Oh, the intoxicating euphoria of success.� Last month, after my first effort at organizing my thoughts into a column/article/essay/treatise/manifesto/
thesis/screenplay/shopping list, I was absolutely swamped with a veritable tidal wave of emails jamming my inbox.� Most of them were from disgruntled ebay customers wanting to know why their brand new, hand-stitched, Prada beanies had strange holes and smelled like tea.� The other one suggested that I used far too many forward slashes and I should really not bother with the whole thing.�

Well, I must admit that I briefly considering quitting, but then I said to myself, “I’m not a quitter.� I’ll show them”.� So here I am.� I’ve even taken up smoking again.�

And this time I’ve decided that I will talk about Paul.� No, not the guy two doors down who plays distorted electric guitar at 3am and smokes just a bit too much pot.� I’m talking about the Paul who founded the early Christian church and wrote a fair chunk of the New Testament.� That Paul.�

First, some background.� Born Saul of Tarsus to parents Peter and Mary, he was relentlessly bullied in school, due in part to his strange middle name (of), but mainly his parents’ habit of taking him out of school for long periods of time and the three of them touring the Roman empire as a folk music act called Peter Saul and Mary.� Critics were harsh and compared them to the Partridge Family.�

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I love a good, old fashioned barney. That’s what King David said just before he led the Israelites into the city of Troy inside a giant wooden horse and was subsequently beheaded by Richard the Lionheart. (I’m a bit sketchy on the details but I think that’s the gist of what happened, although, who knows, I was sick the day they did history). And it is with those words of battle ringing in my ears that I embark on this, my historic first foray into what I hope will become a quad-weekly (every four weeks) essay exploring the murkier corners of Christendom. If all goes well, I may consider making it a monthly thing.

And what better way to cut this baby’s cord - to use an inappropriate metaphor - than to let rip with a vicious diatribe against one of the most subversive, manipulative and downright evil films that the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, a legal injunction prevents me from doing so, so instead I will talk about The Da Vinci Code. The talking car movie will get its comeuppance, though, make no mistake.

The Da Vinci Code has been a cinematic phenomenon, breaking box office records worldwide and making millions of dollars for its producers through ticket sales, advertising revenue and promotional tie-ins such as McDonalds happy meals and Tom Hanks action figures. The one that spews forth quotes from the movie, such as, “Gimme a break, not another stupid anagram” and “Run, Robert Langdon, run!” is admittedly quite ingenious. The movie’s success has been so unprecedented that apparently a novel has even been released of the same name. Read the rest of this entry »