"I ated the purple berries!... It tastes like... burning." -- Ralph Wiggum

.
Guess what!

Another T.M.B.S. moment!

Remember, T.M.B.S. stands for "This Movie is Bull Shit!" --

This refers to the point in a film when believability falters, when you question the reality of the film and roll your eyes and say, "Come onnnnnn!" or "Gimme a break!"

And those moments show up in films and in the Bible all the time!


First-- the latest film:

The missus and I were just watching "Blade," in which the titular character (played by pre-tax-evading-Wesley Snipes) is half-man/half-vampire, who hunts vampires! Irony!
The film, written by David S. Goyer (of new "Batman" films fame) was released in 1998, way before the resurgence in vampire popularity of the last few years, of which my wife is a member.
Like most rabbis-in-training, my wife LOVES vampires.
She has read every book of the "True Blood" and "Twilight" series, and seen the respective HBO series and films. And watched the "Buffy" series religiously (ha!).

During the film's climactic fight, the bad-ass Blade takes on the evil leaders of the vampires (or "suckheads", as Blade calls them... quite the derisive fellow, ain't he?)... Deacon Frost!
In the scene Blade has a few vials of ... some kind of liquid... that blows up vampires. They get knocked out of his hand, go up in the air... and land on the floor, rolling to the side (hmmm, I wonder if they'll be used in a little bit).

At this moment ,my wife throws up her hands and says, "Come on! You're telling me that NONE of those vials broke??"
Sorry, "Blade." You've lost your credibility with my wife. Ninety minutes into this film about Wesley Snipes beating up VAMPIRES... she doesn't believe it!
They just asked her to suspend too much disbelief.

Anyway, Bible time!

Genesis, chapter 30. Jacob has married a pair of sisters, Rachel and Leah. While bigamist-at-large Jake makes it clear that Rachel is his favorite (29:30,33), she is barren! Can't get preggers, no way- no how! And Leah is popping out offspring like a Nerf gun shooting ping pong balls (including Reuben, her eldest).

So what does Rachel come up with?

"And Reuben... found mandrakes in the field, and brought them unto his mother, Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, 'Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes.'" (Gen. 30:14)

Mandrakes, huh (a plant said to improve fertility)?!

The two sisters then cut a deal-- Rachel allows Leah to spend that night with Jacob once Leah gives her sister the magical mandrakes (30:15). Thus we see an early example of the Middle Eastern Jew's penchant for haggling.

Trading a crazy baby plant... for sex. Makes sense to me!

Mandrakes, also mentioned in "The Song of Solomon" (7:13) and said to have a fine fragrance, is "doo-da-yim" in Hebrew -- loosely translated to mean "love plant."

You might remember the mandrake root from the Oscar-winning flick "Pan's Labyrinth," written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro (also dir. of the creepy "Blade 2")!
In the film, a magical faun tells little Ofelia she can restore her sick mother's health by placing a mandrake root in a bowl of fresh milk underneath her bed... then the mandrake turns into a weird quasi-parsnip/infant baby crying and wriggling! Yikes!


Horticulture 101:

The Mandrake, or Mandragora officinarum (ooooh, hoyty-toyty!),
contains deliriant hallucinogenic tropane alkaloids, which do exactly what you'd guess they do: make you CRAZY!

The mandrake also produces orange and red berries which are, of course, poisonous!

And the roots can contain shapes that often resemble human figures, hence the belief that the mandrake roots aids in fertility. Pagan and Wikken rituals also include use of the mandrake.

Thanks Encyclopedia Britannica (11th ed., 1911)!



So Rachel hoped to get knocked up by chewing on a mandrake root!

Reading this, I was like "Come onnnnnn!"
Really, Book of Genesis? -- A root that promotes fertility?! That's ridiculous!

... Now where's that talking bush that turns Moses' stick into a snake?


(All this even though nearly every religion and culture has its own plant-fertility drugs/aphrodisiacs)

After the sisters swap, guess what!
God, always with a sense of humor, causes Leah (after she spends that night with Jacob) to get pregnant AGAIN! And Rachel STILL doesn't! Ouch! That's harsh.


And hard to believe.

But that's what any good film or book or piece of fiction requires-- at least a little suspension of one's disbelief.


Now, remember-- I am a cynic. Which is dangerous.

"I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's active disengagement."
-- Filmmaker Ken Burns



Check out this exchange from the forgettable 1998 film "Goodbye Lover":

Rollins: Why are you so cynical?

Sgt. Rita Pompano: Because someone killed Bambi's mother.


-- (written by Ron Peer, Joel Cohen, Alec Sokolow)


People get burned, they don't want to put themselves out there.
Cynicism is a safety net, allowing one to stand back and say, "Come onnnnn" or "Shyeah right!" It's a lot easier to mock and criticize than to roll up your sleeves and affect change -- DO something about a situation.

... Like kill some vampires or eat a baby-makin' plant!


"Go and catch a falling star
Get with child a mandrake root
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot..."

-- John Donne, "Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star".