Atlanta Vampire Alliance [AVA]

[zero]

Dear Anne Rice,

If you're Kibozing the Web and you somehow get to seeing this, this post is for you. I had a dream that you hired me to fix your computer. I guess it was broken, but you never got round to explaining the problem. In the dream, I was charging my regular hourly rate, but upon waking I realized that I'd happily do it for free, I just can't afford a plane ticket out to La Jolla.

Also, there is a very pleasant coffee shop in that neighbourhood whose rear wall overlooks the beach. It's worth checking out.

If your computer is ever broken, email me and we'll talk. Maybe you could ship it?


Sincerely, Z

P.S. Alternatively, if you could show up in another dream and tell me what the problem with the computer is, I could just tell you how to fix it on this forum or something. Remember, I'm on the East Coast of the US, so I'm three hours ahead of you. Please dream accordingly. Thanks!

[Eclecta]

Dear Anne Rice,

Christ our Lord sucks. It was almost good enough to be ok.. but somehow feel just below the line between ok and suck.

Anyway, how's Lestat these days? I hope he is up to no good, so he'll have a good story to tell us someday.

-E

PS if you ever need your computer fixed... let Z know.
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"Love is the law, love under will."

[zero]

Yes, bring Lestat back now, please. If Jesus returned to Earth, I think he'd dig the hell out of "The Vampire Lestat." No pun intended.

Actually, I'm glad she wrote Christ Our Lord for one reason; Mel Effing Gibson. I know that she has said that she actually LIKED "Passion of the Christ," and thinks of her work as complementing it, but the fact is it's at the polar opposite end of the religious fiction spectrum.

Gibson wrote a freaking Passion Play. This is a form of entertainment invented during the Middle Ages SPECIFICALLY to incite anti-Jewish sentiment. That's why the Passion Play exists. To get everyone in a Jew-killing mood. I heard one university professor call it "a pornography of violence." It's self-indulgent, uninterested in any mystery God may offer and more concerned with which battle lines we can draw amongst one another.

"Christ Our Lord" is like an antidote to Gibson's hysteria. It's thoughtful, in its proper Jewish context, and doesn't incite anyone to anything, except a little nerdy contemplation. It does what she set out to make it do, which is humanize the Jesus myth. It's successful to the point at which a Passion Play might actually solidify the humanistic message that Christianity is capable of, rather than provide an excuse to kill all the guys who don't believe like you.

Furthermore, it is an antidote to ALL of the literature of intolerance that's flooding the Christian market these days. From Prayer of Jabez to Left Behind, the message is always, "we're better than you." Rice's Jesus, by contrast, is just like you.

If a Christian can read a book in this day and age that doesn't pit him against his fellow man, if when he's done with the book he doesn't have a brand-ass new excuse to go beat up on or look down on his neighbour, then I say it should be pushed on every street corner, in every city, FOREVER.

Having said that, yeah it was boring. So's the Bible! I don't feel like reading either, ever again! (I read Queen of the Damned about once a year, at least. Every time I read it, I notice something else that Rice did right.) But if people are going to insist on reading the Bible, I hope they read it in the context of a human, living, and thinking Jesus, not the context of a bloody, beaten-to-a-pulp, mascot-for-our-wrath Jesus.

-z

[Eclecta]

That movie was gory.. Mel Gibson is a trip.. I bet he had no idea it would make that big of a ruckus or that much money.. but he might be smarter than he looks..
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"Love is the law, love under will."

[Andarael]

WOW & Bravo, Zero! I haven't read Christ Our Lord yet but now I think I need to. I DID see "Mel effing Gibson's" movie though and I have much the same feelings as you do about that. I won't repeat them because you said it well for us both.

Hope to see you at BA tonight!

Eternally,
Andarael

[cathmael]

I liked the Jesus Chainsaw Massacre, but the fundamentalists puking in the trashcan during the flogging scenes kinda detracted from it somewhat. I almost
didn't need the subtitles in the roman parts of the dialogue...

Best line heard "no no Timmy, jesus didn't really die like that, it was a lot cleaner, God wouldn't bleed so much...."

All I could do was stare at that woman who brought her 10 year old son to that movie.....

Yeesh

[Eclecta]

Did she cover his eyes and say, "Don't look at that!" And act like that would be enough when the kid can stiill hear enough to know whats going on? LOL.
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"Love is the law, love under will."

[zero]

heh. fricking snuff film.

Looking back, I still think I was overly mean about "Christ our Lord." I was bored because religion doesn't really send me, if you know what I mean. I thought that it was well-written, it's just that the inner life of the child Jesus doesn't really bring on all that much deep thought for me. I'm sure he must have been a very contemplative kid. So are lots of folks I know. Discovering your "share of the blessings," as Tolkien had put it, isn't really all that special, it's just something I wish all those stupid snuff-film watching, Gibson-worshipping Muggles would do, so they would stop threatening to make my world suck with their censorship and their lynchings. They get so grabby with the blessings, you know? That's the modern mainstream Christian definition of good behaviour, but it was Tolkien's definition of evil. Ironic.

So, after all the wordage, what I really mean is that I wasn't shocked or thrilled or really engaged by "Christ our Lord," because of who I am and the way I see the world. But I deeply hope some Muggles worlds were turned right on their heads!

I thought of G.K. Chesterton's "the Convert"

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

[Malhavoc's]

I remember, about a year back one of the newspapers reporting that Ann rice's husband died, or is dying, and with him so is lestat because thats who she based the character off of, however In the same source they reported that Rice's next book would be realsed through a film... I have no idea its true never seen another story like it since... Sad thing is it wasnt in a small tabloid but the actual news paper.
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Horrid Dreams, Pleasent Screams, Feed well on this Ravenous night.