Chamblee54

This is the second, and final, part of a chamblee54 book report on Another Roadside Attraction, by Thomas Eugene Robbins. The book is due back at the chamblee library today. There are two possible reasons to hurry up, and finish reading the book. A overdue fine from the local library is less of a burden than a failing grade. The effect can be the same… not stopping to smell the verbal roses, but shovelling the animal product that facilitates growth. FWIW, part one is available for your perusal. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The first note is page 177. John Paul Ziller, and his wife Amanda, decline to get drunk. They consider alcohol to be an imperfect drug. This is a line that PG remembers from the 1978 reading of ARA. What was forgotten was Marx Marvelous, the narrator of the tale. He proceeds to get sloshed, and quotes Bertrand Russell: there is little difference between a man who eats too little and sees heaven, and a man who drinks too much and sees snakes.
Amanda replies that one of the men sees snakes. She says a lot of things in ARA. It is probably quite charming in person, especially when one is warm for her form. In the text, forty five years later, it can be rather annoying. On page 336, Marx Marvelous learns two things about Amanda: she loves him deeply, and it totally indifferent as to whether, or not, she sees him again. The concept of sexist condescention, germinating when ARA was written, has come to politically correct fruition in the age of Obama. If one is of the mind to do so, they could judge ARA harshly for this.
There is an order of renegade monks down the road from the Zillers. An associate, Plucky Purcell (more formally known as L. Westminister Purcell III) is a visitor at this facility. This residency is a marvel of totally unbelievable fiction, and is essential to the plot of ARA. The monks are a Vatican hit squad, and Purcell fits right in. In a stroke of impossible to forsee synchronicity, two *good* nuns stop by for a visit. They are Sister Elizabeth and Sister Hillary. They make two appearances… on page 183 and page 283. Amanda decides it is nun of her business.
The Zillers have a roadside zoo, and hot dog stand. It does not sell coffee, which is disappointing to many road warriors. “they stop for coffee, and feel cheated when they learn the meaning of meaning.” PG first heard the phrase “meaning of meaning” in an eleventh grade history class. It was presided over by a basketball coach, who was not interested in the dribbles and shoots of wars and civilizations. For the first test, “Dudley Doo Right” asked the class to write three pages on the meaning of meaning.
As second time readers know, the essential character in ARA is the body of Jesus. It was in the Vatican, until Plucky Purcell found it, and brought it to the Ziller’s hot dog stand. In this edition of ARA, the mummified savior appears on page 222. This is one third of the anti christ. There is something cosmic about a dead Jesus having a numeric value equal to one third of beelzebub. Or maybe it is merely comic, and the author had an extra s that he had to use before the expiration date.
One of the joys of google era reading is easy access to fact checking. (The proposed french word for google was a palindrome, googelegoog.) On page 280, TER reports that Carmen Miranda wore size one shoes. The page wikiFeet for Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha has pictures, which appear to be larger than size one. The Celebrity Shoe Size List has Carmen Electra (size 7) and Carmen Kass (size 8.5,) but no Carmen Miranda. PG thinks the diva detail to be an apparition of overactive imagination.
As ARA rambles on to the uplifting conclusion, a council of war is convened in the hot dog stand. The Zillers, Plucky Purcell, Marx Marvelous, and Mon Cul (John Paul Ziller’s pet baboon) try to decide what to do with the holy remains, known by now as “the corpse.” On page 290, there is a typo, unless “insited” is a scrabble approved word. On page 288, someone is called “utopianist.” This may reefer refer to utopia. A more whimsical vision sees a keyboard musician working for the United Thank Offering. Those Episcopals think of everything.
There are several sides in this debate. Amanda takes the historic approach, and washes her pretty hands of the corpse. Pontius Pilate hands her a bar of soap. Plucky Purcell wants to publicly display the corpse, with the idea of destrying the Catholic church. Marx Marvelous says that lots of Catholics are good people, and telling them that Jesus is dead would hurt their fee fees. Sister Elizabeth, and Sister Hillary, are used as examples.
In truth, the fictional debate has been rendered moot in the post Nixon, but not post racial, world. The Catholic church soldiers on. The revelation that *some* priests like to forcibly sodomize pre adolescent boys has barely mattered to the masses. The church has taken a (catho) licking, and kept on ticking. Co-dependent Protestantism does even better.
Page 290 was where PG had to throw down the book in disgust. Plucky Purcell, backing down from his plan to destroy the church, admits that *Jesus* was a pretty good guy after all. Never mind that the story he quotes is from the Bible… written by hundreds of anonymous authors, hand copied by anonymous scribes, compiled and edited by the Romanized church, translated by a queer English king. How can you trust a book like that? And yet, the PR of Jesus persists. Even the most vicious critics of the modern Jesus worship church have a soft spot for the old boy.
One *page 69,* John Paul Ziller warns against anthromorphizing, or assigning human emotions to non-human animals. And yet, 222 pages later, the text anthromorphizes the cult of Jesus. It must work, because the conclusion of ARA leaves the Roman Pedophile Church intact.