L.B.: Otherwise innocuous

Left Behind, pp. 397-399

The authors, yet again, subtly point out that Buck and Rayford have opposite impressions of how their recent "interview" went. And by "subtly" there, I'm thinking of the way that Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford subtly expressed her disapproval of wire coat hangers.

Here's the last bit from Buck's point of view:

It would be fun someday to tell Rayford Steele how much that otherwise innocuous interview had meant to him. But Buck assumed Steele had already figured that out. That was probably why Steele had seemed so passionate.

And then we switch back to Rayford and read that he "felt he was a failure" based on that same interview. For those keeping score at home, this is the eighth consecutive transition between protagonists to make this exact same point. And in between those transitions, the pilot and the reporter have spent most of the past 13 pages brooding on this same thing --

Rayford was privately frustrated. ... Buck sat without interrupting. ... Buck was desperate to maintain his composure. ... Rayford was certain he was not getting through. ... Buck did not trust himself to respond with coherence. ... Chloe was crying. ... Rayford was profoundly disappointed with Chloe's [response]. ... Rayford was convinced Williams was merely being polite. ... "Your dad is a pretty impressive guy." ... Buck did not sleep well. ... Buck assumed Steele had already figured that out. ... So far Rayford felt he was a failure. ...

Uncle! Please, make the bad men stop. Thirteen pages of this relentless pounding doesn't just make an impression on readers, it makes a contusion.

One also wonders what Buck meant by "this otherwise innocuous interview." It was a 90-minute, uninterrupted monologue informing him that: A) he is a sinner, damned to Hell; and B) the world is coming to an unspeakably violent end and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. How is any of that "otherwise innocuous"? It's the End of the World -- literally. Buck here seems to be supplying the answer to the old joke: But besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play? "It was otherwise innocuous."

As Rayford continues his sanctified sulking, we learn that he, too, is a bit unclear on the concept of the apocalypse:

If this signaled the soon beginning of the tribulation period predicted in the Bible, and Rayford had no doubt that it did, he wondered if there would be any joy in it.

What part of "tribulation" does he not understand? I suppose Rayford's just trying to accentuate the positive, to find the silver lining in "great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world." He just prefers to look at the seven bowls of divine wrath as half-full. (Or I suppose, in this case, half-empty would be the more optimistic view.) The next seven years will be marked by unprecedented, convulsive, global calamities. The population of the earth will be enslaved to a tyrant and inexorably, painfully whittled down to a scant remnant which will itself be swept away in a final conflagration. One way or another -- through famine, pestilence, war, fire, flood, earthquake or poison -- every man, woman, beast, bird, fish and plant will die.

"He wondered if there would be any joy in it." Short answer: No.

We get another full page of Rayford's self-flagellation over "his performance during the interview with Cameron Williams," during which we're told that, "From the depths of his soul Rayford wanted to be more productive ... to bring more people to Christ." Take a moment to savor the ghastly use of the word "productive" there, and appreciate that all of the reasons why that's so very much the wrong word are the same reasons the authors seem to have thought it was the right one.

The magazine interview had been an incredible opportunity, but in his gut he felt it had not come off well. ... Rayford believed he had seen the last of Cameron Williams. He wouldn't be calling Bruce Barnes, and Rayford's quotes would never see the pages of Global Weekly.

Because the important thing isn't to spread the gospel or to warn the world of its impending doom. The important thing is to get quoted and get your name in print.

Rayford mopes about for another full page. He had heard Chloe crying herself to sleep, but he's convinced they were tears of embarrassment over her father the fanatic. (After spending this entire chapter totally misreading every signal from his daughter, it would have been nice to see Mr. Perceptive begin to question his utter confidence that he always knows exactly what women are thinking and what they would say to him if he allowed them to speak, but of course this doesn't occur to him either.)

He prays for a sign, for "encouragement ... I need to know I haven't turned her off forever." Two paragraphs later, Chloe "embraced him tight and long, pressing her cheek against his chest."

Such little quotidian signs of the presence of a responsive God become a regular part of the rest of these books. This is a staple of Christian Brand fiction, but the authors don't seem to have considered how strange it is in the context of this story. "Please, God, give me some small sign," makes sense in some Jeanette Oke or Grace Livingston Hill story, but here, after God has directly incinerated the Russo-Ethiopian air fleet and then whisked away some 2 billion people in the twinkling of an eye, it seems a bit odd that the believers in Left Behind would find these smaller gestures so much more compelling as evidence of divine intervention.*

This comes up again in the following section, after Chloe receives her own equally ambiguous and unimpressive answer to prayer. "I just told God I needed a little more," she says. More, that is, than just her father's earnest pleading. Chloe also acknowledges that the Trip and Die guys might be a hint of some divine activity. "There's no other explanation** for those two guys in Jerusalem, is there, except that they have to be the two witnesses talked about in the Bible?" she says. It doesn't occur to her, or to the authors, that The Event or what Buck called "the Israel miracle" might also be regarded as signs from God. Like her father, she doesn't find such flashy phenomenon as persuasive as she does the "little more" gestures, the supposedly miraculous answers to prayer, such as a hug from a family member or a stalker's reminding you that you're never alone.

The impression such scenes give is something like if Moses had interrupted God's engraving of the stone tablets on Mt. Sinai and said, "I'm thinking of a number between one and ten ..."

That's symptomatic of a larger problem pervading the rest of this series, following the conversion of our various protagonists. The authors follow the conventions of much Christian Brand fiction, presenting their heroes as models of Christian living their readers ought to emulate. Except that none of their readers is living in this same wholly disconnected context. This tribulation period is, according to the authors themselves, a unique, parenthetical span of history -- a distinct and separate "dispensation." It is wholly unprecedented and nothing about it is to serve as a precedent for anything else (just like Bush v. Gore). The authors vacillate between emphasizing that differentness and forgetting about it entirely. It's the apocalypse, but it's otherwise innocuous.

Better writers can still find a way, even in such an alien context, to allow readers to relate to characters in such a story.*** But in the hands of LaHaye and Jenkins, this becomes a story of people who are not like us in a world that is not like ours, overseen by a god that is not like God.

While receiving the answer-to-prayer hug from his daughter, Rayford wonders if this would be the right time to press her again about converting to the Church of The Antichrist and All. But then:

... he felt deeply impressed of God, as if the Lord were speaking directly to his spirit, Patience. Let her be. Let her be.

"Though she may be parted," the Lord might have added, "there is still a chance that she may see."

What's interesting here is that after 15 pages of Rayford being wholly misled by what he felt "in his gut," we see him now getting a feeling in his gut that he interprets as "the Lord ... speaking directly to his spirit." How can he be sure this is, indeed, the voice of the Holy Spirit and not, rather, "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato"? Rayford's visceral approach to spiritual discernment seems prone to misinterpretation.

Here's the Christian Brand novel I'd like to see. Start with this very scene -- the apparent voice of the Lord reassuring the anxious parent to "Let her be, let her be." Then have the daughter walk out the door and get hit by the Hypothetical Bus. And then what happens?

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* This reminds me a bit of the story of Gideon, who played endless games with fleece while remaining unimpressed by repeated face-to-face conversations with the angel of the Lord. But unlike our heroes in LB, Gideon was supposed to seem timid and obtuse. (The tone for the story is set when the angel, finding Gideon cowering in a winepress, calls him "mighty warrior." You have to like any story that includes angelic sarcasm.)

** Chloe, Buck and the authors all seem to think the answer to this question is No, but of course there are dozens of other possible explanations for "those two guys in Jerusalem." They might, in fact, be acting like the two witnesses from the Bible because they'd read that passage in the Bible. That actually happens a lot. The two witnesses in our story might be Moses and Elijah returned to this mortal coil, but they might also be the reincarnations of John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton. We can't discount any alternative theories until they actually start belching fire.

*** One obvious way to go about that would be to explore how the inescapable suffering and death of the apocalypse is really just a concentrated version of the unknown-but-very-limited amount of time that each of us has before also encountering inescapable death. After all, every man, woman, beast, bird, fish and plant on earth is going to die, just probably not during the same seven-year span. That's not something our premillennial dispensationalist authors are interested in exploring, though, since the whole point of believing the PMD nonsense is to be able to reassure yourself that you're never going to die -- that you will escape death by being "raptured." (How that experience is any different, for the rapturee, from meeting your maker in the twinkling of an eye courtesy of a gunshot or railway accident is unclear, but this is something PMDs have trained themselves not to think about.)

In any case, The Meaning of Life in the Face of Death might be fertile thematic ground for a real novel, but it won't do for a Christian Brand novel, which must always be about How to Live Like a Good Christian.**** For a character living during the exceptional Great Tribulation, the matter of How to Live Like a Good Christian is likely to be incomparably different from what it means for a reader who is not. That makes the theme of these books, almost by definition, irrelevant to the lives of the people reading them.

**** The fact that these are perceived to be unrelated themes tells you everything you need to know about Christian Brand novels.

Comments

[cjmr]

Sorry, we have absolutely zero overlap. I remember reading Head of the House and Substitute Guest, but I didn't end up with those somehow.

Her books definitely seemed a lot more...camp?...when I re-read them in my late twenties than they seemed when I read them at her house when I was a teenager. At least most of her heroines are strong and capable, instead of being fainting daisies. (And even when there is a protagonist who's a fainting daisy, there's always a good role-model strong and capable heroine-type to help her.)

I wonder if Christian Romance is the oldest in the "we must have 'Christian' X" trend.

[cjmr]

Sorry. I appear to have left the bold on somehow.

[cjmr's husband]

Disembolden!

[cjmr]

Thanks, dear.

[Randy Owens]

...but here, after God has directly incinerated the Russo-Ethiopian air fleet and then whisked away some 2 billion people in the twinkling of an eye, it seems a bit odd that the believers in Left Behind would find these smaller gestures so much more compelling as evidence of divine intervention.

On the other hand, it might be consciously set up so as to lead a devout reader to equate such things, so they see the "little more" things (which will, inevitably, happen in the course of day-to-day life, divine intervention or no) as just about as compelling as the disappearance of two billion people in, as you say, the twinkling of an eye.

Similarly, I'm much more certain that the flip-flopping between Rayford-failed-miserably, Buck-was-shocked-and-awed is set up so that when the Devout Reader &tm; tries witnessing to potential converts, and feels like they haven't been getting through, they'll be given hope that their subject has been much more impressed than they seem to be. But I believe that's been pretty well covered already.
Yep, I see Vermic picked up on that early in this thread.

[stinger]

"I wonder if Christian Romance is the oldest in the "we must have 'Christian' X" trend."

Possibly. I wonder if Hill was the earliest practitioner. For sure, they didn't have rock bands back then. I don't know when bowling started.

[hapax]

Grace Livingston Hill wasn't deliberately and explicitly writing "Christian Romance" fiction. She was writing romance novels which, like all authors, happened to be strongly influenced by her own particular world view. (Remember she was born mid-nineteenth century, and raised in a very devout clerical family.) In other words, she wrote what she knew.

Her books were no more meant to be "Christian romances" than, say, Jane Austen's books were meant to be "genteel aristocratic landowner romances". Which is why Hill's books are still quite readable today, as opposed to to someone like Kingsbury's -- objectively much better written, more professionally crafted, timely, and sophisticated -- which will appear impossibly tendentious and laughable in two decades' time.

[mike timonin]

Bowling has been around for quite a long time. It really took off in the States in the '50s - I seem to recall a blurb in an American Heritage about a new design for bowling balls that made the sport more generally accessible to the common man with a common budget and less than average physique. I'm not sure when Conservative Christian Bowling (if that isn't, on some level, redundant) began, but it's not unlikely that it was shortly thereafter, the '50s being all about conservatism and social Christianity.

Which reminds me - cjmr, I promised you a copy of that paper. Send me an e-mail, and I'll send it your way.

[Comrade Rutherford]

OMG! I just picked up the house copy of Left Behind and flipped to the pages Fred is on now, and... It's worse than I ever suspected, and I had thought it was bad!

It is such terrible, terrible 'writing'.

I read about a page and a half, now my eyes are bleeding and I feel so unclean!

Fred has more fortitude for literal awfulness than I.

[Tonio]

Conservative Christian Bowling

I suppose LB Bowling would be like the video game, with the pins depicting heathens and UN troops.

[Tehanu]

I remember reading a book called "Patricia", in about 1960 (I was 12), which I think was by Grace Livingston Hill. And I remember it being rather religious, but not like LB -- there was a handsome young clergyman, or something, who fell in love with the heroine, or preached a nice sermon, or something ... and I think he had a sweet little vine-covered church in the vale, or something like that. It was all very Victorian, really, even though set in the 1920s or '30s, and sentimental as all get-out -- like Thomas Kinkade as literature. At 12 I thought it was romantic. Well, I'm rambling, but honestly, this is the first time I've given G.L.H. a thought since then! Does anybody else remember this particular book?

[stinger]

Tehanu: Not that particular title, but she wrote 90 or so others that are pretty much the same.

[paula]

...Rayford being wholly misled by what he felt "in his gut," we see him now getting a feeling in his gut that he interprets as "the Lord ... speaking directly to his spirit." How can he be sure this is, indeed, the voice of the Holy Spirit and not, rather, "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato"? Rayford's visceral approach to spiritual discernment seems prone to misinterpretation.

Reminds me of George Bush's gut.

[Jeff]

cjmr: Today would have been Andrew Olmsted's birthday. If you've been to ObWi recently, you know what that means to Jesu. So I think some snappishness here, where it's more expected and "safe" is not unreasonable.

Of course, this is Jesu we're talking about, so I could be WAY off base!

[Dash]

I wonder if Christian Romance is the oldest in the "we must have 'Christian' X" trend.

That honor probably goes to the Book of Revelation: "O Great Sage of Patmos, the kids can't seem to get enough of Daniel and Ezekiel and portions of Isaiah, and they're asking uncomfortable questions about why we left traditional Judaism when it's got such cool visions and everything. Clearly, we need some Christian apocalyptic literature! Any thoughts on that?"

[Michael]

I just love how Rayford is obsessing over his "performance." You picture him witnessing to someone, and then suddenly stopping and saying, "I'm so sorry, that's never happened to me before..."

[RobertoElGrande]

Just got to to call out Jeff for this comment.

Kermit is Buck (he's played a reporter)

Kermit is Buck, though the director will find it tough to get a take without a wrinkled snout. Because Kermit WAS a reporter. Muppet News was a trusted name back then and he blew the lid off Old Mother Hubbard and the rest of her sordid gang. That's why he was blacklisted. Kermit was getting too close to the truth! Fortunately he rebounded, finding a place in community theater at The Muppet Show.

Sam The Eagle is Ray, Ms. Piggie is Chloe, Gonzo is Nicolae... but that makes Hattie a chicken. Which works well with Ray as Sam. Sadly in a novel about the end of existence as we know it, there aren't many notable characters to map to the Muppet cast, which contains dozens of notable characters.

[Reynard]

(...)like Thomas Kinkade as literature.

Oh, Lordy! *visions of Kinkade-as-Black-Velvet-paintings dance in my head* MAKE IT STOP!!! IT BURNS!!! IT BURNS!!!

"Thomas Kinkade: Painter of Kitsch." - my version of T.K. advertisement line.

[bad Jim]

Paraphrasing Milton, what is kitsch compared to what?

I'm a subscriber to the local opera company, and in the next season the notable soprano Deborah Voight will perform as Salome in the Strauss opera of the same name, libretto by someone based on a shocking text by Oscar Wilde.

Nowadays the demand that someone's head be delivered on a platter is satisfied straightforwardly, promptly, uncontroversially. In latter times such presentations were delivered with side dishes of applesauce and horseradish, festooned fore and aft with rhetorical flourishes.

[Dorothy]

While visiting a family I know, I experienced cognitive dissonance when I saw both the Left Behind and Harry Potter series on their bookshelf. - Tonio
It is to laugh. Last summer a nephew came for a week-long visit and arrived toting a LB novel (I married into an evangelical family). I offered him the latest HP book, for which he was extremely grateful (he had already read the other ones, so I knew I wasn't breaking any rules). Then I went internet-surfing, looking for ammo to do battle with the kid's parents, and ended up here. The battle I might actually do someday, if I ever stop laughing.

[cjmr]

Believe me, Jeff, I am too exhausted at this point to take offense at just about anything. I got six whole hours of sleep last night, which takes me up to 18 hours since Tuesday. When I was in college, I could pass finals and write papers on this little sleep--now that I'm rapidly approaching 40, not so much.

[Angelika]

Dash: That honor probably goes to the Book of Revelation:

It seeems to me that apocalyptic literature is of particular value for people ho are actually persecuted. Most of these books, Isaiah, Daniel, Revelation were written from and for people who suffered persecution for their faith. I certainy would not consider Revelation a sort of 'fan-fiction' or Christian ripp-off. The book is very inspiring for the right people: I once met a Russian-German Christian who spent several years of imprisionment in Siberia for his faith. He took tremendous comfort in the book of Revelation - he also was very understanding with the problems that bothered us young German not at all persecuted Christians, frankly acknowlegding that different times bring different challenges.

My guess is, that the bizarre interpretations LaHaye and others come up with for the book of Revelation has a lot to do with the fact, that they really are not the proper audience for apocalyptic literature, and that fancying oneself persecuted is quite different than actually suffering persecution. - But I wouldn't blame that on John.

[Karen]

We get another full page of Rayford's self-flagellation over "his performance during the interview with Cameron Williams," during which we're told that, "From the depths of his soul Rayford wanted to be more productive ... to bring more people to Christ." Take a moment to savor the ghastly use of the word "productive" there, and appreciate that all of the reasons why that's so very much the wrong word are the same reasons the authors seem to have thought it was the right one.

My office just started this week with a big "productivity" push, which includes a requirement that all of us have a physical symbol of how well we're doing on our particular goals on our desks. Most people went with those thermometers showing the goal beloved of charities during fund raisers. Now, thanks to this post, I wonder if RTC's like Rayford have little goal-thermometers on their Bibles showing how many souls they've "won" each month. This is made worse by the fact that I'm sure there's an RTC church somewhere that's done exactly that. I'm reasonably certain Jesus is NOT amused.

I got my copy of Praline's book yesterday, and it is excellent. Praline, I do hope you have a blog or website somewhere so that we can all keep up with the progress on the next one. Also, let me plead for another book set in the same world, even if it doesn't use the same characters. I am a government lawyer (which adds a level of extreme absurdity to that productivity goals think discussed above) and you have created the most accurate picture of live in a bureacracy I've ever read. I would be happy to have your protagonist in my office.

Muppet LB: You're all totally missing it. Link Hogthrob has to be Hattie, so we can call him The Boar of Babylon!!!

[Shuffles off to Buffalo to the sound of kazoo music]

[Karen]

Die, Damned Italics!!

[Karen]

Imperio Italics. Let's see if this one works

[cjmr]

Link Hogthrob has to be Hattie, so we can call him The Boar of Babylon!!!

*groans* oh that was awful!

[Raj]

The Devil made me think of this concept:

RTC LENSMEN!

(Any "Doc" Smith fans out there?)

[damnedyankee]

Muppet Left Behind: Animal and Sgt. Floyd Pepper as the Two Prophets, Statler and Waldorf as the Trip and Die Guys.

Crazy Harry as the guy who blows up Buck's car.

[damnedyankee]

And

[Karen]

cjmr, thank you, that's the nicest thing anyone;s said to me all day.

[damnedyankee]

Curses. Typepad betrays me again. I was going to suggest Uncle Deadly as Nicky.

[Praline]

Everyone's being so nice! Karen, I do have a website including blog; you can get to it by clicking on my name below. I fear I'm not planning a sequel any time soon - I sort of feel I did as much as I could think of in that world and sequels suffer from the law of diminishing returns, but I've just handed Novel 2 over to my publishers and am about 50 thousand words in to Novel 3, so there should be more coming, assuming the publishers bite...

[damnedyankee]

...but I've just handed Novel 2 over to my publishers and am about 50 thousand words in to Novel 3...

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

(yes, that's a good noise)

[Jeff]

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! indeed!

Praline, on your blog, you said: "you wouldn't expect a pillock to stand up for himself very well."

Isn't a pillock one of those short thick poles used to keep cars from entering pedestrian paths? If so, then a pillock should have no trouble standing up for himself!

[sophia8]

Definition of pillock: Urban Dictionary

[jamoche]

My office just started this week with a big "productivity" push, which includes a requirement that all of us have a physical symbol of how well we're doing on our particular goals on our desks.

My sympathies. I think, faced with something like that, I would first polish my resume, and then pick a selection of classic Dilbert strips for my indicator.

RTC LENSMEN!

(Any "Doc" Smith fans out there?)

Yes, but - now that my eyes have stopped crossing at the very concept - don't think it would work. Lensmen have to be open to new experiences, not blink when it turns out the multi-tentacled monster is the good guy, and follow "when in Rome" even when the Romans are nudists, and let's not forget the Arisian's breeding project - evolution, anyone? Less than 1% of Lensman candidates make it to graduation day; RTCs would wash out on day one.

Now, a RTC plan to create their own Lensman-equivalents to counter the real ones ... ooh, now I think about it, they would be so primed to fall for the Eddorian Lensmen recruiting process...

[damnedyankee]

OK, how about RTC Green Lanterns?

[Karen]

jamoche, I'm looking for a physical double entendre. What makes it so irritating is that my management generally doesn't do this kind of "managery" thing often. At least in this instance there's an actual problem that needs to be addressed, in that the agency I work for inherited a bunch of cases from another agency that need to be completed in some form. I've worked for places that did this kind of crap simply because a consultant sold something to management and they needed to use it.

[Reynard]

OK, how about RTC Green Lanterns?

Sure! Call them "God's Lamps" ("Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." - Ps. 119:105), and they use flamethrowers against infidels, heretics (at least as *they* define the term) and anyone else that they just generally disagree with and/or don't like.

@ RAJ
Any "Doc" Smith fans out there?)

Yes, but never read the Lensmen stuff.
Loved the Skylark series as a kid, though.

[Praline]

Isn't a pillock one of those short thick poles used to keep cars from entering pedestrian paths?

I think you may be thinking of a bollard.

[Dash]

Angelika,
You're absolutely right of course, except that I wouldn't care to refer to the work of St. John as "fan fiction," and writing in a known genre isn't the same as "ripping off." But it is Christian apocalyptic literature and is within the same genre tradition as Jewish apocalyptic literature.

One question, if I may:
"The book is very inspiring for the right people: I once met a Russian-German Christian who spent several years of imprisionment in Siberia for his faith. He took tremendous comfort in the book of Revelation."

Can you say something about what he found comforting about it? It occurs to me as I write this that that could be perceived as suggesting that it's by definition not comforting--i.e., read as a rhetorical question. I don't mean it that way. I'm really curious about what he said was comforting about the Book of Revelation given his own circumstances.

[Dash]

I should clarify, in connection with my previous comment and question to Angelika, that I was raised in a religion that views the LaHaye/Jenkins take on Revelation as pretty much spot-on. So it was always presented as something of a revenge fantasy. I'm interested in a view that doesn't read it that way.

[LMM]

I certainy would not consider Revelation a sort of 'fan-fiction' or Christian ripp-off. The book is very inspiring for the right people:

Those two concepts aren't necessarily orthogonal, you know.

[Karen]

For no good reason at all:
moar funny pictures

[Fraser]

Gonzo as Nicky is inspired: "Tonight, I Nicolai the Great, will come up with a plan for world peace and an end to religious differences while explaining the disappearance of every child on Earth—and I shall do it while swimming through a vat of peanut butter and jelly filled with hammerhead sharks!"

OK, someone saved me the trouble of explaining pillock.

Congrats on publication, Praline!

[cjmr]

Funny picture by husband and me. (Since there appear to be other links to funny pictures)

[Salamanda]

Geez, and I thought Muppet Christmas Carol was awesome...

I think Ray could be played by Beaker, if for no other reason than because everything he says sounds like "me me me me me me!"

Oh, and mmack? You + Spin Doctors = WIN WIN WIN

[burgundy]

cjmr - I made my first cat macro recently, with a similar "alas" kind of feeling about it. It's not in the least bit creative, but that was pretty much the point: when you have a cat that likes to get into the bathroom cabinet, there's really only one macro you can make.

My mother read the Illiad for the first time a couple of years ago, and we spent some time trying to Muppet-cast it. I think LB is a much better fit.

[Karen]

I've become a fan of several sites around the Net that show pictures of things made out of Legos. The Brick Testament is one that comes to mind immediately, but there are others. I think a Lego Left Behind would be amusing, but for the fact that a disturbing number of people would take it seriously.