I went to mass for Easter. I went for the sake of Mrs. Wife and The Daughters. It’s important to them and I respect that. I even went to communion. 8-Year Old Daughter is receiving her first communion in May and I wanted to set a good example. I’m glad I didn’t burst into flames when the host touched my tongue. That would have sent the wrong message.

Even though I left the church years ago, I still try to keep an open mind and listen hard to the readings and sermons. This was a portion of the gospel reading:

God raised him up the third day, and gave him to be revealed, not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen before by God, to us, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

Acts 10:40-41

If Christ wanted to pave the way for mankind to embrace Christianity, he should have shown Himself to the masses, not just a chosen few. If you had been there, would you have believed them? Would you have taken their word for it? “He’s not dead. But only we’re allowed to see him.” That’s too convenient.

The night before Easter I was watching the annual broadcast of The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston. (What a ham.) Marking a doorway with lamb’s blood to avoid the wrath of the Angel of Death made no sense to me. Why would they need to do that? If the Angel of Death is an omnipotent spirit, wouldn’t it, by its own supernatural power, know which houses were Hebrew and which were Egyptian? Isn’t doing something worldly like smearing blood on the door superfluous? It’s a good thing the Egyptians didn’t catch on or it would have blown the whole operation.

And commanding Abraham to slay his son to prove his devotion is sadistic and cruel.

I don’t understand any of it. And I attended a parochial school! It all boils down to a very simple equation; you either believe or you don’t.

I paid a visit to the David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea to view the original drawings from R. Crumb’s latest book, The Book of Genesis Illustrated. All 50 chapters! It was a Friday and the gallery was gloriously empty. I love Crumb’s work. It’s so dense.

Each drawing, some 200+ pages, was arranged sequentially along the perimeter of the gallery as they appear in the book. You could see where Crumb made corrections to some of the drawings with white out. Did you know that in the world of collectors, the less white out used on an illustration, the more valuable it is?

Crumb played it straightforward with this book and didn’t include any of his usual brilliant sarcastic wit and commentary. It’s a studious interpretation that uses text directly quoted from the bible. In perusing the drawings, I couldn’t help noticing how violent and erotic some of the bible stories are.

I asked the gallery attendant if the drawings were for sale. She told me that they can only sold as one lot. That’s so silly! Who would have room to display all of these?