TVSquad

Here's the story:

Carved in a hillside in the U.K., Cerne Abbas in Dorset to be exact, is a 180 ft image known as the "Cerne Abbas giant." The club (and boner) weilding pagan god has been in place since the 17th century and is seen as a symbol of fertility (and how).

Now, the god has a friend, or at least a temporary visitor. A drawing of Homer Simpson, placed there to promote the upcoming movie, now stands next to the ancient symbol. The biodegradable Homer pic will wash away after the first rain, but local pagans are still upset, calling the advertisement disrespectfut. I'm sure it doesn't help that Homer and the giant look like they're playing some perverted form of ring toss, too.

I'm not easily offended (hell, I often offend people by how unoffended I am by offensive things), but this concept does seem more than a little egregious.

Larry Charles, director of Borat and a writer and producer for Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, is teaming up with comedian Bill Maher (HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher) for a new film about God and religion. Their goal: make it funny.

To quote Variety, quoting Maher: "this movie will make you laugh so hard you'll pray for it to stop."

Maher and Charles traveled throughout the Middle East, interviewing people to try and find humor amongst the tragedy. It was undoubtedly a rough undertaking, but the result was hundreds of hours of footage that Maher and Charles are currently paring down to a feature-length film.

A simple search on this site for the words "moral" and "orel" should provide you with all you need to know about my feelings for this Adult Swim series, but in a nutshell: I've been a fan since the first Christmas episode aired back in December of 2005.

As it turns out, "The Best Christmas Ever" was actually supposed to be the last episode of the first season, something that is discussed at length on the audio commentaries of this DVD set, which hits stores on April 24. Going back and watching the shows in order (the set contains all of season one and the first five episodes of season two), it's easier to see how the writing and animation improved as the creators became more and more comfortable with the town of Moralton and its citizens. The first ten episodes follow the same basic template of Orel trying to do good but ultimately having his intentions backfire, resulting in such chaos as attacks by Christian zombies who pray before they devour people, and a rash of pregnancies across town caused by Orel injecting his sperm into women while they sleep using a pastry bag.

This is the 27th in my twelve-part series where my friends (that's you) and I (that's also you, but in this case: me) try to learn all we can about a subject by turning to that great teaching tool known as television.

Many people will tell you that whether or not a person ultimately believes in a supreme being is a matter of personal choice, hopefully arrived at through study and reflection. This is not true: both atheism and religion are based on cheese, and which of the following items most interests a person, this:

This is the first in a 376-part series* in which I try to better myself, and in turn better the rest of you, by turning to the font of information known as television, courtesy of this other font of information known as the internet.

It is my belief that everything we need to know can be learned from television. We have relied too heavily on books for too long, and it's time we stopped reading and started accepting everything TV tells us.

Today, let us all learn about Christianity, one of the three Abrahamic religions along with Judaism and Islam:

Out of all the late night hosts, Conan O'Brien is far and away my favorite. I'm not quite old enough to have enjoyed Letterman and his hipper days at NBC, and Leno's populism doesn't quite do it for me, but Conan came along during my high school and college days, and the humor of Late Night is perfect for a weird guy like me riding in the caboose of the Generation X train.

I'll admit Conan isn't always perfect, and I wish sometimes he'd get rid of that whole "If They Mated" segment, which I never found all that funny, but he still comes up with some great material, such as the clip I've placed below. Actually, I only wanted to show you the first part of the clip, a preview of a series called Meet the Press for Idiots, but the following segment featuring God trying to bond with Jesus is pretty funny, too.

(S02E09) The Adult Swim schedule grid has this episode listed as "Holy Image," but the opening credits had it as "Holy Visage," so that's what I'm calling it. At the start of this season I received an e-mail from creator Dino Stamatopoulos that said the title of the episode may change from "Holy Image" to something else. I assume it was changed so viewers wouldn't confuse it with "God's Image," an earlier episode. [Note: Dino e-mailed me and confirmed this after I posted this review].

(S02E07) The first thing I noticed about this episode was the opening. As far as I know, this is the first time creator Dino Stamatopoulos wasn't credited with writing the episode. Instead, that credit went to Mark Rivers, who composes the music for the series.

At this point, I think fans of Moral Orel have come down off the high of the first season and have settled in to simply enjoying the show. We're more familiar with it now, but it's still smart and funny, and manages to go places you don't expect. When this latest episode began, it had a very "first season" feel to it: Orel hears Reverend Putty's sermon and takes the lesson to heart. I settled in for an enjoyable if not familiar episode, but by the end of it I was laughing so hard I had to take anti-laughing pills to stop.

Over the holidays while I was back in Iowa visiting family, my mother and I stayed up late one night engaging in one of those perpetual conversations about "God vs. Science." Like anyone else, I have my own feelings about how the universe operates, so when I was sent this link to a new boardgame from Growing Pains hunk turned evangelical Kirk Cameron and minister Ray Comfort called Intelligent Design Vs. Evolution, you can bet my brain lit up with about a dozen opinions.

(S02E06) This episode dealt with the line between faith and reason, which may be why I wasn't as drawn to it as other episodes. I thought it was a good episode, but the way in which the citizens of Moralton use fractured reasoning to explain their religious beliefs has been a major component of the show since it began. This episode merely brought that idea to the forefront, and while it was still funny, there wasn't much to surprise a fan like myself. I laughed several times, but was ultimately left with a feeling of "oh yeah, I knew they were gonna say that." That being said, this wouldn't be a bad episode to introduce someone to the show, as I think it's a great overview of the show and what it's trying to say.