You've surely seen the kind of tee-shirts I'm referring to--they're sold in countless suburban mall kiosks along with inflammatory cartoon books that defame Catholics, Mormons, intellectuals,and Satanists (pretty interchangeably). The shirtfronts depict the meek and gentle visage of Jesus with the oddly incongruous caption in bold block letters, "He died for my sins..." and on the back of the shirt,"BUT HE CAN'T TOLERATE YOURS. REPENT."
They're worn by the very same people today who bought tee-shirts commemorating Saddam's asswhipping in the Gulf War a few years ago.
The shirts, like the cartoon books, display the pugnacious rock n'roll brand of Christianity espoused by their owners. "Jesus Christ World Tour 1998: This time He won't go down without a fight!" I haven't attended the concerts yet, but I imagine the album cover is basically a redux of the artwork on the old Kiss "Destroyer" album, with "JC", John, Paul, and Ace Frehley standing victorious over a wasted plain of smoking rubble. That rubble probably represents Sodom, and the tiny squirming bloody bodies in the background are me and my buddies--and boy! are we sorry we didn't take the warnings more seriously.
Actually the concerts on the tour are already widespread; they're called Promise Keeper gatherings. I have a somehwat fanciful, but plausible, theory about the Promise Keepers:
I think they are what's left of the Nicaraguan Contras, infiltrating American society cleverly disguised as homogeneous rednecks. I think the CIA, frustrated by its military setbacks in Central America and its political setbacks at home, has retaliated by letting loose the fruits of the infamous School of the Americas. The Promise Keepers are all S. of the A.'s graduates and they are going to start selling drugs and murdering nuns any day now. And it all starts with the tee-shirts. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Be afraid, very afraid, when you encounter one of the bad-ass Roadies of the Second Coming. They're the hardcore Crewe of the Too-Live Jew....and they're after you.
