Or -- the 'Lewinski Code' might sell better

On Friday I made a list of things I didn't want to do this weekend. The list included: Not slashing my wrists; not harboring untoward carnal thoughts about Lindsay Lohan (who might arguably be seen as more dysfunctional than the entire Culkin clan), and especially to 'not' see The Da Vinci Code. In fact, I made a further vow, and was to not ever see The Da Vinci Code. None of my motivation in eschewing the flick had anything to do with the 'present in entirely too many movies' Tom Hanks weird hair syndrome, but everything to do with my belief system. Anyway, Hanks had much weirder hair in Forest Gump (contender for the most overrated movie in history). Back to my belief system. My belief system regarding Code is that I don't give a shit about the findings of a half-baked novel. Because, that is all it is. It's not the arrival of the anti-Christ, it's a trowel-it-on semi-researched novel. Nothing wrong with that per se. Kudos to the guy who wrote it and sold it. My point is, such mental, pseudo-theological ramblings have nothing to do with what I believe or disbelieve. Those things are 'mine', and not to be interfered with. Is the premise of Christ and Mary Magdalene blasphemy? Of course not. Maybe it even really happened. I don't know. Neither does anybody else. Clues in Da Vinci's The Last Supper? How so? Why would Leonardo Da Vinci know more about what was going on than, say, Leonardo DiCaprio? Well, maybe a little bit more, but you get my drift.

So, I'll put Da Vinci right there alongside those who through the ages have surmised that somebody other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays. A wag once suggested that the plays of Shakespeare were in fact written by another writer of the same name. But again, what does it matter. What if the plays were written by a guy named Melvin? Does that make Hamlet any less magnificent? Not to me it doesn't. The point is, they were written and they have gone down through the ages as a true gift to humanity. The story of Christ is deemed by the devout to be a true gift to humanity, likewise, and no pop-culture nonsense is going to defuse the beliefs held by those people.

However, I have the germ of an idea brewing for a novel and ultimately, I hope, a film. I call it by the working title: The Lewinski Code. In this one Monica, as the Mary Magdalene character, comes to the realization that Bill Clinton is actually the anti-Christ and that her Christian quest is to ultimately disgrace him, and to force him to spend the rest of his days knowing that he induces titters in certain sections of the crowd when he is on the rubber-chicken speaking circuit. The moment of truth comes near the end when a penitent Monica utters, in Aramaic, as a nod to Mel Gibson, the immortal lines of Freud: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."