Sunday, December 25, 2011

The True Story of The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyala, a Musical Christmas Play for Children (Monday, December 01, 2003)

When I was a youth in St. Peter's School, we had a number of memorable Christmas pageants. For example, when I was in seventh grade, we performed a charming musical entitled The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola which was based on the book of a similar name and implied authorship.

For this pageant in the winter of 1991, we were fortunate to have the composer on hand to direct and choreograph. His partner who had written the libretto was hospitalized with a case of motorcycle accident at the time, which sometimes caused our director stress. They were both in their mid twenties, and had written the play shortly before. It's hard to say whether the play was intended for children initially, but I'd say it came off well. Some minor alterations were made to the text; for example, in the song "Oh, What A Night," which is the story of the birth of Jesus, as related by a young boy who worked at the inn in Bethlehem where said Jesus was born. Specifically, a verse detailing his thoughts on witnessing the Virgin Mary's water breaking as she entered labor was excised.

To be frank, there were a lot of fairly "blood and thunder" tunes and themes throughout the play - after all, we were Catholics, and Catholicism is not a "fucking-around" kind of religion. I don't wish to offend any Protestant readers, but your religions are kind of half-assed and you guys nancy around when you could be really hardcore and screwed-up. Anyway, like I said, we were Catholics, so the play was completely terrifying.

One song that stands out as an example of "raw terror" on the wacky Catholic model is the great "Souls In Hell." To quote its lyrics briefly, "Down a fearsome, flaming chasm / Walls of roasting ectoplasm / Pain and torment racked me as a / Mighty blast impelled each spasm. ... A group of spirits in their misery / Wishing they could change their history / Taunting those who would soon join them / Reeling others in their mystery. ... [refrain] Souls in hell, I hear them crying / Out to me, in my bed lying / Please dear God, don't leave me frying / At the hour of my dying." Although this may not immediately seem like the most festive of holiday songs, we still had a lot of fun bellowing out the chorus, and it was generally a very fast, upbeat number. (Note that I use "upbeat" in a strictly musical sense.) The song does give you a good idea of the kind of thoughts that spun through Saint Ignatius' head, and the part about not being able to sleep because of the constant wailing of damned souls will be familiar to any Catholic.

I explained that this play was performed by children aged 5 to 13, right?

Anyway, the plot of the play, as I recall it, ran about thusly: a young woman, troubled in her life, goes to a retreat, where the spiritual exercises mentioned in the title and developed by Loyola are practiced. It opens with a tune including the groovy lyrics "Prayerful participation / Builds a strong spiritual nation / Meditation, medication / Physic for our restoration" and many others in a similar vein. The choreography accompanying this involved a lot of vigorous calisthenics, to provide a physical symbol of the kind of work that goes into exercising the soul. The song also explains the importance of bending yourself to God's will as soon as possible.

So, anyway, the girl arrives, and is given an overview of the camp. Then, to her surprise, she finds that her boyfriend has followed her to the retreat. She's sort of like, "Wow, man. I kind of wanted to get away from you for a little while, but this is also very sweet of you. But a question that we must resolve by the end of this narrative is whether you can come to understand my commitment to my God." And he's all like, "Whoa, these spiritual exercises are intriguing but really, really weird."

Then there are a few musical numbers explaining some of the themes explored by Loyola in his book, including the aforementioned "Souls In Hell" and "Oh What A Night." We also hear from some of the counselors about what brought them to serve in God's laic ministry at the camp. One of their songs opens "My eyes see the reds sing the blues all the time ... [a bunch of stuff I can't remember because I was not a huge pothead when I was eleven years old and the song did not totally make sense to me even though I liked it] ... but nothing sticks in my head ... [more lacunae in my memory - boy, I'm just like the guy in the song vis-a-vis things not sticking in my head] ... If feeling so, so good is a crime / Then arrest me till I am dead." Like I said, a lot of groovy stuff in this play.

Another song details the Fall, that is to say, Adam and Eve's unfortunate missteps in the Garden of Eden in regards to fruit. More progress is made in the young couple's relationship, although I forget what exactly happened at the end. It was good news, no matter what; they had both gotten stronger souls. The big closing number dealt with the Assumption, the Virgin Mary's ascension into Heaven, where she currently works administrating the saints. That's a very slow ballad, concerning the overwhelming love she feels for humanity as she surveys them from above. The song implies that Mary's Assumption involved her literally traveling vertically up from the surface of the Earth. That may sound odd to you - like, you might ask, "Don't most modern Christians, with the exception of some stray Fundamentalists, take ideas like Heaven's location being somewhere several dozens of miles above Earth as being symbolic?" The answer is no. Over the course of my Catholic grade school education, I had the luxury of being taught by a good many nuns, who were all quite old and insane, and they taught us a lot of important truths, like "Heaven is up there," "Let the Communion host dissolve on your tongue; if you bite it, Jesus will start bleeding in your mouth," and "You need to use 'Magenta' every time you color because it's my favorite color."


Thursday, December 22, 2011

A True Story

Q: Hello, Jack. I hope you're well. Anyway, could you please tell me the NOT AT ALL COMICAL-SOUNDING names of the co-chairs of the "Friends of the High Line"'s fourth annual summer benefit?

A: Sure, they're Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, Diane von Furstenberg, and Edward Norton.

Q: [titter, titter, guffaw] Oh, really, how normal. Wait, who are the Steering Committee Co-Chairs?

A: That would be Alexandre von Furstenberg and Bronson van Wyck.

Gina Gershon Erotic Fan Fiction

I think there are more in this series?

Erotic Celebrity Gina Gershon had taken the day off of work to visit the Suction Machine Factory. "This particular suction machine is one of our latest models," explained the professor. "It offers unparalleled suction for energy consumption, and operates as softly as a purring kitten."

"Wow, how remarkable! Its styling reminds me of a vintage Honda Metropolitan."

"Yes, we don't do things by halves here at the Suction Machine Factory. Would you care to see it in operation?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Take any common household item and apply to the suction apparatus... Oh..." said the professor, seeing Gershon twist out of her panties. "Yes, your womanly parts will do fine."

Gina Gershon sat herself upon the machine, and immediately felt it go to work upon her. And go to work upon her it did, providing exactly the kind of uniform, steady suction about the entirety of her vulva that women crave. "Oh, gosh!" she said.

The professor checked the gauges, and noted with pleasure that the machine was operating quite smoothly. "Yes, although this model is intended for industrial applications, we've found that this sort of exaptation happens pretty regularly."

"My, oh, my! I've turned your suction machine into a fuck-tion machine!" said Gina Gershon, who was a bit too distracted by the workings of the device about her erotic ingress to converse very effectively.

"You may feel free to female ejaculate as much as you would like... the machine is well proofed against it."

"Is there a chance that the suction will cause my vagina to invert itself?"

"The chance of that happening is well under five percent, and it only very exceptionally happens to women who are not, by nature, prone to vaginal inversion. Although we do have another machine that will cause that quite reliably, if you are interested. Once the vagina is inverted, it is a relatively simple matter to give it the facility to reach a firmness with which to achieve penetration."

"Oh, not today, but remind me to grab your business card before I leave!"

And he did, and she did.

***

Kerry and Edwards fucked each other vigorously in the butts.

***

Gina Gershon was enjoying a chiken putanesca salad at a local restaurant entitled Hardwick's, the name of which she had, regrettably, misread. Nonetheless, her salad was quite good. Her labia were still swollen from the morning's exercises, and blood-red. Although they were depending considerably farther than usual, and very thick, they were still nowhere near so swollen as her old boarding school chum Ming Na's would get after an hour or so of the Warmed Glass Method. She chuckled at the memory of that enormous inner tube protruding from Ming Na's pelvis. "Oh, those were salad days," she said.

Quite suddenly, Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas eroticed her. "All right!" said Gina Gershon.

TO BE CONTINUED!