Netnet Camomot RAINY days and Mondays don’t let me down anymore, thanks to the Senate hearing last Monday. I’d rather have a rainy Monday than that hearing. Listening to all that drama days before Christmas is like playing a hard level in Candy Crush Soda Saga—you keep on going and going until you can level up to the next, wasting many precious hours, ignoring chirping birds and the tuko, and even forgetting to stare at the trees outside the window. It’s all about eating chocolates, saving bears, and freeing bears now. Buti pa ang teleserye—at least you know it’s scripted. But a Senate hearing, you have to decipher first who’s writing the script there, and who’s the “backer” behind each character’s back. With one saying they met in Baguio in November 2015, and the other insisting it was in November 2014, you’re tempted to sit between them while eating popcorn and downing all that with diet soda. Selective amnesia is nice if you’re trying to forget a sad event in your life. But once you’re the star in a Senate hearing, better remember all details of that sad event otherwise the senators, whose collective brain is generally hopefully brilliant, would be confused. Boxing fans are already encouraging Sen. Manny Pacquiao to punch some faces already, believing that’s the best way to make these witnesses tell the truth and nothing but the truth. Drama mixed with action must be the best movie of all time. With the Metro Manila Film Festival executive committee preferring mostly indie films for this year’s official line-up, the likes of Vic Sotto’s “Enteng Kabisote 10” and Vice Ganda’s “The Super Parental Guardians” have to be content with breaking box-office records without the chance of winning any film fest award. At the end of “Parental,” there was Arci (Vice) telling Megan (Awra Briguela) and Ernie (Onyok Pineda) that they must be the jinx in the movie, for being excluded from the MMFF. “Parental” is the kind of movie where you wait to laugh like a hyena. Yeah, I know, hyenas don’t laugh, but let’s not waste time going there. Anyway, “Parental” doesn’t disappoint. You wait and wait and wait, until—voila!—there’s that scene where your intestines have to be embraced, to keep them from bursting out of your tummy. We were still laughing while having midnight snacks at a fast food outlet, and even later on our way home. A movie is best watched inside a cinema while you’re grasping a huge bag of popcorn and downing all that with diet soda. Yes, exactly like watching a Senate hearing. There’s a community effort there, of helping each other laugh at the right moment, cry at the right moment, and sleep at the right moment when the script goes blah. If you’re going through an emotion not appropriate for a certain moment—laughing when you should be crying and vice versa—you’re probably hopelessly confused, like the star witnesses at a Senate hearing. Christmas can be depressing, that’s why the need for nice movies to be shown, in order for these depressed people to have something to look forward to. December and January are filled with these movies. Aside from “Parental,” there’s “Moana” for this week. Like any other Disney movie, “Moana” also inspires, complete with the cutest pig and the, hmmm, dumbest chicken as Moana’s pets. Any movie with a cute pig already has me hooked, add a little girl with goo-goo eyes to that, and I morph into an instant fan. Moana’s songs are potential Oscar winners, with “How Far I’ll Go” as the LSS (last song syndrome) proving that, yes, a song can indeed go so far. 2016 didn’t happen overnight. Most of us went through the eye of a needle, and now, after almost 12 months, here we are watching “Moana,” inspired by the thought, “See the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me/And no one knows, how far it goes/If the wind in my sail on the sea stays behind me/One day I’ll know, if I go there’s just no telling how far I’ll go.” Another movie with cute pigs is “Sing,” which will be released next month, with at least two singing pigs. But before we can say goodbye to 2016, there’s “Office Christmas Party” which may help you recall the best office Christmas party you’ve ever had or warn you against having too much tequila. It’s the movie “The Hangover” all over again but with a Santa. You’re probably making lists now—the Christmas list, New Year’s resolutions, the menus for the Noche Buena and Media Noche which will have the usual lechon and ham. But a younger sis insists her chef-friend’s chicken galantine is the yummiest of all, thus, there’s one more addition to your weight-gain goals. I wonder if any Pinoy still looks forward to the next Senate hearing. Witnesses have been saying the same thing, and only Senator Leila de Lima and her emotional outbursts are injecting much-needed perks into it. But there are surprises outside of those hearings, such as Vice President Leni Robredo being fired from her housing chair role, although her team says she resigned, a resignation that President Rody Duterte accepted with a “heavy heart.” Christmas is the time to express our love to loved ones, but not the same way we express that love on Valentine’s Day. Still, a heavy heart is not allowed in a season of love and joy and peace in a perfect world. In this imperfect world, however, watching a Senate hearing on the first working day of the week doesn’t remind us of love, despite the presence of De Lima and her ex-boyfriend Ronnie Dayan. It simply reminds us that life happens, with or without these characters in the Senate.