Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Fezzes are cool

Bow ties are cool.
Cliffhangers are cool.
Time travel is cool.
Stone daleks - very cool.
River Song is an enigma, and they're quite cool.
Feisty redheads are cool.
Plastic centurion Rory is cool.
Marrying a plastic centurion may not be so cool.
Giving your life to save the universe is way cool.
Being brought back to life by one person's belief is even cooler.
Coming back just in time for a party is practically sub-zero.
The finale of Doctor Who season five was, therefore, very cool.
The whole season, in fact, was pretty cool.
Matt Smith's Doctor is cool. Funny in a geeky Patrick Troughtony way. And that's way cool.

Having time to rewrite this post to fit King Missile's 'Jesus Was Way Cool' is too cool for me. So you can have it as it comes.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

CSFF Blog Tour: Imaginary Jesus - Real Review!

Fellow CSFF Tourists, ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, you may wish to sit down. You are about to experience a rare and, some might say, life-changing event. Something that has happened precisely once in the history of the universe to date.

Yes, it’s true. I am about to review the featured book. During the tour.

Unfortunately the little backwater in which I live was outside the reach of review copies, but the publishers very kindly made a pdf available, which means that (a) I can review the book; and (b) I get to ask my mother-in-law for a book for Christmas whose nicely irreverent title will probably offend her. Bonus!

That nicely irreverent title – Imaginary Jesus – and the ‘not-quite-true story’ tagline were pretty much enough to sell the book to me.

And, I’m happy to say, I was not disappointed. No, hang on, scrap that. I was more than not disappointed, I was, um… well, ok, like many of my fellow bloggers this week, I had no idea what to expect. What I didn’t expect was time travel, fake Jesuses by the dozen, a theologian who was an ass (how many times do you get to say that in a serious book review?) and to laugh out loud at practically every page. I seriously cannot remember the last time I did that at a book. Especially a Christian book, but that’s beside the point.

There are too many good things about this book to mention. The flagrant disregard for the fourth wall:
That reminded me of the Frog of Hate, and I reached into my pocket and was pleased to find him still there, eight chapters later.
The aforementioned irreverence:
Maybe you have forgotten the story where Jesus was walking with his brother James to the synagogue and they were about to cross the street and Jesus grabbed James and said, “Look out for that dog poop.”
And the fact that Matt Mikalatos seems to have got hold of my sense of humour and distilled it into a novel about Jesus.

On the slight downside, some of the Imaginary Jesuses (Televangelist Jesus, Magic 8 Ball Jesus) come straight out of American culture and perhaps don’t have quite the resonance here that they do out there in the colonies, but the point is clear nonetheless.

In between the laughs and the irreverence, there is, it should be said, a serious point. I imagine that, given the ‘not-quite-true’ nature of the story, some of story Matt’s backstory must be based on author Matt’s real life experiences. And so the story takes a (slightly) more serious turn when Matt decides to ask the Secret Society of Imaginary Jesuses why his unborn child died.
Free Will Jesus snorted. “True, I allowed your baby to die. Meticulous Jesus chose for your baby to die.”
And this sort of thing – bickering between Jesuses – goes on throughout the book, all the while Matt is trying to track down the real Jesus, aided by his new friends Pete (yes, the guy from the Pearly Gates) and Daisy (a talking donkey). It’s how I imagine Robert Rankin would have written The Shack. It is totally insane, and yet… and yet… it does show us something about Jesus. The real one and all those we may have imagined as we looked for him.

I love this book. I have been touting this book in web forums for a few days. I’m stopping passers-by in the street and asking if they’ve seen Imaginary Jesus. Now I’m telling you: read this book!  

Imaginary Jesus now has the official title ‘The Book I Wish I Had Written’. There’s a trophy for that, but my publishers won’t mail it overseas.


Brandon Barr Keanan Brand Grace Bridges Beckie Burnham Valerie Comer R. L. Copple Amy Cruson CSFF Blog Tour Stacey Dale D. G. D. Davidson Jeff Draper April Erwin Andrea Graham Tori Greene Becky Jesse Cris Jesse Jason Joyner Julie Carol Keen Krystine Kercher Dawn King Leighton Rebecca LuElla Miller John W. Otte Donita K. Paul Crista Richey Chawna Schroeder Rachel Starr Thomson Fred Warren Phyllis Wheeler KM Wilsher

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

CSFF Blog Tour vs Tuesday Tunes

Now I have to say, as is fitting for the tone of this month's featured book, this Top Ten was quite fun to put together. In case you had forgotten, this week the CSFF Blog Tour is looking at Imaginary Jesus by Matt Mikalatos, so of course, I am happy to present for your, um, entertainment... the Top Ten Imaginary Jesuses:

10. Martin Harley: Chocolate Jesus
A Tom Waites song covered by a Welsh slide guitarist. You didn't even know they had those in Wales did you?

9. Scatterbrain
: Mexican Jesus
All together now: Every Top Ten needs at least seven minutes of psychadelic hallucinatory electronica...

8. Green Day:
Jesus Of Suburbia
Is it me, or do all Green Day's songs sound the same? Oh yes, there are some very naughty words in some versions of this song. Green Day, wash your moths out with soap and water!

7. Ben Mono feat Jemeni:
Jesus Was A B-Boy
I'm not sure I remember B-Boy Jesus in the book, but he sounds pretty cool!

6
. Ugly Kid Joe: Jesus Rode A Harley
Harley Jesus, on the other hand, was definitely in there!

5. Hawksley Workman
: Google Jesus
Which is not only a cool and slightly surreal name for a song, but also, by a curious coincidence, how I came across most of these songs...

4. The Levellers:
Plastic Jeezus
English folk-punk cover of an American folk song about a dashboard Jesus.

3. Johnny Cash:
Personal Jesus
This Depeche Mode song was pretty much the first thing to come to mind when I started this, but then I found this great cover....

2. Ministry:
Jesus Built My Hotrod
Because nobody with a good car needs to be justified.

1. King Missile:
Jesus was Way cool
This is a fun little song, some of the lyrics are great, but it's here because it sums up the same sort of distorted image of Jesus that Imaginary Jesus is all about.

NB: All songs in this Top Ten are about imaginary Jesuses, and their lyrics do not reflect the theological position of this blog, the CSFF Blog Tour, or indeed anyone else.

Here's your Spotify playlist: Imaginary Jesus Top Ten. If you're not Spotified, have a look through these blogs as you wonder what musical gems you may be missing:

Brandon Barr Keanan Brand Grace Bridges Beckie Burnham Valerie Comer R. L. Copple Amy Cruson CSFF Blog Tour Stacey Dale D. G. D. Davidson Jeff Draper
April Erwin Andrea Graham Tori Greene Becky Jesse Cris Jesse Jason Joyner Julie Carol Keen Krystine Kercher Dawn King Leighton Rebecca LuElla Miller John W. Otte Donita K. Paul Crista Richey Chawna Schroeder Rachel Starr Thomson Fred Warren Phyllis Wheeler KM Wilsher

Monday, June 21, 2010

CSFF Blog Tour: Imaginary Jesus

It is an important and popular fact that there is a thin line between genius and insanity. Based on the evidence of this month's featured book, Matt Mikalatos is a man perched rather uncomfortably atop the fence that follows that line.

The book in question is Imaginary Jesus, a 'not-quite-true story', according to the cover, and 'a sort of semi-autobiographical novel comedy thing' according to the story itself. It's got time travel in it, and laughs aplenty, which goes right up my flagpole. I'm saluting this book.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves here, there's three days of the tour, and given that I've actually read this month's book (oh yes, Mr Mikalatos, you are in very select company there!) I figured I should really manage three posts. So no full review yet.

First, we shall return to the much-loved Fantasy Spectrum. Imaginary Jesus definitely lurks towards the infra-red, not-quite-fantasy end, but slightly off to one side, slightly Octarine shifted onto the parallel spectrum of comic fantasy.

In fact, and it occurs to me that many CSFF readers will have no frame of reference for the following concept, but in the hope of dragging in some out-of-towners Googling unrelated stuff, I'm going to make the comment:
If Robert Rankin had been a theologian, he would have been Matt Mikalatos.

I highly recommend visiting the book's imaginary website and downloading the first chapter. I guess you'll love it or hate it from that point! And if you still need any convincing, the following bloggers will be sharing their bemusement at the bizarre concept of this book over the following three days:

Brandon Barr Keanan Brand Grace Bridges Beckie Burnham Valerie Comer R. L. Copple Amy Cruson CSFF Blog Tour Stacey Dale D. G. D. Davidson Jeff Draper April Erwin Andrea Graham Tori Greene Becky Jesse Cris Jesse Jason Joyner Julie Carol Keen Krystine Kercher Dawn King Leighton Rebecca LuElla Miller John W. Otte Donita K. Paul Crista Richey Chawna Schroeder Rachel Starr Thomson Fred Warren Phyllis Wheeler KM Wilsher