BETTER FRIDAY ON A SUNDAY
By: Iris P. Concepcion

From where am at, the death of Jesus is celebrated with food and enough merriment one could pass it off as a fiesta.

This propensity of Filipinos to celebrate everything with a palate marathon is almost obscene in spirit but it is part of our being closet gluttons. Hello Rocket. Ssshhhh.

You name it, everything must be capped with food gobbling that one almost sees a fat man holding a breaded chicken thigh to commemorate his first root canal experience.

I have gotten used to the weirdness of the place; its people churning in eccentricities the likes of Indian writers can only depict in their novels.

The procession to parade the dead Jesus is one for the books. I saw a statue of the Blessed Virgin in an Alanis Morrisette kinky mane looking statuesque over the felled Son with expansive, widespread, humungous wings. It was ecstasy at sight. The Blessed Virgin morphed into one of X-Men characters. One could almost see a chubby kid whose tummy protrudes mouthing: "Way to go Holy Virgin!!"

I always visit first, the church, whenever I am in a new place. Here, they seem to give paramount adoration to the Blessed Mother that she shares the best altar podiums with Him, innocently observing Him, hawk-eyed.

I also saw a statue of God the Father (I do not know how these people can identify St. Peter, St. John etc etc. without their name tags; they all look the same with their ScotchBrite beards). I do not know, it could be Blessed Lorenzo Ruiz who, instead of a halo on top of his head, a spaceship gleamed on it instead.

Their Last Supper tableau is varnished like porcelain you normally see only in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs toys.

I also had been to a Christmas House filled with beautiful dolls of all shapes and sizes (not your typical Barbies, they are pug-nosed with overtly curly, black hair like li'l twists in neat get-ups----very adorable). This hole-in-the-wall has a swimming pool where you get fined for P100 should you not wear your swimsuit. I wonder if they give you P500 bucks if you frolic around stark naked there.

I am consciously not mentioning the names of these places to protect their charm.

Likewise, I saw a guy whose thong brief went up beyond his waistline and no one minded him out there in the streets. Just like I didn't mind a very tall person walking mindlessly in front of the Church plaza almost unclad. Just like I didn't mind a cow that quite talks like baritone and had awesome, long eyelashes (old rascals seem to jog around this arena like it is New York Central Park) or slogans so hilarious I often mistake them for verbal farts.

There are always poetic touches to the things I formally hear and you just know that they are laid there by people who had studied the words deeply and wrote them as their own.

This one, however, takes the cake for its brilliancy, timing, climactic rigor and suspense:

"Rock and Roll!!!(whoossshhh--motor speed---whoossshh) Laban!!! (whoosshhhh--motor speed----wooshhhh) Virgin!!!(whosshhh-motor speed----whoossshhhh---what the heck!! I chortled).

From the kids who need to protect their mother.

Perfect Easter Egg Hunting Gift for this writer.