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Don’t Cry for Me, Imelda Marcos! by John Calendo  Saint Imelda “I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty.” — Imelda Marcos, 1987  Here she is world, here she is boys!  Dubbed the “Chubby Mai-Tai Marie Antoinette” (by our beloved staff member Stinky), Imelda Marcos is set to get an Evita:The Rock Opera treatment this coming March at the Adelaide Music Festival in Australia.  Shoes owned by Imelda MarcosEntitled Here Lies Love, the musical will concentrate on the Filipino First Lady’s mania for disco music, Studio 54, and, of course, Italian shoes (actual pair, left) — the one thousand and sixty of which she had to abandon when she fled the presidential palace in 1986 after her husband, the dodgy Ferdinand Marcos, was toppled in a popular revolt.  Talking Head David Byrne will co-write the spectacle with, appro- priately, Fatboy Slim, whose world-wide techno-hit a few years back, Praise You, featured spastic dancers from an out-of-shape community dance group. This sort of twisted surrealism, we think, is the only approach possible for a retelling of the life of this wacky autocrat, who once said,  “It is terribly important to do certain things, such as wear overembroidered dresses. After all, the mass follows class. Class never follows mass.”  and  If you know how rich you are, you are not rich. But me, I am not aware of the extent of my wealth. That’s how rich we are!”  and  “When they see me holding fish, they can see that I am comfortable with kings as well as with paupers.”  and  “In the material world — where everything is valued — when you commit yourself to God, Beauty and Love, it can be mistaken for extravagance.”  and, of course,  “I have only ever dreamt of a small house with a picket fence by the sea. But how can I stop what I am doing? It becomes a romance not only to a president and a husband but a romance of principles and commitment. A romance for humanity. This is perhaps what makes me so controversial. I am beyond logic and rationality.”  A former Filipino beauty queen, (dubbed “Muse of Manila” in 1950), Imelda, on the arm of her husband, took an active, tireless role in the government, building hospitals for the poor, promoting scientific programs to increase rice production, fancying herself “the Mother of my Nation” — while somehow finding a spare moment or two to amass $650 million in ruby necklaces, emerald bracelets and embroidered dresses with those relentless little angel-wing demi-sleeves.  Bejeweled headacheThough she once said of herself (do strap yourselves in for this, children) “I was born ostentatious. They will list my name in the dictionary someday. They will use Imeldific to mean ostentatious extravagance,” she, and her husband, will more likely appear as illustrations under the term kleptocracy — a government so outrageously corrupt that no pretense of honesty remains