In Portland, Maine, a Baptist minister gave a sermon about how Christians should support Jews and the nation of Israel. The sermon’s point was to express love and admiration for the Jews. The sermon’s title: “The Only Way to Destroy the Jewish Race.”

The title was published in the church’s ad in the local paper the day before he preached the sermon. When people freaked out, the minister said he “never expected” the title to elicit a negative response.

Really? You didn’t think calling your sermon “The Only Way to Destroy the Jewish Race” might cause people to think you were delivering an anti-Semitic speech? Really? Huh.

It’s been a few months since we implemented the comment feature on EricDSnider.com, and you readers have certainly gone all interactive and comment-y on us! We’re up to 1,300 total comments (not including the blog, which is counted separately), which is like 11 comments a day. Not bad, considering we only have about 12 visitors a day.

Anyway, while I welcome any and all comments, and am grateful to have any readers at all, please don’t think this means that if you post something really, really stupid I will just overlook it. I will do no such thing. Rather, I will copy and paste it into a file on my desktop called “dumb comments,” and at a later date, I will take several such comments and reprint them here so everyone can look at them. These are mostly from movie reviews, except as noted.

“The Grudge 2″:
Unfortuantely,what other considers as “horror” does not relly on “gimicks” or suspense rather it rellies on slasher movies and opening people up w/ all the blood and gore.I disagree I think the movie was great not as great as the original japanese version but it’s nice that it tackle some of the loose ends. And like other great stories it does not rely on spoon feeding the audience to the true nature of the plot and leaves us to make our own conclusions. I do however not recommend it to those who doe not like to use their brain and imagination that often.

[This isn't too bad, but I do like how the commenter suddenly learns how to spell "rely" midway through.]

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“The Grudge 2″:
i think the movie was wonderfull and funny even when the girl peed on herself

[Even when, or especially when?]

Continue reading…

Since I was late in posting this week’s “Snide Remarks,” and later still at doing the podcast for it, I give you this unrelated item to ponder. This is a conversation I overheard on the Portland State University campus. First speaker is a wispy Asian hipster boy with bleached hair. He is talking to his female friend. They are both about 18 years old.

WISPY ASIAN BOY: I don’t have style.
FEMALE FRIEND: How are you going to make a clothing line if you don’t have style?!
WISPY ASIAN BOY: I’m just kidding. I’m all about style.

The end.

Allow me to welcome myself back! I was on hiatus for January, not seeing new releases, taking a break from reviewing, but now it is February and everything is back to normal. This is especially true if you consider a plethora of lousy movies to be normal, because that’s what we have today.

“Because I Said So” is an utterly rancid comedy starring Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore. We were stunned first by its badness, and second by the hyenas behind us who laughed from beginning to end as though the film were the funniest thing ever produced by humans. Stunned, I tell you.

The other wide release today is “The Messengers,” which is yet another PG-13-rated un-scary horror film about a creepy house. It’s better than some, but that’s not saying much.

“In the Dark” is the weekly e-mail that summarizes all this stuff (and much, much more), and if you prefer to use your ears instead of your eyes, you can listen to the podcast version here.