#Best of my blog

Inside the gloomy sepulchre, sometime around unto the third hour on Easter Sunday, Jesus squinted at his day planner — which didn’t even say “Easter Sunday,” heads were gonna roll over that little slip-up — and sighed with frustration.
Three days in this stupid cave, absolutely splitting headache, stigmata throbbing like the dickens, the Stone Angel’s late again — and not even an out-of-date copy of National Geographic or Puzzler to relieve the tedium.
Honestly, he thought, this was so typical of good old Galilee-with-a-G, the Backwater-with-a-B! Right? You were expecting maybe entertainment? Fat chance. You had one option—Mary Magdalene, that was it, dude. And after your first five visits, even she was like, “All right, bubbaleh, time we switched things up. Just close your eyes and, umm, I dunno — think of Bathsheba!”
Why had he let himself get sucked into this whole incarnation trip? “You’re gonna love being human!” they’d insisted at Word Made Flesh, the travel agency of record for the heavenly in-crowd.
“On Earth, it’s all about the binary, dude. You’ll be a “man”, like, male human, but don’t worry, you’ll still be God. But not God. More than God. You’ll also, and hear me out with this one, occasionally be an annoying dove that appears with a circle of gold rays around its head. That’s — you see — hmm. You know, don’t try and figure it out,” Archangel Michael reassured him.
“And genitals!” he continued. “This is gonna sound weird, but they’re bits of your body that most of the time just dangle between your legs, but listen to this: they get bigger when you’re happy! In fact, they’re so sensitive, we petitioned to make them retractable, but no cigar, so instead, we just made using them at all a mortal sin. Of course, that was a HUGE success!
“And if you’re into the whole networking, LinkedIn-type schmozzle, you’ll meet all sorts of interesting and influential people like…. let’s see, there’s Lucifer, John the Baptist, Pontius Pilate, you name it, talk about lovable eccentrics! Great nosh, you heard of the Mediterranean diet, that’s all there is, and sunshine day after day after day after… Me, I prefer a nice infinity pool and air-conditioning on “high”, to each his own, right? So, how’s about it? Sign here, not valid with any other offer.”
Jesus, quite eager by now, signed on the dotted line, at which point Archangel Michael added breathlessly, “Oh, by the way, you read the small print? No?
“OK, couple things: You’re going to be an influencer, develop a following, get popular for a bit, then the Romans and the Jewish High Priests decide you’re a troublemaker, at which point things go south a little, so, you’ll be an outcast, get betrayed by Judas, that’s one of your followers, at Passover — I know, absolute worst timing ever but what can you do?
“Let’s see, oh, yeah, arrested as a political prisoner, humiliated, whipped and crucified, then rise from the dead and end up on TV as some chick named Tammy Faye Bakker, which involves a lot of mascara running down your face. I think that’s everything. OK? By-eee!”
And he was gone with that grating little twang of sound like a chord played on a Wurlitzer organ and the sprinkling of angel dust that always accompanied his arrivals and departures.
Bait and switch. That’s what this whole earthly stint amounted to. Restless and bored, Jesus flipped ahead to see what was on his plate in the coming week. With all the Friday kerfuffle he’d endured—
—hangin’ with the two low-lifes on either side for a conversation he frankly would have passed on given the choice, and an especially messy deposition, his earthly mom, Ave Maria, all weepy and tragic for the media but still somehow managing to hold back her sobs long enough to squeeze in a “Pietà” photo-op, how many times did he roll off her lap? —
—he’d forgotten that Bed, Bath & Beyond was holding a major going-out-of-business sale starting tomorrow.
But would he have time to step out of his tomb, unwind the shroud, pick the cloves and coriander seeds out of his split ends and find the right escalator? And would slow cookers still be on special?
Would he be able to schedule a well-deserved chillaxing chamomile foam bath (and maybe Down-Low John The Beloved Boychik would be free for one of his famous rub-downs. The first time had been a revelation—!)
He still had to deal with manifesting as the Holy Ghost all over the map and scaring the pants off his earthly bros — (reminder: determine location of Emmaus, he scribbled, or just Google it )— and the final straw? Given the last-second choice of carry the cross? carry the sunscreen? he’d figured it came down to optics.
Honestly. This whole weekend was just turning into a black hole of stress, stress, stress.
His stomach was growling with hunger. “Verily, “ Jesus muttered, “I sayeth unto Zion: When, as is foretold in the scriptures, it shall come to pass that I ascend to the many-roomed mansion of my heavenly father, should a serving man offereth unto me even one more plate of stale freakin’ hummus — t’would be better had that man never been born…”
Hi there. I know that I missed Monday yet again, but at least give me credit that I’m hitting some high spots. I mean I’m early, this time. Or maybe late. Anyway. Why this petty insistence on that hobgoblin of small minds, consistency? I can only think you must be new. My regular readers come here for something they can’t get anywhere else: straight dudes ribbed and served with their morning coffee at unpredictable intervals.
Today’s #MondayManCrush is a hymn to Him that strays beyond the boundaries into blasphemy, but seriously? Jesus turned water into wine, which shows more than a little mischievousness. To quote him directly:
“To women caught in adultery, I say: No way you should get stoned.
A glass of Manischewitz, maybe.”
The story goes that later that same day he bumped into Mary Magdalene who, hungry for something a little exotic, had ordered some take-out from “Auntie Boo-Boo’s Yummy Gentile Snack Cart.” Jesus raised an eyebrow at her choice, and was about to reprimand her, but she cut him short.
“Look,” she said, “I know it’s not kosher. But seriously, I’m a whore. They’re gonna stone me anyway, sooner or later. So fuck it, I might as well have the BLT!”
So now I’m supposed to elaborate what makes Jesus so tantalizing and appealing, even though he’s a straight dude. That is, after all, the whole point of Monday Man Crush: making straight dudes uncomfortable but hopefully in such a way that they have to laugh it off and not publicly come out all homophobic.
Since Jesus never said anything about gay dudes, and, significantly, surrounded himself with hunky guy-acolytes, it suggests he was maybe a bit shifty-slidey about the whole man-to-man love situation. Stranger things have happened.
On a different note, he also said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” which taken at face value is straightforward. But taken another way by Catholic priests, it’s problematic, seeing as the dudes in the dog collars, after those years of seminary deprivation — and accidentally, I’m sure — misread that a little too much to their advantage.
What a shanda for the goyim, right? With the slight problem that Jesus isn’t perceived as a Jew, and wasn’t even a Christian yet because, Easter. It took a few generations for the goyim, that’s me, to come up with that Hail Mary/How’s It Hangin’ Alice? boondoggle.
Anyway, Jesus — who it turns out is white, by the way; sorry, guys, but photos don’t lie — dresses in super-cool sixties hippie clothes, has lush, curly long hair that smells like Old Spice body wash and fairly screams “I never finished my BA in Sociology!”; appears in at least two Broadway musicals; and is not unfamiliar with how sensual a pair of stigmata-hobbled feet can look when encased in a pair of those handmade sandals they used to have at PayLess — the ones with the thin straps that wrap around the ankle and which easily last a couple of months if you’re carried everywhere in a sedan chair.
If you need further proof of JC’s savoir-faire under pressure, check out that runway spectacle of the Grand Entrance into Jerusalem.
Minerva! This guy knows his PR backwards. No falling down on the catwalk for this canny martyr to fashion — He rides ass like a pro! Jesus, I kiss your dusty Nazarene toes. Ditch that Magdalene bitch and make with the switch, bubbaleh!
And speaking of switches: crucified, mocked or whipped under pressure and sprayed from a can, our Bro from the Great Beyond knows that, like an adult movie starlet wearing drop earrings from Birk’s, lucite-soled stiletto’s, and nothing but air in between, it’s the come-hither drape of a loincloth and what’s left to the imagination that sets a body lusting for the falafel that can never be yours.
Yet, somehow, I don’t feel awful about the falafel. Hit me with another Vinegar-On-the-Rocks-of-Golgotha, garçon!
Here’s how I like to think of it: Jesus is just like you and me, in other words, human, but really more like the Royal Family: human but undoubtedly better than human.
To be more specific, there’s really no comparison between a Meghan Markle and anyone else’s dusky colored but not really more than a California tan trophy bride. Yours is a real housewife, so, just human; Prince Harry’s is bestowed by God, whose wisdom cannot be questioned, so better than human.
That’s why we love Meghan and want to shelter her from hurt. It wasn’t her choice to be bestowed by God! Let up on the pressure, world!
And, just like Jesus, if you love her enough — Meghan will deliver the goods.
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