'Til The Cows Come Home

I'd like a gin martini, straight up, with two olives and a crucifixion, please.

T. Bo (coworker and Canadian extraordinaire!), K. and I went outlet mall shopping upstate at the Woodbury Commons shopping center earlier this year. After we hit the stores and beat down some truckloads of Asian tourists for the best deals, we lunched at a Red Robin or an Applebee’s or a Pizzeria Uno or some other type of traditional outlet mall eatery. While we were dining we noticed the Christian Super Store across the parking lot. K., seeing my eyes light up with glee, immediately slammed the idea of visiting the store.

“Look, you know how I feel about organized religion,” he explained, “My theory is that if you’re going to be religious and try to make a point of it then you shouldn’t half-ass it. And the people who run those stores go all the way religious. I can’t have you going in and making a scene.”

Shot down! But T. Bo and I weren’t about to give up without a fight. K. finally relented, but only after I promised on the soul of my dead father (I get a lot of mileage out of that one…sorry, Dad) that I would behave myself. We paid our check and all but skipped across the way to retail heaven. Upon entering, the store was innocuous enough. Ceramic angels, Virgin Mary statuettes, First Communion jewelry, a wide assortment of colorful rosaries, and Bibles, Bibles, Bibles. Then we hit the back of the store.

The back of the store was clearly the section aimed at the “hip” Christians. There was a rack of t-shirts with an assortment of ironed-on logos emblazoned across them. A green t-shirt read “Desperate Housewife…” in big bold letters, and underneath in smaller print “…Desperate for Jesus!” A design clearly fashioned after the Abercrombie & Fitch emblem read “Abreadcrumb & Fish”. Another t-shirt ripped off the Sprite cola logo, splashing the phrase “Catch the Spirit!” across the front.

We were so busy flipping through the t-shirt racks, shocked into silence by a combination of fascination and horror, that we nearly missed the shelf full of Crown of Thorns leather wrist cuffs and choker collars.

“Is this going-all-the-way-religious enough for you?” I asked K. He was staring at the leather accoutrement with his mouth wide open.

“Is it just me, or does anyone else think a kid would get the living shit beat out of him if he wore this to school?” he asked.

“Don’t you mean get the Holy Shit kicked out of him?” I said.

At this point, T. Bo started to crack and had to run out of the store, barely making the exit before she burst into a fit of the giggles. K. and I weren’t far behind her. Thank God there was a Pier One next door so that we could cleanse our souls and mock what we’d just seen in the comfort of God-free capitalism. On the drive back to Manhattan, we continued to crack ourselves up reliving the bookstore experience and tried to think of other ways that the religiously inspired could market themselves.

“Stations of the Cross coasters,” I told K. and T. Bo. “I remember being an altar boy back in my youth and being jealous of the ab definition on the hot guys hanging from the crosses. There are enough stations to make a nice set. I totally would have bought Stations of the Cross coasters if they'd had them.”

They wholeheartedly agreed that Stations of the Cross coasters would indeed be a fabulous addition to one’s coffee table. And unbeknownst to each other, once back in the comfort of our own homes, we all set about scouring the Internet in search of the coasters. Alas, we struck dirt time and time again.

Fast forward many weeks later, at the office. I was sitting with T. Bo at her desk when she took a white paper shopping bag out of a drawer.

“I wanted to give this to you and K. for your birthdays, but they weren’t ready yet,” she said as she handed me the bag. I opened it, peered inside, and just about wet myself.

Stations of the Cross coasters. All fourteen of them.

“Oh. My. God. Where the hell did you find these?” I cried with joy.

After having no luck in finding an online vendor, T. Bo culled images of the individual stations from the Internet and e-mailed to a friend of hers who owns a mousepad design business. The friend then resized the images, printed them onto the mousepads, and cut them down to coaster size. And voila – Stations of the Cross coasters!

Here’s a closer view of the fourteen stations. Click on the thumbnails for a larger view.

I couldn’t be more pleased with the gift and I’m thoroughly inspired by T. Bo’s ingenuity. The coasters have already proved to be a phenomenal smash hit with guests. Last week we invited the adorable homo couple from next door over for dinner. As we sat around the living room table, they noticed the coasters. Apparently, one of the boys was in the monastery at one time before deciding he liked cock and needed to make a break for it. He was so smitten with the coasters, he even asked if his drink could be served on a specific station (Veronica’s Veil). He kept threatening to steal the coaster and take it home with him.

“Don’t steal ‘Veronica’s Veil’,” said K. “If you’re going to steal one, at least steal ‘Jesus Falls The Third Time’ because you can’t really tell it apart from the first two.”

We also found out that "Put The Stations In The Correct Order!" makes a great drinking game.

The true success of the coasters will be weighed this Sunday at our Easter dinner. If God really does exist, we won’t have to go to the liquor store this weekend. All we’ll have to do is pour some water into the wine glasses and see what happens next.

Posted by mak at April 4, 2007 8:59 PM