This being the last Sunday supposedly as we know it, I made sure to get my butt into church today, or my favorite Brooklyn version of one anyway.  And thus I found myself this evening in Williamsburg at Pete’s Candy Store, discussing Kindles and the impending would-be apocolypse with the offspring of the famed televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.  After the service, in the bar that is home to Revolution Church, Jay Bakker was reassuringly unfamiliar with the details of the prophecies promising to upend us in a matter of days.  “Oh, that’s this week, right?  Yeah, I totally forgot about that.”  Thankfully, the sermon as well was devoid of any nod to the obviously well-funded doomsayers who have begun to draw the attention of more mainstream media.  On NPR this week, I listened, wishing it was a joke, to a young couple with a baby who are using up their life savings because they are certain they won’t be here on May 22.  It’s not that there won’t be a May 22, they say, it’s just that they expect that they, themselves, won’t be here.  Let’s hope that proverbial needle guarding the gates of heaven is as wide-eyed as they are.  Jay told me about being twelve years old and anticipating an upcoming day identified by Nostradamus to be the big End.  Having survived that, he isn’t too worried about such prophecies anymore.  My mother, also, told me about one of these they had when she was a girl, and how skin was thickened after many of her classmates, certain it would be the last time they saw each other, came face to face the next day, rabidly denying they had ever believed what they had rapturously professed just the day prior.  Like Jay, she recalled the particular source of the end-of-world rumors, but the current doomsday soothsayers remain oddly murky in their identity.  Who are these people bankrolling the proclamations on subway billboards, city buses, and even national commercials to announce yet another Judgment Day?  And why do they bother if, as they say, there’s nothing we can do about it anyway since it’s a private party, and the invitations are already engraved?  Some of the folks at Pete’s Candy Store speculated it might be a movie in the making.  I’m wondering if Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck aren’t behind the camera somewhere, hoping for a shot at redemption for their failed mockumentary on Joaquin’s supposed quick-change career leap from acting to rapping.  Maybe this is the sequel, and they’re working out the name, and it’ll focus on all those left behind… “I’m Still Here, Part II,  Joaquin Phoenix in the Rap-ture.”  Speaking of Joaquin, he’s an official vegan. 

QUESTION: if you’re having a dinner party, and you’re feeding vegans, can you feed them food grown using compost that has ice cream and meat-eater’s urine in it, or, at least what once was ice cream (yes, of course, cow’s milk or I wouldn’t be asking) and meaty pee?  I need some experts to weigh in here, so if you’re like me and totally absolutely in the dark on this stuff, you are precisely the person I’m looking for…go ahead, gimme the dirt.

Links: http://www.revolutionnyc.com/