MIRON

Hail to the Max!

          My name is Maximum Exposius Solivenus! Commander of the Armies of the North! General of the Felix Legions! Loyal servant to the true emperor, Glorius Eraptus Ad Nauseous, father to a proud son, husband to a proud wife, and I will have my publicity with a vengeance -- in this life or the next!

Rizal, at a time like this

I don’t know if any of you heard Manolo Quezon III's videoessay on TV Patrol World’s “Sa Wari Ko” series. Beautiful! Heartbreaking!
And I hear I wasn’t the only one struck in the heart by mlq’s unexpected reference to Rizal's pulse moments before his execution. Apparently the doctors had been baffled to find his heart beating steadily even as he was about to face his firing squad.
It was so incongruous hearing about that kind of stillness, in between stories on the noisy Ayala rally, that I think the message connected even more powerfully.
I hope mlq writes something like that again. We needed that.

Inky Dinky

The Gloria Rebellion gained so much momentum last Friday that, for a while there, I thought it was actually going to tip and that I was going to have to eat my shorts after daring to say it wouldn't.
Now that the thing has most certainly died a most unspectacular death (with not even a whimper but a yawn), I look back and wonder why I even considered any other outcome.
Filipinos are in no mood for another political upheaval.
Aside from that, it was shaping up to be an upperclass uprising led by ten unknown cabinet secretaries and Cory Aquino who is now more known for Kris and Hacienda Luisita.
Who, afterall, is Purisima? And what do the masa care about the disillusionment of La Sallistas? Sorry my friend Chuck. Don't ditch my blog. But the only possible successor to the queen is the d'King and FPJ has left the building.
For all their plotting and scheming, the Hyatt 10 failed to provide the one thing the public needed: A compelling reason to demand Gloria's resignation. Do they know something we don't? Did any of them hear Gloria say "Hello, Garci?" Because if they are just frustrated with leadership, jeez man, GET IN LINE!
Refusing to answer reporters' questions because of "ethics," they left the field wide open for the more publicly known, Tagalog speaking Malacanang defenders, led by Mike Defensor who connected with the masses, by speaking the language of the streets. Feigning righteous indignation, he calls Dinky Soliman "traidor", "plastic".
And then this photo of Dinky comes out. The end.

Naks! Soliven

Just when I thought publisher Max Soliven has finally curbed his propensity for appearing in the frontpage of his own newspaper, he pops up again! This time appearing not just in one photo, but in TWO!

There he was in last Sunday's edition of The Philippine Star. On the left, Max smiles beside president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, just hours after her cabinet demands her resignation. On the right, Max smiles beside pajama-clad former president Erap Estrada, for whom he braves a tropical storm to visit in the hospital.

The cynical among us would call Max a two timing "sanamagan" (to borrow Max's favorite expression). But not miron. I'll just say that, well, Max was just trying to (ahem) get all sides and (ahem) appear fair and balanced.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Max has already dug up file photos of himself smiling beside Cory and FVR, Loren Legarda and Noli de Castro, Franklin Drilon and Lito Atienza, and JUST IN CASE, REZ CORTEZ.

Because these days, you just never know...you just never know.