The morality of Sen. Bong Revilla
Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. – Star of “Alyas Pogi” (1990) “Alyas Pogi 2” (1992) and “Alyas Pogi: The Return” (1999) – has a penchant for roles that demand bandanas, screaming half-naked females and paint-by-number tattoos. The boyish superman with the plastic M14 can take on a gang of mustached and bearded hoods – hoods, we assume, by virtue of the mustaches – all while heroically sucking in the gut under the tucked-in T-shirt. This is the man whose defining moment in his role as Leon in the 2000 film “Ang Kilabot at ang Kembot” has three women accusing him (accurately) of pretending loyalty to each of them, while all the while attempting to get a virgin into bed. And so the women stride in, big brothers in tow, all of whom launch themselves at the man with a hand on another woman’s behind. And then the action starts, elbow to gut, fist to face, a knee to the groin, the whining Casanova suddenly Zorro. The men fall bleeding at his feet, and so do the women, all four trying to squirm their half-naked selves into his arms while Leon rolls his eyes. Another day in the life of a real man.
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Execution
THE road was not dark at 7:30 p.m. on February 17. The streetlamps lit Edsa a fluorescent white. Taillights burned red and yellow. Just ahead, McDonald’s arches glowed neon against a backdrop of northern traffic. It was Tuesday night in Quezon City, and it sounded the same as any other Tuesday night in Quezon City: the whine of police whistles, the rough idling of car motors, the random impatient shout. And then the gunshots. Like the report of a car tire. Or a hammer pounded to wood. Or a bullet exploding out of a .45 caliber pistol. Once, twice, thrice, yellow fire bursting from the mouth of a pistol.
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Here be Dragons
IT begins, of course, with a once upon a time.
Once upon a time, there was a King, and his fair Queen. They say that the King was once wise and just, but power corrupted him, and the world bowed to him. His Queen, once as poor as a peasant girl, was blinded by the gold and adoration and the glitter of diamonds on her neck. And so for many years, the land wept, those islands many called the pearl of the orient. Many heard the call to battle, the eager young men with fire in their eyes, the grim old soldiers who rose from their rest. Many were lost in the grim battle against the ruthless King.
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The giant
As it happens, I am sitting on the floor of a Makati hotel room, flush against a row of red and green cardboard boxes, each box marked and labeled and stuffed with printed pages and faxed letters and folders-within-folders. I am told the governor never travels the seven hours from Isabela without bringing along the workings of the capitol. There are newspapers piled haphazardly on a suitcase, along with four tissue-wrapped, beribboned bouquets the size of small trees blooming with white and orange and red, red blossoms. Adonis, my gaffer, sets up the redhead lights by the big open window. Fresh tapes are handed to the two men handling the cameras. I sit on my square of floor, beside coils of cable, and watch the small, smiling woman in the black-and-white striped T-shirt make her ungainly way across the room, her crutches making small round marks on the carpet.
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Caught
It rained Tuesday. It was the sort of day that had vendors standing underneath the pink-and-blue overpasses, selling thin P100-apiece umbrellas to soaking pedestrians. On that day, Court of Appeals Justice Vicente Roxas was found “dishonest and untruthful” and was removed from his post because of his “undue interest” in the Meralco case against the Government Service Insurance System. On that day, Sept. 9, two congressmen were convicted of corruption, 21 were killed in a landslide in Compostela Valley, four Caloocan houses were ravaged by flood, and the website Star-mo-meter chose Angel Locsin as the most beautiful Filipina over her dimpled, hip-slinging rival in GMA7.
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The state of their nation
President Macapagal-Arroya made many promises. She said the country needed the VAT, and that the poor were being helped. She said that the population was being trumped by natural family planning. She said we must come together as a people.
The state of the nation, after all, depends on who is telling the story.
To Adonis, the burly freelance gaffer who came to Manila as a teenager, the day the President delivers the State of the Nation Address is the day traffic chokes the highways, along with the protesters who have nothing better to do. For him, the fools who fill the sidewalk with their placards should be pounding out a living instead of coming home hungry. Adonis did not finish third grade, he grew up hacking away at rice fields and jumped at the chance to deliver water to actors’ dressing rooms. Today, he carries lighting equipment for production companies and lives in a small, green-painted room with his sisters, their children and his tiny mother.
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Tarpaulin gods
I will apologize in advance for anything that will be construed as an endorsement in this column. I am well aware, due to recent events, that politicians are willing to do anything—almost anything, anyway—for their names to be in print and a few seconds of airtime, negative or not-so-negative. Which is perhaps why senators are now at luxury to rewrite their resumés with the customary slashes of the aspiring starlet: singer/host, chef/endorser, and, in this case, senator/laundry detergent endorser.
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