Toodles

Off to darkest Orange County, there to chat with the folks at Loyola Press - I think they're in town for the RTBE - about that little book of mine they published. And from there to Ojai, land of the Pink Moment, where some nights you can get your bliss on by just standing outside and inhaling, so powerful is the scent of orange blossoms. Back Sunday. As my dear friend who somehow ended up a Manhattan lawyer living in Park Slope used to say when he signed off - be good.

They Might Be Drinking

It occurred to me in the shower this morning, as I bellowed my way through my morning songlist, that They Might Be Giants is among the few pop bands (as opposed to country) I know that makes consistent, quality references to drinking. Off the top of my head:

Self-titled debut album:

Well, I ain't feeling happy
About the state of things in my life
But I'm working to make it better
With a six of Miller High Life

- from "Alienation's for the Rich"

Lincoln:

Lie still, little bottle
And shake my shaky hand
Black coffee's not enough for me
I need a better friend

- from "Lie Still, Little Bottle"

Flood:

Confidentially
She never called me baby-doll
Confidentially
I never had much pride
But now I rock a barstool
And I drink for two
Just pondering this time bomb in my mind

- from "Lucky Ball and Chain"

Apollo 18:

Now let's toast the sad, cold fact
Our love's never coming back
And we'll race to the bottom of a glass
So narrow your eyes

- from "Narrow Your Eyes"

John Henry:

Meet James Ensor
Belgium's famous painter
Raise a glass and sit and stare
Understand the man

- from "Meet James Ensor" (Admittedly, the weakest reference in the bunch.)

Factory Showroom:

Full bottle in front of me
Time to roll up my sleeves
And get to work
And after many glasses of work
I get paid
In the brain

- from "Your Own Worst Enemy"

And there, alas, my love affair ends. Haven't bought any since. But what a run! I knew there was a reason I liked these guys!

Elective surgery...

...is there any finer sign of encroaching middle age?

Got a lump carved out of my neck this morning. The wife encouraged it. I fought her on it, but when the thing grew a mouth and started talking - and I don't know where it learned that sort of language, I swear - she suggested that I take action.

In the end, I agreed because I feared it would turn out to be more a more interesting conversationalist than myself. Trumped by the lump - the stinging shame of it!

The King

Yesterday's News Today, per usual...

Burger King has, to their great credit, revived the Burger King himself in their ad campaigns. Now, every king has a court jester - a fool, a ... clown. Let's see...are there any burger-related clowns out there who could be cast in the role...hm...

It would make such a great commercial. Ronald, the King's Fool.

"Your Highness, instead of flame-broiling, why not FRY your burgers?"

"Ha ha ha, Ronald! The things you say! Truly, you are the greatest fool any king ever had."

Talkin' NFP

I just finished an interview on Relevant Radio. During the interview, a fellow called and said that he and his wife were, it seemed to him, some of the only Catholics he knew who practiced NFP. He wanted to know how to put it out there, how to present it, how to explain it. My answer wasn't too stellar. Mostly, it was this: admit it's a hard teaching. Admit it's diffficult to understand. Suggest that understanding is not essential to obedience - "trust the Church implicitly," as Cardinal Newman advises, especially if you believe that She is on the side of love. Suggest also that God will surely not be unhappy with the sacrifice you have made in obeying His Church - even if you didn't understand exactly why you had to do so.

But I'd love to hear how y'all would have answered.

Story

First Son can be our toughest nut, emotion-wise. So it was amazing to see him literally jumping out of his seat with anxiety, rage, and sympathy as we watched Heidi. Heidi, with Shirley Temple. I thought he'd be half into it, at best. Wonderful to see what stories can do.

Today in Porn, Poignant Edition

Or rather, yesterday...

So I was heading down to RCP Block and Brick to get crushed rock so I can line the bottome of the ginormous new flowerbox we had built for the wife for her birthday - which was yesterday. RCP is next door to Little Darlings, an establishment whose bubblegum-pink exterior has faded considerably over the years. (I was at RCP a few years back for decomposed granite for the front yard of last house - we were going for the Provencal look, lavender bushes lining the edge, etc. It's all grass and sprinklers now. The place was pinker then.)

The first thing I noticed was the ice cream truck in the parking lot. "Urgh. Dude goes straight from selling Bomb Pops and Fudgsicles to getting his jollies, doesn't even switch to his civilian car. That's just nasty." Then, as I passed by, I saw the sign on the side of the truck: Mrs. Frostie. "Mrs.? Some girl working on a second career, gets off her shift, throws on jeans and a sweatshirt and heads out into Kiddieland?"

Wrong again. On my way back home, I checked Mrs. Frostie again (go ahead and cast aspersions; I surely deserve them), and there was a young lady standing at the side of the truck, staring up into it and deciding upon her order, just like any expectant kid would do. Except she wasn't exactly a kid, and she was (half) dressed for work. The woman inside was very much a Mrs. Frostie - middle-aged, matronly.

Not sure what I can add to the image by way of comment, so I'll leave it at that.

Fragment

"Memento mori? You must be joking. I can hardly forget it."

Second Son, Theologian

Okay, so insofar as the devil has existence, he is loved by God. After all, if God didn't keep willing the existence of a thing, it wouldn't exist, and existence is a good, and willing the good for something is loving it. Right?

So I have to explain all this when Second Son asks me if God hates the devil. (Here's what haunts me behind that question - my forbidding them to say they hate anyone, except the devil.)

Months later: "Dad, shouldn't we love the devil? Becuase God loves the devil." (Missing middle term: we should love as God loves.)

Let the distinctions commence - while you try to help make dinner and calm the crying baby, etc.

Sigh.

"Writing is Easy..."

...says the man. " Just sit down and your desk and open a vein."

He's right. That's the easy part. Getting someone to read the stuff, now that's the trick.

That goes for blogging, too. What does it mean when I find that, during the month that I quit linking to outside stories, I get what is far and away the lowest number of visits to the blog since its inception? That'll teach me to write poetry...

A Bookmark of Sorts

First Son had a grand idea for a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip yesterday - something about not being able to test his mother's theory about what made sundaes great without trying a second one - but he couldn't get it to look right. He crumpled the paper in frustration. I showed him William Faulkner's 1955 acceptance speech at the National Book Awards (he won that year for A Fable):

By artist I mean of course everyone who has tried to create something which was not here before him, with no other tools and materials than the uncommerciable ones of the human spirit; who has tried to carve, no matter how crudely, on the wall of that final oblivion, in the tongue of the human spirit, "Kilroy was here."

That is primarily, and I think in its essence, all that we ever really tried to do. And I believe we will all agree that we failed. That what we made never quite matched and never will match the shape, the dream of perfection which we inherited and which drove us and will continue to drive us, even after each failure, until anguish frees us and the hand falls still at last.

***

Not sure I agree absolutely with the first part, but that bit about failure seems worth considering. It's encouraging, in the odd way that the reassurance we get from the saints that we shall never be sinless is encouraging.

Elsewhere

(It's not linking if it's done in perfect charity, or something like that...)

Visitors to my comments boxes may have noticed a new voice: the estimable Father Stephanos, O.S.B.. I have had the pleasure of meeting Father, and now you can, too: he's taken up blogging at One Monk of the Order of Saint Benedict.

Jukebox/Today in Porn

Was it Flannery O'Connor who linked porn and sentimentality?

The band Nickelback scored a big ol' hit playing on the sweet, sweet sentiment of nostalgia, in what may be its purest, rawest form: old photographs. The song "Photograph" is about a dude recalling his high-school days via the "photo album spread out on my bedroom floor." The nostalgia gets so intense that he calls out to God, an expression usually reserved for more passionate moments - rage, sex, etc.:

Oh oh oh
Oh god I

Every memory of looking out the back door
I had the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor
It's hard to say it, time to say it
Goodbye, goodbye

I was surprised when it became a hit, and then I wasn't. I like looking at old photos, too. Then I was surprised again when I turned on the radio and heard this little bit from Nickelback's "Figured You Out":

I love your pants around your feet
And I love the dirt that's on your knees
And I like the way you still say please
While you're looking up at me
You're like my favourite damn disease

This, from the guys who sang, "Kim's the first girl I kissed/I was so nervous that I nearly missed" in "Photograph"? And then, again, I wasn't surprised any more. Porn is a sentimental view of sex, in that it removes it from the rest of life and tries its damnedest to airbrush out the shadows and realities. If a band is willing to hit the sentimental nerve as hard as "Photograph" hits it, then maybe this kind of dabbling in mild raunch is just the other side of the coin.

Stepping on a Nail on a Rainy Morning

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. I say in silly poetry.

Come, nail
Impale
My foot
Put
Your point
At joint
Of ball and toe
My woe
Swells
The yells
Alarm
The harm
Withal
Is small
Unless
Tetanus

The Discriminating Drunk

When I'm drunk on good gin
I still feel bad about sin
But when I'm drunk on good bourbon
Sin is much less disturbin'.

Whiny Author

So there's a dude at the info desk at Borders tonight, and he's got Garry Wills' Why I Am A Catholic in one hand, and he's asking where he can find Jenna Jameson's How To Make Love Like A Porn Star. And I'm thinking, "Dude, you are my ideal reader." I would have loved to put my book in his hands (to say nothing of book two), and according to the computer, the store had it on the shelf. (Not that there's much of a chance that I actually would have had the guts to approach him.) According to the computer. According to the shelf, nada. I actually bleated - it's the sixth or seventh time I've visited, seen it listed "in stock," and not found it on the shelf. I am such a sad specimen.

Reminder from St. Joseph

Whose feast is today...

To be a better father. To draw the comic, make the mix tape, engage in the wrestle. To teach baseball, for pity's sake. And before that, to buty the Neat's Foot Oil to treat the baseball glove.

I want to be the shepherd of my flock.

The Table and the Bed

So somewhere along the way last night, a friend challenged me to write one chapter of a food-related romance novel. If I can pull it off by birthday 33, I get a bottle of Blanton's. If not, I owe him some decent Barolo. Hoo!

Happy Feast

One of the reasons we gave up the TV here at Casa Godsbody (well, except for videos and DVDs of our favorite shows...) was that, when we gave it up for Lent, we found we didn't miss it a bit. Not so, the Internet, not so. This being a feast to which we are at least somewhat attached bloodwise (Godsbody - French palate, Irish liver), we have summararily released ourselves from the Internet fast we took on Ash Wednesday, and have been disturbed at the degree of pleasure we took in visiting the old sites.
TV:cocaine::Internet:crack?

While we're out and about - this is fantastic. I'm not sure I could join, since I'm afraid I went and wrote a book, but I'm definitely with the B-listers in spirit.

Last note: Tullamore Dew or Powers? Discuss.

Holy Crap.

Godsbody may be bloody, beaten, and bowed, but it has somehow survived a year. Here is my first real post. Hoo!

From the Way-Back Machine

In the spirit of Godsbody (Yesterday's News Today!™), I thought I'd post something from today's news (pretty much--the story's still hot, anyway) that makes reference to yesterday's posts (mine, natch).

What's the Godsbody connection?

1. To "quote" Clooney (à la Arianna), "I'm [sort of] a liberal [too]; there, I said it." (Shades of rants past.) Plus I think I've said some nice things about Clooney somewhere else on this blog. Like here. (Read a nice interview with Clooney recently in which he reveals that it meant more to him than anything else that his newsroom in Good Night and Good Luck passed muster with his anchorman dad.)

2. We were talking about bloggers and journalistic standards a while back. Clooney, everyone's favorite movie journalist (esp. among journalists) here holds forth on the subject in a (proleptically) timely manner in February 2006 in Los Angeles Magazine:

You have to remember, the beauty of blogging is that they can fact-check a tremendous amount of things journalists say instantaneously, but who is their ombudsman? Who corrects them? Along the way an awful lot of crap gets out.

(Again, Yesterday's News Today!™...or in this case, Yesterday's News is Today's!)

Controlled Cinematic Haiku...

Shaun of the Dead

Sometimes, it's enough
When avoiding zombie life
Just to try something

Lucky Jack and me.

"The Captain says there's enough of his blood in this ship that it's almost a relative."
- sailor in Master and Commander, speaking of Capt. Jack Aubrey

I'll go the good Captain one better, or worse, or whatever. There's enough of my money in my house that it's almost a child.

The redwood ran a little more than anticipated.

The world is too much with us, etc....

Man and wood.

In college, where we spent our time pursuing philosophy, theology, mathematics, and other rather abstract matters, special reverence was kept for the carpenters - those who could create things - actual concrete things - from wood. Small wonder Aristotle chose lumber to make his analogy to prime matter - the primal stuff underlying substantial change. St. Joseph was a carpenter, we reminded one another, and he was the paragon, the model of virility and husbandry. Needless to say, I, the glorified word pusher, was not counted among their number.

So my friend the carpenter is visiting now, and he's going to replace the narrow and dilapidated strip of decking outside the house. Last night, he ran into another friend of mine, one with considerably more practical skill than I.

Other friend: What do you think of a man who can't replace his own deck?

The carpenter: Man?

Sigh.

The Way of It

the latest hour, the extra bottle of wine, the best conversation...

Happy Death

(It's not linking if you're doing it for someone else, or some such...)

Got to go out with the wife last night, to the fantabulous Maxwell's House of Books here in La Mesa. We went to hear the Methodist Reverend John Fanestil read and discuss his new book, Mrs. Hunter's Happy Death: Lessons on Living from People Preparing to Die.

A fine evening, an interesting discussion - I especially liked his observation that the Happy Death started slipping from the popular imagination when death became institutionalized - that is, when it went into hospitals. He certainly wasn't bagging on hospitals and/or medical treatment, but it seems sensible to suppose that the attitude toward death will shift when the chief caretakers of the dying are no longer ministers and family, but doctors and medical personnel. When death leaves the home, it becomes easier to deny, and also becomes less of an ordinary part of life, and more of a monstrous enemy.

Going, going...

...toodles!

Off to San Bernardino today, to watch wine judges in action. Oh, the rigors of the day job. Back tomorrow.

Nashing of Teeth

Finally sat down and gave a good listen to my most astonishing Christmas present: The Ogden Nash Soundbook - four tapes of the man himself reading his own work. It made me so very happy. Thinking of starting a new bit of doggerel myself...

Are you tired of peace?
Are you tired of sitting around in harmony with your fellow man, watching the length of your days increase?
Would you thrill to even the imaginary shedding of blood?
The cartoonish clash of the Bunny and Mr. Fudd?
If you are, if you would,
If you think the setting of mother against daughter and father against son and brother against brother is a positive good,
And you need a causus bellum more powderkegish than Burgundy vs. Bordeaux
Walk into a room full of Catholics and ask, "Tridentine or Novus Ordo?"

Hoo!

Chatting with Anne Rice

(It's not linking if you're linking to yourself...or something like that.)

Well, in the true spirit of Godsbody (Yesterday's News Today!), I went and talked to Anne Rice a couple of months back about her novel Christ The Lord. (I wanted to let everybody else in the media world have an opportunity before I went - the last shall be first and all that.) She was exceedingly gracious, and I thought we found one or two plots of ground to cover that hadn't already been done to death.

Survey Says

So the wife wants to know of movies or novels in which a person is presented as extremely wealthy - never lift a finger, what to do today wealthy - and also happy. Mr. Knightly from Emma came to mind, though I could be misremembering. Others?

Poetry Corner

A friend passed this along...

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
and hermits are contented with their cells;
and students with their pensive citadels;
maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
high as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
in truth the prison, into which we doom
ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
in sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
should find brief solace there, as I have found.

Wordsworth

No, no, no.

Glad to see* Hoffman win for Capote, but while I admit to missing and continuing to miss Crash, I find it hard to believe that it topped The Squid and the Whale for Best Original Screenplay. The Oscars, as everybody knows, are an absolutely objective and reliable measure of excellence in film. What happened?

*By "see," of course, I mean, "read about on Defamer." Sigh.

"May blessings of blood rain upon you."

How to handle an Internet scammer targeting religious-minded people? Adopt the persona of bloody-minded "Sister Lillian Gans," and let the fun begin.

(Thanks to Michael for this and the Financial Times article below.)

"This is easily the worst generation since...The Protestant Reformation."

The Criterion Collection does Metropolitan. Yes, it's another Whit Stillman link. I saw this movie when it came out in 1990; I was the same age as the protagonists. It delighted my heart.

"We'll win by attrition."

That's what a friend of mine said at a wedding a while back, as he beheld the hordes of lil' Catholics running about. I think he was sort of joking, but if this is right, then maybe not so much.

(Yeah, I'm linking. It's Sunday!)

Family Matters

Just noted in an email that since giving up the Internet for Lent, I've made some fascinating discoveries. I seem to have five children. Fascinating.

Third Son, age two, has a new Prime Directive: watch Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, and get a parent to sit on couch and watch with him. I bought the thing for two bucks at Hollywood Video, just on a nostalgic lark - something to which we Gen Xers seem to be particularly vulnerable - as it was the only Godzilla movie I could recall having seen. It was my first introduction to arterial spray - the bright red Japanese variety (don't know if there are many other kinds). I also never forgot the awful scene where Mechagodzilla, while still in his fake Godzilla skin, dislocates the jaw of one of Japan's Defender Monsters.

I never really intended Third Son to see it. I didn't know if First Daughter, age four, would be able to take it. Now Third Son is forever presenting us with the video - he knows it by sight, even without the cover. And First Daughter? There's a scene in which one of our heroines kneels on the beach and sings a '70s ballad in an effort to wake King Cesar (sp?), another of Japan's defenders, this one resembling a giant Pekingese (sp?). I'm sitting with Third Son, wondering at his devotion to this film, when I notice First Daughter, on her knees in front of the TV, hands folded in front of her just like the gal onscreen, singing along.

At the judgment, I will have much to answer for.

I stand indicted.

First Son, aware of my Lenten Internet fast: "Hey Dad, if you like reading on the computer so much, why don't you just read books?"

No sense in telling him that I just finished Volume Two of Stannard's biography of Evelyn Waugh. I read it at night, after he's asleep. As far as he knows, I tell him to read but I don't do it myself. This is not good. The obvious remedy is to lounge about the house all day, nose in a book. The wife will most likely object - she'll say something about doing my job, earning money to support the family. But we're talking about my son's reading habits here. Surely I would be remiss to let a little thing like money interfere with his formation in this regard?

So, let's see...where to begin? Perhaps Appointment in Samarra...

Tradition!

I had occasion this evening to attend Vespers at a United Methodist church. This included a communion service, in which the celebrant recited the words of Jesus at the Last Supper, then invited everyone to come and receive communion. Now, Methodists do not believe in the Real Presence, that is, that Jesus Christ is substantially present under the accidents of bread and wine (I'm not even sure they use wine). BUT, when they processed into the sanctuary to receive, they took their places at a U-shaped communion rail around the upper altar, and knelt.

Afterwards, there was a dinner and a talk from a Methodist theologian. I approached her. "May I ask you a question?"

"Certainly."

"I know Methodists don't believe the bread and wine are actually Jesus' body and blood, but I noticed that everybody knelt to receive communion. I've been in many Roman Catholic Masses where they do believe it's the body and blood, and they don't kneel. Can you give some account of why you kneel?"

The theologian allowed as how there was some controversy among churches on this point. She mentioned two thousand years of history, and launched into an explanation of what Jesus may have meant when he said "This is my body" - perhaps he was referring to the community of believers there with him at table, etc. She assured me that what went on in the Methodist church was not Hocus Pocus (been a while since I heard that one applied to its source - Hoc Est Enim Corpus Meum).

"But when you kneel to receive, isn't that an act of reverence?"

"Well, we're not reverencing the bread. We're..." She paused, and asked herself, "Well, why DO we kneel?" She turned back to me. "It's tradition. You've seen Fiddler on the Roof, right? Tradition, Tradition!"

Much might be said here, about the relation of tradition to theology, etc., etc. But I note it more because I was fascinated to see Methodists upholding tradition where Catholics have cast it off - even though the Methodists have cast off the theology (transubstantiation) that seems to lay behind the tradition, and Catholics haven't.

Lest anyone think I'm snarking at my Protestant brothers and sisters, I will note that I was happy to be prayed over at Vespers for help in my struggles with religious doubt. This Lent, I'm hoping to catch a better glimpse of Jesus than I've had in a while.