AUTOTOMY

In the supermarket we were buying mangoes and bananas since we’d been too lazy to hit the street market on the weekend, where you get the best prices for fruits and vegetables. Normally there’s a store attendant in the produce area and that person weighs and stamps the prices on your items for you. But that day only the armed security guard was available. So he left his post, gun at his side, and weighed the mangoes for us, smiling, as if he were the produce man.

The Philippines is a country of smiles. So why is there a billboard advertising a concert for a band and none of the guys have smiles? They’re scowling. In fact, stuck up there giant-sized, they look mean, thuggish, the kind of guys you wouldn’t want to meet in an alley, much less up the bean stalk. They’re all tattoos and metal bits, as Bruce Cockburn would say. The name of the band is the auditory equivalent of “deluge of noise.” But this is a “praise band,” with songs like, “Thanks Be to God,” and “Let Us Come Before Him in Worship.” Considering all this, the concert is being sponsored by the Philippine equivalent of pepto-bismal.