Wait Till Bigus Dickus Hears of This

Continuing his quest to -- depending how you look at it -- keep alive the flame of Monty Python / degrade the memory of everything beautiful and subversive about Monty Python by turning it into a fucking musical, Eric Idle will unleash "Not the Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy)" tomorrow night at the Hollywood Bowl. It's billed as a concert oratorio combining Handel's "Messiah" and the best bits from Monty Python's Life of Brian -- arguably one of the greatest movies about religion ever made, and certainly the funniest.

I have some serious reservations about whether one of the world's few perfect films truly needs to be reimagined as a concert piece, which are only slightly offset by the moderate self-loathing I feel for wanting to attend anyway. (For what it's worth, a recent Washington Post review of the D.C. performance was positively glowing, but then again this is from the same paper that called The Dark Knight "a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war.")



WHERE: The Hollywood Bowl
WHEN: This Friday, August 1st at 8:30pm
COST: $10 - $110, depending upon seating / wallet size
MORE INFO: Hollywood Bowl Website

Holy Texting, Batman!!

World Youth Day 2008 starts up in 2 days!

This is a big annual event where the Catholic church tries really hard to rally the youth of the world... This year WYD has gone uber-hip!

Announcing...


DAILY TEXT MESSAGES FROM THE POPE!
YEA!!!

(if you don't believe me you can read the press release here)

Other uber-hip stuff includes the following declaration about sex... "If there is one word that sums up the Church's attitude to sex it would be WOW! 'cause sex really is awesome!" ... and ... "Saved Sex = Awesome Sex!"

In the words of the immortal Saint Robin...

Aliens, Monasteries, and a Russian Tortoise of spiritual significance...

It turns out that we are all really aliens... from another galaxy... sent here to help humanity... If we can channel our true self, then maybe we will ascend into the next life... and... in a thousand years we will all be wearing triangle necklaces... or something like that...

At least that's the story according to the "Morningland Urban Monastery", as passed down to them (through their leader) from a vision of a giant Tortoise named Thinis back in the 1980s.



Well...
This isn't that same tortoise, but Thinis II suddenly dissappeared from the "monastery" recently. He holds some mystic place of spiritual significance for the group as a representative of their founder's vision.

So....
If you've seen a Russian Tortoise trekking around LA somewhere...
You might want to let them know... they're worried...

If you live in Long Beach you've probably seen these signs up all over the place!


Check out this past week's District magazine (or read it online here) for more about Thinis II and the Morninglanders... and for an alternative point of view, check out Ex-Morninglanders.com.