How are Cedric Lee and Deniece Cornejo spending Valentines Day?

Poetic justice or just a coincidence? Funny how on this year’s much-anticipated Day of Hearts, ABS-CBN News releases sensational footage of alleged Chinese mobster Cedric Lee and extortion suspect Deniece Cornejo seemingly “passionately” kissing “inside the elevator of her condo unit, just after the mauling of actor and TV host Vhong Navarro.”

Talk about great timing. This is that day of the year when people wax poetry and philosophical discourse on the many nuances of romantic love. And considering that traditional love as a topic is falling by the wayside as pressures to be, errm, “diverse” in our perspectives is pushing the boundaries way out to the outer rim where luvvv’s deviant nature lives.

So, yeah, locking lips after another day at the office mauling the local TV show host. Lucky Cedric Lee, indeed. Perhaps not so lucky for Deniece. “Maybe it’s just me, but it looks like the girl didn’t even want to be kissed,” according to Cornejo’s mouthpiece Raymond Fortun who beseeches us to be a bit more precise in the definitions of “passionately” that we apply [Erratum: Fortun is actually Lee’s attorney].

“I would object to the use of the word ‘passionately’ then I would pull out the definition from the dictionary. Then I would pull my wife and kiss her in a passionate manner to prove my point. I expect to be sustained by the judge,” he said.

Well, very imaginative for an attorney but, perhaps, not imaginative enough.

Couples getting all hot following an act of violence may be deviant, but not entirely implausible. In Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Natural Born Killers (directed by Oliver Stone), the idea of violence-induced libido is explored in graphic detail as this Wikipedia account of its opening scene reveals…

Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) and his wife Mallory (Juliette Lewis) stop at a roadside café in the New Mexico desert. A group of rednecks (Richard Lineback, Kirk Baltz, and an uncredited James Gammon) arrive and one begins sexually harassing Mallory. She briefly encourages him before beating him to a pulp. Mickey and Mallory then murder all but one of the diner’s patrons, culminating in a morbid game of Eeny, meeny, miny, moe to decide who lives and who dies. After executing the waitress Mabel (O-Lan Jones), the couple ensures that the only survivor remembers their names (which is their modus operandi) before they embrace and declare their undying love.

A separate ABS-CBN News report includes an observation that Cornejo was “smiling” as she was being kissed by Lee. So who do we believe, Fortun or ABS-CBN?

Too bad for Deniece though, as her Valentines Day may not be as happy as she would have liked it to be seeing that the Department of Justice reportedly denied her request to postpone a hearing on her case scheduled for today. The hearing covers preliminary investigation surrounding “the serious illegal detention, serious physical injury, grave threats, grave coercion, illegal arrest and blackmail case against Cornejo, Cedric Lee, his sister Bernice, Ferdinand Guerrero and Zimmer Rance.”

Not to worry. As the famous saying goes: All the world loves a lover. Perhaps someday, a clever writer will turn all this into a hit romantic comedy movie. Everyone will be laughing all the way to the bank. Well, maybe not everyone.

[Image derived from a photo originally published by ABS-CBN News.]