Holy Kegger

Some of my favourite friends are the ones who constantly surprise me. Even after living with the guy for a year in college, my friend Chef Hanssen still manages to pleasantly surprise me every time I have the opportunity to talk with him on the phone, or better yet, to hang out. Reading the Bible is often like hanging out with Chef for me, constantly being surprised by a Father God and Christ who consistently refuse to stay in the boxes that we’ve furiously constructed for them to inhabit.

Most recently, I have been taken a bit aback by John 2. Many of yall know the story: Jesus is invited to a poorly planned wedding, gets goaded by his mother, and bails out the party host by coming up with some wine. There’s a lot more to the story, however, than the felt-board narrative I remember from Sunday school. The jars that Christ uses to perform His miracle are ceremonial cleansing jars, and I don’t know enough about Jewish culture to know what the significance of using them is, let alone filling them with wine. Was this an act of convenience or was there a deeper significance to the jars?

Perhaps most shocking, however, is what happens after Christ selects his vessels. A far cry from what we would expect from the pious figure cross-legged in the lotus position, Christ commands that six ceremonial jars, each containing 20-30 gallons each, be filled with water which is subsequently transubstantiated into wine. For those of you doing the math at home, that’s about 150 gallons of wine. Crunching a few more figures, we discover that such a volume of wine would fill over 750 standard wine bottles or nearly 300 two-litre bottles. That is a lot of wine. Furthermore, Jesus broke out this wine after everyone had already drunk through the previous supply and were well on their way to significant headaches the next morning. What does this tell us, if anything, about Christ’s ethics of alcohol? What he did for a good time? This is the stuff I wonder about sometimes.

Get Excited

I've decided to be bold and install a feature I've been thinking about doing for a while. Here's hoping that it goes better than the movie reviewing . . . right?! Anyway, I used to love reading Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was young and I thought it'd be a fun thing to try on a blog. The plan is to update the feature weekly, so vote on the course of action you think most prudent at the end of each post and we'll see how many times we can end up dead. And now . . .

La Concha

The adrenalin was already singing through his chest and river dancing on his bowels by the time Liam’s eyelids snapped open, beginning to register his murky surroundings. The garish radiance of red, blue and yellow neon intermittently lit the room with a wan rainbow through the worn curtains hanging over the solitary barred window. His horizontal view shifted as he raised himself from his sweat-drenched pillow and swiped his hand over his damp face. “Stupid brain,” he murmured to no one in particular, now rubbing sleep from his left eye and yawing cavernously. Stealing a glance at the digital clock glowing a verdant 2:17 he shook his head ruefully. “Always coming with these weird drea . . . ” but he trailed off as he heard over the usual nocturnal bustling of the city about him a soft but distinct thump and faint rustle come from down the small hallway which lead to his kitchenette, like the sound of a trench coated body grazing a grimy wall.

With every nerve in his body now aflame and extending what felt like inches past his skin, Liam gingerly disentangled himself from his matted bed clothes and snatched the carved wooden bookend from his bedside table as he eased himself silently onto the dingy low-pile carpet of his bedroom floor. Toeing aside a discarded t-shirt and stepping over a pair of black wingtips, he ever so gently padded towards his slightly ajar bedroom door. Creeping along the wall of his bedroom, making sure to keep the door between him and the hallways as much as possible, Liam nervously worked his grip on the bookend, finding its solid weight and sublime burnish somehow reassuring. Arriving at the door still wound tighter than a nun at a frat party, he thought he could hear nasally breaths being drawn steadily from somewhere on the other side of the flimsy piece of composite board now only inches from face, but over the whooshing of traffic and the buzzing of the neon sign outside his window it was impossible to tell for sure.

Liam should:

A) Charge down the hallway into the kitchenette

B) Attempt to sneak down the hallway

C) Stay put behind the door until daylight

D) Call out to see if anyone is there

Bodamania

Things I learned while in Mexico for my brother-in-law's wedding:

1. In the States we slow our speech and get uncomfortably close to a person if they don't understand our English. It would seem that in Mexico, the opposite is true. Tío Sergio was especially fond of approaching and rapidly pelting me with urgent sounding Spanish. I would blink slowly, quickly sorting through my lexicon of approximately 25 Spanish words and see if any of them sounded like they could fit into the preceding deluge. Next I would venture a translation: "You gave the box to Tom?" Tío Sergio would blink back, say, " . . . No." And then launch into what seemed to me a more complicated and break-neck Spanish explanation. All in all a great time.

2. You can pay $10 (US) to go 10 kilometres in a Taxi or $15 (US) to go 200 kilometres on Omnibus Mexico. This leads me to the conclusion that we either got shamelessly bent over on a cab fare or the bus system in Mexico is subsidized. I'm inclined to think a little or both.

3. It's possible for the temperature to remain in the low 30's C and still sweat through two shirts in under 15 minutes while sitting in the shade. It's not pretty, but it's possible.

4. Harry Potter has spread at least as far south as Tampico, Mexico. So has Wal-Mart.

5. It is entirely possible to spend four days in Mexico, enjoy the local cuisine to the fullest, and not suffer any major gastrointestinal incidents.

6. Rumours of 'Mexican Time' have been greatly under-exaggerated. When the bride showed up at 7h15 for the 6h00 wedding I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

7. Despite the laws of physics which dictate that no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time, two-way traffic on 18'-wide roads in Mexico continues unperturbed.

8. Just because the 1h15am (A. M. !!!!!) flight to Mexico is cheaper doesn't mean you won't still pay dearly for it.

9. Shockingly, some parts of Fresno are nearly identical to rural Mexican towns.

10. I enjoy Mexico a lot more than I thought I did.

PS. The pic is not my brother in law. Just some yokel I found on Google image.

Lo!

There arose in those dark days a champion from amongst the Arbourists against which no unruly shrub nor unkempt tree could stand.  It is said that his saw sang stridently as it slaked its sap-lust slashing through misshapen foliage, and that the sound of his loppers was like a great engine breaking, a cacophony of staccato blasts chewing blithely through the stoutest of boughs.  Amongst the evergreens he was named Ethanatl-ul-taunphl, which in their tongue means "€˜He who hews with impunity."  Amongst the hard-woods he is called Ntllny’phn Hlthyphn, which means, "€˜The Steel Jaw."  Rumours of his shearing feats spread far and wide throughout the deciduous and coniferous world, and it is said that when the wind blows the trees can still feel his presence on the breeze; this is why they both moan in sympathy for the pruning of their brethren and quake with fear of their own inevitable coiffing as the gusts pass them by.

Good Idea/Bad Idea

Today, Friday the 13th, 2007, will find me pruning my parent's Chinese elms. This activity involves several ladders, sharp implements and me dangling anywhere from 5-20 feet in the air while stretching to lop off offending boughs. I'm thinking about bringing along a couple mirrors and throwing them down to the concrete below just to make a propper job of it.

Der Untergang

I should have realized when I started reviewing movies that I would never keep up with my copious consumption. I’m several films behind by now, well over a month since my last movie post, and after some soul searching I’ve come to terms with the reality of the situation. From now on, I’ll stick to only reviewing the standouts and smatter some of the more pedestrian films in and amongst real meat and potatoes. If, by some unfortunate accident, I happen to pigeonhole your favourite film into the ‘pedestrian’ category, I apologize in advance and will happily reprint a full retraction upon request. That being said . . .

Since my last post, I’ve had the pleasure of watching five films. At least four of them were completely different. They are, in order:

1. Love Actually (a James Orr fav)
2. Downfall
3. Confetti
4. Jesus Camp
5. Borat

I only really want to talk about Downfall, and I’ll leave the rest to scores and highlights.

The Germans, if you didn’t already know, are a singular people. Athletic, intelligent, cultured and industrious, it’s little wonder they very nearly brought the world to its knees twice within a span of 50 years. The film Downfall, an unflinching examination of Hitler’s final days as seen through the eyes of his personal secretary Traudl Junge, manages to capture the zeitgeist of the Nazi regime in its unwavering discipline, staunch principles, debauchery, decadence and myopia. Not once are the writers tempted to resort to painting their characters as caricatures, but instead force the viewer to witness the humanity inexplicably coupled with the monstrosity of the Nazi regime as Joseph Goebbles sings with his children and Hitler shares tender moments with his staff and friends.

The film is book-ended by an interview with Ms. Junge, and as the film closes she recounts a momment late in her life of passing by a monument to Jews killed at a labour camp and suddenly feeling the conviction of 6 million souls. " . . . But I hadn't made the connection with my past," says Junge. "I assured myself with the thought of not being personally guilty. And that I didn't know anything about the enormous scale of it. But one day I walked by a memorial plate of Sophie Scholl in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse. I saw that she was about my age and she was executed in the same year I came to Hitler. And at that moment I actually realised that a young age isn't an excuse. And that it might have been possible to get to know things."

While most WWII films claim to educate us about the atrocities so that we never allow anyone to commit them again, this film instead strives to warn the viewer that the person we must strive to censure is not a faceless enemy but in fact ourselves. It is our acquiescence, our own willingness to complacently follow and unquestioningly serve that must be constantly examined. In a nation where a genocide which still leaves its ghastly scar on a proud people is politely swept under the rug of casinos and firework stands every day, this film about personal and national responsibility speaks loudly and honestly about what can easily happen on any scale anywhere when we start to let our humanity come in second to expediency and convenience.
Grade: A+

Scores and Highlights:

Love Actually: A fun little romantic jaunt with the who’s who of British thespians. Strait down the pipe, with the drunken Bill Nighy character stealing the show for me.
Grade: B

Confetti: Another who’s who of British comedy, go figure. A clever film about marriage and weddings with a few genuinely funny moments, this film includes even more nudity than the previous, but none of it sexual. Actually very well done and enjoyable, I’d recommend it to anyone not offended by nudists.
Grade: B+

Jesus Camp: I was expecting a much more hard-hitting view of frighteningly conservative Christians, but the film really only picked on one charismatic church group from Missouri. Copious film editing and questionable sequencing aside, it was a fascinating look at the isolationist tendencies and blind espousing of rhetoric in certain conservative circles. Also featured in the film: Creepy behind the scenes clips of Ted Haggard preaching against homosexuality at his megachurch. Good times.
Grade: C+

Borat: Yeah . . . see it if you want to.
Grade: C

I Repent

It was brought to my attention that my previous Celebrity Playlist did have a hole in it, and for this I am truly sorry. It was not my express intention to misrepresent myself as so crass. While some questioned the validity Metallica's inclusion (I'm listening to No Leaf Clover right now), I'd like to strike the President's song from the record. An enjoyable track, to be sure, but definately one I can live without. In its stead, I'd like to insert Luckenback, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love) by Waylon Jennings. A classic country track extolling the virtues of living simply and authentically, it's a relaxed two-step away from Heaven. In retrospect, it's rather shocking I didn't have a country track on there the first go round, and again I'd like to set the record strait. Waylon in, Presidents out. Metallica stays.

15 Minutes

I was drooling around on iTunes recently and decided to thumb through some of the celebrity playlists. Let me just say, Sly Stallone's track list is everything I hoped it might be. Anyway, if I were famous, this is what you'd be dying to find out I listen to . . .

1. Batman Theme Song, Danny Elfman. I’ve listened to this before every test I’ve taken through my college and graduate career, and I haven’t ever outright failed one I attended. There was the French final I completely slept through, but even that turned out better than I could have possibly imagined . . .

2. Bye Bye Blackbird, Miles Davis. It’s called auditory heroin. I can't get enough of it! But seriously, I love this song, totally chills me out.

3. Dancing Across the Water, Dave Matthews. This is the favourite of my many so called ‘drug songs.’ My parents started to wonder when I began getting into Pink Floyd, Nick Drake and Jefferson Airplane (before they went Starship). Another great chill-out song.

4. No Leaf Clover, Metallica. When I need to get angry, this is a good song to go along for the ride.

5. Against the Wind, Bob Seager. A classic about growing up the hard way. Not that I’d know, but I’ve heard lots of crazy stories and I like to pretend.

6. Body, Presidents of the United States of America. Yes. Yes, they did put out some great tracks, and yes I still remember them. Musically and lyrically this jam is bemusing.

7. Where the Streets Have No Names, U2. Clichés are cliché because they changed everything at one time or another. A paradigm shift, if you will (Michelle!). If you don’t get goosies when you hear the opening guitar riff, check for a pulse.

8. Oh! Darling, The Beatles. One of my fav’s from possibly their greatest album. Just a strait forward lil’ ditty, but I used to belt it out when I was listening to it on vinyl, age 8.

9. Requiem, Mozart. It’s worth your time to listen to all the way through. When I think about the fact that dude wrote the music for his own funeral, the reality that genius has its price begins to sink in.
   

10. One Day More, Les Misérables. I’ve always thought it would be an unbelievable experience to be in the cast of a musical, and Les Mis is as smokin’ a musical as any. The highlight of any good show for me is the montage piece, and this one is thick with story lines weaving and dodging. And when they all come to unison at the end . . . *ah* It would make wearing stage makeup worth it. Almost.

An Unknown Unknown

In honor of Independence Day, I thought I'd pass along a rather scathing Onion article which brought me back to '03. Here's hoping we figure out how to independence well some day.

Flash Back

This one is for my good friend James, who despite his ample intelligence and otherwise decent taste in music, continues to denigrate Billy Corgan in favour of STP.

Knickers Ablaze?

A question for you, readers. From the deepest, darkest, most pessimistic corner of my consciousness: Are we lying to our children when we tell them they can be anything they want? If not: Really?! If so: Is this a bad thing?

In Motion

He may not be as mysterious as James' man crush, the pseudonymed Kim Jong-Il, but I very much enjoy Pablo Neruda's poetry. I've always fancied myself more Latin than Asian, and between his works and my new favourite radio station, I'm swiftly approaching the point in my life where I need to break down and add Spanish to my repertoire to retain a modicum of authenticity. This is an excerpt from Walking Around which grabs me every time:

Just the same, it would be delicious
To scare a notary with a cut lily,
Or knock a nun stone dead with one blow of an ear.
It would be beautiful
To go through the streets with a green knife
Shouting until I died of cold.

I do not want to go on
Being a root in the dark
Hesitating, stretched out
Shivering with dreams
Downward in the wet tripe of the earth
Soaking it up and thinking
Eating every day

I do not want to be the inheritor
Of so many misfortunes
I do not want to continue as a root
As a tomb, a sollitary tunnel
As a cellar full of corpses
Stiff with cold
Dying with pain.

Though I am sure that in the mouth of someone like Antonio Banderas the spanish reading of this piece would melt me entirely, Sam Jackson's English redention is pretty sweet. I also recently heard Sam recite another piece of poetry:

You want my blood,
Take my blood.

Double Trouble

I’ve got a few films stacked up on me, so I’m pulling out the Drive-In classic double feature . . . and as far as double features go, this one’s a doosey. Both have stanch rebels against authority, wily women, shifting alliances and onerous villains. And now on to our feature presentation: Casablanca, followed by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest!

Casablanca was everything I thought it might be, plus some unexpected bonuses. I suppose this betrays a bit more of me than I’d like, but I’m always pleasantly surprised when I find old movies are crisp and poignant. Set in 1940’s Morocco, Casablanca follows suave cantina owner Rick as he attempts to make an honest living in a crooked world. Confronted with ghosts of his past and specters of the present, the film lets is characters struggle, showing their humanity and their desperate attempts not to loose it in what is ultimately constituted as a rich tapestry of history and character. Featuring lines like ‘Here’s lookin’ at you, kid’ ‘Play it again, Sam’ and ‘Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship’ which have become strayed towards cliché in American cinema, Casablanca is much more than a collection of classic movie quotes. If you like movies at all, give Casablanca 102 minutes of your life and enjoy a film made when Hollywood still wore the glow of youth.

Grade: A

Pirates of the Caribbean was everything you hope a sequel won’t be. Sequels are notoriously difficult to do well, with successful ones comprising a short list: The Empire Strikes Back, Temple of Doom, Weekend at Bernie’s 2. Maybe a few others. Presenting new material, continuing to grow characters and referencing the previous film tastefully are all very difficult tasks, and Pirates II seems to have had moderate to severe trouble with them all. The film have the flavour of a shameless remora, banking on the success of its predecessor and hoping to just enjoy the ride while doing as little work as possible, a poorly conceived follow up to a tight and witty first installment. Jokes were recycled ad nauseam, characters stagnated and plot lines were pressed thinner than Kiera Knightly’s waifish form. What could have been an interesting film with plot devices like confronting the immortal Davy Jones and reconciling Will to his father Bill, the film bogged down for me in some places and flew by at others, leaving me feeling confused and generally uninterested in the plot or characters. The special effects were impressive at times, and new characters such as Jones and the Fortune Teller showed glimpses of original thought and shine which garnered the first film its accolades, but as a whole it is a disappointing installment to an enjoyable franchise. I was left wishing the whole affair had ended with the first film in 2003.

Grade: C

Sound Stage

Ok, so I love sound. Yes, I’m glad that I can physically hear and cognitively decode the mechanical waves into chemical signals my brain then interprets, and I’m fairly confident that if you can hear whether you’ve thought about it or not you’re thankful for the ability. That’s not what I’m talking about, though. What I’m talking about is some subjective, intimately subtle and barely noticeable quality of certain sounds.

Leprechauns that only make themselves known on blue moons when Democrats are in office, the sounds I love require just the right conditions to be detected, and may likely never be detected again. They aren’t everyday honks or bangs or screeches but minute vibrations of atmosphere which are to be captured and relished in memory, not in the prostitution of recording. They are the naked sound of cigarette paper and tobacco crackling as the smoker inhales. The unsullied sound of a knife being whet, grinding viscously and then emitting a slight ephemeral ring as stone releases steel. The felt more than heard sound of a bat’s super-sonic squeal just behind my ears at 3:47 am above Little Yosemite. These are the sounds that I love and with them I am never alone, and rarely bored.

My favourite sound, however, is found in College Station, TX. Rudder Auditorium still sports a very fashionable décor from 1972, and as such is usually as silent as a tomb. While outside the darkened neo-Stalinistic glass walls the free speech area throngs and sizzles with fish and fools, inside you can feel 68^o F silence as you move through the cool stillness like a gauze curtain you can’t quite make out. There is one exception, however. The air conditioning ducts lightly ping, a hollow resonance which somehow only enhanced the quiet. Rudder Auditorium is the best place in the entire world to take a nap. I used to walk through Rudder for a distance of perhaps 87 yards between classes, cherishing every step and trying my best to muffle every thunderous footfall, stifle every hurricane gale breath, shoe-lace ends intermittently providing staccato artillery blasts to my heresy. The sound of Rudder’s silence still takes my breath away.

Sing a Song of . . .

A visited a friend’s church last Sunday night; it was a very different and very enjoyable experience. The people who gathered to worship in this church’s basement in a small rural California town sang with passion and reckless abandon, shared their lives openly and intimately with everyone there, and took the immanent stirring of God in their lives very seriously. While their service was full of joy and thankfulness, an outpouring of many of the Body’s experience with God throughout the week, I couldn’t help but think of the Biblical witness to the lives of people who are called to follow Christ. Starvation, explusion, inverted crucifixion. I couldn’t keep the words of the Psalmists out of my head, cursing their enemies. Expressing confusion. Crying out in pain and abandonment. Then I tried to think of songs the Body sings to express these emotions, and the list was very short. This, however, is my favourite. The expression of hopefull injury is something that I think could benefit many if sang from the loft and preached from the pulpit a good deal more than it is.

Come let us return
He has torn us into pieces
He has injured us
Come let us return to the Lord
He will heal us
He will bandage our wounds
In just a short time He'll restore us
In just a short time He'll restore His church
So we might live
We might live in His presence
In His presence

Oh that we might know the Lord
Oh that we might know the Lord
Oh that we might know the Lord
Let us press on to know Him
Let us press hard into Him
Then as surely as the coming of the dawn
He will respond

- Hosea; Shane Barnard

All Too Easy

All hail the power of the information age!

'Bout That Time?

Audience participation returns to the Texafornian! Today's question: If you were a racehorse, what would your racehorse name be?

Practical Theology

"[Forgiving and forgetting or ignoring the past are] a travesty, of course, but it is something to beware of. No, we need something more positive to say about forgiveness. We need to recognize both the reality of the past and the hope of a future of forgiveness. Because real forgiveness is something that changes things and so gives hope. The occasions when we feel genuinely forgiven are the moments when we feel, not that someone doesn’t care what we do, but that someone does care what we do because he or she loves us and that love is strong enough to cope with and survive the hurt we have done. Forgiveness of that sort iscreative because it reveals new dimensions to a relationship, new depths, new possibilities. We can find a love richer and more challenging than before. If someone says to me, “Yes, you have hurt me, but that doesn’t mean it’s all over. I forgive you. I still love you,” then that is a moment of enormous liberation. It recognizes that reality of that past, the irreversibility of things, the seriousness of damage done, but then it is all the more joyful and hopeful because of that. Because this kind of love doesn’t have illusions, it is also all the more mature and serious. It can look at and fully feel my weakness, and still say, “I love you.”

- Rowan Williams in Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross

In the Beginning

Then Illúvatar spoke, and he said: 'Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Aiunr, that I am Illúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.'

- From the Ainulindalë¹ creation narrative, Tolkien


^{1. The Ainulindalë is one of the five books contained within The Silmarillion.}

Scene It

I live for the unexpected momments in my life in which reality steps out for a quick cup o’ joe and the fantastic insuperably inserts itself in an all too infrequent cameo. This is probably why I like Scrubs. This morning, having had an appointment cancel on me, I thought I would swing by Barnes and Noble to see if they had in stock a certain book I might be interested in purchasing. As I swung my gallant Honda down the parking aisle feeding directly into the main entrance to my place of previous employment, it happened: The Momment.

“Double-non-fat-three-splenda-extra-hot-half-caf-vanilla-laté for Reality? . . .”

I became acutely aware of the radio, which had been previously blathering some rather innocuous music or another, but now was playing something very similar to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries¹. My point of view shot up 25 feet and I saw my car lurch forward, hammer both sets of front doors from their hinges and spray parchment in every direction with impunity, spin 5 brodies in the cheap carpeting and finally streak off down Blackstone leaving a wake of dangling modifiers and mangled diphthongs.

I didn’t much care for the time I spent employed by Barnes and Noble, nor did they have the book I was hoping for.

^{1. Scroll down to track 6 for a sample if you're unfamiliar . . .}