Illustration by Bob Aul San Juan Capistranans will get a surprise in their mailboxes this holiday season. Tucked between residents' gas bills and the Ed McMahon “You may have already won $10 million!” magazine solicitation will be a free video on the life of Jesus. “But what if I don't want a free video on the life of Jesus?” you may be asking. Too bad. You're getting one. Now shut up and go turn it on, heathen! Thanks to San Bernardino-based Campus Crusade for Christ's Jesus Video Project, San Juan—that's St. John in English—is among 10 cities nationwide where households are being sent 1.1 million, unsolicited copies of the 83-minute video. Previous mailings have led to outrage in some communities, including Florida's Palm Beach County, where many of the mostly Jewish residents sent back the videos that were mailed between Passover and Easter. Jeeeeeezuzzz Christ! Put these same people in voting booths, and they can't punch out chads or distinguish between Al Gore or Pat Buchanan, but send them freakin' Christ flicks and they can find repacking material, figure out the return address and find enough stamps for return postage. And remember to put it back in the mailbox? Incredible.
SPEAKING OF CHRISTIAN PUKES Can you explain something to us: How come the past week's electricity-crisis alerts caused holiday lights to be turned off at Sea World, Knott's Berry Farm and the state capital (five minutes after Governor Gray Davis turned them on for the official tree-lighting ceremony), but what must be a zillion white lights at the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) headquarters in Costa Mesa shine on? Jeeeeeezuzzz Christ! That display facing the 405 freeway is so bright it has to be a traffic hazard—for the Space Shuttle! Even God himself, blinded by the spectacle, has called down and yelled, “Medamn it, would you dim those medamn lights already?” Of course, when some old lady freezes to death after sending her last dime to TBN instead of paying her sky-high utility bills, it'll all be worth it: her soul will be saved. Praise Jesus!
AND ANOTHER THING If we can't find enough water in a particular area, we don't build there. Then why the hell, amid this energy crisis, are new homes and businesses going up in California like there's no tomorrow? Shouldn't we impose at least a temporary development moratorium until someone figures out how to guarantee power to existing customers? A spokesman for the entity that controls 75 percent of the state power grid unwittingly made the case himself: “You can't keep adding about a half a million people to the state every year, with all the lights, heaters, air conditioning, and computer warehouses that go along with that, not build any power plants, and not expect a problem.” Then stop adding about half a million people to the state every year. Don't build it, and they won't come.
LIARS' CLUB Disgraced President Bill Clinton, in a Rolling Stone interview to be published Dec. 28, praises disgraced President Richard Nixon. Bubba said he treasured a “lucid, eloquent” letter Dick wrote him from Russia a month before his death. During a White House visit, Clinton said, “He told me he identified with me because he thought the press had been too hard on me in '92 and that I had refused to die, and he liked that. He said a lot of life was just hanging on. We had a good talk about that.” He added that Nixon could have been “a great president if he had been more trusting of the American people.” Replace the words “more trusting of” with “less repulsive to,” and you could make the same case for Clinton.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.