PeaceBang

Ever Had One Of These?

Oh wow. This is what I call FUN SPAM:

“My Bethren, Calvary greetings in the name of our Lord JesusChrist, I am former Mrs Fatima Ibrahim Idris , now Mrs Rosemary Ibrahim Idris, a widow to Late Sheik Ibrahim Idris.I am 72 years old, I am now a new Christian convert,suffering from long time cancer of the breast.From all indications, my condition is really deteriorating and is quite obvious that I may not live more than six months, because the cancer stage has gotten to a verysevere stage. My late husband was killed during the Gulf war, and during the period of our marriage we had a son who was also killed in a cold blood during the Gulf war. My late husband was very wealthy and after his death, Iinherited all his business and wealth. My personal physicianm told me that I may not live for more than six months and I am so scared about this. So, I now decided to divide part of this wealth, by contributing to the development of evangelism in Africa, America,Europe and Asian Countries. This mission which will no doubt be tasking had made me to recently relocated to Republic of Benin, Africa where I live presently. I selected your church after visiting the web site for this purpose and prayed over it, I am willing to donate thesum of $13.200,000.00 Million US Dollars to your Church/Ministry for the development of evangelism and also as aids for the less privileged around you.Please note that, this fund is lying in a Security Company in Switzerland and the company has branches,therefore my lawyer will file an immediate application for the transfer of the money in the name of your ministry.Please, reply me is important i will forward your reply to my Attorney to enable him to make prepration of my Will.If there is any statutory fee i will authorise my nurse to send you $7000.You must send this fund to him as a statutory fees with the evidence of payment if you have the intention of using this fund for personal use other than enhancement of evangelism. Lastly, I want you/your ministry to be praying for me as regards my entire life and my health because I have come to find out since my spiritual birth lately that wealth acquisition without Jesus Christ in one’s life is vanity upon vanity. If you have to die says the Lord, keep fit and I will give you the crown of life.May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the sweet fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you. Yours in Christ Mrs. Rosemary Ibrahim Idris.Christ Live Church,Bodija, Porto Novo, Republic of Benin”

It’s almost beautiful, it’s so pathetic.

Ashamed of the Gospel

I attended services a few weeks ago at a nearby Protestant church. The minister, a friend of mine, was on vacation and a retired clergymen was filling in for her.

I left the service limp with amazement, and not the good kind.

First of all, the entire worship experience was so elaborately casual as to be downright sloppy, and much of that the fault of the garrulous visiting minister, who seemed far more committed to coming across as a Really Nice Guy than to bringing a meaningful message or serious Sabbath experience to the gathered people. Worst of all, they just looooooved it! They loved the message. They loved the shared, self-satisfied smiles. They even loved his biting sarcasm during the Story for All Ages, which appalled me. A woman turned to me after the service (she knows who I am) and said, “Isn’t he great?? He is so good.”

I thought he was far from great but just smiled.

The lector, before giving the New Testament reading, gigglingly confessed that she had been so happy to return to church after a vacation that she forgot to come up and adjust the microphone. While she adjusted the microphone we got to hear all about how she was adjusting the microphone because she had forgotten to adjust the microphone earlier. Is your brain numb yet? You get the idea. The reading was incidental to the jabber.

Woman, you are bringing the Gospel. Bring it. Give it. One can be warm and loving without wholly crushing whatever sense of solemn joy has been generated among the worshipers and making the moment entirely about YOU.

The singing was lackluster and mumbly. The hymns, I regret to say, were of the awful Fanny Birney variety, so Victorian-sentimental blood-of-Christ-y with piercing high notes, that I wondered that any men would bother to open their mouths at all. Had I one more drop of testosterone in my own body, I couldn’t have managed it myself.

It was the ceaseless prattle between and during worship elements that most distressed me. I thought only Unitarian Universalists fell prey to the “over-explaining” syndrome, where we can’t let the next thing happen but must intellectualize, analyze and contextualize every blasted action, whether corporate or individual. Actually, I’d rather have earnest over-explanation over pointless, distracting blathering any day. The subtext to it all was: now we have to get through this next silly old tradition, but you’ll humor me, won’t you?

Worst of all was the preacher, who preached not only a highly disorganized, meandering feel-good piece straight out of the Religion Lite Manual ( I swear he got the whole thing off the Internet), but who managed to insert a sort of meta-narrative about how he was preaching into his actual preaching.

The Rev repeatedly reminded us throughout his sermon that he was retired and hadn’t preached in over a year and we would have to be forgiven for going on for too long and being scattered, all the while smiling with such winsome old-boy charm that we were bound to eat him up like a dish of vanilla ice cream. He practically contorted himself to avoid seeming like a Christian leader with any authority. This could be because he was a guest in someone else’s pulpit. I notice, however, that this fact didn’t keep him from insulting the absent minister with several sarcastic remarks (eg, “Well, your Pastor told me there wouldn’t be any children here today, but she was wrong! I guess that means you like ME better than HER! Heh heh heh”), so I doubt that his deprecating moues were anything but devices to avoid responsibility for what he was saying and doing.

Brother, I didn’t come to church for a dish of vanilla ice cream. I asked for bread and you gave me stones.

Authentic vulnerability is one thing. Authentic garrulosity is one thing. They are charming and human qualities. But sarcasm, pandering and theatrical displays of humility are another thing entirely: they are manipulative, exclusionary and prideful. In the end I was left remembering Paul’s beautiful, raw confession: “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” Every word and gesture I had heard that morning made me think that this was a people ashamed of the gospel, and none more so than their visiting minister.

“This was so great,” continued my neighborly greeter in the next pew. “Our services can get so negative, with confessions of sin and everything. We think that’s why we’re not getting any new young people. You’re getting new people, aren’t you?” she asked.

I replied that yes, we’re getting some new young people but to my knowledge, it wasn’t a year of great growth in any of the neighboring congregations, UU or Catholic or Protestant or otherwise. I said that I liked their liturgy very much because it did allow for the confession of brokenness and need before moving into the contemplation of God’s love and Christ’s redeeming work. I told her that we had nothing like a confession of sin in our own church and that frankly, I tried to sneak it in on ocaasion because it’s good for the soul.

“But,” she fretted, “we need something to make us feel good! I mean, we come to church and we need to go away feeling good.”

“I have to disagree with you.” I responded. “You need to go away feeling that you can do good.”

That’s what made me feel the most sick. We have every drug in the world to make us feel good: television and movies, computer games, drugs, food, shopping, comfortable cars, spas, self-help gurus galore, and guilt-free sex. Church doesn’t need to be another drug. Imagine thinking that what you most want out of church is to “feel good.”

Jesus didn’t bid us take up our lawn chairs and follow him.

I’m not saying we have to be solemn, miserable martyrs. My own congregation and I laugh together a LOT, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But the church doesn’t exist just to comfort the afflicted but also to afflict the comfortable. All of which can be done in a spirit of love and joy.

The Worst Of the Dental Torture is Over

I made it thorugh the much-dreaded root canal this morning.

Angry America

I met a military mom at the nail salon today. Her son, a 35-year old Army officer, husband and father of two small children is being sent off for this second tour of duty in Iraq: this time for 18 months.

His mother is a nervous wreck about it.
Realizing she had a sympathetic ear, Military Mama vented for 15 uninterrupted minutes about the moral depravity of the war, the “dirtiness” of the Bush Administration, and the lack of news coverage about the true conditions in Iraq, including on the thousands and thousands of our troops who are coming home so badly injured that they’ve lost the will to live, even though medical science has managed to patch their bodies back up.

“But of course that’s nothing compared to the devastation we’ve caused to the Iraqi people,” quoth she.

“And if I complain or question,” she says, “I’m not patriotic. I don’t support our troops. I’m a bad American. Like they’re making Cindy Sheehan out to be. A left-wing nut job.”

She gave me this tip: when sending packages to servicemen and women, send them in strong plastic containers. Apparently our soldiers are living among a healthy and rampant flea and mouse population (while the higher ranking officers get air-conditioned rooms).
Halliburton, which supplies food for our troops, is providing green eggs and green meat. Her son lost 35 lbs. on his most recent tour of duty. She’d like to throttle Dick Cheney (I told her I’d sit on him while she did).

I deeply regret that I didn’t invite this woman to church. She left to get her wallet and said she’d come back, but I left before she showed up again. I left my card for her with the church website on it. What else can we do but encourage people who are suffering such anger and anxiety to find a supportive community?

(Sister of PeaceBang sent me this link of a veteran wearing his “bullshit protector” while listening to George Bush address a gathering of the Veterans of Foreign Wars)

In other local news, a gas station owner shut off his pumps and closed up shop. Take this job and shove it, indeed. His family has been in the gas business since 1917 but this man is sick and tired of taking verbal abuse from pissed off motorists who actually think he’s making a bunch more profit from the insane gas prices.

How ignorant and uncivil. Like some random guy in Quincy, MA is to blame for the fact that it costs you $40 to fill your SUV. Jeezy Creezy.

Happy Birthday, Henry

I think it’s my friend David’s baby’s first birthday today or sometime this week. I haven’t met him yet and I really have to, except that I secretly am not very interested in babies until they’re at least one. They start to get really funny and develop a little personality by that time. Until then, we refer to them as “larvae” (That is, Sister of PeaceBang and I do — and we mean it affectionately, as in, “Of course he’s darling but he’s still in that larva stage.”).

I think about my own past year: went some places, wrote some stuff, bought some new CD’s, saw a dozen or so shows and movies, had a few dinner parties, made some friends. Starred in a show. Started a doctoral program. Added a few pairs of shoes and a few blouses to the closet. Got the oil changed.

This compared to Henry’s past year:
got born, learned to hold head up unaided, went from breast milk to solid foods, carved thousands of synapses in the brain, developed vision, cut some teeth, began to recognize mom and dad’s face and to respond to them with facial expressions. Developed a rudimentary sense of language. Went from gassy grimaces to authentic smiles. Mastered the whole “bye-bye” wave. Accosted by dozens of enthusiastic strangers simply for being rolled around in a buggy looking fetching in tiny cotton outfits. And hopefully: raked in tons of presents from adoring grandparents for managing to make it through the past 12 months without getting broken or damaged by novice parents.

He’s got me beat by a mile. Happy Birthday, Henry. This old broad salutes you. Best of luck climbing up that big hill called life.

Dogville

dogville
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

I finally saw Lars von Trier’s celebrated and loathed film, “Dogville:”

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dogville/

It’s pretentious, yes. And yes, I have to agree with the critic from the Philadelphia paper who said that Rod Serling could have said in 22 minutes what von Trier said in 3 hours.

Yes, it was a lot of egotistical moralizing with mushy philosophy spouted by a mumbling Paul Bettany as Tom Edison, Jr.

And I really liked it. I almost loved it.

Some acting highlights:

Chloe Sevigny bugs me. She’s excessively unattractive and a very limited actor (she was great in “Boys Don’t Cry” but I’ve never seen her do anything else well).
Lauren Bacall was wonderful in her small role as Ma Ginger (she’s a similarly crusty characater in real life, so it wasn’t much of a stretch). Patricia Clarkson was, forgive the pun, smashing as usual (there’s a devastating scene where she smashes ceramic figurines that have great meaning for Grace, Nicole Kidman’s character. It’s an awful scene, very painful).

James Caan shows up for a very strange cameo role at the very (dead) end of the picture. It’s a very contrived plot twist, but he and Kidman make it work.

And as for the spidery, beautiful Miss Nicole Kidman, well, she’s just marvelous. The beginning of the film is extremely ponderous and I managed to read the Ideas, Travel, and Arts section of the Sunday paper before her entrance. After she appeared, looking incredibly long-limbed and fragile and haunted in a fabulous fur-trimmed coat, I had to put the paper away from there on in (okay, I did peek at the sports section and at the front page, but only peeked).

Anyone who lives in small town America will appreciate von Trier’s parable of violence and vengeance. His sly commentary on the treasured institution of the Town Meeting is coldly hilarious. He also writes some very fine dialogue for the townsfolk, capturing a cadence somewhere between Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” Surprisingly it is Siobhan Fallon, best known for her work on “Saturday Night Live,” who delivers the dialogue most naturally and convincingly.

You may be familiar with the basic plot line: Grace (Kidman) shows up in a tiny town in the Rockies. She is fleeing gangsters. She is first met by the idealistic, young and handsome Tom Edison, Jr. who treats her with great kindness, and the townsfolk (all 15 of them, plus some children) agree to shelter the fugitive. At first, she is happy to be there and they are happy to have her help. Soon, though, the relationship between Grace and the people of Dogville becomes more and more exploitative until Grace is literally their slave for domestic and sexual purposes. She attempts an escape. She is punished (in a contrivance that will bring to mind the best of Shirley Jackson) and bears her suffering with grace (get it?) and dignity. The end of the film is a plot twist, so I won’t give it away. Suffice it to say, Grace changes her mind about the nature of forgiveness and understanding. The final tableaux is bloodier than “Hamlet.” Hell, it’s bloodier than “Titus Andronicus.”

You wish von Trier had provided the character development that would give the ending have more integrity than it does; as it is, he relies entirely on the acting chops of James Caan and Nicole Kidman to achieve what he should have provided in the screenplay.

But you know, I’m still thinking about it the next day, and that’s all I ask of a film.

B. D. Was So Wong

My mother and I saw a really C- production of PIPPIN at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor the other night, starring B.D. Wong as the Lead Player.

Here’s the gushing, deluded review from the Stephen Schwartz web site:

http://www.musicalschwartz.com/pippin-bay-street.htm

My take?

“There’s a reason that Broadway favorites Rachel York and Karen Ziemba backed out of this production and had to be replaced. It’s called shoddy production values and directorial insanity. Who does ‘Pippin’ without any dancers? Who thinks that throwing a bunch of wheelchairs on stage during ‘Just No Time At All’ isn’t an egregious rip-off of Susan Strohman’s hilarious granny-walkers bit from ‘The Producers?’ Who paints skeletons in Day-Glo on leotards and then passes of the brilliant dance break after ‘War Is a Science’ as a campy high school ‘dem dry bones’ routine?

Who the HELL destroys ‘Extraordinary’ by having four members of the ensemble — all Equity, all accomplished — dress as DUCKS and quack around Pippin as he tries to get through the number with a modicum of dignity? Who, when blessed with a Catherine as beautiful and fair of voice as Anastasia Barzee, destroys the simple loveliness of ‘Love Song’ with endless sight gags and cheap laughs?

You know how at the end of the story (whose second act really is a mess : Mother of PeaceBang remarked, ‘It seemed like someone was backstage writing the thing and giving the cast their numbers right before they came out.’), the Leading Player invites Pippin to make a thrilling end to his life by climbing into a fire box and committing self-immolation?

Think about the sun, Pippin
Think about her golden glance
How she lights the world up
Well, now it’s your chance…

I was very happy that the adorable Pippin (Peter Larsen) declined that particular honor. However, I nominate director Jack Hofsiss for the fire box, and the Bay Street Theatre for allowing this travesty against the memory of Bob Fosse to be committed on their stage, with such talented performers, costume designer, and orchestra.

Anne Reinking and Ben Vereen, you were sorely missed.

Puppy Spiral

Puppy Spiral
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Busby Berkeley meets Animal Planet.

(Sari, I know you noticed the one with the inside-out ear first)

My Heaven

Since ChaliceChick and Fausto brought it up, this is my idea of a really great Heaven:

http://www.92y.org/Default.asp

When I die I want to live forever at the 92nd Street Y.

Just look at their list of speakers in one little category alone: Joan Didion, Salman Rushdie, Billy Collins, Garrison Keillor, John Updike, etc.
Not to mention their theatrical readings, classes for singles, culinary offerings, fitness classes, bla bla bla forever and ever, amen.

http://www.92y.org/shop/category.asp?category=Programs888Events888Literary+Readings+and+Performances888Main+Reading+Series888

A Special Kind Of Sharing

My 20-month old nephew had his inaugural outing on the training potty the other day, with relative success.

His maternal grandma was visiting and put him on the throne and left to answer the phone. When she returned to check on him, my accomodating nephew proudly presented her with a doody. By hand.

You can’t say the kid isn’t smart. He knew he was producing something of great importance and he just wanted to share. I still laugh when I think of how she must have managed to praise him while simultaneously explaining that while doodies are great and all, we don’t need to save them and share them.

Is that a metaphor for family life or what?