October 28 -- Feast of Saints Jude and Simon

St. Simon and his saw

Saint Jude with the hatchet to behead him

There's a movie called The Other Guys.  It's kinda funny, but  I mention it here because these guys are the original Other Guys.  Simon is not Simon Peter, the rock on whom the Church was built, but rather Simon the Zealot.  Yeah, the Other Simon.  And Judas is not Judas Iscariot, the villain of the Gospels but anti-hero of Jesus Christ Superstar (yes, there is a difference), but rather he is Judas Thaddeus, author of the Epistle of Jude.  (When in doubt, nod sagely as if you remember reading it. Later, look it up and see if it says anything memorable.)

If forced to cast, I guess Will Ferrell should play Judas Thaddeus, since he is the patron of lost causes and every one of Will Ferrell's characters seems to be a lost cause.  And Simon Zealotes -- Mark Wahlberg can definitely bring the zeal when the script demands it.

Judas had a very cool gift -- his prayers could drive the demons out of false idols, which forced the statues to crumble.  As a rule, I am opposed to iconoclasm, but I suppose if there is an actual demon inhabiting an artwork, I can make an exception. (Ghostbusters II, anyone? Didn't think so.)  And really, it wasn't Judas that was busting up the icons; the force of the demon fleeing caused them to crumble.

In case you golf game is a lost cause

Judas and Simon took the Post-Pentacostal Road Show to Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia.  They met with the usual receptions -- curiosity, gratitude for some miracles, resentment and fear from the local rulers, and eventually grisly deaths.  The Crown of Martyrdom and all that.  Judas was beaten to death with a club and then beheaded -- his skull fragments were forwarded to Rome, Rheims, and Toulouse.  Simon was either crucified in Samaria, sawn in half in Persia, or killed in Weriosphora, Iberia.  There's no word on how the Iberians would have killed him, but Western artists seem to like the Persian story since they generally depict him with a large saw.  He is the patron of sawyers and woodcutters, though also curriers and tanners, suggesting something really painful and unfortunate in Iberia.