Holidays in Hell

by P. J. O'Rourke

  The architects must have been touched by the holy spirit because they were definitely speaking the language of design in tongues when they did this. At one end there's the Heritage Grand Hotel-Georgian on steroids, Monticello mated with a Ramada Inn and finished in Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers gothic. This is attached to a two-hundred-yard stretch of bogus Victorian house fronts, which screen the shopping mall. The house fronts have extruded plastic gingerbread details and are painted in colors unfit for baboon posteriors. Interesting that the same God who inspired the cathedral at Chartres, Westminster Abbey and the Sistine Chapel also inspired this. That Big Guy Upstairs can be a real kidder.

  The Christmas decorations were still up at Heritage. From the entrance gate all the way to the water slide, the place was festooned with Yule lights and other pagan symbols of the season-tinseled evergreens, holly wreaths, snowmen, candy canes. But no Santa Claus. His elves were there, stuffing stockings and wrapping presents, but Santa himself was nowhere to be found. When we walked into the hotel lobby, carolers were singing:

  And I thought Heritage USA was going to be dumb. But I'd only been there fifteen minutes and I was already confronted by enough serious theological questions to send St. Thomas Aquinas back to Bible college. Did Santa die on the cross? Will he be resurrected at Macy's? Were Christ's disciples really elves? When the second coming happens, will Jesus bring toy trains?

  While I puzzled over these mysteries Dorothy went shopping. She's normally as good at this as any human female. But she was back in minutes with no bags or packages and a dazed, perplexed expression, like a starved Ethiopian given a piece of wax fruit. What could be the matter?

  We went into the bookstore and I found out. There on the shelves were personal affirmations of faith by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, a born-again diet plan, a transcription of the horrible (though rather unimaginative) things you can hear if you play rock and roll records backward, and a weighty tome arguing that every time the New Testament says "wine" it really means "grape juice." But I couldn't find anything you'd actually call a book. The Bibles themselves had names like A Bible Even You Can Read and The Bible in English Just Like Jesus Talked.

  Then we went into the music store. It was the same thing. There were racks of tapes and records by Christian pop groups, Christian folk groups, Christian heavy-metal groups, Christian reggae groups, all of them singing original compositions about the Lord. No album was actually titled I Found God and Lost My Talent, but I'm sure that was just an oversight. There was even a "Christian Rap Music" cassette called Bible Break:

  And so on to Revelations with complete lack of rhythm or meter. (I was witnessing a miracle, I was sure, or auditing one anyway: Here was something that sounded worse than genuine rap.)

  The toy store was weirder yet. The stuffed toys had names like "Born-Again Bunny" and "Devotion Duck." A child-size panoply of biblical weapons was for sale, including a "shield of righteousness," a "helmet of faith," and a "sword of truth" that looked ideal for a "clobber of little sister." And there were biblical action figures-a Goliath with a bashed skull, David looking fruity in a goat-skin sarong, Samson and Delilah as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. "Comes seductively dressed" read the sell copy on Delilah's bubble pack. Here was a shopper's hell indeed.

  I looked at the people crowding the Heritage "Main Street" mall. They didn't seem to be having much fun. Many of them were old, none looked very well-off. There was a dullness in their movements and expressions. Even the little kids looked somber and thick. In the men's room stall where I went to sneak a cigarette there were only four bits of graffiti:

  Do you know were [sic] you wife is at

  Jesus is #1

  666

  Please don't mark these walls

  The last scratched into the paint with a key or pocketknife.

  I almost don't have the heart to make fun of these folks. It's like hunting dairy cows with a high-powered rifle and scope. Then again, I have to consider what they'd do to me if they caught me having my idea of a vacation-undressed bimbo in a sleazy Florida hotel room, bottle of Vaseline Intensive Care lotion, some drugged wine. . . . In fact, you already know what they did when they caught Jim Bakker. Heck, they want to hang the likes of Jim and me. And all I want to do is rib them a little.

  I've always figured that if God wanted us to go to church a lot He'd have given us bigger behinds to sit on and smaller heads to think with. But God or carbohydrates or something had done that for these people. They all had huge bottoms, immense bottoms. It looked like everyone in the place had stuffed a chair cushion down the back of his leisure slacks. And what leisure slacks! Heal them, oh Lord, for they are injured in the taste buds. Dorothy and I had dressed quietly for the occasion. But my button-down shirt and chinos and her blue blazer and tartan skirt made us stick out like nude calypso dancers. We were wearing the only natural fibers for 2,300, acres in any direction.

  "You know what you've got here?" I said to Dorothy. "This is white trash behaving itself-the only thing in the world worse than white trash not behaving itself."

  "Shhhh!" said Dorothy. "That's mean."

  "These people aren't having any fun," I said. "They should join the Klan. They'd be better off. They could hoot and holler and what-not. The Klan doesn't do all that much really bad stuff anymore because there are too many FBI double agents in it. And if these folks joined the Klan, they could smoke and drink again. Plus, they'd get to wear something halfway decent, like an allcotton bed sheet."

  "P. J. !" said Dorothy, "Stop it! Everybody can hear you."

  "I'm serious," I said. "All you people, you really ought to..." Dorothy slapped a hand over my mouth and pulled me outside.

  The next day, Dorothy and I pretended to be married and went house hunting in the Christian condominium sub-development. The homes were mostly free-standing ranch jobs built on slab foundations and supplied with a couple hundred dollars of old- timey exterior trim. Each unit is supposedly built to order, but neither the designs nor the floor plans can be altered. (What God and contractor have joined together let no man put asunder.) Condo prices range from $128,000 to $144,000. I checked the real estate sections in the local papers, and this seemed to be almost a third again the going rate.

  The model homes showed no special religious features, no Last Supper-style dining areas, walk-on-the-water beds or totalimmersion adult-baptismal pools in the johns. There was also a sad lack of evangelical hard sell. Dorothy and I had hoped for a real estate sales person who spoke in tongues, not that real estate persons don't usually.

  Instead, there was a lonely-looking middle-aged lady with a layer of Tammy Bakker-style makeup. "Now, I live by myself here," she said, "but gosh there are so many things going on I never have a moment to feel lonely." She was interrupted by a phone call from Maine. "Excuse me," she said, "this lady is calling from all the way up in Maine."

  The caller was, I gathered, very elderly.

  "Yes," said the real estate lady on the phone, "you can live right here at Heritage USA.... No, Jim and Tammy don't actually live at the Heritage Center.... But they live real close by. . . . No, dear, you shouldn't buy something you haven't even seen... . Well, maybe you can get your minister to drive you down."

  We slipped out during the phone call, feeling a little creepy. Something is drawing forlorn old ladies and poor, morose families to Heritage USA. Five million of them came in 1985. It can't be Jesus doing a thing like that. He's. a compassionate guy, isn't He?

  We took one more walk through the Heritage mall. I was eavesdropping hard, hoping for some final, telling quote. No luck.

  Everybody was on good behavior just like the day before. There were no screaming toddlers, no running kids, no griping adults. It was like being in the First Church of Christ Hanging Out at the Mall. Dorothy heard a jewelry salesman tell his customer, "It has a life-time guarantee-or until Jesus returns, whichever."

  A goody-two-shoes treacle seemed to flow sluggishly through the place, and I think it was m
aking Dorothy a little crazy. She kept tugging on my coat sleeve and whispering that we should go behind a Coke machine or in a mop closet or someplace and "pet." They must have this problem a lot at Heritage USA because all the Coke machines were right out in the middle of the rooms and the mop closets were locked. We tried a stairwell, but it had a floor-toceiling window opening to the hotel lobby.

  And that was when it dawned on me. There's only one explanation for Heritage USA. Jim and Tammy were working for the other side. Their own recent behavior seems to make that obvious. And consider the other evidence: a bookstore without books, a record shop without music-what else could these be but the vain and empty works of the devil? And Heritage USA has lots of rules and ugly architecture just like communist Russia, that den of Satan. And don't forget that fundamentalism prohibits premarital sex, yet you can't have a proper Black Mass without using a naked virgin as an altar. Put two and two together-it's not a pretty picture. Furthermore, as a result of our visit to Heritage USA, Dorothy and I had committed every one of the seven deadly sins:

  Pride Looking at our fellow visitors had turned us into awful snobs.

  Wrath-We wanted to murder the architects.

  Lust-If we could have found an open mop closet.

  Avarice-By proxy (Jim and Tammy Bakker, as founders of Heritage USA, had committed this sin for us.)

  Envy-How come Jim and Tammy get to live so high on the hog? Why didn't we think of Heritage USA?

  Gluttony-For a quick drink.

  Sloth-We spent three days in bed recovering from the drunk we went on after we got out of there.

  This is no way to have fun. Everybody likes a good laugh, and there's nothing wrong with that. But on this year's vacation steer clear of Heritage USA. For the sake of your immortal soul, stay home and take drugs and have sex the way Jim and Tammy do. (After all, I understand they've been forgiven.)

  riml

  The Post -Marcoe Ph4puaee-

  Life in the Archipelago After One

  Year of Judtice, Democracy and

  Things Like That

  MARCH 1987

  Well, everything's fine in the Philippines now. Smelly old Marcos has been given the gate and earnest, Catholic, good-to-the-bone Cory Aquino is president. Everyone in the country has a fulfilling career. All those cardboard houses down in the Manila slums are being gentrified-track lighting, redwood decks, nickel plated Victorian plumbing fixtures from Renovator's Supply. The citizens of the Philippines are rich and happy. They won't go Communist or get another corrupt and egomaniacal dictator for at least a week.

  I was nine years old when I fell in love with the Philippines. My father had been there during World War II, practically the only place he'd ever been outside Ohio. He was a salesman who had wanted to be an engineer. He'd taken some night courses but, what with the Depression and a family to support, it never happened. Yet for one moment he was an engineer, a chief petty officer in the Navy Construction Battalions, the CBs, building docks, warehouses and barracks in the Philippines.

  When my father died in 1956, I found his photo albums from the war. To a more sophisticated kid, the Philippines might not have seemed like much. Famous for what, house boys and ugly mahogany water buffalo carvings? But to me, in Toledo, Ohio, the Philippines represented everything I could hope for in the way of romance. The albums were filled with pictures of burned-out Jap tanks, bomb craters and sunk LSTs and also of lustrous beaches, mangrove-edged lagoons and ancient Spanish mission churches. There were pictures of my dad, not the pale, workaday dad I'd known, but a thin, tanned guy in faded khakis with one foot on the bumper of a Jeep and a Lucky jammed in the corner of his mouth. That dad had a smile I don't think you can get in Ohio. And, at the back of one of the albums, folded behind a flap of paper, were pictures of Philippine women-dark, smooth, small, beautiful women who seemed to have misplaced their bathing suits.

  It was thirty years before I got to the Philippines, but the islands were no disappointment. I arrived in February 1986, in the midst of the Marcos ouster. I found adventure and excitement; in fact, I saw more action than my father had. (His battalion went through the whole war with only one casualty-a palm tree fell on somebody.) The country was as exotic and the people were as attractive as I'd known they would be. I met a young woman I liked very much, a Filipino journalist named Tina Luz, with anthracite hair and the most beautiful color skin I've ever seen-something between peanut butter and bronze. And the society, culture and politics of the Philippines were unfathomable, desperate, violent and strange, which is a large part of what romance is all about.

  I was there for a month and spent the next year trying to wrangle a way back. I invented dozens of journalistic "hooks' for Philippine articles. I told my editors at Rolling Stone that each bungled coup attempt was the hottest story since Morton Thiokol used the Challenger to move teacher hazing into the space age. "The Philippines are Democracy with its thumb in the door hinge of history," I'd bluster. "Civilization-as-we-know-it is walking the balance beam in the political gymnastics of death." And other such. Finally, on the first anniversary of the Cory takeover, they gave in.

  I returned to Manila to find myself a hero, sort of. Each of the one thousand plus members of the foreign press who'd been present at the Marcos heave-ho was made a "Hero of the Revolution." There was an austerely dignified award ceremony. By that I mean we had to buy our own drinks-in clear violation of the international journalists' code of truth, fairness and an open bar. But Cory Aquino came to thank us in person for having suddenly discovered, in 1986, that Marcos was a pig. "Joe Rorke from Rolling magazine," said the master of ceremonies. I mounted the podium, and General Ramos, the Philippine Army chief of staff, put the medal around my neck as canned applause played on the PA system.

  It's a silly-looking medal, showing a hand making the proCory LABAN-coalition "L" sign with a little happy face on the tip of the upraised index finger. But it's the only medal I'm ever going to get, and, hell, I'm proud.

  "Freedom Week," as the anniversary of the Cory revolution was called, was choked with self-congratulatory festivities- songwriting contests, public-speaking competitions, a display of children's art about "people power," fireworks, street dances and eleven million Catholic masses. Dignitaries and various fans of social justice arrived from all over the world. Even Peter, Paul and Mary came to play. The Filipinos were pretty sure they were famous. Everybody recognized "Puff the Magic Dragon," anyway, and sang along.

  "We were in El Salvador in 1983 and in Nicaragua last year," a fervent Mary Travers said to the puzzled crowd, who didn't see what that had to do with anything. The Cory government was supposed to get rid of communists.

  On the last day of Freedom Week a million and a half people shoved themselves into the avenue along the front of Camp Carrie. Camp Carne is the military base where Defense Minister Enrile and Chief of Staff Ramos had announced the revolt that brought Cory to power. Marcos sent loyalist troops to snuff the coup, and unarmed civilians (though rather less than a million and a half of them) blocked tanks and armored personnel carriers with their bodies.

  Camp Carne's gates were opened for the anniversary. Some of the troops inside had already been involved in another revolt against Cory. And six months later nearly half of them would rise up in more stupid mutiny. But, today, they were all smiles. You could tell it was a special occasion because the soldiers had their shoes on.

  A thousand vendors sold mementos of the revolution, all of them yellow, Cory's campaign color, and most of them bearing Mrs. Aquino's likeness. One T-shirt said simply, "I Am A Filipino." But what passes for a size XL in the Philippines splits right down the beer gut when I put it on.

  There were lots of speeches. It was hard to tell who was making them or where. But loudspeakers had been nailed to all the phone poles so everyone could hear. Filipinos enjoy a good political diatribe. But in the hopelessly decent Cory administration rhetorical bombast is always trimmed with polite qualifications. "Professionals, students, rich and p
oor embraced themselves and fought," bellowed the kick-off speaker, "almost nonviolently against what we thought might be an autocratic government."

  The autocrats themselves were by no means gnashing their cosmetic orthodontia. The parking lot at the Manila Polo Club was as full of Range Rovers and BMWs as it had been in Marcos days. The club was holding a "Freedom Cup" match to celebrate the revolution and decide the Philippine polo championship. A priest blessed the ponies with a squirt bottle full of holy water and then prayed at length for Cory and her government. The Hermes-scarfed and Ralph Lauren-shirted crowd (People at polo matches actually do wear Polo-brand clothes, at least in the Philippines.) prayed along and applauded vigorously.

  Meanwhile, Manila was the same squalid mess ie s always been.

  Cory Aquino is the most upright, kindly and honorable person running a country today. Given the other people running countries, that's probably safe to say. And there doesn't seem to be anything particularly wrong with the men and women she's got helping her, especially compared with the pack of muck spouts, scissors bills, jacklegs and goons who used to be in charge. But it would be nice if cashews on the top always meant ice cream on the bottom. It would be nice if swell national leaders meant instant peace and plenty.

  There are more than 57 million Filipinos spread across 7,107 islands. Almost every island has a communist or moslem insurrection of some kind. Per capita income is $652 a year. It seems hard to find an army officer who isn't ready to toss a coup d'etat. And pages could be filled just listing the country's other problems. It would be amazing if the Cory government even knew where to start.

  One of the features of Freedom Week was an inventor's convention. It was a modest affair. Most of the inventions had to do with improved charcoal braziers for home heat and better ways to spread water buffalo dung. But there was one very complicated mechanical device with a hand-lettered sign taped on the front: