“What new flavor of the month shall September bring? More tales of greed and systemic corruption in the benighted land?“
IF YOU are a senior citizen or even a millennial approaching 60, you probably remember Magnolia ice cream’s “flavor of the month.”
I do not know if Magnolia still sells different monthly flavors which we always awaited in our youthful days. Some flavors have become standards, like “coffee crumble” and “rocky road.”
There was “rainbow pineapple,” vanilla ice cream laced with multi-colored pineapple tidbits which has now become extinct. I miss the Magnolia ice cream parlor, first in Echague when Manila was yet genteel, later New Manila in QC.
Riveted towards the latest scandal, the strip-tease revelations about flood control projects that are either non-existent or exist to worsen the flooding, a small group of friends laughed when I asked over sips of San Miguel, “ano kaya ang susunod na flavor of the month?”
In January, it was the brouhaha over the magical insertions and unprogrammed appropriations in the current GAA which was momentarily stilled by the holiday season, where the president signed his imprimatur on Rizal Day after shaving a few of the bicam’s concoctions.
February started with a bang, a flavor that continued to keep the nation enthralled till July, similar to “rocky road,” which was the fourth impeachment complaint against the vice president signed within eight hours by 216 congressmen and dispatched to the Senate by personal courier, the HoR secretary general mismo.
February’s flavor melded into the first two weeks of March, though overtaken by another blockbuster — the dramatic surrender of former president Duterte unto the waiting arms of the ICC.
The flavor of the ides of March, even amid the midterm election campaign, was a blockbuster.
By April, the impact of the two sold-out flavors of February and March eclipsed all the other issues of the campaign, with little if any interest in what Alyansa ng Bagong Pilipinas candidates were spewing in their “hakot” rallies.
Instead, Duterte’s “durian” candidates began to excite the tastebuds of voters.
By May, the administration which under two past presidents swept the midterms was given a disappointing surprise — 5 of the durian flavors made it, and only 3 from Alyansa’s independent-minded “mantecado,” (Gen Z’s do not know what mantecado means, which is vanilla laced with egg and butter, produced by Magnolia and Arce from a Cuban recipe), a forever silent senator and a member of the new Tulfo dynasty, plus two “pinklawans” who magically made it to the first six.
The pollsters predicted a different outcome and ate crow, while the pinklawans rejoiced at their resurrection from the political graveyard, just as the durians gained strength and upset apple carts even in the once Garcia stronghold of Cebu.
June brought us the Escudero y Conjunto’s “halo-halo” of “skillful” means to slowly kill the badly-scripted HoR articles of impeachment, postponing commencement from June 2 to June 9, then finally for days after the SONA.
The durians were giddy; the pinklawans and their civil society cheerleaders howled; the people cared little, even if optics showed 20 peso rice in a few stalls and the president hyper-active with tactical MRT rides and other “pakulo.”
Then, amid torrents of rain falling from angry heavens in July, missing sabungeros stole the show.
Is there such a flavor as “manok” ice cream, even if the promo model is Gretchen Barretto?
Well, oodles of money supposedly from Pampanga may have launched the sabong flavor, but typhoons and Atong’s money eclipsed the divers mightily looking for skeletons in Taal to flavor manok ice cream.
But the end days of July came up with a new flavor akin to “sili” ice cream, more spicy than what Bicolanos have invented.
The Supreme Court declared the mélange of seven articles of impeachment by the HoR as “unfit for human consumption,” followed thereafter by a SONA where an “angry” president shouted “mahiya naman kayo” upon his audience of legislators.
August has produced a variety of flavors, all competing to become best-sellers that would stretch till the “ber” months.
And the factory is once again the “august” Senate (please follow Sen. Marcoleta’s correct pronunciation — “u-gust” with proper accent, rather than the tepid “ow-gust”): first with the entombment of the impeachment articles until and unless the Supreme Court orders its exhumation, improbable though it may be, and Ping Lacson’s detailed expose on flood control corruption most gross that dwarfed Napoles’ scam of 2014, with the “elephant in the room” as Migs Zubiri pointed out being the “proponents/funders” in Congress.
What new flavor of the month shall September bring? More tales of greed and systemic corruption in the benighted land?;
