The Anti-Hero

Do you ever root for the villain to win? Are you at times sick of the fact that the hero always win? That's the reason why I don't like Steven Seagal and Van Damme movies. I won't pretend I haven't seen any but when I fortuitously come across one while surfing channels, sometimes I stick on it just to find out if Stiffy-Steven or Jean-Claude gets whacked in the end. And don't get me started on their outfits.

Seriously, sometimes, the antagonist in the plot is more interesting than the protagonist. Take Dr. Doom for example. In my book, he's way cooler than the Fantastic Four. He's super-strong, an evil genius, and he wears this really menacingly sick iron mask with a little dark green riding hood. In contrast, Reed Richards--apart from having a incredibly stupid sounding name--stretches. Stretch and you're a hero. That's the stupid Reed Richards character is all about. My dick stretches about three to four times its original size but I don't call it a hero. Well at least I won't go draw a comic book about it.

In the movie "Untouchables," there starred my all time favorite actor Bobby De Niro opposite Kevin Costner. Bobby was Al Capone, and the Californian Dork played Elliott Ness. I mean, come on, in the real world, can The Bodyguard shine Bobby De Niro's shoes? I didn't think so. When I first saw the movie, I wished so hard that Costner's character should die I pissed my pants a little bit. By the way, the baseball bat scene in which Capone bludgeons a mobster is loosely based on an actual 1929 incident when Capone bludgeoned three (3) mobsters to death; Albert Anselmi, Jo "Hop Toad" Giuinta and John Scalise.

Here in our country, I can't help but to root for the anti-hero, because the supposed protagonists are really crooks. The current administration is the number one crook, who holds out itself as the hero. After so many fuckin' photo-ops, even they believe that they are the goddam good guys. One law school professor, once said, "Corruption is institutionalized in the framework of our government." I believe that the government is actually against national growth. If we take a look at most successful economies, we'll discover that they began from humble entrepeneurial endeavors of people who believed in their own ablilities and had the courage to pursue their dreams. I'm talking about the pioneers, businessmen of any kind, they be inventors or bootleggers. In the old economy, the way to succeed was to "build a better mousetrap." What better way to build a better mousetrap if you don't copy the original? My father used to tell me that when he was very young, all things made in Japan were crap. Mostly, he adds, they were cheap imitations of U.S. and European made products, and they were consistently poor in quality. Of course, they were considerably cheaper so folks bought them, warts and all. How things have changed! When I was growing up, all the best products are made in Japan. The best bicycles, the best toys, the best video-games, the best everything. The Japanese built a better mousetrap. These days, China (that includes Taiwan) is the new Japan. Chinese products flood the domestic markets. As a consumer, I can clearly see the improvements in the quality of their products in less than a ten (10) year span. Some Chinese products are now competitive in quality even against the best in the market. Here's my point: The Chinese, and the Japanese before them didn't fuck the entrepeneurs. Their governments weren't busting the balls of the bootleggers for infringing copyrights and patents owned by some foreign schmucks. Their governments actually encouraged and induced local enterprise advancement, by fostering an environment conducive to business growth and expansion. Whereas in this country, the government does all it can to make a quick buck.

My uncle (Don Marcelino), together with my father (Don Bonifacio) and other friends of the family, own and operate some small business. One of these meager businesses is a Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) Refilling Plant. All these businesses are, in the eyes of the law, legal. The bosses faithfully comply with all laws, rules and regulations pertinent and relevant to their businesses. All documents, permits, taxes, and what-else-the-fuck-have-you are secured and with reasonable promptitude. However, in compliance with these legal requirements, the people in government--apart from the legally mandated fees and charges--charge and collect ridiculous sums of money from the businesses to go directly into their pockets. Some describe it as the "cost of doing business," or padulas money, even if it is totally unnecessary. The main thing is this: even when you go legal, you get fucked on the ass by this government. From the City Hall to the Office of the President, all them snakes and alligators want to bleed everyone dry.

It is bad enough that local businessmen tolerate this sub rosa culture, but an even greater and previously unimaginable evil have spawned in this GMA adminstration: The Presidential Task Force. Along with the super-irresponsible television media that we have, the elite of the elite, top-of-the-foodchain crooks in government have rallied under the presidential banner to create chaos and to extract even more cash from businessmen. Under pain of prosecution and negative media exposure, these motherfuckers extort money from businesses like those belonging to my family. Our LPG refilling plant has been raided by task force after task force and featured on TV crime shows on both big channels. These task force fuckers think they are Elliot Ness and the untouchables. They climb the gates, force open the locks, shout various uneducated profanities, and brandish their cheap U.S. surplus M-16 Armalites and WWII M-14s at my father's poor employees who are there to make an honest living refilling cooking gas. One of them, my father's cook, was even sent to prison for a couple of nights after a task-force raid. Did he make the monggo stew too fuckin' salty? Everytime they do this, they only want one thing: money. The cops want money, the newsmen want money, the government lawyers want money, the judge wants money, the mayor wants money...what every single authority-type motherfucker wants is money. It is not enough anymore to simply keep their beaks wet. These birds have turned into vultures and they want flesh and blood. They are making a killing. How can legitimate business survive in an environment like this?

Perhaps it is time for us to make the jump from hero to anti-hero.

It just takes one dum sumbitch

I have a Swede friend, Rico--who was once a hardcore dogman but now turned Buddhist--who said, "Never estimate the predictability of stupidity." I thought it was one of the stupidest one-liners I've ever heard at the time, but recently I have serendipitously discovered its deep wisdom.

A couple of weeks ago, I was tricked by my wife to take along my father-in-law with me when I renew the car registration certificate at the LTO. My wife is a very smart little lady. She said it was our chance to bond. I was thinking, "Bond? Who the hell wants to bond with his father in law? Immediately, I thought of two kinds of guys: 1.The Suck-up, and 2. The Plastic-man. I am neither. On an afterthought, I realized that even these two don't really want to bond with them in-laws. The first wants something in return, usually capable of being expressed in terms of money, and the second principally operates on a pretext based on a lie. Clearly, no married male in their right minds would want to "bond" with their father-in-law.

My wife's old man said to me, "Jorge, kailangan maglagay tayo para mabilis."

I said "Uhm, okay." But then when he was not looking, I was shaking my head and smirking. I'm not implying that I am 100% corruption-free. Hell, it's sad to admit but its part of Flip culture. Deeply ingrained in our society is the tendency to cut the red-tape by slipping in some extra cash sub rosa. Nevertheless, the thought of my own father popped-up in my head. My father is the kind of classic old-school guy who would not think of making a bribe unless there is absolutely no other way around it only whenever he really needs something important done real quick without too much hassle. Simply renewing a car's registration papers is definitely not one of those things. If he founds out that I did that, he'd probably shake his head just like I did, and add that deplorable act to his list of my life's disappointments.

Once, when I was fifteen (15), I faked my age to get a student driver's license. One was required to be sixteen (16) to get one of those. One of my uncle's truck drivers was my accomplice for that particular bad deed. He was blind in one eye and had a professional driver's license. Just imagine what would happen if he went through the regular procedure in getting driver's licenses. The medical examiner would go, "cover your right eye and read to me the letters you see on that poster..." Later on, my father found out about it and although I cannot recall at this time the precise contents of his sermon, I am definitely sure that there was a long and onerous one. Perhaps it just came to the right ear and out the left.

So me and the old man went in there, walked through a line longer than one on the first day of Marian Rivera's new movie. And no, I did not watch it, I just saw the line at the local SM mall near where I live. He started unusually politely talking to this bespectacled fat lady, who looked like a villain who popped-out of an anti-corruption poster. She had these old-fashioned rimmed glasses on, thick stockings failing to disguise the tree-trunks she had for legs, and from the looks of it, a big chubby pencil stuck-up her ass. The old man just gave all my car papers to this lady and told me to chuck the cash discreetly to her desk. The price was a few hundred Pesos more than that legally required. Somewhat feeling like a crook, I shoved the wad of cash to her desk and she told us to wait outside and wait for her call.

Since me and my wife just got recently married, she had to go through the business of changing her last name to mine's. The Civic was in still in her maiden name because at the time we bought it, we were not yet married. So I told the fat-assed LTO lady the story and asked asked her "Miss, how can we change the name on the registration papers?" She had all sorts of answers but none of them were making sense to me. I rephrased my question and asked, "Do you have a procedure on how my wife can change the name reflected on the registration papers?" Finally, and seemingly out of thin air, she gave me this answer "you have to execute a deed of sale..." As a rather annoying habit of mine, probably inherited from my father, and reinforced by some law school professors I had, I shake my head from left to right repititiously on instinct whenever I hear a wrong answer. My wife is really pissed off whenever I do that thing to her.That moment, I had no idea I was doing it. The lady, on a tone, said "Don't shake your head Mister, it's as though like you're looking down on me!"

That got on my nerve, to say the least. I broke all politeness protocol and said "Look, Miss, what you are telling me is totally wrong, one person cannot sell a thing to him or herself. In the eyes of the law, that is not a valid sale. As a graduate of law (with stress on "graduate" and "law" so she can hear perfectly), I will not and can not do that in good conscience." Hearing that, I could see her expression from something really snooty and sinister common to most government employees who think they are doing ordinary citizens tremendous favors by doing their jobs, to something more pleasant and a little bit scared and apologetic at the same time.

As I was blurting all that shit that out, I felt my soul flew outside of my body and I was looking at myslef arguing with some nincompoop. I quickly came back inside my body and smoothly came up with a fake apology. She said that that's the way they do it whenever they encounter situations identical to my wife's and then she also conjured a fake apology of her own. With that, I thought, "fuck it, let's just let the papers be as they are, I have no patience for this." So I went outside, lit a smoke and started to wait for our 2008 sticker to issue.The old man with me was left inside, probably apologizing profusely to the fat lady for my unruly behavior.

True enough, the padulas we gave cut down the time we were engaged to wait. After a little over thirty (30) minutes, My wife's maiden name was being called, and the rest of the honest sumbitches who had been waiting for half a day since morning still had their asses stuck outside the LTO office praying to God to make the assholes inside call their names so they can get the fuck out of that shitty place.