So, lemme get this straight: A man dedicates his life to the practice of non-violence to turn on the conscience of a nation. Not everybody honors his legacy. And here's a song by people who say that they'll honor his legacy by threatening the life of ignorant law-makers.
In this day of cannibalistic music trends (where, again, barely-talented teens with nothing to say run and ruin the urban radio) Nas, like Nat King Cole, wants to be remembered as "Unforgettable" too. Nas seems to want to eat and heave his cake.
These are the movies I’ve seen for the first time over the last two months, as best as I can remember them:
The Last King of
Ice Age II: The Meltdown. I missed the first installment. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I had seen the first. The squirrel (what’s up with the squirrels in these anamorphic movies these days? Why are they all high-strung comic foils? And why do I fall for it every time?) and the primitive, volcano-worshiping slug tribe are easily the highlights of this meandering project.
The History Boys. It’s a good thing this gay love triangle talkie is tempered by a clash between old methods of teaching (as in, teaching for life and “burying our graves”) vs. the newer, administrative-directed and results-oriented methods (in this case, literally teaching to the test). Hence, the title’s two parts: the history of teaching history in the making and - as is the case with so much off-Broadway – boys who like boys.
It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown. (Ok, technically not a movie. But as "Boondocks "creator Aaron McGruder notes, these seasonal specials aren’t made anymore.) Much like Napoleon Dynamite and the strips that this tv special was based on, most of the four-panel stories only serve as loosely-themed vignettes. Still, even though Shultz’s schtick was wearing thin by the early ‘90s (I vividly remember bemoaning the recycling a few years before his death), minor Charlie is still a giant among mortals.
Monster House. I read a review that quoted another reviewer that chastised the male executive producers (Spielberg and Zemeckis) for creating a monster that’s basically an angry woman with an angrier ummm… hole. But credit also goes to the filmmakers (of which a minority of director/producers, if memory serves, is female) to making the first animated horror film for kids that I can think of – complete with a kiddie ending that takes most of the horror out of the rest of the movie. Which, honestly, is fine by me.
Happy Feet. A cute ugly-duckling fable is ruined by a too-cute, reductionist third act. But it got the little ones in the theater on the night after Christmas: SRO some three weeks after it was released.
Hoodwink’d. Hands down, my favorite animated movie of the last year. Maybe one of the best movies I’ve seen within the last year, for sheer force of energy and comic sensibility. Maybe I was just taken in by its cleverness (and significant movie in-jokes), but much like Shaolin Soccer last year, the lack of pretentious depth and ridiculous gags just kept me in high spirits.
*Then again, maybe not...
Merry Christmas from us.Youth Specialties pulled the article after the first week. It was too controversial, they said, and people (most likely Evangelical youth pastors) found it confounding and probably a bit heretical. Youth Specialties also insisted that they found the same article, by Tony Campolo progeny Bart, to be important and that they believed the article had many good points and would be a bit of a flamethrower for good conversation.
Campolo's article found him decrying a God of judgment, a God that would allow little girls to get raped in a heartless world and then walk away from him and his silence. Campolo was attacking (as he often is found in attacking mode - which is nice to hear every once in a while in a sometimes tepid environment of grassroots white American Evangelicalism - as opposed to, say, Pat Robertson's or James Dobson's attack-mode mass media frenzy) a God who would be silent in such excruciating circumstances, and a people and a theology that would defend such a God. God, in his estimation, cannot be simultaneously all-loving and all-powerful.
Reverend Carlton Pearson (the popular mentor of Bishop T. D. Jakes and "Black son" of Oral Roberts) was sitting in his dining room, watching the news on his large tv with his well-fed daughter on his lap, pondering much the same thing while they showed images of ravished and starving children in
They have both come to a similar result, a similar end to a similar plight. The God of judgment is a fake God, a God they will not and cannot believe in any longer. And with that Eternal God of condemnation goes the God of eternal damnation. Hell, to both Carlton Pearson and Bart Campolo, does not exist, except in the hearts, minds and experiences of people while on earth. We have done injustice to God, they both insist, by scaring people to heaven. God must be real, but not the God who would condemn people to hell. Jesus came, they point out, to save the whole world. Add to this universalism Campolo's Open Theology, the idea that God exists fully on our plane of time and can not see (or chooses not to see) the future anymore than you or I.
To all this we must add the voice of one more prophet of our age, the great Pigeon John. In an update of "It's the End of the World (And I Feel Fine)" song popularized by REM (among many others), "As We Know It" finds John confronting a "black man on a white horse" who comes down to earth and "look(s) like Avril and Bill Cosby mixed together." Among terrifying pleas and cries, John faces down Jesus in a seemingly irreverential and accusatory, hurtful voice asks:
What up, Jesus, what up my nickel, my man, can I ask you a couple a questions about the whole danged plan? Why the Holocaust, why the slavery, why the Crusades in the name of bravery? Why you let little girls get molested?... If the fall of Adam and Eve is all it took to leave the whole human race lost and shook, that don't make sense, it don't feel right! But I can see your whole face in the moonlight. Dang you look crazy, you make a n**** wanna cry. Looks like you hold the whole ocean in your eye. Are you crying too?...
I'm freaking mad at you... Why ain't you talking? Why don't you answer me?...
Every step you take is a freaking tragedy!...
In his last verse, after the world is taken up and Pigeon John finds himself flying over the clouds, PJ continues to question, only in a softer, sing-songy style,
What up, Jesus? What up my nickel my man? Can I ask you a couple questions about the whole danged plan? Without an answer, you stretch out your hand with the look in your eyes that you understand all the pain, all the loss, all the confusion, all the ups and the downs are now amusing. And I spent all my life rushing and hustling when I could've just been your friend. We're drinking coffee in the sun, the old and young... and it's ok now.
She hasn't been getting much sleep recently. That's largely due to the fact tat she' pregnant, of course, and the physical and emotional anxieties that allay themselves to the early stages of pregnancy. (Pause. Why, thank you, thank you. Yes, I am very much happy.) But, of course, when the wife doesn't sleep well, neither does the husband.
I often wonder what it will be like in the future. If long-married husbands and wives are so used to the rhythms of each other sleeping that they are more in-tune and therefore able to sleep through the irregularities or sleep less because of them. I doubt I could sleep less.
So, during the week, neither of us slept much. The nights are longer here in
Thanksgiving Day was difficult for us. The whole tryptophan thing was beyond difficult for us, already struggling in the area of lack of sleep. If we knew - mentally - we had to sleep, our bodies took some convincing. The turkey juice not only convinced our entire bodies, it kept us paralyzed in a state of perpetual lack-of-stretchiness. This is a great thing if we were at home and could practice our own good manners however we so danged pleased.
If only 'if' were 'because'.
There's a few things I do know. When the Bears lose, I don't sleep well. When I'm suffered by my students, bosses or peers, I don't sleep well. When I worry about not sleeping well, I don't sleep well. When my wife's need to cuddle me exceeds my breathing capacity, I don't sleep well. When I worry that I've offended my wife and she may want to sleep somewhere else, I don't sleep well. On the occasional nights where she has slept elsewhere, or in the same bed, but separated by the width of a cold shoulder, I don’t sleep well.
But as someone who jealously guards his sleep (and dreads going back to school for that very reason), I wonder how I’ll feel when the newest member of our family invades that sacred ground. I have some friends who have two little girls that they are raising under the philosophy that the children should follow the parents’ schedule rather than the popularized other way around. My wife and I, of course, like this philosophy and – although I’ve not confirmed this with her – both agree that the alternative is a hollow philosophy, a type of sophism run amok among mothers, fathers and Dr. Spock alike.
With the exception of the weekends, night time is the only time to actually see the love of my life, much less speak to her. Often, in embracing and trying to forget our harshly-lighted days, we fall asleep on one of our couches. After a short reading from the Bible, we clock out at about nine o’clock. At six we slowly rise and head-on to our morning routines, neither wanting to free ourselves from the inertia of the warm bed into the cold, uninviting world of the bathroom and, ever more reluctantly, into the cold world of the Near North and Downtown areas of the Town of
I also wonder how much of our talk, and how early in his or her developmental stages, affects the baby jasdye. We know that worry, bad health, positive energy, nutrition, etc., affect the pre-born. But to what degree does interacting with the child before birth impact the child? Or are the mental benefits largely given to the parents? Is it largely just me who would benefit from talking into an imaginary tube in my wife’s belly button to the same imagined baby bounding for joy?
Which reminds me of the biblical scene (shortly before the Magnificat) where the baby inside Elizabeth (John the Baptist) leapt for joy upon hearing Mary’s voice. I wonder how many sleepless nights Mary, heretofore known as The Virgin, must have had upon waiting for the arrival of that miraculous child. She had to worry about her reputation. Her fiancé, Joseph, in fact, worried about his and her reputation. He only kept the woman and baby under strict orders from a shiny man. Mary was known to “ponder… in her heart.” I wonder how often she tossed and turned – or lay silent and still – in bed, concerned about the activities of her saintly, prophetic, but rebellious son. I wonder if she slept the night after they laid him in the tomb; or the night before she rose early to give him his proper burial. I wonder how much sleep she got after realizing that her son was the “firstborn from among the dead,” as one of her son’s later followers would put it.
Something tells me she got quite a bit.
