Madonna of the Toast

Holy Frig

2011-09-07T22:20:00.006-05:00

In honor of the Honest Abe Lincoln penny pose struck by this cloud over Grand Falls, New Brunswick, I’m going to tell you the truth. Keeping up with the visual manifestations of iconic figures and forms has not been a priority of late . . . okay, it hasn’t been a priority for a while. Tracking and considering these happenings is a full-time job. Such sightings never stop, and they never will. It’s a fundamental aspect of our existence. Uploaded to YouTube on August 1, I just watched the video, viewer number 2,553,733. “Holy frig,” exclaims the man filming the sky.

The big picture is something I’m still trying to bring into focus, but for all of the differences in the countless individual stories, there are incredible commonalities. The commonalities are telling, though I’m still trying to crack the code. Recently I saw No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s Bob Dylan documentary. Recollecting the angry audiences that booed him when he first went electric, Dylan said something like, “Whatever they were mad about had nothing to do with what they heard.” We all carry so much with us that a song, a certain noise, a shadow or a scar can flip all sorts of internal switches and that’s why life on this planet looks as it does.

I’m going to keep looking and kick around some of these ideas from different angles. Most of this will be done in private. Some of it, like this piece about writers not wanting to read, will be shared, at least once a month at Print magazine's Imprint. I’ll do my best to post updates here, though I anticipate they will remain infrequent. The choice bits that do pop up here will be of interest to me, though perhaps not to you. We’ll just have to see . . .

July Junk

2011-07-05T22:36:00.007-05:00

Thanks to the anonymous reader who left the tip about the kudzu Jesus in Kinston, North Carolina. We’re just shy of the two-year anniversary of this kudzu Jesus from Raleigh. It’s true, North Carolina has a lot of kudzu. This particular form has been spared a spray of pesticide.

How has the summer treated you so far? Unlike last year, I’m keeping close to New York. Haven’t had to use the air conditioner yet, though tonight is the first night where I seem to be breaking a sweat typing. Hmmm.

I’m reading next Monday in Washington Heights in support of the amazing Word Up Pop-Up Bookstore, run by friend Veronica Liu. The event is an official Meetup for legendary radio station WFMU (go here and scroll down to the February 26, 2007, episode of The Speakeasy with Dorian to hear me discuss Madonna of the Toast, should you dare, or care).

Also, my pal Christopher D Salyers is gearing up for a trip to Japan as part of his third and final installment of the Face Food books. Have you ever seen a Japanese bento box made to resemble a character? If you have, and you’re not Japanese, blame Christopher. A few years back he introduced charaben to Westerners and since then it has become quite the fad, both in terms of food and design. Since I know all of you have already spent your hard-earned money on my books, think about contributing to Christopher’s Kickstarter project, especially if you’ve ever wanted to see your face rendered in rice, seaweed and okra.

Happy summer!

May Readings

2011-05-03T22:30:00.003-05:00

It’s May, and I’m reading twice this month.

Saturday the 7th in New York, the annual May Fair at the Ding Dong Lounge goes down. I think this will be my third time participating in this great afternoon of readings and indie presses. Veronica Liu of Fractious Press fame is one of the primary instigators and I am always happy to support her myriad projects. I’ve been working on a novel and am planning on brining something out of the woodshed.

On May 21, at Robin’s Bookstore in Philadelphia, I’ll be reading my contribution to The Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms With Queens. I’ve read all over the country, but this will be my first time reading in my hometown, and hopefully not my last.

That is all . . .

“Go through the lights, take the third reich”

2011-03-29T14:54:00.004-05:00

I’ve been busy and Madonna of the Toast has not been a priority of late, but work and deadlines be damned in the name of some Hitler pareidolia! The internet has been aflutter with re-posts, re-Tweets and Facebook likes responding to Charli Dickenson’s Twitter pic of this home in Swansea, Wales. Stuck in traffic, she decided the slanted roofline bears an uncanny resemblance to Hitler. As we all know, all it takes is one random associative leap of faith, or fuhrer, and the whole world tunes in, especially when it comes to one of history’s greatest villains.

If the roof is the hairline, I guess the lintel is the mustache and the second floor windows the eyes. Hitler is deserving of many labels, but fat is not one of them, so I find the ground level windows to be distracting, as he never had jowls as far as I know. Admittedly, I am not a Hitler buff so maybe I’m wrong about this.

Poking around the various media outlets that have picked up this story, everyone seems to be taking it all in stride, with most reactions keeping it classy with clever wordplay and puns, like this WalesOnline report from which I borrowed the title of this post: “Various sites across the world are adding their own comments including one which offers these directions to the house: ‘Go through the lights, take the third reich and you’ll find it on your extreme right.’”

Of course, Hitler’s face is one of the most salient and disturbing icons of the twentieth century. A story like this reminds us of that, but plenty of ink has been dedicated to examining Hitler’s legacy, and all of that ink has resulted in a whole realm of publishing, filmmaking and art that makes money off of this image, such is the power of an icon.

My buddy Noma Bar has just created new covers for Picador editions of Don Delillo novels, including Running Dog. This is a riff on a previous illustration Bar did for an Esquire UK article about the demand for books about Hitler.

For all you diehard fans, you’ll remember that this is not the first instance of dictator pareidolia. Who can forget Lenin in the shower curtain?!?

Banksy Didn't Win, Maybe I Will

2011-03-04T12:58:00.004-05:00

For those of you who keep up with Hollywood's awards season you know that Banksy's documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop was nominated for an Oscar. It didn't win the Oscar, though it did win an Independent Spirit Award. The iconoclast street artist made a brilliant film that skewers the consumer culture that has made him a star. Because I've worked on numerous graffiti and street art books, I was lucky enough to attend an exclusive screening of the film. It floored me, and prompted me to write Chasing the Whale: Banksy, Obsession, and the Sea for The Millions.

Now I'm trying to drum up votes for the piece to make it to the next round of the 3 Quarks Daily Prize in Arts and Literature. Actual judges will decide the winners and award cash prizes, but for them to even consider this essay I need enough votes to get it in front of their eyes.

Here's the essay's opening to whet your appetite:

There is nothing positive about the dictionary definition of “obsession” – it haunts, is abnormal and persistent, like a bad rash. Tossing the word into a conversation typically indicates some form of criticism about a person and that person’s particular pursuit. Obsessions can lead to stalkers, delusion and great creations (the last two are not mutually exclusive); they can limit and restrict you to minutia or endow a unique vision that changes how you and others view the world at large. People indulge obsession in different ways – live it like a lifestyle or stir it into a creation like a minor but crucial recipe ingredient where it doesn’t overpower anything and complements everything.

Go ahead and read the whole thing, or don't, but vote for #50 either way!

Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms With Queens

2011-01-12T22:00:00.007-05:00

When I wrote Madonna of the Toast I lived in Astoria, Queens. These days Jackson Heights, Queens, is home. I mention this because I have an essay in the forthcoming book Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms With Queens. Edited by Nicole Steinberg, the book contains Queens-centric fiction and nonfiction by writers that live, or have lived, here. I don’t have a copy of the book yet, but judging by the contributors I’m sure it is lively and eclectic, like Queens.

My piece riffs on the citizens of the borough using the Hell Gate Bridge (the photograph above is of the bridge’s viaduct arches at sunset, shot by yours truly) as a metaphorical thread to tie everything together, in my mind at least. Queens will never receive the same cultural cred as Manhattan or Brooklyn, but that’s why I love it.

Here’s a little taste of “To Bridge: The Spaces Between, Behind, and Around Us”:

Fierce tides and the traffic of industry were the East River’s song. But now, multilingual soundtracks of ice cream trucks, revving engines and the flotsam of a consumer culture—broken glass, food wrappers, old, faded shoes and tires, slapping, tinkling, rattling— these are the new songs that rise and fall along the tidal shore: the songs of Queens.

Mournful, bronzed autumnal sunset draws out the day like taffy, long and unrelenting. Ambling amid rattling leaves, two men speak Greek. Their shoulders sway like the river; their punctuations flash like whitecaps. Squealing girls careen their bicycles around the two who move along, seemingly oblivious. Perhaps they speak of the old country, a foreignness to them that seems impenetrable, far removed from the country they stroll through. But then the reality of their context is made clear as one of the men, in heavily accented English, says “freedom of speech,” followed by laughter—the punch line to some joke.

Kudos to Steinberg for putting this collection together and to SUNY for publishing it. Check out the book’s blog for more info.

The Last 2010 Reading

2010-12-07T19:12:00.005-05:00

Hi friends and fans – 2010 is winding down and on both a personal and professional level it’s been a great year for me.

I’ve got a final 2010 reading coming up, Tuesday, December 14 at ACA Galleries, 529 West 20th St., 5th Floor, here in New York. I’m one of several readers representing Fractious Press, one of six presses being feted in the name of New York City Small Presses Night. Things get underway at 6pm, the readings will be brief and there will be wine and nibbles.

Though my short story collection, I Like to Keep My Troubles On the Windy Side of Things, has been out for a few months – old news in publishing terms – I’m happy to let some more folks know about it. In fact, I wrote a piece for The Millions (which was picked up by Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic) that touches on the promotional aspect of publishing.

The book hasn’t received any big reviews or anything, but I guess people are discovering it here and there. Andria Alefhi included the book on this list of small press recommendations, which is great. I was actually a guest on Andria’s WHFR radio show, Zine Therapy.

So come on out on December 14 and help support renegade independent presses!

See you there, or in 2011 . . .

Friday, October 29, Reading at Saki in Chicago

2010-10-25T20:03:00.004-05:00

Dear readers, how many of you live in Chicago? How many of you want to hear me read from my short story collection, I Like to Keep My Troubles on the Windy Side of Things? For the rare breed of reader that both lives in Chicago and wants to listen to me say words I have written, you are in luck. I will be at Saki in Logan Park Friday, October 29. The event starts at 6:30 so we won’t take up too much of your night. I’ll be there with my pal Veronica Liu, the mastermind behind Fractious Press. There will also be local talent, including John Paul Davis, an old friend. Tell all of your Chicago friends!

And just so no one thinks that Madonna of the Toast stories don't happen if I don't keep up with them, here's one from last week. According to the Winston-Salem Journal, Bill Johnson found this fallen branch in his yard and discovered "what appears to be a robed image of Jesus with an outstretched hand." Johnson has sprayed the wood with polyurethane and plans on keeping this fallen treasure. I have to say, he looks good holding it.

Is Something Burning?

2010-09-17T08:34:00.004-05:00

The world just can’t get enough of foodstuffs infused with iconography. After mucking about in these Madonna of the Toast waters for as long as I have, this doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me, however, is how commercial interests make headway into the mainstream with outlandish products. Burnt Impressions out of Vermont is the latest on the scene with its Jesus Toaster. Company owner Galen Dively, III, asks: "Why buy one ‘miraculous’ Jesus toast from some online auction site when you can be with The Lord every morning over coffee or tea?”

Of course, Dively is not the first one to try to cash in on DIY Jesus toast. The Jesus Pan has been around for a while, as have other similar types of molds and presses featuring God’s son and Mary. Aahh, the burnt smell of novelty commercialism!

Nationally syndicated cartoonist Ted Rall has also noticed the prevalence of these stories, in Afghanistan of all places, as a result of his “Afghan Notebook” series. This installment speaks for itself.

Lastly, I've been in Spain for a bit and, among other things, read a book that inspired this piece that went up on The Millions.

It Must Be Summer

2010-08-01T08:55:00.003-05:00

It’s been a hot, muggy summer here on the East Coast, with air conditioners humming nonstop and pools and beaches overrun with folks seeking respite. Even up in New England, the days have been unseasonably warm, which is good news for places like Liquid Planet Water Park. Located in Candia, New Hampshire, the past couple of summers had been rainy so business was slow. But, according to this Union Leader report, not too long after opening for the new season, Liquid Planet employees noticed the face of Jesus on the red cross of the lifeguard flag. According to Kevin Dumont, one of the park’s owners, this year’s weather has been perfect and business is up 200 percent.

Dumont’s sister, Kelly, thinks the form is more a likeness of a gladiator, or a rendering of the Beatles (minus Ringo, I presume). But lifeguard Sara Schlachter recognized Christ as soon as the flag was unfurled, though she is not religious. Either way, you can’t argue with hard numbers, so whether it’s weather (ha!) or divine intervention, it seems like this is one small family-owned business that will stay afloat for another year, which in this day and age is an impressive feat.

I know it’s been a while since I posted a Madonna of the Toast tale, but it’s not because the heat has sapped me. I’ve been busy elsewhere, and if you’re interested you can see what I’ve been up to.

The venerable magazine Print, which I have contributed to over the years, has recently started an online forum called Imprint, and I’m one of the regular contributors. If you have any interest in keeping up with visual trends, from typography to art, branding and packaging design, you’ll find something worthwhile.

I also wrote recently about the amazing Tara Books for The Living Principles. If you like the idea of book as object, you have to read about Tara.

Until next time . . .

Talking Books and Stuff

2010-06-18T03:44:00.004-05:00

Greetings from London, where this time of year cool evenings and late sunsets make for a wonderful break from New York City humidity. Always fun to kick around here, highlights have been the opening of The Family and the Land, an amazing retrospective show of Sally Man’s photography, and the necessary visit to Borough Market where you can get your eat on with all sorts of local delicacies.

If you happen to be in Amsterdam on Saturday, June 26, be sure to check out the American Book Center’s Urban Arts Festival, where loads of artists and craftspeople will be doing what they do best. Yours truly will be talking about illustrated books with Kate Bingaman-Burt and Peter Giljam of Buzzworks (nice name, right?).

Should you show up because you have read this, be sure to let me know. I will be duly impressed!

Also, for all of you clamoring to buy I Like To Keep My Troubles On The Windy Side Of Things, copies are starting to pop up on Amazon and B&N – so now you have no excuse!

Tree Falls, Story Ends

2010-05-18T23:19:00.003-05:00

July 2007: I shared with you the story of a Virgin Mary Cottonwood tree in Brownsville, Texas, which had attracted the devout and curious for more than twenty years, besting weather and even an arsonist. But, according to this Brownsville Herald story, “when heavy rains swept through the Rio Grande Valley on Tuesday, winds toppled the tree to the ground and left it resting in pieces outside of the now abandoned boarding house where it was located. Purple and red plastic flowers were crushed under the soft, wet wood.” (Great image!)

According to a local resident, people didn’t flock to the tree like they used to, which in my mind explains the plastic flowers (real flowers dry and decay). I’ve long been fascinated with the lasting power of Madonna of the Toast stories. This tree’s story spanned four US presidents, outrageous technological developments and plenty more. Sure, this Cottonwood was no Giant Sequoia, but these days it doesn’t seem like anything ever lasts that long. Here ends one tree’s unique tale.

Out and About

2010-04-26T18:46:00.005-05:00

Greetings one and all. I've been busy with some non-Madonna of the Toast related projects of late. For the curious among you, here are some dates and links loosely related to said busyness:

This Saturday I'll be reading from I Like to Keep My Troubles On the Windy Side of Things as part of May Day at Ding Dong. I read around 2:30pm and I can say from experience that the Ding Dong Lounge is a fine venue for early afternoon drinking and literary revelry. There will be zines and indie presses a plenty - including the wonderful Fractious Press - plus some minstrels, including Ed Askew.

On May 12 I'll be on Washington Heights Free Radio, talking shop, reading various words and spinning some tunes. Why? Because I have a poem in the latest issue of We'll Never Have Paris.

For those of you who prefer reading over listening, you can check out an essay about "obsession" over at The Millions.

And for the hardcore readers amongst you that still like to hold paper in your hands as you read, the latest issue of Grafik includes my review of Cartographies of Time.

Be the Ad

2010-04-06T21:04:00.009-05:00

Last year on April 20, I posted a little tidbit about this strange Kit Kat Jesus, and asked, A brilliant Nestle publicity stunt or a divine snack? Turns out it was the former and now the truth is ricocheting around the interweb, thanks to a website and several Youtube clips like this one:

One of my favorite blog entries, he typed modestly, is Thoughts About News Covering the News of the News. We live in an infotainment culture and Madonna of the Toast stories thrive in such an atmosphere.

According to a comment at Digital Buzz Blog, the ad agency behind this viral marketing is UbachsWisbrun/JWT (will look into this). No matter if that’s true or not, the creators tapped a cranial fold with this concept. In four days this story found its way onto 140,000 websites (including this one), ranging from personal blogs to bona fide media outlets. Because of the candy’s catchy slogan everyone, myself included, riffed on “break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar” – a no-brainer.

But you know what? The narrator of this case study video points out that everyone who posted and re-posted the story, everyone who read it and talked about it with others, we all became the advertising – ingenious and emblematic of our era to be sure. Because of technology's acceleration we have lost a sense of distance and separation and this funnels all of us into the same media environment and we become the media and the environment.

Marshall McLuhan was the first to say it, so I leave you with his words, from The Medium is the Massage:

Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as the information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience coexist in a state of active interplay.

That was written in 1967 – it’s all the same today, just faster . . .

Thanks to Tom Hamling for sending me the video!

Look: Some Thoughts On Look It's Jesus

2010-03-12T00:01:00.011-05:00

Released in 2007, Madonna of the Toast was the first book of its kind. When I first started researching the project in 2006 international media had disseminated the tales of people seeing Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Mickey Mouse, the Pope and Bob Hope in unusual places and on unexpected surfaces. Like everyone else, I’d heard about the $28,000 Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese, and I had some vague memory of an eccentric collection of potato chips spoofed on The Simpsons. As I’ve said many times, a friend presented the idea of a book about people seeing the Virgin Mary. I thought, What does that book look like? A bunch of photographs with regurgitated copy from local interest news items? I didn’t find that particularly interesting, but the idea stuck with me and I began poking around, and quickly became fascinated.

What hooked me was how when I began peeling back the layers on some of the stories, these objects – some of them uncanny, others difficult to discern, bizarre and/or questionable – served as fascinating points of entry into broader, richer ideas about contemporary culture. At lease that’s what I found. So I just kept looking.

Why am I telling you this? Because I have gotten my hands on the just released Look It’s Jesus, a book of “Amazing Holy Visions in Everyday Life” – a familiar theme in these parts, right? Compiled by Harry and Sandra Choron and published by Chronicle the book definitely relies on the same kinds of stories as Madonna of the Toast but the two books couldn’t be any more different.

Here’s the tale of the tape: both books are 96 pages; Madonna of the Toast is a larger book; Look It’s Jesus contains 60 examples of these visions (most of them Jesus), while Madonna of the Toast has 20; of the 60 examples, five of them can be found in my book, and 13 of them were reported on this blog.

There’s no doubt that with the passing of every year more of these stories surface and patterns emerge, like the oil stain faces, the wood grain forms and gnarled bark on trees. As those familiar with Madonna of the Toast know, I credit the increase in these sightings to technology’s hyper-accelerated ways, driving images and information around the world, fast enough to get everyone’s attention without remaining in many people’s memories. Something else will always come along.

This isn’t the sole idea I attach to these stories. You can’t ignore the psychological phenomenon pareidolia, the act of random visual stimuli being mistakenly perceived as recognizable. This is an intrinsic human trait that influences how we view the world. These stories have also claimed permanent spots in pop culture, especially American pop culture, and that’s interesting. In fact, these stories can be weaved into contemporary issues ranging from separation of church and state, immigration, politics, e-commerce, media studies – you get the point.

Here’s the thing, though: Look It’s Jesus doesn’t mention ANY of this. No mention of pareidolia, or anything other than a brief introduction that skims the phenomenon’s history, mentions cell phone cameras and then pairs a caption with each image.

So what’s the point of this book?

One thing is for sure: it has a great cover, a lenticular cover to be precise. But I’m not sure the point of hanging a book on a flashy cover (the Jesus image fades in and out as you move the book). A number of the photographs are of dubious quality (admittedly also an issue in Madonna of the Toast and a reason there are fewer examples), but what makes things worse is that the captions seem like for the most part they’ve been lifted from the original news item.

An example: On May 3, 2007, I posted this entry about Jesus, or Gandalf, appearing in a flash memory chip. I linked to this engadget.com article, in which one Dick James says: "We often get dark fringe lines in the silicon, and in this case it looks like there was some holy influence." Guess what? James “says” the same thing in Look It’s Jesus.

This is probably where I need to make clear that I’m not accusing, or suggesting, that the Chorons have done anything wrong. They haven’t. Many subjects have many books dedicated to them. And it’s no secret that book publishers try to cash in on trends – one or two successful graffiti books unleashed a torrent of them, and be sure that over the next year there will be ample titles that mash up classic public domain literary texts with zombies, werewolves, robots and vampires. Some such projects work, others don’t.

In their dedication, the Chorons thank those who served “as a constant source of inspiration during the creation of this book.” Look It’s Jesus is certainly their creation but their creation is a rickety raft of repurposed material. It fails to tell any sort of story. Person unexpectedly finds Jesus/Mary – everyone knows that story, even if you’ve never heard of Madonna of the Toast (and believe me, most people haven’t).

In researching Madonna of the Toast I interviewed most of people that made these discoveries, met some of them and was lucky to have Mark Batty Publisher (MBP) foot the bill for some great original photographs. This resulted in stories that became about much more than material objects and what they may or may not resemble.

Furthermore, because of how the Chorons approached the content, they don’t always get the facts straight, even when it comes to two of the most famous of these stories: the Nun Bun and Diana Duyser’s Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese.

The four sentences dedicated to the Nun Bun do not even bother to mention its creator, Ryan Finney. I interviewed him, and Bongo Java owner Bob Bernstein, over the phone, and when I went to Nashville to read at the cafe, Finney picked me up at the airport. Long story short, the Nun Bun was stolen on Christmas Day 2005 and was MIA for a couple of years until it turned up via a ransom note. In Look It’s Jesus the last sentence in the paragraph about the Nun Bun reads: “When it eventually turned up in a thrift shop, Bernstein was delighted to find it intact.” Bernstein didn’t “find” the Nun Bun, he received some bizarre photographs of it. The wording implies that the Nun Bun has returned to Bongo Java, but it hasn’t.

In the cursory overview of the Diana Duyser Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese saga, the book reports that she stored the sandwich half in a freezer. This is not what she told the BBC, or me when I interviewed her on the phone and in person during a great photo shoot at a Times Square hotel. One of the “miracles” of the sandwich is that it never rotted, even though it nested in cotton swabs and stored in a plastic case.

Now, Madonna of the Toast is not a perfect book (very few books are), but I had a goal: to examine these stories and their relationships to contemporary culture. Look It’s Jesus is a product of the gawk and forget about it culture that consumes those of us, myself included, who spend way too much time in front of screens that are gateways to limitless information and distractions.

Sitting here trying to figure a way to wrap this up I can’t help but think of the news stories that report these visual manifestations of religious and secular icons. Because of 24-hour news cycles and cell phone cameras much of the media has become a continuous distraction, with no shortage of content though most of it is totally without substance. In this way, maybe Look It’s Jesus is a suitable vehicle for transporting these tales to more people. But if all you want is a peek, might as well just keep surfing the web.

All About the Light

2010-03-03T00:10:00.005-05:00

In Mercedes, Texas, according to this KRGV report, Merced Mendoza spotted this image of Jesus on her pants and her husband was there to photograph it using his phone. As she drove, Mendoza spotted the image on her thigh. By virtue of the sun’s location, how it landed on her otherwise plain jeans and matters of physics beyond my ability to describe, the form took shape, just long enough for it to be digitized, and then submitted to the media. The Mendozas “lead a small church” and find the fleeting face a blessing that inspires them, and they hope it does the same for others.

Now to Puerto Rico and the pale winter skin of a New Yorker on vacation. Not just any New Yorker, this arm marked with a sunburn shaped like a hand belongs to my pal and the internationally acclaimed champion of charaben, Christopher D Salyers. Christopher missed out on last week’s snow, preferring to laze on a beach. He did get a little local culture in, however, including a stop in a store where he noticed a photograph of clouds shaped like hands folded in prayer. When Christopher inquired about the image (thinking of yours truly) he was told that these were believed to be the hands of God. And then, later that day this shape emerged on his arm. But, says Christopher, he neither napped nor drunkenly passed out in the sun, leaving in question the source of the unique marking.

Back in April I explored various interpretations of “hand of God” should any of you want to read up on the concept.

In both of these examples the sun was the cause. But what was the reason?

It Ain’t Easy Being Ahead of the Curve

2010-02-28T23:16:00.004-05:00

I wonder if Nicolas Baier ever feels this way. The image above is “Canada in the Marsh of a Golf Course in Laval 2007” from the artist’s series Pareidolias. Baier works with damaged mirrors to play with viewers’ ideas of perception. As this article from Artdaily.org says: “Our likeness cannot be seen in the scratches, cracks, holes and other markings of these damaged surfaces, but it is practically impossible not to continue to seek for whatever may constitute an image, be it a hand here, a bear’s head there, the surface of a pond or distant galaxies . . . There is always more to see; the gaze ceaselessly invests these marks with a meaning they do not intrinsically have.”

Ain’t that the truth! Way back in 2007 my book Madonna of the Toast was released, resulting in the start of its eponymous blog – the one you’re reading right now. Since then, I’ve read all over the country and had folks say some really nice things about both the book and blog. The time and effort I’ve devoted to this project have resulted in my thinking about these stories in terms of greater cultural significance. Nicolas Baier and I work in different mediums but mull over the same ideas. The regular readers amongst you know all of this. But, it has been brought to my attention that a new book, Look It’s Jesus, has been released recently.

I have yet to see the actual book but as soon as I read it I’ll be sure to post a response.

Have any of you seen this book? Thoughts?

New Book, Slightly New Direction

2010-01-25T19:53:00.006-05:00

Hi Folks,

While this here blog will remain a source for Madonna of the Toast stories, I am going to change things up a bit. There are a few reasons for this, but the primary one is the pending release of my first collection of short stories, I Like To Keep My Troubles On The Windy Side Of Things.

In true indie spirit, we’re going to avoid Amazon for the time being, but you can learn more about the book, and order it, here. Starting next month the book should begin to appear in select independent bookstores.

For those of you in New York, I’ll be reading at Housing Works on Monday, February 1, joined by fellow Fractious Press author John Controna, with Rachel Levitsky and Kevin Varrone from Ugly Duckling Presse, plus the song stylings of Franklin Bruno.

The official release party for the book will take place on Saturday, February 27, at KGB, where Alex Rose will join me, along with others.

As more readings and events take shape, here in New York and elsewhere, I’ll post info.

For the past three years I’ve kept things pretty focused around here. My interest in Madonna of the Toast phenomena remains keen, though certain of the stories have begun to feel canned. As a result, and in light of this little book of fiction and other projects simmering away, I’m going to expand the subject matter. Sometimes I might just point you in the direction of something I find interesting, but if all goes as planned I will also share longer pieces about culture at large, which I honestly believe is echoed in all these happenings that I relay to you: religion, technology, media, pop culture, e-commerce – these are the filters through which most people understand the world, and that’s significant.

Happy Reading!

Potato Cross x 2

2010-01-07T19:51:00.004-05:00

Everyone is talking about it. Or at least everyone that tracks homespun local interest reports that attract national and international media interest because they are about Jesus or Mary showing up in some unexpected place. So here we have one story that becomes a couple stories, which all end up being the same kind of story, the old Madonna of the Toast story.

According to The BIG One – WTAM 1100, Dennis Bort of Berea, Ohio, was peeling potatoes, on Christmas Day no less, when he found a cross in one of the spuds. Now it’s up for grabs on eBay. But guess what? It’s not the only potato cross available on eBay right now. On New Year’s Eve a woman in Iowa found one too, though this one is more rough hewn.

Who remembers this potato cross from my January 23, 2008, post? You don’t remember? It’s much better than this post, which is just more of the same when it comes to these stories. There is one bid on the Iowa potato, while the Ohio one has a minimum of $1,000. Guess what? That one won’t sell. But, if you check out the older story, you can also get a little dose of James Joyce and my secret ingredient for making the best potato salad.

Happy Holidaze!

2009-12-22T15:39:00.003-05:00

For this Holidaze post, I bring you a Jesus banana and His mother as a cascading waterfall. Who needs a manger?

According to this Daily Telegraph report, Lisa Swinton went to her fruit bowl for a healthy snack and chose this slightly bruised banana, found at the bottom of the bowl. Everyone knows that the brown spots equal sweetness, but Swinton was shocked when she noticed the face: ‘‘I was like ‘Oh my God! It’s Jesus on a banana!’’ I guess Swinton was really hungry because she snapped some pics and then peeled this sucker, later posting images on her Facebook page. For Swinton and her crowd, such visual manifestations, apparently, are no big thing; she tells the Daily Telegraph that her friends have seen Mary in mold and on a door. But have they seen Mary in a waterfall?

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “You cannot step twice in the same river.” And that goes for waterfalls, too, meaning photographer Carl Silverstein was in the right place at the right time when he shot this photograph. Titled “Falls of Foyer – Woman Holding Child,” Silverstein emailed me the image as he thought I would appreciate it, which I do. The patterns and rhythms of nature inform everything about life, no matter how far-removed we are from those patterns and rhythms; their echoes influence how people recognize these forms in the most unexpected places, even if the people don’t realize it.

See you in 2010, people. If you miss me, Madonna of the Toast can keep you company.

Canned Religion

2009-12-04T16:35:00.003-05:00

Spend enough time squinting and deciphering stains and burns thought to resemble iconic faces and forms and the stories start to get a bit humdrum. Such is the case with this recent Virgin Mary pancake from Glendale, Arizona, made by Bianca Lopez the day before Thanksgiving, according to this ABC 15 report. Short story made shorter: Lopez made a batch of flapjacks for her family and the last one featured a shape that she recognized immediately. This visual manifestation has delivered to Lopez the requisite “peace and comfort” and it is now in her freezer for the sake of posterity. End of story.

But for me the real revelation has been learning about the existence of Batter Blaster. Apparently, folks, including Lopez, spray pancake batter from a can. I guess this really shouldn’t come as a surprise because if you can squeeze cheese (or some semblance thereof) from a can squeeze pretty much anything from a can, right? Cheese is a bit more complex to make than pancakes, however. I’ve always been appalled by the idea of pancake mix, so this pressurized version of the stuff really puts me off, even if it is organic.

Of course, there isn't a boring story in Madonna of the Toast, which does include a papal pancake!

The Man in the Ultrasound

2009-11-19T16:20:00.003-05:00

In the sad but true category, Michael Jackson’s death resurrected his reputation. In the wake of the untimely and bizarre passing the world has forgotten about the questionable dalliances and eccentricities, remembering the hits and solidifying his legacy as one of the world’s all-time great entertainers. The release of This Is It, the albums and rumors insure that MJ’s image has been everywhere; the world has MJ on the mind.

Even Dawn Kelley and William Hickman, according to this Telegraph report: Kelley, pregnant with her seventh child, received an ultrasound from a particularly “powerful scanner . . . normally used to examine internal organs” and while looking at the images, the two saw Jackson’s face, as did their six children. The family aren’t mad-capped Jackson fans but they all see this image. Kelley knows her next child will be a girl, so no naming it Michael, but she says, “It is my seventh child, and they say seven is a mythical number.”

There is an aura of myth that surrounds Jackson, especially now so I’m sure this won’t be the last instance of MJ pareidolia. And for you regulars, you know it isn’t the first.

Been There, Done That

2009-11-11T09:58:00.005-05:00

Being the first on the block has its perks, though most of them come along after the fact, once the rest of the world has caught up with you (or me). Now, I certainly cannot claim to be the the first one to take an interest in the unexpected visual manifestations of religious and secular icons, but I'm certainly the first one to write a book about the subject, and attach to these stories ideas ranging from Plato and Marshall McLuhan to changing the U.S. Constitution.

For you long-time readers, you'll of course remember how the New York Times ran an article right around when Madonna of the Toast was released. For a couple of days I received emails and phone calls asking, Why no mention of your book? Good question, especially since the Times claimed they could not contact Diana Duyser, someone I had been in regular contact with for the book.

Well, today, to just further prove that these sorts of stories remain culturally relevant, The Huffington Post has posted a slideshow of famous faces showing up in foodstuffs and foliage. Many of the examples appear in the book, and those that don't either surfaced after publication or could not be used for print (like the image above of Liverpudlian Keith Andrews and his John Lennon face); there are only a few I've never seen before. The images are fun to look at, but there's no real context for them and that's what I find so intriguing about this subject. Thing is, I think most people are more than happy to just gape and move on.

Maybe I'm just over thinking this stuff - is that so wrong?

Buy That Man a Beer!

2009-11-08T18:10:00.004-05:00

The photograph accompanies this Johnson City Press article makes me like Jim Stevens of Jonesborough, Tennessee. It makes me want to buy him a beer. There he is, looking at the window of his Isuzu and the image of Jesus rendered by morning dew with some regularity. He is casually nonplussed and probably ready to talk about something else. It is an admittedly recognizable face of Christ and it apparently keeps appearing most mornings. The window has even been rolled down (though Stevens isn’t going to wash it). But Stevens isn’t religious and it doesn’t seem like this will convert him: “[H]e believes strange things happen and that he has no explanation for the image on his truck’s window.”

These Madonna of the Toast tales usually grace the faithful, or those who’ve been looking for an excuse to roll holy. The image has definitely surprised Stevens but he isn’t trying to impose meaning or latch it to some aspect of his life, even with his “bum shoulder.” Stevens knows the image will stir up different emotions in different people and he’s happy to let everyone see whatever it is they want to see. Referring to employees at a market who went and took a gander at the truck when Stevens was shopping, he said, “There was no doubt when they came out they saw what they saw.”

Ain’t that the truth!

We're Only Human

2009-11-02T00:13:00.004-05:00

Larry David has pissed some people off because of his namesake character’s latest awkward social fiasco on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Not familiar with the show? All you have to know is that episodes consist of David, co-creator of Seinfeld, muddling through an imbroglio that he has stirred up through some misunderstanding, and hilarity ensues.

In this case, David’s urine splatters approximations of tears onto a picture of Jesus. Others notice the droplets and think the image is weeping. The Week offers some different perspectives on the (non)controversy. As usual, the loudest and angriest pundits railing against David have neglected to really assess the facts, claiming David would never make fun of Jews or Muslims. Fact is, Curb Your Enthusiasm has always been equal opportunity when it comes to mocking organized religion. So, why all of the fuss?

The easy answer, unsurprisingly: the media. Once it, with its oh so many tentacles of dissemination, gets a hold on a story it doesn’t like to relent until all of the life has been squeezed out of the story. In the US, outlets like Fox News are prolific when it comes to this sort of inflation to the point of popping.

Sure, with the exception of bathrooms and choice plots of open ground, urine can be quite offensive should it land on you or your property. But David accidentally peeing on a towel that someone will inevitably dry their face with would not become international news. Yes, he’s having a laugh at the expense of religion. But on a Madonna of the Toast level the core criticism is of the human tendency to invest importance in the idea of a painting of Christ or Mary crying, or a Star of David bubbling up in oatmeal. Maybe it’s not even a criticism but more of a revealing of this tendency, and that’s what really rubbed people the wrong way.

No one wants to admit that they find meaning in a stain or wood grain but they are quick to congregate where Jesus has appeared in an oil stain or Mary in a panel of siding. Those inclined to act upon such visual manifestations don’t discern between the object and the image (and they sure don’t get into the semantics of worshipping, or belittling, an image of an image). David isn’t desecrating Jesus, but the way in which some people view not just Jesus but the whole of Christianity.

Of course, people who find the topic repulsive don’t have to watch the episode, the same as the people who ridicule the surprising appearance of an iconic form don’t have to pay it any attention. But in both cases, they(we) do, and that’s the point.

Cultural Dependence

2009-10-20T20:16:00.003-05:00

Have you missed me? It’s been a busy few weeks. I went to Germany and even had an email account hacked. And how about the whole Balloon Boy fiasco? Richard and Mayumi Heene are awful but the media did not help the matter. Why report on real news when there’s live footage of a boy hurtling through the sky in a UFO-esque contraption, most likely on the way to his death? Veracity is secondary, it’s the story, what we think we see or want to see. Do we really want to see a tragedy involving a kid? What do you see?

In Oakdale, California, David Nunez’s father excavated a “football-sized rock” ornamented with what the two men saw as an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, according to this Boston Herald story. Of course, “the caramel-brown and chalkboard black hunk of gneiss, a banded metamorphic rock that started out as sandstone and shale” dates back millions and millions of years. This shape was created around the same time as the Sierra Nevada Mountains, way before humans and human stories spawned. Merced College humanities professor Max Hallman gets it: "Culturally, people in India may have seen a Hindu goddess on it. If you’ve never heard of the Virgin of Guadalupe, you wouldn’t have seen it. Visions are culturally dependent.”

What then, Professor, can we deduce about the culture of Braehead, Scotland, where the purported image of Christ has been spotted on the bathroom door of an Ikea? According to this Telegraph UK report, visitors to the men’s room see Jesus and Gandolf. As such Madonna of the Toast stories go all of this is pretty standard. Here comes the curveball: the Ikea claims that the face is intentional, and meant to portray Benny Anderson of ABBA. As a spokeswoman said: “Swedishness is engrained in every part of our stores."

I love it when corporate branding and national identity mingle, especially when some late 1970s pop music joins the mix . . .

Obama, Letterman, Potatoes!

2009-09-22T12:03:00.001-05:00

It won’t go down as one of television’s funniest moments like when Myrtle Young and her collection of pareidolia potato chips appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (Letterman makes no secret of his idol worship for Carson as the master of television tomfoolery). But President Obama’s appearance last night on The Late Show certainly caught my attention for the heart-shaped potato tossed to Letterman by a woman in the audience. Do you think Obama heard about this potato rendition of him?

The video is below and if you want to read more about Myrtle Young check out Madonna of the Toast.

Samoa: More Than A Reality Television Location

2009-09-20T21:41:00.003-05:00

Did you know that Apia is the capital of Samoa? I didn’t, until an image of the Virgin Mary showed up there on the John Williams Building. According to these Samoa Live and News.com.au reports the image results from many years of dripping water and mold. But even with that explanation floating around as many as 500 people have gathered at one time to admire and discuss the form. And for good reason, Samoa just made a big change, a change so significant that the country prayed in unison to help the transition happen smoothly. In Samoa, they now drive on the left, like here in the United States.

Many interpret this visual manifestation as evidence that God has been looking down on the paradisal Pacific nation (though there has already been one report of a maimed pedestrian who forgot to look both ways when crossing the street). Others think the shape better resembles a bottle of Coke than the Virgin Mary.

Father Spartz Silva, Secretary of the Archbishop, had this to say: “It is creating curiosity, which is a good thing, it has triggered us to ask ourselves the basic question of who we are, and our purpose in life.”

I guess hosting a season of Survivor doesn’t count as “purpose.”

999 Is The New 666

2009-09-10T14:10:00.004-05:00

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped some photographs recently and, surprise surprise, some folks see a robed Jesus basking on the planet’s surface. This Telegraph UK report says it all: “If looked at from the right angle – and with disbelief suspended – this photo released by NASA can appear to show the face and robed body of Christ.” On display once again the human proclivity for seeing what we want to see where we want to see it.

I couldn’t help but think of this while reading news of the half-hearted hijacking attempt by Jose Marc Flores Pereira a k a Josmar Flores. About an hour after an Aeromexico flight departed from Cancun on its way to Mexico City, Flores got the attention of the crew when he threatened to blow up the plane, brandishing a fake bomb, according to this Bloomberg report (apparently passengers had no clue what was going on until the plane landed in Mexico City and was surrounded by emergency vehicles). His demands? A visit with Mexican president Felipe Calderon to discuss a pending earthquake.

Originally from Bolivia, Flores has lived in Mexico for 17 years, has spent time in jail, was a drug addict and is a born-again Christian. According to Public Safety Minister Garcia Luna, Flores also “is a reverend . . . He said it was a divine revelation that drove him to this action.” The revelation? The date – an inverted 666, the Mark of the Beast a la the Book of Revelation.

No two people see the world the same. Some look at images from space, from places where humans have never set foot, and impose human mythology in the name of meaning; others see a calendar, isolate a single day in a certain month in a single year and see divinity.

As always, I ask: What do you see?

Be My Friend

2009-09-02T11:27:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, these Madonna of the Toast images really grab your attention because the resemblance to an iconic face is quite striking. Other times the images are mind boggling because they resemble nothing at all, no matter how much you squint. Such is the case with this Virgin Mary agate. According to this Northland’s News Center report, Jesse Bradshaw, a devoted agate hunter, found this beauty in Northern Minnesota, though months passed before he identified the holy form.

In Bradshaw’s words: "Right here you see a face and a shadow of her eye and a nose and a mouth and a hood around her head there. . . I was kinda having a struggle and I woke up one morning and she was sitting on top of my other agates and staring me right in the face and I knew right away what it represented and I got so emotional; I just wanted to cry right away."

I see something that looks more like an extoskeletal alien. But maybe that’s just me. Bradshaw, however, is convinced that his discovery has blessed him, filling him with positive energy. Offers to purchase the agate have been made but Bradshaw won’t have any of it: “[T]he feeling it's given me is just incredible.”

For those of you keeping score at home, this is the second divine agate of the year. The first one hailed from Montana and possessed, to these well-trained eyes, a better semblance of the Mary. But hey, who am I to chide one’s happiness?

In other news, Madonna of the Toast is now on Facebook! Want to be my friend?

Kudzu Jesus

2009-08-19T14:29:00.004-05:00

If you recall from my last post, I’m from Philadelphia. I didn’t learn of kudzu, a tenacious climbing vine, until I had friends living in Asheville, North Carolina, where the stuff runs roughshod. It should come as no surprise then that a kudzu Jesus has been discovered in Raleigh, North Carolina, visible from the Boylan Avenue Bridge, close to train tracks.

What’s really interesting about this story is how it originated on the blog Goodnight, Raleigh! and then became a news item, thanks to the North Raleigh News.

Goodnight, Raleigh! is “a look at the art, architecture, history, and people of the city at night.” John Morris, one of the blog’s regular contributors, was out on the bridge one night talking trains with friends when a pub patron ambled by and pointed out how the kudzu running along wires takes on the appearance of outstretched arms, a la the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.

Morris writes of the form that it is “merely a coincidental growth formation on power lines, but can still be an interesting topic of conversation.”

One man’s coincidence is another man’s human interest story, however. Writing for the North Raleigh News, Josh Shaffer came at the overgrowth from a slightly different angle: “He snakes up a utility pole, forming a majestic trunk and a head seemingly bowed in prayer or agony. A pair of arms appears to spread along the wires in each direction, inviting the world into a leafy embrace.” Shaffer even discussed the topic with Pete Surrette, who happened to walk “past with ketchup-stained pants and a Ziploc bag full of toiletries.” Says Surrette: "He's got the outstretched arms and everything. I walk these tracks and never noticed it. It was just a bush to me."

Isn’t that what Moses said?

Here’s more on Surrette as reported by Shaffer:

As he muses on its resemblance to the Lamb of God, Surrette mentions that he spent nine years behind bars for attacking a man with a garden rake. If the Kudzu Jesus turned around, he could see the window of the very cell in Central Prison where Surrette served his sentence.

But the mysterious bush keeps its gaze fixed straight ahead, vine-made eyes on the path where Surrette is strolling away, offering shelter from a hard world.

If only that rake were still around, I bet Surrette could get himself a landscaping gig down there by the tracks.

What's In Your Heart?

2009-08-14T11:15:00.003-05:00

Philadelphia – place of my birth, the hometown, the punch line for many jokes (this Michael Vick development won't help) and a city I wish I knew better. Sure, I can navigate the streets no problem – William Penn’s street grids help – but I have no idea what’s going on along those streets. My periodic visits these days make clear that there is plenty going on, but I’m not the one to tout these changes.

But if there is a subject that I can claim authority and expertise it’s the visual manifestations of religious and secular icons. So let's set our sights on the greater Philadelphia region, Levittown to be exact – a place with some history of its own. According to this Fox 29 report, a woman discovered everybody’s favorite longhaired spokesman for peace and love in this MRI. The oft-recognized facial form can be seen in the area of her heart.

Even by Madonna of the Toast standards the information provided by the media regarding this latest Jesus appearance is sketchy at best. But that’s how the news functions these days I suppose: find the story and worry about facts never. If some unnamed person said it happen, than it did.

This item has been picked up by Fox News affiliates across the country. I guess Jesus in the heart is a nice break from false reports of “death panels.”

Toliet Seat Bumper Sticker

2009-08-10T18:14:00.003-05:00

Bumper stickers: the excuse to espouse your beliefs and let others know what you think without ever having to engage in a dialogue. People brag about their kids, claim something or someplace as the best and get political, philosophical and just plain silly.

Of course, most people place these adhesive announcements on their cars but Las Vegas resident Magdalena Nelson loves her hometown so much that she’s affixed an “I Love [expressed with a heart] Las Vegas” sticker on her toilet seat. And, according to this KTNV report, the face of Jesus has appeared in that red heart of love. Nelson’s boyfriend sees the face too, and it’s given the couple “a positive feeling after they almost lost their home to foreclosure.”

If you’re going to be in Vegas and want to take a gander at this bumper sticker, or just need to use the bathroom, you can email Nelson to arrange a visit.

Ukraine Jesus Wall

2009-07-29T10:59:00.001-05:00

To western Ukraine we go, to “a metallically reinforced factory wall at the Velyky Berezny township” to be exact. The wall belongs to a lumber factory, according to this Russia Today report, and it features an image of Jesus, prompting locals to pay their respects. Though, the police have also been paying close attention to the wall because “debates on the divinity of the image are often and heated, and in the multi-ethnic region – apart from Ukrainians the township is also inhabited by Rusyns, Hungarians and Slovaks – tensions may easily flare.”

It doesn’t really sound like Texas, California or Florida, does it? But fear not, technology makes the foreign familiar for all of us anymore, and this area of the Ukraine, for all of its ethnic conflicts, is no different. According to the article, many of the onlookers capture the image using, you guessed it, their mobile phones.

We all speak different languages, adhere to myriad traditions and beliefs, but in this day and age we all, no matter where in the world we reside, are accustomed to, dare I say rely on, the ability to memorialize a moment and then disseminate it using phones and other such hand-held gadgetry. I’m not complaining, too much, since my phone doesn’t have a camera. Plus, these phones definitely provide lots of Madonna of the Toast fodder. But isn’t is amazing just how these technologies level barriers of space and time, accelerating the power of the image?

It Came From Above, Part II

2009-07-17T15:38:00.004-05:00

Animal defecation and the Virgin Mary in the same sentence? Blasphemy you say? Well, according to this KWTX report, the Pachuca family of Bryan, Texas, calls it a blessing, and “more than a coincidence.”

Cristal Pachuca says the old truck doesn’t get much use, “but last weekend her husband decided to take it out of their garage and wash it . . . A few moments later the image appeared.”

While the Pachucas don’t use the word “miracle” to describe this bird bowel movement, the gawkers don’t hesitate: “Onlookers say the image is a miracle because the distinct colors and outline of the image on the truck match the image of Virgin Guadalupe.”

I guess an ornithologist familiar with the local flora, fauna, earthworms and such would be able to explain the coloration, but until I find a resident bird expert we’ll defer to the locals.

Of course, Texans know a thing or two about sacred fecal forms. Who remembers this post from May 2007 about a bird poop Jesus? How can you really forget such a thing?

And since we’re strolling down memory lane, don’t forget about the book. Maybe if you leave it out on your windowsill it will collect its very own divine doo-doo . . .

Another Tree, Another Country

2009-07-10T15:17:00.002-05:00

This Virgin Mary tree stump marks Madonna of the Toast’s first trip to Ireland! According to this RTE report, workers chopping down trees at the Holy Mary Parish Church in Rathkeale, County Limerick, saw Mary in this cross section of one of the trees.

Upon being made public, nightly vigils have attracted hundreds of visitors and apparently thousands of people have signed a petition “to keep the stump in the grounds permanently.”

The church is not so cheery about the discovery. Father Willie Russell, a local priest, said, “It’s only a tree”; Father Paul Finnerty said, “While we do not wish in any way to detract from devotion to Our Lady, we would also wish to avoid anything which might lead to superstition.”

Probably not the best word choice on the part of Father Finnerty, what with Christianity being built around rites and rituals followed on blind faith.

Reader Response

2009-07-02T15:22:00.002-05:00

The ultimate long summer weekend looms so why do my own research when I can rely on a reader of this here blog? I was made aware of this Jesus tree by Helot over at Maniac Annex. Dubbed as “Jesus in the Maple Tree” the facial form, as pointed out on the blog, does bear an eerie resemblance to South Park’s version of Jesus.

Thanks for the lead Helot!

If any other readers have their own personal pareidolia feel free to share in the comments.

Keep any eye out for iconic forms in your fireworks . . .

RIP MJ, We'll Always Have Pareidolia

2009-06-26T14:08:00.003-05:00

I know, I know this is just adding flame to the raging fire that is the media coverage devouring the death of Michael Jackson. Regardless what you think of his music and/or his eccentric behavior no one can deny he will go down as one of the most famous human beings of all time. His image, as varied as it has been over the decades, has disseminated across the globe with the same verve, reaching the same point of saturation, as the images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

So it should come as no surprise that an example of Michael Jackson pareidolia exists. The first mention of this strange facial apparition appeared back in April at Forgetomori. A reader who had been watching the legendary 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman noticed what looked to him like the face of MJ (circa 1990s) suddenly appearing in the crowd.

The motion GIF above isolates the apparition’s appearance. Hoax or genuine pareidolia – what say you?

On a personal note, as someone in his mid-thirties my sense of self and my own quirky tastes had just started to take shape when Thriller came out. I’ll never forget kneeling on the floor with my brother, a little tape deck between us, as we listened to the title track over and over again, grinning with demented delight at Vincent Price’s voice and then dancing around the room like zombies. Hearing the choice tracks from Thriller and Off the Wall, along with such Jackson 5 classics as “Never Can Say Goodbye” over the past 24 hours or so, the soul and energy of these songs hold up against the test of time.

Another Virgin Mary Tortilla

2009-06-22T16:40:00.003-05:00

The manifestations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary on tortillas is so common new instances start to sound like the start of a bad joke. But here we are again, this time in Harlingen, Texas, where, according to this KRGV report, a couple discovered this image of the Virgin Mary on a freshly made tortilla. The unnamed devout couple considers the form a blessing and have since enshrined the tortilla and taken it to a local church to be blessed.

Roadside America has a great description of the original Jesus tortilla: “No one realized at the time, but the 1977 appearance of Jesus Christ on a flour tortilla set the international standard for miracle sightings . . . the Miracle Tortilla was the first to fully wrap around the collective pop subconscious.” Discovered in New Mexico, the tortilla remained a point of interest until 2005, when the granddaughter of its creator took it to school for show and tell where it broke after being dropped.

Maybe this new one will take the place of the original Miracle Tortilla or inspire another movie, though I doubt it since more are bound to come along . . .

Holy Mamma!

2009-06-12T14:54:00.002-05:00

What does the image above look like to you? Pretty womanly, right? Estimated to be approximately 35,000 years old, the discovery of this ivory female figure was made public a few weeks ago in the journal Nature, according to this New York Times article (which is also a few weeks old).

Found in a cave in southwestern Germany, the explicit form stands apart from other extant examples of Paleolithic art. The emphasis on the breasts and vulva makes it clear that the person who carved this object was celebrating the role of women in reproduction.

There have been several similar discoveries in the same region over the past 70 years. Archaeologist Paul Mellars, as quoted by The Times, said of the region and the artifacts it has yielded, it is “a veritable art gallery of early ‘modern’ human art . . . [which] must be seen as the birthplace of true sculpture in the European — maybe global — artistic tradition.”

This dovetails with my review of Miri Rubin's Mother of God, which you can read over at The Rumpus. Rubin’s fascinating book elucidates how images of Mary were used to spread Christianity, very much based on her unique status as a human vessel for the divine. I approached the book from the Madonna of the Toast perspective. The tropes and trends Rubin identifies as the major factors in establishing Mary’s allure fit with the stories I relay here. How? Because no matter what you believe, these are human stories, all of which can be distilled to archetypes, like this curvy carving.

The Wonders of Yeast

2009-06-05T15:08:00.003-05:00

According to this Daily Telegraph report, Claire Allen of Ystrad, Rhondda, Wales, opened a jar of Marmite so she could spread some on her son’s toast. The face of Jesus was staring at her from the back of the lid. She showed her husband Gareth: "When I first looked at it I wasn't sure, but when I moved it away from me it started coming out. I thought Christ, yeah, she's right - that's the image of Jesus.”

This is the first Madonna of the Toast story where “Christ” is used as an exclamation to emphasize the presence of Jesus’s face in an unexpected place. This is not, however, the first time that Marmite has been an aspect of these stories. If you haven’t read the book you wouldn’t know. But way back in 2006 as I was wrapping up the book, British artist Dermot Flynn made quite a splash in the UK media with his Marmite art – “Marmart” – images of which appear in Madonna of the Toast. (Interestingly enough, Flynn is represented by Dutch Uncle Agency, which also represents my buddy Noma Bar.)

Surprised that yeast extract could be so dynamic?

Cheesus Redux

2009-05-25T10:42:00.003-05:00

The story of Dan and Sara Bell’s Cheesus has been making the media rounds of late. According to this CBS 11 report the Texas couple bought a bag of Cheetos and Sara got to eating them: "I was putting them in my hand and I had eaten most of the ones in my hand, and one was left lying there. And I said, 'Oh my gosh, look at this. It really looks like a person in a robe praying.'"

The Bells have joked about trying to sell their find on eBay, though for now it’s just being stored in a plastic box: “They say it is a reminder of their blessings from God; but primarily they think it's a funny Cheeto.”

The couple dubbed the 2-inch tall snack “Cheesus” but they should not be credited with coining the term. If you remember, back in March of 2008 the original Cheesus was made public – how quickly the media and its minions forget. The Week, a magazine that distills the most newsworthy stories of the previous week, really demonstrates the media’s lack of any memory. In the magazine’s gloss of this story, which I’m shocked they bothered to pick up, there is no mention of the original Cheesus. Furthermore, they cite an article from the Houston Chronicle written by a rabbi who wonders, “Why don’t Jews see things in our food?”

Obviously not enough people have read Madonna of the Toast or kept up with the blog. Who can forget the Star of David oatmeal?!?

Iceman Did Not Keep His Cool

2009-05-17T17:17:00.004-05:00

Remember back in 1997 when the Virgin Mary/Our Lady of Guadalupe was spotted on a tree in Salt Lake City? Neither do I. But news of Leslie Iceman’s attempt to burn down the tree offers us an excuse to stroll down memory lane. According to this ABC 4 story, Iceman, a homeless man, “used matches and cardboard to try and burn the platform that leads up to the spot where the image was.”

Apparently the Virgin’s form is no longer, thanks to a previous incident during which the “image was gouged out.” People still congregate at the tree, however, and the shrine remains. Facing charges of public intoxication and arson, there’s no speculation about why Iceman did what he did.

Above, the image as it once appeared and the image superimposed with an actual painting of Mary.

Here is a history of the tree written on the occasion of the visual manifestation’s tenth anniversary. The author, Richelle Hawks, was the evening manager of the New Age and paranormal section at a Salt Lake City Barnes & Noble back in 1997. One night a customer informed her that the form of Mary had appeared on this tree and after closing that night she and a friend went to check it out: “There was a ladder up against a tree as the woman described . . . The only light in this rundown, crack-house-infested neighborhood was a lone, flickering streetlamp. But, there did seem to be a darker, detailed oval figure in the smooth stump-which could pass even in the bad lighting for the traditional Virgin of Guadalupe. And it was wet – 'crying', as the woman described.”

Hawks relays the vague details of the initial discovery, credited to an anonymous city official “who was attending to or cutting the tree's broken limb, which had been damaged by lightning.” Of course, Salt Lake City’s Catholics are a minority, but an organized one that is predominately Latino and the shrine came to be. The piece goes on to draw parallel’s between these events and the story of Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe. A bit of a stretch, but Hawks also posits that the tree actually led to the neighborhood’s gentrification.

How long before someone comes along and sees Mary in the charred residual of Leslie Iceman’s failed effort?

Speaking Words of Wisdom

2009-05-08T14:33:00.005-05:00

If you haven’t noticed, newspapers and magazines have been dropping like flies, leaving reporters and freelance writers with fewer and fewer outlets to hawk their written wares. Just ask Jonathan Tilove, a long-time Washington DC beat reporter who has been hustling between bureaus for the last several months. According to this email he sent to Poynter Online, it was all of his shuttling around the capital going from cubicle to cubicle that resulted in him discovering this likeness of the Virgin Mary. In his words: “On Monday evening, May 4, I went back to the Cox office to pack the rest of my boxes and clean out my cubicle. And there it was, on my desk, a coffee stain in the image of the Virgin Mary. I was a little surprised. Why me? I'm Jewish.”

Tilove answers his own question: religion aside, this guy has a lot of Mary in his life. He and his wife honeymooned in Fatima, Portugal, location of a very famous Mary visitation in 1917; Tilove also admits that he and his wife have lots of Mary art in their home.

Leave it to a hard-nosed journalist, however, to push speculation aside and stick with the facts:

Perhaps, most crucially, I provided the medium for the appearance of the coffee-stain Madonna by allowing the remains of a cup of coffee to slowly leak out of a paper cup and then only casually blotting up the spill with an old notebook. I am still not sure what it means, but I confess that amid all the layoffs and furloughs and forced relocations, seeing the image comforted me. As it has been written, "When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me ..."

Let it be, Jonathan, let it be . . .

The form actually looks more like a mushroom-capped fairy. But it's not about what I see.

What do you see?

Viva Our Lady of Guadalupe y Lucha Libre

2009-05-02T10:56:00.003-05:00

Hilda Maciel was cleaning the griddle at the Las Palmas restaurant in Calexico, California, when she discovered this Our Lady of Guadalupe image, according to this Imperial Valley Press article. A border town, it is no surprise that in Calexico the image elicited thoughts of Our Lady of Guadalupe and not the Virgin Mary, though of course the two are more or less the same. Even the local priest that “confirmed the image was a true likeness of the Virgin” hails from Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.

The form really struck Maciel because just two days before seeing it her brother had died of a heart attack and this was her first day back at work: “I believe that for me it’s to give me the strength to continue on.”

While the visual manifestation of this iconic form is pretty standard by Madonna of the Toast standards, the story seems to be making the media rounds by virtue of the fact that the Las Palmas Swap Meet had brought some Lucha Libre wrestlers in from Mexico. The visit made by Renegado and Mr. Tempest to the newly erected shrine provided a unique photo-op. Said Mr. Tempest: “I follow Our Lady of Guadalupe . . . This is amazing. It’s a true miracle.”

The Many Hands of God

2009-04-27T16:10:00.003-05:00

Here’s a new one: an attempt to sell a rockslide rendered Hand of God on eBay.

The term “Hand of God” can have very different meanings. Michelangelo’s version from the Sistine Chapel’s “Creation of Adam” is without a doubt the most famous.

But, if you know more about World Cup soccer than art history, Diego Maradona’s infamous “Hand of God goal” from the 1986 Argentina/England World Cup Quarter-Final match probably comes to mind. One of the sport’s most lauded athletes scored two goals on that day, one that he hit in with his hand but was never penalized for, the other a result of Maradona dribbling around 6 British players to score what has since been dubbed “Goal of the Century.” (Argentina won the game, and the World Cup that year.)

If you know about symbolism in antiquity and world religions, “Hand of God” signifies khamsa, or hamsa. The five-fingered figure is believed to have Phoenician origins though it is most commonly associated with Judaism and Islam. Not only do our hands have five fingers, but the Jewish Torah comprises the first five books of the Bible and Islam has its Five Pillars.

According to this CNN report, if you ask Paul Grayhek what the Hand of God looks like, he’ll show you the photograph above, and then try to sell it to you. The Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, resident lost his job and during Lent had been praying. Then on March 8 within a stone’s throw of his home the rocks tumbled, leaving this form, which is about nine feet tall and four feet wide.

Excavating this mass would be expensive, but no worries, you aren’t getting anything material. Says the report: “The buyer will ‘basically be buying the rights, complete and exclusive rights’ to the rock, including literary and movie rights, according to Grayhek.”

He goes on to say: “People think I'm some holier-than-thou person trying to get rich. I'm not . . . The purpose is to spread the story of God and eBay is just a vehicle.”

Well, in this instance eBay is a bit of a jalopy because as of writing this post the item has been removed. Maybe God thought there were better ways to spread His story. Or maybe God’s agent got in touch with Grayhek and explained that literary and movie rights to all rocks and stones have already been sold . . .

Kit Kat Kitsch

2009-04-20T12:27:00.003-05:00

Greetings from London, folks. Keeping with the European theme of my current location, the Kit Kat Jesus above was found on Good Friday by some Dutch guy. According to this little blurb (read a translation of the NU.nl letter to the editor here), the guy was on a break and, you guessed it, he broke off a piece of that Kit Kat bar, only to find Jesus.

A brilliant Nestle publicity stunt or a divine snack? Do you think that Kit Kat Easter sales went up in The Netherlands as a result?

More anon . . .

Myth Makers

2009-04-12T13:57:00.006-05:00

I saw this Virgin Mary image during a recent trip to Colorado and Utah, where the dramatic and ancient landscapes hold many forms and faces. But, of course, what I recognize as a visual manifestation of a religious or secular icon in stone has existed since well before humans and religions. In many of the Madonna of the Toast stories, people see Jesus or the Virgin Mary in a tree or rock, but in the shadow of such grandeur of places like Natural Bridges, Valley of the Gods and Canyonlands I couldn’t help but ponder myth and how it is made visual, and recognizable.

Along with the spires of red rock stacked like totem poles (replete with human-esque faces) and towering canyon walls that reveal millions of years worth of geological history, screaming with Edvard Munch faces, myth cannot be ignored when you also consider the abundance of the region’s petroglyphs and pictographs, most of which were left by the Anasazi (a Navajo word meaning “ancient ones”). I first learned of the Anasazi years ago when I met photographer Nathan Troi Anderson, a very good friend of mine and the impetus for this trip. I had seen his photographs of these symbols, but had never had the chance to look at them in situ. While I’m no expert on the Anasazi, or the American Southwest for that matter, it wasn’t hard for me to put the two subjects within a Madonna of the Toast context.

The exact meanings of these ancient symbols are difficult to define, especially since the Anasazi more or less disappeared, leaving little more than these markings, some structures and various artifacts. But standing in these stunning canyons, looking at the natural contours of stone weathered by time, it is clear that the manmade images respond directly to these natural environments, for it is all these people knew. It was through their interactions with the land, the sky and the seasons that the meaning of life took shape. The shape of these meanings, whatever they might be, are seen in lightning bolt lines, dizzying circles and majestic shaman forms. This is the stuff of myth.

When I saw the Virgin Mary shape in Utah, it was myth speaking to me, though in this case the myth is not as old as the form. For its relative youth, on a geological scale as well as human scale, Christian mythology, particularly that of the Virgin Mary, has proliferated over time. When you consider that Mary is mentioned only 19 times in the Bible (she is mentioned 34 times in the Qu’ran) her popularity is astounding. What do we make of this?

No matter when they came into being or where they were located, all human cultures have their own creation stories in which a mother figure plays a central role. With the Anasazi, as one example, feminine forms are not hard to discern in the petroglyphs and pictographs. Their importance is also bolstered by the belief that the Anasazi held their most sacred ceremonies in manmade ritual caves, or kivas. These areas were built underground so participants would have to go down into them and then later emerge, much like a child exiting the womb.

From both the literal and figurative perspectives, the Christ story also possesses this maternal quality, which was recognized and elaborated as Christianity spread. In fact, Western interest in Mary did not flourish until the 12th century, though the power of her myth was recognized all along. According to this Maclean's article, “when nascent Christianity spread to Egypt and encountered the cult of Isis, mother of the god Horus, Mary’s status began to rise even higher. Isis was a powerful and kind-hearted deity, attributes Mary soon acquired.”

The article is essentially a review of Miri Rubin’s Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary, which apparently identifies the real power of the Mary myth:

[T]ension—poised between virgin and mother, human and divine—is the source of her endless variety of portrayals, all gracefully traced by Rubin, from the young, sometimes playful, virgin girl to the grief-stricken and empathetic mother at Calvary. The need to ground Mary explains why she did die, as befits a mortal, but was raised bodily to heaven, as befits the mother of God . . . But there was a Mary for everyone, not just motherless clerics, in the flowering of medieval Mariology. For every image of a heavenly queen commissioned by wealthy art patrons, there was a story of the humble carpenter’s wife, particularly gracious to the poor and those who suffered.

This dovetails perfectly with the Madonna of the Toast mantra: What do you see? Throughout time, whether in the form of ancient inscriptions or Biblical stories, the visual manifestations of mythic iconic forms have endured the tests of time because they can represent a range of meanings, depending on the viewers. And while interpretations of the images may vary, they all demonstrate the human need for asserting our presence in this mysterious world where answers are nowhere near as important as interpretations.

Found in 1972, Making News Today

2009-04-02T15:07:00.003-05:00

Joan Reed Carter of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, found this spindly shell back in 1972, while shelling with friends. According to this South Florida Sun-Sentinel article, Carter’s shell has been associated with Jesus since she first picked it up. In fact, one of the friends she was with that day declared: “Well I can't take it home with me because my husband's an atheist.”

Discussing her own relationship with religion Carter said: “Every night my mother would give us a crucifix to kiss. But I like all religions. If I'm near a synagogue I'll go there. If there's a Catholic cathedral, then I'll go there. We all came from the same place and we're all going to end up in the same place."

Over the years anyone that’s seen the shell thinks Carter should do something with it and I guess the approach of Easter inspired her to contact the media. She claims that some people get nervous around the object, not even wanting to touch it. And once, Carter snapped a photo of it but it came out blank. Luckily, the image made itself visible for the newspaper’s photographer.

Worth noting that while the incidence of seeing Jesus and the Virgin Mary in unexpected places has skyrocketed since 1972, Carter claims that no one goes shelling anymore because there are no shells on the beaches.

BBQ Mary

2009-03-30T23:26:00.003-05:00

If there’s one thing people take as seriously as religion, it’s barbeque, especially in Texas if these articles from Texas Monthly and The New Yorker serve as indicators. So there is synchronicity to this Virgin Mary image discovered in Odessa on the lid of a grill.

Employees at Reliable Transport Auto Shop first noticed the form a few weeks ago, and since then a shrine has been erected and regular Sunday services have occurred. No word on what these folks had been grilling to create this Mary shape but according to this News West 9 story the employees believe it to be a divine visual manifestation. But they also “say it's up to individuals to judge for themselves.”

Monsignor James Bridges suggests, however, that it is not “authentic,” seeming to care very little about what others think. He asks: “What does it lead people to . . . Does it lead people to be better people? Does it lead people to be deeper in their faith? If all of these things lead to what I would call the agenda of Christ, that would put them in a position of being more believable.”

The word “agenda” always puts me off, and for a priest to use the word in the context of Jesus strikes me as rather absurd. To answer Bridges’s question, it does seem that this image has led "people to be deeper in faith,” hence the weekly services, the candles, rosaries, prayers and hymns.

Madonna of the Toast stories whip people into action, from the media to the faithful to dissenters. As I write in the book: “Whether on the level of sacrosanct devotion or pop culture kitsch, these forms become as relevant as the world’s finest art because they compel people to react; the objects in this book, emblazoned with faces and symbols recognized the world over, have been appraised at stunningly high sums, been toured around the globe and have inspired people to travel, pray and steal.”

What say you, Monsignor?

Jesus Needed a Haircut

2009-03-23T13:51:00.003-05:00

In Greenock, Scotland, according to this Greenock Telegraph report, Karim Babaa was having lunch on a bench when he noticed the face of Jesus on a garden wall. Formed by weathered stone and moss, the image was immediately recognizable to Babaa, a barber and a Muslim. Babbaa works at the Cutting Room (get it?) and when he showed his boss Alan Stocks the wall, he too agreed that it resembled Jesus.

Both men often relax in the garden, which sits between apartment blocks and Westburn Church, but neither of them had noticed the face until recently. Stocks cites the approach of Easter as a possible explanation. I prefer an explanation that factors in the amount of time Babaa and Stocks spend dealing with facial hair.

A local minister had this to say: “I’ve seen the image and, if it amuses people, then that’s fair enough. It all comes down to imagination.”

He’s right. It’s imagination that resulted in Babaa, originally from Tunisia, seeing the face in the first place: “This really looks like the face of Jesus. I’m a Muslim but I read lots of books and that is Jesus.”

Think he’s read Madonna of the Toast?

And speaking of imagination, this story has yielded two of the best captions I’ve read in a while – leave it to those UK tabloid writers:

“Christ-Moss Present” (Greenock Telegraph)

“It moss be him . . .” (The Scottish Sun)

Thoughts About News Covering the News of the News

2009-03-17T14:22:00.006-05:00

Since being made public by Everything is Terrible, the video in the post below has received more than 140,000 views – in just over a week! Furthermore, said video was aired by one of the featured network affiliates that covered one of 2008’s Jesus sighting stories: news covering news of the news.

The tendency for media outlets to cover these stories comes full circle in the news covering news of the news, and it is within this cycle that the real power of these visual manifestations summons its bewildering cultural strength.

What we see is relative, right? Looking at a Jackson Pollock canvas, some see sheer genius, others quip that their child could make the same kind of chaotic mess and still others examine the tangle of lines and detect algorithmic patterns. How we interpret what we see is a direct result of what we have been taught, shown and exposed to during our lives. Various combinations of parents, friends, schools, religions, philosophies, television, movies, books and individual perspicacity influence our individual views. That’s why I’m so inclined to ask, What do you see? This is what matters because it is the collection of all our individual views that comprises this grander phenomenon, which is so acutely documented in the video montage.

Human beings share the need to explain what they see. That’s the function of language – to communicate internal thoughts externally. An intrinsic human trait, in this day and age of internet immediacy such explanations, whether on a blog or the news, swirl all around the world, are re-posted and re-appropriated, all in the name of explaining what someone sees, or claims to see.

The authenticity of these images is often called into question, but never by the news (as I’ve blogged about before). Sometimes reporters will include a quotation from a bystander with a different opinion (Jane Doe sees Jesus, John Doe sees Charles Manson) but they never really track down the facts about how the image in question came to be. There is often speculation, but very rarely is anything proven.

Of course, proving that a divine hand caused an image to appear would be tough, but these stories – human interest stories – rely on what the individuals saw and what they told reporters, not what actually happened.

So what’s really happening? That’s the big question. There isn’t a definitive answer, but if you weed through enough of my older posts, I think some answers begin to take shape, though they might be as hard to decipher as some of the images. There is no doubt that technology and its acceleration plays a role. How else could the frequency of these sightings explained in light of reports of religion being less and less popular?

Technological advances also permit us to know more and more about the world (for better or worse) so as more and more about science is revealed, we tend to think that EVERYTHING can be explained, can be given meaning.

Take this recent story from The Scottish Sun about a woman who claims to see her dead father in this ultrasound. She claims that her father is holding the baby, a sign that he will always be with them, looking out for them. Yes, ultrasounds provide invaluable information about a baby’s natal development, but they also are yet another image for people to stare at and look for meaning that may or may not be there.

It is this speculative quality of these stories that draws people to them and the reason why the media never shies away from such stories, no matter how little news the news might contain.

Want to read more about this? There’s always the book!

Local News Pareidolia Montage

2009-03-12T08:50:00.003-05:00

Everyone likes a video montage, right? An editor distills an entire year's worth of death, celebrity imbroglios, new movies, you name it. Thanks to Everything Is Terrible, we can now all enjoy this rundown of 2008's local news coverage of all things Madonna of the Toast! Some of these stories have graced this blog, but others haven't.

Which one is your favorite?

All the World's a Stage

2009-03-06T16:11:00.003-05:00

Recently, I reported the conclusion of the saga that unfolded from the 2005 discovery of a Virgin Mary image under a highway in Chicago. The image drew jeers and cheers for years, until it was spray-painted with devil horns and then covered over by city officials. The image is now gone, but the story will live on, not only in a forum such as this, but on stage as well.

Playwright Tanya Saracho has penned Our Lady of the Underpass and it runs at Teatro Vista until the end of March. I haven’t seen or read the play, but this review from the Chicago Reader makes it sound like Saracho’s approach to the topic is very similar to Madonna of the Toast’s, in that they both leave the image in question up to the viewer: “It’s Saracho’s genius to keep questions of reality unresolved, to leave open the gap between an indisputable fact—a salt stain on a cement wall—and what human beings make of it: art, faith.”

Sounds like the Madonna of the Toast mantra: What do you see?

Apparently the play is a series of monologues that covers the range of attitudes about the image, from devout to derisory, which are separated by “clever choral recitations that bring to mind different types of prayer.”

This is not the first play inspired by these stories. Who remembers this post about The Jesus Hickey? While I can’t vouch for the quality of either play it does not surprise me that writers, visual artists, film directors and actors delve into these stories. If approached correctly, they can yield so much about human nature, and that’s the real power of these visual manifestations.

If anyone out there reading is in Chicago and happens to see the play, let me know what you think.

A Colorful Stone

2009-03-01T17:03:00.001-05:00

Sergio Romero of Pocatello, Idaho, took a trip to Las Vegas last year and traded an antique coin purse for the colorful stone pictured above. According to this KPVI story, back at home while polishing the new acquisition Romero discovered what he sees as the Virgin Mary in the asparagus-tip shaped blue of the stone. Said Romero: “I'm not a religious man. This has kind of turned me to looking into religion. As a matter of fact, I think I might even go to church this Sunday.”

I don’t see the shape, but the jade and blue are dazzling. That must have been some antique coin purse. Perhaps sometime soon Romero will be able to get the purse back, because no amount of newly discovered faith is going to keep him from selling this on eBay, which he plans to do within the next month.

Potato Chips: A Salty Sacrament?

2009-02-18T17:10:00.003-05:00

I’m a big fan of potato chips, both as snack and Madonna of the Toast fodder. In fact, right before I read about the Jesus chip above, I had just polished off a bag of jalapeno chips, the perfect compliment to a PB&J sandwich.

The chip that Linda and Brian Hershey found while eating at a restaurant in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, doesn’t seem to have any additional flavoring (I assume it was salted), unless you count the face of Jesus as a flavor. Regardless if anyone ever has the chance to taste this particular chip, the Hersheys very much consider the discovery a sign that they are on the right path in life. About six months ago they, along with their 15-year-old daughter, accepted Jesus into their lives, and this chip bolsters their decision. Furthermore, just before Linda noticed Brian about to eat the chip, according to this Chambersburg Public Opinion report, the couple had been talking about quitting smoking. And now, perhaps they will, or not.

Of course, the doubters have chimed in, accusing the Hersheys of doctoring the chip. I’ve looked at lots of chips and I don’t think this one has been altered. Selling it on eBay has also been brought up, as has eating it – I guess that would be like taking communion, but tastier. As of now, the Hersheys are undecided, though they are worried about preserving the chip and its crispy countenance.

I should put them in touch with the ultimate maven of potato chips that have iconic qualities: Myrtle Young. One of the true stars of Madonna of the Toast, Young is the friendly octogenarian from Indiana who to this day lives with her famous collection of potato chips that resemble famous figures like Bob Hope and Mickey Mouse. She’s been on every late show of the 1980s and her collection has been featured on The Simpsons – now that’s fame!

If the Hersheys read the book, they would know exactly how Young has kept her chips safe, even when she used to shuttle them all over the world. I don’t know if Brian and Linda will ever travel with their Jesus chip, but they are certainly in the process of getting some decent figurative mileage out of it . . .

Does an Image Trump Location?

2009-02-16T15:44:00.002-05:00

Jubilee Fellowship parishioner Mary Mitchum took it upon herself to give the church’s lectern a new shine. According to this Augusta Chronicle article, Mitchum stripped the old finish off and applied a new coat of varnish. As soon as she brought the lectern back to the church someone claimed to see Jesus in the wood grain: “There were two eyes, a nose, hair and maybe even a halo.”

Now, I don’t see much of anything in this photograph, but as regular readers know by now, it isn’t about what I see. What do you see? I’m guessing in this instance many of you won’t see much, but here is the story nonetheless, orbiting around in the 24-hour news cycle, a fleeting shooting star that only a handful of people may ever actually witness.

I’ve spent time in Augusta, Georgia, and even been to a church there, twice – once when my grandmother remarried and then again when she passed away, back in the mid-90s. She had moved there and on more than one occasion I spent several weeks on end in those hot, humid summers. We stayed with extended family and they had a pool so it wasn’t that bad, but those trips were the first time I realized just how different the country is depending on geography. With most of my family peppered around the northeastern part of the US, the funniest accent I had heard was an uncle’s “a”-heavy Boston speak. The drawls in Georgia can be syrupy, the same way people tend to move when the heat is at its fiercest.

Fact is, due to all sorts of circumstances, life is different in Augusta than it is in Philadelphia or Berkeley or Austin. And the same was true back when I was a kid first visiting places outside of the area where I grew up.

When I first endeavored this whole Madonna of the Toast project I had assumed that the stories would be limited in terms of geographical range. I was wrong, happily. While there are some geographic tendencies for these stories, namely areas heavily populated by Spanish-speaking populations (e.g. California, Texas), for the most part the stories favor the image over where the image is seen.

I haven’t really fleshed this idea out yet, but I haven’t thought about Augusta, Georgia, in a while either. I haven’t been back there since that funeral, yet I still have strong associations with the place. These images of Jesus and Mary seem to transcend place on some level, which I guess is the true power of iconography.

More on this once I’ve thought about it more . . .

Recession Proof

2009-02-08T16:19:00.005-05:00

About 10 years ago, during a remodeling, the wooden door seen above was installed at Jarrett Ford Lincoln Mercury in Dade City, Florida. Recently, because of the recession, people working at the car dealership have some extra time on their hands, and one of them saw Jesus on this door, according to this St. Petersburg Times article. Or is it Sasquatch or a “Persian prince” (whatever that means)? There are some different opinions about the image, but the form has clearly given some people in need of something to do, something to do.

Chips Davis, who runs a dent removal service, was the first to liken the 3-foot tall shape to Jesus: "Anybody who's seen pictures of the burial cloth and image of Christ that's on that cloth — that same image is on that door.” (Davis attends church; I would think he’d be able to name the Shroud of Turin.) Anyway, he took a photo, sent a copy to the St. Petersburg Times and posted the image on his Facebook page.

Receptionist Ruth Johnson is credited for the Sasquatch quip and customer James Bauman Jr. suggested, “Christ in a Jedi outfit . . . [or a] Persian king." Then, as the article explains it, Bauman touched on a number of topical cultural markers, citing “significance in the stain, just as there is in Barack Obama being president and Israel's conflict with Hamas.” He said: "I believe the Rapture is just around the corner.” It’s beyond the scope of this post to figure out how all of this bundles up into a sure sign of the end, but if you’re reading, John, feel free to leave a comment.

General manager Cliff Martin hadn’t noticed anything until it was pointed out to him: "I like to say we're blessed but we're not breaking any sales records, so maybe we're just blessed to be in business." Judging by how quickly the US is shedding jobs, I’d say he’s right.

Where Graffiti and Religion Meet

2009-01-29T15:36:00.004-05:00

For the most part, Madonna of the Toast stories end in one of two ways: they drop off the media’s radar, fading into obscurity or they get sold on eBay, making the attention last a bit longer (but not that much longer). But there is a third, less common possibility: defacement.

Above, a devil graffiti painted atop the Virgin Mary. The image in question is in Chicago, underneath the Kennedy Expressway. A hospital worker first spotted the image back in 2005 and since then people have wandered through litter and homeless encampments to leave a memento and say a prayer. The city’s department of transportation attributes the belled image to road salt, but that has not dissuaded the faithful, or the detractors.

This is not the first time the image has been vandalized. According to this article from Medill Reports (a creation of Northwestern University’s graduate journalism program), the image has been the victim of two previous attacks. Once, the words “big lie” were scrawled across the shape; the second time someone riffed on Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

In the past, the city has scrubbed away the paint, but not this time, so they just used one of the classic methods of graffiti abatement: a rectilinear paint over.

I like graffiti. It can be artful, political, smart, cute and funny. I think there is a lot to be said for the public reclaiming certain spaces and surfaces. Hitting someone’s home should never be done, unless requested. Yes, much of what gets tagged, stenciled or painted in urban settings is private or government property, making it a fine line (at least from a legal perspective).

So, what do we make of someone painting over an image that some people find important? The articles say that no one has complained about Mary being painted over by the city, but that doesn’t answer the question. Thoughts?

A Stony Jesus

2009-01-26T16:06:00.003-05:00

"I ain't no rock scientist, but call Dr. Dre ...” So uttered Erik "Smoke" Jones. According to this Contra Costa Times article, Jones discovered the face of Jesus on this stone, one of many that comprises the counter at the store Cali Style in Redlands, California. Jones told his boss Jonathan Hernandez about the discovery, and presumably Hernandez told the media. The counter has been in the shop for years, but Jones only noticed the image a couple of months ago.

The writer reports that from different angles the face better resembles Che Guevara or just a black splotch. Whatever it is you see, however, Jones adamantly denies having painted the stone, and while neither a geologist nor Dr. Dre were consulted, the reporter does make it a point to say that the form seems to be a natural occurrence.

According to the article, “the image is viewed more as a curiosity than a sign of divine presence.” In fact, Hernandez hopes the visual manifestation doesn’t attract too many of the devout. I guess lots of folks praying and lighting candles could interfere with the business, and if really large groups began to congregate they could also get in the way of Hernandez’s business next door: THC Smoke Shop. Makes for a new interpretation of this phrase from the article: “stony store counter.”

Without incriminating myself too much, I can say that several years of living in California did prove to me that the state’s pot culture is something truly um, err, uhh . . .

Montana in the Mix

2009-01-22T15:24:00.004-05:00

Jeff Wahl found this agate on the bank of the Yellowstone River, seeing what looked to him like a kneeling figure. According to this Billings Gazette article, when Wahl got home “he cut the agate on his rock saw and revealed what he says is a resemblance of the Virgin Mary kneeling while cradling her baby Jesus. An aura seems to enshroud Mary's head. He calls it the Prayer Agate.”

Once again, the image in question is difficult to discern. It looks more like an ultrasound of a fetus than the typical Virgin Mary shape. I will say that it echoes the lava lamp image from the previous post. No matter what you or I see, however, the story was reported and now I’m relaying it.

To his credit, Wahl made his find public with the hope that he could raise money to help his friend, who is very ill and awaiting a liver transplant. Cash is tight for the friend and Wahl wants to help.

Also worth noting that this is the first time that a Madonna of the Toast story has hailed from Montana. This brings the grand total of states where these stories have originated to 29, with 16 countries and two planets also representing.

Lava Lamp Vision

2009-01-16T16:17:00.003-05:00

For this most recent report of Mary and Jesus appearing unexpectedly we head down under, to Sydney, Australia, where one John Smith – at least that’s what he’s calling himself – has made public his psychedelic discovery: “I turned on my brand new lava lamp and watched in awe as the unmistakable image of the Holy Mary cradling the Baby Jesus appeared.” According to this Herald Sun article, Smith has kept this visual manifestation private for over a year, during which he has kept the lamp unplugged and his life has gone from ho-hum to dandy – including lucrative job offers and a woman. Now it’s time to share this “miracle” with the world, hence www.holymarylamp.com.

The article, dated January 16, reports that at the time of writing the site’s visitor counter read 251, but as of writing this, also on January 16, the ticker reads over 54,000! Never ceases to amaze me how folks love looking at these images (or love to hate looking at them).

For those of you keeping score at home, this is the first time a lava lamp has been the vessel for such a vision, which is kind of surprising really. There have been plenty of foodstuffs, plastic bags, stones, driftwood and chipping paint but no lava lamps. These colorful novelty items have been around since the 1960s, becoming a critical accoutrement to any hippie hideaway. I bet John Smith isn’t the first person to turn on a lava lamp and see Jesus, but he’s certainly the first guy to dedicate a website to his vision.

Not that lava lamps are underrepresented in today’s culture, as this Obama lava lamp proves.

Vatican Gag Order

2009-01-14T21:58:00.006-05:00

This is a bit off topic, but relevant nonetheless. According to this UPI report: “The Vatican plans to release a handbook to help Roman Catholic bishops investigate claims of heavenly visions of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.” Regular readers know that Madonna of the Toast is only about the visual manifestations of Jesus and the Virgin Mary (among other recognizable icons), and while they happen frequently enough to keep this blog somewhat lively, if I relayed every story about “heavenly visions” – like statues crying blood and individuals channeling Jesus – it would be a full-time job.

Some of the news stories about this pending Vatican report tread on being sensationalistic, but I did find an even keeled analysis of this development by John L. Allen Jr. on the National Catholic Reporter. All of the perspectives seem to agree that this is a power play. In Allen’s words: “[I]n the Catholic system the only ‘licensed’ spokespersons for God, so to speak, are the ordained. The eruption of alternative channels of revelation, especially among laity, thus has the potential to make officialdom nervous.”

I’ll say, according to these articles, upon any report of such a vision, the seer will be thoroughly investigated and vetted by church officials. Psychiatrists, theologians, spiritual experts and even exorcists will examine the individual in question. During the examination he or she must stay out of the limelight, since seeking publicity comes off as dubious. The person must also turn over their computer in order for investigators to see if the “suspect” – though this really sounds like guilty until proven innocent – had been researching suspicious topics.

In talking to people and reading quite a bit about people seeing Jesus -- whether as an animated apparition or an oil stain -- the general consensus about them is that they are just having a bit of fun, a crafty entrepreneur looking to make a quick buck on eBay or a crackpot. What then does the church have to worry about?

That there is what you call one of them rhetorical questions. If you find spiritual solace outside of a church, then you won’t go to a church, and this is what worries the Vatican. Allen dubs it “quality control” which strikes me as incredibly impersonal, mechanical even. But I guess dogma is kind of like a conveyor belt, it keeps coming and there’s not much you can do about it . . .

Okay, maybe not like a conveyor belt exactly, but the spiritual should be personal. If a visit to the woman speaking to Mary puts your mind at ease, or lighting a candle for a shrine set up by a telephone poll resembling Jesus on the cross slakes your worries, do it. If the faithful were jumping ship to worship American Idol winners, I could kind of understand this, but what the Vatican is reacting to is a result of its proselytizing -- the church has taught people to look for Jesus for help. Lots of people need help so it should come as no surprise that Jesus and Mary get seen all over the place.

This isn’t new actually. Allen explains that this report is more of an update of a 1978 document compiled by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that was sent to bishop’s all over the world “outlining the procedure to be followed in cases of reports of supernatural happenings.” Then there was the Vatican’s 2003 condemnation of New Age, urging people not to seek spiritual fulfillment in pursuits like yoga and feng shui and shamanism (though all three are quite a bit older than Christianity). (This is the Vatican’s official stance on New Age.) The Vatican's goal is to keep Catholics in line with Catholic doctrine and these personalized spiritual beliefs can’t be contained because they are different for everyone.

As more and more people react to seeing Jesus and Mary in ordinary places I guess the Vatican will dedicate lots of time to digging through people’s internet search histories. Maybe they’ll stumble across this blog!

Update: Speaking of holy visions and the pilgrimages they inspire, The Economist’s January 15 “Correspondent’s Diary”: “Pilgrims in Rhineland” describes a journey through Catholic pilgrimage sites in Germany and the author sites Madonna of the Toast as a “lively book” that documents these stories. How about that!

Kuckuck

2009-01-08T13:14:00.003-05:00

According to this Bremerton Patriot report, Allen Kuckuck of Poulsbo, Washington, bought a handful of “novelty rocks” before Christmas and when he got them home and examined them “one rock spun around, revealing a new perspective on the crisscross pattern of its surface . . . depicting Jesus toting a cross on his back.”

Sure, the photograph doesn’t reveal much, if anything, about the image, but haven’t we learned after all of these visual manifestations that the actual image is less important than the story created around it?

In the story, Kuckuck jokes about selling the rock on eBay, though he doesn’t own a computer: “I’m going to sell it if I can get $20 million.” Kuckuck identifies himself as religious, and as a painter, so he has an eye for these things, and apparently a decent sense of humor about them.

How about the surname? I’m pretty sure it is of German heritage. Some Googling around also suggests that it is what Germans call the bird cuculus canorus, otherwise known as the cuckoo. What a great onomatopoeia! Apparently, the kuckucks that migrate to Germany have the bad reputation of laying eggs in preexisting nests. The female will lay her egg, eat one of the eggs already in the nest and then fly off, leaving her egg to be cared for by the other female bird. I discovered this tidbit here, but be warned, the writer uses this example of nature’s ways to present a screed on human morality. Kuckuck, kuckuck, kuckuck.

A New Year

2009-01-02T14:19:00.004-05:00

A new year: a new president about to be sworn in, a dismal economy, the end of the Holidaze, winter and, of course, more stories about recognizable forms and faces appearing in unexpected places. I think it is safe to say that every year is the year of Madonna of the Toast!

This story from the Las Vegas Sun does provide a twist on the standard story, however. Antonia Baker of West Valley claims that every tile in her kitchen carries on it an image of Jesus. The 13 x 13 inch ceramic tiles were put down in the kitchen eight years ago, but Baker only noticed them three years ago “during the Christmas season while she was recovering from surgery for an eye injury. Doctors said she had to keep her head down to allow her retina to heal. She wasn't allowed to read or use the computer, so she had to stare at the floor for three weeks.” Sounds like that would make for a sore neck.

I know the image above is less than ideal, but if you really want to take a look at the tile, click here for a slideshow. Thing is, the Jesus part of the pattern is pretty tough to see. What’s most interesting about this story is that the form Baker claims to be that of Jesus is replicated on all of the tiles. Most of these instances are one-off examples of pareidolia. As the article points out, there could be many kitchen floors in the greater Las Vegas area with the same Jesus tiles.

Baker has tried to sell a few of her tiles on eBay, but to no avail, so she is happy to keep walking all over Jesus.

With a new year also comes the obligatory year-end retrospective of the previous year. California’s Porterville Recorder did one such nostalgic romp of 2008’s most popular stories and at the top of the list, above murders, fatal car accidents and the presidential election, a story about this angel image. Seen on the window of a local business, the image drew thousands of visitors and even got a shout-out from Keith Olbermann. And then, a couple of weeks later an image of Jesus on the cross appeared on a palm tree next to the window that initially got all of the attention.

The past two years have been pretty good for this ongoing project. Maybe this year the book will get Olbermann's attention -- remember, every year is the Year of Madonna of the Toast!

The News in the News

2008-12-16T17:04:00.005-05:00

From the inception of this project, my spins on these stories have always been linked to how the media treats them, and how those treatments get others to react. Here then is the story of Pamela Latrimore, as told by her on eBay, where she is in the process of selling this brain scan, where in the cerebral folds of her brain she has discovered the Virgin Mary.

Nothing shocking about that, right? Jesus and Mary have popped up in ultrasounds and MRIs plenty of times. It’s not even particularly surprising that it looks like this item will sell for more than $700. What’s interesting is how this event, for Latrimore, has spurred her campaign for awareness about Agent Orange dioxins that have long been polluting her hometown of Jacksonville, Arkansas. In her words from eBay: “Some do not see the image some do. I'm not here to dispute that. I see it and I think it is a blessing and a miracle. The miracle to me is people are now aware of this town.”

Yes, her explanation of all this is erratic in terms of spelling, grammar and capitalization, but this abstract from a November 4, 1991 issue of The Nation proves that Latrimore is not exaggerating the severity of illnesses and environmental issues that have plagued this town since the end of the Vietnam War. Apparently, the Vertac Chemical Corporation stored various toxins all over the town: “It is opined that no one knows for certain if a house or backyard isn't directly on top of a yet-to-be-identified toxic dump.” Yikes!

Latrimore says she is very ill and while she and others have long fought to save themselves, their town and other towns that suffer the same plight, dead ends are all they seem to hit. But now, this image of the Virgin Mary has garnered national media attention, including a potential appearance on CNN (according to Latrimore).

I’m just tuning in to this issue today. I can’t verify Latrimore’s claims, but searching around, they don’t strike me as outlandish. What does it say about the culture of media when real human suffering does not receive proper reporting until a purported image of the Virgin Mary in a brain scan becomes a part of the story? I’d say that the media, at least the mainstream media (CNN, I’m talking to you, too), has conditioned us to consider tabloid stories as hard news. That’s why banner headlines on AOL and Yahoo inform us about reality television dramas. If that’s your thing, fine, but that ain’t news.

More on this as it develops . . .

Update (12/18/08): The MRI sold for $730, going to an anonymous California bidder. With more than $100,000 in medical bills, this was clearly not about the money for Latrimore. According to this WFTS report, she is actually disappointed that the auction only received 21,977 views over the course of 10 days because she was hoping to raise even more awareness about the pollution that plagues her hometown of Jacksonville, Arkansas. It doesn’t seem like that CNN appearance ever happened – maybe it was too much news?

If Everyone Else Does It, It Must Be Okay

2008-12-12T14:56:00.003-05:00

Connie Covert from Idaho Falls, Idaho, has come out of the closet. No, wait, she’s come out about her closet. According to this Local News 8 report, Covert first noticed an image of Jesus on this door in her home over 30 years ago but “was afraid to tell anyone fearing she would be called crazy.” All of the stories about Jesus and the Virgin Mary showing up in all sorts of places inspired Covert to make her secret public. Of the people she has shown, only about half see Jesus, while others see a hobo or a horse. I kind of see Macho Man Randy Savage.

Covert is not religious, but she interprets the face as a sign that something has been looking over her for decades, especially since her life is tragedy free: “Trailer hasn’t burned down or anything.” The article doesn’t establish any specific reason for Covert’s confession, though it does make clear that she has no intention of selling the image on eBay.

Attitudes change with the times. Sure, there is still plenty of bigotry and racism out there – all over the world – but it is fair to say that culture at large, as filtered through the media, has become more accepting of pretty much everyone and everything, even, apparently, how people will think of you if you claim to see Jesus, Mary or Mickey Mouse in a water stain. What once might have resulted in your neighbors inconspicuously whispering about you has become something of a status symbol, or at least a way to attract some attention and get your fifteen minutes of fame.

Maybe that’s the essence of this shift in perception, that getting noticed, being on the news, even for less than complimentary reasons, is the status symbol. Because if you read enough reader comments tagged on to the end of these Madonna of the Toast stories, plenty of people like Covert get ridiculed, pretty harshly at times. But, no matter what people write and say about you, if your story is out there, circulating all over the world, then you have arrived: I can be Googled, therefore I am.

Hopefully Covert doesn’t regret making her story known.

Sold – Jesus Doggie Door Goes for $1,185

2008-12-07T11:04:00.003-05:00

The title says it all. No word about whether or not the winner of this auction is going to pay extra for Roger Bowman to accompany the framed object to its new home, but the sale does seem official. Scroll down to read more about this story.

Believe it or not, I do read about more than questionable iconic forms showing up in surprising places. I actually read books, ones without pictures even. Check out The Millions if you are interested in my favorite reads of 2008. Contributors to the annual A Year In Reading comprise a roster of today’s most interesting and acclaimed writers.

An Ode to Salsa

2008-12-04T12:23:00.002-05:00

Recognizable faces and shapes have appeared on a dizzying array of substrates, formed by jet streams and condensation, frothing oatmeal, rust, wood grain and now, salsa – my favorite condiment. Of course, no proper story about a salsa-splatter Virgin Mary could originate anywhere else but California. After living there for 5 years I can attest to the glories of California salsa. Thanks to the close proximity of so much amazing produce, the state’s Mexican food is often accompanied by a range of salsa as varied as these Madonna of the Toast tales. Pineapple, watermelon, apple, mango, corn, pumpkin seed, tomatillo, heirloom tomatoes – all of these flavors of salsa exist. Free avocado salsa so plentiful you can fill a cup and drink it? Head to Cancun in Berkeley (portion of the famous salsa bar pictured above).

So to Bakersfield, California, we go, where, according to this FaceBakersfield story, Elvia Alvarez was making salsa. Some of it splattered against the wall, forming what Alvarez immediately recognized as the Virgin Mary. Since it has appeared, Alvarez also says her house has smelled like roses, although there are no roses in the house, or neighborhood. Such a scent may come in handy if she leaves that stain on the wall. Odors aside, Alvarez believes the image to be a sign from God that people should learn to treat one another better.

As you can tell from the photograph, this is a pretty standard tomato salsa that Alvarez was blending, nothing more than tomato, chili peppers, onion and cilantro. With the exception of tomatillo salsa, I prefer a chunkier, rustic salsa, hand-chopped and mixed, so a recipe like Alvarez’s doesn’t come out as spicy ketchup. I like my salsa to have a bit of crunchy texture, so those spikes of cilantro, jalapeno and onion really contrast with the tomatoes.

While its carbon footprint is questionable, one of my favorite salsas to make in the winter is mango salsa, thanks to the abundance of cheap South American mangos found at my Astoria produce stand of choice. Let them get really ripe and then chunk them, scrape all the flesh off the pit with a spoon, letting the juice run into the bowl, add some onion, garlic, cilantro, jalapeno, lemon, salt, pepper and you have a top-notch mango salsa, good with chips, on fish tacos or dolloped into a bowl of chili. If you’re really lucky, some of the mango juice will run down your wrist, hit the counter and congeal into the face of Frida Kahlo.

Jesus Doggie Door on eBay

2008-11-30T23:53:00.004-05:00

For you long-time readers, this Jesus doggie door is nothing new. Back in January 2007, I blogged about Roger Bowman’s tale of disobedient dogs and how this scratch-formed Jesus face saved them from the pound. What is new, however, is this eBay auction – to the winner goes the doggie door, framed for posterity. Apparently, according to Bowman’s thorough eBay explanation, he has lost his job and needs a quick cash infusion to cover his mortgage.

Like the economy, plenty has changed about this story since it was first reported. One of the dogs is dead, and Bowman no longer believes that the image resembles the Shroud of Turin, though he maintains that it is Jesus, partly because of the iconic beard and long hair, but also because of other circumstances: “The compelling factor in judging this image is the convergence of both the image, which had never before been observed in any way prior to the day it was discovered in full form, and the fact it appeared on an item that was of extreme relevance to the most important issue facing my family at that time.”

As of writing this post, the current bid stands at $1,850. Needless to say, it has generated ample press, like here. It’s hard to imagine why such a personal object for Bowman would be worth much to anyone else, especially in this dire economic climate, but the display case alone is pretty nifty: “The backlight is created from ultra-thin fluorescent tubes that are housed in a pre-manufactured backlight device with a semi-opaque front. It is typically used to backlight transluscent [sic] store signs such as fast food menus.” If there’s one thing that says “classy” and “spiritual” to me, it’s fast-food menu lighting. Actually, the lighting is necessary if you want to see this semblance; it has been rigged to replicate how the sun lit the doggie door on the day when Bowman first noticed the image.

Should you want to kick in for airfare and provide notice one week in advance, Bowman and his dog Hercules will attend an “unveiling,” and presumably pose for some photographs.

Recognizable Is Not Always Reliable

2008-11-17T16:48:00.003-05:00

Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris maintains a New York Times blog, Zoom. The November 12 post meditates on, among other things, “the perceived reliability of the source,” a topic inspired by a reader comment. Very apropos for stories about recognizable images appearing in unexpected places, no?

Morris cites two very different examples to explore the idea of “reliability”: Colin Powell’s now infamous 2003 testimony during the UN Security Council, when he held up a vial that “could have” contained anthrax; the classic Ansel Adams photograph Winter Sunrise, Lone Pine, CA, a print that Adams took the liberty of spotting out an “LP” on a hillside because he found the Lone Pine initials a desecration of the natural environment. In both cases we as viewers believe the subject presented. With Powell, because he was, and is, a distinguished figure, an expert, etc., he knew what he was talking about; Adams’s reputation as one of the greatest nature photographers of all time results in viewers assuming that he always presented nature exactly as it stood before him when he snapped the shot.

The perception of a source’s reliability builds trust amongst those informed by the source. As Morris describes it: “The saddest thing of all is that without trust, civilization would be impossible. We can’t possibly ever know everything through first-hand experience. We can’t check everything nor hold everything up to scrutiny. We have to depend on others for information. In some cases, the dependence on others is not critical; in others, it is of crucial importance.”

Morris also mentions the human propensity for mistaking an image for the object itself, a notion dating back to Plato, which I cover in Madonna of the Toast and have discussed here countless times. He follows this thought with another question: “Why do we trust our eyes?” I don’t think it’s our eyes that need to be questioned, however, as they are only two surface parts of “seeing.” It is our brain that makes us trust, or distrust for that matter.

(Purported Jesus image on a laptop screen, which is being auctioned on eBay.)

Now, the stories that populate this blog are not of “critical importance,” but a great majority of them come to us via a media source, starting from a network affiliate covering a local happening, followed by rebroadcasts on other affiliates, sometimes inspiring a gathering where people gawk and pray, which in turn creates more media interest. People, at first, respond to the news report that relays the image of the image you may or may not get excited about, or believe. But, in the case of my recent Infotainment post, the news source didn’t even bother to report facts about an old Youtube video of a Jesus cloud. Yet, the report circulated internationally.

Here then, in such stories, the reliability of two sources comes into question, that of the discoverer and that of the report of the discovery. When someone sees a Virgin Mary stain on a window or the shape of Jesus in a tree stump, that is the story. Rarely do the media outlets do anything journalistic, they just pass along something they’ve been told and it becomes “news.” Ever since I began nosing around in these occurrences, I’ve been fascinated by the cultural ripples they create as perpetuated by the media. The recipients of these media-generated stories react in one of two ways: with utter devotion, or utter derision. Yet, either stance accepts the reliability of the two sources in question. People either see the face of Jesus in the stain, or quip that it looks more like Charles Manson or Jerry Garcia. I’ve never come across one of these stories where a news item concludes with evidence suggesting, or proving, that the image in question was manipulated.

Is it me, or in this realm is the reliability of a source unimportant, a non-issue? Why is that? In matters of global affairs and art, to name but two, it’s a huge issue, but with these stories reliability seems to get a pass.

Thoughts?

French Toast for Muscles, and Jesus

2008-11-12T14:30:00.003-05:00

It’s not the first piece of toast emblazoned with an iconic face to come out of Florida, but it is the first piece of French toast with the face of Jesus, and two swans, at least that's what Troy Eckonen sees. I dare you to tell him he's wrong.

It was during breakfast at Mack’s Café in Pompano Beach when he noticed the visage. According to this First Coast News report, Eckonen “and friends also see Christ's left arm raised and holding a cross, as well as two birds over the left shoulder.” Eckonen says he will not sell his Jesus French toast on eBay – probably because it will be worth much more to him in the business it brings into his gym.

Turns out Eckonen is a body builder and owner of Tropical Gym, which seems like a pretty serious gym, judging by its website with lots of photographs of Eckonen and various Mr. Olympia’s. This is Eckonen:

This photo gallery has been set up on Tropical Gym's website with more images of the French toast, replete with the important question, “What do you see?”

Sound familiar? It’s the Madonna of the Toast catchphrase, and it’s finally taking off! Of course, if I ran into Eckonen and he wanted to claim it as his, I’d probably give him credit if I thought it would keep me from being mauled and splattered into something that people have to squint at and wonder what it is.

And the Angels Sing

2008-11-06T16:52:00.003-05:00

The election is over (YAAAAY!), and so now it is back to business as usual, or as usual as matters can be in these parts. This story is a pre-election story, but just about a week old. It came to me via a Google alert, and I was tickled by the fact that the writer cited this here blog to give the story a bit of context (though she should have mentioned the book, too).

Found near Johnny Mercer’s Pier in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, this shell immediately struck the stroller as resembling the Virgin Mary. According to the article, “like a good entrepreneur,” the person that found the shell, no doubt reeling from religious ecstasy, put it up for sale on eBay. Nothing surprising in that, but what is surprising is that the shell sold for $135 after 26 bids.

The shell’s ribbing does create the effect of a robe, and its belled shape echoes the iconic form of Mary, but I’m not quite sure why this item would sell while so many other more or less similar items do not sell, or sell for a couple of bucks. I guess some people really like shells.

But that’s the beauty of these stories, there is so much you can never know and wondering can be the real joy.

I wonder why a pier in North Carolina is named after Savannah, Georgia’s most famous son?

Vote!

2008-11-02T15:37:00.004-05:00

Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.

Story of the “Potatobama” image here.

This Is Infotainment

2008-10-29T16:42:00.004-05:00

I’ve never been to Australia, but from what I hear there is a different sense of time down there. This news item from the Macarthur Chronicle confirms my understanding. This article about the video above is from the paper’s October 28 issue, but the video was posted on Youtube a year ago. Hardly breaking news, or even news for that matter. The paper didn’t even bother to get the real name of the person responsible for the footage.

Someone using the handle “tubeoffroad” shot the video, thinking the wispy cloud resembled Jesus with outstretched arms. The video has gotten over 8,000 hits, which is nothing when compared to other similarly themed videos, some of which have been viewed over 400,000 times.

This particular video has also generated a smattering of comments, most notably one from tubeoffroad: “WOW! Today, 28 OCT 2008 I'm on the front page of Macarthur Chronicle local newspaper. Unbelievable! About time I made the front page.”

I’ve never even thought to look at Youtube for these sorts of clips, but I guess that’s because I’m interested in how the media gets hold of these stories. But, in this day and age, Youtube is a very real facet of the media. The viral nature of this website, and many others, is such that if you get enough people viewing whatever it is that you’ve created it becomes news. A great example is the Obama Girl. That video was originally posted in June 2007, and since then more than 10-million people have viewed it with new comments popping up every few minutes. The video and its star, Amber Lee Ettinger, have been topics of pretty much every major news outlet. So, tubeoffroad’s attitude is kind of understandable within this context, as s/he clearly had the expectation of the video translating to news media/pseudo-celebrity status.

I used the word on this blog for the first time a couple of posts ago, but this story is the essence of “infotainment.” I’d much rather squint my eyes and try to discern a religious or secular icon than spend my time figuring out which parts of the news are truly newsworthy and which parts are just people trying to get notoriety. I guess it’s all kind of the same anymore . . .

You Just Have to See, Even If You Aren't Looking

2008-10-27T14:54:00.002-05:00

When I returned from Germany, I had waiting for me phone messages and emails from my cousin, a guy I always thought of as the big brother I never had. He had been traveling for work and was in a hotel room in New Orleans, drinking Dr. Pepper out of a plastic bottle, when he discovered what struck him as an image of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. Now, my cousin does not go to church, but he has heard me go on and on about these Madonna of the Toast stories. For as much as I can ramble on about these things, I just assume most people, especially my family, are nodding politely but then getting on with their lives: jobs, significant others, children, hobbies, friends, etc.

But here we see how that intrinsic human trait of seeing recognizable forms in unexpected places is in all of us, no matter our motivation, or lack thereof. We’ve been playing phone tag, but I can assure you that my cousin was not thinking about how he could find me something to blog about. He was just sitting there, watching TV, maybe checking email, quenching his thirst, thinking about anything any of our minds may land on during those quiet moments of aloneness: tomorrow’s meeting, an old pet, politics, the best friend from high school that you haven’t seen since high school, what to have for breakfast, death, the meaning of life. And suddenly, manifesting in some alchemy of condensation and carbonation, a form that looked to him like a scene from a medieval miniature painting: the gowned Virgin swaddling Jesus in the manger.

It’s one of these examples that makes you squint, but it doesn’t really matter what we see. My cousin saw it. He didn’t call any local television stations and you won’t find this bottle being auctioned on eBay. He was surprised to make the discovery, however, because it was not something he ever expected to find. If you sift through previous posts, you’ll find that many of the people were looking for something to help guide them, but just as many were shocked, the same as my cousin. How any of us see and filter the world we inhabit is subjective – and that’s the point. Meaning, or a lack thereof, can be found just about anywhere, even if you’re not looking for it.

Speaking of finding images in unexpected places, I came across this tidbit on what seems like a great food blog: Bread and Honey. The image above is a photograph of a bag of frozen organic broccoli – a vegetable an old buddy of mine always calls the “virtuous veggie.” Obviously, these tiny faces in the florets are the handiwork of some rogue graphic designer, but it just goes to show you: when you take the time to look, you never know what you might see.

Joe the Plumber of the Toast

2008-10-23T15:41:00.002-05:00

Geez, you leave the country for a week and lose all sense of what’s going on. What’s the deal with this Joe the Plumber guy? I’ve talked to some people, Googled around a bit and I think I have a handle on him and how he has been inflated into a political idea. Strikes me as little more than a media melee. This eBay auction for the piece of toast above seems to bolster my theory.

This is the world of infotainment, people.

Religulous Review

2008-10-13T11:42:00.003-05:00

The Boston Globe’s website reported last week that the Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, will remove the window upon which the image of Virgin Mary was spotted, and subsequently attracted hundreds of visitors. Says hospital spokesperson Mark Fulco, “Removal of the window is not only a prudent decision at this point but is necessary for returning to normal operations.” The widow will be studied and then perhaps made into a display. Fulco, echoing a message from the local Bishop, asked that “attention now be placed on prayers for the people in the hospital as well as the sick and infirmed throughout our world.”

These were the kinds of stories that I had hoped Bill Maher’s new movie would cover. But, aside from the poster’s toasted countenance of Maher, there really isn’t that much directly in common between Religulous and Madonna of the Toast. I thought there would be. I thought that he would be lampooning the commercialization and media sensationalized aspects of religion by making examples of these stories that anyone reading this is fond of, for whatever reason, be it religion or absurdist comedy. But that’s not what the movie is about.

In Maher’s words, he is “preaching doubt,” asking what’s so great about faith. What has made Maher popular, and a reason I have been a fan of his since Politically Incorrect, is his ability to get under people’s skin, pushing all the right buttons so as to bait answers – or more accurately lack of good answers – in order to make his point. He’s done it with politicians, celebrities, activists, writers and now with self-proclaimed true believers.

Unfortunately, the movie only focuses on Christianity, Judaism and Islam, making the glaring omissions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Paganism and really any other –ism you can think of a real shortcoming for a movie that calls into question the notion of “faith.” That’s the disconnect – if Maher were really looking to pick a fight with humanity’s panache for faith, he would really have to go after ALL religions. The movie would have been more successful had Maher better identified what really drives him nuts about faith: hypocrisy and self-serving contradictions that take advantage of people looking for answers to life’s mysteries and hardships.

So, the interviews with Jeremiah Cummings and Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda play right into Maher’s objective: to reveal how religion, for these two, is a means to bilk money from their respective congregations so as to keep them dressed in fine tailored suits.

But, when he talks with Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, an anti-Zionist Jew infamous for going to meet with Iranian President Ahmadinejad, Maher shows his hand; he only really wants to talk to people with answers that are caricatures that he knows are coming, playing into his true agenda – to make these people look like hypocritical idiots (some of them are). But the rabbi does not let Maher get a word in edgewise, which frustrates Maher enough that he abruptly ends the interview. It’s a great scene because both men are accustomed to talking their ways around interlocutors. In this case, Weiss betters Maher by answering questions with orations that Maher interrupts with a different question. The new question only spurs a new oration, however, taking Maher off his talking points.

Maher is preaching to the choir in Religulous. No one struggling with a dilemma of faith will walk out of the theatre with their troubles assuaged because Maher doesn’t really tackle the issue of faith, at least not as it applies to all belief systems. He reminds viewers that the Jesus story borrows heavily from the story of the Egyptian god Horus. This is not news to serious students of religion and myth and I imagine most people who see the film will know this, and will appreciate most of Maher’s points.

There are a few moments, however, where Religulous dovetails with Madonna of the Toast, and that is when individuals are talking about their faith, not as a means to proselytize but to simply get through life. Such is the case with the truckers he interviews at a truck-stop church. One driver in particular tells Maher, “When I seen what I seen, you can’t change what I believe.” This guy isn’t talking about seeing the Virgin Mary on a window. He’s talking about how faith pulled him out of a bleak life of addiction. So, for this guy, faith did factor into making life better. If it had been an image of Mary that got him around the bend, it’s really the same metaphor, right? This guy saw something, thought about what it meant to him and changed his behavior based on this vision.

Maher asks, “Why is faith good?” This isn’t a hard question to answer. Faith on an individual level is inevitable, whether it is religious or agnostic. At one point Maher posits, “Doubt is humble.” That’s tough to argue, but it is a statement of belief, no different than a statement of faith: “I believe . . .” The tough questions deal with how and why faith is used to take advantage of people or to sell a product.

I credit Father Reginald Foster, not Bill Maher, for getting in the best line of Religuous. The Catholic priest and Vatican Scholar tells Maher, as the two are standing outside the Vatican: “You have to live and die with your stupid ideas.” “Your” is the key word here. We are inundated with ideas from friends, family, media, religions, governments and academies. It is up to us to interpret them and live with our interpretations. Yes, certain of these ideas are biased, illogical and inconsistent, but that’s not a secret. Yes, some people are not necessarily equipped to make those distinctions, but is that the fault of the ideas, or the reason for them? I think it is the latter, which is a hugely more profound and complex question than the point of faith.

All of these bodies of ideas are human creations, no different from the wheel, the printing press and computers, and they should be examined as such. While Religulous offers some genuinely funny moments, it only skims the surface of “faith” as an idea. Maybe that’s for the sequel, the one that Maher and his director Larry Charles will let me help write.

I’m off to Frankfurt for the Book Fair, so I won’t be posting for a while. But, if any of you readers have seen Religulous, I’m interested to read your thoughts.

What is the Why?

2008-10-01T13:37:00.003-05:00

From Springfield, Massachusetts, a Virgin Mary on a window of a Catholic hospital. Reported by the Boston Herald, this faint iconic shape on the second-floor window of an empty office has attracted hundreds of people, prompting the hospital to up security, according to a spokesperson for Mercy Medical Center.

Mark Dupont of the Springfield Diocese had this to say: “The way the colors cascade would give the outline of a very common artistic impression of the Blessed Virgin . . . It’s understandable how people would see an image in it.” As always when it comes to church officials addressing these events, Dupont was careful not to claim divine intervention, rather choosing to revel in the crowds’ supplications marked by tears, prayers, rosaries and candles.

So, another example of a Virgin Mary appearance garnering the attention of the faithful, and the media. What to make of it?

Recently on the New York Times blog By the Numbers, Charles M. Blow posed the question “Why is America so religious?” His question is rooted in “a study entitled ‘Unfavorable views of Jews and Muslims on the Increase in Europe’ (which is quite disturbing). The report is part of the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project.” Part of the report reveals, statistically, that poorer countries tend to contain more religious populations, with one major exception: the United States. From the study:

Despite its wealth, the United States is in the middle of the global pack when it comes to the importance of religion. Indeed, on this question, the U.S. is closer to considerably less developed nations such as India, Brazil and Lebanon than to other western nations.

See, there's the United States, there "in the middle of the global pack."

By virtue of how religion plays into politics and culture, we know this already. The frequency of these Madonna of the Toast-type sightings also backs up what these statistics suggest. But what does it really mean? What is the why?

I haven’t seen it yet (though I blogged about it last year), but I bet Bill Maher’s new movie, Religulous, touches on this question. I’m aiming to see it this weekend and will report back. In the meantime, the Times has published a review.

Lots of folks don’t like Maher, and I can understand where his detractors are coming from. I like him though because he’s not afraid to ask tough, sometimes unanswerable, questions, knowing they will irritate people. Doubtless he would have plenty to say about the Virgin Mary window and the Pew report.

Bill, feel free to drop me a line. We should talk.

And Colombia Makes 17

2008-09-25T15:09:00.001-05:00

That’s 17 countries where Madonna of the Toast-related stories have originated, a figure that says quite a bit about the human fascination with the image. In the US, 26 states have hosted various visual manifestations of religious and secular icons. From Jesus and the Virgin Mary showing up on an smorgasbord of substrates to the Arabic for Allah in gristle, the Star of David in oatmeal and Elvis and Yogi Bear in all sorts of places, people see forms they want to recognize all over the world for a host of reasons.

I’ve been meaning to tally all of this geographic data for a while, but news of this Colombian Jesus spotting on the shriveled leaf of a plant that needs watering has spurred me into action, and allowed me to rationalize not having a great image to show you, though you can watch a broadcast in Spanish here, which does have footage of the plant in question. This Jesus image hails from the northern city of Riohacha and has apparently brought the faithful out in droves. Local church officials have yet to confirm the sighting but the owner of the plant is convinced it is divine by virtue of how many people have witnessed Jesus on this leaf.

And that’s what so many of these occurrences are about, really: seeing is believing. Some may believe what they see is utter rubbish, delusional. But others see shapes and shadings that they find inspirational, poignant and life-affirming.

No matter where you stand on the issue, it cannot be denied that these events reveal humanity’s intimate connection with the image, which is perhaps the greatest lesson to take away from these stories. Just ask the folks in England, Wales, Poland, Canada, Argentina, Germany, Scotland, India, Italy, New Zealand, Nigeria, Philippines, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine and, of course, the US (where California, Texas and Florida rule the roost for the greatest number of these stories). These phenomena are inescapable!

Is Toast More Important Than Politics?

2008-09-19T10:39:00.005-05:00

Judging by this, some people would clearly prefer to think about toast over politics. Remember how last post I commented about the media’s propensity to sensationalize Jesus images and the US election? Well, it’s not only the media that’s in on it – though doubtless they have inspired the public. Above, a piece of toast currently being auctioned on eBay. Yes, that’s supposed to be Sarah Palin’s face. The seller writes: “You get this piece of toast with the image of Sarah Palin. Miraculous? You be the judge. Not sponsored by any political party.” According to this Reuters article, Palin memorabilia is all the rage on eBay these days.

A fan of this here blog tipped me off about this absurdity via TheDailyDairy.com.

The current bid on this item is $12,000! How much do you think people would pay for an Obama toast?

UPDATE: It seems that rogue bidders were responsible for raising the price on this item. So, after weeding them out, the toast sold for $31.

Chronicle of a Demise

2008-09-16T23:37:00.005-05:00

Greetings. It’s been quiet on the Madonna of the Toast front. It would be better for all of us if the media stuck with trying to sensationalize the latest Jesus image, as opposed to how it is attempting to sensationalize more pressing issues, issues that deserve serious and sober reporting and consideration: the election, economy, health care, war(s).

And then, as if some apocalyptic convergence of all the big, scary, impossible ideas that propel those issues – election, economy, health care, war(s) – writer extraordinaire David Foster Wallace hanged himself. You’ve probably heard. If you’ve never read him, you should, a short story or an article. Worthwhile memorials at The Millions and McSweeney’s.

So, I’ve been thinking about writing and writers, America, not that different from normal I suppose, but over the last few days tinged by melancholy. But is has yielded something, after returning to a seldom-read collection of Tennessee Williams stories. There are some true gems, but the story I felt drawn to the other day was “Chronicle of a Demise,” the title an ode to my mood. Guess what? It’s a short story that could have been reported here, a perfect accompaniment to these random, and questionable, eBay objects: Jesus (or an ogre) on a wood panel, Mary on a candle. (Where’s the wick?)

The story’s first person narrator belongs to an Order, which has a Saint who spends her days on a cot, up on the roof of an apartment building. Her charge: she tends to the Order’s articles of faith. They are cataloged in an old Valentine’s Day heart-shaped candy box. The items “were collected at random, in subway stations and under the seats of trains, in gutters and alleys of many different towns, even by theft.” After inspection by the Saint, a new item was either put in the candy box or a “Possible” box. As any regular reader knows, articles of faith can be subjective.

The demise in question is that of the Saint’s and her growing misgivings about the Order’s behavior. The “purple tinfoil” and the “wad of peppermint gum that Hannibal Weems had picked up on the steps of an escalator in Gimbel’s department store” revealed the truth to the Saint: “Matter is not what matters!”

With five simple words, the Saint's epiphany conjoins the two poles of belief – religious devotion and agnosticism – as they come around from opposite directions and become the same. The deeply religious can say it, and believe it, knowing that the divine is all that matters, that this physical, temporal world is but a corridor, a threshold, to something greater, something that is part of the Master Plan. But the overly-educated post-modern cynic can say it, committed to just how unnecessary the day-to-day can be, and view it as the proof of an ontological truth: the impossibility of ultimate or complete knowledge.

I bet it would have been fun to sit with DFW, discussing Tennessee Williams, Jesus stains and the media.

If Wine Can Be the Blood of Christ . . .

2008-09-07T21:03:00.004-05:00

What does that make the grape? Answer: The Virgin Mary.

This past Friday, The Dallas Morning News reported that Becky Ginn of Arlington, Texas, discovered this image of the Virgin Mary on a rotting grape. Ginn, a 24-yeard-old makeup artist and devout Baptist, noticed the image just as she was about to throw out the bunch of grapes, all of them had gone bad.

In the brief article, Ginn comes off as serious about her faith, dubbing the event “pretty ironic.” She says: “I'm all for showing that God sometimes does have a sense of humor.” She is considering selling the grape on eBay, but proceeds will go to her church.

While some have been “energized” by the image on the grape, others have “questioned its authenticity.” Ginn denies having created the image: “I can Photoshop a zit off someone’s face . . . I can’t Photoshop the Virgin Mary onto a grape.”

But can she Photoshop this Virgin Mary image onto someone’s face?

Off to the Movies

2008-08-31T17:44:00.005-05:00

Before this past week, the last film I had seen in the theatre was Andrei Tarkovsky’s ecstatic masterpiece Anrdei Rublev. It was shown not too long ago at Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan one sunny Saturday afternoon – and it was packed. The other night, I ventured to a theatre just north of Union Square to see Henry Poole is Here. There were no more than 10 people in the audience.

If not for my obsession for navigating the cultural currents of the visual manifestations of religious and secular icons, I would have been reluctant to lighten my wallet by $11 to see this movie on the big screen. Truth be told, if not for Madonna of the Toast, I most likely would have never seen this movie. But, it had been put on my radar after debuting at the Sundance Film Festival. I even blogged about it back in February.

The reviews have been pretty negative (with notable exceptions, like Roger Ebert’s review), which isn’t surprising. The overly sentimental script and soundtrack drown the acting in a treacly tide of feel-good Hollywood schlock. I’m not going to be a spoiler, but nothing will surprise you about the movie’s narrative arc. Nonetheless, it is fascinating to me that the purported face of Jesus in discolored stucco serves as the hinge for all of the movie’s dramatic tension.

A synopsis: Henry Poole moves to California and buys a house. His nosy neighbors learn that he does not intend to be around for long. One of the neighbors sees the face of Jesus on the side of Poole’s house and then a number of “miracles” occur, which include a little girl speaking again after being mute for a year and the improvement of a young woman’s sight and, yes, the eventual discovery of true love. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before all of that, Poole unleashes cynical wrath on all of the people who see the face of Jesus in this stain. But the devout will have none of it and with every additional inexplicable event, Poole finds it more and more difficult to deny that “something” is happening related to the image. That’s pretty much it.

The story of the Jesus face in the movie plays out like any of the stories from the media that I post here, though aspects have been refined for the sake of Hollywood. Example: Esperanza, the nosy, Latina neighbor who speaks, presumably for the benefit of the English language audiences, an overly dainty English-Spanish patois. Now, based on the fact that the story takes place in California, I was amazed that there was no mention of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Esperanza – esperar means to wait or expect in Spanish – was basically called in out of central casting, and had this been a news item – in this part of the country, discovered by this woman (who in the movie brings in members of her church, all of whom speak Spanish) – it is most likely that they would speak of the Virgin, even in the context of a Jesus face. Furthermore, while the faithful do eventually line up to pray at Poole’s wall, the media never gets involved. In reality, the people active enough to organize a church fieldtrip to such a site would also make sure the local news knew about it. As we know, the local news loves a story like this, and the locals love to be a part of stories like this.

To most, these may seem like minor details, but by paying close attention to facts like these, a good writer can render a human story with all of life’s nuances and avoid creating a caricature. Unfortunately, the script achieved the latter and not the former. It’s hard to care about any of the characters for this reason, which is a shame since two actors accustomed to good writing – Cheryl Hines (who makes a strange real estate agent cameo) and Luke Wilson – were obviously just gunning for the paycheck on this one.

Something else I found surprising was that this movie got accepted into the Sundance Film Festival. Having helped to launch careers of filmmakers like the Coen brothers, Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino, I’ve always considered the festival as one of some gravitas. I don’t know enough about today’s culture of films and distribution, but it is clear that there were enough people with funding who believed this film was worth making. And I guess that the Sundance powers that be deemed the movie worthy of being part of festival.

There’s no doubt that the American culture favors something it already knows over something completely new. With stories about Jesus and the Virgin Mary popping up in the unlikeliest of places considered commonplace on the nightly news, the idea of basing a film on such a story is not so surprising.

Another example of this American panache for reassuring regurgitation came at me during the pre-preview ads. Check out this hypnotically bizarre JCPenney Back to School ad for their “American Living” line:

I remember the middle school retreat where I first saw The Breakfast Club, back in the late 1980s. It was one of those mandatory weekend trips, the intention of which was to make us all awkwardly confront our budding pubescent selves (as if our changing bodies and attitudes didn’t already make it hard enough). I was amazed to be sitting in the same room with my teachers watching these teens talk about sex and smoke pot!

Now that clarion call for teenagers to assert their individuality has been muddled by this hokey reenactment, trading angst for branding (check out the pink Nirvana t-shirt). This is certainly not the first time such a tactic has been employed by marketers, though I’m not sure of the commercial’s target audience. Is it people my age who are supposed to let nostalgia steer them, with their children presumably, to the closest JCPenney? Do kids today watch The Breakfast Club? Is the ad meant to appeal to them?

The question of how to appeal to groups of people is complex, but it is a component of every facet of life, from economics and culture to politics. Both the JCPenney ad and Henry Poole is Here are derivative of already established trends. But are they meant to appeal to the people already aware of the trends or are they meant to broaden the audience? Of course, it’s a little bit of both. The bigger question then is, Why do these cultural reruns appeal to us as consumers (and I think in this instance religion and clothes are being consumed in a very similar manner)?

In the case of Henry Poole is Here, I sense that part of the objective was to mainstream these visual phenomena. Because the film falls flat, however, I think it is destined to be forgotten, unlike some of the real-life stories that have come through these parts. Although several visual and narrative threads exist in the stories I tell, one reason for my continued interest in relaying them to you is the very personal nature of each and every story. The movie tried to filter many stories into one, and in doing so lost the impact of intimacy.

So, if you’ve made it this far: Any thoughts?

From Our Northern Neighbors

2008-08-24T11:03:00.003-05:00

According to the Toronto Sun, “An uncanny likeness of the Virgin Mary formed into the bark of a Scarborough tree has left dumbfounded residents wondering if their neighbourhood has been divinely blessed.” Neighbor Christopher Moreau, a condo superintendent who had just cracked an after-work beer in his yard, was the first to spot the “uncanny likeness.” He assured the reporter that he is “not a wacko” and was indeed “stone-cold sober.”

The image has inspired people to cry and shake, though the owners of the property where the tree stands have refused to be identified or make a statement. While they may not be thrilled about the manifestation and the potential hordes of the faithful queuing to look and pray, Moreau’s mother-in-law just received news “that her lymph node cancer appears to have been cleared.”

Miraculous as that sounds, Neil McCarthy, a representative of the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, towed the church’s standard line about such occurrences: applauding any event that causes people to consider their faith, but refusing to “authenticate” it.

Probably no surprise to Moreau, who was raised Catholic but is not particularly devout because he “disagrees with the Catholic church's emphasis on collecting money from churchgoers – and [questions] why the Vatican is so rich when poverty is rampant.”

Good question. But, Moreau has an even better one: "Why do I need to go to church? . . . I feel that God has come to me."

That seems to be the sentiment in the just released film Henry Poole Is Here, which I'm aiming to see this week, even though it has been panned by just about everyone. No matter, I'm sure my Madonna of the Toast perspective will give me something to say about it different from the views of traditional film critics.

Jesus & Me and My Phone Make Three

2008-08-08T18:49:00.005-05:00

Pensacola, Florida, resident Linda Square volunteers at Englewood Coin Laundry. According to this Pensacola News Journal article, in an effort to kill time during a recent shift, she pulled out her phone and “began scrolling through the substantial library of family photos stored on the device.” Amid all of the recognizable scenes and faces, a “dark and blurry” image caught her attention. She had no idea what it was. She looked closely at the image, created on July 25, and still didn’t recognize it. Then she turned the screen so it was horizontal. That’s when things got interesting.

In the right part of the image she saw herself, and looking over her on the left side of the screen: Jesus, his face bearded, a white light over His head. Square has no recollection of taking the picture. She visited her local cell phone purveyor and asked if the company had sent her the image (which strikes me as a question you ask when you already know the answer). My guess is that the phone was in a pocket or bag and somehow got triggered to become a camera.

Do you think she was wearing this shirt when she went to the store?

Obviously, Square is proud of her discovery, finding it inspirational. She has been waiting to interview as a foster parent: "He is telling me to prepare for this . . . He's telling me to get myself together."

Of course, the best parts of this story are the t-shirt and cell phone. I understand why people like looking at photographs, whether as art or a way to remember, but I am shocked by the frequency at which I see an individual, mostly on trains and buses, but sometimes at bars, doing exactly what Square had been doing: killing time staring into a hand-held screen. The image is of such appeal to us that the easier it is to focus on it, the more we do. We have always turned to the image for meaning, as a way to understand experience, and now, too many people seem to favor the moment as memory, rather than experiencing it enough to let the moment pass before it has been memorialized.

In Square’s case, how the image came to be is another story, but her discovery of it was because she opted to look at old photos rather than stare at the tumbling colors in a dryer.

I wonder if she would stare at spinning clothes if her shirt, which says “Jesus & Me,” were in the load?

Do you think many people wear cell phone photographs on shirts?

(image from an instructables.com article about encoding data on clothing, business cards, etc.)

Will the Real Cheesus Step Forward?

2008-07-30T16:38:00.003-05:00

From Missouri, the Show Me State: Kelly Ramey reached into a bag of Cheetos and felt something unusual. She pulled out this Cheeto (above), thought it looked like Christ on the Cross and she and her husband started calling it Cheesus. Now it's news. You can watch the CBS report:

For those of you keeping score, this is not the first Cheesus. I wrote about the first one here. This is what it looked like:

If I had to choose the real Cheesus, my decision would be an easy one.

Another International Story

2008-07-28T16:06:00.003-05:00

The image above is believed to be the Virgin Mary on the glass door of a home entertainment unit in Mangatarem, Pangasinan, Philippines, according to this ABS-CBN report. Yes, it’s been a globetrotting couple of posts lately. Better than its location, this image, along with a Jesus image on the opposite door of the same piece of furniture, has already been credited with curing a sore throat so severe that the afflicted woman in question had lost her ability to speak. While the family that owns the holy hutch has chosen to remain anonymous in the beady eyes of the media, neighbor Hilda Evangelista has praised the object’s healing wonders, crediting it for restoring her voice.

The article goes on to say that other neighbors have been showing up at the home to pray, but it doesn’t sound like the owners are so keen to have them around: “A member of the family noticed a ‘shadow-like’ image of a veiled woman while she was wiping the glass doors of their television rack. The family said they wiped the image over and over, but could not erase it.” Ha!

And, just to slake anyone’s concern that Americans have grown weary of such stories, here’s a Virgin Mary rust stain from a sink in Salinas, California, according to this KARE 11 report. Found by a plumber working on a drainage system as part of renovations for this soon-to-be restaurant, the owner thinks this sighting is fortuitous, so long as it is cleaned up before local health inspectors pay a visit.

Chew on That

2008-07-23T15:05:00.003-05:00

According to this BBC report, a diner in Birnin Kebbi, Nigeria, saw “the Arabic word for God and the name of the prophet Muhammad” in beef gristle that had been boiled and then fried. Since first being discovered last week, thousands of people have visited the eatery to take a look, and Muslim scholars that frequent the joint claim the incident as proof that Islam is the world’s one and only true religion.

A blogger over at Epicurious.com has compiled a list of such foodie visual manifestations, most of which I have covered in the book or on this here blog. Having looked at lots of foodstuffs emblazoned with religious and secular iconography – pancakes, oatmeal, tomatoes, carrots, pretzels, potato chips, chocolate, etc., etc. – I’ve wondered about the wasted food.

Judging by the image of this gristle, it seems best that no one ate this particular example. Of course, Nigeria is not America or France, or even South Africa for that matter. I like to eat, and have eaten in some pretty rustic places, like the slums of Nairobi and jungles of Malaysia, but I have never eaten a piece of meat, or gristle, that looks like this one.

Eating habits aside, a sighting like this really drives home the point how similar we humans really are, especially in our understanding of the world in the continuous, pixilated glare of images.

More Media Musing

2008-07-21T16:02:00.004-05:00

What’s that I smell? Is it Madonna of the Toast burning? I don’t know what it is exactly, but something is in the air. I’ve been noticing more and more media outlets devoting time to the ideas behind the stories I’ve been relaying to you for a while now. Scroll down and see the last two, or just chew on this one from the venerable Financial Times.

The story puts into perspective sightings of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France, back in 1858. Writer Matthew Engel uses that sighting and the hordes of visitors who have since made the pilgrimage to Lourdes (a city with more hotel rooms, according to the article, than any other French city aside from Paris) to examine the city’s immense popularity as a Christian tourist trap in light of Christianity’s decline in popularity. Now, while a ghostly sighting of a holy figure is slightly out of the Madonna of the Toast image on an object realm, the two are certainly related, like cousins.

Jesus or the Virgin Mary are seen and people flock. It is the aftermath of a vision, whether seen by only one person or hundreds that gawk at a rock or telephone pole, that is the story. Engel really makes a great point on why people do flock, even as Christianity looses much of its congregation because of controversy and generational shifts:

The faithful have become almost as marginalised as the sick. Yet here piety is not freakish or eccentric. . . . Here their faith can be reaffirmed, whether or not they feel cured, whether or not they feel the presence of the Mother of God. This is not a place of ageing priests and tiny congregations, not a place where Catholicism feels emaciated, apologetic or irrelevant. Here it is the Church Triumphant. As it once was right across Europe.

Engel is spot-on with this assessment. I have a tendency to frame these stories with media and technology, making the religious aspect of them secondary (though I think the media does very much secularize the stories, which is part of my interest). This article firmly roots these occurrences back in their source and for that it is well worth the read.

An Expected Pattern on the Swirling Chaos

2008-07-17T16:06:00.003-05:00

Surprise, surprise, another hard to see image of Jesus has shown up, this time on a wooden utility pole in Alice, Texas, according to this KRIS report. Steven Newlan first noticed the face as he pulled into his driveway. The report informs us that the “image is best viewed from the right side of the pole.” I’ve been swiveling my head around, but this one is really a stretch. Maybe it’s my monitor, as plenty of people have been showing up at the corner of 6th and Dickey to take a gander and add to the shrine of flowers and candles. Clearly, there are multiple people who have seen this image, accepting it at face value (zing!).

One of my Madonna of the Toast mantras is What do you see? My interest in these phenomena is their very existence and how these events often stir up all sorts of media and cultural attention. For me, that’s the story. I’ve never been particularly interested in dissecting people’s personal beliefs. But, lots of folks do, especially scientists who seem to take it as a personal affront when someone dismisses the notion of evolution.

Recently, I found one such example in this book review of Karl Giberson’s Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution. I haven’t read the book and I know nothing of this blog outside of this article, which caught my attention because it provides a riled up scientist’s take on religious pareidolia:

Where the pious see the Virgin Mary in a pita, we look and see cooked bread, random mottling, and a credulous brain that matches an irregular pattern to a familiar expectation. I think we have the more accurate and useful explanation; if the religious think they have a better explanation, then they're welcome to propose it and subject it to critical evaluation. If it's just nebulous, airy-fairy "you've got to believe" or "you've got to respect our faith" B.S., then they can go get in line with the dowsers and UFOlogists and Bigfoot fans.

I don't think Giberson sees universal spiritual truths in the Madonna-in-a-pita phenomenon (but maybe he does; I'll have to read his book to find out), but he does believe in something equivalent. He is not a literalist looking for a bearded man in the sky described in the bible, but instead has this vague metaphorical notion that if he melts down the bible in the philosophical flux of his personal beliefs, he'll be able to extract something ethereal and true from its words — a beautiful, loving, personal god who thinks he is really, really important and wants to give him eternal life in a paradise. That's his Madonna-in-a-pita, his credulous imposition of an expected pattern on the swirling chaos of generations of ravings and noise and poetry that is the Christian faith.

It is the very personal nature of these occurrences that appeals to me, but I found this passage to be a very concise gloss of why people do see these faces, no matter how hard it is to see them.

More Than a Swirl

2008-07-14T14:54:00.003-05:00

Salt Lake City’s Hatch Family Chocolates has a bucket of spumoni with a Jesus face staring up, daring to be scooped, according to this KUTV 2 report. Or is it Shakespeare, or one of the Beatles? Steve Hatch chalks the image up to coincidence, but concedes: “You can find inspiration in whatever you look at, I guess."

Such is the case with this image, provided by my cousin:

Do you see it? It’s toast on Jesus -- brilliant!

I'm Not the Only One Thinking About This Stuff

2008-07-08T13:26:00.003-05:00

Straight out of Stockton, California: a Virgin of Guadalupe rock. Jamie Garcia had hit rock bottom (get it?), having lost his family because of his excessive drinking. While working construction, according to this CBS 13 report, Garcia found the rock pictured above and immediately felt that his life had changed. He quit his vices and grew closer with his wife and kids. Garcia believes the image to be that of the Virgin of Guadalupe with Juan Diego looking up at Her. Garcia goes on to say that he has been offered $80,000 for the rock, “but he refused, saying it’s priceless.” That’s something you say when you’re offered $100 for one of grandma’s old baubles, or you're mimicking one of those credit card commercials. If the story is true I guess credit (I'm on fire today with the wordplay, no?) has to be given to Garcia for not selling out.

If you’re a regular in these parts and have already read and re-read Madonna of the Toast you might be interested in this tongue-in-cheek perspective from the Contra Costa Times, which riffs on a Jesus ultrasound (different from the one I mentioned last post). Here’s an excerpt:

As I have two biological children, according to the last time I counted, I have some experience in trying to decipher ultrasound images. It's not easy. One minute you think you're looking at a little thumb, the next the doctor tells you that thumb is really a spleen. I once thought my daughter's ultrasound actually showed a squadron of Russian fighter planes attacking Dublin and tried to call the authorities. You just never know — it could happen.

Though seeing Jesus in there could be just as startling. I'm sure Mary and Joseph had the same reaction when they got their first three-dimensional ultrasound at Bethlehem Ultrasound and Donkey Feed.

Until next time . . .

Jesus Ultrasound, Virgin Mary Breastfeeding

2008-06-26T15:11:00.004-05:00

I don’t see it, but that’s not important, because according to this WESH 2 report, Joaquim Garcia sees the face of Jesus staring back at him from this ultrasound of his child. That’s pretty much the long and short of it – amazing what passes for news – but I couldn’t resist in light of the recent decision out of the Vatican reversing a trend that has been in motion since the 17th century: censoring portraits of the Virgin Mary breastfeeding. What was once seen as too carnal has now been condoned, according to the UK's Telegraph. As one advocate of the decision says: “The Virgin Mary who nurses her son Jesus is one of the most eloquent signs that the word of God truly and undoubtedly became flesh.”

Take that idea and splice it into the ultrasound tidbit and somewhere there’s a good metaphor for our contemporary cultural condition. Flesh becomes light a la Marshall McLuhan, maybe? Images mistaken for objects, like Plato once opined. Any other thoughts?

Freezer Burn is Better Than a Heart Attack

2008-06-20T11:14:00.002-05:00

Well, the news has been quiet on the surprising iconography front – must be all the tomato salmonella scares (I’m just glad this isn’t happening at the peak of the tomato season). So, I’ve decided to take a stroll through the aisles of eBay. Look what I found:

That’s a fried clam and its owner believes it resembles Christ on the cross. The story goes like this: the battered bit was served up on a heap of other battered bits at a restaurant. The person usually just scarfs them down because they’re so small, but upon seeing this deep-fired shape, “stopped cold in [her/his] tracks.” That was over two years ago. Ever since, the morsel has been bestowing luck on its owner from the freezer. Like how she/he made a full and fast recovery after a quintuple bypass surgery (which was necessary because “all the major arteries were blocked to my heart”).

Some might say that is was all the fried food that caused the condition, but this person is clearly in the rosy “glass half-full” camp when it comes to life.

If you buy this thing – and there is no reserve price so you can get it for a song – it will be delivered in dry ice, which is always kind of fun. I bet that this fried clam will spend the rest of its days in its freezer, jealous of all the frozen pizzas and Hot Pockets that get to warm up.

There's Always More on the Inside

2008-06-13T18:07:00.002-05:00

Straight out of Kansas City, Missouri, we have this Virgin Mary rock. According to this KMBC 9 report, rock collector and jewelry maker Randy O’Kane found this stone while canoeing on an unnamed Missouri river. It was only upon splitting the stone that O’Kane discovered this recognizable form. Probably too big and heavy to make into a necklace, the stone may be on its way to eBay.

This is the first time that "The Show Me State" has come into play here in Madonna of the Toast land – although what had to be shown was hidden.

No word about what attracted O’Kane to the stone in the first place.

Paging Dr. Phillips

2008-06-08T23:05:00.002-05:00

Just outside of Orlando, Florida, according to this Local 6 story, Jesus has been appearing every night on a tree, thanks to a streetlight’s shadow. Dr. Phillips resident Joe Lewis noticed the form one night and has seen it since. Lewis says that he is “not really hardcore religious” but the shape is something he couldn’t ignore.

Here’s his take on it: "The face forms where the knot is . . . Then, when you come down, there is texture. There are waves in the tree and that forms the knees and the feet. Then when the sun goes down, the street light that is right above the tree casts shadows across it and forms something that looks like Jesus."

Curious about the suburb’s name? Apparently, Philip Phillips revolutionized the production of orange juice, which resulted in him becoming a citrus barren. According to this, he was also a medical doctor, with a degree from Columbia University. He bought his first citrus farm in 1894, but a brutal 1895 freeze decimated what trees had existed. He left Florida, returning in 1897, when he began his empire. Seems like he was quite a philanthropist. His tombstone reads: "Under His Hand the Wilderness Bore Fruit."

What would Dr. Philip Phillips would have to say about this Jesus tree?

Do You Want Paper or Plastic?

2008-05-25T12:43:00.003-05:00

This story has it all: a giant corporation, deep faith, small-town America, a cell phone camera, an aspiring writer, questionable reporting.

John Wasendorf might just remind people that Lone Tree, Iowa (A TREEmendous place to live), is on the map, thanks to this Wal-Mart Virgin Mary/face of Jesus plastic bag. After returning home from shopping, according to this Press-Citizen report, Wasendorf put away the groceries and then tossed the bag. This was on April 13. The article reports: “Two days later, while resting on his couch, Wasendorf looked over at the bag and saw the religious figures.”

The article continues:

He said the house was warm the day he went shopping, so he opened the blinds. He said that the sunlight coming in though the windows helped create the image. He believes on the right it is almost the head-to-toe image of the Virgin Mary. To the left, he sees the face of Jesus.

Does this confuse you, too? If Wasendorf discovered the image two days after he went shopping, what does the weather on the day he went shopping matter?

Stranger still, the fact that the bag’s shape made such an impact on Wasendorf that he took the time to snap the photo with his cell phone, but then lost track of the bag: “The picture is all that remains. Wasendorf said he doesn’t really remember what happened to the bag, but guesses he or a friend ‘must have picked it up and thrown it away.’”

Wasendorf claims that visions have come to him since he was young. When he was 4-years-old, a Jesus statue spoke to him after his grandmother had taken him to a hospital chapel to pray for his mother, who was about to have gallbladder surgery. His dreams also are rife with religious symbolism, from figures dressed in white to a scroll with a poem written with gold lettering. Wasendorf also makes it a point to mention that he has been on the wagon since 1979.

According to the article, the photograph of the bag was shown to hundreds of people before it was shared with the media. Some people thought it was a plastic statue, others thought it had to have been manipulated by Wasendorf and some saw the figures.

Because his life has been filled with sights and visions that not everyone else can see, Wasendorf wants to write a book. Never one to thwart the dreams of others, I say, Write on, John, write on. As you engage the process, however, come up with a better story for what happened to the bag.

The Nixon Rock

2008-05-20T12:34:00.003-05:00

I’ve been waiting for an excuse to drag out this Presidential pareidolia: the Nixon rock. What’s my excuse? All of the publishing hoopla surrounding Rick Perlstein’s new book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. You can read an excerpt from the book here. I haven’t read the book, and it’s a pretty safe bet that I won’t read it, especially since the topic strikes me as one that has already been put through its paces. I don’t understand what makes for a best-selling book (it is certainly about much more than the actual writing), the same as I don’t understand what causes certain people to see iconic forms and figures in unexpected places. Both phenomena seem to rely on a convergence of circumstances that is not always logical or traceable, but herein lie the mysteries of life.

Located on the southern tip of Taiwan near the town of O Luanpi, it has long been thought that this rock resembles a sail. Many people also think it resembles Richard Nixon, in profile. Of course, Nixon’s mug is one of history’s most maligned – its craggy definition found in the nose and chin. Local lore claims that after Nixon made his 1972 trip to China his head was cut off and put in this spot, destined to stare at China forever.

Madonna of the Toast includes an examination of the President Kennedy rock in Hawaii. I have been searching, in vain I fear, for the Calvin Coolidge cashew, from which protrudes a node that is the spitting image of Coolidge’s nose, one of the largest to ever reside in the White House.

Get Your Rocks Out

2008-05-15T14:57:00.004-05:00

Dena Patterson, a resident of Brooksville, Florida, came across this rock in 1996 while walking through the woods in West Virginia, according to this Hernando Today report. Found near a stream, the rock caught her eye because of the shape worn into its surface. Recently, Patterson took the rock to Peter Harries, an associate professor of geology at the University of South Florida, Tampa. She had thought it was granite, but Harries thinks it is shale or silt stone – some sort of fine-grained sedimentary rock. He attributes the pattern to the “preferential cementation of grains, or water percolating through sediment after it has been deposited.”

Harries goes on to share that the geology department does get periodic visits from folks with objects “that they feel are particularly unique or symbolic.” His perspective, however, is more scientific than spiritual. The fact is, mimicry is a very salient aspect of nature, which of course leads to the phenomenon of pareidolia.

For years, the rock has been a doorstop in Patterson’s home, but now she wants to sell it on eBay: "I expect to get a lot of money . . . This is a rock. It's not like it's a piece of cheese.""

Of course, she is referencing fellow Floridian Diana Duyser’s epic Virgin Mary grilled cheese windfall, though I doubt Patterson will receive $28,000 for this object, especially in light of all the other Virgin Mary rocks currently up for grabs on eBay.

Like this one from Oregon:

Or this one from Canada:

Patterson is 79-years-old and says her health is declining. Her desire to make money off this rock is directly linked, as she tells it, to wanting to be able to make a trip to West Virginia to visit family before her health becomes any worse. Regardless of how much the rock sells for, if it even sells, I hope she gets the chance to make one more trip to West Virginia.

Lastly, in more news of the Virgin Mary showing up in unexpected places, the Los Angeles Times ran this slideshow recently. I can’t figure out why, but it’s just another indicator of how Madonna of the Toast is culturally relevant, in far-flung suburbs as well as in big cities.