Since she sent it here, I didn’t get to show it off at home…but now that I’ve finished reading it, I would like to recommend to you my Christmas present from Poke: Lamb, by Christopher Moore. (So thank you, Poke — and happy birthday!)

Moore, for note, is also one of the three wonderful author people who answered all my silly questions about author blogs last semester.

Now, the most obvious comparison is to Monty Python’s Life of Brian, but I’m not going to make it. I’ve seen Life of Brian, but at the time, it was late at night, we were trying to keep the volume down, and consequently I couldn’t hear very well. This only added to a common Python problem, which I will call “Wait, are you still playing the same character?”

Lamb is good fun, though. It’s definitely R rated, but Moore’s smartest decision in his portrayal of Jesus (called Joshua here. Think of Avenue Q: “Remember guys, Jesus was…Jewish”) is in giving him a wisecracking sidekick. Levi, called Biff, is our narrator and is not a bad sort of person, just deeply flawed. With Biff around to hold grudges, curse like a sailor, and chase skirts all over Asia, Joshua can be good without being boringly perfect. Moore gives him enough faults to make him interesting and human, which, as I understand it, is part of the point of Jesus, anyway. Being human.

In that spirit, Moore sets about telling a story that doesn’t leave large chronological gaps as the gospels — what did happen in those thirty-odd years between his birth and his ministry.

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Categories: books
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My friend EB posted this and I feel the need to share:

I’m sure it was all a matter of scheduling…

Heehee. Must have been all kinds of interesting in the land of conservative students and liberal faculty.

Categories: college, in the news
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Spamalot! So much fun.

The strength and challenge of this show is that it is so closely based on the cult-favorite film. The very mention of swallows and the first hint of a French accent got huge laughs long before a punchline was even suggested. But though some scenes are almost verbatim from Holy Grail, the story has been slightly restructured so that it can be a musical! (jazz hands!) Scenes from the movie that feature Random Person #53 become scenes about the knights — Lancelot and Robin are in the “bring out yer dead” scene (and then go off to enlist as Arthur’s knights), and the “help, help I’m being oppressed” peasant is transformed by the Lady of the Lake into Sir Galahad.

The Lady of the Lake turns out to be (A) everywhere, (B) Guinevere, and (C) a huge ham! Most of her songs are very meta-theatrical — she has three versions of “The Song That Goes Like This,” in which she explains that it is time for the lover’s duet that ends with a kiss or the torchy ballad or what have you. And naturally she marries Arthur at the end to fulfill that box on the formula checklist (no ambiguous semi-ending this time!)

Of course the Camelot dance sequence is still there, but much bigger! …And Camelot is basically Vegas. Best use of coconuts: Arthur joins a row of tap-dancing knights, but instead of dancing, he just sticks out a foot and Patsy does the taps! Clever.

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Categories: life in the big city, movies, theater
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Well, one reason.

Because “some contemporary view of how we treat each other” is clearly a bad thing when the contemporary view actually offers tolerance and acceptance of different lifestyles.

And to demonstrate the fluidity of contemporary views, he offers us Religion? Which stands as a king in the hall of the most divisive, most often re-interpreted concepts in human history.

Huckabee, keep your narrow-minded mits off the Constitution.

Categories: in the news
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Things I thought about doing this evening, but didn’t:
-Doing laundry.
-Cooking something new for dinner to provide a break from the leftovers from last weekend. (Don’t get me wrong, I adore leftovers and plan for them. But variety ain’t a bad thing either…)
-Napping.
-Finishing The Grand Tour by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. Sequel to a book subtitled The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, so you see where the attraction is. At least in part — Wrede is singlehandedly responsible for some of my best-loved (and most often lent out) books in middle and high school (like these and this and this one and its sequel and even this one, which I borrowed from Elf and later found a used bookstore copy).
-Finishing two letters (Only managed one.)

Events I’ve planned to blog about in the last month, but didn’t:
-The writer’s strike.
-The rally in Harvard Square for the writers’ strike, which I didn’t take time off work to go to, but my roommate did and got to meet Joss Whedon. Actually, I did too, briefly, because he was signing stuff at a little sci-fi bookstore after the rally and was still there when I got off work. It was pretty awesome.
-The Golden Compass and the brouhaha that the Christian right managed to create around it. I highly recommend the book, by the way, very highly. The movie is a pleasant enough way to spend a couple of hours but is not an acceptable substitute.
-Mitt Romney’s speech about why his religion shouldn’t matter to his presidential campaign. I didn’t see the speech, I just read about it and meant to read a transcript, but haven’t. If he continues to look like a contender, I’ll get around to it eventually. He worries me, and I can’t put my finger on why, except to be flip and say that he looks like the evil Mayor from season 3 of Buffy. (Source. Not my cleverness; though I think the whole list is hilarious.)
-Alex and the Ironic Gentleman by Adrienne Kress. A fun and funny YA adventure — and its author was one of three who were fantastically nice about letting me ask them questions for a paper I was writing on author blogs. Definitely another recommended read.

Enjoyable things that happened while I was home for Christmas:
-Two lovely Christmas dinners in one day.
-Going ice skating.
-Laughing at my brothers’ oddly decorated gingerbread cookies (One that stands out is a bell that B. frosted in white and spelled out “E.A. Poe” on the top in little chocolate sprinkles. (”Hear the sledges with the bells, silver bells, silver bells, what a world of merriment their melody foretells…” Yes, the poem gets darker; it is Poe.))
-Getting to hang out with Liz before her move and see Elf in the new digs.
-Teasing Mom for calling it a “white Christmas” when it hailed on Christmas morning.
-Beating my brothers at ping pong. Sometimes.
-Getting to show off my beautiful ring…did I mention that we got engaged?

Categories: books, grad school, home, in the news, life in the big city, movies
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