Maria Alexander News and Updates from TheHandlessPoet.com

I'll be participating at WHCthis year! It's May 11th-14th. My schedule is as follows:

Thursday evening, May 11th @ 8:00pm
Signing at Borderlands Books

Friday afternoon, May 12 @ 1:00pm
The Horrible Ladies of Horror, a Persephone Panel
Each Persephonite will be speaking on a different historically important
female horror writer. I'll be speaking about the ghost stories of Edith Wharton.

Friday evening, May 12th @ 8:00pm
Mass Autograph Signing

Saturday afternoon, May 13th @ 1:00pm
A reading
I'll probably trot out my newly penned tale, "The Last Word" -- you don't want to miss this!

Hope to see you there!

As a tongue in cheek reference to the non-existent war on Christmas, Brian Flemming has started a campaign as of yesterday that he calls The War On Easter. While I approve of his intent to start conversation about the dangers of religious belief, his game plan -- to plant 666 copies of The God Who Wasn't There in churches all over America -- won't educate people, I suspect, but rather make them livid.

Now, I'm totally guessing as to why Brian's blog and all of his other sites are down, but I don't think it's a coincidence that they went down the day after the "declaration." It wouldn't surprise me if certain factions have declared The War on Brian Flemming.

While it's obnoxious to put those DVDs in churches, it's ILLEGAL to take down other people's websites. I think some people are feeling a wee bit threatened. But that's okay. They seem to thrive on a persecution complex. If one man can make someone feel that persecuted, he must be onto something.

An English translation of The Gospel of Judas has now been published, brought to you by The National Geographic Society in the US, the intellectually dishonest sonsuvbitches who made such a big deal over the so-called ossuary of "James, son of Joseph, Brother of Jesus" , yet completely failed to report when it was declared a fake. Let's see...what makes more money? Headlines about Jesus being real? Or headlines about Jesus being fake?

But the Gospel of Judas puts Judas in a positive light, identifying him as Christ's favourite disciple and depicting his betrayal as the fulfilment of a divine mission to enable the crucifixion - and thus the foundation of Christianity - to take place. This view is similar to that held by the Gnostics - members of a 2nd Century AD breakaway Christian sect, who became rivals to the early Church.

Yup, the Gnostics. The same folks who created the first New Testament collection of letters, which originally had Paul's letters while the rest of Christendom was rejecting him. Why, you ask? Because he wasn't talking about a Jesus they recognized. (And he wasn't.) But when Paul became, like, totally popular, they, like, nabbed his shit to include it in their own New Testament. The church leaders then wrote Acts to somehow reconcile Paul's views with the Gospels, as the two were not in synch (and still aren't).

Please note that this document is from something like the 3rd or 4th century, and that it's allegedly based on a 2nd century text. I'm sure it's very interesting, but this is in no way a contemporary document of Jesus' time. And, strangely enough, it echoes what Mormonism's "Fortunate Fall." If mankind didn't fall, mankind couldn't be saved. And according to the Gnostics, if Jesus wasn't crucified, we wouldn't be saved. It only makes sense. You'd ultimately have to do some kind of intellectual Cirque du Soleil to cast the Serpent and Judas in a bad light, but they were only doing what they were told to do. And it wasn't like Jesus or God suffered any more than anyone else on earth. Ask any parent who lost a child in 9/11; I bet their kids didn't even get to go to Heaven and get godlike action figure scepter power.

Speaking of which, I really need to finish the Judas story I started...

Last night, I went to the opening of the City of Lights, City of Angels French film festival. I was at the celebrity-packed premier of a funny French film called The Valet (aka La Doublure) by the famous French writer and director, Francis Veber. Afterwards, there was a Q&A with Veber and the star of the film, Gad Elmaleh, who is a big standup comic in France. He was very funny, even in English.

The film is about this loser guy who is paid to pretend he's the boyfriend of a supermodel to get the supermodel's boyfriend -- a married billionaire -- out of hot water with his wife when their affair is exposed in tabloids. What I found interesting about the film was that it was missing what American directors and writers would consider a crucial scene: when the loser and the supermodel first meet. Veber skipped that moment entirely to show another "first meeting" that was far more powerful. (It's too good. Kristin Scott Thomas delivers a priceless reaction shot. And I didn't even know she could speak French!)

No American director or producer would have ever in a million bazillion years let that happen. EVER. And I felt the absence of the scene. I thought, "How can he do this? It's the money shot, fer Chrissakes!"

Then as I heard him explain why he did it, I realized that American screenwriting rules don't necessarily promote good storytelling. They're too obvious and commercially driven. This is the guy who wrote La Cage aux Folles, The Dinner Game, and other classics; he knows a thing or two about visual storytelling.

Anyway, the film is funny and sweet. It makes a great twist on the traditional buddy film, as the loser and the supermodel become friends. And the ending...let's just say it's probably truer than anything. Sadly. Yet happily.

And that's what you should expect from the City of Lights.