Goodbye, YES! ...Hello, PEP.ph

It’s been a good run. All of 18 years, plus one month.

- Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon

With this May 2018 issue, we would’ve put out a total of 235 issues of YES! That comes up to 6,606 days, 944 weeks, and 217 months of blood, sweat, and tears, with lots of laughter in between.

I recall the beginning. It was the year 2000, and I was knocking on doors of producers and managers that knew me. Mainly, I was trying to get these powerful people to allow their stars to appear in the new magazine we were calling YES!, Your Entertainment Source. I came bearing no proof that YES! would be good; we were Summit Media’s first entertainment title, after all. I just kept repeating what I knew this magazine would do: it would respect showbiz; it would get facts and quotes right, be fair and inclusive, hire photographers and writers that are pros; and it would get printed on album-grade, glossy paper, unheard of in showbiz at the time.

I still don’t know how much of my pitch actually worked. But I’m certain this one did: Douglas Quijano had my back. The fellow — who came in looking like a hippie with Afro and bling and left looking like a doting lolo, both of which he was—was a talent manager publicist-producer I met in my Celebrity magazine days. For some reason, we liked each other very much. I thought there was, even in the thick of his bawdy tales and insider gossip, something authentic about the man.

So when YES! was going to happen, I got in touch. He opened those doors. I actually got a foot in Mother Lily’s home and was even offered a soft drink. You must understand, Lily Yu Monteverde was then an eccentric who disdained reporters and was afraid of them. But, she was the premier movie producer in the country at the time, bar none, and I had to get myself in her home. And because I was with Tito Dougs, whom she adored all the time, I wasn’t thrown out.