Evan Almighty

Evan Almighty

Linda and I hired two resident teenagers sometime ago. They moved in several years ago and agreed to eat and sleep in exchange for access to transportation and cash money. Apparently, it's the way things are done where they come from. Parents as taxi and ATM. Prior to their employment as teenagers, they were young and innocent enough to have seen Bruce Almighty at an early enough age to have God imprinted on their brains as Morgan Freeman. Now as resident teenagers, they have become very religious and seem to naturally gravitate towards any movie that has God's voice or face.

Except Evan Almighty, which we got on DVD just recently and after they began to realize that not everything God acted in was really all that good. So, only the younger resident teenager stuck around to watch it. It wasn't that bad, amusing but oddly unfunny. Jim Carrey did not want to do the sequel to Bruce Almighty so Steve Carell got talked into it. I haven't laughed at any thing I've seen him in. Is he supposed to be funny?

The movie cost 200 million dollars to make and still lost money. Wow! Imagine that! It was the most expensive comedy ever made and only made a strong argument for how the hell small countries can survive on less money. Of course, it was a green movie as the director bought everyone bicycles and insisted on having everyone plant trees in order to off-set the movie's carbon footprint. They certainly didn't want to get out-done by those Jewish green movie-makers, the Coen Brothers who had a statement at the end of No Country For Old Men about it being a neutral carbon emission movie.

It was hard to tell if this was a Jewish version of the Noah story, a Christian version, or a Messianic Mormanish version. When some of us were younger, God was much more clearly Jewish as evidenced by George Burns in Oh, God! The Southern Baptists protested the movie in Augusta way back when so it must have been the Jewish version of God.

There were several clever references to scriptural verses in Evan Almighty which only clever people like me understood especially after I read the trivia page on the IMDb website. I did, however, immediately recognize one of Dad's favorite sayings when Steve Carell tells Morgan Freeman that building an ark was not in his plans. God, of course, laughs as in Mann traoch, Gott läuch, which Alex translated the Yiddish for us at the funeral as meaning "Man plans, God laughs."

Evan Almighty is rated PG even though there is a cutesy reference to the really stupid 40-Year Old Virgin movie, so you can use it for Sunday School to teach the fun version of the Great Flood or you can use it in a socialist adult day care to teach a fairly literal version of the Great Flood of Johnstown, Pennslyvania, of 1899. Oops, I just gave away the plot. I'd apologize but according to most professional reviewers the plot was quickly obvious to everybody but me.

The Johnstown Flood was not, as the National Geographic fatuously said several years ago, a natural disaster. None of the wealthy members of the Hunting and Fishing Club got convicted of deliberately overloading the dam so they could have more water to hunt and fish but Andrew Carnegie did build a nice library for the survivors. And to add more insult to tragic injury a poem was written about the Johnstown Flood shortly after it happened. Not just any poem but one by Willaim McGonagall. It's called The Pennslyvania Disaster and is terrible which is fitting since McGonagall is famous for being declared the worst poet in the English language. He was probably also declared dead long before he actually died in 1902. He was known as the Bard of Banality before the title passed on to me. You will be utterly grateful that I am not pasting his poem here. It is awful.

We do want to extend our wishes for a speedy recovery to Morgan Freeman who was in a car accident recently. Sadly, he was also served with divorce papers at the same time.

It's hard enough for someone like my lovely wife to be married to someone who only thinks he's God.

No banal poems to paste, but since the subject of Jews came up, I'll just cut and paste some haikus from a website I can't bother to link to:

Jewish Haiku

*****

After the warm rain
the sweet smell of camellias.
Did you wipe your feet?

*****

Her lips near my ear,
Aunt Sadie whispers the name
of her friend's disease.

*****

Looking for pink buds
to prune, the old moyel
wanders among his flowers.

*****

Today I am a man.
Tomorrow I will return
to the seventh grade.

*****

Harsh Scrabble discord--
someone has placed "putzhead" on
a triple word score.

*****

Testing the warm milk
on her wrist, she sighs softly.
But her son is forty.

*****

The sparkling blue sea
reminds me to wait an hour
after my sandwich.

*****

Tea ceremony--
fragrant steam perfumes the air.
Try the cheese Danish.

*****

Lacking fins or tail
the gefilte fish swims with
great difficulty.

*****

Yom Kippur-- Forgive
me, Lord, for the Mercedes
and all that lobster.

*****

My nature journal --
today, I saw some trees and birds.
I should know the names?

*****

Like a bonsai tree,
your terrible posture at
my dinner table.

*****

Beyond Valium
the peace of knowing one's child
is an internist.

*****

Jews on safari --
map, compass, elephant gun,
hard sucking candies.

*****

Coroner's report --
"The deceased, wearing no hat,
caught his death of cold."

*****

The same kimono
the top geishas are wearing:
got it at Loehmann's.

*****

The sparrow brings home
too many worms for her young.
"Force yourself," she chirps.

*****

Jewish triathlon:
gin rummy, then contract bridge,
followed by a nap.

*****

"Can't you just leave it?"
the new Jewish mother asks -
umbilical cord.

*****

The shivah visit:
so sorry about your loss.
Now back to my problems.

*****

Our youngest daughter,
our most precious jewel.
Hence the name, Tiffany.

*****

Mom, please! There is no
need to put that dinner roll
in your pocketbook.

*****

Seven-foot Jews in
the NBA slam-dunking!
My alarm clock rings.

*****

Concert of car horns
as we debate the question
of when to change lanes.

*****

Sorry I'm not home
to take your call. At the tone
please state your bad news

*****

Is one Nobel Prize
so much to ask from a child
after all I've done?

*****

Today, mild shvitzing.
Tomorrow, so hot you'll plotz.
Five-day forecast: feh

*****

Left the door open.
for the Prophet Elijah.
Now our cat is gone.

*****

Yenta. Shmeer. Gevalt.
Shlemiel. Shlimazl. Tochis.
Oy! To be fluent!

*****

Quietly murmured
at Saturday services,
Yanks 5, Red Sox 3.

*****

A lovely nose ring --
excuse me while I put my
head in the oven.

*****

Hard to tell under
the lights--white Yarmulke or
male-pattern baldness