\Happy New Year, Lovers! Let's raise our Martini Glasses as we kick 2009 to the curb and bask in the glorious potential that is 2010! The Lady is revived and refreshed, and as the reining domestic champion of "Cranium", considers herself utterly unstoppable!
Domestic Patriarch and the Lady kicked off the first film of 2010 with the fascinating documentary Marjoe from 1974. Marjoe Gortner got his name when his parents smartly combined the name "Mary and Joseph" and set him on the path to being the youngest Evangelist ever. He even married a couple at the age of 4. We get to watch old ladies get the vapors and people speak in tongues while Marjoe prances around each venue like Mick Jagger, blithering nonsense and working up a sweat.
The story is fascinating, mostly because Marjoe (maybe in his 30s by the time he did this documentary) used the film as a vehicle to announce that he was a fraud. He discusses in detail how he plays a crowd and the business of religion. The relationship between Marjoe and his flock it's a strangely symbiotic - we're told it's not real, but the power of persuasion gets plenty of people fainting on the floor and swooning with God's grace. Seemed to me to be the age old idea that if you want something to be true badly enough, you can be persuaded to believe it is. I don't wish to draw judgement on deeply religious people, but that idea is what I gathered if Marjoe is to say he is a performer rather than a believer.
I didn't gather Marjoe was a bad person - this life was the only one he knew. I was impressed with his honesty and the moral realization to come clean, but I am left with so many questions - do these leaders need to believe what they preach if their followers need it anyway? I can't answer that question though it does smack of creepy when they ask little old ladies to take their wallets out. I don't know. What I do know, that at the very least, is that Marjoe's followers are in deep, serious search for something real and powerful, which makes them inherently vulnerable. Thinking about that vulnerability prompted the Lady to scratch her head, without of course ruining her beehive hairdo.
The Lady stepped out on job searching towards the end of December. Some may recall this entry which really prompted her to check out during the Holiday Season. Delightful Melinda has been dutifully stalking me ever since with helpful advice to get her $400 from me as quickly as possible.
Here is a breakdown of her correspondence to me over the past few weeks, as I've not written one word, Ladylike or otherwise in return:
