In 1997 The Philippine Collegian released a lampoon tabloid issue which contains some of the funniest bits of lampooning I have ever read. It was downhill from there, but at that point I became greatly appreciative of comedic writing. I wanted to get into the paper but succumbed to abject laziness and apathy towards the “socially relevant” issues. One of the characters in the lampoon issue was called Eclair Pains, who is a spoof of Clair Danes. That was the time of her much publicized trip to Manila and her comments about cockroaches everywhere. The two other characters were Fax Modem and Data Scanner (Fox Mulder and Dana Scully). So 90’s.
I’ve recently remembered Eclair Pains because lately I have been doing nothing other than coming to work, chemoing patients, then running back to the dorm to sleep. Then I watched the first episode of Homeland featuring Eclair Pains at 11pm. Bad idea, because I could never stop watching the blasted thing since then.

Homeland is about a CIA agent, Eclair Pains, with a “mood disorder” or “bipolar disorder”. At times she borders on being a psychotic bitch. And since she’s a psychotic bitch (which Eclair Pains plays fantastically), do we believe her when she claims that a marine who’s been kidnapped by Al Quaeda for 8 years is not a hero but a sleeper agent? Do we? Specially when they fuck in the car? In one episode I am convinced that he’s not really a sleeper agent but is indeed a hero/survivor, but by the next one I am sure that he intends to blow up the White House. Good job, Eclair Pains.

We first saw Eclair Pains back in 1996 when we watched “Romeo and Juliet” in Greenbelt 1. I was with Ruth Marx, Namtab Pots, Toms, and Ysa, and we were trying to unwind after a series of horrible, abusive events back in our school. I slept through most of “Romeo and Juliet”. We then ate lunch in… Triple V. There were no free tables, so we went to a table with a table top sign that said “Reserved”. Ysa got the sign… and placed it in his bag. “I collect these things,” he said.

In 1997 the song Mmmbop was crazy popular in radio. When I first heard it I thought that the singer was a girl. I then saw the music video and said, “Ang lead singer pala ng Hanson ay si… Eclair Pains!” I found out months later that the lead singer is not only not Eclair Pains, but is a dude. They really did look alike.

Mmmmbop dup bi dop

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