Synopsis "Joy and Sorrow"
About the Book, "JOY AND SORROW" Here, in this book, the 27th book of the Make My Day Series, Larry Henares waxes poetic about Lea Salonga who won the part of Miss Saigon in London, and Regine Velasquez who refused to play Miss Saigon on Broadway, because her family and neighbors would frown on her making kandong and having sex onstage with the leading man. Here, he also invites the reader to love and lust, to the poetry of the Vagina Monologues and the earthiness of Salitang Puki. Here, he recounts the attempted assassination of Chavit Singson which was the tipping point that led to the fall of Erap Estrada, and the exciting events leading us to EDSA II when Erap was thrown out from the Presidency though people power. The EDSA II was discussed thoroughly in previous books. Here, he tells the hilarious story of Juan de la Cruz asking God to make the Philippines a perfect heaven on earth, and his eventual exile to that Pile of Shit that Noah dumped in the far Atlantic. Here, he tells us why drugs manufactured by American firms are 14 times more expensive in the Philippines, than they are in India. And informs us that while Russia plays the intellectual game of Chess, and China plays the intellectual game of Go, the US plays the visceral game of Poker, bringing bluff and bluster, deceit and instant gratification into international diplomacy. Here, he exposes the Council of Tent that practically dominates the administration of President Cory Aquino, headed by a Rasputin of a priest, and manned by Cory's Seven Dwarfs, from Doc to Dopey. Here, he speaks of his daughter's 5 miscarriages, triggered by her immune system that regards the sperm of her husband as a foreign object to be rejected and destroyed - and the advent of Dr. Alan Beer who treated her and brought two pregnancies to term, giving her two sons late in life. Here, he projects as shadows on the wall, an epic home movie called the Battle of the Sexes in 3 rounds, with a prelude that tells of the creation of Man and Woman, by a mischievous God; three rounds of (1) a nagging wife, and the secret life of her poor husband, (2) a madcap extramarital affair, and a missing chemise (camison); and (3) the Last Supper of a husband and wife, a poisoned glass of wine, and a deadly game of life and death. Add to this a home movie of Somerset Maughm's Rain about a priest and a prostitute, and W. W. Jacob's The Monkey's Paw and the three wishes that destroyed a family, the characters in both movies played by small children prior to puberty. Here, in this book, Larry Henares tells the heart-warming story of Teresita Valdez, wife of a policeman, mother of a spoiled only son, supervisor in my wife's factory, who is disliked by all, and whose vocation is to adopt poor children of the streets - eight of them, whom she fed, dressed and sent to school, most of them already abroad in gainful occupations. Here, he speaks of the Cebuano Enrique, who accompanied Magellan on his trip, from the Moluccas back to Spain, and on his second trip round the Cape of Good Hope to the Philippines. Enrique, claims historian Charlie Quirino, joins Vasco de Gama and Magellan, as the one of the first to circumnavigate the world. He writes of the onerous taxes that eventually kills a nation, of the University of the Philippines, the best school of the country, and why he'd rather send his boys to Ateneo de Manila where he studied. He writes of the balut, the answer to the the great riddle "which comes first the chicken or the egg?" of Greece where Democracy began, of the French Revolution, of the Fall of Spain and the USA which progressed from Barbarism to Decadence without going through the process of being Civilized, and why Hitler hates the Jews.
