They Heard the Call

So a religious group is predicting the immanent end of the world. I used to hear Harold Camping, the worldly head of the organization behind this Neo-Millerite message, on a religious radio station in Birmingham. He has an idiosyncratic voice and lumbering speech style that I found hypnotic; I barely remember any of what he had to say, except that events in the news tie in with scriptural prophecy, plus dancing is bad because you could cut in and hold his wife in your arms, which ain’t how Harold Camping rolls. Maybe he should try salsa.

I bring this up not for cheap yucks but because I wonder if some part of his mind is already working on a rationalization for if and when the Rapture doesn’t happen on his schedule. He says on NPR that there is “No plan B.” Does that mean Camping doesn’t have a Plan B, or God doesn’t? Can Camping tell the difference between his plans for God and God’s plans for Camping? Can anyone tell the difference between their plans for God and God’s plans for them?

While I’m picking on preachers, consider this guy. The story reminds me of the year I spent working at a factory in Chattanooga that made a point of hiring students from the local seminary. Many of them were inspiring guys; kind, helpful, scholarly and smart.

Others, I believe, were becoming preachers because it was the only way they’d ever get any respect. Goofy, slow-witted, mean-spirited people who wanted to don the mantle (or cloak) of goodness that preachers get by default. Assuming there’s something to my suspicions, it’s not surprising that some preachers would bark like a SEAL. Note what retired SEAL Don Shipley, who keeps track of retired SEALS for the Navy, says:

““We deal with these guys all the time, especially the clergy. It’s amazing how many of the clergy are involved in those lies to build that flock up.”

As long as you're disguising yourself for cheap validation, why not add a second layer of cloaking?

BTW one of these seminarians showed two very different sides of himself depending on whether he was talking to fellow students or civilians; once when his schoolmates weren’t around he boasted of getting kicked out of the local strip club for fistfighting. This wasn't before he was saved; this was the previous weekend. I later asked him what his plan for the future was. He wanted to be a traveling evangelical preacher, affiliated with a church but going from one church/revival to another. I like to think he’s out there in Tennessee or someplace, some small town, preaching the gospel under a white canopy, winning souls, while scanning the congregation for potential Jezebels…

Repositioning Slaughter

A friend recently passed along this article about a forthcoming Nepalese festival involving mass animal sacrifice (every five years, for a goddess, etc.) My friend, who is vegetarian with vegan leanings, was of the opinion that this is an outrage. I see his point, and having recently nursed a sick kitty back to health, I'm more in touch than usual with the importance of life, including animal life, but...

I'm a meat-muncher, and a Unitarianish type who is leery of changing others' faith practices. If you're worshiping a Goddess of Power, doesn't it make sense to spill a lot of blood? And they eat the meat, so it's not going to waste...

I believe in the value of all life, but not in the sanctity of any life. Life is an accidental byproduct of impersonal cosmic forces (a splendid byproduct, but still...) and so the destruction of it isn't inherently wrong.

And yet. I'm generally against killing humans, I don't believe humans are meaningfully more important than other animals, I'm against cruelty and confinement, and animal sacrifice is as stoopid as any religious practice could be. I'm still trying to find a balance between the part of myself that is drawn to Vegan values and the part that intends to keep eating animal flesh. This festival is a troublesome issue for me precisely because I don't know quite where I stand or why I stand there.

Literalistic religion is one cause of this problem. A symbolic sacrifice can be just as powerful as actual animal slaughter; that's part of what makes The Crucifixion resonate so strongly with so many people. Animal rights activists in Nepal are trying to persuade folks to sacrifice plants instead, but plants don't make the noises and smells of animal sacrifice and so may be a less pleasing odor in The Divine's nostrils... but sometimes The Divine needs to tighten Her belt, just like the rest of us.

Another possible compromise... abortion sacrifices. They should have doctors at the festival, ready and willing to perform abortions for all pregnant comers. That's almost like a human sacrifice, right? Powerful juju. And they got overpopulation issues around that region, right? I think I've just solved this problem. Another controversy ended.

Kannapolis: Duller Than Birmingham

One of the houses around here has been purchased by a couple who plan to give it to their son. The son grew up in this economically troubled little town, and lives in Indonesia now. The parents are hoping he'll move back to the old hometown because they bought him a house. They should have bought one-way tickets to Indonesia.

Anyway, Rev. Karen Matteson, the former pastor of the Birmingham Unitarian Church, is the new interim pastor at our local Unitarian church. What a surprise! We cycle around...

Our production of Turn of the Screw is just getting started and I'm quite enthused about it. Rest assured this is not my last mention of this.

More about Last Temptation

I am oddly fascinated with this article which I found while Googling Last Temptation of Christ. The author, Steven D. Greydanus, seems thoughtful and levelheaded right up until he draws his final conclusions, equating the image of William-Dafoe-as-Jesus kissing Barbary-Hershey-as-Magdalene with the imagery in racist propaganda films, and finds the racist propaganda less objectionable.

"Sometimes it’s possible to prescind from a movie’s offensive use of themes and appreciate its achievements in spite of its moral failings," our reviewer writes. "One can bracket one’s objections to the Marxist propaganda in The Battleship Potemkin, or the racist celebration of the original Ku Klux Klan in D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, and still value the striking imagery of the famous Odessa Steps sequence from the former, or the groundbreaking editing in the climactic chase scene of the latter.

"But I for one don’t see how it’s possible to bracket all the objections that must be raised to all that is anti-Christian in Last Temptation, and still have anything worthwhile left over to appreciate or enjoy."

Well! I strongly question his use of the phrase Anti-Christian. "Anti-Christian" suggests a deliberate attempt to argue against or belittle Christianity. I don't buy it. The film makes use of fictive paradox to examine the role of Jesus, but while I can't read the minds of the film's creators, the logic of the movie is a validation of Jesus. Even if one does consider it to be blasphemous, though, comparing it to racist propaganda is problematic. The problem with racist propaganda isn't that it takes decent-minded people out of our comfort zones, but that it endorses ideas that are unacceptable if humanity is to thrive. Now, if Christianity is fundamentally true one could argue that blasphemy also endorses ideas that are unacceptable if humanity is to thrive, but exactly what kind of blasphemy is on display here? It's the kind of "blasphemy" that takes pious people out of their comfort zones, but that's not the same as a real attack on the heart and soul of Christianity. The film is not an attack on Jesus as a person or as God Incarnate, but rather a consideration of what Jesus was not, the better to highlight what Jesus was. The complex use of paradox which is essential to Last Temptation is shocking to conventional piety, but the end result of the film, if one takes it on its own terms, is a resounding validation of Jesus. Maybe not a conventionally pious one, but a validation nonetheless. It brought a tear to this Unitarian's eye.

I'm not saying there's no case for a Christian taking offense at this film; it constantly problematizes our understanding of Jesus and his role. But I think folks seized on the wrong parts of the film to worry about. Harry Dean Stanton as Paul has a speech about how the concept of Jesus as Redeemer is relevant regardless of the facts about the person of Jesus... that's probably the part you'd wanna fight with.

I met Randall Wallace, the famously Christian screenwriter, once. He spoke at a seminar about how his screenplay for Braveheart was in large part a free reworking of tales from the Bible, and how his script for We Were Soldiers reworked facts for the benefit of fiction. I asked him how he would approach the task of writing about Jesus; if he would let piety rein in his fictive approach. His reply shook and reconfigured my whole approach to life.

"I think Piety is a bunch of crap," said Randall Wallace.

Nostalgia Without Pleasure

Thumbing through a high school yearbook the other night, I was struck by how many attractive kids there were in my graduating class. Many of them weren't particularly well known, and certainly weren't the acclaimed beautiful people of the school; just a lot of pretty young women and handsome young men who never plugged into whatever social mechanism it is that turns some kids into the beauties and hunks of the school. Who knows why?

With some of those kids I vaguely remembered talking to them once or twice... I think a lot of people put out feelers to see if I'd be their friend, and I was too clueless and socially inept to even realize it was happening. I had important Dragonlance novels to read, vital Roger Dean coffee table books to study... who had time for new friends?

Moreover I think I was too cliquish. I really believed that if you weren't a card-carrying member of the Dungeons and Dragons table in the lunchroom, the prayer group that met Friday mornings, or the forensics team, then relations between us could never, and maybe should never, flourish. What was I thinking?

* * *

Speaking of what people were thinking in school, I had a teacher named Mr. Smith who taught Freshman world history. He looked rather like Dan Quayle. He took an interest in me and I in him. I don't remember much about these classes, but they satisfied my curiosity about other lands and my desire to, well, exercise my brain a bit. I think he stayed pretty close to the textbook, but had a speaking style I found engaging. I remember a couple of things about his class, though, that struck me oddly at the time and irk me now.

Uno: He skipped the chapter in our textbook about African history. He explained this by saying that Africa hasn't contributed enough to the world to be worth studying. !!! Africa contributed THE HUMAN RACE to the world. Maybe it hasn't contributed much stuff that Honkies named Smith can appreciate, but that's all the more reason to learn about Africa. Now I wanna find Mr. Smith and graft an African ceremonial mask to his face.

Dos: There were a couple paragraphs in our textbook about Buddhism. Mr. Smith devoted a day's class to "debunking" Buddhism by showing how, on the basis of the potted explanation of Buddhism our book offered, Buddhism was bogus. Weelll... any religion can be made to look silly if you come to it from the outside and take a reductionist approach. Smith and I were both outspoken Christians, and he loaned me a tract that I thought was pretty cool at the time. It might have been a genuinely intellectually stimulating class if a whimsical Buddhist could have offered a counterpoint by taking that tract to task.


This ties in to a recurring concern for me lately; what lessons did I actually learn, and from whom? These are the crap lessons I remember Smith teaching; what else did I pick up from him? I have a lot of bad ideas in my head, and lately I find myself wondering: how much of this did I learn as a youngster, and how did I learn it? How much of it was me misunderstanding what people tried to pass no to me, as opposed to people just misteaching me? I recall a church camp where they got all the boys in an auditorium so a woman could tell us all about what women want from men. I remember paying close attention but I don't remember what she told us. There's a lot of stuff like that in my past. How much of what's right and wrong about me comes from these lessons that I've conciously forgotten? Who taught me what?

I had at least one wonderful teacher whom I should write about later...

Obama-Cola

Obama gave a great speech, that Race speech. Here's how good it was: all the Yahoonews opinion pundits, on both sides of the aisle, whose bread and butter depends on oversimplification, phony outrage, demonization and cheap rhetorical games, are tirading about how lousy the speech was. If Obama actually manages to acclimatize us to political rhetoric that is heartfelt, subtle, meaningful, and which honestly addresses deeply buried anxieties in a productive fashion, then all the Coulters and the Ralls and the Malkins will be faking Nazi muggings for attention like Morton Downey Junior.

Some folks are asking why Obama would go to a church in which the preacher says things like "God damn America." I suspect a lot of those asking are folks who don't have much experience going to church. Here's the deal: You don't always agree with your Preacher. And that's okay, at least in the better churches. It's not when you disagree with the Preacher that you gotta leave; it's when the Preacher demands that everybody agree that you gotta leave. (Of course you may substitute Rabbi, Priest, etc. for Preacher on an as-needed basis)


* * *

Heard about this shop on NPR. Apparently they have a bazillion brands of soft drink (or coke as we say here... it's all coke. Pepsi is coke) in their brick and mortar store. The online shop is more limited, but the NPR story suggests that the shop is an Aladdin's Cavern of fizzy drinks.

I'd love to visit. I hate soft drinks, but I'd love to hear the owner, who obviously has a cultivated palate for soft drinks (which is odd; the whole point of soft drinks is that they don't require a cultivated palate) explain the subtle distinctions between a dozen different kinds of orange pop. Maybe I'd find something I'd like. Chocolate egg creams sound tempting. Too bad it's all made with corn syrup instead of sugar nowadays.

Throwing the Bones

Saturday I went to a local Psychic Fair and had a seer Throw the Bones on my behalf. Shut up, it was great. She threw a handful of small talismans onto a scarf and drew mini-ley lines between them to scry out the parameters of my situation. It was actually quite useful. I don't believe there's any supernatural guiding hand behind these things; it's a storytelling system, but taken as such I find it an amusing game, and I firmly believe that a lucid and intuitive storyteller can construct a narrative for me that points out possibilities I hadn't considered. The Seer made me more mindful of the need for hard work and guidance from friends. If she'd just told me to work hard and be open to help from friends, that wouldn't really have stuck; it's easy to shake off good advice. By making a combination game/story of it, though, her advice had sticking power. It didn't hurt that she was HOTT.

Slightly edited to improve grammer (probably not enough, though) and to tell my readers to shut up.

Star Lord Vs. God

Today I got nothing, so I'll cross-post something I wrote on a nerdy message board.

When I was in junior high I bought some old Marvel black and white SF magazine. I think it was titled Star Lord or something equally dopey; it included a Harlan Ellison rant about the evils of calling science fiction "sci-fi." Anyway, it had a few panels of a topless woman. I'd never owned such hot stuff! Then I went to a church camp; I don't remember what they actually told us that inspired this action, but I came back from camp, picked up the magazine, put it in my wastebasket, and intoned, "In the name of Jesus, I command you to BURN."

I honestly thought it would work. I'd planned this midway through the weeklong camp; I was so upset about my sin (owning and enjoying a mildly smutty comic) and so pumped up about God's power to work in our lives that I honestly believed God would make this comic burst into flames, proving His power over evil.

But whaddayaknow, folks; Star Lord wouldn't burn, so I just threw it out. I learned that God's miracles aren't available on demand.

Pleasure Domes

I watched Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome by Kenneth Anger last night. If you like artsy proto-MTV cinema, you have to see it. Nutty folks in strange costumes. Then more nutty folks in strange costumes. Then they get overlayed in evocative ways; the multiple exposures never get muddy. I bet Peter Greenaway watched it a few times.

* * *

I was thinking about the scripture passage we discussed in Sunday School last weekend; I don't remember chapter and verse (it's from Revelation, though) but it's about heaven as an eventual reward for suffering believers. The notion of heaven that's presented to suicide bombers is the fast-food version of that; an option that's available now at the low low price of murderous martyrdom, instead of something to come in the distant future after a natural lifetime of service. Like all suicide there's an element of cheating out of life; it compounds the promise of "no more pain" with the promise of "eternal pleasure." Talk about instant gratification! Talk about false promises and inflated claims.

Inapt Abstract

There was an art festival thing in town last weekend (Magic City Art Connection, to be exact), and after a'gawkin' and a'grinnin' at all the pretty pictures I made a couple modest purchases. One was a tiny but thick book of lovely landscape sketches... I haven't delved into it yet, so I have no particular comment. The other was a tiny abstract by an out-of-town artist. I have a case of buyer's remorse now, because it's a pretty weak work. I bought it after perusing her exhibit, and she's got a complex and compelling style; her paintings really drew me in. This tiny square I bought has all her motifs, but little of the richness of her better work. It's like a student imitation of her style, or a hastily commodified version. Rather than a compressed miniaturization of her work, it's just a bashed-out self-imitation, quickly made and sold to low-budget abstract-hungry shmoes like me. It looked better in the context of her exhibit, when it fit into a continuum, but removed from that continuum it stands revealed as a flavorless crumb from a tasty meal. I ganked a postcard with tiny reproductions of her work, and it persuades me that I hadn't taken total leave of my senses; her developed work is quite rich and lovely. But my share of it didn't get the love the big canvases got.

Nonetheless, I've taken down a Ranma 1/2 wallscroll I've had hanging there since the Clinton Administration and put this tile of offhand abstraction in its place. I intend to buy more art to spruce up the place. Let this underwhelming offshoot of a rather more impressive corpus serve as a warning for this wayward art buying novice. Perhaps I'll buy more tiny abstracts and make a mosaic of them. If I were more ambitious and good at construction I'd make a cheap-abstraction-mobile. Or something like a bead curtain, only with palm-sized paintings instead of beads. But I won't do these construction projects, because I'm lazy and bad with my hands. The mosaic, OTOH, might happen.

I think one reason I've tolerated the jaw-dropping messiness of my room for so long is that if you fill a room waist-deep with books, comics and clothes, then squint in bad light, it kinda looks like Paul Klee. Maybe getting some real art on these walls will be a more fruitful way to meet my aesthetic hungers.

* * *

Yesterday at church we had the youth-led Sunday. I always enjoy this stuff; I participated in one back at Signal Mountain Presbyterian, and it's always excited me to see teens stepping up to the challenge of providing spiritual sustenance. They did a great job. I don't know any of them but they're bright, funny and thoughtful. I learned something from watching them; whenever they spoke, sang, danced, whatever, they would usually betray lack of confidence for a second, through a grimace, uneasy grin, or eye roll. But then they'd jump into whatever they were doing, and do it well. Confidence, it turns out, is a choice. I kinda knew that, but I didn't really know that.

The youth also talked about how they recently attended a Unitarian youth camp where they lit candles for the victims of the VTech shootings. They discussed whether to light 33 candles or only 32. They finally decided on 33, because Unitarianism is rooted in a belief in the worth and dignity of all life. It would have been hard for me to light that 33rd candle, but it was the right decision.

You're Always Sorry, You're Always Grateful

Last week there was a cute item in the news about a wacky book title contest in which one of the finalists was "Better Never To Have Been: The Harm Of Coming Into Existence" by one Professor David Benatar. According to a cursory web search, Benatar argues that (quoting from the cover copy) "Although the good things in one's life make one's life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence." In other words, if I stub my toe (Bad Event) on my way to my Dream Date with Gillian Anderson (Good Event) then I come out behind. A Bad Event (stubbed toe) is inherently more significant than the Good Event (Dream date with Gillian Anderson).

The obvious response to this logic is to move to the other side of the bus. Or to tell Prof. Emo to get off the cross cuz we need the wood. Still, I feel compelled to s--b this argument in the groin, because once I would have found it a fairly persuasive notion, with possibly horrid results.

Caveat: Admittedly I haven't read the book, but I'll tear up the cover copy, by gum.

So, for starters, only someone who's been hiding out in the academic oxygen tent for a lifetime could ever buy the arithmetic of Benatar's logic (not that academia is bad, but there are those who use it to hide out from the real slings and arrows). This notion that Bad Things in a life always have more "weight" than the Good Things doesn't add up. Get your thumb off the scale, Benatar! If I get to skip through the park hand-in-hand with Gillian Anderson, I'll happily kiss a stubbed toe up the The Man Upstairs.

And Another Thing: Professor Weteyed Wimpywuss seems to think that Good Things and Bad Things are steady-state. No. Often what seems like a Bad Thing in one's life (say, working as a carpet cleaner, and thus spending 12+ hour days driving all over the county, cleaning filthy homes and/or bowing and scraping to the idle rich) turns out to be a good thing (got me out of my insular poor-little-rich-boy bubble, showed me how a diverse array of humans live, taught me that happiness and sadness aren't tied to income). I'm not a moral relativist, but often good and bad aren't Good and Bad, they're "good" and "bad." A life is open to interpretation, and attitude is key. For example, is the sadness of heartache bad? Sometimes it's achingly delightful. Sometimes it motivates one to seek more successful love.

Also from the cover copy: "...it would be better if humanity became extinct." You first, Dave. I sometimes suspect that humanity has done more harm than good, but I could be wrong, and we may do better with time. I also suspect that we are accidental side effects of cosmic forces, rather than the glorious end product, but so what? Grant Morrison pointed out in an interview (that I can't find right) now that once England realized it couldn't be the Big Bad Empire anymore, it also realized it could have The Beatles and Swinging London and other fun, relaxed things. Perhaps humanity should adopt a similar attitude. If we don't matter in the cosmic scheme of things, that's cool. Stop grubbing for power and have a good time.

You know that popular quote from Reverend Chuck Swindoll about attitude? It ends with "I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it." Preach, Chuck!

P.S. Holla to Frank Thompson for inspiring the Sondheim quote in the title.

Second Post of This Here Day

Just read on Yahoonews that the Governor of Mississippi has signed one of those as-close-to-banning-abortion-as-they-can-get bills; this one actually says that if and when Roe V. Wade gets overturned, abortion is illegal in Miss. No surprises so far, but the sting in the tail is that they make exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape... but not by incest. Ladies and Gentlemen, the great State of Mississippi!

As surely as I mock Mississippi, though, we'll find a way to top them. "Alabama just signed into law a controversial bill requiring women to eat any fetuses they abort." We'll think of some way to regain our status as SHAME OF A NATION.

Second Post of the Day

I just heard an item on NPR: audio of a group of US soldiers patrolling in Iraq, finding and detonating IEDs, and trying to pacify children who set the IEDs by throwing peanuts and candy at them. One soldier says, whimsically, "please don't blow us up!" Indeed. Is it really helping the new Iraqi government to have these poor soldiers putting themselves on the line, and inadvertantly making the civilians feel like an occupied territory? I suspect that we can help the new government succeed, but it will be with advisors and financial assistance, not soldiers. Bring 'em home.

Anyhow, more on those purity balls. A little googling reveals they have similar things for boys, only the boys get "Integrity Balls." This speaks volumes. "Integrity" connotes an active principle, while "purity" connotes passivity. Boys have choices to make, actions to carry out; girls just have to glow like the widdle angels they are (don't fornicate or you lose your hymen halo). This sexist framing of men as active and women as passive probably flatters the predelictions of the evangelical daddies at these things, but it has less and less application to the big bad world. Women can be active; they need integrity as much as guys do. Integrity is something everyone needs. What is purity? Cocaine can be pure, but that doesn't make it good.

My [CENSORED] Belongs To Daddy

This article by Mary Zeiss Stange probably won't be online long, but it's an intriguing editorial about Purity Balls, a new attempt by the abstinence-only crowd to get young women to take abstinence seriously. The sons and mothers are conspicuous by their absence. Perhaps they figure teaching boys to abstain is a lost cause. How Victorian. I'm extremely conflicted on this stuff. On the one hand I'm totally in sympathy with the daddies in this. I don't think young people should be having sex, and if I had a daughter I'd be desperate to keep boys from seducing her. But consider the narrative they're creating here; abstaining equals purity and faithfulness to Daddy; not abstaining means losing one's "purity" and betraying Daddy. As the article points out, studies show that these girls are going to break their purity vows at a ratio comparable to girls who don't get the abstinence-only treatment. What narrative obligations will they be compelled to live out when they do so? Will they carefully select decent partners, protect themselves and maximize their erotic and emotional pleasure? Not on your life; they've been taught that not abstaining=A SECOND FALL FROM GRACE, and they'll take it as a duty to live out that narrative, choosing the worst partners and having really awful times. When you're in thrall to the patriarchy it's possible to defy Daddy's will, but not to defy his narrative.

And another thing; having run with members of the abstinence-only crowd, I know that for some of them it's very important to discourage the use of condoms and other protections for the very simple reason that unwanted pregnancy and disease are God's divinely ordained punishment for fornicators. The fact that fornicators can beat the system drives a substantial subset of the abstinence-only crowd into a fury. If you fornicate, they want you to get sick or pregnant; it's God's will.

Lost Weekend

I was sick most of last week. Been sleeping a lot, drinking a lot of tea. Yet it was pretty busy.

Thursday we performed a cutting from the Cabaret for the Music for Peace and Justice series at The Church of the Reconcilier. This is a church that's aimed at the city's homeless. I saw the preacher in action, putting his well-dressed arm around an unbathed homeless guy. That's a Christianity that Jesus would recognise. It must take such strength to work at such a church; I could never do it.

(I was way too low-energy in the show. Sure, I was sick, but a pro wouldn't let it show. A lesson has been learned-if you're performing sick, aim to fool everyone into thinking you're in perfect health.)

Speaking of churches, I recently found out that the church in which I grew up, Signal Mountain Presbyterian, has voted to leave the Presbyterian, uh, syndicate, because they're getting "too liberal" on stuff like homosexual preachers, Trinitarian theology, etc. Hmm. I have a friend who was a church secretary for a while, and he tells me that his liberal Southern Baptist church decided not to leave the increasingly conservative Southern Baptist Convention because that way they have a chance to get on the floor and be heard. Better to be a loud minority opinion than an absent one. According to the handed-down account I got, Reverend Dudley, the Pastor of Signal Mountain Pres., had a similar point of view and wanted to keep the church in the PCUSA, but the church packed him off on a sabbatical so they could hold a vote without openly humiliating him. Poor Reverend Dudley. He and I may not agree on homosexual ordination and such, but he's one of the good guys; a voice of compassion who's really been trying to make a difference in a very comfortable, very white community. He was a good pastor to me and I hope he's able to discourage the church from ousting him and replacing him with Fred Phelps. Obviously I'm joking; Fred Phelps isn't polite and well-groomed enough for WhiteTight&Polite Signal Mountain.

When I was a college boy I wound up involved in a big church concert in which I had to give a closing benediction. I'm not sure how it happened. Anyway, there were two performances on two nights. On the first night in my Benediction I asked that we share Christ's words with all people, and proceeded to list some of those types of people, like rich and poor, old and young, etc. And being a college boy I threw in heterosexual and homosexual, just to show 'em. You go, teenage Aaron! STICKIT TO DA MAN! Well, some people acted like I'd pooped on the Bible and wiped with the communion elements. Reverend Dudley was very nice about it, and some people understood that I was only saying we should share Christianity with homosexuals, not commenting on the rightness or wrongness of homosexual activity. But I was instructed not to repeat my little stunt on the second night of the performance... and I didn't. You go, Aaron! KNEEL BEFORE DA MAN! I was cheered up considerably by the guy they'd hired to conduct the orchestra for this concert, though; we met briefly before the show and, upon learning that I wasn't to mention those dreadful homos again, stated "I wonder what they'd think if they knew their conductor was one?" I wonder indeed.

Okay, anyway, this weekend I did crawl outside to see two shows; The Children's Hour at Birmingham Festival and Guys and Dolls from Centerstage. I enjoyed both but don't have any insights, except to point out that Valerie Lemmons and Leah Luker, who play the female leads in Guys and Dolls, are two of the great talents in Birmingham Theatre, and woefully under appreciated. KNEEL BEFORE THE DIVAS. As for Children's Hour, it's still running, so go see it for yourself.

Finally, I got a couple of movies from Netflix this weekend: Zu Warriors and The Magnificent Ambersons. The former is a CGI-laden kung-fu fantasy that I would have creamed over as a boy, but which bores me to tears now. It's odd how CGI from a few years ago looks more dated than A Trip To The Moon. Director Tsui Hark has a rep even among the most snooty film buffs for artful kung fu drama, bursting with dynamic choreography; action as dance. I like that kind of stuff, but there's a big difference between having extraordinary acrobats doing extraordinary acrobatics (supposedly Hark's usual modus) or using a few mouse clicks to blatantly fake extraordinary acrobatics. Plus the story is such little-boy stuff; it's heartening to discover that my nerdiness has its limitations. Although if someone makes a movie titled Zoo Warriors featuring CGI giraffes and llamas kickboxing each other, I'd totally watch that.

As for the Magnificent Ambersons-surprise! It's not the old Orson Welles movie, which apparently ain't available on DVD, but a recent for-TV remake. So far it's pretty Masterpiece Theatre; well done on many levels, a bit polite and pasteurized for my tastes. It has some lovely elements but can't match the peculiar richness of Orson's mise en scene, which blazed with hothouse theatricality without seeming over the top.

Let Us Prey

I saw that awful neighbor the other day. He looked really bad but he's still alive. You people are not praying hard enough. Oh ye of little faith. Here's the new prayer:

Oh Lord, kill the bastard already. Just take one of those deaths You're planning to ship to someone in Darfur and hit him with it instead. Make it look like an accident, oh Lord, so law enforcement won't read this blog and think I had anything to do with it.

Selah

Kill him, oh Lord, and he will be killed. I know You don't make no trash, but some of what you make becomes trash, and that horrible neighbor of mine is a case in point. I've had bowel movements that deserved more respect than him. Flush him, oh Lord.

Storm

A storm passed through last night, so we were sent home early from work. I got home, and since it was grey but dry I went for a walk. Of course I got caught in the storm, but I always enjoy that; the cold pounding rain makes me feel like I'm in touch with the elements in a raw way, like the world is forcing me to engage it in an unprotected way. It's like being touched by God. EDIT: I didn't know that twenty people, some of them Alabama schoolchildren, died in this storm when I wrote the proceeding. It was much milder around my way. I'm sorry for the dead and their loved ones, and grateful that my blithe stormwalk didn't have any consequences beyond a cold soak.

Anyway, Ken Hite has begun a series of blogposts on H. P. Lovecraft. There's a lot to disdain about Lovecraft (clunky prose, all kinds of bigotry, lousy characterization, way too indebted to his influences) but there's a lot to love, and Hite's the man to tease out the good.

I'm listening to an Acid Jazz compliation. I've slowly fallen in love with acid jazz's blend of hiphop and horns. Anyway, lyrics in this stuff tend to be pretty nominal, but there was one song with the lyric "Give it all you've got, don't give up, life's a game and you've go to play to win!" Once I thought that was trite, but now it's the kind of motivation I need, so it added fresh cheer to my day. Sadly the next song's lyric was all about making love tonight. I won't be making love tonight, so that stripped my fresh layer of cheer right off. I'm ready to join with Tipper Gore to get all these sex lyrics out of songs, but only so I won't be constantly reminded that they're writing songs of love, but not for me.

Old Tyme Religion

Sorry, D&T, the last post was less gracious than it should have been; ya'll are dear friends indeed; I sympathize with your intentions and thank you for the gift. But I'm no more likely to return to the flock than ya'll are to add The End of Evangelion to your shortlist of favorite films.

Today I regard myself as a Unitarian pantheist; I believe that God, the idea of God, is a focus for our reverence, awe, hopes, fears and faith in the face of life and the universe. It's a bit like Yeats' thing about fairies that I commented on a few posts back; he was right to believe in fairies, but incorrect to believe that fairies were factual. They weren't factual; they were true. I believe much the same about God. So the literal-mindedness of the intelligent design crowd leaves me cold, while the vibrant, engaged faith of any number of people excites and inspires me.

It's the thought that counts.

My first Christmas present has arrived, and it is a book titled The Case For A Creator, sent by some dear friends from my old stomping grounds in Chattanooga TN. I'll certainly give it a day in court, although at a glance it looks like more of the Intelligent Design stuff that I find utterly uncompelling.

Lately I'm engaging two Christian writers whom I find more persuasive, or at least more relevant... one is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who tried to help assassinate Hitler, and paid with his life for his efforts. That's a pretty compelling faith-into-action story, but even putting such autobiographical elements aside, his writings are richly resonant, so far. I need to stop looking for online snippets and actually get a book of his; he wrote a few, and they're highly regarded on their own merits.

The other is Charles Williams, the forgotten Inkling. I finally got my hands on a copy of his book Descent Into Hell, and while I haven't started it yet it promises to be a haunting look at Williams' powerfully intense Christ-centered mystical worldview. I can't wait.

A Month Later

The following post leaps from thought to thought with no attempt at structure whatsoever. Sorry.


H2$ was a success in my book! The final matinee was one of the most satisfying performances I've ever worked on. One dramatic moment: the power went out for just a minute, and all the equipment in this tech-heavy show went down. The stars were onstage singing "Rosemary," a tender love duet, and they just kept going, a cappella and in the dark, until everything came back up. After the final dramatic note they embraced in genuine relief and affection as the crowd went bananas. I spent the rest of the day barely holding back tears of delight.

Now I'm exausted, due in large part to the wear and tear of this show. Staying up partying on friday and saturday nights didn't help. Well, they helped with some things, but not my energy level. My parents are on a trip, and they insist on calling me with their cell phone instead of a real honest-to-goodness phone (cell phones are the mark of the beast). They called me at work today and after their phone stopped wonking out I couldn't find the energy to speak at all. I usually want to talk to my folks whenever they call, since I'm increasingly mindful that one day we'll all, in the words of Firesign Theatre, fall apart like rotten fruit (thanks for the shoddy workmanship, God!) but I'm so enervated that it's all I can do to type this.

Anyway, I'm delighted that I got to work with the phenomenal Carl Dean, and terribly excited about doing Christmas Carol with my friend and neighbour Frank next, but I'm about ready to do some meat-and-potatoes straight theatre again. There's only so much singing and dancing I can do, much as I love it.

Backstage was the usual blend of friendships, slights and simmering loathings all round, but I feel like it was a net gain. I learned a lot about professionalism from the lead performers; Wes, the guy who played Bud, was a particular inspiration to me. Even though we changed costumes next to each other I became utterly starstruck by him, and turned into a gushing lobotomized praise machine whenever we spoke. He showed me how to be continually inventive yet flawlessly consistent. He also showed my how to be gracious when some twit is constantly boring you with praise. I should know by now that no one really wants to be praised for more than a minute; at least no one whom I'd actually want to praise.

I couldn't attend the Sidewalk Film Festival this year, but durn tootin' I weaseled my way into the after party at Sloss Furnace. I bumped into a talented filmmaker I know and she lied me in; the next day she won an award for her film, so bravo Jennifer!

I feel a bit like the guy in Fight Club who attends support groups for diseases he doesn't have; I attended the prayer circles a few cast members had before each production of H2$. I agree with David Mamet that (paraphrasing his book Three Uses of the Knife from memory) prayer is when we let down our defenses and acknowledge our fragility, our needs, our reliance on one another and the kindness of strangers, including a very strange God.

A few things I learned this weekend:

If you're at a party and you're gonna say something mean about somebody else at the party, do it in a whisper, not a holler.

Dancing to loud techno still feels really good, many years and pounds later.

Red Bull is magic.

All cute married people should be required by law to bling their wedding rings at single strangers before making friendly, flirty conversation.