See The Movie, Buy The Nail
Jesus died for your sins -- and also to sell you a really bitchin' "Passion" coffee mug
You, yes you, can right now purchase a truly stylin' sepia-toned "Passion of the Christ" cross-adorned coffee mug, an exact replica of the one Jesus Himself used every morning at the Jerusalem Starbucks.
You can buy "witnessing tools," including lapel pins labeled in indecipherable Aramaic (yay Aramaic! What a comeback! Who knew?) and lapel pins with crucifixes, and packs of "witnessing cards" to swap with your Jesus-happy friends, just like the Disciples did when they sat around the holy campfire, swapping tales of sad lost goddesses and making s'mores with communion wafers and pink Easter marshmallow peeps.
But nothing says "slightly masochistic Jesus fanatic" like adorning your fine self with a two-inch silver pewter crucifixion-nail pendant, hanging 'round your neck from a nice 24-inch leather chord. Oh my yes.
It's an actual product, available right now for about ten bucks from Mel Gibson's official "Passion of the Christ" movie Web site, while supplies last, which they will forever and ever because they're doubtlessly made in bulk by Malaysian sweatshop workers wearing faded "Lethal Weapon IV" T-shirts who all believe in a very unhappy Allah. Irony, it knoweth no boundaries.
The nail will be, I imagine, a hot-selling item indeed, given the desperate hoopla surrounding "Passion". Busloads of wide-eyed Christians trucked in by the tens of thousands, coupled with serious claims of anti-Semitism to ardent claims of lame historical revisionism and scary claims about Mel Gibson's ulterior agenda, given how he's, you know, a stringently conservative, ultradevout and allegedly antifeminist, homophobic member of a rather creepy orthodox Catholic sect called the Holy Family, a guy who is right now building his own, private, multimillion-dollar conservative-Catholic church somewhere outside Malibu where you will not want to ever visit.
And, as for the nail pendants, well, the late, great comedian Bill Hicks probably said it best when he commented, "A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. Do you think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a f--in' cross? It's kind of like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant on."
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/02/25/notes022504.DTL