Anne Curtis is back in UNO Magazine this November 2011

THIRD TIME’S A CHARM

You can never, never have enough of Anne Curtis.

And as we celebrate UNO’s 8th anniversary, we thought it would be perfect to have one of best-selling cover girls shot by lensman extraordinaire Xander Angeles (whose cover and pictorial prove that Anne can be smokin’ without having to light up a cigarette).

So as part of my personal thank you to Anne for gracing our cover, my wife and I contributed about two hundred bucks to Anne’s paycheck by watching Star Cinema’s No Other Woman, which is by far the highest grossing local movie of the year (Incidentally, they shot the closing scene of the movie in this really great weekend market called Mercato Centrale.

Judging the copious amount of tears I, este, my wife shed during the movie, I’d say Anne delivered quite a stellar performance while sharing screen time with my cousin, Derek Ramsay.

Ok, ok. My reel life cousin Derek Ramsay.

Allow me to explain. Aside from editing this fine men’s magazine of purty pictures and high-fallutin’ words, another one of my jobs that help subsidize my credit card loans is that of a – cough, cough – actor.

For all those who had the first signs of pubic hair emerge in the late eighties, you may remember me as a chubby, be-pimpled and curly-haired adolescent hawking a carbonated orange softdrink in a series of commercials that ran from 1988 to 1991.

But ever since that initial surge in caffeine and sugar-fueled popularity, I have been clawing my way back into limelight. Unfortunately, my attempts at a showbiz comeback has probably been less successful than that of Jojo Alejar’s

Nonetheless, I have had a couple of flashlight moments in today’s showbiz scene.  After twenty or so years in the media business, I have all but four movies to my credit. I played Sam Milby’s cousin in Star Cinema’s And I Love You So, Cherie Gil’s lawyer in Working Girls 2010, and guest roles in indie films Senior Year by Jerrold Tarog and Kaye for Komiks by Arnold Arre. Then I also played a recurring role as Derek Ramsay’s cousin on ABS-CBN’s Habang May Buhay and Gretchen Barretto’s lawyer on ABS-CBN’s Magkaribal  (Can you spot the trend? I played both Sam and Derek’s first cousins. Therefore, I am related to greatness).

In my desperation to reclaim the spotlight, I even created, executive produced and appeared in my own late night show (no, it is not Jojo A All the Way), it was the critically-acclaimed (my mom was very critical of it) cult hit (the cult members are now in hiding) Studio 23’s The Men’s Room with UNO contributor and stand-up comic Tim Tayag.

But alas, even me appearing half-naked on late night television did to upgrade my popularity to the highly carbonated levels that I enjoyed in my youth.

Nowadays I have to show interested parties within a ten feet radius my pocket album filled with newspaper clippings and 80s photos to remind them of my royal status. However, there are a few out there who still appreciate my thespian efforts.

Why, just recently, I was buying a cup of coffee in one of the ubiquitous café that line Tomas Morato when a giddy young man in his early twenties tapped me on the shoulder and asked if he could take a picture with me.

After five minutes of fixing my hair and applying foundation, I gladly obliged. When our thirty-minute photo session ended (I insisted he take our picture from several hundred angles), I thanked the young man for the opportunity.

“Remember to tag me!” I said to him as he waved goodbye.

The young man waved back. “Thanks again, Mayor Bistek!”

-RJ Ledesma
Editor-in-Chief

[Shameless plugging ends here.]

directed and cut by Jason Tan
produced by Dix Buhay
music by Malek Lopez