There's a slightly new twist on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, compliments of the venal (mean "venerable") New York Times. The dead Tsarnaev (Allah be praised) is kinda-sorta a Muslim version of Benjamin Braddock, known more commonly to movie fans as "The Graduate."

Get this passage from the Old Gray Obfuscator:

Yet, during his [Tsarnaev] six months in Makhachkala, according to relatives, neighbors and friends, he did not seem like a man on a mission, or training for one. Rather, they said, he was more like a recent graduate who could not quite decide what to do with himself. He slept late, hung around at home [cue "The Sounds of Silence"], visited family and helped his father renovate a storefront.

Perhaps Tsarnaev attended a party in Makhachkala, and when a family friend pulled him aside to say: "One word: Plastics," sweet, confused Tamerlan thought he was referring to plastic explosives (and maybe the family friend was). To our befuddled, traumatized Tamerlan, there was quite a future in explosives, even if he couldn't quite get the plastic part right.

Or... or maybe forlorn, gentle Tamerlan was more on the order of Joe Buck (aka, "the Midnight Cowboy"). At least, that's the flavor one picks up from this take from the Times article:

Wherever he went, though, he did not quite seem to fit in. He was a Chechen who had never really lived in Chechnya, a Russian citizen whose ancestors were viciously oppressed by the Russian government, a green-card holder in the United States whose path to citizenship there seemed at least temporarily blocked.

Wanderin' Tamerlan's brother and conspirator, Dzhokhar, was Ratso to Tamerlan's Joe Buck. Surely, after the Marathon bombings, everybody's talkin' about the Brothers Tsarnaev.

But... but maybe -- just maybe -- Tamerlan fits more the Sam Kinison mold. Kinison the long dead raunchy comic. You know, Kinison, the Pentecostal minister-in-training who shucked his faith for a life of drink, drugs, and womanizing, which was right up dear, dear Tamerlan's alley, per early press reports.

The critical difference is that woebegone Tamerlan didn't dump his faith like Kinison. No, our lamb-like Tamerlan embraced Islam with a Quranic fervor. Jihad, baby -- that's the ticket to heaven! Kill and maim the infidels. Kill women, a kid, and a cop. Maim others by the bushel basketful. Virgins surround you now, Tamerlan, you heroic imitator of the venerated Mohammed.

This last passage from the intellectually flaccid and rascally, agenda-hiding New York Times:

"Listen to the call to prayer -- the azan -- that they play from the mosque," Mr. Tsarnaev said, according to his aunt. "It makes me so happy, to hear it from all sides, that you can always hear it - it makes me want to go to the mosque."

"What, you can't hear the mosques there in America?" she recalled asking, and he replied, "Something like that."

(Ah, I need to stop a sec to dab the tears from my cheeks.)

Admittedly, the dawn air throughout Boston Metro isn't filled with the dulcet tones of the Muslim Call to Prayer, so that may well have bummed our lovable, faithful Tamerlan -- and a mysterious Muslim religious leader who, who, may have misguided our lil' angel, damn it!

So, delicate Tamerlan decided to take matters into his own hands (and the hands of his be-sainted brother, Ratso -- opps, Dzhokhar) and commence to change the equation in Boston, in hope that the peal of church bells will one day no longer be heard in Beantown (thanks more to PC enforcers than Islam's triumph), and the Call will sound from atop old church steeples.

Sleep now, my sweet, sweet Tamerlan -- that is, between sweaty workouts with your very own 72 virgins. In the end, unlike Ben Braddock, you found your way.