Doubtless you've already seen this bouncing around the blogosphere:

"The Passion" is showing at the Movies at Berry Square at Mount Berry Square Mall, and the machine that prints the tickets assigned the number 666, the biblical mark of the beast, as a prefix to all the tickets for the film.

The fact that triple-six and "The Passion" have been joined is purely luck of the draw, says Gary Smith, who owns the theater complex.

"It's from our computer and it's absolutely a coincidence," Smith said. "It has nothing to do with the film company or any vendor. It's completely in our computer. Several people have commented on it, but only one made a stink about it."

That person asked for her tickets to be substituted and was given passes in exchange. She declined to talk about it with a reporter, but a family spokesperson said they had found Scriptures that eased their mind on the 666 reference.

"I've got a feeling that the person who wanted us to exchange the ticket thought the devil had something to do with it," Smith said. "They didn't want it in their possession.

"She just said that she had this superstition about the 666 number," said Smith. "She said she just felt uncomfortable having those tickets in her possession."

This happened in rural Georgia, of course. Click here to see the ticket. See Revelation 13:16-18 if you don't understand the 666 reference.

I can't understand a person who spends her Friday night watching a man get tortured to death for two hours. (To be fair, she probably can't understand a person who spends his Friday night huddled in the corner with the lights off, weeping for hours while REO Speedwagon's Greatest Hits plays over and over and over again.) But I really can't understand a person who gets spooked by a randomly generated ticket number beginning with 666. Let's play along for a moment and suppose that Satan caused the ticket number to start with 666. Is that the best Satan can do? If Satan has power to make a computer spit out tickets with certain numbers, wouldn't he have power to make the film projectors stop working, or to make them show a movie of his own devising, say, The Sodomy of the Christ? I just think that diddling with the ticket numbers sounds pretty weak. Nobody failed to see the film because of the ticket number, after all, which would seem to be Satan's objective here.

I think the woman who exchanged her tainted ticket was afraid she might get into a fatal car crash on the way home:

ADMISSIONS ANGEL: Good afternoon. May I see your papers? Welcome to Heaven, Mrs. Jones. Baptism... confession of faith before men... post-marital heterosexual coitus for the purpose of childbearing only... faith... works... unquestioning submission to male authority... very good. Everything seems to be in order here. I'll just need you to empty your pockets into this tray and walk through the detector... thank you. Don't forget your items, Mrs. Jones! [Picks up ticket stub.] Oh, you saw The Passion of the Christ? Did you enjoy it? Yes, I did too. Well, here you go... hold on a moment, what's this? Hmmm...

[Awkward pause.]

Would you please step to the side, Mrs. Jones? [Into shoulder-mounted radio.] Backup to Pearly Gates, please. I've got a 10-666 here. Mark of the beast, that's right. Get here as fast as you can.


You've probably also seen this one (midway down page):

John Debney, who composed the music for "The Passion of the Christ," says he did battle with Satan while scoring the flick.

"I had never before subscribed to the idea that maybe Satan is a real person, but I can attest that he was in my room a lot and I know that he hit everyone on this production," Debney said, according to a lengthy interview that ran on Assist News Service, a Christian news agency.

Debney claims that Satan's image kept appearing on his computer screen while he was trying to compose music. "The first time it happened, it scared me," he said. "Once I got over the initial shock of that, I learned to work around it and learned to reboot the computers and so I would start talking to him. ... The computers froze for about the tenth time [one] day and it was about nine o'clock at night and so I got really mad and I told Satan to manifest himself and I said, 'Let's go out into the parking lot and let's go.' It was a seed [sic] change in me. I knew that this was war. I am not a physical person, but I was really angry on this occasion."

Emphasis above is all me. I always thought that to expel Satan you needed a formal exorcism performed by a priest armed with holy water and Latin phrases and stuff. But it turns out that you can defeat Satan the same way you can defeat The Blue Screen of Death -- just press Ctrl-Alt-Delete. No wonder John Debney was willing to meet Satan in the parking lot. The Prince of Darkness is kind of a pussy.

Read the full interview here.

(Links via Go Fish and Stupid Evil Bastard.)

+posted by Lawrence @ 3/06/2004 07:14:00 PM