What's the news from your bed?

A few updates for you:

1. I use ellipses way too much.
2. This is completely self-indulgent. I mean, this is totally, wholly, egotistical on our part. I know this. But it's so much darn fun. The hamster, Myles, and I have started a new blog where we do nothing but review movies. Check it out - it's boss.
3. Benjamin loves him some Blue's Clues. Amazing. Steve (and Joe, I reckon) have helped raise all three of my kids.
4. There is some big news on the horizon. We hope. Should be happening in the next week or two. Cross your fingers for us. And say a prayer or ten.
5. Do you have to be married for, like, 30 years to renew your vows? Cause I love my wife a whole lot. She's groooovy. And she puts up with me getting tired and going to bed at ten o'clock.
6. The new Ben Shive record is jawdroppingly gorgeous. Go to The Rabbit Room and buy it. It's worth the ten bucks - seriously, what's ten bucks anymore, an extra value meal from McDonald's? Go buy "The Ill Tempered Klavier."
7. I bought this great book from the used bookstore this week. It's called Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who's Who by Frederick Buechner. Awesome.
8. I am officially a Tennessee state certified commercial C3(turf grass and ornamentals) pesticide applicator. As my mom says - "Every mother's dream."
9. I really want to go see WALL-E this weekend. Have you seen the reviews?
10. This one's from Laney, "I love you, world."

It's All (not) Happening!

Eberto the Pirate says "Arr, there be spoilers ahead. These be dangerous waters. Mind your spinnakers!"

THE HAPPENING - A Tale of Trite Shite

"Class, welcome to Great Directing 101. This week, we're discussing the concept of denouement. Now who can tell me what denouement means? Steven? Marty? Wilder? Clint? Oh fine, Alfred."

(class groans, murmurs of "teacher's pet" abound)

"Professor Kubrick, it means the final resolution of the intricacies of a plot, as of a drama or novel."

"Good, good, Alfred. Now, let's discuss examples. M Night, can you give me an example of the proper use of denouement? M Night? Has anybody seen M Night? Dang it. This'll come back to bite him one day. Ok, let's move on. Joel, Ethan, can you give me an example?"

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Oh, THE HAPPENING. How I wish thee had not been a bad movie. How I wish that you had lived up to thine wonderful opening scenes. Those bodies falling like raindrops,the calm of shoving a knitting needle through a jugular, the idyllic, foreboding images of nature. The first five minutes or so were excellent. Then Marky Mark opened his mouth and everything began to fall apart.

I wonder if Marky Mark was thrust upon M Night, or if M Night chose Marky Mark. Either way, it turned out bad. He simply can't carry a movie. He has one emotion - incredulity. Fortunately for him, it helped in some scenes - that was the required emotion. But incredulity can only carry you so far. The unfortunate part is that Jon Leguizamo was excellent, if wasted. His role is far too limited, as if M Night didn't want him stealing scenes from Marky Mark. Zooey Deschanel is wonderful, of course, and her bright blue eyes dominate the screen.

I do think, though, that THE HAPPENING could have survived Marky Mark. But the story is really the low point of the film, and not even Zooey's eyes can save that. It's almost as if M Night (who my boss at work calls "Midnight" as if the M stands for Mid) came up with the concept and figured that the kinks would just get worked out along the way - "An ending? Don't bother me with details!"

Here's the plot in a nutshell: People start committing suicide en masse, and no one knows why. Marky Mark, his wife Zooey, and their buddy's young daughter attempt to flee from New England to escape what's HAPPENING. They progress in smaller and smaller groups until they are alone and assured that they too, will die. (SPOILER) They don't. Everyone lives happily ever after. What was killing everybody? You guessed it, the plants. The plants are mad that people are mistreating the earth, so they start killing folks (actually, getting people to kill themselves). We find all of this out in a third act that lasts all of four minutes - very reminiscent of Speilberg's crappy WAR OF THE WORLDS. In fact, the whole of THE HAPPENING is reminiscent of WoTW. So much so that Stevie might want to check out some plagiarism lawyers.

Oh, M Night can still build suspense. There are some excellent, tense scenes. They effects are nice - a guy gets run over buy a riding lawnmower, etc. There's a really great scene involving three individual suicides with the same gun.

M Night's strength has always been that he's an excellent storyteller, but I'm afraid he's lost his mojo. The movie really feels like a student assignment - "Do a film about global warning. Make it a metaphor." 2 Marky Marks out of five.

(Sorry Kevin)

A (Day)Dream Show

There's this charitable organization called Letters to Santa. They do some really cool stuff for underprivileged kids, or something. I'm not really interested. What they do that is awesome, though, is that every year they have a living room benefit concert with Jeff Tweedy. They record it and it ends up online somehow (something to do with vacuum tubes, I think). And then those recordings find their way magically on my computer where I can lovingly enjoy them.

But here's the best part. The format of this thing is that Jeff goes around the room to each person and lets them request a song. That's the set list. Each person chooses their favorite and he plays it. Ridiculous.

So I was spreading fertilizer a few days ago and listening to the show and daydreaming about what I would choose if Jeff picked me. I'm so indecisive though, everyone would get mad at me for taking too long to make up my mind (Should I pick When the Roses Bloom Again? How about Hummingbird? Candyfloss? Via Chicago? Summerteeth? I can't decide!! Janna, just pick for me."Ok, honey. Heavy Metal Drummer, please, Jeff.")

So here's my question for all of you. Which performer, and which song?

(Myles, if you say King's X, I'll scream.)


Here's my real answer:

Something New, and Still Really Old, Under the Sun

(note: the sister review of this fine feature film can be found over on the hamster's site)

(another note: some of this review should be a bit, um, graphic. Fortunately, I've tastefully removed any possibly offensive terms and replaced them with the word "Chewbacca." If your curiosity gets the better of you, click the link. But don't say I didn't warn you.)

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If I told you that the movie I'm about to review concerns a centuries-old, cross-cultural, mythological phenomenon that has roots in Egyptian, Greek, Christian, Native American, and African folklore, would that make me seem scholarly? Professorial, even? 'Cause it does come from those traditions. Really. I promise. Look it up.



I've seen lots of horror movies and I've seen lots of blood and guts and pretty much every conceivable way of killing some poor Hollywood schmuck. But this is a first. I can sit through SAW and HOSTEL without flinching. I can watch Freddy Krueger invade the nightmares of unsuspecting teens with nary a bad dream of my own. But this, this myth called Chewbacca, this is the hardest to watch. This made me look away.

Throughout the history of our vast world, patriarchy has always been the status quo. Men have always held the power. Owned the land, made the money, voted the votes. That's where the root of this Chewbacca myth comes from. It's a story where the script is flipped, a feminist dream. Men become the victims, the helpless ones. In a situation where they believe the power is theirs, they find in one quick, sickening second, that they are powerless. And a bit lighter.

TEETH is a cautionary tale for boys. Remember that time in middle school where the boys are separated from the girls and each gets to watch a "special video?" I don't remember the video we watched 20-some years ago, but I know this: TEETH should be required viewing for all pubescent boys who are considering becoming "active."

Our heroine, Dawn, a high-school age girl who trumpets celibacy to young people everywhere, saying things like, "That's what the ring is all about. The way it wraps around your finger - that's to remind you to keep your gift wrapped. Wrapped... until the day... you trade it in for that other ring. That gold ring. Get it?", has come to realize that perhaps there is something that is... let's say "unnatural" down there. Through no fault of her own, she is forced to confront this... umm, mutation. Her first victim is a fellow save-it-for-later fellow she genuinely likes, who decides to get a little too frisky and ends up as crab food. Then there's the perverted OBGYN who loses a few fingers and, hilariously, writhes on the floor screaming, "Chewbacca! It's real!", but won't tell the doctors what actually happened to his hand.

When she discovers that she can, in fact, control her... um... gift, Dawn comes to realize the potential she has, not only the potential to defend herself from sick and unruly boys, but also the ability to be pro-active. To punish stupid fellows who think first with head #2. She becomes something of a feminist superhero, or, at least, vigilante. Her mission (and by the end of the movie, we believe that she has chosen to accept it) is to destroy those males who would use their superior physical strength to take advantage of the "weaker" sex.

It's a moral tale in the vein of the slasher films of the '80s. Just like Jason chopped up the campers at Camp Crystal Lake (and on a cruise ship, and, oh yeah, in space - I'd forgotten about that one) for sins as varied as fornication, pride, and gluttony (or just being the funny guy), Dawn enacts justice on the predators in her town. It's really a tale of the evils of sexual exploitation of women. Every guy who gets... um... shortened, absolutely deserves it. The moral of this morality play is this: Treat women as objects and suffer the consequences. The horrible, terrible, life-altering, gruesome consequences.

TEETH owes as much to the '90s teenager movies - CLUELESS, HEATHERS, BRING IT ON, etc. as it does to Jason and Michael Myers. The teen caricatures are typical - the geek, the bully, etc. It's campy (the good kind), smart, and biting (ha!). It's really a B-movie that lives above its means. Some of the effects betray the budget, but that's forgivable. Mostly it's a lot of wince-inducing fun.

Husbands, don't show this to your wives. They might get ideas.

Joy Like a Fountain

There was this book I read and loved,
the story of a ship.
who sailed around the world and found,
that nothing else exists;
beyond his own two sails,
and wooden shell,
and what is held within.
- Bright Eyes

I am an extremist. Janna tells me this all the time. I either love something or it's absolute dreck - not much lives in between. But, I can say for certain that I have reserved the following statement for only two novels in the past ten years. The first is A Prayer for Owen Meany, the second is Peace Like a River. The statement is this: "This is my favorite book."

I finished Peace a month or so ago. I've wanted to write a review of it ever since, but I've held off, mainly because, if I'm being honest with myself, I don't know how to do it justice, despite that Bachelor's degree in English Lit that I purloined back in '99. But, with some encouragement from The Hamster to start talking about literature again, here goes.

I read a lot. Like, more than anyone else I know. In the past week I've finished at least two, maybe three novels (actually, on further review, I think it was four). I probably read at least a hundred books a year. I'm not trying to brag (or as Shaq would say, I'm not trying to be bragadocious). It's just that I can read anywhere, regardless of what's going on around me. I can read and watch TV at the same time. I usually have at least two, sometimes more, going on simultaneously. I read my favorites five, ten times over.

But when I started Peace Like a River, all of that went away. Like the Bright Eyes quote above, there was no other existence than me and the boat I was in. A boat I shared with Jeremiah, Reuben, Swede, and Davy Land. I felt like young Bastian in The Neverending Story, simply disappearing into the novel.

The story is simple. A family in Minnesota in the '60s undergoes a family tragedy of sorts that serves to both bind them together and pull at the fragile seams of their lives. It's a story told from the point of view of an adolescent child, who is just beginning to understand love, all kinds: the love of a father for his sons, the love of a sister for her brothers, the protective love of a big brother, even lust for the opposite sex.

But more than anything, the novel is, for me, an examination of the nature of faith. Not simply faith in Christ, although that's definitely part of it, but a larger faith. As Reuben watches his father, Jeremiah, struggle through raising three children alone, he sees a man who is profound in his faith, so much so that he bears as much resemblance to Peter, James, or John as to the elementary school janitor that he is.

And perhaps the fact that faith is at the core of the story is what lends it such a childlike quality, almost naive in its worldview. It's not a story where everything turns out alright in the end, but there are no lasting tears for what's been lost. It has an innocence that's akin to To Kill a Mockingbird and characters that are as rich as John Irving's. And magic... oh yes, there's magic.

It's difficult for me to muse on an intellectual level about the merits and faults of this one, because it affected me on such an emotional and personal level. I proclaimed it my new favorite immediately upon finishing the last page, and the more I've thought about it and discussed it in the weeks hence, the more I am confident in my proclamation.

My affection (strange how affection and affected are so close) for the novel lies in the details, like in this story about a revival at church. Reuben and his crush, Bethany Orchard, sneak away to the church kitchen for a snack, where she begins to cook pancakes for the two of them. When the smell finds its way into the sanctuary, here's what happens:

Therianus-dequayas-remorey-gungunnas, a man called out, plus a paragraph or so more. I'm not making fun; the language was complicated and musical, an expression outside human usefulness. Expectant silence followed. The Reverend Johnny surveyed the room. At this moment I noticed that the smell of our pancakes - Bethany's and mine, and they'd been good ones - had floated upstairs, a fabulous smell. It occurred to me we might get into some small trouble for using the kitchen during service.

Then Reverend Johnny spoke up. "Does anyone have the interpretation? Who's hearing the word of the Lord tonight?"

Nobody said a thing.

Johnny Latt persisted. "Someone's fighting obedience tonight! Speak up, for no prophecy goes untold. Joe, is it you?"

And Joe, a bull-shouldered patriarch whose shirt stretched wet across his back and who looked to be in deep communication with the Almighty, rose without hesitation and gave it a shot. "O my sons and my daughters, how I love thee! How I wish to provide for thee! Yea, I long to surround thee with delicious smells, heavenly smells! How gladly will I sit thee down in my banquet hall, for beauteous are the cakes therein! Oh, golden is my syrup! And unto me shall gather the hungry from every nation-"

What a shame Swede wasn't there. She'd have adored that prophecy who knows what commentary she'd have whispered in my ear?

Even though I didn't grow up in the '60s, or in Minnesota, there is a feeling of familiarity with the Land family. Just like Jeremiah welcomes even the undesirable door-to-door salesman into their home for dinner, you, the reader, are welcomed in to the Land clan.

I guess that's where the brilliance of the book lies. Just like with Harper Lee's Finches, the reader becomes a de facto member of the family. Relation becomes instantaneous, not something you have to work at. Empathy is not difficult, not forced, because these people are people you wish were your flesh and blood, people you want to sit down for breakfast with. Maybe having been an adolescent boy once upon a time helps. Maybe having sisters, maybe being a person of faith. Maybe just being a member of the human race is good enough.

Please read this. Please?

Things that I Love

In the wake of an outstanding Over the Rhine concert a few days ago, I think I'd like to mention some things that I love.

- Venues that serve beer and cocktails during the concert - any show is better with a Shiner Bock in tow.
- A crowd that's chronologically, socially, and economically diverse
- Guys that wear the shirt of the band that they're going to see - not that I would do that, of course
- Mary Gauthier, a whizbang combo of John Prine and Emily Saliers
- Merch Tables
- Gay Street in Knoxville
- A mom that will watch the kiddos on short notice
- Karen Berquist
- Linford Detweiler
- The stand-up bass
- A wife who likes to dance to the slow songs - even if she's the only one in the joint doing it
- Concerts with less than a couple hunnerd folks in attendance
- The Knoxville Bijou
- Music, especially the good kind

A Post No One Wants to Write

We drove up I-81 to Baltimore yesterday and I had managed to go a couple of days without even thinking about the news of Steven Curtis Chapman's daughter. I had seen it first thing Thursday morning before work and, thankfully, shoveling mulch and spraying weed killer allowed me to not have to think about that five year old girl being struck and killed by her teenage brother in his Land Cruiser.

But yesterday, somewhere around Bristol, TN, Janna was driving and I was taking a snooze. She had slipped in a mix CD that I had made a year or so ago for a trip we took to Little Rock. I woke just in time to be caught completely unaware by track 12 or so. It was a live performance at the Dove awards - Chris Tomlin, David Crowder, Mac Powell, and Jeremy Camp doing a tribute to Steven Curtis Chapman. Christian music's most important worship leaders expounding on the influence SCC has had on their lives and careers. It's short, really, only about 5 minutes, when it could have been 50.

The song came on and I looked back toward the back seat and I saw Laney (who's 5) playing with her toys and looking happy. My insides dropped. It's a good thing Janna was driving because I was so affected at that moment that I probably would've driven into a guardrail.

All I could think about for those 5 minutes were Steven and his family and what had happened to them. I had visions of ambulances being called... CPR being administered... hospital waiting rooms... walking in at night to an empty bedroom... waking up to check her bed hoping it was just a bad dream. I thought about the guilt, the life-changing, horrible guilt her brother will feel forever. And then I thought about how I would feel if Laney, my sweetheart, the apple of my eye, my beloved daughter, were suddenly gone.

I didn't cry. I wanted to, but I didn't want to have to explain to them why I had suddenly lost control in the middle of the interstate, so I willed the tears back. I'm having similar trouble writing this in the Hampton Inn breakfast area.

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I went back upstairs to the hotel room after I wrote that. Janna and the kids were still in bed. The shades were still drawn and the room was still dark. They stirred when I came in and Sam moved over to Janna's bed to snuggle with her for a few minutes. I laid down next to Laney. I wrapped my arms around her and didn't even try to stop the tears. They were flowing freely and I found myself crying out to God in that moment, praying "Please don't take her from me, please don't take her from me..."

Today, a few days too late, I join the thousands who have already sent their condolences and good will to the Chapman family. I share in their grief and wish that I could take some of it upon myself. Maybe knowing that they will see her again, whole and sweet and happy, will grant them some measure of peace.

God, bless the Chapmans. Let them know that they are loved by millions around the world and they have friends that they've never met.