The Moose in the Closet: Ebay II, ER Goodness, Surfers and My God: Father Fox

So, after bringing in an astounding 70 bucks from my first wave of comic sales I continue to unload the comics I feel I’ll never read again. This time around I have 102 Spider-Man comics, 56 Ghost Rider related comics and a lot of 88 and 90 random Marvel comics up for sale. And with each passing week I have more and more room at my place…

I rolled this out a couple of weeks ago and it’s finally coming together, somewhat. Nathan Shumate posted a review of the first three issues of Elk’s Run on his blog in an attempt to convince you to order the Bumper Edition being offered through Speakeasy (order #AUG053101). I supposedly have nine more unbiased reviews coming and if the people that agreed to take part in this fuck me, they’ll forever be on my shit-list. Promise.

And finally, I started reading Essential Silver Surfer Volume 1 yesterday. I tried reading this book before and couldn’t get beyond the first couple of pages. At the insistence of a friend, I decided to give it another shot and holy fuck damn it’s good. I don’t think I got it the first time around – it’s really Stan Lee doing his version of Shakespeare and completely rocking it. Good stuff.

Story time…

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My parents raised me as a Catholic. I went through all of the sacraments: baptism, communion, confirmation and something like eight years of Religious Instruction, which was actually held on a Wednesday at my church unlike the usual Sunday School. All the Catholic kids had permission to leave school early on Wednesdays, walk as a group down to Sacred Heart’s/Saint Stephen’s Church so that we can spend an hour with a nun (or, on occasion, a semi-foxy chick) and learn about letting Jesus into our lives.

Our Religious Instruction program was called CCD and I have no idea what that stands for. Whatever you call it, I hated it (not religion or God, mind you, just CCD). But I went through with it, I even became an alter boy in the second grade, stuck with it until the sixth.

But before CCD and the communions and all of the other stuff, there was Father Fox’s church down in Red Hook. This was the Episcopalian (or Catholic Light, if you will) church that my father’s family went to (although my father only went for baptisms, holidays – stuff like that). When I was young and would stay over my Grandma’s on a Saturday night, me and my cousins would go to church with them and attend their Sunday School the following morning.

Catholic Light rocks. Sunday School consisted of cookies, music and coloring pictures of Jesus dying on the cross. And the people that ran it where basically glorified babysitters. There were two groups, the older kids that were actually going through the sacramental motions and us younger kids that they just didn’t want in the church crying and fussing.

The coloring was the best – they had this humongous tub of crayons. The tub must have contained every Crayola (and generic Crayola, which were always funnier) crayon that ever existed since the turn of the century. Just really weird colors that you don’t see today like “Prussian Blue” or “Pinko Red”. The obscure colors allowed us to create pictures of a “Flesh” colored Jesus pulling “Gay Green” fishes out of a basket to feed the masses.

When we weren’t coloring we were singing, as I remember it. Someone would get on the piano and we’d all belt out a range of songs – from “Old McDonald” to “Jesus Loves the Little Children”. Sometimes we’d watch a “Christian friendly” movie which basically meant no minorities were in it and all of the violence was against animals or people in black robes.

We were encouraged to bring our own toys – Luis and I would always bring our G.I.Joes and if the sing-a-long didn’t appeal to us we’d wage war on the church’s toys. Snake-eyes going head-to-head against Moses, Duke putting the hurting on Peter the Apostle. They had an entire set of these crudely crafted biblical figurines. I find it kind of weird, now. I mean, what kid would pick them up and reenact the saga of Jacob and Esau? Most kids our age would have Jacob cheating Esau for their father’s blessing and then in a surprise twist have Optimus Prime run them both over and claim Jerusalem in the name of “Kick Ass” along with Secretary of Israel Hulk Hogan and head ninja Storm Shadow.

But we were encouraged to play however we wanted to – the primary goal, as I’ve said, is to not have us disrupting the church services. And, if doing so meant Lady Jay was going to get it on with David, King of the Jews and somebody was going to use “Dirty Sanchez Brown” to put mustaches on every character in the Jesus coloring book it’s all worth it as long as we’re not picking our noses during a hymn.

According to Father Fox’s church, Jesus Loved the Little Children as long as they kept their asses in the basement and defiled graven images.

CCD – nothing like Father Fox’s Sunday school. But, we have a whole week ahead of us to get into that.

Labels: mitc

Ebay II, ER Goodness, Surfers and My God: Father Fox

Sunday, August 14, 2005

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