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– Budjette’s impression of Brad Pitt in Se7en.

This gets filed under Pointless Anecdotes or Stuff I’d Forgotten I Wrote.
We were looking for the house of Graciano Lopez Jaena. According to the map of Iloilo City, the Lopez Jaena birthplace—which I’d assumed was a house—was not far from the Lopez Jaena monument in the Bellfry Plaza. Yes, with two L’s.

In Bellfry Plaza there is a fountain whose waters were reportedly miraculous. The fountain has been enclosed in a steel fence because some people took to washing their dirty laundry in it.

On our first attempt to find the Lopez Jaena place, the map was rather vague and Ruth decided to ask for directions. She was the designated asker for directions, as she speaks Ilonggo. She approached this guy in an undershirt. Not the guy I would’ve picked to get directions from: his eyeballs were in constant motion, and he had a demented grin. She repeated the question twice, then showed him the map; he gawked at the map, then pointed to the distance. She thanked him. He punched her in the arm in a friendly manner, then walked off, twitching like Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo.

Graciano Lopez Jaena was editor of La Solidaridad  and a noted orator. The marker on his monument said he died in Barcelona in 1896. Where was  the house he was born in?

There was a small crowd gathered on the edge of the plaza. Oh no, I thought, an evangelist with an amplifier.

It wasn’t a Bible-thumper, it was a guy with a wooden box like shoeshine boys carry. He opened the box and extracted a large mottled brown snake. It was a python, about seven feet long. The guy jabbered into a microphone in Ilonggo. The audience laughed appreciatively. He “interviewed” the python about its habits, and it “answered” his questions. The audience applauded. I don’t think they were clapping because they believed him; more likely they were being nice to him.

I don’t know exactly what the snake-guy was doing—my impression was that he was going to segue into a sales pitch. Snake oil maybe, or matching shoes and handbags. After a few minutes he put the snake back in the box. It leapt out and tried to strike him. “Ooh, he’s in a bad mood,” the guy said. “I’ll pray over him.” He recited an oracion  in pig Latin.

The snake promptly shot out of the box again, barely missing him. “Maybe he didn’t get the Latin,” the guy cheerfully announced. “Let’s try again, this time in Ilonggo.” He recited another prayer. The snake tried to strike him again.

Snake-guy turned to his assistant. “Did you feed him today?” The boy gaped at him and slowly shook his head. “That rat we caught this morning, you should have fed it to the snake.” The boy responded with a look of pure duh.

I would’ve stayed to watch some more, but the sun was beating down. Off we went in search of Lopez Jaena’s house.