What You Will

Why you need an editor, 7.26.11

2011-07-26T14:59:00.000-07:00

Acoustic trio (female lead vocals, guitar/vocals, guitar/mandolin/mandola/vocals) arraigning and performing contemporary and traditional Christian worship and praise music are seeking a couple mature and experienced believers/musicians/vocalists to help collaborate with our project.

Well, I've heard worship songs I don't care for, too, but that doesn't make them illegal.

You can't scare me, I'm stickin' with the onion

2011-07-15T23:11:00.000-07:00

The following lyric, unfortunately, was written too late to submit to the Vidalia onion jingle contest, which I just learned about after the fact. Nonetheless:

i'm broke and unemployed, i'm living on the street
i wear a trash bag for a jacket and newspapers on my feet

life is bitter
but those onions are sweet

i used to move among society's elite
i'd point my pinky when i'd drink and wear a napkin when I'd eat
till that fateful dinner party, when my personal chef
used some onions that were bitter and left me with bad breath
i was dumped by my fiancee, i was fired by my boss
the kitchen caught fire, the mansion burned down and they called it a total loss
but one lesson that i learned from all this misery and failure
i'll never touch another onion unless it's a vidalia

life is bitter
but those onions are sweet

i'm a denizen of shelters, a patron of soup kitchens
a careworn face in the regular crowd down at the rescue mission
there's only two conditions on the onions that I'll eat
they'd better be vidalias and they'd better taste sweet
i've been to pecos valley
traveled up to walla walla
i've picked 'em out on maui
but there's no onion like vidalia

life is bitter
but those onions are sweet

No regrets?

2011-02-12T02:33:00.000-08:00

Never trust people who say they have no regrets. A person with no regrets has never made a mistake big enough to learn from; never done anything important enough or risky enough to have unintended results; never had to choose the lesser of two evils. Or, worse yet, he or she HAS done all those things, and yet remains unaffected by their consequences, unencumbered by conscience.

Love and Theft—and Grand Larceny

2010-05-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

Joni Mitchell was recently quoted as saying the Bob Dylan was unoriginal—stealing his musical ideas from other people. (I guess she failed to note that many of Dylan's sources, e.g., Woody Guthrie, weren't exactly noted for originality themselves.)

But there's still a difference between theft of that sort and the kind of theft where two gospel singers in Georgia break into churches and swipe $100,000 worth of equipment. Hey fellas—just because Jesus said he'd come like a thief in the night doesn't mean that you can.

The Tell-Tale Honky-Tonk

2010-05-14T01:21:00.000-07:00

Been thinking the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe might lend themselves to loose adaptation as a gothic country song or two.

I'm a sweet and pleasant feller,
That's what everybody thinks
Because they haven't seen me
When I've had too many drinks.
It's not that I'm addicted,
I just never get enough.
And that's when I can do
Some really wild and crazy stuff.

My cousin Berenice died
And was buried down beneath,
But I went and dug her up again
And pulled out all her teeth.
They were so white and pearly,
And she had all thirty-two,
But honey, don't you worry—
I would never do that to you.

Then when that's finished, perhaps an Ernest Tubb parody:

I hope you're staying cool and moist
Down there between the joists,
As I'm walkin' the floor over you.

Rick Neuheisel, the Rat of Nim?

2009-08-20T23:38:00.000-07:00

I attended a Mariners game with a group from my church the other night. When I found our section and sat down next to a fellow parishioner, Cal Uomoto, he said, "I didn't have you pegged as a sports fan."

There are bigger sports fans than I, but after all I am not only a fan but an occasional sports writer, so it does behoove me to know at least a little bit about most sports. I admit I'm a nerd, but some nerds love some things about some sports. So there.

Here, anyway, is a sports story with some real nerd appeal: a piece in the Seattle Times about how Rick Neuheisel, current UCLA Bruins football coach and former Washington Huskies coach, recruited his new quarterback by convincing him to switch from UW to UCLA. (If you follow Pac-10 football at all, you probably know that Seattleites either admire Slick Rick for being the last Husky coach to win a Rose Bowl, or despise him for being unable to control his players' off-field antics and for betting on NCAA basketball games and lying about it.)

According to the story, Slick Rick won this quarterback over by challenging him to a game. It was nothing involving football or any other sport, but rather a two-person math/logic game played on a marker board. The quarterback in the story calls this game "sticks." When I used to play it with other nerds in junior high, we called it 3-5-7, but according to Wikipedia, mathematicians call it "Nim." In most variations of the game, objects are arranged in three rows of varying lengths. Players take turns removing objects, trying to leave the other player with the last one. Reportedly Slick Rick told this quarterback that he'd have to consider UCLA if he lost 10 games in a row, which is exactly what happened.

In games like Nim, the outcome is often a foregone conclusion if neither player makes a mistake. For example, a correctly played game of tic-tac-toe always ends in a draw (if one player wins, it means the other one screwed up). Slick Rick's version of Nim is set up so that the person who goes second will win the game, provided that he or she understands the strategy and doesn't blow it. (In most versions, the advantage goes to the first player.) The Times story suggests that the quarterback was completely unfamiliar with Nim, so it's no surprise that Rick skunked him. Heck, Rick probably didn't even have to secure for himself the advantage of going second every time, knowing that the kid would most likely make a boo-boo.

Here's the irony in all this: Rick's use of Nim as a recruiting tool means that he is selecting football players who are no good at Nim — in other words, they can't recognize patterns and don't think strategically. I don't know about you, but those are not qualities I would want in a quarterback. Between two quarterbacks with comparable physical capabilities, I'd go for the smarter one. I'd want one who might even be able to beat the coach at Nim now and then.

If you ask me, this story is a cause for Washington fans to celebrate. Clearly, Rick Neuheisel is interested only in players who aren't as smart as Rick Neuheisel — meaning that every other team in the Pac-10 has a better shot at recruiting players who are as smart as Rick Neuheisel. Maybe even smarter.

Probably Bad News: Definitely bad grammar

2009-08-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

We all love to make fun of newspaper gaffes. It's been standard fare on the Tonight Show since your uncle was in diapers.

So it comes as no surprise that there's a blog devoted to this pursuit, Probably Bad News.

However, there's an inescapable irony in mocking poorly written headlines when one's own masthead contains a grammatical error.

That's right, kids, "fails" is a verb, not a noun. Yeah, dude, I know it's all, like, hip and trendy to say "fail" when you really mean "failure," but isn't standard English and probably never will be, because it makes the language more confusing and not less. There's also no earthly reason to capitalize the F in "Fails" on this masthead, since the subhead is clearly intended to be in sentence case. That's two blunders on one word. Then there's "Established MMDCCLXII." In case you were interested, the Roman numeral works out to 2762, which is either a bad joke or a heinous error—take your pick.

Any fool can point out obvious mistakes in journalism, but it's a special kind of fool who fails (ha ha, I'm so clever) to correct his (or her) own mistakes in the process.

Vanity Fair edits Palin

2009-07-24T12:49:00.000-07:00

Editors at Vanity Fair, evidently lacking anything more constructive to do, have produced a marked-up version of Sarah Palin's painfully rambling resignation speech. It's an instructive example of the editor's art, demonstrating conclusively that the best way to improve a piece of writing is often to knock out a few words.

However, there is at least one thing Palin got wrong that Vanity Fair failed to correct. On the last page of the transcript, Palin refers to Alaska's new lieutenant governor, Craig Campbell, as "Lieutenant General." Well, he may indeed be the new lieutenant governor, but in the military he's [the very model of] a [modern] major general. Do I get a king salmon for that catch?

Houston, we have a problem

2009-07-06T01:45:00.000-07:00

I've seen the seventh circle of hell, and it looks like a bagel

Being the possessor of a free sandwich coupon from Noah's Bagels, I thought today might be a fine time to redeem it. So I stopped into Noah's on Queen Anne Sunday after church, with my wife and kid in tow. The wife wanted a corned beef sandwich; I ordered pastrami.

When I presented the coupon to the young lady at the cash register, the very first word she uttered, under her breath, was "Shit!" She stepped away and conferred for a few minutes with the gentleman who'd taken my order. Upon returning to the cash register, she explained that there was some sort of ongoing goofup with the expiration date on these coupons, but that the store would honor the coupon anyhow. (I checked the printed expiration date; it was Dec. 31, 2010.) She wore a name tag with the sobriquet "Houston"; I considered asking whether she had a sister named Whitney, but decided that would be in poor taste.

After a few minutes the sandwiches were furnished, and consumption proceeded. After a couple of bites I examined my sandwich and opined to my wife that although the portion was generous and the flavor was good, what I had received was corned beef, not pastrami. We compared sandwiches and the meat in mine looked identical to that in hers: the wrong color, flavor and seasoning for pastrami, and almost completely devoid of black pepper. However, not wishing to upset the Noah's applecart, I decided to enjoy the sandwich for what it was, and kept eating.

If you buy cold cuts in a grocery store, they often come in a plastic blister pack, which may have a hole punched in it so the pack can be hung on a peg. Sometimes the bit of plastic that formerly occupied said hole may be found still clinging to the blister pack. And once in a great while, I suppose, that bit of plastic could end up in someone's corned beef sandwich. It must not happen very often — I've eaten thousands of sandwiches in my life that were free of plastic bits — but apparently it does happen. Or, I should say, it did happen. I removed the plastic bit from my mouth, put it in the paper-lined basket next to the second half of my sandwich, and while finishing the first half I contemplated what to do next.

The wrong meat in a sandwich was one thing, I decided. Foreign objects were another. I lodged a complaint at the counter, and Houston promised to make me a new pastrami sandwich. I returned to my seat, but after a couple of minutes she beckoned me back to the counter. Turns out the store was out of pastrami, and the genius who'd made the sandwich in the first place decided to just substitute corned beef without telling me. Houston asked what kind of meat I'd prefer in the place of pastrami, and I chose roast beef.

The new sandwich came, minus any stray bits of plastic, and also minus the tasty dill pickle that had accompanied the first sandwich, which I hadn't eaten before I returned it. I shrugged off the pickle, ate half the new sandwich, wrapped up the other half for later, and went home. But here's the kicker: Remember, I had gotten the first sandwich with a coupon. Want to know how I got the coupon? At the same Noah's, a week earlier, I had ordered another pastrami sandwich, using a coupon Noah's had sent me by e-mail. On that occasion, the young gentleman at the counter TOLD me the store was out of pastrami BEFORE he made the sandwich, and substituted chicken breast at my request ... THEN he came to our table and gave me two coupons to compensate for the absence of pastrami. I didn't catch his name, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Houston.

If you're good at math, you already know that I have one coupon left, meaning that Noah's has one more chance to get it right. Here's a thought: if a store runs out of pastrami by 1:30 p.m. two Sundays running, perhaps the manager needs to order more pastrami for Sundays. We'll see if anyone has figured this out by the time I get back there.

What they didn't tell you about Honduras

2009-07-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

I have a couple of friends in Honduras doing relief and missionary work. Here's part of an e-mail I got from one of them regarding the recent coup:

The president of Honduras was behind the election that was supposed to happen last Sunday. Basically he wanted to "revisit" the constitution and change the one term presidential limit.

Last Thursday the Supreme Court handed down the decision for the second time that the election was unconstitutional. The president fired the head of the military the same day. The entire armed forces immediately resigned in respect for their leader. Chavez, president of Venezula announced he would send his troops in. (Uh oh). Then, the president HIMSELF breaks through the army base entrance, goes to the building where the ballots are stored, breaks in HIMSELF, and he and his supporters load the ballots up in the car and drive away with them. This is all on the news. They do not arrest him as we think they are trying to keep peace.

Friday the Supreme Court restores the head of the military to his rightful position and the military is back on board. The president says publicly that his military leader looks like a gorilla. We also hear that the ballot boxes are half full, which everyone finds amusing since the election is not until Sunday! Meanwhile, schools are closed on Friday and some on Monday. Newspapers and radio are telling everyone to stay home on Sunday. Churches and businesses are closed as well.

We awoke to no electricity Sunday morning, not a good sign, then heard that the president had been arrested at his home and flown to Costa Rica. It was peaceful, no bloodshed. We were sad about this decision because he did legally have 6 more months to serve. He had totally lost the support of the Supreme Court, Congress, the military and his power was dwindling rapidly.

They did find $300,000 dollars (in Honduran lempira) on his desk in his office the day the arrested him. This was for bribes for votes. His supporters go to poor areas and ask everyone to give their personal ID card so they can vote for them. They vote, then return the card with $25 which is a huge amount of money, esp for people who cannot read and whose lives will not change regardless of the election. Not exactly the democracy one hopes for.

The Speaker of the House was sworn in as president until January 27, 2010. Elections are held in November. He immediately announced a curfew from 9 pm until 6 am. Meanwhile world opinions have been swift, that the old president needs to be restored to his rightful position. The old president is saying that he will return soon to Honduras along with some leaders of other countries and head of the OAS. The new president says if he comes he will be arrested. The Honduran Congress stated they ousted the old president because of disregard for the constitution, the law and the institutions. Right now it seems things are at a stalemate.

Wow. I'm not a news junkie, but I'm pretty sure the American news media that I do attend to (mostly NPR) haven't reported those details. It's hard to feel much sympathy for President Zelaya in light of this report. Yes, a military coup is not the preferred way to get rid of a president, but (a) it could have been worse—Zelaya should thank his lucky stars he's not Joao Bernardo Vieira; (b) this apparently is a president who had severely overstepped his authority. What do you suppose would happen to a U.S. president who ignored two Supreme Court orders and tried to buy an illegal election? Impeachment in the blink of an eye, that's what.

Unless some kind of resolution is found, the real losers will be the people of Honduras, who stand to lose hundreds of millions in aid if the country is kicked out of the OAS, as threatened.

Cryptic fill-in-the-blank

2009-06-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a kind of puzzle I've dreamed up. Someone might have thought of this already, but I don't recall seeing anything quite like it before.

Each item in a puzzle is an obscure or cryptic phrase. Your job is to insert the first and last name of a famous person into the phrase so that it becomes two familiar names or phrases. Watch out for homonyms, elisions, and downright nasty puns.

Let me know if you can solve any of these. Each puzzle has a theme, but telling you the theme would make it too easy.

PUZZLE 1
1. Doubting Airplane
2. Henry Avenue
3. Super Indians
4. By League
5. John, Arizona
6. Justice the Right Place
7. George Vacuum
8. Dirty Show

PUZZLE 2
1. Darling Buds of Wing
2. Cash and Wood
3. Block on the Keys
4. County Play
5. L.M. Hanger
6. Edmund Austin
7. Captain Fir

PUZZLE 3
1. Jack Reed
2. Hey and Order
3. Raul Rules
4. James Tease
5. Apple Ball
6. Last Cats
7. Dill Grapes

Tonio K., Prophet?

2009-03-01T00:48:00.000-08:00

Now they've handed us the mantle and they've handed us the key
Left us sittin' here in limbo in the lap of luxury
With a pocket full of credit cards and a mountain full of debt
And a vision of the future that I'd just as soon forget

I sang those lyrics during a little blues gig at my church a week ago. Afterward I told the audience, "That's a little song about current events, written 15 years ago." The song is, of course, "Stuck," from the 1993 album Ole! by Tonio K., and those lines are truer now than when he wrote them.

But that's par for the course for Tonio. 1979's Life in the Foodchain featured a puzzling ballad called "Willie and the Pigman," which made absolutely no sense at the time, but 19 years later, if you accepted the premise that Willie was actually Bill Clinton and the Pigman was Larry Flynt, then you could sort of interpret the song as a prediction of Flynt's attempt to rescue Clinton from impeachment by threatening to publish dirt on members of Congress. A line from the chorus, "They can dish it out from now until 1999," even predicted the year that the impeachment trial would take place. (If the connection still seems fuzzy, try it again after a few Jagermeisters.)

One of Tonio's legendary unreleased songs was inspired by his pet hamster, John Paul III. "Harness the Hamster" proposed using hamsters to solve the energy crisis of the late 1970s/early 1980s. Although Tonio performed it in concert, it never found its way onto an album (unless you count the instrumental version on his Rodent Weekend compilation). It's probably not the first Tonio K. song you'd pick as a prophetic statement — for the simple reason that many of his fans have never heard it.

Nonetheless, it's coming true, as widely reported in February in scientific journals:

Nanogenerators Harness Hamster Power

Could hamsters help solve the world’s energy crisis? Probably not, but a hamster wearing a power-generating jacket is doing its own small part to provide a new and renewable source of electricity.

Just makes you wonder: What will be the next Tonio K. song to come true? Let's hope it isn't "La Bomba"...

Be very afraid...

2008-11-15T23:32:00.000-08:00

of this.

Horton Hears The Who

2008-11-09T21:59:00.000-08:00

(Composed in honor of Michael Crowley's 40th birthday. With the requisite apologies.)

On the fifth of November, in London’s Hyde Park,
On a stroll through the evening, just out for a lark,
While the effigies burned and the fireworks soared,
Potatoes were baking and bonfires roared,
Past the crowds and the cries of importunate boys —
Old Horton the elephant heard a small noise.

Said Horton, “That’s different. Good heavens! Gosh dang!
That’s not an explosion, a boom or a bang.
It’s nothing whatever to do with Guy Fawkes,
It sounds more like music — but music that rocks!
It’s catchy! It’s fun! It’s exciting! Appealing!
It gives me an all-over tingly feeling!
I’ve got to get closer! I’ll lay in a course
For whatever might be that wondrous sound’s source!”

So he pricked up his ears and he followed along
Through the dark foggy streets toward the sound of the song.
The closer he got, well, the louder it grew,
Till he reached Warwick Road, number seventy-two,
A tiny hi-fi shop that sold radios
And reel-to-reel tape decks to kids in sharp clothes.

’Twas the shop’s record player that put out the sound,
And a group of teenagers had gathered around.
“Whose record is this?” Horton asked a young mod.
“That’s right,” she replied.
Horton answered, “How odd.”
“Not a bit,” said the girl. Then she let Horton see
The name on the front of a brand-new LP
Titled My Generation. That’s when Horton knew
That the noise he had heard
Was a band
Called The Who.

Horton bought the LP. Then he took it on home
To his Burbage Road flat, near Herne Hill Velodrome.
There he played it, and played it, and played it some more;
It shook all the windows; it rattled the floor,
Till his neighbour cried out, “Sir, unless you will stop
Playing that wretched music, I’m calling a cop!”

“Do your worst!” Horton said. “I’m a big elephant,
And I’ll play this record as loud as I want —
No matter the time of the day or the night.
I don’t care what you say, ’cause the kids are alright!”

But the bobby who came was another Who fan.
He cried, “Stuff the LP, mate, and go hear the band!
They’re playing a club somewhere out near Thamesmead!”
And off Horton raced with the greatest of speed.
He saw Pete do the windmill! He heard Roger bray!
He heard the Ox thunder! Saw Moon flail away!
That night was life-changing! That night was amazing!
He saw guitars smashing! He saw drums a-blazing!
“I’ve found my life’s purpose!” cried Horton. “I know
I’ll follow this band now, wherever they go!
By tube or by railroad, by boat or by flight,
I’ve just got to be there, ’cause the kids are alright!”

From Wembley to Leeds to the Isle of Wight
He followed them round as they played every night.
In fourteen long years, not a concert he missed,
And soon Horton topped The Who’s V.I.P. list.
Across the Atlantic he took the exploit —
From Woodstock to Memphis! Chicago! Detroit!
In the clubs he’d hang back, never seeking attention.
(The elephant in the room, folks never mention.)

Then one tragic evening in seventy-nine,
Poor Horton’s trip came to the end of the line.
Cincinnati it was — Riverfront Coliseum;
The Who had a show, and he went there to see ’em.
As he stood in the crowd waiting for the event,
He spied a white mouse crawling out of a vent.
Horton just couldn’t help it. He panicked. He fled,
Leaving eleven kids trampled and dead.

And shortly thereafter, the world’s loudest band
Had to embargo their own biggest fan.
“It’s OK,” Horton said as he choked back the tears,
“Imagine the toll on these gigantic ears
From all of those shows in the past fourteen years.
Why, I can’t hear more than an old fence post hears!”

So Horton retired. Now he lives at a zoo
And no longer goes to see shows by The Who.
Sometimes he’ll get a visit from Roger or Pete
And they’ll reminisce about when life was sweet.
(His memory’s still so amazingly keen
He recalls every Who show that he’s ever seen.)
He’s learning sign language, and needlework too;
He does the things most old deaf elephants do.
But sometimes, say the keepers, they’ll hear a strange sound
From the elephant barn when no one is around,
When the stars are all out and the moon’s shining bright —
It’s Horton. He’s singing “The Kids Are Alright.”

To Infiniti ... and beyond!

2008-09-19T19:23:00.000-07:00

Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I follow Seattle professional sports now and then. At least, I follow the ones we have left. The Mariners are winding down the last few games of a wretched season in which they've explored nearly every possible way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But I'm still listening to their games as broadcast on KOMO, and will listen till the bitter end, which cannot come too soon.

Several car dealerships sponsor Mariners broadcasts, including Infiniti of Kirkland, which uses Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck as a spokesman. And in an ad that I heard for the first time tonight, Matt brags about driving his Infiniti around while reading text messages from all his friends who drive Porsches.

Did I hear that right? Matt Hasselbeck is selling Infinitis by claiming that he reads text messages while driving? Shall we count the things that are wrong with this picture?

1. It's illegal. As reported widely in Seattle news media—including KOMO, the same news organization that broadcast the ad—a statewide ban on text messaging while driving went into effect on January 1 of this year. The Seahawks under Mike Holmgren are tough on players who break the law—they shipped off both Koren Robinson and Jerramy Stevens after their DUI arrests—so I can't imagine they'd be too pleased if they heard that their quarterback was getting paid by a car dealership to boast about illegal activity. I realize, of course, that Matt's words in the ad are probably the creation of an agency copywriter, and it's quite possible that Matt himself has never texted while driving at all. In that case, of course, the ad agency should see if it can find another job for that copywriter. In the mail room.

2. It's dangerous. Perhaps I'm more than usually sensitive about this at the moment, because I used to live in L.A. and commute to work on Metrolink. Enough said.

3. It's stupid. Is this really the image the Seahawks want their quarterback to project? Hey, Matt, if you text while driving, when else might you be texting? At practice? During timeouts? Team meetings? On the field while you're getting sacked? Does this have anything to do with starting the season 0-2?

Infiniti of Kirkland has several other radio spots with Matt as pitchman. They sure as heck don't need to run that one again, and if you want my opinion, it should be pulled immediately.

Olympiad? Too bad, so sad

2008-08-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

With the world once again in the throes of Olympic-mania, it might be time to revisit my experience during the Athens Olympics. It was only four years ago, but seems like another lifetime. That's what parenthood will do to you.

In case you're curious, it does appear that Q, my Athens nemesis, has in fact taken a group of some kind to Beijing. Details are beyond sketchy, but the phrase "See you in Beijing" has appeared on one of his Web sites.

Here's hoping that Q's lack of judgment, planning skills, and leadership ability doesn't lead to serious consequences for anyone on the trip. I imagine that in a Communist country there is much less margin for error and tomfoolery.

See you later, Ted Slater

2008-06-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

“When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
——Lewis Carroll, Alice through the Looking Glass

I've held off on posting this particular item as long as I could prudently do so, in hopes that it wouldn't have to come to this. But it has come to this.

First, a wee bit o' background. (There is actually a ton of background, and if I posted it all up front, I might never get to my actual topic.)

You might've heard the name James Dobson, director of a Christian organization called Focus on the Family. These days, when Dobson makes national headlines, it's often as a conservative political pundit. In particular, he's antagonized both of the presumptive U.S. presidential nominees, with the most recent attack coming just a few days ago. I followed Dobson pretty closely from the early '80s through the early '90s, when he was the commencement speaker at my college graduation. As far as I can remember, he wasn't such a bulldog then, and stuck closer to his core competency of giving advice on marriage, family, and child-rearing. But times change, and people change with them, and Dobson has refocused his agenda because he believes it's the right thing to do. I have no problem with that, per se. It is not wrong to subject presidential candidates to rigorous public scrutiny. And anyway, this post isn't really about Dobson. Sorry if you were beginning to think it was.

However, if Dobson used to be less of a bulldog, I certainly used to be more of one. Between the ages of about 13 and 16, when I was still a big fan of Dobson, I also thought defending the faith meant lashing out at anyone and everyone I disagreed with ... flinging any conceivable piece of crap I could find, no matter if it was true or not. I did this mostly by writing angry letters; thank God there was no Internet back then. I have since, I hope, grown up a bit, and become a bit less angry, and above all, learned that it's best to argue fairly and truthfully. Which may sometimes mean arguing less, because you have to pick arguments where you know the truth and believe that it has a reasonable chance to prevail. Which means that somehow I must still have a little hope that truth will prevail in the argument I'm going to tell you about.

I mentioned in the previous post that I don't make a regular habit on this blog of calling out people I disagree with. In one sense that's true, since I blog so seldom that hardly anything I do here can be construed as a regular habit. But in another sense, there's a fair amount of calling-out sprinkled throughout the blog, and there seems to be more of it lately. So perhaps I'm slipping a little. Still, there are certain things I won't stoop to. Lying, for instance.

Unfortunately I can't say the same for the person who's the subject of this post: Ted Slater, an editor for a Webzine called Boundless, published by James Dobson's Focus on the Family organization. The point of mentioning Dobson and his bulldog tactics is so that I may suggest that such tactics appear to be setting the standard for how other individuals in that organization behave — at least judging from Ted's recent conduct.

That conduct consists of a blog post under the headline "Christianity Today Relishes Sexual Perversion." In that post, Ted "rips a new one," as the saying goes, for ChristianityTodayMovies.com because it dared to (a) publish a mixed review by Camerin Courtney of the film Sex and the City — a review which, despite expressing shock at the sexual content, actually found positive things to say about the film's other aspects; and (b) defend its right to do so.

Here cometh the obligatory Big Paragraph Full of Links.

As you can well imagine, Slater generated the controversy he seems to have been looking for. His own blog, BoundlessLine, has additional posts here and here, as well as a podcast here. Film critic Jeffrey Overstreet has blogged about it several times, most recently here, where you'll find links to his other posts on the topic. Christ and Pop Culture blogged it here and podcast it here. Patrol magazine responded to Slater here and rounded up some other bloggage here. FilmChat chatted away about it here. World on the Web took it for a spin here. And finally, critic Gene Veith has hosted two long and very interesting discussions at his own blog, first here and then here, in which both Ted and I have participated. If you don't have time to peruse all these links, then just check out the last two. And I hope you didn't read this paragraph out loud, because if you did, you probably have every dog in the neighborhood scratching on your door, wondering why you keep saying "Here."

The biggest gripe that people have with Ted seems to concern the headline I quoted, which Ted has described as "effectively tabloidesque." I and others have argued — correctly, I believe — that it's unfair, untrue, and defamatory to suggest that Christianity Today or anyone who works there actually "relishes sexual perversion," or to represent the review in question as endorsing pornography, which is what Ted says it does. Ted, using an argument that Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty would be proud of, replies that by "Christianity Today" he means the "entity" of that publication and/or its "caretakers" (but he won't name names), and that by "sexual perversion" he means "the [Sex and the City] franchise."

Ted also says that the franchise trivializes sex, and he might be right about that, but in his haste to combat the trivialization of sex he is actively working to destroy the reputations of innocent people, while defending himself with a phony argument. I mean, really, if Sister Wendy praised Goya's Cronos Devouring His Children, would Ted be justified in saying the Roman Catholic Church relished cannibalism? Ted reminds me of myself as a teenager, only he's not a teenager; he is roughly my age and well educated (even if both his master's degrees are from Pat Robertson's Regent University). He knows exactly what he's doing.

So what to do? Reason with Ted? It's been tried. Point out the flaws in his logic? It's been tried. Demonstrate how he's misrepresenting and misquoting this film review? Tried. Use reductio ad absurdum to show how silly his arguments are? Tried. Give counterexamples to expose his double standards? Tried. Suggest that one problem with being "effectively tabloidesque" is that tabloid journalism lacks credibility? Tried. Call him on the phone and discuss the matter privately? Tried. Use sarcasm? Tried. Get angry and call him names? Tried. Point out that he's committing defamation, and he and his employer could be liable for civil penalties? Tried. Throw the question open to his colleagues to see whether he has their support, or is just a loose cannon? Tried. Give him a faceful of his own medicine by observing that he's bearing false witness, and calling him to repent?

Tried.

What follows is what hasn't been tried — until now.

You see, in addition to working for Focus on the Family, Ted also is or has been a freelance Web developer, and at his own Web site he encourages his clients to purchase hosting services from GoDaddy.com. Here are his exact words:

I'm very familiar with the various features provided by GoDaddy, and heartily recommend we use them to purchase and configure your domain name.

GoDaddy.com. That's the company that, over the past four years, has spent millions on Super Bowl ads (this year's ad alone cost $2.7 million just for the time slot) featuring scantily clad women shaking their money makers to sell domain hosting and registration services. That's the company whose CEO hosts a video blog with entry after entry labeled "MATURE CONTENT." (No, I didn't watch any of the entries, and I won't provide any links. Find it yourself. If you want to read about this stuff without running the risk of having to look at it, try Wikipedia.) Several of GoDaddy's ads have been rejected because they were too sexually oriented for broadcast television. This year, GoDaddy simply ran a "teaser" ad during the Super Bowl — directing viewers to its Web site, where they could watch the ad that was too salacious to show on TV.

Talk about trivializing sex. And where does GoDaddy get millions to spend on T&A? From the customers that people like Ted Slater send its way. I have registered a few domains myself, and made a point of not using GoDaddy because of its prurient ads. Ted? He puts his money where his mouth is. GoDaddy is the registrar and host for both tedslater.com and ijot.com, where Ted has posted some of his writing (including a graduate paper on the "ethics of lying"). Ted's Focus on the Family e-mail address is listed as the administrative contact for one of those sites.

Friends and neighbors, I am certain that Ted didn't mean to "heartily recommend" GoDaddy's ads, only its services. But it becomes a bit difficult to extricate one from the other; the company deliberately makes this marketing approach part of its brand, because it knows that in this culture, sex sells. Even Sex and the City "cleaned up" its TV show for broadcast television, which is something GoDaddy wouldn't do with its ad. And as Ted himself has observed in the course of this controversy, bad company corrupts good morals. Affiliating oneself with GoDaddy, and heartily recommending that others do likewise, hardly leaves one in a position to point fingers over the trivialization of sex. Furthermore, I should hardly think it appropriate for an employee of Focus on the Family, which champions a traditional Christian perspective on sexuality, to be endorsing GoDaddy on the side, either verbally or financially. If you give money to an organization, you are in some measure responsible for what that organization does with your money. At least that's what Rev. Don Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association, used to say when he'd do guest shots on James Dobson's radio shows.

It comes down to this: Ted Slater is not only a liar but a hypocrite.

Please observe, gentle reader, that I have not attributed to Ted anything he did not do or say, and I have not violated his privacy. All the information I have used is publicly available. I merely noted his public endorsement of a particular corporation and connected it with publicly known facts about that corporation. I have no control or say over what happens next, and am in no position to make demands; let the chips (and Humpty Dumpty) fall where they may. But here is what I heartily recommend:

Ted should immediately divest himself of any and all financial ties to GoDaddy.com, transfer his domains to another host/registrar, and strongly urge his past, present, and future clients to do the same. He should post sufficient proof that he has done this.
He should recant his hearty recommendation of GoDaddy and instead post the reasons his clients should not use GoDaddy.
Concerning Christianity Today and its film review, Ted should withdraw all of his remarks — none of which he was in any moral position to make — and post a public, prominent, and abject apology on his blog. He should also apologize to Christianity Today in a letter to the editor.
He should call all the king's horses and all the king's men, and see whether they can ... well, you know.
He should get a job shoveling manure, which is evidently the one thing he is really good at, at least in a figurative sense.

As I said earlier, there is a ton of background. There are questions I could answer, and things I could blather on about, should it become necessary to do so. But that's what the comment-thread is for. Comments deemed interesting and germane to the topic will be accepted and replied to; comments deemed off-topic or inflammatory, or retreads of points that have been made in other blogs, will be cast into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. In other words, the floor is yours, kids, but do try not to knock over the furniture. And don't step in the raw egg.

Off the Mark

2008-05-31T02:15:00.000-07:00

I don't make a regular habit on this blog of calling out people I disagree with. And when I do call them out, sometimes I choose not to use their names, for discretion's sake. But not this time.

One of the most obnoxious bloggers I've ever had the misfortune to come across, Jim Pruitt, has recently exceeded his own high water mark for crassness and stupidity.

Jim was once a big Pat Terry fan (this Pat Terry, not this one), and finds it hard to comprehend Pat's transition from laid-back Jesus-freak folkie to socially conscious garage rocker to country hit writer. Jim just can't get his head around the idea that Pat's journey in faith and his life as a musician have led him in turn to each of these places. Nor, apparently, does Jim completely believe Pat's own assertion that he, Pat, has always written and continues to write from the perspective of a Christian, even if the lyrics to his later songs come in lower on the Jesus-per-minute scale.

Jim can't accept the change in Pat's music as a natural consequence of Pat becoming older and wiser, both as a person and as a Christian, so he looks for something or someone else to blame it on. And evidently he's found a scapegoat: Mark Heard!

Jim apparently has read a lot of Mark's writing on the Web (without bothering to thank me for helping make it available — I have hosted MarkHeard.net for years) and even listened to some of Mark's music, and...

And...

And completely missed the point.

Here's just some of what Jim has to say about Mark:

"...a cynic..."

"He saw himself as an artist/musician/writer first and a Christian second. He worshiped his craft and it was only when he was writing that he felt connected to God."

"He treated with contempt any direct communication of the Gospel."

"He held onto a vain intellectual elitism which treated with contempt simple faith or simple answers whether they were true or not."

"...a depressed, despairing, shadow of a man who was thoroughly in love with his pain and doubt."

"Mark held his identity as an artist, musician, and a skeptic higher than his identity as a child of God."

"...most Christians could detect right away that there was something out of whack in his faith."

Awfully strong words to use about a dead man you never met. You have to read Mark through a pretty strong fundie-filter to come away with twisted characterizations like those. I'm pretty sure my readers (both of them) are familiar with Mark and his music to some extent. So, does Jim's description sound like Mark to you?

Didn't think so.

I'm in touch with Mark's wife, Janet, now and then. I could ask her about this crap, but I know what she'd say.

I must admit I'm impressed by the quantity of "research" Jim has done on Mark, even if the quality of said research leaves me scratching my head. But remember, Jim embarked on this project with an ax to grind. His research was performed for the purpose of depicting Mark as some kind of bad influence on Pat Terry ... as if Pat's own thoughts and experiences weren't valid in and of themselves ... as if Pat were some kind of Mark Heard clone. There's an old issue of Campus Life from the early '80s that contains a passionate letter to the editor from Mark, responding to a record review that had dismissed Pat as a Mark Heard clone:

Pat and I are both, in our own ways, weary of seeing the Christian music subculture foist an anaesthetic atmosphere over life in the real world, and what it is like to be a real living, breathing Christian human being in the culture in which we find ourselves suspended. Is that sufficient basis for dubbing Pat a clone?

There are a handful of artists who don’t care about the expectations of the Christian market and who pursue their responsibilities as artists and as Christians with vigor and determination despite the fact that they will never be as popular as the sterility which besieges us. It’s the thinkers who have something to say, and Pat Terry is a thinker and a unique, valid artist. Please let him speak for himself.

Jim likes to pass himself off as quite the expert on "music ministry,"* and even wrote a book called The Contemporary Christian Musician's Survival Manual. Jim himself didn't survive very long as a contemporary Christian musician because he couldn't get his band to operate according to the rules in his book. It's kind of ironic that a guy who is no longer doing music as a "ministry" thinks it's his place to criticize other people who aren't doing music as a "ministry." But there you go. Backbiting, malicious gossip, and bearing false witness all appear on the Bible's laundry lists of sin, but apparently even that won't slow Jim down.

You could let Jim know what you think ... not that it will do any good. (I've tried.)

*Of the 183 times the words minister and ministry appear in the King James Bible, not one of them has anything to do with music.

Who wears the pants?

2008-05-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

We've all observed the 20-year fashion trend of young men wearing their trousers with the waistband well below the waist — around the thighs or even the knees. We're told this practice is observed in imitation of rap and hip-hop artists, and I hear it can be further traced to prison inmates, who aren't allowed to wear belts and therefore must walk around the prison yard with their pants falling down.

I wonder if I could bring a halt to this trend by announcing my discovery that it has a much older antecedent, about as far removed from rap and hip-hop as possible: Check out the costume in this 1950s clip of comedian and old-time banjo picker David "Stringbean" Akeman, a longtime fixture on the Grand Ole Opry and a denizen of "Hee Haw" until his death in 1973. Would it give today's young men pause to know that their look is as much hayseed as it is hip-hop?

Apart from the pants, Stringbean has something else in common with some rap artists: he died in a hail of bullets, gunned down at his Tennessee cabin, along with his wife, by two men who were after the $20,000 in cash Stringbean had stashed behind a brick in the chimney. Obviously, nothing good comes of wearing your pants this way, no matter what style of music you play.

Tag, I'm it

2008-04-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

I've been "tagged" by Andy Whitman, who wants me to write on the following topics:

Four jobs I’ve had

Disk jockey. I got this job as a result of one of the greatest displays of grace ever shown to me by another human being. As a young teen, I was nuts about my local contemporary Christian music radio station. I'd stay up all night listening, calling the request line once or twice an hour. Then there was a shakeup. Programming changed, and one of the DJs lost his job. I happened to know his wife, and boy, was she bitter. I listened to her gripe, and then wrote angry letters to Steve, the new station manager. He patiently wrote back and invited me to come talk to him, which I did. I left that meeting still angry, but over the next couple of months I gradually realized that what I felt wasn't righteous indignation, just youthful impetulance. I wrote Steve a letter of apology. Later on, the station advertised for interns, and Steve accepted my application.

I was 15 and a junior in high school, and worked at KSOJ for about a year. Pay was four lousy bucks an hour, which didn't make my dad too happy, but I loved being on the radio. Grew up a little bit, I suppose. Fortunately I never had to deal with the kind of angry listener that I had been. The most important lesson was the one Steve taught me. Thanks again, man.

Cartographic aide, U.S. Geological Survey. My 780 math SAT score got me this job, which I did for a couple of summers after the radio station went off the air. I had also applied for a job at a steakhouse that had singing waiters. The owner said he'd start me as a busboy and work me into a singing waiter job if I performed well. I chose the USGS job, but a couple of days after I started there I got an angry call from the steakhouse owner. Why hadn't I reported to work? Whoops! He thought he'd hired me at the end of the interview. I hadn't realized that.

I stuck with the USGS job; it paid a little better. It involved "photogrammetry" — using a specialized machine to stare at 3-D images of Mars or the Nevada Nuclear Test Site and maneuver a little dot around the landscape at specified elevations, thereby producing a topographical map. To this day I have no idea if I was any good at this; I don't know whether the maps I produced were ever actually used for anything.

Because it was a government job, we had cool things like e-mail, chat, and file transfer protocols on our computer network — in 1986. I didn't see what the big deal was with chat — why not just call someone's extension, or go down the hall and talk in person?

Editor/proofreader/etc. This is my main gig. I've been correcting other people's mistakes since I was 12, when my typographer dad taught me proofreader's marks and started paying me to help in the shop.

Touring musician. I've done this with at least five different musical entities, not counting high school or college. I've been to Vermont in January, Atlanta in July, and many places in between. You might think this is the most fun job of all — and parts of it are, like the part where you actually play the music and get to talk to people about it. But there are often tedium-filled days in a place far from home — and once in a while there's something even worse, like the time I was in Ireland and my wife seriously injured her leg back home, and I couldn't be there to help her. Or the time I threw my back out carrying all my gear from my car to a gig at a coffeehouse in Venice Beach. Or this.

I should add that I worked some food-service jobs in college, and I think it would be a fine idea to require all Americans to do some kind of service job for one year at some point in their young lives. It might help service workers and their customers to treat each other better. I also spent some time working at Drugstore.com just after the dot-com bubble burst, when such companies still had some strange employee perks. One of these was the commercial espresso machine in the kitchen. I learned to pull a fairly decent latté — good enough that my colleagues would place orders with me.

Four TV shows I’m watching

I go slack-jawed and glassy-eyed whenever I'm near a TV, so I try to avoid the things as much as I can. Unfortunately, I recently discovered that full streaming episodes are being placed online.

CBS.com just posted a bunch of episodes from the first two seasons of The Twilight Zone, so I'm working my way through those. When that's done I'll start on the original Star Trek episodes they've posted.

The wife and I enjoy late-night reruns of M*A*S*H, which seem always to be on one channel or another. It wasn't consistently brilliant — there are some dud episodes — but when it was good, it was really good.

I never watched The Muppet Show when it was originally airing. Not once. I grew up without a TV, so that's a partial explanation, but still. I am watching it now, often with my son, and we both find it consistently delightful.

Four places I’ve been

Been lots of places, but the following are among the more exotic destinations where I've gone in order to play music.

Athens, Greece
Tbilisi, Georgia
Clare Island, Ireland
Honolulu, Hawaii

I grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona, and have spent most of my adult life in the Seattle area.

Four musical artists I’m listening to

Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill — There's a new one just out, and I will be listening whenever I get my hands on it. Hard to believe it's been nine years since Live in Seattle.

Flanders & Swann — The greatest British songwriting duo ever. Their producer, George Martin, abandoned them for a couple of schmucks named John and Paul. But what did he know?

Mark Heard — It's not easy to accept the early death of a great talent who never got his due. At least the songs will always be there.

Silly Wizard — Andy M. Stewart has a voice to die for, and his ballads are the equal of anything produced by Scott or Burns or Stevenson. He's worked a bit as a solo artist since the band broke up, and is a living national treasure as far as I'm concerned (but then, I'm not Scottish, so make of that what you will). The Cunningham brothers were an ideal instrumental foil to Stewart's vocal heroics.

This list will change next week.

I am now supposed to tag two others. Let's see: Michael. Jeffrey. Go to it.

Belles of the ball

2008-04-01T19:53:00.000-07:00

I've been published again: Here is a story on the recently concluded — and rather remarkable — women's soccer season at SPU.

Unfortunately, it looks as though the magazine had some space issues, and the piece was cut. What you see is about half of what I wrote.

It happens, but it's too bad. The essential numbers are still there, but in some of the missing text I tried to look at the ways the players have developed as students, Christians, and promising young people. I had some fantastic quotes from Sarah Martinez, the player I interviewed for the piece.

Right about the time I handed this story in, the Seattle Times published a series of articles about the University of Washington football team during the Rick Neuheisel era. Slick Rick won the 2001 Rose Bowl with the Huskies, but these articles made it clear that many of the players who helped him do it should have been wearing orange jumpsuits, not purple and gold.

You can find story after story about coddled, spoiled, over-entitled, misbehaving athletes. But it doesn't have to be that way. What's happening with the SPU women's soccer team is really something special. And reporting on Falcon athletic programs has restored my faith in humanity, as it were.

Won't get fooled again

2008-04-01T16:41:00.000-07:00

Speaking of April Fool's Day, my pals Peter Chattaway and Jeffrey Overstreet have both noted that today, atheist filmmaker Brian Flemming posted what looks like a recantation of his atheism (and re-embracement of Christianity) at his blog.

I'll allow Peter and Jeffrey their cautious optimism, and stake out my own position in skeptic's territory. But I do so only after conducting a little investigation, the results of which may be found here.

Deep thoughts

2008-04-01T12:19:00.000-07:00

Whenever conversation turns to the subject of Goths, I invariably ask what they wear for Halloween.

In the vein, perhaps, of that question, today I wondered what The Onion does for April Fool's Day. So I visited its site and found nothing more than the usual spoofs and fake news.

How banal. Today seems like the ideal day for The Onion to attempt some real news coverage. (Insert caustic remark about the mainstream media's attempts at real news coverage here.)

The beginning of fame?

2008-03-20T17:44:00.000-07:00

I won't post it here for now, since photojournalists usually are rightly concerned about copyright issues, but today marks a milestone for my son. It's the first time he gets his picture in the paper. I'm betting it isn't the last.

Stumped

2008-03-19T11:03:00.000-07:00

In what must be an increasingly rare occurrence, I came across a word today that yielded no results in Google, MSN, Technorati, or either of two online dictionaries. The word is "schissaranda." I found it, if you must know, in the text of an ad for New Belgium Brewery.

The irony, of course, is that my reporting it here will in time lead to its being listed in those search engines, if not in dictionaries. But I still won't know what it means. Any ideas?

Ridiculous AP headline of the month, part 2

2008-02-25T14:17:00.000-08:00

Forgive me, but "Ga. Couple Claims $275 Lottery Jackpot" just hardly seems worth getting excited about.

Just a few feet from shore

2008-02-19T13:16:00.000-08:00

Good news for people who have two left feet...

Is unconditional love a bad idea?

2008-02-12T23:10:00.000-08:00

Tonight while I was browsing the Internet, aliens kidnapped me. Everything went black for 45 minutes, and when I woke up I was reading WorldNetDaily. That's as good an explanation as any for how I got there.

I came across a Valentine's Day column by Dennis Prager, who's a conservative Jewish radio talk show host, with the provocative title "Unconditional love: what a crock." He makes six points, five of which I have no substantial problem with. But then there is point #3.

3. That is one reason the notion of "unconditional love" is foolish. The fact is we all earn love, and it is a good thing to have to do so. What possible good purpose can the belief that your spouse loves you unconditionally – i.e., no matter how you act – serve?

For starters, it might facilitate more honest communication within marriage. If you are sure that your spouse loves you apart from the question of whether you deserve it, then it's a lot easier to discuss your own failures and shortcomings with your spouse, and vice versa.

If we believe our spouse loves us no matter what we do, what would motivate us to be on our best behavior at all times? Why be kind even when we are in a foul mood?

Because I love her, nitwit! I treat my wife with respect BECAUSE I RESPECT HER, not because I'm afraid she won't love me if I don't.

Why work to stay attractive if he will love me no matter how much I neglect how I look?

Do not adjust your set, kids ... that isn't Dennis getting in touch with his feminine side, it's just Dennis hypothetically assuming the voice of a woman for a second.

Why continue to pay attention to her — like regularly calling her from work — if I know that even if I ignore her, she will continue to love me?

Maybe because you're actually interested in her and what she did during the time you were apart? I dunno, it's just a suggestion. And if that doesn't work for you, maybe you should love others, including your spouse, out of obedience to God, because it's what he commands you to do. Or maybe you should love her out of gratitude for loving YOU. Any one of those strikes me as a better reason than loving her because you're afraid that if you don't, she won't love you back.

Unconditional love is not a good idea.

Have you tried it?

I don't know where it originated, but I am quite certain it's relatively recent, a product of an age that has put primary importance on feelings. With the possible exception of a parent's love for a young child, unconditional love is not a good idea among people, and it's probably not a good idea concerning God's love for us.

Then why is parent-to-child the primary metaphor used in the New Testament to describe God's relationship to people? (Hold onto that thought for a second.) In your second point, Dennis, you said, "In other relationships [than male-female sexual ones], it is bad to seek to be loved." I think this contradicts what you're trying to say now: that God's love is conditional. Because, you see, if you're going to argue that God's love is conditional, then you can't also claim that it's a bad thing to seek it!

I am familiar with no biblical basis for the notion that God loves us no matter how much cruelty and evil we engage in

It comes from a little thing called the New Testament. You might have heard of it. I realize that as a Jew you don't hold the New Testament in the same regard that I do as a Christian, but you can't be excused for that when you're writing for a Christian publication.

(God's love of His Chosen People, Israel, is specifically depicted as conditional upon Israel's behavior),

Well, yes and no. The Old Testament more often mentions the mandate for us to love God than it talks about God loving us. Among the handful of references we do get to God loving Israel, some of them sound conditional and some don't. For instance, look at Deuteronomy 7:6–13. God's love sounds unconditional in verse 7 and conditional in verse 13. In 1 Kings 10:9 God's love sounds unconditional, in Prov. 15:9 it doesn't. Is God's mercy depicted as conditional? Yes. Is God's love depicted as conditional? Not consistently.

or for the notion that God loved Adolf Hitler and Mother Teresa equally.

Will God reward A.H. and M.T. equally? No, but that's a matter of God's justice, not his love. As you say later in your article, love is only one of God's attributes.

Anyway, the idea that God loves everyone unconditionally doesn't necessarily entail his loving everyone equally. We could say that God's unconditional, universal love for his creation is a sort of baseline: God loves all of us, even Hitler, because he created us and never stops wanting us to repent and seek relationship with him. But those of us who do seek that relationship, like Mother Teresa, may well find additional depths of God's love beyond that baseline, whereas those who reject God's love may well have to take their chances with his justice.

Frankly, I would be disappointed in such a God. It renders Him a love machine whose love cannot be affected by our behavior, not a loving being who is affected by how we act. It renders His love amoral. And it prevents us from growing up.

"What a crock," indeed. The larger point Prager is trying to make is a good one: that love — God's or otherwise — is not to be trampled upon or taken for granted. I just don't think he needs to throw out the concept of unconditional love to make that point.

So, Dennis, before you go to bed, I've got a little book you should read. It's called First John. Won't take you long. If you want, you can even just skip ahead to chapter 4:

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

That's my Valentine's Day column. And for publishing a piece claiming that unconditional love is a bad idea, I'm sending WorldNetDaily a nice big box of chocolates. To be specific, the Whizzo Quality Assortment.

A post about nothing

2008-02-10T21:23:00.000-08:00

One of the most revelatory statements I ever heard from a college professor was uttered by one Bob Chamberlain on the first day of my communications class. Prof. Chamberlain leaned back against a table he always had in the front of the room and told us that television was a means for delivering an audience to advertisers.

Until that point, I'd believed that television was primarily about the content. I might've been naive, I admit, on account of not having watched much of it: I grew up in a family that didn't own a TV.

In TV's early days, of course, it was hard to miss the fact that the advertising tail wagged the programming dog: TV shows had "sponsors," for goodness' sake, and George Burns and Jack Benny would take time out to shill for the product and then step back onto the set without missing a beat. These days we go to great lengths to deny the connection, and we have gizmos that help us try to separate ads from content. But the basic model is still there: the viewer is the product, the advertisers are the consumer, and the programming is just a venue for delivering one to the other. All of this becomes abundantly clear if you've ever looked at a media kit. (If you don't know what one is — take a class on advertising!)

Which is sort of a long-winded way of introducing the following thought: If you want to watch TV programming for its entertainment value, go ahead — but God help you if you should ever begin to take any of it seriously. And I mean any of it, including the news and political programming that begs you to take it seriously. It's there for precisely the same reason that "Big Brother" and "Jackass" are there: to serve you up on a platter to corporations who want a slice of your wallet. And if it doesn't deliver a big enough slice, it'll eventually be replaced with something that does.

I recently traded a few comments with another blogger who I'm sure would disagree, in part, with what I've just said. And, since he held comments from guests to a different standard than the one he applied to his own comments as a host, I've now been banned from commenting further at his blog, which is why I'm posting this over at my blog.

This individual's point, if you'll allow a broad application of that term, was that liberalism is represented in the media by its most extreme wing, whom he identified as Bill Maher, Michael Moore, and Keith Olbermann, whereas conservatism holds in check its most extreme wing (Fred Phelps and the John Birch Society) and leaves its media representation to sober, reasonable, balanced people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly.

In other words, according to this individual, the left wing doesn't get any more radical than the liberal pundits you see on TV. And the conservative counterparts of liberal pundits are not conservative pundits. No sir, the conservative counterpart of liberal pundits is Fred Phelps, a ghoulish preacher who protests soldiers' funerals because "God hates fags" and calls himself a Baptist even though no Baptist denomination acknowledges him. To put it another way, according to my blogger-pal, the liberal analogue of Fred Phelps is not some anarchist hooligan or Communist Party figure. No, it's a middle-aged white guy in pinstripes who makes his audience chuckle by mocking conservatives. That's as extreme as the left wing could possibly get.

So when I challenged the dude's comparison of Keith Olbermann to Fred Phelps, here's what he said:

When it comes to Keith Olbermann and delusionary behavior, I need only quote this gem of his:

"Al Qaeda really hurt us, but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has hurt us, particularly in the case of FOX News. Fox news is worse than Al Qaeda — worse for our society. It's as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was."

Any person who believes that an American news organization (which gives more equal time balance than he does on his show) is worse than those who ran planes into buildings and murdered 3000 Americans is a person who more than measures up to the standard of being Fred Phelps' counterpart.

Now I don't doubt that Olbermann said that, even though the blogger in question didn't provide a source. Hyperbole is Olbermann's job, as it is the job of every pundit. Olbermann is paid to generate ad revenue and jack up ratings by pouncing on every controversy he can. And he frequently tries too hard. The comment comparing FOX to Al-Qaeda is indefensible. (Update: the quote is from Playboy. No wonder I missed it—I don't read Playboy for the articles.)

Whether that makes him the equivalent of Fred Phelps is an apples-to-oranges calculation that armchair pathologists like my blogger acquaintance can make if they want to. It doesn't provide one iota of illumination about either Phelps or Olbermann, but the fact that Olbermann is the most extreme left-winger this fellow can think of, in the mainstream media or out of it, does suggest that he doesn't know much about the left wing.

To bring things back to more reasonable sorts of comparisons, this individual went on to assert that conservative pundits "haven't said anything comparable to that gem from Olbermann." Well, I'm already sick of Googling this stuff, but so far I've got Ann Coulter linking Newsweek to Al-Qaeda, Bill O'Reilly comparing the entire "secular-progressive movement" to Osama Bin Laden, Rush Limbaugh saying the Democrats are doing PR for Al-Qaeda, and Chris Matthews equating Bin Laden and Michael Moore. That's enough for me. It turns out that conservative pundits are the true analogues of liberal pundits after all, and they can both be counted on to say equally ridiculous things.

And when I say that's enough for me, I mean that's enough. Comment if you must, but prepare to be mercilessly mocked, since my primary assertion here is that none of this is worth serious attention in the first place.

Ridiculous AP Headline of the Month

2008-02-07T15:50:00.000-08:00

What would you think if you saw the sentence "Man in Light Shooting Hands Out Bears"?

You could read that one two or three times and still not be sure what it meant. And it wouldn't be your fault.

It almost makes sense, part 1

2007-12-06T01:02:00.000-08:00

I wrote a self-help book, but no one bought it. It was called Ventriloquism for Dummies.

My second book didn't do any better. It was Chicken Soup for the Vegetarian Soul.

I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV.

Used to flip houses. Now flipping burgers.

Will Smith: a "student of world religion"?

2007-12-04T23:34:00.000-08:00

On Access Hollywood, Will Smith tells it like it is:

“I’m a student of world religion,” Smith said. “I was raised in a Baptist household, I went to a Catholic school, but the ideas of the Bible are 98 percent the same ideas of Scientology, 98 percent the same ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism.”

Sigh. Well, now we know that our student failed at least two subjects: world religion and math.

So long, Johnny Frigo

2007-07-12T17:21:00.001-07:00

Last year on the Fourth of July weekend, Sarah and I got stuck in Chicago. Our connecting flight out of O'Hare was overbooked, so we took American Airlines' bribe of two ticket vouchers and a hotel room to fly the next day. The hotel was out in the 'burbs, not far from the airport. We spent some time in the pool with Sebastian, then a year old, and kicked back in the room with The Three Amigos.

But what I should have done was find out whether Johnny Frigo had a gig that night, and take whatever combination of El train, bus, taxi, and rickshaw would get me there.

Johnny Frigo spent most of his musical career as a bassist, playing upright with Chico Marx and both Dorsey brothers in the 1940s. He wrote some songs you might have heard. Later, in the 1970s, he even made a couple of progressive jazz records as a bandleader, on electric bass. He continued as a Chicago session cat until he quit in his early 70s, frustrated with the way the job had changed. Sure, Johnny could do all the popping, slapping, and other funk techniques that had come to be expected of studio bassists. He just didn't care for them.

Johnny also had a secret: inside the studio bass player was a jazz violinist longing to get out. He'd played violin in high school before switching to tuba and then bass, and had made one solo violin record, I Love John Frigo — He Swings! in 1957. When he started thinking about putting down his bass, Johnny picked his violin back up. He took a strolling-violinist gig at a Hilton Hotel to get his chops back. That led to a sit-in gig with Herb Ellis, which led to 1988's Live from Studio A in New York City, an instant critical success. Johnny had made the switch. Here was a septuagenarian no one had heard of, with a talent comparable to Stephane Grappelli or Joe Venuti. Faultless tone and technique, elegant phrasing, fantastic improvisations ... on an instrument he'd more or less kept in the closet his whole career. It was nothing short of amazing.

Johnny spent the last 20 years of his life in his second career, doing what he loved. He did some touring, but most of his gigs were in Chicago, especially in the later years as he became more frail.

In mid-June 2007, Johnny slipped on the floor in the lobby of his condo, and broke his hip. He was hospitalized. Two weeks later, on the Fourth of July — a year after I'd found myself stuck in Chicago for a night — he died. He was 90. I never got to see him, and when I might've had a chance, I didn't try.

Remind me to get out my Real Book and play through some swing tunes in honor of Johnny. I owe him at least that much.

Clueless in Seattle

2007-06-14T19:30:00.000-07:00

Seattle has a reputation for civic niceness, for compromise, for letting people have their say and building consensus before moving forward. For bending over backward to avoid negativity.

I guess it works for some things, like building nice libraries and city halls and having a fairly thriving arts scene (except that midsize theatres are dying off one by one...but I digress).

But it absolutely hamstrings important decisions like where, when, and whether to build public transportation projects or freeway viaducts or halfway housing for sex offenders who've served their jail time. Inevitably these decisions bog down amid all the public hearings and votes and redesigns and whatnot, and the resulting compromise pleases no one.

At least that is what's widely believed. But there could be another explanation: Seattle hires too many stupid people. Here's Exhibit A, as reported by KING-5 TV:

1) Evidently City of Seattle employees are too dumb to heat up popcorn in the microwave without burning it;
2) and then their supervisors overreact by evacuating the building because of the burned popcorn;
3) and then they further overreact by threatening to enact a ban on microwave popcorn in city buildings.

If I were Robert Mak, the TV reporter who filed this segment, I wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry. Notice how the City's facilities manager can't give Robert a straight answer? About popcorn?

More Literary Action Figures

2007-06-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

James Joyce
The first of our action figures with the built-in Recitation Feature — but pull that string at your own risk, unless you've got unlimited time on your hands. Generally well-behaved, but tends to stroll downtown and give public readings every June 16.

(I'll probably get in trouble for this next one, but here goes...)

L. Ron Hubbard
Complete with Private Yacht, Attendants, and Highly Fictionalized Autobiography, but no Passport available. Other accessories, including Complete Science Fiction Library and Mini E-Meter (works just like the real thing!), are sold separately, starting at $1,200, but they're worth whatever you have to sacrifice for them. Also sold separately: Premium Nutcase Celebrity accessory packages, as follows. $1 million: Isaac Hayes. $2 million: Kirstie Alley. $5 million: John Travolta. $25 million: Tom freakin' CRUISE, baby! (Oprah's Couch not included.) Sure, maybe you could get along without owning it, but you might want to ask yourself: "Am I a happy literary action figure collector?"

William S. Burroughs
The holes in the left arm are NOT a manufacturing defect, silly. They are in fact precision-engineered to fit the Needle accessory.

Jack Kerouac
Typewriter accessory features Endless Loop of Paper.

J. D. Salinger
Extremely limited edition. Currently out of stock.

Ian Fleming
The coolest accessory package, by far. But warn your other action figures not to borrow the Exploding Pen.

James Frey
Does it belong under Novelists, or Autobiographers? You decide.

e. e. cummings
because the
   shift key
      was
         broken,
      that's why.
malfunction
   faithfully
reproduced
   on
      typewriter
         accessory.

Coincidence?

2007-06-08T16:47:00.000-07:00

A little random sequence of events in world news:

An Russian expat and former spy falls ill after meeting in Britain with an official of the Russian government...

Later, that ex-spy dies of radiation poisoning. Britain accuses the Russian official and demands his extradition. Russia refuses...

Meanwhile, disputes arise between Russia and the United States over, among other things, the proposed placement of U.S. missile defense systems in former Communist bloc nations. U.S. President Bush meets with Russian President Putin at the G-8 summit in Germany to discuss ways to resolve the dispute...

The next day, Bush falls ill and misses two scheduled appearances at the summit...

I'm not worried. Are you?

Publish, publish, publish

2007-05-29T08:01:00.000-07:00

Not one, but two recent articles to tell you about:

"National Tournament Returns" is a piece for SPU's Response alumni magazine about the gymnastics team. We went to press before the national tournament; the team placed second despite being without its leading scorer.

"Film as a Healing Exercise" takes a look at a unique documentary film festival. This is my first online article for Christianity Today.

Ridiculous church promotion of the month

2007-05-29T05:54:00.000-07:00

This church is four blocks from my house, and here's a flyer they left on my doorstep the other day. I don't think I'll be paying a visit anytime soon.

It isn't the geographical confusion that bugs me, although that is an odd name for a church in a suburb about four miles beyond the northern edge of Seattle proper. But if Major League Baseball will allow Southern California's American League team to call itself "the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim," I guess this is OK too.

I'll also give the benefit of the doubt to the "great, Christian millionaire businessman" guest speaker. There's nothing intrinsic to being a millionaire that makes you a good speaker or gives you anything to say that's worth hearing — but the guy might be a good speaker anyway, and I have nothing against millionaires as a group.

But giving away 52-inch flat-screen TV sets? Are churches so desperate for new blood that they'll use extravagant creature comforts as inducements? Why weren't these TVs sold and the money given to the poor? Argh. (And no, unlike Judas, I don't say that because I want one of the TVs. I got a 55-inch TV for free on Craig's List, but decided there's no place in my house to put something so large, so I gave it away.)

Serves 'em right, say I, if the TVs went to people who took them home and will never darken the door of Seattle Baptist Church again. Isn't the Gospel the Good News? And shouldn't good news be all the inducement anybody needs?

The last thing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wants to hear

2007-05-10T22:39:00.000-07:00

"Hey, Al. You look like you could use a break. You know, get away from it all. What do you say we go out this weekend and shoot some quail?"
——Dick Cheney

Shocking revelation!

2007-02-23T18:55:00.000-08:00

Today I learned that

Nestlé Foods owns Jenny Craig.

So whether you're putting weight on or taking it off, they've got you ... coming and going.

Literary action figures

2007-01-30T17:36:00.000-08:00

Standing on my desk right now, courtesy of Archie McPhee, are two "literary action figures": William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe. They're reasonable enough likenesses, but neither can sit down, which in a writer would seem to be an unfortunate oversight.

The other day my friend Michael and I brainstormed some additional literary action figures we'd like to see:

Joseph Mitchell
Comes into the office every day for 32 years; sits and stares at its typewriter. Now with Extra Heavy-Duty Writer’s Block, and Real Tears of Regret for a Talent Wasted.

Sylvia Plath
Complete with Crawling and Asphyxiating Motion! For extra fun, get the Wax-Headed model!

Hunter S. Thompson
Will do anything it sees you doing, just to see what it feels like. Adults only.

Emily Dickinson
Will not come out of its packaging—and isn’t meant to.

Richard Dawkins
Asks, with a smirk, “If Archie McPhee made me, who made Archie McPhee?”

Ernest Hemingway
For longer product life, avoid simultaneous use of the Hennessy Bottle and Shotgun accessories.

Dylan Thomas
Unsteady, with thrilling Stumble/Fall sequence. Speaks beautifully; swears horribly. Secondhand accessories included, but may be exchanged for Rotgut.

Oscar Wilde*
Armed only with a Pen, but still fights an impressive Battle of Wits. Not appropriate for young boys.

Ambrose Bierce
Not intended for use as a chew toy; leaves bitter aftertaste. Rinse thoroughly after contact. May wander off to Mexico in search of Pancho Villa.

I imagine we'll add more to the list later, but that's enough for now. Must go and sharpen my quill.

*Shoot, ol' Archie has beaten us to the punch on this one.

What's missing?

2007-01-19T12:17:00.000-08:00

Here is the biography of Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby on his official Web site.

It's missing one important detail. Do you know what that detail is?

A lot of senators and representatives are doing this, I'm told...

Ridiculous Web site of the month, part 7

2007-01-11T23:00:00.000-08:00

A while back, Alabama's Decatur Daily reported on the trend of sports teams hosting "Faith Nights" to attract churchgoers — complete with live Christian rock bands, VeggieTales characters, and booths selling your basic evangelical-subculture T-shirts, Moses bobblehead dolls, and Bibles. "Faith Nights" started with Arena Football teams, are moving into big-time sports like Major League Baseball. What particularly caught my eye was the following paragraph:

"It'll be no different than any other group out there," said Derrick Hall, the Diamondbacks' executive vice president. "They will promote it at a much greater level than most groups can. As a result, we'll sell more tickets."

Did you get that? If you thought the Arizona Diamondbacks would put on a "Faith Night" because they were somehow interested in accommodating people of faith, you're sadly mistaken, my friend. It's all about the dollar signs, and at least Mr. Hall is honest enough to admit it. (When Sony Pictures decided to use churches and Christian leaders to shill for The Da Vinci Code, a sophomoric, ill-conceived attack on Christianity, they cleverly spun the campaign as an opportunity for "dialogue." Mr. Hall's remarks are, bracingly, devoid of any such spin.)

It's working, too — at least for the Arena Football teams, which are attracting lots of new fans with the venture. I guess going to a "regular" game, where you might have to sit next to a non-Christian, is just too much for some people to contemplate. I have a friend who publishes Christian music magazines — and on top of going to the standard summer festivals devoted to such music, he also sets up a booth at a few general-market festivals, including the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) convention. I like to think that this is his way of being the "salt of the earth," of going out into the world at large instead of waiting for it to come to him. Whatever it is, it's the opposite of "Faith Night," even though he covers some of the same cultural territory.

I have just one burning question left: What do you suppose is the effect of "Faith Night" on a stadium's alcohol concession?

Public Radio International: Music thieves?

2007-01-11T16:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a little radio piece on European buskers (street musicians), reported by one Gerry Hadden for PRI's "The World" show. I suppose his preference for Dire Straits covers over buoyant Gypsy violin playing must be chalked up to a matter of taste. But perhaps the most intriguing part of Hadden's story is an encounter with a busker in Rome:

Walking down a broad avenue I come upon an African man playing a conically shaped stringed instrument. So I start to record. But when notices me he abruptly stops playing, stands up and shoves me.

He must have me pegged for some audio paparazzi. I don't understand his Italian but I do recognize the universal symbol of a raised fist. So I move on.

Whether or not that guy was famous he certainly acted like it.

As a onetime busker myself, I can shed some light on why this musician was upset about being taped. No matter whether a musician is “famous” or not, it’s rude and unethical to record a performance without permission. Furthermore, in the case of buskers and all other musicians trying to make a living with their music, it’s also unethical to broadcast that music without compensating them for it. Most buskers aren't collecting publishing royalties, ticket revenues, or appearance fees. Busking is like public radio – just because you can hear it without paying first doesn’t mean it’s free. If Hadden didn’t compensate the musicians he recorded for his piece – or obtain releases from them – then shame on him.

When you get tired of beating a dead horse...

2007-01-07T22:10:00.000-08:00

just have a seat.

Dr. Seuss, Web visionary?

2007-01-04T12:17:00.000-08:00

The late Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, is rightly remembered for his contributions to children's literature: a stream-of-consciousness writing style, heavy on rhyme, rhythm and coinage, accompanied by carefree, fanciful illustrations. (Come to think of it, there's probably a doctoral dissertation to be written comparing Seuss' work to that of his predecessors, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. But I digress.)

What hasn't been noted before, at least anywhere that I've looked, is that Seuss might've been the first writer to use the word "blog"; he coined it in his 1973 book The Shape of Me and Other Stuff. OK, he spelled it "blogg," and it referred to some large, ridiculous-looking animal instead of an online journal, but give the man a break. He also coined the word "zillow," a smaller but equally ridiculous-looking animal at the end of 1974's There's a Wocket in My Pocket! As you may know, Zillow.com is now a hot real-estate site featuring user-generated content. I hope its developers have paid the Geisel estate the royalties it deserves.

What lessons can we draw from this? Well, if you need a name for your new Web site, service, or application, there are worse places to look than the children's section of your library. As the parent of an 18-month-old, I'm spending more time there myself these days.

Why you need an editor

2007-01-04T09:56:00.000-08:00

Here's an e-mail from the Northwest Danish Foundation:

Ellen Rossen, pianist will perform in a free rectal Saturday January 6 at 2 pm at the Frye Art Museum. Sponsored by the Ladies Musical Club, the program will include works by Bach, Haydn, Shubert and Bartok. Seating is first-come first-served, beginning at 1 pm.

Please do attend this unique event and celebrate the talent of a longtime NWDF member.

Wow, that's bound to be an interesting performance.

Ridiculous Web site of the month, part 6

2007-01-04T09:44:00.000-08:00

A high school student calling itself "MK" has slapped up a halfhearted blog called SPUWatch, the purpose of which seems to be to hurl invective at my alma mater, Seattle Pacific University.

As MK correctly observes, nobody, including SPU, should be above criticism. On the other hand, everybody should be above the type of tiresome, irrelevant, thoughtless blather that MK dishes out.

When a friend of mine and I both commented on MK's first post, MK thanked us for "legitimizing" the blog. So one can "legitimize" something by observing how pathetic it is? I'm still trying to get my head around that one.

Georgia on my mind

2006-11-16T02:27:00.000-08:00

There's a lot I could say about my recent trip to Tbilisi, but for now this will have to suffice: My entire family, including my 16-month-old son, Sebastian, made the news there. How cool is that?

Molly Lions came to the 10 GIFT Festival with the play Most Notorious Woman. It is a one-woman play based on the remarkable life of the last great Irish queen, Granuaile, or Grace O’Malley. The play was created, produced, and acted by Molly Lions. The production includes original and traditional music written and performed by Martin Stillion. His wife Sarah, an actor and writer, and their little Sebastian supported him during the trip. It was the first international travel for Sebastian, and his mom said that he enjoyed it and got a lot of beautiful Georgian girlfriends. It was true – every evening in the M. Tumanishvili Movie Actors Theatre the biggest groups of charming international females gathered around the little Prince Charming Sebastian!

The article isn't kidding about my son's "beautiful Georgian girlfriends." Here's some evidence.

August is the cruellest month, for mandolinists

2006-08-16T01:25:00.000-07:00

It's been a very bad month for mandolin players.

On Aug. 1, a drunk driver struck and killed Charlie Derrington, the luthier/repairman responsible for bringing the Gibson Company back to the forefront of American mandolin building.

Mid-Continent Music, an online purveyor of acoustic CDs with a wide selection of mandolin music (and the only online retailer to stock my CD, Notorious), is going out of business.

BluegrassBox, an online bluegrass community with three streaming radio stations, has shut down.

And yesterday, Aug. 15, Rigel Mandolins announced it was closing up shop, after 10 years of building some of the most innovative mandolins around.

What's really scary is this: Today, Aug. 16, is the Universal Day of Bad News for Musicians. Robert Johnson, Elvis Presley, Mark Heard, and Vassar Clements all died on this day. With the beating the U.S. mandolin community has already taken this month, I wonder what could happen today that would be even worse?

I don't really want to know the answer. If you play the mandolin, today's a good day to stop smoking and wear your seat belt.

Tim LaHaye, media darling

2006-07-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

Israel and Hezbollah are at each other's throats. Baghdad is engulfed in a civil war (unless you still buy into the U.S. Defense Department's culture of denial). Iran and North Korea are nuclear powder kegs led by people who who just might enjoy playing with matches.

For enlightened Christian comment in these difficult times, to whom does MSNBC turn? Our old pal, "Tsunami Tim" LaHaye.

Biblically speaking, the very nations that are mentioned in prophecy—and have been mentioned for 2,500 years as occupying the focus of the tension of the last days—are the very nations that are involved in the conflict right now. ... no generation has had so many signs of the times as our generation. We have more reason to believe that Christ could come in our lifetime than any generation before us.

This, of course, has been said in every generation. It's exactly the same argument Hal Lindsey was using thirty years ago. And it's exactly the same argument some other nutjob will use thirty years from now ... unless, of course, Tim turns out by mere coincidence to be right. But if you ask me, every generation has exactly the same amount of reason to believe in Christ's return. And here it is: Christ said he would return. What other reason do you need?

As for the "very nations that are mentioned in prophecy" claim, Tim is conveniently forgetting the United States. We're involved, but we're not mentioned in prophecy.

The interview keeps going downhill. Brian Braiker, a journalist with nerves of butter, puts up a bit of a struggle, but soon capitulates to dear old Tim:

But my understanding is that current biblical scholarship reads some of the apocalyptic scenes in the Bible as metaphorically addressing events that were taking place as the Bible was being written.
These are usually liberal theologians that don’t believe the Bible literally.

Excuse me? So in order to take the Bible literally, we have to completely ignore the historical context in which it was written? We have to assume Biblical writers wrote things that were completely unintelligible to their own generation, because they were really writing with Tim LaHaye in mind? That's a "literal" interpretation?

It's funny, too, how much the literal interpretation of Bible prophecy has changed. In Hal Lindsey's day it somehow involved the Soviet Union; now it doesn't. I didn't realize literal interpretations were so mutable.

Once again, MSNBC has bypassed any number of theologians and Christian commentators who could perhaps have said something worthwhile about the Middle East crisis du jour, and instead given ink to someone who has no credibility — but sells a lot of books.

The amazing colossal home value

2006-06-07T21:16:00.000-07:00

What would you think if you learned that the value of your home had increased by 130 percent?

In real estate–crazed Seattle, that would be cause for rejoicing. But the same isn't true everywhere, as this story from Lincoln, Nebraska, illustrates.

I guess the unfortunate lady in the story could get a home-equity loan or reverse mortgage to pay her property taxes...

Pow! Right in the KSER

2006-06-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

If you missed The Priest and the Publicans (see below) at Northwest Folklife, you can hear us live in the studio Saturday night, June 10, on "Bluegrass Express," which airs 8–10 p.m. on KSER 90.7 FM in Everett, Wash.

Three chords and four Hail Marys

2006-05-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

Nice piece here from the Archdiocese of Seattle about my gospel bluegrass band, The Priest and the Publicans. Well, it's mostly about our banjo player, Fr. Armando Guzman. Not many bluegrass bands have a priest on the banjo — or anywhere, for that matter.

The other night I told Armando about the first time I saw a banjo-playing priest. It was roughly 20 years ago at the Newman Center in Tucson, near the University of Arizona. Armando's response: "Yeah, I know that guy." Turns out it was that priest who got Armando started "pickin' five," as they say.

What a wacky world.

Beware: Dangerous Intersection!

2006-04-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

My wife, Sarah, has been fired from her job.

One of her jobs, anyhow. She has several. This one was a once-a-week gig as a teacher for an after-school drama program at a private Christian elementary/middle school. Not much of a job, but it brought in a little money and gave her a chance to do something that's important to her: work where faith and the arts intersect.

But, as anyone who's been there can tell you, that's a dangerous intersection. Signage is notoriously poor. Boundaries are not well marked. Signals are easily misunderstood. Just when you think it's safe to cross, a truck can come out of nowhere and flatten you, just as one did this week.

Briefly, she was working on two plays: with the older kids, a "famous scenes in Shakespeare" pastiche; with the younger ones, an adaptation of a children's book called Tasty Baby Belly Buttons, based on a Japanese folk tale, in which a young girl, armed with a samurai sword, rescues the babies of her town from a gang of oni, giants who have kidnapped the babies in order to eat their belly buttons. The book is, trust me, completely innocuous.

But a certain segment of the Christian population are devoted to finding Highly Questionable Content in even the most innocuous material, and then Raising Grave Concerns about it. Unfortunately, that's the same segment that often sends their kids to private Christian schools.

In the case of Shakespeare, that Highly Questionable Content isn't too hard to find: One of the scenes was from Macbeth, and the parent's Grave Concern was nothing more or less than "My daughter's playing a WITCH?!" Never mind that this particular pastiche portrayed the witches as harmless dolts who couldn't tell Macbeth from MacGyver, and who, lacking both eye of newt and a caldron, had to make do with French fries and a trash can.

For Tasty Baby Belly Buttons, the parents had to search a little more diligently: "I don't want my daughter handling a SWORD!" Never mind that it was a foam-rubber stage prop, and in the story, the girl doesn't even use the sword to defeat the oni. The other objection concerned the oni themselves, who are described in the book as having red and green faces, and horns. "We can't have our children wearing horns! Demons have HORNS!"

(Ever seen a demon, by the way? Neither have I. What makes us so sure they have horns?)

It gets worse: Along with the Grave Concerns, the parents also engaged in the famous Complete Abdication of Responsibility. No one told Sarah in advance that she couldn't present scripts containing this or that. Neither the principal nor the parent supervisor, who was in the classroom for at least part of the class every week, objected to the scripts when Sarah chose them, or at any point during the rehearsal process. Nor did any parent contact Sarah directly to discuss those Grave Concerns — until it was too late. The controversy swirled behind her back to the point where parents began pulling their kids out of the class. Then the parent supervisor e-mailed Sarah, suggesting that they might have to cancel the performances. Sarah called her back and left a message, offering to discuss some solutions. Next thing she knew, she was fired.

But it doesn't stop there. No, it gets even worse than that. When Sarah went in to pick up her last check and say good-bye to the kids, she learned that the parent supervisor herself had raised the hue and cry about horns and demons — after looking at a costume list. No one, not one parent, not the PARENT SUPERVISOR, nor even the PRINCIPAL, had bothered at any point to REVIEW THE SCRIPTS.

That's a particularly toxic combination of caution and carelessness, but sadly, it's all too common. And beware lest ye be tempted to dismiss the story because it happened at a private Christian school. Sarah ran into some of the same types of problems last year when she directed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at a public middle school: "Does Injun Joe have to have a KNIFE?! Does he have to DIE?!"

How did a school serving parents like these come to have a drama class in the first place? Well, that parent supervisor had enrolled her kids in a drama camp the summer before, where they acted out C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. (More about that in a minute.) They enjoyed it, so she thought a drama class at the school would be a good idea. And that, dear reader, seems to be all the thought anyone gave to the matter.

What too many parents apparently failed to grasp is that Good Drama requires Conflict, and Conflict requires that someone portray the Bad Guy. Too often, a Christian family's sole exposure to acting is via the church Christmas pageant, and too often such pageants simply leave the bad guy out. The Christmas story offers a spectacular villain — King Herod — but he's usually consigned to a brief mention in the narration. Perhaps pageant directors are squeamish over the details of Herod's population control program. (As a lad, I was in the one pageant in a thousand that had a King Herod... I played his scribe. Neither I nor the kid who played Herod grew up to be murderers, as far as I know. But I digress.)

In children's literature, villains are frequently larger than life: monsters, witches, giants, talking wolves, sorcerers, wicked queens. Maybe that's because children still have imaginations big enough to contain such fantastic creatures. (Or at least they do if you don't pump nine hours of television into them every day … but I digress.) By the time you become a Typical American Adult, your imagination has shrunk to the size of a pea because you never use it any more, and so you must have your villains cut down to size. You can't get your head around a mythical giant, so you turn him into a demon — and the only reason you can do that is that you don't believe demons are mythical. You're so scared of weapons that even a prop knife or a foam rubber sword is Too Threatening. You say, of course, that you're only concerned for your child, who might not understand the difference between a Real sword and a Make-Believe one, but the truth is the opposite. Kids understand make-believe perfectly well, because they're still capable of doing it. In this case it's the adults who can no longer keep things in perspective.

Before you come after me with garden implements, allow me to say this: Yes, I believe media violence can be a bad thing, and that too much of it can desensitize kids to real violence. And no, I wouldn't leave a loaded gun lying around where my kid might pick it up and play with it. Imagination and curiosity have their dark sides. And yes, I know Columbine High School killer Dylan Klebold was involved with his school's drama group. But he wasn't an actor, he was a sound technician. Those are the people you have to watch out for.

All kidding aside, stage combat and media violence are completely different animals. Any drama teacher worth her salt knows that when you teach kids to use prop weapons, safety is your primary concern. You explain to the kids that the props are not toys, and you show them how to handle those props without getting hurt. Properly done, instruction in stage combat makes kids more sensitive to real violence, not less — and better able to tell fact from fiction.

So, could this fiasco have been prevented? I have to say I doubt it. Sure, Sarah could have chosen other scripts, but I can't think of one that's not potentially problematic. Do you know a stageworthy children's story that has no conflict, no villains, no weapons, no element of fantasy or imagination, and nothing that couldn't be misconstrued as Highly Questionable Content by parents with Grave Concerns? I could spend all day on that question, but let's just look at the alternatives that actually were put forth:

The Elephant's Child. This is a musical Sarah and I wrote, based on the story by Rudyard Kipling. It was one of her initial suggestions for a script, but she didn't have enough strong singers and the kids didn't like the story. Which is too bad, because it probably had less Highly Questionable Content than any of the other alternatives. The major villain is a crocodile, not a mythical being. But there is a fair amount of violence, including (gasp!) spanking, which is bound to Rub Someone the Wrong Way. Not to mention that the Elephant's Child disrespects his elders and runs away from home. Finally, the story suggests that elephants haven't always had trunks, which might be construed as Teaching Evolution — and we wouldn't want that at a private Christian school, would we?

The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The parent supervisor suggested this familiar fairy tale — so familiar, I guess, that we don't think about its disturbing elements. Cruelty to animals! Breach of contract! Unfair treatment of immigrant labor! Enchantment and magic! And, Most Disturbing of All, mass kidnapping of all the town's children, who follow the piper into the underworld, never to return! Is that really better than horns, swords, and witches? I don't think so. And would parents who are so wary of Bad Guys really accept a story with no clear-cut Good Guy?

The Magician's Nephew. Suggested by the principal, this is a book in C.S. Lewis' Narnia series. Even if it weren't too long to develop into a script for a once-a-week class, it's still loaded with Highly Questionable Content. A sinister magician! Travel to other worlds! A wicked queen named Jadis, with superhuman powers, offspring of mythical creatures, who rips an iron bar off a lamppost and kills a policeman with it! Later, after a scene paralleling the Genesis creation, this same queen acts very much like the serpent in the garden. It's widely understood, in fact, that the Narnia books are Christian allegories, and that Jadis represents Satan. Parents at this school wouldn't allow their kids to play a weak parody of a Shakespeare witch, or a giant with horns — but somehow playing Jadis would be OK? Can you explain that?

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Ah, the book that started it all. Another entry in the Narnia series. Jadis shows up here too, and we learn that she's not really a queen but a WITCH. Furthermore, there's a faun named Tumnus, who worries that the witch will saw off his HORNS because he has disobeyed her. In the middle of the story, Father Christmas shows up (speaking of mythical beings) and distributes gifts, including a pair of SWORDS. Hm. Horns, swords, and witches — where have I heard THAT before?

"Something from the Bible." Oh yeah, there's nothing controversial in the Bible. Except maybe the WITCH employed by King Saul to summon up the spirit of the prophet Samuel. Or the SWORD used by the apostle Peter to cut off Malchus' ear. Or the beast in Revelation with seven heads and ten HORNS. (Hey, maybe that's why people think demons have horns. Still, there's no reason to assume that anything with horns is a demon. The Lamb in Revelation has seven horns, and he represents Jesus.)

Is it me, or is there a pernicious double standard at work here? Comes an atheist compiling a laundry list of offensive content in the Bible — witness Julia Sweeney's popular one-woman play Letting Go of God, for example — and Christians quite rightly say that the atheist is Missing the Point. Then they turn around and do exactly the same thing to a script they haven't even read.

Sarah's discouraged, naturally — but as dangerous as it is there, God keeps calling us back to that place where faith and art intersect. Maybe we'll survive long enough to see some decent traffic controls put in. But we're not holding our breath.

Ridiculous Web site of the month, part 5

2006-04-19T23:19:00.000-07:00

A famous celebrity from years past is building a new theatre in Branson, Missouri.

Nothing unusual about that.

Ah, but this theatre is different. It's part of a 600-acre development that also includes shops, cafés, a restaurant, 110 condos, and even classroom/convention space, all built around an old-fashioned, cobblestoned main street. The theatre will be used for the celebrity's TV broadcast tapings as well as live appearances.

Wow. THAT will turn Crystal Gayle, Shoji Tabuchi, and Boxcar Willie green with envy.

But wait, there's more! If you order now, you not only get the theatre, shops, eateries, condos, and all the rest — you get it all inside an enormous, climate-controlled, steel-framed, DOMED STRUCTURE!

My goodness. That'll dwarf anything else in Branson. It'll make Silver Dollar City look more like a wooden nickel!

Can you guess which celebrity has the charisma, the vision, the sheer unadulterated chutzpah, and most of all the bucks to pull off something like this?

Please say it's not Michael Jackson.

No, but you're warm.

Oprah? Garth Brooks? Tom Cruise? Donald Trump? Regis Philbin?

Good guesses, but you're cooling off. Here's a hint: The celebrity in question has already built one theme park.

Oh, this must be Dollywood Part II! But wouldn't you need TWO domed structures?

Cute, but wrong. Here's another hint: Jessica Hahn.

Isn't she in the WNBA?

No. Another hint: I Was Wrong!

Oh. So nobody's really building a 600-acre development underneath a dome in Branson.

No. I mean yes, someone really is. How about this: Do the initials "PTL" mean anything to you?

Jesus, Mary, and holy Saint Joseph! You can't mean —

Actually, I do. It's true, folks. Jim Bakker, one of the smarmiest religious con men ever to creep upon the face of the earth, has broken ground on his "Morningside" development in Branson — and will no doubt once again ask his TV viewers to foot the bill. While serving prison time for defrauding people with his previous TV show, "Praise the Lord," Bakker actually did publish a book called I Was Wrong. Apparently he's now decided he wasn't so wrong after all. So in the name of Jesus, he's going to build this half–Truman Show, half–Thomas Kinkade Missouri monstrosity. You can send an old dog to jail, but you can't teach him new tricks. Someone please tell me when this is over, because I can't bear to watch any more.

At least he lost the toupee.

Anne Lamott: food for thought

2006-04-18T17:41:00.000-07:00

Today Anne Lamott was a guest on "Weekday," the morning talk show at KUOW, the local NPR station. (You can listen at this archive link as soon as it's active.)

I haven't read much of Lamott, but on the whole I've liked the excerpts from her books that I've come across. I have several friends who are nuts about Lamott and her "liberal feminist Democrat Christian" take on Jesus. Maybe I'm less enthusiastic because I don't see eye to eye with Lamott on everything, but I still respect her ability to put her experience of Christianity into words on a page. And I ain't the sort of Christian who insists that everyone agree with me on political and social issues.

But.

I was still disappointed with the way Lamott came across on the radio. She says she became a Christian because she "fell in love with Jesus" — and that's fantastic. But then she goes on to say that she "doesn't believe in the literal truth of the Bible," and uses the standard "Jesus never said anything about it" copout to get around traditional Christian teachings on sexuality — and not just the A-word and the H-word; she alleges that Jesus' teachings on sex are limited to a single mention of marriage. On top of that, she attributes the statement "Faith without works is dead" to the Apostle Paul when, in fact, that statement comes from the Epistle of James — it's probably the single biggest point of difference between James and the Pauline epistles.

I understand that a 1-hour radio talk show doesn't give one enough time to fully explain one's approach to the Bible, but Lamott's remarks came across as a shallow, facile dismissal. I myself don't think the entire Bible is literally true, since parts of it contain poetry, metaphor, and highly symbolic language. But that doesn't give me license to reject the parts I don't like — or to be uninformed about what the Bible says. Jesus certainly addressed marriage more than once in the Gospels, and he does talk a bit about sexual ethics in the Sermon on the Mount, although perhaps he doesn't say as much as we might expect.

Furthermore, if one has fallen in love with Jesus, then one must believe that the Bible speaks some kind of truth on some level — because the Bible is what gives you Jesus. If the Bible isn't true, then why should Lamott believe in Jesus at all, let alone fall in love with him? Whether Lamott likes it or not, the "Jesus didn't mention it" argument is based on a standard literal interpretation of the Gospels, if not the rest of the Bible. If the Gospels aren't true in something resembling a literal sense, then you can't assume that they contain the actual sayings of Jesus. It then becomes meaningless to talk about whether Jesus did or didn't mention any particular thing.

Is Lamott approaching Jesus as a fictional character, and saying she fell in love with him the way one might love Rosalind, or David Copperfield, or Sherlock Holmes? I don't think so — and anyway, the Gospels don't purport to be fiction. I don't think Lamott herself would be too happy if I wrote her and said, "I love your essays even though I haven't read them, and I'm convinced you just made up everything that happens in them." Surely she doesn't mean to say that she's treating Jesus that way.

I believe that God's nature is most perfectly revealed in the person of Jesus as described in the Gospels, so where the Gospels and the Old Testament disagree I'll take the Gospels every time. Nonetheless I think it's a mistake to dismiss the rest of the Bible. After all, the Old Testament gives you the historical, religious and cultural context into which Jesus was incarnated, and the rest of the New Testament tells you how his followers worked out what his teachings would mean in their lives. If you believe that Jesus came to set the record straight on what God is like, and that most of his teaching involves correcting the ways God had been misunderstood, then it's just possible that those issues he didn't talk much about are the issues on which he had nothing to add or nothing to correct with respect to what first-century Jews already believed and taught. (Now there's a scary thought.) The "Jesus never said anything about ______" argument makes sense only if you assume Jesus was speaking into a vacuum, where no one else had said anything about ______ either. And that is most emphatically not the case.

And, of course, not only does the Bible give you the context for Jesus, church history and tradition give you the context for the Bible. This is the next step for me, a lifelong Protestant who senses a growing need to investigate the writings of the church fathers. In Lamott's case, maybe that's too much to ask, but it does seem reasonable to expect that if she's going to discuss the Bible on talk shows, she ought to evince more familiarity with it.

I think it's terrific that Anne Lamott is in love with Jesus. I think one of her great gifts is to make Jesus attractive to other people who might never have considered him, and to get some of us who've loved Jesus a long time to take a fresh look at him.

But loving Jesus is only the first step. He doesn't want us for a secret admirer, or a one-night stand, or even a steady girl. He wants us for his bride — and I don't think it's the kind of marriage where the husband makes all the concessions. Jesus, after all, is the guy who said, "If you love me, keep my commandments" (ouch!). Yes, he takes us as we are — but are we willing to do the same for him?

I haven't laughed so hard since...

2006-03-31T19:36:00.000-08:00

The violin might be real, but the rest of this eBay listing is a tall tale worthy of Paul Bunyan.

My own version of March madness

2006-03-31T13:00:00.000-08:00

I have a soft spot for small colleges. I'm from a small-college town. I grew up and moved away to a big town, but I still went to a small college. So when it comes to the NCAA basketball tournament, I don't really have a dog in the fight.

Unless, of course, we're talking about the NCAA Division II tournament, where this year my alma mater, Seattle Pacific, reached the Final Four. And since, in a transformation only slightly more plausible than an elephant dancing a lead role with the New York City Ballet, I've become a sportswriter for said alma mater's alumni magazine, I got the privilege of writing about the team's coach, Jeff Hironaka, and one of its star players, Tony Binetti.

That Final Four piece displaced this story about SPU's sixth man, Mike Bushmaker, which was written just before the team's remarkable postseason.

You know you're famous when...

2006-03-29T17:14:00.000-08:00

your name is one of the multiple-choice answers in a trivia quiz.

As to whether it's the correct answer or not, I have no comment.

Produce wash: who's really getting soaked?

2006-03-20T21:53:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I paid a rare visit to a Whole Foods Market in Seattle. Rare not because I dislike the place, but because it's so far from my home. I don't travel that far for groceries, but in this case I was on my way home from church.

Whole Foods Market, in case you didn't know, is a high-end supermarket chain specializing in organic produce and "sustainable" business practices, and it's proven remarkably successful. A recent piece in Slate, though, peeks behind the curtain at Whole Foods and questions some of their practices. For instance, is it really "sustainable" to import organically grown produce from Chile instead of buying it locally? Doesn't the fossil-fuel cost of transporting that produce from South America essentially negate the reduced environmental impact of organic farming?

Good question, but I saw something even more puzzling in the produce section at Whole Foods. It's a $4-a-bottle product called "produce wash." It's loaded with fancified, organic-sounding emulsifiers and other goodies meant to eradicate dirt, wax, and chemical or pesticide residue from the surface of your fruits and veggies.

Leaving aside the question of what's wrong with good old-fashioned tap water and a scrubbing brush, I'd like to know what such a product is doing on the shelves at Whole Foods at all. Because, you see, if the produce there is organically grown, why in the heck would I need to wash it with something designed to remove pesticides? Isn't it the point of organic agriculture that the growers don't use pesticides in the first place? What's next, an umbrella shop in the Sahara?

Lots of stores sell us stuff we don't really need; Whole Foods is hardly unique in that respect. But that's the problem: the appeal of Whole Foods is based on the idea that it's different from other stores.

I did go ahead and spend $49 at Whole Foods. I bought some produce; I'm just not sure whether I should wash it.

How not to help orphans in Africa

2006-02-09T12:16:00.000-08:00

Drag 'em out of their home villages and put 'em on display in a theme park for American tourists, that's how.

Yeesh.

Choose this day whom you will serve

2006-01-07T12:53:00.000-08:00

Who Hath Known the Mind of God?

The latest proclamation from septuagenarian televangelist Pat Robertson has me pondering.

If you haven't already heard about this, I hesitate to bring it up, but here goes. After Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage, Robertson opined that God was punishing Sharon for "dividing God's land," an apparent reference to Sharon's forced withdrawal last year of 9,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip. He also suggested that the assassination of previous Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was a similar case of divine retribution.

(Of course, the modern State of Israel has controlled the Strip only since 1967. Whether the Strip was ever part of the historical, Biblical kingdom of Israel I haven't yet been able to determine. So how exactly did the Strip become "God's land"? Does winning some territory in a war create a permanent divine mandate for how the territory should be managed in the future? Apparently Robertson thinks so.)

There are two contexts that might shed light here. One is that Robertson is a card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool, award-winning Zionist who has met with both Rabin and Sharon, so his remarks aren't only political, they're personal. Sharon figured that getting settlers out of the Strip was the best way to guarantee their long-term safety; apparently Robertson disagrees and is using Sharon's illness as a way of saying, "See, God is in my corner." Such pronouncements, naturally, are entirely subjective. How does Robertson know that Sharon isn't being punished for, say, building the West Bank security fence?

The other context, of course, is Robertson's penchant for interpreting certain unfortunate events as acts of divine retribution. He's threatened Orlando, Fla., and Dover, Pa., with assorted natural disasters — the former because of a "Gay Day" at Disney World, the latter for voting out a school board that added intelligent-design theory to its science curriculum. He endorsed a statement by Jerry Falwell interpreting the 9/11 attacks as divine judgment. Through prayer, he claims to have steered no fewer than three hurricanes away from his Virginia Beach headquarters. (Which, of course, would mean that he was responsible for steering them into other cities—and if he's ever apologized to those cities, I haven't heard about it.) He's also suggested that it would be a good idea to nuke the State Department headquarters and assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

All of this is probably too long of a setup for the following question, but here it is anyway. Just whom does Pat Robertson serve? Take your pick:


a) God the Father?	b) The Godfather?

Vote now! America is watching.

Ridiculous Web site of the month, part 4

2005-12-30T20:52:00.000-08:00

Jesus Junk ... in Space!

In December 1969, Jesus Movement evangelist Arthur Blessitt decided to take up his cross. Literally. He put a wheel on an 8-foot wooden cross and has walked over 37,000 miles with it, visiting 305 countries in the process. Wherever he goes, he preaches.

OK, so that's a little unusual, but I can respect him for it. However, now that Blessitt has pretty much covered the globe, with only a few remote islands left to visit, he's started to think about the next step. What lies beyond. Something that isn't so ... terrestrial.

So he cut a couple of slices off his cross, made a 2-inch mini-cross out of them, and is planning to launch it into orbit on a commercial satellite—along with the Bible on microfilm and a couple of fluorescent "Jesus stickers." They'll be up there circling the earth along with Timothy Leary's ashes and the socks missing from your dryer.

I suppose Blessitt has every right to do this. There are no laws protecting the cross. People can wear it around their necks, or drag it around the world, or put it in a vat and pee on it and call it art, or burn it on the neighbor's ... on second thought, there are limits on what you can do with the cross.

Now, do I think sending the cross into space desecrates it? No, but it's pointless. Absolutely pointless, and not too cheap besides, I would imagine. Dammit, Blessitt, if God wanted a cross in space, he would have put one there.

That's my father-in-law

2005-12-21T19:47:00.000-08:00

I don't remember Doc Walton telling me about this—and I'm married to his daughter.

Maybe your father-in-law has accumulated so many kudos that you wouldn't even notice if he were honored by a state legislature. But as far as I'm concerned, this is pretty significant.

Worth a blog entry, anyway. Congratulations, sir, even if it's a couple years late.

Typo in Tokyo

2005-12-20T01:21:00.000-08:00

What is the cost of a typographical error?

How about 40 billion yen ($343 million)? That's how much a trader at Japan's Mizuho Securities cost his employer when he entered a computerized sell order on the Tokyo Stock Exchange for 610,000 shares of a newly issued stock at 1 yen apiece, rather than 1 share at 610,000.

Heads pretty much always roll in Japan when bad stuff happens, and indeed the president of the stock exchange has resigned over the incident. No word yet on who the trader was or what's happened to him.

But for editors like me, the moral of the story is clear: People who think they can't afford to have someone check their work—or worse yet, people who think they don't need their work checked—are wrong. Your mistakes may not cost you $343 million, but they will cost you something. Readers of your ad or marketing copy might not buy your product because you were unclear about its benefits. Your proposal might be rejected because it was vague. Your insights might go unappreciated because you buried them under wordiness.

Those are the costs of miscommunication. Instead of paying them, try investing up front in improved communication. Then at least you'll have something to show for the expense, and at best your written work will get you closer to your goals. So hire an editor—me, for instance. Editors don't bite, and we might even have some tips on hot Japanese stocks.

Happy family

2005-12-15T22:11:00.000-08:00

Yeah, it's happened. Sarah and I have gone all soft. We have long and earnest conversations about diapers and sleep patterns and developmental milestones. We've become our own worst nightmare.

But look at the guy. Can you blame us, really?

Merry Christmas. And thanks to my pal, Jim Mannino, for this great photo.

Get your kicks

2005-12-12T22:49:00.000-08:00

Here is my latest piece of feature writing. I am one of the last people I thought would be doing sports stories, but it turns out that I really enjoy it. I'm sorry to report that at about the time this piece went to press, the SPU women's soccer team lost the Division II national title game in sudden-death overtime. But as they say, it'll give 'em something to shoot for next year.

Where's Will?

2005-12-12T22:23:00.000-08:00

Please pause for a moment to mourn the demise of one of my favorite Web sites, and one which I found extraordinarily useful:

www.theplays.org

This site was nothing more or less than a fully text-searchable compendium of the works of William Shakespeare. Type in a phrase and you could see at a glance what play it was from. You could look up any scene or line you wanted, or just sit and read through a play if that was your pleasure. I spent considerable time mining it for quotations, and now that it's gone, I miss it terribly. There are other Bard references online but none of them are half as good.

Anyone know who pulled the plug on The Plays? How can we get it back? I'm willing to help.

I would insert a Shakespeare quote here, but I no longer have my favorite tool for looking them up. See how annoying that is?

What tree did YOU fall out of?

2005-12-05T21:24:00.000-08:00

This, alack, is a real e-mail I received earlier today.

Dear Staff:

To brighten the office, we would like to put up a non-denominational winter tree in the _____ area. We would like to do this with the support of staff, so if you are offended by this tree, we will post an envelope marked, “tree” in the lunchroom, and you can submit your concerns in that envelope. Your concerns will be anonymous and we will take down the tree immediately. Please send us your thoughts by Wednesday, December 7th; otherwise, we will proceed with decorating the tree.

I composed several possible responses:

I'm offended that you want to kill a living tree to observe a holiday.
I'm offended that you're trying to "non-denominationalize" a symbol of a Christian holiday. (Don't give me yer crap about the tree's "pagan origins"; today it's widely recognized as a Christian symbol. Leather shoes have bovine origins, but no one expects them to moo or give milk.)
Call it "non-denominational" if you want, but I'm offended that you're not putting up a non-denominational menorah or lighting some non-denominational incense or baking non-denominational Kwanzaa cookies or sacrificing a non-denominational goat to celebrate the winter solstice. Let's celebrate ALL the holidays!
Wanna know how an angel feels? You will, after I ram that non-denominational tree up yer rear end. No holiday symbols in the workplace! Bah humbug!
It's a great idea! Can I bring some non-denominational ornaments?
I'm allergic to trees.

Quick—which of those responses should I put in the envelope? I have only until Wednesday...

I eat dead people

2005-11-28T15:59:00.000-08:00

There are typos, and then there are typos.

Picture if you will:

You're sitting at a fine restaurant where you've just polished off a meal that was delicious but, as every good meal does, left you wanting more. You think to yourself, "A restaurant as lovely as this must have some simply scrumptious goodies for afters." So you ask your waiter, who replies, to your utter shock and dismay: "Why, certainly, sir—we have a wasteland full of corpses for your dining pleasure."

If that sounds farfetched, it isn't. I was perusing the Seattle Weekly a few days ago when I noticed an ad for a dinner-theatre event that included a reference to "decedent deserts." As you know, gentle reader, a desert is a wasteland, and as you should know, a decedent is a deceased person. The event being advertised was beginning to sound more like a Donner party than a dinner party.

The hapless copywriter responsible for this ad was, of course, trying to tempt readers with a reference to "decadent desserts," which would have sounded a lot more appealing. Of course, the primary definition of decadent is "marked by decay or decline" (as in, The fact that people can't spell the word decadent, let alone use it properly, is one sign of the decadent state of our language), but the copywriter was trying for the trendier "characterized by or appealing to self-indulgence." At least I hope so, because I don't want to eat desserts marked by decay or decline any more than I want to eat dead people.

This particular combination of misspellings was new to me, and surely, I thought, it was unique. But then I Googled it and discovered the same horrifying phrase on several Web pages, including this miserable, steaming heap of verbiage promoting, of all things, the Holland America cruise line. Here's the offending sentence.

Premium cuts of beef, a variety of pasta dishes, as well as decedent deserts, including baked Alaska, are also offered.

Gee, if you ever get past the proliferation of clauses, the missing conjunction, and the passive voice, you might be bothered by the misspellings. I, for one, have never been tempted to take a Holland America cruise, and I am even less tempted now.

So, folks, let's be careful out there, especially when considering what sweets to enjoy after your meal at a dinner theatre or on a cruise ship. Or better yet, let's be careful when writing about it.

Net worth

2005-11-10T23:55:00.000-08:00

My blog is worth $2,822.70.
How much is your blog worth?

So where do I send my invoice?

Two strikes for Columbia

2005-11-05T23:13:00.000-08:00

Ten years ago, on a cold gray night, I went to Columbia, S.C., for the first time with my wife, to attend her 10-year high school class reunion. She went to a boarding school in Asheville, N.C., but a few years after she graduated, the school signed a pact with Columbia International University, pulled up stakes, and relocated to Columbia, a move that still upsets many of its graduates, including my wife.

From that visit, the two things I remember most distinctly are the taxi driver and the pizza. We gave the taxi driver the name of CIU and our best idea of its general location, but somehow all she heard was the name of the highway. She took us about 10 miles out of our way before I talked her into turning around and actually delivering us to our destination. Speaking of delivery, we ordered bell peppers on the pizza that was brought to our hotel room later that night, and it was the first pizza I've ever seen bearing vinegary, mushy bell peppers that came from a jar. Strike one for Columbia.

On Halloween we passed through Columbia for the second time, on our way from Asheville (which, my wife decided, was the proper place to hold the 20-year reunion, even though the school is no longer there) to Statesboro, Ga. Just ahead of the freeway junction where we were supposed to switch to a different interstate, I pulled off the highway in search of food. As soon as we entered the surface street we encountered a sign showing the way to the current location of my wife's alma mater, but, lacking raw eggs and toilet paper, we declined to drive down and see it. Besides, we were hungry. Motivated by the desire to experience Southern-style barbecue, I pulled in at a place called Maurice's. There are, I later discovered, eight Maurice's restaurants in Columbia, and the cuisine has been written up in People magazine. It's something of an institution.

For all that, we were the only customers. Our road-weary eyes stared at the menu for what must have seemed like an uncomfortably long time for the woman behind the counter, because she actually suggested that we go down the road to the lunch buffet if we wanted a wider selection. I told her we didn't need a wider selection as long as we had an alternative to Maurice's flagship pork sandwich — pork being the main focus of Southern barbecue. We just don't eat a lot of pork.

So we ordered chicken sandwiches, hush puppies, fries, and water, and while we waited for the food, we started looking around the place. The first surprise was the bottled barbecue sauce on every table — it was a yellow mustard-based concoction, rather than the red tomato-ey stuff we're used to out West. The second shock was a little more eye-opening. In a corner of the restaurant were some non-food items for sale: a biography of the restaurant's founder, Maurice Bessinger; Bibles; and miniature Confederate flags.

Uh-oh. I read one of the photocopied political columns lying on the countertop: a defense of William Bennett's recent remark about reducing the crime rate by aborting black babies. The columnist dismissed all Bennett's critics, but didn't stop there. He also suggested that blacks who are born into economic disadvantage should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps — a method shown to work only for people who can already afford boots.

The food came, and we went to an outside table to eat it because the weather was nice, and it was a little chilly inside the restaurant. But maybe not all of the chills came from the air conditioner. The hush puppies were slightly crunchy, oniony, and thoroughly delicious. In marked contrast to his politics, Maurice's sauce turned out to be sweet, bland, and inoffensive, but it did have a pleasing flavor.

The Confederate flag no longer flies over the South Carolina State House, but it does fly over Maurice's Barbeque. Both entities have suffered economically for the flag: the NAACP led a boycott of the state's convention-and-tourism industry, and Wal-Mart has pulled Maurice's sauce from its shelves. You can read all about it at Maurice's Web site if you think I'm making any of this up. There Maurice makes declarations like this: "Our Sacred Constitution was given to us by God and He expects us to have the courage to keep it." I'm not making that up either. If Bush really wants a strict constructionist for the Supreme Court, he should talk to Maurice — but they might have some differences over federalism.

In his own defense, Maurice alleges that Wal-Mart has made no ideological demands on, and never used any such economic leverage against, its suppliers in Communist China. If this allegation is correct, then Maurice has a point, but unfortunately Wal-Mart's hypocrisy doesn't make Maurice's views any more palatable. A Chinese sweatshop magnate might say, "There is nothing wrong with the way I treat my workers. If there were, then this American company would not buy my products." He would then be making the same logical assumption as Maurice — to wit, that integrity is as important to Wal-Mart as the profit motive — but I daresay Maurice would not agree with his conclusion. And anyway, if I buy a toaster made in China, the instruction manual doesn't contain quotations from Chairman Mao or bear the image of the flag of the People's Republic. Unlike Maurice, the Chinese don't mix their politics with their products.

By the end of my meal I was both satisfied and disgusted: satisfied because the food was good, and disgusted because I'd just given thirteen dollars to a secessionist theocratic redneck in the person of a low-rent Colonel Sanders. I revere the Bible as the testimony of the living God, and I don't mind the Confederate flag as a symbol of regional pride and history, but I don't like what happens when you put the two of them together. Neither the Stars and Bars nor the Stars and Stripes makes an appropriate wrapper for the Good Book. Strike two for Columbia.

Nashville bound

2005-10-25T20:25:00.000-07:00

Ma, I'm goin' to Nashville to play the fiddle.

At least for a day.

One of the consequences of my inviting Jason Harrod to Seattle was that he subsequently invited me to sit in with him on gigs all weekend. That seemed to go well enough, so he invited me to play with him this coming Friday.

At the International Bluegrass Music Association Fan Fest. At the Nashville Convention Center. The one location on earth this coming weekend that is guaranteed to have more of my current musical heroes per square foot than anywhere else.

Jason's not really bluegrass ... more like "acoustic Americana," but apparently there's a place for that as well. We're on the Roots and Branches stage Friday, Oct. 28 at 4 p.m.

This might be just another gig for some people, but I haven't been so excited about playing a concert in a long time.

I realize y'all probably won't be able to come cheer us on, but if you can, look for me. I'm the guy with the purple fiddle case.

Parting the Waters

2005-09-29T21:27:00.000-07:00

Wondering why I haven't blogged much? Here's what I've been up to.

Planning all this has been a lot of work, but it should be worth it. I hope you can come to the show.

I didn't know they could do that

2005-09-27T02:07:00.000-07:00

I get my share of scam and "phish" e-mail, but here's one that made me take notice. It's a variation on the ol' Nigerian scam, which has been around since before there was an Internet:

Attn:Sir/Madam,
It is with trust and believe that I write to you, although I don't know you neither have I seen you before, but my confidence was reposed On you. I am Barrister Ahmed Yusuf, a personal Attorney to Mr.Hesham Sabry, and a National of your Country. He was also a Contractor with one of the Government Prostates, ...

Gee, and I thought things were bad when Caligula made his horse a senator.

The Gate swings shut

2005-09-12T03:28:00.000-07:00

I'm glad I went to see the great Clarence Gatemouth Brown when I did. He must have been about 70 years old at the time. Even then, though he was still at the height of his dazzling instrumental skills, he had ceased to innovate — he was essentially making the same record over and over, but what a record it was. He also wasn't taking chances — at the show I saw, he played his current record note for note. But what notes they were.

Now he's gone, his death hastened if not caused by Hurricane Katrina — one of the few forces in nature that could match his intensity. Lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease had slowed Gate, but they couldn't stop him — he'd tow his oxygen tank right up on stage and play anyway. But the hurricane took everything he had: destroyed almost all his instruments, his house, and his whole town. Gate escaped to Texas with his beloved Gibson Firebird before the flooding hit, but he left his heart in Louisiana. So long, man, and I hope they have some horns and a good rhythm section wherever you end up.

P.S. Look up Vassar Clements for me and play another duet.

Rest in peace, Dad

2005-09-09T23:11:00.000-07:00

I blogged the deaths of Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Vassar Clements, and my cat.

But this one's a little harder: my dad. Tough for me to get my head around it. I can tell you how those other deaths make me feel. When it comes to Dad, those feelings are a bit more mixed ... maybe even downright conflicted. It was a long decline and I'm glad he's finally out of pain. On the other hand, our relationship was strained and awkward, even though it had gone from adversarial to cordial. I did reach a point in my own mind where I forgave him of everything I'd held against him. But somehow I never got around to writing the card or making the phone call to tell him about it. I also deeply regret that I didn't take my son to Arizona to meet his grandpa until it was too late.

Here are the cold hard facts:

Stanley Deane Stillion, formerly of Flagstaff, died Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005, in Phoenix. He was 70.

He was born March 7, 1935, in McPherson, Kan. to Paris Hugh and Margaret (Anderson) Stillion.

Mr. Stillion was a typographer and owned his own business. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Mr. Stillion is survived by his wife, Emily Ellen Stillion; their children, Melinda Roell (Craig), Martin Stillion (Sarah), Michele Shepherd (Richard), Erin Stillion (Stella) and John Stillion; brothers and sisters Emily Anne Stillion, Stephen Stillion, Marshall Stillion and James Stillion; and seven grandchildren.

Commemoration services will be Saturday at 1 p.m. at First Church of The Nazarene in Prescott, with visitation one hour prior to the service. Military honors will be provided by the American Legion Post No. 6, Prescott.

The family suggests memorials be sent to: Prison Fellowship Ministry, P.O. Box 1550, Merrifield, Va., 22116-1550; or Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, 6401 The Paseo, Kansas City, MO 64131.

Arrangements are by Sunrise Funeral Home and Crematory in Prescott Valley.

Anyway, kids, parents can be difficult, but that's no reason to hold out on them. Although Dad and I parted on good terms, I never said some of the things I wanted to say or should have said. Maybe someone out there can learn from my mistake.

THIS is the greatest painting in Britain?

2005-09-09T01:29:00.000-07:00

The National Gallery in London recently took a poll on "The Greatest Painting in Britain," and here's the winner: The Fighting Temeraire by
J. M. W. Turner.

Frankly, I don't get it. I mean, sure, it's an important, symbolic work fraught with melancholy meaning for the British. Painted in 1838, it depicts an old tall-masted gunship being towed up the Thames for demolition. And although Britain at the time was still the world's dominant superpower, that dominance had been shaken by the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Perhaps Turner was looking ahead, and the sun on the right is finally setting on the British Empire, not just on the scene at hand. But does all that significance mean that this rather dingy composition is a greater painting than, say, Van Gogh's Sunflowers or Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, both of which were also nominated?

Count me as one who doesn't think so. But then, I'm not British.

Family entertainment

2005-08-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

Sitting at night under romantic lights in a gazebo and serenading my wife and son—that's my idea of a good time.

Actually, this was a wedding gig, so I even got paid for it. Not only that, the bride and groom inspired a new tune, which tumbled out of my fiddle as soon as I starting playing prelude music. What more could you ask for?

Reaching way back

2005-08-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a reprint of something I wrote three years ago that I thought was worth keeping around. I don't know how much longer it will be available at the not-very-healthy-looking Falcon Web site (the campus newspaper at SPU, my alma mater), where it was originally published. So I'm dusting it off and giving it a new home.

This essay was a response to a piece by one of the Falcon's staff writers. I worry about SPU when I read the Falcon. The school's motto is "Engaging the culture, changing the world," and I'm on board with that. But, of course, in order to change the world one must engage the culture in the Areopagite sense, if not the Jean-Luc Picard sense, of the word engage.

Students who write opinion pieces for the Falcon are willing to engage the culture. I'll give them that. But they seem too often inclined to engage it in the "under every green tree" sense, as the prophet Jeremiah put it—in other words, letting the culture have its way with them. And that isn't going to change the world.

Here in its entirety is a Falcon piece that really fried my grits. My response, which the Falcon was kind enough to publish a couple of weeks later, is below.

Christian faith may bias instruction of theology
Diverse professors would promote objectivity
By Andrew Steiner, Staff Writer
Published: 4-3-2002

The goal of a theology class is to teach its students about a faith. It is not about trying to convert its students to that faith. Would a theology class reach this goal better by having a Christian or a non-Christian teach the class?

The theology classes here at SPU are taught by Christian professors. If it were not required that all the teachers here be Christians, would it still be required that the theology teachers be so? Some might say that not requiring these professors to be Christians would make the classes less biased and more objective. Though a theology teacher who is a Christian may attempt to be objective and unbiased, this individual may still have the desire that students be converted to the Christian faith. Of course, nothing is wrong with this desire; one should want others to convert to one’s own faith. Such a desire, though, is a factor in making the teacher somewhat biased and subjective.

On the other hand, there is no guarantee that a theology professor who is not a Christian might be any less biased than a professor who is a Christian. Non-Christian instructors of theology have some interest in the faith since they are teaching about it. They also have some reason for not being a Christian. This reason might be enough to make them just as biased as a professor who is a Christian. One who is a Christian is experiencing that faith much more than one who is not. But does this guarantee that he or she will know more about it than those who are not?

It is a safe assumption to say that any theology professor who is a Christian is passionate about the faith. No matter what a professor’s teaching ability is, a sense of passion will undoubtedly make for a better teacher. In my experience, the teachers I have had who were passionate about what they were teaching were obviously into their subject more than those who were not. I usually learned far more from the teachers who had this passion.

Just as a Christian may have this passion about teaching on their faith, a non-Christian may be just as passionate. One reason that non-Christians may be theology professors is that they are genuinely interested in Christianity. They may be on a search themselves to find reasons to become a Christian. Though they have gone to seminary and taken the same classes that other Christian theology professors have taken, they could still be considered a yearning student of Christianity.

Yet another possibility is that there may be a theology professor who not only teaches classes on Christianity, but also teaches classes on other religions. He or she may teach a class on Judaism, Buddhism, Islam or Hinduism. This instructor’s reasons for teaching these classes would not be because of a passion about any single religion, but because of the enjoyment gained in learning and teaching on several of the main religions of the world.

This teacher’s fascination and curiosity would bring enough passion into the classes. Especially if this teacher does not have a favorite religion to teach on, he or she would be the least biased theology teacher. Such teachers are able to treat religions strictly as subjects, rather than faiths they believe to be true. This type of theology teacher would be the ideal one to have for a class.

OK, so much for that. Here's my reply:

Instructors must practice faith
By Martin Stillion, Guest Writer
Published: 4-17-2002

I’d like to respond at length to Andrew Steiner’s April 3 editorial "Christian faith may bias instruction of theology." In it, he suggests that the ideal theology professor would be "a non-Christian" who "not only teaches classes on Christianity, but also teaches classes on other religions," and "does not have a favorite religion to teach on." He claims that such professors are unbiased, because they can "treat religions strictly as subjects, rather than faiths they believe to be true."

I am reminded here of George Bernard Shaw’s famous quip, "Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach." But Shaw’s remark was meant to be ironic, not normative. The idea that those who don’t practice a religion are somehow best equipped to teach about it strikes me as not only counterintuitive but extremely dangerous.

I doubt very much whether it is possible for a person to take a neutral or unbiased stance toward Christianity. Ultimately, you either embrace Christ or you reject him. I don’t see any neutral ground. It is, of course, possible to reject Christianity out of ignorance or misinformation, but Mr. Steiner doesn’t want an ignorant or misinformed person. He wants someone who has studied Christianity on its own terms and chosen not to accept it. That is neither a neutral nor an objective stance. Yet Mr. Steiner’s "ideal" professor has taken this stance not only toward Christianity, but toward several other religions. Having studied them all and rejected all their claims to truth, the professor will offer nothing in place of those claims.

This professor, if not very introspective, may profess to be unbiased toward religion. But the greater likelihood is that the professor is equally biased against all religions. And this bias, because both student and professor are unaware of it, is far more insidious than any overt bias ever could be. If the professor claimed to be a Free Methodist, a Catholic, a Muslim or even an atheist, then Mr. Steiner could say to himself, "I must keep in mind where this individual is coming from." On the other hand, if Mr. Steiner thinks of the professor as someone whose hobby is religion but who doesn’t have a favorite, then he is likely to come away from the class with the impression that religions are like rare glass sculptures: interesting to look at, but impractical to carry around with you. Mr. Steiner doesn’t want to learn about religion; he wants to be inoculated against it.

There is a good deal of this inoculation going on in "comparative religion" courses at institutions of higher learning all across the country, and it is being performed by men and women who may resemble Mr. Steiner’s ideal professor in some aspects. But Mr. Steiner is not at one of those institutions; he is at SPU, which declares its Christian bias openly and often. Instead of relying on his own wits to detect this bias wherever he might encounter it, Mr. Steiner seems to be asking that the school scuttle its mission in order to minimize the risk of accidentally tainting him with some vestigial affection for Christianity.

A professor of comparative religion may be a syncretist—one who affirms the validity of the moral principles that most religions have in common. But a syncretist is not what Mr. Steiner is after. In his own words, ideal professors teach "religions strictly as subjects, rather than faiths they believe to be true." He does not want faith of any kind to enter the picture. Perish the thought that any religion should be found to contain truth. He clearly prefers the unavowed bias against all religions to the explicit one in favor of a given religion.

I wonder whether Mr. Steiner took the time to read C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man when it was offered as part of the Common Curriculum last year. In that book, Lewis takes the syncretist’s approach, showing that all great religions and civilizations have held more or less the same moral principles. These he collectively calls "the Tao." Lewis goes on to predict that modern education’s systematic disregard for the Tao will soon produce a generation of "men without chests"—human beings with no connection between the soul and the intellect, who are both incapable of moral reasoning on their own and suspicious of it in others. I contend that the type of religious instruction Mr. Steiner proposes will accomplish much the same thing.

Fallen hero

2005-08-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

One of the most original voices in American folk music was silenced today. So long, Vassar Clements.

Entirely self-taught, Clements never learned to read a note, yet developed into a musician of formidable technical prowess and idiosyncratic virtuosity.

The MSN obituary, predictably, focuses on Clements' work as a sideman on rock, pop and country albums, which is missing the point entirely. (Imagine an obituary of C.S. Lewis or Edgar Allan Poe that zeroed in on their literary criticism.) If you really want to hear Clements play, check out his work with Bill Monroe, John Hartford's Steam-Powered Aereo-Plain, or Old and in the Way (the one time I saw him play live, that's who he was with). Or, heck, find one of his 2 dozen solo recordings.

It's also the 13th anniversary of the death of Mark Heard. Not to mention 28 years for Elvis. And 67 for Robert Johnson.

Not a good day for musicians.

Ridiculous Web site of the month, part 3

2005-08-01T22:53:00.000-07:00

There are those who wax nostalgic for Christian heavy metal (I'm not one of them). But even among that crowd, you rarely see the name Stryken mentioned. For good reason. I had succeeded in forgetting about this band, but then I ran across a reference to them, and it piqued my curiosity. I searched. Bad idea.

The page I've linked to appears to be part of a (mercifully) incomplete site called "History of Christian Metal." Perhaps it befits a band responsible for one of the worst record covers in the history of Christian rock, but this really is just about the most poorly written band biography I've ever run across. I could hardly bear to read it. Yet it manages to demonstrate the band members' naivete as well as the writer's lack of ability. See, the band used to be called Stryker, but a certain group of oversized bumblebees threatened to sue, claiming that the name was too similar to their own. So here's how Stryker became Stryken:

Joey didn't like the name of changing from a "r" to a "n" Steve and Dale felt God revealed this name to them but didn't reveal this to Joey. So they left the situation with God to reveal to Joey what name should be used. They felt if God was in the situation and unity was to abound, they left the situation with God and they waited on God to reveal Himself to Joey. They already had their answer from God and that the name for the band was to change to Stryken. Joey calls back to the members that night and says "It is to be Stryken" and from then on, everyone in the band new God was in control of the band.

Of course, if you keep reading, it becomes apparent that if God is in control of the band, then He must be one of the most inept band managers ever.

There's another site devoted to this band, with, Lord help us all, some MP3 clips. In the interest of preserving what's left of my self-respect, I did not listen to them.

Farewell

2005-07-25T20:46:00.000-07:00

Admired Miranda!
Indeed the top of admiration! worth
What's dearest to the world!*

The world will little note nor long remember Miranda, but she was the best pet I've ever had. For 10 years Sarah and I were fortunate to share our lives with the most gentle, beautiful, sensitive, loving, loyal animal imaginable. She was taken from us far too soon, a victim of kidney failure, on Monday, July 25.

If not overwhelmed by grief, I am at least very, very sad. And right now I wouldn't want it any other way. Tears are all I have left to give Miranda, and I'm going to make sure she gets plenty of them.

But you, O you,
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature's best!*

*The Tempest, III.i.

Let Sebastian wake!*

2005-06-21T22:47:00.000-07:00

Maybe you saw this entry and were wondering about the outcome.

So here's the scoop: Sebastian Horatio was born on Father's Day, June 19, 10:07 p.m., weighing 9 lbs. 10.8 oz. and measuring 21 inches long. I got the best Father's Day present ever.

Everybody's thrilled.

*The Tempest, II.i.

Steve Bell shoots—and scores!

2005-06-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from Canadian singer/songwriter Steve Bell's recent profile in Christianity Today:

I'll be very surprised if this season isn't one of the low points in the history of music writing. It's all because of an unbridled market economy where absolutely everything gets commodified within seconds—no matter what you do, it is a product in a very short time. Everything becomes cheapened and market-driven. That's what happened in worship music—it's been commodified, and the same forces that are driving the market are driving the music. That always, always means dumbing down—it's a homogenization, a flattening of imagination. And when sales become the indicator that something is good, right away it's sort of the death of the form. ...

I think pastors have to get a little bit more bold to say we do not support poor work, poor theology, poor poetry, poor melody. There's nothing about the music that's coming out that's even remotely reflective of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There's no mystery. There's no nothing. It's just all platitude after platitude after platitude. And half the time one line actually is not a logical flow of the last one. It's just bizarre—but it sounds right, so everybody goes for it.

Wow. And for once, it's coming from someone with the chops to back up what he says. There are any number of jeremiahs lamenting the current state of CCM/worship music, but Steve is one of the few actually doing something about it.

Ridiculous Web site of the month, part 2

2005-06-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

Or, Hark! How the heav'nly anthem drowns all music but its own

I know there are a lot of ways to waste time on the Web...

But blogging the entire text of a Jimmy Swaggart book has got to be one of the silliest.

If you thought Swaggart just had it in for rock'n'roll, you're mistaken. The book also heaves a few brickbats at Southern gospel. In fact, my favorite bit so far is this exchange between the book's co-author, Robert Paul Lamb, and Janet Paschal, a singer who at the time (1986) had ended her six-year tenure with a Southern gospel group called The Nelons for a brief stint as a soloist on the Jimmy Swaggart Evangelistic Team:

R.P. - If you could change the gospel music circuit in any way, knowing what you know today, what changes would you make?
Janet - I would probably eliminate about three-fourths of the people now singing gospel music.

Gotta love that. I just can't shake the image of Janet bursting into an SGMA convention with an assault rifle. Of course, shortly after the book was published, Janet left Swaggart's team and went back to Southern gospel, where she's been quite successful. Those gospel folks must be a forgiving bunch.

A poetic question of ethics

2005-06-09T00:07:00.000-07:00

Just after Cleopatra had surrendered to the asp,
Her personal physician heard her give a stifled gasp.
He rushed into her chamber and assessed the situation;
From his robe he drew a flask of antivenin preparation.

With his staff he slung the snake into the corner of the room
And, hoping still to save his queen from her reptilian doom,
While praying that his potion would be equal to the task,
He knelt beside her bedside, and offered her the flask.

“Quick—take and drink,” he pleaded, “it’s the only certain cure.”
Instead she knocked the flask aside; it shattered on the floor.
Before he could obtain more antivenin, Cleo died—
So was the doctor guilty of assisted suicide?

He didn't beat her, choke her, hang her, slash her wrists, or drown her—
But then again, he didn't force the antivenin down her.

My favorite grave

2005-05-27T00:14:00.000-07:00

On my recent trip to D.C. I flew into Baltimore, so I just had to stop and pay my respects. I wish I could ask my buddy Edgar to rest in peace, but I'm sure he's been spinning beneath one gravestone or another* ever since Rufus Griswold's 1850 biography of him, which set the tone for every piece of nonsense published or propagated about Poe in the past 156 years. If you want to believe Poe was an insane pedo/necrophiliac dope fiend, or worse, you can probably find some essay by some Internet nutjob supporting such a view. Indeed, can you think of a slander to which Poe has not been subjected?

Well, there's one: No one, to my knowledge, has successfully made a big-budget Hollywood biopic about him (although his stories have been subjected to all sorts of hideous celluloid distortions, most famously by Roger Corman). A few years ago Michael Jackson got hold of a screenplay about Poe and started work on a film, with himself in the lead. Can a man, even a very dead one, imagine a crueler fate than to have his reputation in the hands of Michael Jackson? (Must ... resist ... temptation ... to ... make ... cheap ... joke.) Fortunately, that project, like the rest of Jackson's career, went nowhere.

But now comes the news that another Hollywood star has written his own screenplay about Poe and intends to start production, with himself as director and Robert Downey Jr. in the lead. Can you guess who?

That's right, Sylvester Stallone. Please, God, no. Someone stop him! The guy hasn't directed anything in 20 years, and the films he did direct (the Rocky sequels, Staying Alive, Paradise Alley) don't sound like much of a foundation for a work like this one. This, after all, is the guy who's the all-time leading nominee and winner of Razzie Awards (30 nominations and 10 wins, including two for Worst Screenplay and one for Worst Director).

Even more disturbing is the Variety article (linked above) announcing the project:

Considered the granddaddy of the Gothic horror tale, Poe's life is rich with its own eerie details. He suffered from madness, depression and drugs, and was mysteriously found dead in a gutter in 1849.

If that paragraph came from Stallone's publicist, or if it has anything to do with the actual screenplay, then Poe's reputation is about to suffer another knockout punch. Aside from starting with an atrocious dangling modifier, the announcement can't even get the basic facts of Poe's life straight. Poe was not found dead in a gutter in 1849. He was found seriously ill in a gutter and taken to a hospital, where he died a couple of days later.

Poe did not "suffer from madness, depression and drugs." Depression, yes, and extreme mental stress, which he often described in exaggerated terms — but I don't know of any evidence of any other mental illness. And, contrary to popular belief, he was not a drug user. There is one reference to drinking laudanum in one of his letters — and that was an unsuccessful suicide attempt. There is no other evidence that he took opiates.

Poe had a problem with alcohol, although he wasn't what we think of today as an addict. He was a binge drinker who couldn't stop once he started — but he had long periods of sobriety in between binges.

If Stallone can't be persuaded to abandon this project, he should at least fire the moron who's writing his press releases.

* Poe was originally interred in a different plot in the same cemetery. His coffin, along with those of his wife and mother-in-law, was exhumed and buried under this monument in 1875.

From one keyboard to another

2005-05-06T01:48:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you'll enjoy my profile of local Ghanaian-born pianist William Chapman Nyaho in the new edition of Response.

Sarcastic White Male ISO Answers

2005-05-03T11:59:00.000-07:00

So I was looking for some freelance editing work to do in my spare time, and I ran across a listing for a Christian dating site that needed Web editors.

I will admit that a red flag immediately went up in my brain. Who needs a "Christian dating site"? eHarmony.com already does a good job of marketing itself to Christians and of making faith issues part of its questionnaires and profiles. And it does this without slapping the word "Christian" on itself like an "Inspected by No. 286" label.

But I was overcome by a combination of greed, morbid curiosity, and the desire to give other believers the benefit of the doubt. So I sent in my résumé.

In response I got an editing test—a page of text from the site that I was expected to improve and send back. It was, frankly, some of the most miserable copy I've seen on a Web site—rife with grammatical errors, a misspelling or two, sentence fragments, and clichés. The language was choppy and redundant; paragraph transitions were missing. Overall the page created the unreassuring impression of a bunch of people who had absolutely no idea what they were doing.

And this was the site's mission statement.

So I did what one of my former bosses would call a "five-dog edit": I tore the thing to absolute shreds, moved sentences around, reconstructed some paragraphs, completely rewrote others, and added stuff I thought was missing. I kept half an eye on the clock, and all this took about 90 minutes.

I also went to the site and reviewed some of the other text. Same problems. I did a WHOIS search and found that the domain was registered to an investment group. Well, investors have money, and I like working for people with money. And at least someone working on this site recognized the need for an editor. I figured I could do the work as long as I was well compensated—meaning that I could charge my standard $35 hourly freelance rate, or something close to it.

So I sent in the completed editing test. A few days later I received a congratulatory e-mail. I received two of them, actually—one for me and one for another editor they'd decided to hire, sent to me by mistake. More red flags went up. Multiple editors means you need a style guide so each editor can work to the same standard. But I decided to hold my reservations in check until I saw the contract, which came a couple of days later.

Wanna guess how much they were offering? $80 for the site and $5 a page for any additional pages they might send me later. I'd spent 90 minutes on one page, which is $52.50 at my standard rate. Now I was being asked to accept about a tenth of that—less than minimum wage. So I e-mailed back, politely observing that editing is a highly skilled trade, stating my terms, and suggesting that I would be glad to look at a more reasonable contract.

No dice, replied the nice gentleman I'd been corresponding with. What he had written, he had written. Those were the terms he was authorized to offer. Oh, and the site was "partially sponsored by a church."

I suppose I might bleed for a cause I believe in, but "Christian dating site" doesn't qualify. Even if it's partially sponsored by a church. I'll bet the church in question doesn't expect someone to come in and vacuum the carpet for $3.33 an hour. Or I suppose I could have allocated a couple of hours for the whole site and just given it the quickest, most cursory once-over edit imaginable. But that's not how I work.

Thus ended my online courtship with the Christian dating site. I'm left with my self-respect intact for a change, and with a question. You see, no non-Christian has ever offered me such pitiful wages to improve such dreadful copy. I just want to know why having the name "Christian" on an enterprise is offered as an excuse for trying to rip people off.

His Master's Voice?

2005-04-13T20:46:00.000-07:00

This would appear to be the working cover art for the eternally forthcoming CD by U4ic, the manufactured worship band I was once in (back when it was called Loudmouth Worshippers).

Interesting cover, although the dog looks anything but euphoric. He looks more like he's just spent two and a half weeks overseas on a band tour that didn't turn out quite as promised.

I know that's a plastic veterinary collar meant to keep the dog from licking or biting some part of his body that has received medical treatment. And as a former member of this band, I am familiar with the sort of desperation that makes one consider chewing off a limb. Nonetheless, I keep thinking that someone has taken Nipper, the old RCA mascot dog, and rammed his head through that phonograph horn.

Given that the CD in question has at this point been in the works for something like three years, I'd like to nominate some more appropriate cover art.

Oh, and the record label that keeps threatening to release this CD has also changed its name. Apparently it's easier to rename everything than to actually issue anything. If this CD ever, actually, gets a real, bona fide, you-can-buy-it-in-stores release, I'll, I'll ... strip naked, paint myself blue, and pose for a picture wearing one of these collars.

Ridiculous Web site of the month

2005-03-26T23:57:00.000-08:00

I've seen lots of silly stuff in the name of Christianity, but this is right up there with the best of them:

ChristianMusicMakeover.com! It looks like something you'd find on Lark News or the Holy Observer, but it's real.

I'm not the first blogger to comment on this. You can read James Stewart's thoughts about it here, including a couple of episodes where he puts on the gloves and goes head to head with Brian Mayes, the creator of the site in question.

So what can I say about it? A few years ago I bought something from True Tunes and received some freebies with my order, including It's a Mystery, the debut CD by a young band called Daniel's Window. I gave it a listen and didn't care for it, so I sold it on eBay, or traded it to someone (I forget which). Now I'm surprised to find that the band not only is still around but was selected for the honor of a "Christian music makeover": cosmetics and guitar lessons for the female lead singer; weight loss for aforementioned lead singer and her keyboardist/DJ husband; new Bibles, devotional guides, and guitars for the whole band; and a new CD produced by Billy Smiley of longtime CCM band White Bread—excuse me, White Heart.

It was the idea of a "spiritual makeover" that most upset James Stewart—and I agree that it smacks of a cookie-cutter approach to spiritual development which sounds naive at best and dangerous at worst. But I'm also disturbed by the overt commercialism of the Christian Music Makeover site ... it's obviously set up to drive visitors toward the various books, weight-loss plans, magazines, record labels, etc., involved in the makeover. Whatever messages the band might want to get across with their music are buried under all the merchandising. Must one become a huckster for Jenny Craig in order to succeed in the Christian music business?

In particular, though, I'd like to draw your attention to a part of the affair that's every bit as disturbing as the spiritual makeover or Jenny Craig. I'm talking about the guitars, man. Despite having only one female band member, as a part of this promotion Daniel's Window evidently was required to play and endorse...

Daisy Rock Girl Guitars!

I don't know about you, but I'd die of embarrassment and I think most self-respecting male musicians would do the same. You might say I'm being sexist—which is OK as long as you'll admit that I'm no more sexist than people who build and market guitars specifically for girls, especially if they're shaped like butterflies or hot pink flowers.

Artists don't always relish their symbiotic relationship with advertisers. Rod Serling of "The Twilight Zone" said, "It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper." Alfred Hitchcock used to introduce commercial breaks by making derogatory remarks about the sponsors of his TV show. But if the members of Daniel's Window have any qualms about being used as a sales tool, they're keeping those qualms to themselves.

Several of my friends and acquaintances are calling for the "Christian music industry" to dismantle itself. They argue that Christians who perform music should strive to be salt in the mainstream of musical culture, rather than perpetuating a derivative evangelical subculture that never reaches beyond its self-imposed borders.

I don't know that I completely agree with them. I'd rather be a reformer than an iconoclast. I'd like to think that there could be an evangelical subculture (or, perhaps, a counterculture) that actually serves a useful purpose. But it's hard to maintain that point of view in the face of a God-and-mammon merchandise-driven reality-TV ripoff like the Christian Music Makeover. If this is the future of Christian music, can you blame me for living in the past?

The truth about Booth

2005-03-20T21:07:00.000-08:00

Just got back a few days ago from a weekend in Washington, D.C. I had little time for sightseeing, but I made it a priority to visit Ford's Theatre, scene of Lincoln's assassination—an event that has fascinated me since I first learned about it in childhood.

The timing couldn't have been better, as I had just finished reading the book American Brutus by Michael W. Kauffman—perhaps the best-researched account of how John Wilkes Booth conducted the assassination conspiracy. Here are a few paragraphs from the introduction:

Misdirection was Booth's secret weapon. It was not only a form of life insurance, but it helped him place attention just where he wanted it. Through lies and false insinuations, he crafted the impression that his conspiracy against Lincoln was larger than it actually was. He did this to boost his credibility, to confuse potential witnesses, to prod his cohorts into action, and to entrap anyone who might potentially betray his trust.
It seems clever in retrospect, but it wasn’t hard to do. He told friends he was heading for New York when he was actually going to Washington. He claimed to have struck it rich in the oil business, though he never made a cent. He implied he was working with Confederate agents, but his only contacts were personal. He stretched the facts at every phase of the plot. On stage or off, he was always an actor.

Kauffman's book goes on to describe Booth's machinations in considerable detail, working from statements his co-conspirators gave during the investigation and trials that followed Lincoln's assassination. According to Kauffman, Booth never gathered his cronies together at once or in the same place; some of them never even met each other. What he said about the nature and purpose of the plot depended on which conspirator he was talking to, so any two of them might have conflicting information. He succeeded at keeping most of them in the dark most of the time, and conducted many of his meetings right under the nose of a War Department clerk, Louis J. Weichmann, who had no idea what was going on.

Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the tactics of John Wilkes Booth as described by Kauffman and the tactics of individuals described in other posts on this blog is purely coincidental.

P.S. I think I'll add Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation to my reading list.

Ten Things I Hate About Voice Mail

2005-02-28T19:07:00.000-08:00

1. Systems
2. That
3. Cut
4. You
5. Off
6. When
7. You
8. Pause
9. Between
10. Words.

Today I tried to call back a reporter at a small weekly community newspaper as part of my media-relations duties. (I won't name names.) I got her voice mail and attempted to leave the information she wanted.

Only to be rudely interrupted the first time I took a breath. "You paused while speaking," lectured the voice-mail computer. Yeah, for half a second at most. See, I try to speak in complete sentences and think about what I say, which makes me talk slower than some people. But the voice-mail didn't care. It fired a bunch of options at me so fast that I couldn't catch what they were and didn't know which key to press. I thought, "Is that how I'm expected to talk on this message? Like John Moschitta on twelve cups of Folger's?" The computer repeated the options, and I chose to try to continue recording my message. I pepped up my delivery as much as possible, but darn it, a fellow has to inhale once in a while—and as soon as I did, I got the same lecture followed by a third iteration of the options.

I pictured the recording session for this voice-mail system. The voice actor, a nervous-looking woman in her early 50s, dressed conservatively but not carefully, sits behind the microphone in the isolation booth. Her taut and drawn face is dwarfed by an enormous pair of studio headphones. There's a stain on her blouse from the afternoon's moo-shu pork. She drums her fingers impatiently. What she really wants is a cigarette, but the engineer won't let her smoke around his equipment. The producer punches in and says, "That was pretty close, Nancy, but can you try to sound just a touch more ... exasperated?"

Other voice-mail actors sound matronly and reassuring (I recall hearing one of them interviewed on the radio once). Nancy sounded like she'd just come off a front-desk shift at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

This time I chose the option to hear what I had recorded so far—and discovered that not only was the system cutting me off, it was partially rewinding my message between segments. So it had chopped off the end of the first segment before recording the second, hopelessly garbling my words in the process. Defeated, I erased the message and left a new one, just giving my name and phone number and asking the reporter to call me back.

Which she did, and she seemed both sympathetic ("Yeah, several people have had that problem") and a wee bit defensive ("Do you know how long it took us to get voice mail set up at all?").

File this as one more example of how technological advances actually make life less convenient. Back in the day of the analog answering machine, you could talk as long as you wanted on your message, at least until the tape ran out. And the machine's owner was in complete control: if you received a message and wanted to keep it, you simply set the tape aside and put in a new one. Voice mail is supposed to be an improvement, but it's not. The storage issue hasn't been solved—how many times have you heard the phrase "This mailbox is full"? There might be a way to save a message permanently, but I don't know what it is .... and anyway, it probably entails an advanced degree in electrical engineering. A few years ago I played in a band called Cabin Fever. Our best-ever rendition of our song "Dirty Socks" was one we left on someone's voice mail—but do any of us have a copy of it now? No, we don't. (Singing on voice mail can create other problems: on a tone-dial line, certain notes can terminate your message early.)

And finally, there's Nancy and her annoying habit of interrupting me when I pause. Perhaps it's an attempt to solve storage issues: messages with no pauses don't occupy as much time or memory. But in my case, it defeated the purpose of leaving a message at all—other than the plea to call back, which was all I could blurt out in a single breath.

Not every voice-mail system, thank goodness, is programmed to interrupt people, and even among the ones that are, not all of them are as hasty about it as Nancy. If you're an office manager choosing a voice-mail system, please keep this anecdote in mind. If you run across a system like the one I've described, try other forms of communication. Send the person an e-mail instead, or even a nice note.

As for me, I'm beginning to think perhaps the Luddites—and Mike Tyson—are on to something. I'll look into the possibility of converting that extra bedroom to a dovecote, and start sending messages by carrier pigeon. I bet even Nancy would admit it's more romantic than voice mail.

Theatre vs. Film!

2005-02-20T23:38:00.000-08:00

Smackdown, Round 1

My friend Jeff Overstreet, writing in Image, has this to say about film:

[Filmmakers] organize what we see in such a way as to encourage the viewer to explore relationships between character, image, color, music, and camera angle. If they do their job well, the viewer comes away wanting to see the film again, to take a closer look. In this way, film is uniquely qualified to explore spirituality. More than any other art, it mirrors our experience in time and space. Reflecting our world back to us, it gives us the opportunity to reflect and revisit moments, slowly drawing back the veil.

I say that it's precisely this recursive quality of film, its non-ephemerality, that renders it unlike our experience in time and space. Yes, film pins the butterfly to the card so that you may analyze it. But I don't have to tell you what happens to the butterfly in the process. Not to say that film isn't "uniquely qualified to explore spirituality"—I'll give him that, as long as by "uniquely" we don't mean "best" or "most" or "exclusively." I dispute the "more than any other art" bit.

If you want an art form that mirrors our experience in time and space, I nominate theatre, which is not only viewed in real time but created in real time. Not only that, but theatre has the ephemeral quality of real-life experience that film lacks. No two performances of a play are exactly alike, and once the performance is over there's no way of rewinding it to watch it again—except in your own mind. Finally, film is mediated by the camera, the celluloid, the screen. Theatre, on the other hand, is about as immediate as the arts can get.

What do you think?

Disinheritance

2005-02-18T22:23:00.000-08:00

Disinheritance, by Robert Schwartz. I just dig this painting. It reminds me of ... well, a lot of things.

C'est un garçon!

2005-02-10T00:23:00.000-08:00

Due June 16. Something good came out of my Greece trip after all...

No one would argue that. Or would one?

2005-02-02T01:39:00.000-08:00

You hear a lot these days about this being a divided nation, although the nation is divided on that question, according to Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic Monthly. He doesn't think we're as divided as we think. But I'm of two minds about that.

I think the erosion of language contributes to a lack of consensus, since you can't have consensus if you don't know what it means. I suppose someone might argue with me on that, but first we'd have to agree on the meaning of the word argue.

One can still confidently use "argue" to mean "positively assert" in a sentence such as "Republicans argue that the President is principled; Democrats argue that he's naive," with little danger of being misunderstood.

But put a "no one would" in front of "argue that," and all of a sudden "argue" apparently can mean "dispute" instead of "positively assert," as in this quote from Canada's National Review of Medicine:

While no one would argue that preventive measures (lifestyle, nutrition, exercise) are the best way to stay healthy...

These days, half the time I see the phrase "no one would argue that," it precedes a self-evidently true proposition—and the other half the time it precedes a self-evidently false proposition. I argue that only the latter usage is correct.

Of course, "argue with" is a common construction that does mean "dispute." I think the "with" is a victim of an elision in the above example. I wouldn't argue with the grammar if the sentence ran this way:

While no one would argue with the notion that preventive measures (lifestyle, nutrition, exercise) are the best way to stay healthy...

However, that's a bit wordy—which is why the elision happens. In the interest of both clarity and concision, I argue that if people mean "dispute," they ought to write "dispute."

Would you argue with—I mean, would you dispute that?

Look, Ma, I'm in the paper

2005-02-02T01:35:00.000-08:00

So a few days ago I called a columnist at the Seattle Times to answer her question, and next thing I know I'm a "spokesperson."

Then the P-I not only quoted me, it gave me a promotion.