There are many posters in homage to the female form, but my favorite is that of Raquel Welch, emblazoned in a vintage-hazy movie poster while thinly clad in a mammoth skin two-piece as she stares vacantly in an upward direction, face open and gleaming like a saint in epiphany. This was the legendary poster for the 1 Million Years BC movie marquee. Not the most revealing of getups, nevertheless flawless feminine glory...

In the vespers of the Soviet Empire, American rock band Metallica appeared in a Moscow air field in 1991. Urban legend has it that Mikhail Gorbachev personally invited the string-thrashers to jam in a newly-liberated Russia, perhaps a nod to the reformer that the corrupting and subversive power of rock music…a rage against a machine, if you will. And perhaps it was proof that blue jeans, Coca-Cola, and Rock were the soft power to spur democratic youth aggression, long before the Internet...

I remember nodding off in calculus back in high school, and for those of you who draw from recent memory, it is the ultimate critical showcase of educational concepts, unrivaled in juvenile whining over the applicability of the stale rubric. I recall a particular class in which we were studying that there can be no such thing as a negative integer square rooted. The problem presented itself like a Rubik's cube I could not resolve in my mind, even after I left school for the summer...

The Holy Lands are a magnet for pilgrims, prophets, kings, conquerors, and occasionally educated fools from the West. Some came in search of peace, while others like Saladin, Indiana Jones, Alexander, the Khans, and Richard the Lionhearted, all found Jerusalem to be irresistible (though the Mongols never fully reached it). Yet others like Roman politician Marcus Antonius (Mark Anthony) found Egypt to be a sand trap. So how does the Anointed One feel upon his disembarking? Can his charm save us in this unending saga of repentance?