Rags and Riches

About the Book,"RAGS AND RICHES"In this Book 26 of the Make My Day series, Henares chronicles how he started making home movies, Hollywood style, based on his first born son's favorite stories, St. George and the Dragon, and Noah's Ark. He could not find a knight's costume, so he used a cowboy's costume and re-christened the hero, Hopalong St. George. He could not build an Ark, so he used a banca, and called the movie Noah's Act, gets the nursemaid to represent Noah's Family, and a pet dog to represent the Animals, and himself as the rest of the sinful human race who deserved to drown because he would not say his bedtime prayers, nor eat his breakfast properly, nor brush his teeth, and whose dying words were "Give me a toothbrush so I can save myself!" A 50 feet roll of Kodachrome cost a fabulous P50, and will only run 3 1/2 minutes, so the epic St. George and the Dragon filmed to run 2:35 minutes; and the epic Noah's Act was compressed to a mini-epic 2:12 minutes! The unused film footage was incorporated into Henares' third film, based on his own favorite story, The Tell-Tale Heart, which run for 3:32 minutes, and which was such a horror story, it caused nightmares for the rest of the children generations hence.The rest of the Shadows on the Wall featured a surfeit of good Filipino movies that came much later, many of them starring Larry Henares' favorite ex-future daughter-in-law Vilma Santos. This included the OTHER Golden Age of Filipino Cinema during Martial Law (since it was the only way to protest against the dictatorship, and to take advantage of Imelda's tolerance for bold sex films). A critic (not Henares) observed that there were no good films in the time of Cory Aquino, whose only two contributions to the film industry were Censors chief "moral hypocrite" Manoling Morato, and an "appallingly untalented" aspiring-actress daughter Kris Aquino, hahaha.On Stage, Henares chronicles the magic moment when the musical giant Ryan Cayabyab and La Môme Celeste Legaspi shared the same stage "to restate an eternal truth -- to distill the soul of a nation -- to crystallize the hopes, fears and aspirations of a people -- and bring forth the good, the beautiful and the common humanity of all men." And the divine spark of pure goodness that creates such artists as RJ Jacinto and Jose Mari Chan, music-makers, dreamer of dreams, movers and shakers of the world.Then he tells us of a new book by cartoonist Frank Miller, "The Dark Knight Returns" about Batman, long a two-dimensional comic strip, now transformed into a four-dimensional bundle of neuroses, using computer-generated graphics. The book is a phenomenal development in the art of comics, a new approach to graphic story-telling that dealt with adult themes full of intensity, passion and power. It was a historic coming of age of a beloved art form.The rest of this book is pure Henares, detailing the shenanigans of people in power: Gethsemane of Alran Bengzon; Seventh Heaven of Bobby Borja who grows bougainville vines on Meralco's power lines and anticipates pushing up daisies after a thunderstorm; the $500 million project of George Marcelo, a village subdivision made of styropor on top of the sea, using alternative renewable power sources; Jaime de la Rosa with a brother named Rogelio, who is not a movie star, and the mess he made in the Food Terminal Inc.; Perils of Eggie Apostol and the Philippine Daily Inquirer; the epic struggle and lonely battle of Rep. Tet Garcia against foreigners and the palace cronies.Then he writes of the foreign policy in crisis, the covert war waged against us by Malaysia, about homosexuals, about pyrrhic victories worse than defeats, about Justice above all though the heavens fall, and about the Doctor YES, the doctor of the future.Good reading of the Henares style of writing, that enlightens, inspires, educates, astounds, delights, amuses, and imbues us with a sense of childlike wonder. Enjoy.