Category Archives: Arts

Now What?

All About Me, Arts, Books and Literature, Culture, Politics, Politics & Culture, , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m freeeeeee! Finally, at the age of 51, I’ve graduated from college. Yay me. I’ve spent the last 3 1/2 years busting my butt, studying, reading, thinking, and writing, and it’s come down to this: I got an email the other day saying that they’ve checked, and yep, I’ve completed all the requirements for a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing (I do have to admit to some disappointment that its a B.A., and not a B.S. degree, although, as some have pointed out, I’ve had a degree in BS for decades. Still, it would be nice for it to be official).

The last semester was particularly hard. It’s difficult to concentrate on Frances Burney’s Evelina, or, The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, first published in 1778, when the whole world seems to be losing its shit. Seriously. In the (sur)real world, we had Donald Trump, whose chief accomplishment seems to be losing money on casinos (and in fairness, even I would find that difficult) vs. Hillary Clinton, who is most famous for being the only politician on earth who has spent her entire existence under congressional investigation (and inconclusive investigation at that).

On top of that, we had dozens of examples of malfeasance by both parties, the campaign was virtually issue-free (why waste time talking about the future of the country, when you can just get on TV and sling shit at your opponent? It’s like the whole thing was held in a monkey house full of incontinent chimpanzees). Finally, Trump won, despite losing the popular vote (by almost 3 million votes), and all of a sudden, it seems like everyone is talking revolution; lefties are gearing up to stop Trump no matter what (although honestly, if they couldn’t get their shit together enough to beat Trump during the election, it seems fairly naive to think they’ll get it together now), and the rightest of the right wing are proposing armed revolt if Trump turns out to be a disappointment to them (it’s like cognitive dissonance has become viral).

So like I was saying, it was really hard to concentrate in school. All the time I was supposed to be writing papers, and reading books, I just couldn’t help thinking about all the stuff I wanted to write for Moonsthoughts. Every conversation would turn to politics, and I’d think, “Ooooh, that’d make a good post,” and “Hey, I have thoughts on that subject too!” I have to admit, I wasn’t really doing my best work there at the end.

And now, 2-3 weeks later, I’m free to write whatever I want . . . and I’ve got nothing. I’ve started several posts, and given up on them all. Part of it may just be ennui, after straining my brain for school, but I’m more afraid that it’s just . . . well . . . despair? resignation? depression? I thought that things would change after the election. I thought that, no matter who won, everybody would calm down, lay off the panic buttons, and maybe start talking to each other again (what can I say; I’m an optimist). Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case. All the craziness and hyperbole (on both sides) just seems to keep getting worse.

Most people seem to just want it to be over, to forget about it, to get back to their lives. I’ve had at least two conversations in the last couple of weeks, with intelligent, reasonable, compassionate people who just want to stop talking about all this stuff. This is the wrong approach to take, I think. There’s way too much of just sticking our heads in the sand in that response. Of course, I think it’s also because we were all white, straight, married, Christian, several-generation American, lower-middle-class to middle-class people. The only thing we really have to worry too much about is our own slow slide into poverty (which does seem increasingly likely). Nobody wants to register us, or deport us, or revoke any of our rights, so we’ll probably be okay with our heads in the sand for at least a few more years. Yay us!

The only way I see things getting any better, is if we (and I mean all of us), pull our heads out of the sand (or wherever else they may currently be inserted), and talk to each other about the issues, about the ideas, about our fears, about what direction the country should take. We need to get off the talking points, stop talking about the politicians, and stop talking about what they want us to talk about.

One of the things I learned in college is that you don’t learn a whole lot from people you agree with. We need to talk to people we don’t agree with; to find out why they feel the way they do, to let them know why we feel the way we do. Of course, in order to do that, we’ll have to learn to stop communicating in memes, to stop parroting the misinformation machine that feeds both sides a steady diet of Bullshit.

On the Facebook, I’ve got a lot of pretty hard-core, right-wing friends. I’ve also got a lot of hard-core, left-wing friends. If I’m honest, I have to admit that I find the left’s bullshit much more palatable, but that’s why I don’t unfriend or unfollow my right-wing friends. I don’t want to live in an echo chamber. I know a lot of people who voted for Trump; some who did so proudly, and some reluctantly, but I have no problem with anyone, based on who they voted for. Whether I like it or not, I can understand the reasoning (or at least most of it), to some point, anyway. I think they’re wrong, but being wrong doesn’t make them bad people (to paraphrase a famous guy I used to know).

We’ve got to see past the generalizations. I’m soooooo tired of seeing right-wing propaganda that refers to all liberals as “libtards” or worse, and I’m just as tired of left-wing propaganda that refers to all conservatives as fascists. It’s bad enough in the memes, but when people I know start slinging that kind of crap around, I really get kind of angry, because, (I’m gonna let you all in on a little secret here) I’m a conservative – more on that later.

It’s not just counterproductive, it’s stupid. I don’t know anybody whose entire existence can be summed up by one word. Like I said before, I know a lot of folks on the right, and even though I disagree with almost everything they say, I know that they are not fascist, racist, gay-bashing, Troglodytes consumed by hatred for anything that doesn’t look or act like them (at least not the ones I know). I also know a lot of folks on the left, and none of them hate America, or want to invalidate your religion, or to take any of your stuff away and give it to anybody else. Pretty much all of the folks I know, left and right, just want to live their lives according to their own lights. None of them wishes harm to anyone else. None of them want to hurt anybody, or rule over anybody. They just want to do their jobs, support their families, and live in peace.

We like things simple; we like the idea that there are good guys and bad guys, absolute right and absolute wrong, and we all, left or right, like to think that we’re on the side of the Angels (or the side of Right, anyway). That way we don’t have to think. We really hate to think. We really, really hate to think that we might not be absolutely, completely, 100% right on everything (although ironically, we do like to post about how flawed and imperfect we are on the Facebook, especially us Christians). We need to talk, and more importantly, to listen to people who think differently than us because, the chances are that on any given subject, neither of us are really, completely, 100% right on anything.

We’ve got to talk about this stuff; capitalism, socialism, gay rights, racism, abortion, women’s rights, freedom of religion/freedom from religion, guns, immigration, all of it, among ourselves. We’ve got to take the power out of the hands of the politicians, and back into our hands, where it should be. The powers that be don’t want us to come together; it’s much easier for them to get what they want if we’re too busy fighting with each other to look at them. Our loss is their gain.

We’ve all got to do whatever we can do to contribute to the conversation, but first we’ve got to start that conversation; what we’ve got right now is essentially a nation of incontinent chimps flinging shitty memes at each other, thinking “that’ll show ’em.”

I know I’ve got to keep on writing; not to convince, not to convert, or to preach, but to present what I think, and why I think this way (and yes, I was dropped on my head as a child. Several times). It’s the only way I know to try to fix things.

What can you do?

 

The Real Rich Mullins, Shameless Namedropping and the Cult of Personality

Culture, Movies, Religion
The only saint in our family, plus Jess, Wayne, and I
The only saint in our family, plus Jess, Wayne, and I

 

This morning I got up, got all the critters fed, and sat down to check my e-mail. Oddly, there were new comments on a post I wrote about my brother Rich Mullins a while back. When I checked the stats on my blog, that post had gotten over 200 views today. Now, that particular post has always been by far the most popular post I’ve ever written, which frankly is a little frustrating because I feel like I’ve written some pretty good posts that had absolutely nothing to do with him (of course, I could be wrong. It happens).

At one point, I had even considered just putting his name in the title of every post, just to try to get people to read my blog, but decided that would be taking shameless cynicism too far, even for me. I would also like to point out, at this point, that there is a point to this post that does actually have something to do with him (also, are there bonus points for getting the word “points” into one sentence multiple times, and if so, do parenthetical “points” count?), so don’t panic. This is merely the Shameless Namedropping bit. I like to ease into these things.

At any rate, I’ve gotta say thanks to all those who commented, both here and on the Facebook. They were all very nice. A couple of people even accused me of profundity, something that would make pretty much everyone who knows me laugh (I know it made me laugh). I am known for a lot of things, mostly involving bad temper and disgusting bodily functions, so it was nice to be considered profound for a change, no matter how far off-base it may be.

Even though the remarks were all nice and complimentary, I still found them disturbing to a certain extent. One of them invited me to join a Rich Mullins group on the Facebook (of which there are at least eight). This seems weird to me. Of course, it is also extremely gratifying, to know that he had, and continues to have, such an impact on people’s lives. However, I’ve got to ask, at what point does all this fan-girling (sorry, but it seems a lot like Tiger Beat for Christians) become kind of Idol Worshippy?

Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with fan pages, or sharing your admiration/fanship of somebody with like-minded people. Far from it. However, I do think it’s something that we all need to be careful about. This has been bothering me for a while, but one of the commenters kind of brought it all home for me. This person wrote that in all the videos of Rich, he was “always clean and usually upbeat”, but the movie “Ragamuffin” portrayed him as “looking pretty bad, and usually in a kind of downer mood, or like there was a cloud over him.  Any problems Rich had, aren’t talked about out there.  So I feel like someone is being deceptive.”

I think the simplest way to address this is to tackle the four different points separately:

First:

The way he seems in the videos: He was the way he seems in the videos; smart, caring, sensitive, intellectual, spiritual, funny, and clean. But you also have to understand that in those videos, he was onstage. He was at work. How many of us are the same at work and at home? A large part of a job is image, whether you’re a rock star, or a Walmart greeter. You’re expected to look a certain way, to act a certain way, to talk a certain way. There are things you are supposed to do, and things you’re not allowed to do. I’m no authority on Rich Mullins, I pretty much only knew Wayne, but I know he struggled with that “Image” thing a lot. I remember him complaining that the record company was always trying to get him to lose weight, dress a certain way, wear his hair a certain way, etc., and he found it very disingenuous. Rich Mullins’ “job”, to him, was pointing people toward God. His job, according to the record company was to sell records and make money. Sadly, it seems like, to way too many people, his job is to be a kind of substitute Messiah, a kind of, “Well, I know he’s not Jesus, but he’ll do until the real one comes back,” kind of thing. Again, I’m not accusing you, or anybody, but I’m pretty sure you know somebody like this. Think about it.

Second:

The way he seems in the movie: He was the way he seems in the movie. First, of course, you have to realize that IT WAS A MOVIE! It was an attempt to tell forty-some years of one man’s life in two hours. I don’t want to say that parts of it were made up, but PARTS OF IT WERE MADE UP! That in itself does not make it untruthful. The bits that were “made up” were representative of actual events compressed into a form that made narrative sense, just like some of the characters were composites of multiple people. Think of it like this: Take a drop of water. Try looking at it atom by atom. It doesn’t look anything like a drop of water. If, however, you step back and look at all those atoms collectively, it’s a drop of water. The job of the movie was to show you the drop of water, not it’s atomic composition. I hope that makes sense.

As far as the difference between Rich in the movie and Rich in the videos, that was a decision arrived at early on, by both our family and David Leo Schultz, the director. None of us were interested in making a movie that glorified Rich Mullins. Now a movie that did that would probably have made a whole lot more money (and frankly, in my weaker moments, when I’m worrying about the car payment or the property taxes, I wish it’s the movie Schultz had made), but it would have been antithetical to his whole life. As stated earlier, I really believe that he believed his job was in pointing people toward heaven, and he tried to do just that. We all wanted the movie to try to do the same. Schultz could have painted him as some kind of saint, kind of a Christian Yoda who’s got it all figured out, but that movie would have only glorified Rich, and Rich would have hated that (of course, he probably would have loved it too). Schultz took a braver approach: to show the other side, the private side. The side that only a few ever saw. I almost said were privileged to see, but frankly, there were a lot of times when it was no privilege, I’m sure. The movie Schultz made shows him as we all are; flawed, fallible, and frequently a complete asshole, but a complete asshole who never stopped loving God, who never stopped trying to please God. His struggle was not with God, but with himself, just like the rest of us. If you want the squeaky-clean, family-friendly Rich Mullins, watch the videos. If you want a man who accomplished remarkable things through the grace of God, in spite of his own shortcomings, who struggled daily, just like you and I, then watch the movie. If you really want to get to know him, watch them both.

I guess the best way to put it came from Rich himself. He once said something along the lines of, and I’m paraphrasing from memory here (I’m sure many of you are more familiar with it than I am), “People talk about how open I am, how I say just what I think. If they knew what I’m really thinking they’d say ‘Oh man, we gotta burn this guy’.” Feel free to correct this version.

Third:

Rich’s problems aren’t talked about: No kidding. Nobody wants to take potshots at RICH MULLINS! He’s our hero! In fact, I know that Dave Schultz has gotten some pretty incendiary hate mail for even attempting to show him as flawed. Listen, you want to know what problems Rich Mullins had? Look in the mirror. He had all the same problems you and I have. It wasn’t his problems that were extraordinary, it was his life. His problems and flaws, for the most part, were pretty mundane. He was poor, he was lonely, he had weaknesses and flaws, just like everyone who ever walked the face of the earth, except One.

Fourth:

Somebody’s being deceptive: Simply put, no one is being deceptive. First of all, deception requires intent and there is normally something to be gained through the deception. The videos are amateur videos of a man at work. They don’t purport to represent every facet of the man. If you think they do, then the mistake is yours. Nobody gains anything from posting them. The movie was professionally made and expensive. The approach was intentional. Schultz is not a stupid man. If he wanted to be deceptive, then he would have made a movie that would make money. Instead, he made a movie that glorified God rather than Rich Mullins, a movie that, instead of making people say, “OOOOH, that Rich Mullins! What a great Christian!” tried to make you say, “Okay, I’m not the only one who’s screwed up. God loved him, I’ll bet he loves me too.” Plus, I’m not even sure they’ve broken even yet.

The Difference:

The difference between the popular perception of RICH MULLINS! and the reality of Rich Mullins can best be seen, I think, by looking at one of his most popular songs, “Awesome God”.

Here is the song’s lyrics as he wrote and performed them:

When He rolls up His sleeves
He ain’t just putting on the ritz
(Our God is an awesome God)
There’s thunder in His footsteps
And lightning in His fists
(Our God is an awesome God)
And the Lord wasn’t joking when
He kicked ’em out of Eden
It wasn’t for no reason that He
she’d His blood
His return is very close and so
you better be believing that
Our God is an awesome God

Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, power, and love
Our God is an awesome God

Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, power, and love
Our God is an awesome God

And when the sky was starless
In the void of the night
(Our God is an awesome God)
He spoke into the darkness
And created the light
(Our God is an awesome God)
The judgement and wrath He
poured out on Sodom
The mercy and grace He gave
us at the cross
I hope that we have not too
quickly forgotten that
Our God is an awesome God

Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, power, and love
Our God is an awesome God

Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, power, and love
Our God is an awesome God

Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, power, and love
Our God is an awesome God

Our God is an awesome God (God)
He reigns (He reigns…) from heaven above
With wisdom, power, and love
Our God is an awesome God

Our God is an awesome God (Our God is an awesome God)
He reigns from heaven above (He reigns from heaven above)
With wisdom, power, and love (With wisdom, power, and love)
Our God is an awesome God
Our God is an awesome God
Our God is an awesome God

Read more: Rich Mullins – Awesome God Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Now here is the version we sing in church:

Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, power, and love
Our God is an awesome God

See the difference? The version we sing is like the perception of RICH MULLINS!; Powerful, true, and above all, simple. The version he wrote is more like Rich Mullins; still powerful and true, but also awkward, kind of weird, thought- and question-provoking, and, I think, fairly deep, juxtaposing God’s vengeance with his Grace.

In contrast, the church version is just a mantra; essentially repetitive and hypnotic, requiring no thought at all, all too often just a mindless parroting of a slogan. Sure it sounds great, but there’s nothing there that isn’t said in a thousand other hymns.

I’m not saying that one is better than the other (for my part, I cringe at the thought of either version), but if I have to choose, I choose the one that makes me think.

Finally:

This brings me back around to my original point: the Cult of Personality. It seems like people may be taking RICH MULLINS! way too seriously. The fact that he was deeply flawed should not detract from our opinion of him, or what he had to say. Our opinion of him is a matter of complete inconsequence. If we say we are Christians, then the only person we should be fan-girling over is Jesus Christ.

OOPS!

Well now . . . that got a little preachy, didn’t it? Sorry. Sometimes I get a little carried away. I trust you’ll all have the good sense not to take anything I had to say too personally, or too seriously. To any of you who managed to slog all the way through this: Thank You! And now you know why I have no reputation for profundity.

Adventures of a House-Husband: Christmas Edition

All About Me, Arts, Books and Literature, Home Life, Kids & Grandkids, Pets, Religion, Uncategorized, Wives

Merry Christmas everybody! Right now, I’m sitting here feeling sorry for anybody who isn’t me. Last night, in an effort to minimize the cooking over the next couple of days, I whipped up another huge batch of Slopbucket; arguably the greatest and deadliest meal known to man (the recipe is in another post entitled “Adventures of a House-Husband: Home Cooking Edition”). It was, in a word, AWESOME!!!!! That knocking you heard last night? That was the sound of my arteries (and possibly my colon as well: there’s a LOT of Velveeta in this stuff), slamming shut and reverberating around the world. That weird and ominous thundery yet kinda gurgly noise you heard this morning?  It was probably just weird and ominous gurgly thunder (but there are a LOT of peppers and chili seasoning in this stuff too).

Even more awesome is the fact that there’s enough left over for supper tonight, and it just gets better with age, like wine, whisky, and my wife, the lovely and gustatorily adventurous Jess (although she’s still just 27, as far as I’m concerned). I haven’t looked forward to supper this much since . . . well, last night, I guess. Still, I’m really looking forward to it. A lot. You might want to sleep with your earplugs in though. But enough about that.

I decided to try something different this year; cooking dessert stuff. Every year, my wife, the ever-more-awesome and eternally lovely Jess, makes Christmas candy, primarily Buckeyes, Peanut Clusters, and what she calls Moose Balls (don’t knock ’em ’til you try ’em). They’re basically Buckeyes, only instead of peanut butter, it’s cream cheese and crushed Oreo cookies rolled into balls and dipped in chocolate. They’re awesome, and I love ’em, but I got to thinking that she might enjoy something new. Plus people keep posting videos of how to make all this stuff on the Facebook, and it looks so simple. Seriously, watch the videos: it’s almost like the stuff makes itself.

Chocolate Lasagna

I mean it combines two of my favorite meals; Chocolate and Lasagna. What could go wrong?

And then there was this: Cinnamon Roll French Toast Bake. The sweet-toothed and just plain sweet Jess loves her some Cinnamon Rolls. I figured she’d enjoy this for breakfast Christmas morning (Sorry, I can’t figure out how to link the video, but here’s one to the recipe).

The Chocolate Lasagna looked to be the most complex, so this morning, I started with that. It went pretty well, although the first step was to mix some stuff up and set it aside. I did that, but then it was really kind of unclear as to what to do with it. I also learned that using a mixer is a skill. A skill I do not possess, apparently. Those little whirligigs can really fling the heavy whipping cream. You’d think that something like that would come with some kind of cover, or they’d make mixing bowls with deeper sides, or something.

Fortunately, I had Dude, Mattie, and Molly, a highly efficient and enthusiastic cleanup crew. They had my back. And my chest and legs, as well as the walls, countertops, etc (yeah, it got a little freaky in the ol’ kitchen this morning). Anyway, I got everything mixed up and ready. I put down the first layer of Graham crackers, and started smearing the cream cheese mixture over it. Now in the video, it smeared right along, with no problem at all. Not in my kitchen though. In my kitchen, it was like trying to get rid of snot. That stuff stuck to everything, and wouldn’t spread out at all. I ended up with the Graham crackers piling up and shattering into pieces which I then had to try to put back into something resembling a layer, like a frustrating (but delicious) jigsaw puzzle.

Finally, I referred to the recipe. Yep, I was doing just what it said. Oh wait . . . remember that bowl of stuff I’d mixed up and then set aside? Yeah, neither did I. There was a sentence in the middle of a paragraph that said to “fold” it into the cream cheese mixture. Now, I don’t have any idea how to fold a liquid, so I “dumped” it in, mixed it up, and everything went fine after that. It really makes me wonder about who wrote that recipe though. I mean, you just don’t stick something like that in the middle of a paragraph. There should have been a separate step in there. Were they pressed for space? Were they limited to a certain number of steps? Or, were they just expecting the people who used that recipe to know what they were doing? If that was the case, then they were wrong. Very, very wrong.

At any rate, I got that done and put in the fridge, and tackled the Cinnamon Roll French Toast Bake. Now that one really looked easy. Twenty minutes later, I was still trying to get that first can of cinnamon rolls open. Poppin’ fresh, my ass. They might be fresh, but there was very little poppin’ going on. I’ll admit, I was a little worried. The instructions warned me to make sure I pointed the ends of the can away from myself to prevent injury. Apparently those things are under a lot of pressure. I could not get that thing open to save my life. I even read the instructions. They said, “Push spoon against seam. Unroll tube.” I tried a spoon. No luck. I tried a butter knife. Still no luck. Finally, I resorted to a steak knife. That did the trick. Apparently (happily) the Pillsbury people are laboring under an extreme misunderstanding about how much pressure that cardboard tube contains. There was no pop, not even when I stabbed it with the steak knife. A little oozing maybe, but certainly not the explosive blast I was led to expect. I’ve got to say, I felt a little silly (and kind of disappointed, too).

Anyway, I got it done, and both dishes turned out great. Well, at least they look great. We have yet to try them. Still, I’m feeling pretty optimistic about it.

Of course, Christmas isn’t just about food. It’s also about presents.

Now I don’t know about you, but in my family, traditionally, it’s the grandparents who give the worst gifts. Don’t get me wrong, when I was a kid, I always looked forward to going to my grandparent’s houses for Christmas, but it was because I looked forward to seeing them and all my cousins (plus, my Dad’s folks lived in Florida, and Pa had a huge collection of Louis L’amour and Max Brand westerns). It was not for the gifts, which were normally underwear and socks, or their equivalent.

Note: If you are one of my grandkids, you should stop reading now, unless you’re just into preemptive disappointment. Seriously. Plus, what are you doing reading this blog? I’m pretty sure there’s some at least mildly inappropriate stuff on here. There’s certainly supposed to be. Go read something good for you!!!!!

Now my wife, the cool and generous Jess, and I have always tried to get the grandkids something pretty cool for Christmas, but this year, I decided it was time to go traditional. I do, of course, remember the expected disappointment of opening deceptively festively wrapped packages of underwear and socks, so I decided to go a different route. We got them books. Now, when I was a kid, I would have been thrilled to get books (yes, I was a weird kid), but I’m not sure my grandkids will be equally excited. Still, they’re good books, and they’re smart kids, so who knows?

I got the oldest boy Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It’s a great book, and full of stuff that he’s almost certainly not going to learn about in school. Plus, he’s gone with me to the Rez a few times now, and I feel like to understand the present situation out there, you have to have some understanding of the history.

I got the oldest girl My Name is Malala, the story of an Afghan girl, Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head for insisting on going to school, survived that to face her attackers, and won the Nobel Peace Prize by the age of 16. I figure in a world full of Kardashians, Britney Spears’es (she’s still a thing, right?), Miley Ray Cyrus’es and various other assorted females who seem to be mostly famous to for their ability to vibrate their posteriors faster than the speed of sound, as well as the scarcity of their clothes, she could do worse than learn about a girl only slightly older than herself who stands for something good, does it fearlessly (or maybe in spite of fear), and is trying to make the world a better place. I also figure that if nothing else, it would be good for her to learn that not all Muslims are psychopathically religious headcases who want to kill her.

Jess got the younger boy The Indian in the Cupboard. Hopefully, it will induce a love of reading like Jess and I have. I don’t think it’s particularly heavy or inspirational, but we both started out reading fantastic adventures, and we figure it’s a good way to get him started.

At the very least, it should be less disappointing than socks and underwear.

Of course, gifts aren’t even what Christmas is really about, they’re just symbolic.

The Real Meaning of Christmas

If you really want to know what Christmas is all about, you’re looking in the wrong place. This is a silly place (mostly), for silly ramblings. The real meaning of Christmas is beautiful, and deadly serious. Look around you. All those people of different races, creeds, colors, lifestyles, etc.? They’re what Christmas is all about. They’re why He came. Well, them, and you, and me (that’s what I believe. You, of course, are welcome to believe what you believe as well). If you need more information than that, go to church tonight.

At any rate, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanzaa to all.

 

 

Cheer Up! It’s Really Not That Bad. Seriously. At Least Not For Most of Us.

All About Me, Arts, Home Life, Music, Wives

The fall semester is over, finally. I’ve been looking forward to this forever (at least that’s how it feels). So yesterday, I decided to tackle a job I’ve been putting off; building sideboards for my truck. I need them, not so much for myself, as for hauling a load of clothes and other donations out to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. I’ve gotta say, I haven’t been looking forward to it, either building the sideboards or the long, long drive to S. Dakota the week before Christmas. On the other hand, at least I’ve got the time to do it. So I bit the bullet and got stuck into it. First, I had to take the stainless steel rail things off of my truck in order to get to the pockets for the sideboards. I thought, you know, how bad can that be? Four bolts and four screws, right? No big deal, ten, fifteen minutes, and I’d be set. Hahahahahahahahahah. Rust is some pretty incredible stuff.

Two hours later, I finally got the last bolt loose. I strained what muscles I have left in my arms and shoulders getting them off, but I did it. Mission accomplished! I’m still a man who can do stuff! Then of course, it was time to go to Lowe’s to get the plywood and hardware. I was extremely careful to make sure I got everything I needed. You guys know what I mean. None of us have ever managed to complete a project with less than two, and usually at least three or four, trips to the store. Well this time was going to be different! I was going to achieve the holy grail of modern American masculinity: I was going to come home with everything I needed to build those sideboards in one trip. I went over and over the plan in my head (because lists are for sissies, right guys?). I even moseyed up and down the aisles, browsing, just in case I noticed something I might need. Finally, I realized I really did have everything. I was going to be the first guy to ever accomplish this. I was gonna be a legend! People were going to point me out on the street to their sons and say, in a hushed and reverent voice, “Look, it’s HIM! He’s the ONE!” They were going to go bed at night, praying that their sons would grow up to be as manly as me.

I got home and got started building. Everything was going great, even better than I expected. I had to cut down the 2×4’s to fit the pockets of the truck – my cuts were perfect. They fit like a glove. It was all going so well. Then I hit a snag; the eyebolts I had bought were just a little bit too short. Okay, disappointing, but at least I’d remembered to buy them. Not only that, but I’d made sure to buy them the same size as the carriage bolts I was using, so I could go ahead and finish building them, and just stop off at Lowe’s the next time I was in the neighborhood and pick up longer eyebolts and just switch them out. I mean stopping by Lowe’s is not the same as having to make a special trip, right? Okay, so there might be a little less awe and reverence in those guy’s voices as they point me out to their kids, maybe I wouldn’t make the cover of American Manly Man magazine, but what the heck, right? As far as I was concerned, it still counts.

Then, out of the blue, disaster struck: I’d been so careful to make sure I had the right number of bolts, fender washers, lock washers. How did I manage to forget nuts? That’s just stupid. Who forgets nuts? My delusions of grandeur came crashing down around my ears. I was just an ordinary guy after all (and don’t say I told you so; especially you guys. You know you think the same thing every time you go to Lowe’s when you start a project).

It was all downhill after that. I managed to scrounge enough nuts by raiding my brother-in-law’s garage (thanks Ron!) to get one sideboard built. Then came the final blow; I couldn’t get the sideboard off the truck. When I was a kid, we had heavier sideboards than these, and I could just pop them out by myself no problem. Well not anymore. I fought and fought, but couldn’t get them out. Too short, too out of shape, too weak, too pitiful. Guys were going to be pointing me out to their sons with snickers, “Look, it’s HIM, heheheheh. He’s the ONE, hahahaha.” I felt so ashamed.

I had to wait until my wife, the lovely and tall Jess, came home from work so she could help me. My humiliation was complete.

Today wasn’t shaping up to be much better. When I got up, I was in fairly excruciating pain. Apparently, I strained every muscle I have, trying to get that stupid sideboard out. Everything hurts. I’m moving even more stiffly and robotically than normal. I am a tower of pain (okay, more of a well-rounded mound of pain, but you get the picture). I wanted to do some writing for fun, so I came to the computer and started checking out the Facebook, looking for inspiration. Nothing. just the usual round of political rants from both sides of the fence. It was really bumming me out.

I wanted to write something funny, something to brighten at least my own day, but couldn’t think of a thing. Everywhere I looked, just the usual depressing stuff; Terrorists, greedy capitalists, free-loading socialists, abortion, gun control, mass shootings, religious rants, etc. You know, Wednesday. There was nothing funny in the world. Everything sucked. Everybody sucked. I sucked.

In the midst of all this suckage, I gave up. I decided that I’d get some housework done. I managed to brush my teeth and take a shower without too much pain or self-loathing. I started in on the kitchen. Now I won’t say it’s clean, but I did manage to get the dishes done and all of the current bio-hazards taken care of. I started to do the laundry, but it turned out we’re out of softener. It’s no big deal to me, but the civilized and sophisticated Jess clings to a higher standard than I, so I just gave up until I could get some.

That left me with the computer. I remembered that we English geeks are having a white elephant gift exchange at the writing center tomorrow, so I decided to burn some cd’s for it. I know that technically it’s copyright infringement, and I’m against it, but I also figure that none of them have ever heard of these bands, and if one of these discs persuades someone to buy an album, then I’ve done the band a favor. So I started working on it. I put one or two songs from each album on a disc, enough to give a taste of each band’s oeuvre, without getting too carried away.

As a result, I spent about two hours just listening to music. Not just music though. Great music. Lucero, Todd Snider, Jay Farrar, and many others. Before I knew it, I felt so much better. Not physically of course, it still hurts to move anything but my fingers, but spiritually. The music reminded me of how blessed I am. I’ve got a beautiful and fantastic wife, the lovely and loving Jess, and great friends and family. I’ve got what’s left of my health, and my brain still functions pretty well. I’ve got a warm house, dependable transportation, and plenty of food. I’m not wealthy (financially anyway), but I’m doing okay. I don’t want for anything (other than a pain- and diet-free way to lose weight). I’m a lucky, no – check that – blessed guy.

I think about all the people, both in this country and out of it, who can’t say the same. People who live in no-shit real poverty. People whose neighborhoods are war zones, literally. People who actually have to worry about freezing to death in the winter, every winter. People who can’t feed their children. People who look at me and those like me like we’re Donald Trump (wealthy, I mean, not assholes). I think about that, and I’m glad I’ve got the time to take coats and gloves and stuff to S. Dakota, that I’ve got friends who can donate that stuff. I’m glad I’ve got a dependable truck and funds to make that drive. I’m glad I live in a country that people still want to come to because they believe it’ll make their lives better to be Americans (and I do believe that’s why 99.9 percent of them come).

Sometimes I just need a minute and a good song to remind me that things really aren’t as bad as I think; at least not for me. The trick is to keep trying to take what I’ve been blessed with to make somebody else’s life better too.

More Great Movies You Might Not Have Heard Of: Foreign Film Edition

Arts, Movies

Okay, you can breathe a sigh of relief; this post has absolutely nothing to do with politics, religion, philosophy, ethics, or anything important. This one is just about movies. I love movies. All kinds of movies, but especially horror, suspense, action, and comedies. The following movie recommendations are all foreign movies, but from English-speaking countries (except Big Bad Wolves, which is Israeli), so you can enjoy these little gems without worrying about subtitles. They are all also available through Netflix, as well as other sources, I’m sure.

I will also try not to give away too much info. If you find your interest piqued, it’s easy enough to find all of the synopsis’ (synopsi? synopsis’s?) and spoilers you want on IMDB, Netflix, etc.

I’m sticking with the 5 ***** rating system, since I still don’t know how to make a star.

Housebound ****

A horror-comedy from New Zealand, about a young woman who is an incredibly incompetent criminal, as well as a thoroughly unpleasant person who is placed under house arrest – in her mother’s house, which she comes to suspect is haunted. Apparently New Zealand’s penal system is quite different from ours, but it makes for a darned entertaining movie. It is pretty suspenseful and funny, and much better than I expected it to be. The lead character is such a horrible person at the beginning, I thought it was going to be impossible to empathize with her, but she pulled it off.

Warning! Lots and lots of bad language.

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead ****

Another one from New Zealand, this time, a low-budget zombie flick. Almost a zombie-movie-meets-Mad-Max, with a disco-loving mad scientist, with gallons of gore, an off-beat, Evil Dead 2 sense of humor, and at least two or three new twists on the genre (at least as far as I know they’re new). It’s not going to change your life, but, if you like zombies, you should enjoy this, especially if you liked Shaun of the Dead, Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, and others of that nature.

Warning! Tons of violence, gallons of gore, lots and lots of bad language (I mean, c’mon, it’s a zombie movie, what do you expect?).

Grabbers ****

Another horror-comedy, this time from Ireland. A small island just off the coast of Ireland is invaded by vampiric, alien, Octomonsters, which are, fortunately, allergic to alcohol. Can an entire Irish village stay drunk long enough to beat the alien invasion? Low-budget, but pretty good special effects, along with a nice dose of Irish hominess, lots of laughs, and a few thrills make this an above-average comedic creature-feature, sort of an alcohol-fueled Irish Tremors.

Warning! Lots of drinking and bad language. Some gore and violence.

A Lonely Place To Die *****

This one is a straight-up thriller, from the U.K. Five friends mountaineering in the Scottish Highlands run afoul of human traffickers. An excellent thriller, with beautiful scenery, and some real shocks and scares. A no-kidding, edge-of-your-seat, nail-biter.

Warning! Violence and bad language.

Alan Partridge ****

Alan Partridge is a movie based on a character from BBC-TV played by Steve Coogan. Alan Partridge is the worst TV show host in the world, and, in the movie, has been relegated to hosting a mid-morning radio show in the Midlands. A disgruntled employee takes the radio station hostage, and it’s up to Alan to save the day. If you’re familiar with the character, then you know what you’re getting. If you’re not, you can check him out in the BBC-TV series, Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, and Mid-Morning Matters. He’s narcissistic, oblivious, selfish, childish, and completely self-unaware. They are very funny (and very British) shows, and the movie Alan Partridge puts the character in the middle of a typical Bruce Willis-type situation. Extremely funny if you like British humor.

Warning! Bad language and some violence, but definitely the tamest movie on this list, content-wise.

 

Big Bad Wolves ****

Okay, it’s an Israeli film, which means if you don’t speak Hebrew, you’re gonna need the subtitles, but it’s well worth it. A maverick cop screws up the bust of a man suspected of killing children, and goes after the guy outside the system, and ends up joining forces with the father of one of the victims. It’s a grim and grisly vigilante/revenge movie that stops shy of the torture porn sub-genre, but still has some harrowing scenes involving torture. It is, however, never gratuitous, and the tension is relieved periodically by a healthy dose of humor. It’s also interesting in it’s examination of torture as a legitimate information-gathering instrument, as well as the ethical dilemma’s faced by all of the characters. It’s an excellent movie that gets right up against the grindhouse/gratuitous violence and bloodshed line, but never goes over it, and never looses sight of the ultimate question at the root of the movie: Did the suspect do it, and where do good men draw the line to find out?

Warning! Extreme violence and bad language.

Four Lions *****

British comedy about 5 homegrown Muslim British Jihadi’s. Granted, not the most conventional subject for comic treatment, but it works here. Extremely funny without ever making light of the damage or harm that extremists/terrorists do. A hard movie to describe, and an even harder one to make someone want to see, but if you take the time, it’ll make you laugh a lot, and make you think long after you stop laughing. Best movie in this list. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Warning! The usual, violence and bad language.

Anyway, I hope you’ll take the time to check out some of these great movies. They are all well worth seeing. Enjoy!

A Kentucky Courtship: Full Story

Arts, fiction, Fiction

Okay, so here’s the full version of my award-winning story, “A Kentucky Courtship” (yes, I know I’ve beaten that “award-winning” horse to death, but give me a break, it’s pretty much the first thing I’ve ever won. I’ll give it a rest after this.). I know that several have expressed an interest in reading it, and I figure that if they haven’t ordered a copy of Tributaries, the journal it was printed in, by now, they’re not going to (although it is free).

Seriously though, if you haven’t ordered a copy of Tributaries, you should. It’s got 2 more stories by me, some really, really good non-fiction covering subjects like autism and PTSD, Poetry, and Artwork by some really good writers and artists. It’s definitely worth the price (did I mention it’s free?).

Also, I’m trying to figure out how this PDF thing works, so this is sort of an experiment. Anyway, enjoy!

 

The Author, with the original John and Rose.
The Author, with the original John and Rose.

Kentucky courtship final draft

A Kentucky Courtship – IUE Tributaries 1st Prize for Fiction 2015

All About Me, Arts, Fiction, fiction

Okay, so I’m pretty excited about this. Tributaries, Indiana University East’s Journal of Creative Writing has finally come out, and my story “A Kentucky Courtship” won 1st prize for fiction. I decided to post part of it here, as kind of a teaser. If you want the whole thing, you can order it from the Tributaries website: http://www.iue.edu/tributaries/. Also, I think it might be free (although I could be wrong. It’s happened before). Even if it’s not, you’ll not only get my story, based on John and Rose Mullins, my dad’s parents, you’ll also get another story of mine about them, a non-fiction essay by me, and some really, really good writing by some people way more talented than me. There are stories and essays that’ll make you laugh, make you cry, possibly make you scratch your head and say whuuuuut? but they’ll make you think. There are also links to sample stories on the website if you don’t want to take my word for it (and who could blame you?).

Anyway, with no further ado, here’s the teaser for “A Kentucky Courtship”.

The Author, with the original John and Rose.
The Author, with the original John and Rose.

 

A Kentucky Courtship
By
Lloyd Mullins

Romance is for the birds. That was my first thought after the bullet took my hat off. Well, not quite; my first thought was, “Shit!” My reflections on the nature of romance followed, just as soon as I’d found a suitable tree to hide behind. It was romance that had brought me to this pass, and not even my romance. My brother Elvin was hunkered down behind a log, one hand over his eye while the blood poured out. “God, please don’t let him die, I don’t want no feud with anybody this handy with a gun, or this free with ammunition,” I prayed.
*****
My name is Alvin Cross, and I was fourteen years old in the fall of 1919. The trouble had all started when my older brother Elvin had taken to courting Rose LeRoy, whose father had some good bottomland right next to our farm. Rose was pretty enough, but that acreage was really what Elvin was in love with. Elvin was already a prosperous man, but if he could add that land to his own, he’d be the biggest landowner in the county. Between that, the dry-goods store in town, and the four stills he had hidden away back in the hills, and Elvin would be a man to be reckoned with. A man with that kind of money could write his own ticket. (And by the way, if you think Elvin and Alvin sounds ridiculous, how do you think our sister Alvinia felt? Our folks were good people, but kind of unimaginative in the naming department.)

Unfortunately, Rose wasn’t in a hurry to get hitched. To tell the truth, I think she scared most of the young fellers to death. I know she scared me. She worked in the fields as hard as any man, and took no guff from anybody. She was tall and strong, and she had a fierce kind of personality that made her even more intimidating. She didn’t seem too impressed with Elvin’s flashy ways, and she was death on drinking, so him running so much ‘shine wasn’t making it any easier.

“Alvin,” Elvin told me, “I ain’t never seen a woman so down on a man making a living. Men are going to drink. At least the ‘shine I cook is good, and not that busthead swill that killed her brother.”

Then the war ended, and John Andrews came home. Rose and him had had an understanding, until he’d left for France with Pershing. She’d given him up when his rare letters stopped coming altogether, especially after the news about the Marne, and Belleau Wood. Everybody just assumed he was dead, right up until he stepped off the train in Cumberland. Rose was some put out with John, but when Elvin heard through the grapevine that John was going to call on her anyway, he sent me along to spy things out and make sure she was as mad as she seemed.

“Get up close enough you can hear, but don’t let them see you,” Elvin said. “I ain’t looking to get on her bad side, but I want to know where things stand.”

So that was how I come to be hiding in the bushes along the side of Rose’s daddy’s yard when John Andrews come to call. He come walking down the road in his uniform, with a couple important-looking medals hanging off him, looking like Black Jack Pershing himself. He wasn’t big, not more than half-again bigger than me, and I was scrawny in them days, but he seemed to take up an awful lot of space for such a little feller. He come sauntering along with a bunch of flowers in his hand.

Rose was sitting on the porch with her momma and daddy, and John walked right up to the bottom step. “Evening Rose. Evening Mister and Missus LeRoy.”

“Why daddy, look who it is. If it isn’t John Andrews the heroic Kentucky fighting man. We all thought you were dead, John. Either that, or taken up with one of those fancy French gals. Why else would you stop writing, and after all we’d said before you left.”

“Rose, darlin’, I just didn’t think there was any way I was going to survive. I felt like you was waiting on a ghost, and so I gave you up. But I’m back now, back and in one piece.”

“Don’t you ‘Rose darling’ me, John Andrews,” said Rose, coming down off the porch like a scalded cat and stepping up nose-to-nose with him with her fists on her hips, “I’m not your ‘darlin’, not anymore, and it’s your own fault. I’d have waited until hell froze over for you to come back, but you couldn’t even bother to write, over there, having your big adventure. When you stopped writing, was it me you were thinking of, or was it those French maddymoselles?”
“Now you need to stop that line, before you make me mad,” John said, as he took a step back. “You know there ain’t no woman for me but you, not then, not now, and not ever. I was too busy trying not to get shot or gassed or bayonetted, to have time to think about women.”

“Well, I know one woman you should have taken time to think about!” she snapped, stepping right into him. Now everyone in those mountains knew that John Andrews was a hard man, but it was him that backed away. Like I said, Rose was an intimidating woman. “You think you’re going to waltz in here with a few medals on your chest, and I’m just going to come running, well you’ve got another think coming. You’re not the only bull in these fields, you know.” She kept right on walking into him, backing him up, right toward where I was hid out, so everything they said got clearer and clearer.

“Well now, what the hell are . . .”

“Don’t you think that kind of salty language will work on me! That sort of thing may impress those half-wit friends of yours, but it carries no water with me!”

“Now Rose, I didn’t mean . . .”

“I know what you meant, and I don’t care. I cried myself to sleep for weeks over you. Well, I’m all cried out. Now I’m just mad, so you’d better get used to it, or stop coming around!”

I looked up toward the house to see how Rose’s folks was taking this. They were drinking sweet tea and enjoying the show.
Out in the yard, Rose was still going after John like a hound after a coon, and he was starting to look as eager to get away as that coon. As he backed away, he said, “Now Rose, don’t go saying nothing you’ll be sorry for later . . .”

“The only thing I’ll be sorry about is that I’m too much of a lady to tell you what I really think.”

Well, there’s only so much abuse a man can take, and he’d had enough. He stepped forward and grabbed hold of her, and pulled her toward him to kiss her quiet, like I’ve seen them do in the pictures. The only thing he accomplished was to add velocity to the knee she fired like a mortar shell into his . . . well you get the point. John certainly did. He let out a high-pitched groan as his eyes rolled back in his head, and he changed from pulling her to him to clinging to her for support. Like I said, she took no guff from no one.

Despite myself, I let out a groan in sympathy, but they were so intent on each other that neither noticed. I didn’t reckon he’d be much competition to Elvin, at least not for a while.

John had recovered himself enough to let go of Rose, and stood gagging and retching, hands on his knees. “Good God Rose,” he gasped, “if you hate me that much, couldn’t you just shoot me?”

“I don’t hate you John,” she smiled, as she petted his back like he was her dog. “I just don’t want you thinking you can just waltz in here like Douglas Fairbanks and sweep me off my feet. If you want back in my good graces, you’ve got some work to do. You can start by walking me to church next Sunday.”

So John Andrews staggered down the road and up the mountain to his cabin, those flowers wilting in his hand, and Rose LeRoy stood there watching him go. Then she turned and stared daggers at the brush where I was hiding. She didn’t say nothing, but I tell you, that look made my blood run cold. I wanted no part in getting on the bad side of that woman. Eventually, she went off to work in the garden, humming to herself as she hoed weeds from the rows of corn.
Once the coast was clear, I slid out for a rondeevoo with Elvin. He laughed and laughed when he heard about that kick.

“Hot damn, Alvin boy!” Elvin gloated. “You know who the big bull in these fields is, don’t you? Old John Andrews better hunt himself up another heifer, or this bull’s going to give him the horn. ‘Course, from the sound of that kick, she may have done pulled his horns in for him already.”

“They say he’s a bad man to cross, Elvin.”

Elvin rolled his eyes, “Hell, boy, you heard Rose. He ain’t got nothing to offer but some army tinware, and she ain’t impressed. She knows he ain’t got a pot to piss in. I won’t have to cross him. It’s him should worry about crossing me.”
I wasn’t so sure. Elvin hadn’t seen the way she looked at John when his back was turned, walking away.

 

Okay, so you know you want more. So go the the Tributaries website and get more. You’ll be glad you did.

Things I don’t understand #3: Harry Potter and the Epicization of Everything

All About Me, Arts, Books and Literature, Culture, Movies, Politics & Culture

So I’m sitting in class today, and the professor is telling us about a meeting of the Honors Club that she’d like us to go to. She’s very excited about it, and then drops what she apparently thinks will be the big draw: the subject for discussion at the meeting will be . . . wait for it . . . HARRY POTTER!!!!! I’ll wait while you seethe in jealousy at the fact that you won’t be able to attend. Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.

Oddly enough, I lost all interest in attending at that precise moment. I mean, seriously, this is college. This is where you’re supposed to get educated, to learn about new ideas, big ideas, and discuss them, and solve all the problems of the world, and harness all of our youthful enthusiasm (and I’m writing as a typical college student here, and not the crusty old fart that I actually am. What can I say, I got to the game late. Very Very Late.) to go out and set the world to rights. And the Honors Club (Arguably, perhaps even dubiously) the best and the brightest that the campus has to offer is meeting to discuss HARRY POTTER!!!!!

To be honest, I found it to be more than a little disconcerting. Can anybody please explain to me what is the big deal? Now I’ll admit that I’ve never actually read any of them. I did watch the first movie, and I’ve seen bits and pieces of the others. Nothing that I’ve seen has made me think that I’m missing anything. And yet, I’m surrounded by people, intelligent people (or at least people that I consider intelligent) and they freaking’ looooove HARRY POTTER!!!!! (Note. Please understand that the exclamation marks are an attempt to mimic the enthusiasm that otherwise normal people feel for HARRY POTTER!!!!! They are not meant to affect the entire sentence preceding the name HARRY POTTER!!!!! Please also note that I am using 5 exclamation marks, and all capital letters, both universally accepted signs of a diseased mind.)

Why are all these otherwise reasonably intelligent people so worked up about a series of children’s books? Is there anything actually original in them? Anything that hasn’t been done before about a thousand times? Or is it, as I suspect, just a matter of packaging and marketing? The special effects are SOOOO good!

Honestly, HARRY POTTER!!!!! isn’t the only aspect of modern popular culture (and I’m using the term loosely) that I don’t understand. Take the Hunger Games. Please. I took this kid I know to see one of them, and he was so excited. When it was over, I asked him what the big deal is. He started going on about how new and fresh it was, how it had never been done before, etc., etc. He was pretty much unfazed, even when I told him that it had been done before, in the Richard Bachman stories The Long Walk, and The Running Man, and that they had even made a movie out of The Running Man, with Arnold Schwarzeneggar, complete with people killing each other on a game show with a flaky host in a dystopian future, and it was done 30-40 years ago. Ok, I’ll grant you that Jennifer Lawrence is a whole lot hotter than Arnold, but still. Why did they need three books to basically cover something that Stephen King (Bachman was a nom de plume) did in two short and unrelated novellas?

Why does everything have to be so epic? Look at The Hobbit. One of the greatest and best-loved adventure stories of the 20th century. Then Peter Jackson gets hold of it, and it becomes a 9-hour epic. Of course, he had to make up a ton of stuff that wasn’t in the book in order to pad a great adventure into an epic. Granted, the movies are well made (as are the HARRY POTTER!!!!! and Hunger Games movies), but that’s not the point. My dad had a saying, “10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag” to describe a situation where too much stuff is crammed in. These epics have the opposite problem, “5 pounds of gold in a 10 pound bag of shit”. There is lots of good stuff, even in these movies, but it’s completely overwhelmed by all the pointless, repetitious, and just dull filler. And seriously, what’s the deal with the freaking Elves defying gravity and skateboarding across everything? That looked stupid, even in the Disney animated version of  Tarzan.

It’s not just movies, or movie series either. This epicization extends to individual scenes. The interminable fight scenes where, 5 minutes into it, I’m thinking, don’t any of these bad guys have a gun? Somebody please take two steps back and shoot Bruce Willis (or Stallone, or Jason Statham, or Jet Li, or whoever’s kung-fuing his way through hordes of bad guys tonight), so it can end. I don’t care if the bad guys win, I just want this fight to end. Then there’s the ever-popular chase scene. Those have gotten so endless that I don’t even pause the movie to go to the bathroom. Frankly, they’ve gotten so big they’re just dull. Everybody is so busy making things bigger, better, louder, (insert your own favorite _____er here).

It’s really kind of silly, but we just keep buying it. Literally. We bought the DVD, and the video game, and the movie-tie-in version of the book, and the soundtrack, and then the Blur-Ray, and then the Director’s Cut, and then the 10th anniversary edition (because it’s got all those cool “special” features), and the DVD’s and Blu-Rays of all the sequels, because, even though they weren’t really as good as the first, and the last 2 or 3 sucked, it would be aesthetically wrong to not have the whole epic.

It’s even affecting real life. People can’t just like anything any more, they have to be “obsessed” with it. I know people who are “obsessed” with this book, that author, that director, that movie series, those shoes, that tv show, the new flavor at Starbucks. Just liking it isn’t enough. Even loving it isn’t enough. Of course, maybe those people need to become obsessed briefly with a dictionary.

Now I’ll grant that when I was a kid, I got pretty carried away with a lot of things. Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings were my big things. But I got over it. I still really like them, but I’m certainly not obsessed with them. Honestly, I’ve still got a few things like authors that I get carried away with, and will buy pretty much anything they write. I like them a lot, and recommend them to everybody. But I also realize that they’re not everybody’s cup of tea. Frankly, I’d feel a little silly enthusing over a book or movie like a 12 year-old girl with a new copy of Tiger Beat with a fold-out of Justin Bieber (speaking of things I don’t understand).

I think it probably concerns me most because it makes me feel more mature in comparison to those overly enthusiastic fans of anything. Honestly, anything that makes me feel like the adult in any situation concerns me because I know how phenomenally immature I really am.

I just don’t understand.

 

Rich Mullins movie. Another freaking post.

All About Me, Arts, Culture, Movies, Religion

I got a comment on a previous post about the movie “Ragamuffin”. It was a very nice post from a very nice guy who was disappointed in the movie. He was disappointed that they didn’t show more of Wayne’s funny, charming side. That seems to be a fairly common complaint, so I thought I’d post my response to him here. Keep in mind that I don’t speak for any of the folks who made the movie. This is all my opinion, and mine alone. That said . . .

 

Hey Tom – I think you’re kinda missing the point of the movie. They could have gone with a different angle (and actor) and shown Wayne’s charming, witty, funny side, but that’s the side everyone knows, and the side everyone (well a lot of people anyway) emulates. The side that I think most of us look at and say, “Why aren’t I like that?” But the upshot of making that movie would have just been preaching to the choir, and ultimately just glorifying Wayne as some kind of paragon of Christianity. Let’s face it, if you want that kind of stuff, you can find a shitload without really even trying. Just go to U-tube. What they were trying to do was make a movie that we could all watch and say, “Holy shit, I am just like Rich Mullins in so many ways! Maybe God loves me too.” A movie that ultimately glorifies God and not a musician who sang about him. Don’t get me wrong, I think Wayne was a good man, and a good Christian, if there is such a thing (at the very least, he was a better Christian than me), but I think part of the problem today is this whole cult of personality that has taken over. Even the “real” news is inundated with pointless pablum about celebrities and how great this one is or how bad that one is. The reason for this is that’s what the people apparently want. To hold up Miley Cyrus or Lindsey Lohan as examples of how terrible people are, or to hold up Tom Hanks or Princess Diana or Rich Mullins as examples of what we all ought to try to be. At the very least, us Christians ought to know better, but instead, we make heroes out of guys like Wayne or Amy Grant or Billy Graham, and have the nerve to be offended when we find out they’re just as jacked up as we are. It’s especially bad once somebody like that dies, whether that someone is a celebrity or just a family member. Once they’re dead, we sanctify them. We block out all the bad stuff about them, or, if we can’t block it out, we make it funny and endearing. I’ve lost both parents, a brother and a sister, and did that to all of them. Only when this movie came out did I really start dealing with all of it. Up til now, recognizing the bad aspects of their personalities and behavior seemed like a betrayal of their memory. Now that I’ve started actually dealing with it though, I realize that to deny those aspects or to try to laugh them off is really robbing them of their humanity, and that is unfair to them, and unfair to myself. I love and miss them all, but if I could have them back, I’d want them back warts and all, because that’s who they were. I think if you really want to know who Rich Mullins was, then the movie they made tells a necessary part, especially when taken in context with all the truly wonderful things about him that everyone already knows.

Well, sorry about getting on my soapbox. I do understand where you’re coming from, and I hope my little rant here won’t stop you from reading more (normally, I’m a lot funnier). Anyway, take care and thanks for reading.

 

God, Dad, Me, and Rich Mullins: A Few Thoughts On Rejection

All About Me, Arts, Culture, Movies, Politics & Culture, Religion

There's a phrase you never thought you'd associate with me. Try to get it out of your head though. hahahahaha
There’s a phrase you never thought you’d associate with me. Try to get it out of your head though. hahahahaha. Seriously though, I look like an Irish Buddha. Kinda disturbing, huh?

I wrote this a few weeks ago during a showing of “Ragamuffin: The True Story of Rich Mullins”. I’ve put off publishing it because I’m afraid it’s a little bit muddy. I know what I want to say, I’m just not sure that this says it. I hate to be misunderstood. I hope this makes sense. Feel free to let me know what you think.

I’m sitting in Mr. Coblentz’ old Sunday school classroom in our church basement. Upstairs we’re playing the 3rd showing of the movie “Ragamuffin”, the story of the gospel musician, Rich Mullins, my brother Wayne (sorry, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to call him Rich). This being the 3rd showing this weekend, I’m kind of reaching critical mass with it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good movie, in many ways, a great movie, but it’s painful to watch, for me anyway. It’s even more painful, or maybe difficult, or emotional, or uncomfortable are better terms, to watch it here, in the church we grew up in. Not only does it bring back memories of Wayne, but also of Mom and Dad, my sister Deb, Harold and Martha Coblentz, Bill and Betty Cox, Naomi Green, and so many more that I’ll never see again, at least not in this life. It makes me remember how much I miss them all, and how much I owe to them, and to the folks who are still here. I’m not going to mention any of their names; I’m pretty sure that would just embarrass them. Suffice to say, they are the ones who were here when I was growing up. These are the people who, when I moved back home after being gone for 20 years, welcomed me back with friendly smiles and open arms. The people who, most of all, should have known better. These are the heroes of my own paltry faith, and, I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say, of generations of kids who’ve been lucky enough to grow up in this church.

As far as the movie goes, much has been made of Wayne and Dad’s broken relationship in the movie. I can assure you that it was both much worse, and much better than it’s portrayed in the movie. The movie’s portrayal of their relationship seems, as far as I can gather from reading people’s comments on the Facebook, to be helping a lot of people who had dads like mine, and I’m glad. I’m also glad that Mel Fair is a good enough actor to show the pain Dad felt over that relationship. I think he gave an outstanding, nuanced performance in a very tough role. I think though, that a large aspect of that broken relationship has been missed (or maybe it’s just me. I’ve seen this thing about 6 or 7 times, and just realized it this weekend). Everybody seems to get that Wayne’s broken relationship with Dad is symbolic of his broken relationship with God. That he kept trying to get Dad to love and accept him, and Dad just couldn’t do it. That’s true, as far as it goes, but it seems to me that that is the smaller part. To understand the bigger part, I think you have to understand how we all felt about Dad (please keep in mind that this is all based on my own feelings, and my perceptions of my siblings feelings. I do not presume to speak authoritatively for any of my brothers or sisters). When I was little I saw my Dad as God. Not the touchy-feely, “footprints-in-the-sand” God of the New Testament, but the wrathful, “I love you, but for your own good I’ll kick your ass if you don’t do as I say” God of the Old Testament. Dad was everything a man should be, everything the Old Testament said God was. He was stern, he was tough, he was pissed. He was DOING THIS FOR OUR OWN GOOD. He was also perfect, or at least a perfectionist. Dad could make anything, he could fix anything. Things that he fixed lasted longer than one fresh from the store. He could look at a fistful of nuts, and pick out the exact size and thread that he needed. A lot of the reason for the disconnect between Dad and me (and I’m pretty sure the rest of us), wasn’t that Dad was tough, or that he was emotionally distant, it was that we could never measure up. We were all, in slightly varying degrees, totally incompetent at anything practical. We tried and tried, but we were all trainwrecks, a danger to ourselves and others. I think that was the root cause of the disconnect between all of us and Dad. We felt inadequate. It wasn’t that Dad never said he loved us, we knew he did. It wasn’t that he expected us to be as good at things as he was. It was pretty obvious from an early age that none of us were very good at anything practical. He did expect us to do our best, and REALLY our best, not that “I’m doing my best” that we all pull out when we’re half-assing something we don’t really want to do at all. Dad yelled at me all the time when we were working together, but as I think back, I can’t think of a time when he ever said a cross word to me when I really was doing the best that I could. He had more confidence and faith in us than we did. I think a lot of the problem was not that Dad rejected Wayne, but that Wayne rejected Dad, and it is in this that I think Wayne and Dad’s broken relationship represents the broken relationship with God. Of course, it’s possible that I’m just projecting my own issues.

Most of the problem between me and Dad came not from Dad, but from me. I knew I couldn’t be as good, or as tough, or as hard-working, or as right as he was, and so, I rebelled. I couldn’t understand how he could love me as I was, because I knew I wasn’t good enough. I’d find some other way to prove I was good enough. So, as years went by, I found myself constantly looking for his approval. I tried so hard to do the right thing, on so many things, and fell short on pretty much all of them. It never occurred to me that it wasn’t him I was failing, it was myself. Dad loved me just the way I was, even when I was doing some just remarkably stupid things (and if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s finding remarkably stupid things to do). Unfortunately, Dad died just as I was getting old enough, or mature enough, to really appreciate him, and to really know that, although he didn’t approve of the stupid things I did, that he loved me just as I am. I think that a lot of the reason that Wayne didn’t feel God’s love, that many of us feel that way, is that we believe in God, but we KNOW us. I mean seriously, how could a perfect God love me? I know what kind of stupid things I get up to. I know that a lot of the things I really want to do are things I shouldn’t do (but man, do they look like fun!). I know I don’t measure up to God even in my everyday life, when I’m trying to do the things I’m “supposed” to. I know I’m not cutting the theological mustard even on the little things. I know I eat too much, drink too much, cuss too much, smoke too much, don’t pay enough attention to my kids or wife, don’t make enough money, aren’t a good steward of my blessings, and God help me if he comes back in the evening, because it’s far more likely he’ll find me watching Game of Thrones or The Wolf of Wall Street than reading the bible. I also suspect strongly that I am not alone in this. How could God love losers like us? You’d have to go all the way back to Exodus to find another bunch as venal, fickle, unfaithful, self-righteous, and dim-witted as I am. And I’m talking about those of us who go to church regularly, and really try to follow God. Well, you might not have to go back to Exodus. Take a good look at the disciples sometime (I know I don’t measure up to those guys, and they lived with Jesus for 3 years and still didn’t seem to get it, so how much do I suck?). So a lot of us rebel. We’ll be as good as we can, and that’s gonna have to be good enough for God. After all, we’re still a lot better than a lot of people we could mention. I mean, aren’t we all the way God made us? Then, because we know in our heart of hearts that that’s just a load of rationalization bullshit, we feel even worse, like even bigger losers, and push God farther away. It seems to me that what appealed to Wayne about Brennan Manning’s message is that it seems to say (to me anyway),“You are as God made you. You’re not perfect, but he loves you anyway. So stop trying to make him love you, and be the YOU that God made. Do your best, your REAL best, and when you fail, and you will, remember that God will always love you.” Now I’ve read that some people believe that the Ragamuffin Gospel is just a lot of new-age hippie, I’m ok, you’re ok bullshit, but I disagree. I don’t see it as a license to just do whatever you want because, “That’s how God made me.” It seems to me that it is a way to move the stumbling blocks that keep us from loving God, to keep from just giving up. To remind us that God is bigger than we are, is bigger than our sin, our weakness, so that we can always see him, always find our way back to him. I think the question we’re really asking isn’t, “How can God love me?” but “How can I make him stop?” Because we just get tired of feeling like losers all the time, and if we can get him to turn his back on us, we won’t be reminded constantly of how far short we fall. Fortunately, it’s not up to us. He loves us whether we want him to or not, whether we deserve it or not.

A common (I think) way of referring to God as “our rock”, and he is. He is always there, and always Himself. But there’s a big old ocean of crap out there too, and we’re us. We’re prone to want to slip down the Rock, just to soak our feet, and end up getting washed off. But when you get washed off, you don’t say, “Well, that’s it for me, I don’t deserve to be on the Rock. I’ll just drown in this ocean of crap. In fact, I think I LIKE this crap. This is great crap! I can’t believe I was missing out on all this crap!” Well, you shouldn’t anyway, but that’s exactly what a lot of us seem to do, and so, down we sink, sucking in as much crap as we can, all the while congratulating ourselves on how much smarter and more sophisticated we are than all those poor saps sitting up there on the Rock. In fact, we’ll just be our own rock, or make our own rock, out of sex or drugs or booze or money or power or whatever trips our own particular trigger. Some of us even manage to be quite happy in our ocean of crap, sitting on our own personal rocks. But it is all a lie. There is only one Rock. Accept no substitute.

All of which brings me back to Dad. Dad didn’t bust our asses because he was mad at us. If he was mad at anyone, it was himself (most of the time anyway). He was hard on us because he loved us, and he knew the world wasn’t about to give us a break. If he hadn’t taught Wayne the value of hard work, Wayne wouldn’t have worked so hard at writing and performing. If he hadn’t taught Wayne to be tough, the music business would have chewed him up and spit him out like it has so many others. If he hadn’t taught Wayne that there are more important things than success and money, Wayne wouldn’t have been able to walk away and stay himself, the Wayne that God made and Dad trained.

And that brings me back to Whitewater Christian Church. I let myself get washed off the Rock as a young man, and I sucked down as much of that ocean of crap as I could. It took me quite a while to recognize my mistake, and as a result, I did a lot of damage, both to myself, and to those I love. Eventually though, I found a tractor big enough and powerful enough to pull my head out of my ass, and I started swimming back to the Rock. Our church has helped guide me back. Thinking about the example that those wonderful, loving, flawed people had set for me when I was a kid gives me hope for myself, and I think about them every time I set foot in that church. I know that they weren’t perfect (and to be honest, most of them would probably horrified at the pedestal that my generation has put them on), but they had the courage to try, and the patience and love to keep trying. I’m also comforted when I look around and see so many willing to take their place and continue the tradition established by our forebears. I don’t know that any of us will ever have the positive impact on the kids that those older had on us, but it’s encouraging to see so many willing to try. I feel lucky to be a part of it.