july 13 2000
on one of those freakishly pleasant july nights that new york seems to enjoy every papal administration, pj and i grabbed dinner and went over to tompkins square park to sit on a bench and eat and listen to the free gospel concert that was apparently happening (our warning was limited to walking into the park and saying "hey! they sangin' over there!"). love gospel, hate proselytizing. and sure enough, about 15 minutes into my couscous and snow peas, up walks this skinny nervous looking kid who silently hands us evangelical pamphlets. immobility poses a problem in such a scenario; while i generally don't hesitate to blow by those handing things out (or, come to think of it, those in need) on the street, i wasn't really feeling the prospect of getting up with my food and moving just to avoid timmy scriptureson and the lamb's-blood '99 tour.
before we go on, i want to make perfectly clear that i have nothing but respect for religion and/or spirituality--worship small pebbles arranged into the shape of bobcat goldthwaite if that's what brings you fulfillment. what i don't have much respect for is active recruiting. belief and faith is a personal thing, and i find unsolicited conversion efforts akin to unsolicited prostate exams. that being said, i begrudingly took timmy's pamphlet (the cover of which featured bugs bunny and the caption "what's up god?", ostensibly in an effort to get me to ignore my instinctual misgivings and read the entire thing hungrily in pursuit of loony-toon exploits. by the time i realize tex avery has nothing to do with it, it's too late to avoid the beatific purity that floods my body. this, mind you, is a hypothetical situation) and scanned it with what i thought was obvious and cursory annoyance. soul blah blah blah salvation blah blah eternal hellfire blah blah busty amateurs blah blah saved. standard save-the-heathen material.
meanwhile, timmy was standing at that annoying distance that treads the line between proximity and periphery; he then asked us "so what do you guys think about that?" "well," i said, "i'm jewish." this seemed to stop him. "oh," he said. "uh, right on, right on." my judaism has come in handy in similar situations more than once in my life, and i don't mind saying that it's a nice little perk. i mean, on top of the whole chosen-people-plus-innate-wit-and-intelligence-despite-hereditary-shortness thing. timmy realized he didn't want to fuck with the blood of abraham, so he turned his attention on pj. if there's anyone i want to have nearby when a religious debate goes down, it's pj. lapsed catholic, insanely well-versed in the history of christian theology, philosophy major, going to the university of chicago for his doctorate in said discipline, fiercely bright and more than a bit iconoclastic where matters of dogma are concerned. "what about you?" asked timmy. go go go go i whispered internally. "oh, i'm a lapsed catholic," said pj.
unfortunately, this proved to be like telling a telemarketer that no, you weren't busy and no, he hadn't reached you in the middle of dinner. you could actually see timmy's eyes flick from left to right as he visualized his convert-a-godless-savage manual from the training seminars. for the next twenty minutes, he regaled us with his own path to redemption. i'm trying to be nice, but timmy wasn't the brightest flower in the lei. and pj was infuriatingly nice, and accommodating, and let timmy ask him the most inane and patronizing questions about his own morality and reasons for not turning his life to jesus, all the while hopelessly fumbling john 3:16 (timmy, not pj). i'm jewish, and i know john 3:16. john 3:16 is just one of those things. finally and thankfully, pj came up with a stunner of a line about his own intellectual dislike for god--not something i would actually say, but it seemed to do the trick, because timmy said his goodbyes pretty hastily after that.
then we got ice cream and went up to my roof and stared at the skyline. holy crap, it's a gorgeous city.
to recap: timmy scriptureson. eternal hellfire blah blah busty amateurs. thank you.
now go to feed and see what i have to say!
p.
and yo. my full-on venture kneejerk.net is up and running, though not nearly full. go and getcha read on. for me.
props to darkcounter.com
and sitemeter