The Feast of The Black Nazarene kicks off in Manila tomorrow. Basically, this little slice of religious insanity involves slightly more than 10 MILLION Filipinos descending on Manila for about three days, trampling each other to try to touch a statue of some black guy.
Then, four or five days later the Pope, whose church has done the best possible job of keeping Filipino families poor for centuries, shows up for a four-day frenzy of lunacy. Six MILLION are expected just to hear one mass in a Manila park.
Then weeks to clean up the mess. Manila's off my list until February.