Jesus Wept.

I thought that while I have finally shared with you my last LP, I might just as well share the fruit of another silly project (please understand: I’m about eight beers into this operation; mistakes and embarrassments will certainly follow).

In the summer of 2003, Jeremy Kerner and I decided that we would host a Public Access TV program, one that would feature J.K. and myself as amicable but crack-brained-paranoid eschatological Christian televangelists. It would be called Prayer-A-Dise, and its highlights would include performances by several prominent Christian acts (bands created and portrayed by he and I), as well as some ridiculous infomercials for products and services of a decidedly spiritual strain. We took the endeavor pretty seriously, and attended the Public Access workshop at the local cable provider in Hollywood.

While the premiere episode was never actually broadcast, it was completed, along with material for a second installation. My technological ineptitude is such that I have failed to understand how to render DVDs to any uploadable format; thus, the unfortunate absence of available video. In lieu of this, I thought I might share with you a bit of the audio from the program, as I feel it’s reasonably funny as a series of self-contained little songs and sketches. They are as follows:

Thud of Grace: at the time of this project’s conception, I was sleeping on Jeremy and Cory’s couch, and we all spent some quality time watching the Trinity Broadcasting Network. One afternoon, a particularly animated female evangelist was engaged in retelling the story of Magdalene’s unfair stoning; she referred to the thud of the stones upon the whore’s physical person as a “thud of grace”. And we of course could not just simply let this go. We got drunk and immediately formed a band, Luther Honeycutt and the Sunshine Boys, and in a single evening, we wrote and recorded the tune in its immaculate entirety. Our rendering has nothing whatever to do with Magdalene, morality or fistfuls of whirled pebbles; ours is rather a Revelations-based admonition of consequences concerning the impending apocalypse. The video was shot in Malibu Canyon, and on a basketball court in North Hollywood (I’ll post the video as soon as you explain the process to me).

Tofucious: the Info-Guru: later that year, in autumn, I’d acquired an apartment in Koreatown. As I am virtually unemployable, I set about writing songs and comedy sketches, thinking that I might be someday well-paid for my retarded ruminations. Among the characters I gave birth to around that time was the inimitable Tofucious; a bandanaed old soul who offers Mankind an effective exit from its inevitable ruin through a simple acceptance of a tofu-based sacrament. Like most spiritual compensations, it doesn’t make a grain of sense, but I suppose that’s its point. All shot at my old place on the corner of Kenmore and Beverly.

Footprints: this one was recorded for Episode II, and the well-conceived video was sadly never executed. This piece was to be delivered as a kind of perversion of the original Footprints tale; instead of the Good Lord thoughtlessly carrying the man throughout a period of serious moral transgressions, as he does so reflexively in the original piece, the Lord elects to instead simply drop the narrator, allowing him to fend for himself. Go Fuck Yourself, the lord says. We wrote the song together, with myself as the voice of the protagonist, and Jeremy as the voice of God (you’ll get it). This one was easily the most fun; note my drunken Gilmour-esque solo immediately following the middle-eight; it’s way off, but still a pretty rippin’ lead.

There are other pieces, some of which you’ll later enjoy by way of video; but others that are purely conceptual. There’s always The Scroll Ranger, a metal-detector whose wiring has been modified so as to detect only sacred parchment-based texts beneath the earth's crust.

Anyway, Happy New Year to all of you. Y’all’re the best.