The Gospel According To Carl

Others have noted (especially SNL's scriptwriters, in a fake commercial some years ago) how much U.S. men of a certain age depend on lines from films such as "Caddyshack," "Animal House," and "Airplane" just to get through the day. On our recent St. John's pilgrimage to Israel and the West Bank, I learned that pilgrim Damian, though only 12, had already mastered a surprising amount of the canon but not yet the text which yields up such riches as "I've got that going for me, which is nice" and "big hitter, the Lama." Bill Murray plays assistant groundskeeper Carl Spackler. It's an Independence Day classic, a Cinderella story.