What a Dish!
What’s my favorite Filipino dish? Ah but there are so many to choose from! There’s dinuguan, congealed and yummy, slathered on puffy white puto. There’s a chorus line of street food, each with their own tasty charm and unique appeal: balut, fishball, isaw, betamax, tokneneng and kwek-kwek, all slathered in vinegar or that sweet brown sauce. (Drool.) There’s kare-kare, when done wrong, a disgusting blend of meat and peanut butter, but when done right, it’s so very very right. Not to mention sinigang, rellenong bangus, lechon…how can you make me choose??
But wait, do you mean Filipino dish as in food? Cause I think Vhong Navarro is pretty yummy. No really. I’m a huge fan. I used to have pictures of him tacked up on my cubicle wall back in my old office. One time some guys passed by and asked why the hell I had pictures of Vhong on my wall. Baduy daw. I asked them if they had ever seen Gagamboy. Nope, they hadn’t. Had they seen any of his films? Nope. Then what right did they have to judge, dammit, and I shooed them away.
Office cubicle wall plastered with pictures of Vhong. Circa 2004
I happen to think Gagamboy is an excellent movie, the one that turned me onto Vhong. Get a DVD and see it if you haven’t! He’s one of the greatest comedic talents of this generation. His sense of comic timing is pitch perfect. His physical comedy rivals that of silent movie great Buster Keaton; I think his being a dancer (formerly of the Streetboys) has a lot to do with it.
He may not be matinee-idol handsome, but it works for him. For instance, I can’t tell if I think Epi Quizon is truly funny or if I think he’s funny cause I have the hots for him (he’s another great comedic talent though; get a DVD of Radyo and see it if you haven’t!). With Vhong it’s the other way around: I have the hots for him because he’s just so damned funny. Of course, he’s not always perfect; there are hits and misses. In D’Anothers, for instance, there are plenty of misses; but it’s worth the price of admission just to see this single scene between Vhong and Toni Gonzaga involving hotdogs and pandesal (a team-up that seriously would have changed the world had it not been aborted. Damn you, Sam Milby!)
It was with great anguish that I missed Agent X44 because nobody wanted to see it with me, and I’m not hardcore enough to watch a movie by myself, even if it stars Vhong. I only found out later that my friend Mich is a closet Vhong fan, and she didn’t get to see X44 for the same reason. We could have watched together!!! But she got to work with him on some TV show, lucky schmuck. Oh Mich, how I envy your proximity to Vhong!
At the very least, I got to meet him twice; first at the premiere of Gagamboy, after the movie finished, where I shook his hand and looked at him with shining eyes, a brand-spankin’ new convert. The second was at an FHM party, where three different people were calling me to tell me he was there, and one of them dragged me backstage. I got to have my picture taken with him, and tacked it up on my cubicle wall the very next day.
I think his brand of comedy works so well because It’s so uniquely Pinoy; it’s a little bit baduy, a little bit brilliant, a little bit of what-the-hell-is-going-on. Like using a piece of bread to tenderly wipe ketchup off Toni’s face…and then eating the bread after. Yum. And that, my friends, is why Vhong Navarro is my favorite Filipino dish. Bow.