinds of shoulder straps concentrated on just her right shoulder, the two different necklaces layered on her neck, the colored bangs that are covering her left eye, and the white hat with a red sash that perches awkwardly on her head, as if she wanted to plop something on her head because her outfit wasn't dressy enough yet she didn't want to smush her hairdo so much.

Now, where would one wear an outfit like this, hairy-looking foreigner by her side notwithstanding?

To a bordello?

Ah, to a dj's booth, where she does her hip little dj thing with her right eye doing the work of two eyes because her left eye is covered with the bangs, doing a little spinning while her double strap on her right shoulder keeps falling over that shoulder, and her left shoulder is busy keeping the dj's headphones in place, because said headphones cannot be worn properly as her head is already occupied by aforementioned white hat with red sash.

So this is what female djs wear to work. No wonder there are so little of them. It's such a difficult, difficult job and I bet they get stiff necks all the time, and pneumonia.

[Photo from Yes! magazine.]

To thine own self be true

2006-12-27T09:37:00.000-08:00

And here we have another case of an actor waking up one morning not sure of his own identity.

In the case of Deither Ocampo, he believes he is George Estregan, him of the sideburns, the eerily thin mustachio, the layers of string necklaces peeking from an embroidered shirt open to show the sweaty chest, shiny pants, and sharp-toed shoes.

He has gone the way of Regine Velasquez thinking she is Mariah Carey, Geneva Cruz thinking she is Toni Braxton, Borgy Manotoc thinking he is Rudolph Valentino, Eric Santos thinking he is Ruffa Mae Quinto, and Maui Taylor thinking she is part British royalty. And that's just too bad for Diether. I've always thought that if an actor like him would have an attack of mild schizophrenia, he'd be thinking he's, well, George Clooney. And this look of his is just not it.

[Photo from The Buzz magazine.]

Just a suggestion

2006-12-26T09:58:00.000-08:00

Regine Velasquez has had the same look for over four years now. Short shiny bobbed hair, long dresses with no sleeves and with necklines that drop to the waist to show her cleavage.

The color and print of the dresses may change, but the structure is the same. And no matter what the occasion, it's always, always this look. Sometimes I get the feeling she just keeps dyeing them or changing the appliques or adding glitter to the same exact set of, well, 10 dresses. Take all her photos for the past four years, render them in silhouette, and you have a long string of cutout people like the art project we all had to do at some point or another in grade school.

Perhaps for her New year's resolution she can include "start wearing sleeves and a different bodice and neckline, and stop dating married men and/or those who are already involved."

[Photos from pinoy.rickey.org]

Separated at birth

2006-12-25T08:57:00.000-08:00

The same ass-crack. The same angle. The same come-hither-if-you-dare-but-if-you-do-dare-you'll-get-the-sex-video-of-a-lifetime look.

It's either they had run out of uncomfortable poses and had decided to air out their labias for the afternoon, or they had found the meaning of life sitting this way.

And then I will not say anything more because it's Christmas and I am pretending to have a soul.

The sleepwear look

2006-12-24T09:26:00.000-08:00

So Cindy Kurleto woke up one morning and decided to just throw a robe over her camisole top from the night before and go stand in front of a lot of people with a microphone, and smile and pretend that she has already brushed her teeth. Never mind her hair, which she probably wore that way while asleep, and her makeup, which looks as if it were a remnant of the day before, and that she had even forgotten her Silverworks bling-bling, which would have taken the attention off her rumpled tired-from-yesterday look. At least her lips look properly glossed-over, courtesy of her greasy tocino-sinangag-and-itlog breakfast.

At least I am assuming that this photo was taken in the morning. And I do fervently hope it was taken in the morning. Otherwise, I would have no explanation to offer for why she had been running around in sleepwear and stale makeup the entire day looking puffy and dishevelled.

But come to think of it, I can always come up with something, although I prefer to let it go for now and just give her the benefit of the doubt because it's Christmas.

[Photo from Yes! magazine.]

Ignorance is bliss

2006-12-23T09:07:00.000-08:00

I tried looking the outfit up in other magazines and online, but it really, truly is an actual orange fake leather harness with gold-plated buckles over a gauzy light-colored long dress which would have looked fine on its own for some sort of summery brunch with one's grandmother and not for the evening concert where she was appearing when she wore the harness over it.

So she really should have worn something else entirely. Poor girl. And she looks so happy, too.

{Photos from Yes! magazine.]

Organic

2006-12-22T09:11:00.000-08:00

It looks like some sort of giant shiny bronze fluted lichen grew on her chest overnight, and will soon spawn more growths that will creep upwards towards her face and eat that smug smile off her face that had sprung there after she slept with Andrew Wolfe.

[Photo from The Buzz magazine.]

Saved by the feet

2006-12-21T09:22:00.000-08:00

She is wearing this shapeless yellow sundress that is seemingly from the fifties over an animal-print blouse with poufy sleeves that is seemingly from the seventies and wearing a long string of large pearls around her neck that is seemingly from the eighties, perhaps hoping to look retro in an eclectic and lost kind of way (no wonder she does look lost).

The black leggings aren't helping, either.

Encircled, though, is her outfit's only good feature: her footwear. And when this photo was taken, the realization of all this must already be dawning on her.

[Photo from The Buzz magazine.]

Famous last words

2006-12-20T09:52:00.000-08:00

Angelica Panganiban on national television: Bili na po kayo ng kopya ng Maxim. Talagang mahihimatay kayo sa ka-seksihan ko dito. (Please buy a copy of Maxim. I'm sure you will faint when you see how I sexy I look there.)

No wonder she was so eager to show people her ka-seksihan. Because in the magazine she looks sexy and fabulous, like in these 2007 San Miguel Beer calendars that came out recently:

But the truth is that she really looks like this:

I should have known. No girl with as fat a face can have a body like the one in Maxim and those calendars. Really, those calendars should have been autographed NOT by Angelica Panganiban but by the Photoshop artist. (Man, is he/she awesome! Man, is he/she going to get rich!)

But "in fairness" to the poor mutated and manipulated subject, her breasts are quite large.

I don't get it

2006-12-19T11:30:00.000-08:00

And now we segue to that person that was mentioned at the ending of the previous post. He is supposed to be a gigolo, as many actresses have sworn to have been his girlfriend at one time or another and have complained of his unfaithfulness to them with other actresses who in turn have admitted to having been his girlfriends, and all the time he has been married -- and still is -- to one woman for about three centuries.

I would not have even mentioned him here if he looked like Either Pierce Brosnan or Blair Underwood or Marlon Brando before Marlon Brando turned old and pudgy and moved to Hawaii. But have a look:

Not only does he have a round moon face, a fat nose, thin old-granny-like lips, eyes that are almost disappearing behind the thick and fleshy folds of his upper and lower eyelids, and is wearing the collar of his sports shirt as if it were one of those starched trubinized bright white long sleeved shirts that everyone seemed to be wearing in the mid-eighties, he also has bangs. And said bangs look teased and hairsprayed. Give him some glittery bright blue eyeshadow and some rouge and lipstick and he could be the fat and desperate and off-key and aging version of one of the singers of Duran Duran. How was he able to be a gigolo with this look? Did those actresses merely had bad taste in men? Or did they have too much faith in themselves that they could teach him the proper way to wear his clothes and style his hair and also cure him of his chronic infidelity?

I suppose this photograph was taken for some sort of promotional purpose, as I cannot imagine why beauty queen Lara Quigaman, a beautiful British-educated woman with presumably good taste, would ever have herself photographed with Bong Revilla out of her own volition. If anything, she was probably thinking: "... ... ..."

I know. I can't understand it, either.

The plot thickens

2006-12-18T09:14:00.000-08:00

Now who can ever forget this outfit, and the famous line that went with it: "Huwag nila itong maliitin dahil hindi madali ang mag-Eskinol sa puwit gabi-gabi." ("They shouldn't belittle this because it's not easy to apply astringent on one's ass every night.")

This photo, taken at an awards night, and way before Rosanna Roces' life took a nosedive, makes me quite nostalgic of the time when she did not yet have a confusing feud with Vicky Belo, have not been Mon Tulfo's girlfriend, did not have a sex video, have not gained two hundred pounds, have not announced on The Buzz that she had been gotten pregnant by the director of photography of the movie Feng Shui and that she had miscarried and all this while she was still married to another man, and did not have a grandchild from a daughter who had been gotten pregnant at sixteen by the equally-underaged son of a senator who is also an actor and who is , strangely enough, a "happily married womanizer."

And we thought, gawking at Rosanna Roces' ass while she was presenting an acting award a few years ago, that it could not get any worse.

The covering

2006-12-17T10:01:00.000-08:00

There's absolutely nothing mystical about Mystica. Sure, her entire corporal identity has already been horribly altered -- hair colored, nails pasted over, skin bleached, pupils color-contact-lensed, armpits and pudenda waxed, and so on and so forth -- and we might wonder what she looked like before her transmogrification, but we can only assume that she looked even worse, and we don't want to waste time wondering about that, as we are already given enough fodder for thought with her constant demystification of herself.

She does, however, come across as being quite impoverished, as she seems to never have enough funds for any outerwear after having spent for the upkeep of said transmogrification and demystification. She always seems to be dressed in modified underwear, and they're not even Victoria's Secret. Take, for instance, this blue lace body suit with the opaque metallic silver covering the legs from the mid-thigh downwards. It looks rather of the cheap and itchy kind, and she would feel cold inside a mall or a cab. And she has a strange sense of modesty, too. I mean, if one has a choice of which body part to cover, i would imagine that one's last choice would be one's knees.

A remarkable generic flatness

2006-12-16T09:30:00.000-08:00

Great. Yet another generic-looking young actress wannabe with generic-looking any-occasion makeup (with which she can go malling and attend a children's party and guest at The Buzz with no need to darken the eyeshahow), generic-looking stiff, straightened, colored, layered hairstyle (which she shares with about 30 million other Filipinas), a generic-looking pose (the same awkward, unbecoming pose that every contestant of Little Miss Philippines used, combined with a fake smile) and even the generic pink satin dress which, from the looks of it, is just one large swath of cloth folded in a bias and swathed over her front and pinned to her waist by a generic dressmaker with a generic sense of style, to create a generic-looking outfit that every generic low-imagination bridesmaid and generic low-budget debutante had been wearing since 1997.

Redemption

2006-12-15T11:00:00.000-08:00

Oh, Ms. Vilma Santos. It's just such a relief that she was able to redeem herself by being a surprisingly capable and efficient Mayor of Lipa City and has, since the turn of the century, stuck to classic pant suits in mild and neutral colors.

Because there is no excuse -- NOT being beautiful, NOT being the Star for All Seasons, NOT being a multi-awarded actress, NOT having been married to yummy Edu Manzano, NOT even being in the eighties, the most horrific decade, fashion-wise -- for her dressing up like this:

It looks like a piece of orange tulle that was supposed to decorate the ceiling for the supposedly fabulous occasion had fallen on her head. Also, her earrings and her choker do not match, and the choker looks like something my Grandmother used to decorate one of her life-sized saint statues (I think it was Santa Rita, the patron saint of lost causes). The dress itself looks limp and saggy and looks like something a statue of a saint would be draped in, if it weren't so orange, and if it didn't have shoulder pads. But that's not the worst part.

The worst part is that she is wearing orange gloves.

Revived!

2006-12-10T19:45:00.000-08:00

Since the Laitera has been quiet for seven months and the Laitera doesn't want people to think that she has gone the way of starlets who have been gotten pregnant by either old politicos or some other middle-aged wig-wearing forgotten actors or yet one of those never-heard young actor-wannabes, and thus she has opted to just sit it out in an obsure provincial town without internet connectivity and spend her days reading trashy celebrity magazines and watching "The Buzz" with herr bloated feet up on a bamboo chair while waiting for the baby to come out and then be invited by Joebert Sucaldito to an interview where she can air out the baby's father's dirty laundry out on radio, the Laitera has decided to create this post to say that she has not been gotten pregnant and that she is still baby-less and thin and bitchy and fabulous as ever!

Well, truth is, contrary to what her detractors keep saying, the Laitera has got a life. But since she has also spent part of this life gathering all the celebrity trash magazines she could get her perfectly manicured hands on, she would like to declare this blog revived as of December 15.

Let the panlalait begin again!

Honestly, I don't quite know what to name this

2006-04-19T04:14:00.000-07:00

There is a very thin line between sexy photos and lewd photos, the main thing being that sexy photos are quite tasteful, teasing yet leaving things to the imagination, whereas lewd photos assault the imagination pretty much like a horrifying nightmare does.

This photo does leave Aubrey Miles' nipples and labias -- and, well, toes -- to the imagination, but that metal thing she is holding on to that we cannot quite see and thus have to imagine the nature of is rather horrifying. What's it for? Is it like a handle to open up something? Is it for tying a rope to and dragging her around?

Stop. I'm not even going there. I need my sleep. I'm a busy girl.

The difference

2006-04-17T21:55:00.000-07:00

You know, the whole point about getting breast implants (aside from them making you look a lot better) is that it means you can afford to pay for them. (Case in point, Kris Aquino. She's tactless and wants to be a Senator, but we at Laitera credit her for her expensive taste in fashion and cosmetic surgery.) And the effect is really fantastic. They look natural, they move naturally, and they can make a girl's life really fabulous in this increasingly physical and superficial world. (it snagged her a Joey Marquez, yes, but it also snagged her a James Yap.)

This, of course, excludes all those cheap implants done in second-rate hospitals by practitioners who have fake medical diplomas hung up on their walls, or in cosmetic parlors by fat and aging women with overbleached skin and overyded hair and eyebrows tatooed with greenish ink. Because really, those kinds are everywhere, and a girl can get a cup D for just Php 5,000 per pair, the only catch being that in environments that are a bit cooler (i.e., in an airconditioned room, or in Tagaytay), these boobs harden.

The former is something to be proud of. A girl has a right to flaunt them. Like Kris Aquino, ergo her lingerie ads. But in the case of Maui Taylor...

... you be the judge.

Self-preservation?

2006-04-05T06:48:00.000-07:00

I can't really pinpoint exactly when some genius had decreed that this pose was sexy. From then on, it seemed like every female celebrity had her photo taken where she sits on her haunches in a skimpy outfit (better if the breasts are almost spilling out and the legs are exposed) and stares straight into the camera and tries to look either sexy or happy, never mind that the pose actually makes her look like she's suffering from either diarrhea or constipation. And they don't seem to get that the pose is not flattering at all. Aside from squeezing the thighs till they look humongous, it also foreshortens the legs, accentuates the bumps of the knees, bunches up the abdomen, and makes the poser look like some kind of midget or dwarf.

Still, sexy stars would actually DIE if they didn't have at least one photo of themselves looking like this. Rufa Mae Quinto, being the quintessential "sexy star," of course needs a photo of herself in this generic pose.

Retard

2006-03-30T18:14:00.000-08:00

Because her baduy image has gotten so dreadfully laos -- after the young people realized rather belatedly that she has absolutely no talent and that she's ugly and that there is absolutely no point in dressing up like toys and sugary food -- Jolina Magdangal has decided that the next hip way to go is to become seven years old.

Air and bubbles

2006-03-30T06:53:00.000-08:00

It's confirmed. Regine Velasquez has a hormonal imbalance that keeps her perpetually PMS-ed. As in bloated, grumpy, acting like she's seventeen, and with a constant nagging desire to wear bad-fitting, lopsided, filmy, ruffly, pointless fashion. Even her navel is actually trying to disappear from embarrasment into that flabby stomach.

Hopeless

2006-03-28T17:35:00.000-08:00

If Aiza Seguerra finally decided she didn't want to be a lesbian anymore and then got married to Oscar the Grouch, this creature would be their issue.

Take note. This photo was apparently taken in a studio, and he apparently took great pains in styling his hair and practicing his "mildly seductive subtle half-smile." Gawd. Why did he even bother?

Why do I even bother?

Not you too, Korina

2006-03-27T07:56:00.000-08:00

The first thing to understand when working in front of a camera is that it always makes you look about ten pounds fatter.

The second thing to understand when working in front of the camera is that when you are already chubby off-camera, plus the ten pounds added to you on-camera, wearing a rumpled looking light-colored blouse with a button on the verge of popping and a strange neckline that looks like craft paper shaped to go over a grade-schooler's art project and accentuated by a limp-looking flower-feather-thing over one armpit is simply a mortal sin.

Oh so you think you're a queen-something

2006-03-27T06:55:00.000-08:00

I know I should be more supportive of Pops, as she, after all, is the jilted wife who, when she began having romantic affairs with younger men post-jilting and had repackaged herself into a hot performer in midriff tops and bell-bottoms and psychedelic color and an embarassingly large tonnage of beads and glitter, had been condemned to death -- mostly by grandmothers and spinsters -- as if she didn't deserve some fun of her own.

She does, of course. No doubt about that. She's our Demi Moore, and we don't question Demi Moore.

But since we at Laitera have no soul, I am going to bash her anyway. The jacket is Raymond Lauchengco circa 1987. The strange net-like non-blouse is Pilita Corrales' hair protector for when she sleeps. The knitted head-thing is Jolina Magdangal back when people hadn't yet realized that she has no talent. The entire effect is not Concert Queen; it's Japayuki. Take off the black bra underneath Pilita Corrales' hairnet and it's Abante tabloid front cover. Take off the black bra and the jacket and it's Pegasus Pinup Girl.

And the hair! The hair is Kris Aquino about four years ago, dry and damaged from too much rebonding in Hong Kong when Ricky Reyes still hadn't gotten his clutches on the technology and made it available to a million desperate women who are now suffering from massive hair loss, which makes me wonder if Ricky Reyes does have the real rebonding technology right because Kris Aquino's hair, rebonded over and over in Hong Kong, is still intact. Or so I think.

Anyway. Pops. I don't care if you used to go out with Troy Montero. I don't care if you've shagged Brad Turvey. Please stop trying too hard to be young and hip because you're not anymore.

Candidate # 2,543

2006-03-27T06:50:00.000-08:00

"I look so sexy. Do you like my breasts? They are so special. They are unique! They are the only breasts in the world that are capable of falling in love. In fact, they have fallen so madly and deeply in love with my collarbones that they are gradually creeping up over my chest to finally unite with the beloved collarbones forever in married bliss somewhere near my throat. I am so proud. I am so happy. I am filled with so much love. And someday, when my collarbones and my breasts, in their married ecstacy, end up throttling me to death, it will be all worth it and I will die happy. I pray for world peace. I Thank you."

Vamos a comer

2006-03-27T02:08:00.000-08:00

Strange how in Philippine showbiz where people with bad breast implants run about half-naked, someone as ravishing and natural as Iza Calzado felt at the last minute before leaving her house for the Manila Filmfest Awards that she was too exposed. Why did she have to throw this black mosquito net over a perfectly good gown? I'm sure she has regretted the decision, as she looks a bit ashamed in this photo.

Or is she ashamed because she is standing next to Wendell Ramos, who is dressed in a tablecloth?

A portent of things to come

2006-03-26T23:05:00.000-08:00

There's something about this photo that really makes my heart ache with such deep and profound sharpness. It's not the fact that Kris Aquino appears to be wearing nothing but underwear again -- never mind that there's two layers of it -- and that the male model looks like he has a tummyache from diarrhea because he ate too much of the grilled squid that his gay admirer brought from the province, and that he is now wondering whether he has been poisoned or bewitched to love the gay guy and bring him back to his own country and marry him in a same-sex wedding. It's not the fact that she seems to feel no connection at all with the male model. It's not the fact that they both seem to feel cold with all that wind blowing over their naked / almost-naked bodies in the cold, unforgiving light that, if you ask me, seems hardly conducive to the act that their pose seems to be hinting is going to happen shortly. It's not the fact that Kris looks rather uncomfortable in her pose and is in danger of getting a stiff neck. It's not even the fact that she looks either bored or tired.

Maybe it's the fact that Kris once declared on The Buzz that she wants to be a Senator.

Don't hold your breaths for this one

2006-03-26T20:26:00.000-08:00

The ten key qualities to being a sultry singer:

1. You should either dye your hair a dark blonde or get highlights. Your hair should be either long and straight or long and wavy or short and wavy, but never short and straight. Whatever. The secret is in the hair color. It should not be your real hair color. (Note that Jennifer Lopez wasn't a sultry singer until she got highlights.)
2. You should show a whole lot of leg.
3. You should show a whole lot of shoulders. Better if you can pretend that a teensy weensy strap has fallen off a shoulder and then pretend that you didn't know it.
4. You should have a french manicure.
5. You should have a cleavage.
6. You should be able to contort yourself into ridiculous poses that forbid you to breatahe during photo ops and make it look as if you were feeling very very comfortable, as comfortable as if you were all sprawled over a soft, pillow-covered bed after breakfast on a lazy Sunday morning while dressed in your favorite ratty pajamas and wearing no makeup and with no one else to see you except your cat.
7. You should be either unattached, or be in a long-term relationship but be able to declare openly that in that long-term relationship you call the shots and you have absolutely no plans to ever have children from this long-term relationship or any other long-term relationships that could come next. You could also be divorced and a mother, which will place you above all the other sultry singers because you have won the battle over stretch marks, sagging breasts, untoned skin, and motherly bearing.
8. You should spend your weekends in Boracay.
9. You should wear a whole lot of glittery waist chains.
10. And oh, yes, you should let out more breathing than voice.

Diyos ko day, Juday

2006-03-26T19:07:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's pre-wedding jitters. Maybe she's really, truly blind because she's in love. Maybe it's what Ryan Agoncillo wanted. I simply refuse to believe that Judy Ann Santos was in her right mind when she stuck this royal blue nurse-cap on her head. Maybe it was her stylist's idea, in which case the stylist should be fired. Imagine ruining a perfectly good pictorial with that cap. And the royal blue with fuchsia is just so Cyndi-Lauper-slash-Duran-Duran-slash-That's-Entertainment. But on second thought, if the cap were the same color as the dress, would it look any better?

Hmmm.

No.

This reminds me of Sharon Cuneta and The Sharon Cuneta Show during its Dobie Arana days, when Sharon would be made to wear a perfectly good suit which would be ruined by something really off, like a green track stripe running up the side of the pants, or a vile-looking bunch of tassels hanging off the right breast of an otherwise perfectly acceptable blouse. It's like there was an irresistible urge to uglify what could have been rather nice. Which made me wonder whether Dobie Arana really liked Sharon or was secretly envious of her so she simply had to keep ruining the outfits and justify it as fashion while remaining on the Megastar's payroll. Which further made me wonder whether the Megastar was blind not to see that she was being uglified.

I see history repeating itself in this photo.

Holy

2006-03-26T00:58:00.000-08:00

It looks like she woke up in the morning suffering from a combination of a hangover and amnesia and then went out of the house wearing her nightie and then somehow found herself inside Quiapo Church. In the divine presence of the beggars and the geriatric gropers and the vendors of rosary beads, heavy-duty cleaning sponges, and "Pamparegla," she suddenly realized she was, horror of horrors, indecent. In public! So she ran to the nearest saint and stole its dainty and see-through lace veil -- donated by some rich matron who is storming the dieties with material gifts trying to negotiate with them over the soul of her husband who is bedding some starlet -- and wrapped it around her waist.

I'm completely at a loss, however, for the short, misplaced wrap that looks like scrap material. Maybe that's the first thing she stole before the lace veil but decided she didn't want to be too covered up and then draped it over her elbows intead and proceeded to rob the poor lace-veiled saint.

But with hangover-ed amnesiacs, who knows? And what do I know anyway? If anything, this could be just bad fashion design from yet another uninspired gay guy who also owns a beauty parlor called "Eau de Toilette" or "Showers by (name of gay guy)" and hankers, all too predictably, after Piolo Pascual.

Classic

2006-03-25T23:35:00.000-08:00

Of course it's absolutely impossible to make lait to Melanie Marquez except in retrospect, when the tides of fashion had already taken a turn towards the next more tasteful level, and previous photos of her wearing fashion from the eighties are now nothing but a bad reminder of how stupid humanity had been to think that shoulder pads were actually cool and the long bulbous blouse with a very wide elastic garter attached to its hem pretending to be some sort of skirt was actually sexy.

That said, we would like to reiterate that we simply loooove Melanie because she is so classically beautiful and ageless and adorable and her brother is not a book and therefore should not be judged.

Bloodline

2006-03-25T23:06:00.000-08:00

Remember when Joey Albert used to guest in variety shows in the mid-nineties when she was trying to stage a comeback (which totally bombed, anyway) and all she could ever wear were dark-colored cocktail dresses with shoulder pads, elbow-lenth sleeves, and with unforgiveably stiff flaring skirts with pointed hems that ended around her knees and a stuck out a foot from her body, and anybody who had to stand anywhere near her had to be almost an arm's length away because they all had to abide by the boundaries of her skirt, which, if not respected, will, with its stiff and starched hem, puncture the knees of the disrespectful albeit unfortunate person tasked to stand near her?

Well, this dress is its daughter.

Denial king

2006-03-25T23:00:00.000-08:00

"People, I am telling you. I am NOT exhausted. I am NOT sweating profusely from wearing this fake leather jacket that makes me look like one of those callboys in Manila By Night and I am sure you all feel like I copied Avril Lavigne's way of wearing ties and of course I didn't. My beautiful wife Michelle van Eimeren just burned all my collared shirts this morning in a vain attempt to make me admit that I have had a series of affairs, which I DIDN'T, so I figured, why not wear this unwashed puke-colored t-shirt that I found under the couch on which I have been sleeping for months because Michelle won't let me in the bedroom and then use a tie with it, and then maybe I'd look a little bit more decent. And I simply had to wear these fiercely orange sunglasses because I don't have any rose-colored glasses, and at this point in my career and in my life I need rose-colored glasses to delude myself into thinking I still have a marriage but since I don't have rose-colored glasses these orange ones will do, and come to think of it, these orange ones would do even better than rose-colored ones because at least there is the possibility that I could go blind because of the fierce orange glare I have to stare through and then that'll be my punishment and everything will be all over because then I won't be able to see this horrible, horrible world.

"God, I'm exhausted. It's too hot in here."

The fish in the skillet

2006-03-25T21:44:00.000-08:00

I don't care if she is young and nice-looking and that everybody seems to love her and that to most people's eyes she is an angel for having a real talent for mimicking Celine Dion's voice which strangely gives her the right to be a higher-level Jolina Magdangal and a thinner and non-butterfly-winged Regine Velasquez (who is, incidentally, generally considered of lower quality for trying to imitate Mariah Carey rather than some higher-pedigreed singer) and that wholesome people admire her for not having revealed her belly button on national television just yet.

But this dress makes her look like a strange tattered fish. The shoes look like the tail of a fish, and it doesn't help that the dress seems to have a short cape-like thing draped over her left shoulder, which makes her look like, well, a caped tattered fish. Hardly something befitting a Celine Dion wannabe. But at least she's not mimicking Celine Dion fashion-wise in this outfit. What a relief.

Everybody please rise

2006-03-25T19:20:00.000-08:00

I admit, it's hard to make lait to Assunta de Rossi for the simple reason that we generally like her for her awesome natural beauty, her awesome natural knack for looking good in anything she wears, and her awesome natural lack of breeding.

But just because of she has that awesome naturalness at achieving whatever goal she puts her pretty little head into, including snagging the short and portly and uber-rich Jules Ledesma, doesn't mean she could get away with everything.

After all, one should not decorate a national flag with black lace and then actually wear it to an event. Bad enough that we don't even know what country the flag stands for, in which case we just assume it's a flag decorated with black lace and reworked as a shapeless dress, which is even worse. Better if it had been the Philippine flag, sequinned and beaded and stuck to death with feathers, and then Assunta could have looked more definitive, like Bjork by way of Larry Flynt trying to be Tessa Prieto-Valdez

Ibitin daw siya

2006-03-24T05:08:00.000-08:00

Angelica Jones, don't compete with the Christmas tree. You'll never win.

Look Ma, no tail!

2006-03-24T05:05:00.000-08:00

If you want to be taken seriously as a sexy starlet, hija, I think the first thing that you should do is to give up wearing schoomarm shoes. This is the most disgusting pair of shoes I've ever seen since the Mary Poppins movie. (Unless that's your point, but somehow I get that it isn't.)

However you should fear for your life because your hideously uneven skin tone might drive the jeepney driver to drive over you, his possible arousal at seeing your exposed bush notwithstanding.

Splat!

2006-03-23T05:01:00.000-08:00

It looks like Regine was trampled and pushed over a shoreline cliff by a mob that was desperate for her autograph and then she fell right into a devastating oil spill. Granny Auring, however, will never regret that she ever lent Regine her favourite long dress with 3/4 sleeves and a ruffled neckline. Although it has shrunk a bit, it's amazing that this dress retained its original color. The fabric is definitely water-proof & oil-resistant.

While Regine's hair is soaked in crude oil, Granny's dress is definitely the winner. It survived the Japanese war, the Ormoc landslide, the Pinatubo eruption, this particular celebrity oil spill, and it will survive the next hundred years. Long live the dress!

Now Regine, get yourself peeled off that rockface before you start to grow into it and never have a future of having long and dyed hair and wear gowns with plummeting necklines and ruffled blouses revealing your untoned abs in an effort to look like Mariah Carey, and perform in your concerts barefoot and pretend to be a butterfly.

Oh. I forgot. You're already doing all that now. Looks like you have gotten yourself peeled off that rockface after all.

Running... where?

2006-03-22T04:53:00.000-08:00

Eternally stuck in the eighties, this Running Priest probably thinks, among other things, that he is the soul reincarnate of Richard Simmonds who ruled the fitness videos of the 80's.

Frankly, his shorts are too short for a priest. The sleeveless tank-top belongs to Father Grajeda -- and he wants it back! (It holds much sentimental value for Fr. Georgie because that's what he wore during his seminarian days at the Holy Rosary Minor Seminary.) Furthermore, the state of his baseball cap is a disgrace to athletes and baseball-cap-wearing-non-athletes everywhere. The visor is flipped upward -- a proof of bad fitting and insufficient lining.

Maybe the real reason he is running is that he is trying to get away from a looming excommunication because of his atrocious fashion crimes (those shorts are definitely sacrilegious). But then again, if he hadn't begun running in the first place, he wouldn't be wearing this outfit. Which is which? I don't know anymore. I'm so confused. I now have a headache. See? Being a Running Priest doesn't solve problems at all. It only creates more, ah, intellectual suffering.