Simpsonized.

Obvious Observation of the Day

Why on earth would they bother to make a movie like Untraceable, in which the browsing public speeds the death of an entrapped and tortured victim by clicking through en masse to watch the horror unfold? Who would pay to go to such a thing, when they can just click on the gossip blogs and be part of the real-life version?

Today in Porn, Time to Hang it Up Edition, Part II

UPDATE: Apparently, this story isn't quite as juicy as originally reported. Mr. Thompson's connection with Clean Flicks, it seems, was tenuous at best. Thanks to the Darwins for the heads-up.


Okay, I give up for reals. Amy sends word about this, from the Christianity Today blog.

CleanFlicks Founder Arrested

Charged with forcible sexual activity with a 14-year-old girl, Daniel Thompson was known for editing videos to make them more family friendly.

Mark Moring

The co-founder of CleanFlicks, a video editing service once used by many Christians, has been arrested in Utah for allegedly paying a 14-year-old girl for sex.

Daniel Thompson, who ran CleanFlicks till the courts shut it down in 2006, had more recently operated Flix Club, a family-friendly edited-movie video business in Orem, Utah. He was arrested last Thursday on two charges of forcible sexual abuse and two charges of forcible sexual activity with a 14-year-old. Thompson is out on bail.

Thompson’s business partner at Flix Club, Isaac Lifferth, was also arrested on similar charges.

Thompson reportedly told police that Flix Club, which carried videos in which objectionable content had been edited out, was only a front, and that he and Lifferth were also involved in making and distributing porn movies.

Flix Club was forced to close last year after a federal court ruled that movie-editing businesses violated U.S. copyright law when they "sanitized" films by removing nudity, sex, profanity, and other objectionable content.

According to police reports, Thompson and Lifferth allegedly paid two 14-year-old girls $20 each to perform oral sex, and Lifferth allegedly had intercourse with a 16-year-old girl multiple times, including in the offices at Flix Club.

"I would have never suspected there was other stuff going on," the father of the 16-year-old told the Daily Herald in Provo. "I guess I didn't know Daniel. He always seemed like a real decent guy."

Obviously not. USA Today blogged several news items about the story under the title, "Clean Flicks, dirty man?"

Ironically, and perhaps prophetically, Thompson’s MySpace page includes the tagline, "Somewhere in the valley between Good and Evil." On that same page, for his "status"—where most people write something like "single" or "married"—Thompson wrote "Swinger."






And when Christianity Today starts dropping Today in Porn bombs, it's definitely time to pack it in.

Pool Kid

First Son's second video:

Today in Porn, Time to Hang it Up Edition

I mean, when First Things starts running Today in Porn items, you can either say, "My work here is finished," or "Hey, I've just been made irrelevant!" The rest, it seems, is silence.

Those Whom The Gods Wish To Destroy, They Record.

Oh, this just keeps getting richer. The good people at Catholic Radio International went and interviewed me about the whole Young Jesus-Eater thing. The chat opens with me stumbling through some thoughts on Catholic fiction, God help me. (Didn't see that coming.) But I had fun all the same, and the soothing tones should make the perfect antidote to the stress of your evening commute! And yeah, I'm working on a graphic novel.

Exchange.

First Daughter: Mom, when will Second Daughter stop wearing those shoes?

Mom: When you stop wanting them.

There Will Be Blood

Ernie and I talk it out.

Oh, my dear sweet Lord...

...somebody call Design and Layout, stat:



This showed up in my mailbox - a flyer from a local megachurch. Am I a pervert for initially seeing this as "Eastlake Kids Thank GOD for sex: the Best Hour of Their Week"? (Don't answer that.)

Book Meme

Clayton over at The Weight of Glory was kind enough to tag me for a meme - especially kind because the book he found nearest him was this one. Hilarious. So:

Book Meme Rules

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Got this while I was making coffee for The Wife. The nearest book was Sarah Moulton Cooks at Home

Page 123 is about Mini Meat Loaves.

Here are the sentences: "I tested these guys by freezing them both precooked and raw, and I slightly preferred the way the precooked ones turned out. If you are baking meat loaves that were precooked and frozen, they will take about 45 minutes to heat through. If you are baking meat loaves that you froze raw, put them right in the oven from the freezer and give them about 50 minutes or until cooked through."

I tag Amy, Johnny, Ellyn, The Darwins, and, of course, the boys at Korrektiv.

Yesterday's News Today: Abortion Edition, Part III

FOG Johnny Vino let us know that the Yale Daily News article referenced below is offline now. How odd! Where did it go? We know that the Internet is a series of tubes. Was one of those tubes a vacuum tube that evacuated the article from cyberspace in an inexpensive and effective manner? Were the article's remains (the "products of reporting") carefully inspected to ensure that all the unintended clauses had been successfully removed? I guess they were right: we need to work to keep this kind of reporting safe, legal, and rare. Oh, but there's a clarification:

In speaking about abortion, it is important to remain clear in words and spirit.

[Amen!]

Often, in an attempt to alleviate anxiety regarding the procedure, we speak of its technical simplicity. The process of terminating a pregnancy, however, is far from easy. As health care providers-in-training in the age of biopsychosocial medicine, we are actively learning to provide women with comprehensive and unbiased care.

[It's unbiased, but we can't just be printing articles that tell you about it. You'll have to take our word for it. Trust us - we're doctors!]

At a time when 85% of counties in the United States have no identified abortion provider, it is time for us to step up to the plate. We are advocates for women at a difficult juncture in their life, when biology leaves them bearing the product of unprotected sexual encounters in a way that men can never imagine.

[You know, the way John Irving couldn't imagine it in The Cider House Rules. Still gotta love the careful terminology. "What's the matter?" "Oh, I'm bearing the product of an unprotected sexual encounter." "Oh - I thought you might be pregnant."]

The goal of our talk on Monday night commemorating Roe v. Wade was twofold: an overview of the epidemiology of abortion as a medical option for women with unintended pregnancies, and a technical description of the procedures, medical and surgical, involved in pregnancy termination.

Every year, 49 percent of US pregnancies are unintended and 20 percent end in abortion (Finer LB, Henshaw SK. Perspect Sex Reprod Health. 2006). Of those who choose abortion, 61 percent have access to information and care early enough to abort in the first 8 weeks of pregnancy. Less than 1 percent of women have an abortion after 21 weeks. As stated in our talk, this figure reflects desired pregnancies that are aborted for fetal anomalies, often incompatible with life (and diagnosed later in pregnancy), as well as disparate delays in access to care. As we stressed, prevention is key. Prevention includes: early sex education, early and comprehensive contraceptive access, early identification of pregnancy, and early, supportive discussion of options including abortion.

[Prevention is key only if abortion is bad in some way - I think we agree on that. The question, of course, is "in what way is abortion bad?" But early identification is key only if later abortions are worse than early abortions. And the question of why a later abortion might be worse than an early abortion is, I think, a little murkier.]

The focus of the remainder of our talk was Manual Vacuum Aspiration (MVA). This is part of the “surgical abortion” option offered to women between 5 or 6 weeks and 14 weeks of gestation. MVA is 99 percent effective at pregnancy termination and can be done in the outpatient setting. The aspirator itself is safe, clean, easily transportable and reusable. It is also cheap, reducing cost barriers to reproductive care and the disparities those barriers create.

[Honest question: is there research out there showing that women, at least in this country, are bearing children that they would have aborted if they could have afforded to do so? I mean, you hear about Planned Parenthood getting all sorts of donations and economic support - are mothers really being denied abortions because they're too poor?]

We concluded the talk with a demonstration of the MVA on plastic pelvic models as well as papaya fruits to allow participants to practice and demystify, not trivialize, the procedure.

[If you really wanted to demystify and not trivialize, oughtn't you to have used something that actually looked like a fetus - er, product of conception - however small?]

When I was asked what the contents removed from the uterus with the aspirator looked like, I said “blood and mucus,” referring to products of conception, which are then carefully studied in a separate room to ensure the gestational sac and fetal parts (if old enough), are present, ensuring that the procedure was carried out successfully.

[So is there some dispute over the accuracy of the reporting in the first article? If so, say so.]

We presented anecdotal cases highlighting the experience of three different women with abortion: a woman in her mid 40s in an abusive relationship, a 30-year-old mother of three unprepared for another and a recent college graduate in a short-term relationship. These were meant to illustrate the fact that women across the age, race and economic spectrum at various points in their life may make the difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy. We stressed the role of providers and support staff in ensuring the woman has every resource available to her, from someone to hold her hand and drive her home to psychosocial support offered by the doctor, physician assistant, nurse, administrative staff and most importantly, society.

Do women “take this procedure lightly”? The truth is that women, like all patients, have a range of reactions to invasive procedures.

[Oh, no you don't. Abortion patients are not "like all patients." First of all, abortion is generally an elective invasive procedure, no? When my brother had his appendix out, that was an invasive procedure, but he sure as heck didn't choose it. And I'm pretty sure that nobody says they're going to hell after getting their appendix out - viz. the original article.]

The predominant sentiment expressed is relief. But anyone who has had their body instrumented understands relief at the end of an unsettling period is not without a queasy sense of invasion and at times loss, no matter how sound their decision.

[I don't think my brother really feels a sense of loss over his appendix. It's an absurd example, I know, but this simple equation of abortion with the great mass of invasive procedures is nothing short of galling.]

When we fail to prevent these unintended pregnancies we must wholeheartedly support and empower women with choice.

To disarm the myth that legalized and safe abortion leads to an increased abortion rate I refer you to the excellent report: “Induced Abortion: Rates and Trends Worldwide,” published by the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Oct. 13, 2007 issue of The Lancet.

And I invite you to join us at the Medical Students for Choice Annual Meeting: April 5-6, 2008 in St Paul, MN, where you can meet and be inspired by choice providers across the medical spectrum. Their perseverance brings hope.

Rasha Khoury is a student at the Yale School of Medicine and a member of Yale Medical Students for Choice.

Yesterday's News Today: Abortion Edition, Part II

This isn't a particularly funny edition of The News on Cracked, but when was the last time you heard the term "unwanted babies" in an abortion joke?

Yesterday's News Today: Abortion Edition

The Manhattan Lawyer passes along this brilliant bit of reporting from the Yale Daily News. Brilliant because both sides could conceivably come out thinking the reporter was on their side. Bracketed comments are mine:

Students who walked into WLH 119 on Tuesday night were greeted with models of the female pelvis complete with fallopian tubes, cervixes, vaginas — and papayas on which to perform mock abortions.

[Okay, that's gross. Or educational!]

In commemoration of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, the 35th anniversary of which is this month, the Reproductive Rights Action League at Yale (RALY), in conjunction with Yale Medical Students for Choice, demonstrated different abortion methods and techniques, answered questions students had about the procedures and encouraged students to be active in abortion-rights groups during last night’s presentation. The presentation was part of a week-long celebration of the 35th anniversary of the landmark decision.

[Straight dope. No read either way.]

“I’m here to talk about what happens after you get past the picket lines,” Merritt Evans MED ’09, a member of Yale Medical Students for Choice, told the assembled crowd of about 15 students.

[Okay, maybe it's just me, but 15 doesn't sound like a particularly large number, considering that two different organizations put the event together. I'm wondering if there were more presenters than attendees. But then, abortion is legal and normative, so maybe people don't feel the urgency.]

The presenters began by showing the students different surgical tools used during different stages of a pregnancy and ticking off statistics about the safety and number of abortions performed in the United States. Eighty-five percent of counties in America do not have any abortion providers, Evans said.

[That's pretty amazing. That means that 15% of counties are aborting something like 4,000 pregnancies a day.]

Evans and Rasha Khoury MED ’08, another member of Medical Students for Choice, who said she plans to become a gynecologist and expects to perform abortions, went on to describe one of the most common abortion procedures, manual vacuum aspiration, which “creates suction to evacuate pregnancy,” Evans said. The technique is a good option because the device involved is reusable and relatively cheap, she said.

[How do you evacuate pregnancy? You don't. You evacuate the uterus, ending the pregnancy. Is the reporter highlighting doublespeak?]

“It’s not as scary as it seems. It’s just blood and mucus,” Khoury said, referring to the fetus remains in the device. She added, “You’ll be able to see arms and stuff, but still just miniscule.”

[Arms and stuff. Stuff like heads and legs and torsos. And if there's arms and stuff, it's not "just blood and mucous. But miniscule, so it's okay!]

Evans and Khoury also explained the finer points of abortion-clinic etiquette, including some potentially sensitive terminology. Khoury said physicians performing abortions generally refer to the aborted fetus remains as “POC,” an acronym for “product of conception,” and refer to fetus’ hearts as “FH.”

[Oh, don't tempt me. The acronym game would get ugly, and fast.]

The most complicated part of the procedure can be the emotional fallout some patients experience, she said.

“Often times, women are crying and cursing and saying they’re going to hell,” Khoury said. “It may be a quick and easy medical procedure, but it definitely is a very involved social-medical procedure.”

[Holy crap! This seems rather a major admission.]

The presenters also urged the crowd to become involved in the abortion-rights movement by joining Reproductive Health Externships, a campaign in which volunteers are taught how to conduct abortions.

[VOLUNTEERS? HELLO?]

“It’s fun because you meet people from all over the country who do them,” Khoury said. “It’s pretty inspiring.”

[FUN?]

The ethical implications of abortion may be a topic of endless debate, but Elizabeth Kim ’11, who attended Tuesday night’s meeting, said she remains unsure of where she stands on the issue.

“I wanted to learn about the scientific and medical process before I can make any conclusions about the ethics,” she said. “It disturbed me how quick and clean the procedure is, because it is a big deal.”

The week’s events began with the showing of a documentary about abortion Monday and will end Saturday with a performance by the all-female comedy group the Sphincter Troupe.

[Okay, see, this is where I decide that the reporter is on my side. There was no real need to have the article end with the words "Sphincter Troupe." That was an editorial choice, one that provides a delightful bit of context. Unless it doesn't!]

Two Tributes

New York Times.

Best Buy.

Poetry Corner, Wisconsin Poet Edition

You call for it early enough to peel
Back dreams from the hours of sleep – a thirst
The mouth’s cavity has, full of last night’s

January: the pure blank of snow’s fall
Such that smoke from the chimney
Brushes a column’s shadow on its canvas

Of full moonlight like drunken thought:
Without meaning but upwards, upwards….
You made your way up to the bedroom,

Undressed your corpse, and died on the blankets.
Next morning, this morning, you call,
And oldest daughter comes, having made

Coffee every other morning with dutiful
Distrust, wondering if this morning will be
The one when coffee will be more required

Than curses at the cry of early morning dark.
But this morning, she brings ice water,
Blue, like shadows thrown by objects in snow

And, twirling with ice, colder than the snow.

(Photo found here.)

God rest his soul.

"Art begins in a wound." - John Gardner

Alphonse is a-borning...

No, we're not expecting...

With Apologies to the Walrus...

"The time has come," the Daddy said,
"To read of many things,
Of towers and of fellowships
And returnings of the kings!
It starts with Bilbo and his ring -
The trouble that it brings!"

Movie Blogs Say: Abortion is Bad!

Continuing a theme...

From today's Defamer: "Lilo can sob on the shoulder of newly sorta-single Eddie Murphy, who received a record-breaking five nominations for his multiple roles in the abortion Norbit." See, Norbit was a bad movie. So when you call it an abortion, that means abortion is bad. And since you're talking about Norbit, that means abortion is really, really bad.

From today's FilmDrunk: "Yes, a gross miscarriage of justice and a revolting, partial birth abortion of the legal system." Okay, so when you look at it in context, it's clear that the writer is being maybe a touch sarcastic, but even so: "a revolting partial birth abortion of the legal system" doesn't sound like a good thing.

UPDATE: Oh, this is too good. FilmDrunk has a new post up, offering comment on all the comment being offered about the recent spate of pregnant-girl-keeps-baby movies. Says FilmDrunk, "I’m just a little annoyed none of these movies choose abortion. I think today’s young ladies need to know abortion is still a viable option. Or 'miscarriage,' as it’s known in my hometown." Viable=good? But you just used "abortion" as a pejorative. Which is it?

Aphorism of the Day

Thank God we can participate in His life and work. If we had nothing to do but sit about and work ourselves into a constant state of gratitude for the work of redemption, it would not be long before we began to resent or even hate Him. Even weekly Mass would be a brutal chore.

The Wisconsin Poet speaks.

The reading of the little book continues over at Catholic Radio International. Now with biographical background on the man behind the microphone! The Powers That Be interviewed Friend-of-Godsbody JOB, and here's what they found:

Tell us a little about yourself - where did you go to school and what are your degrees?

Hailing originally from New Jersey, I traveled cross country to attend Thomas Aquinas College in California: there I found truth, Christ, and the Truth of Christ. I finished up my schooling at the University of Dallas where I graduated with a BA and MA in English Literature.

Full disclosure is needed here – you have close ties both to CRI and to the book that you're reading – can you tell us about those.

CRI’s founders, Tom and Jeff, were also my colleagues at the Diocese of La Crosse when all of us worked there. In fact, Tom was also my boss, my editor, and the guy who took a chance on this two-bit poet, the first to turn him into a half-respectable journalist (if such is not a contradiction in terms).

As for Swimming with Scapulars, my ties to the author Matthew Lickona go even deeper. Some time ago I wrote a book review for Swimming in which I think I put it best. What I said was:

“I count Matthew Lickona as one of my closest friends. I appear several times in the book – the friend 'Joseph' who introduces Matthew to both the scapular and Wild Turkey Bourbon (101 Proof), as a fellow Catholic storming heaven or as an accomplice storming hell in youthful folly.

…Despite my own investments in these pages, I offer this review if only to underscore the real importance of the book. Swimming shows the face of a vigorous Catholicism (like Christ, ever-ancient yet ever-new) from the first generation to mature in faith entirely in the shadow of the Second Vatican Council. It also shows the plausibility of maintaining the faith amid the murkiness of the modern world.

Indeed, Swimming should not only draw young Catholics to the pool’s edge, but it should entice them to jump head- and heart-first into the deep end.”

Besides the fact that you know and admire Matthew Lickona, how important, in your opinion, is his book Swimming With Scapulars?

Picking up the thread from what I said above, I think there are young Catholics out there (and honestly, I don’t think there are as many as there should be) who are scratching their heads and wondering if they’re like ham radio operators after a nuclear holocaust: am I the only one out here? I think a number of these young Catholics picked up Matthew’s book and, with an ability reminiscent of his (and my) literary hero Walker Percy, Matthew shows the young face of the faith to these people by pointing out those matters of the faith (and existence) which we all think about but few actually put into words. I can’t help but think a number of these young Catholics responded – and responded well to his fix on the faith.

You have what many would consider a unique living arrangement; you are one of three families that live on a farm in rural Wisconsin. Tell us about life on the farm.

I’d like to take more conscious credit of the situation I’m in right now: I live on a rural homestead (without garden or livestock of my own at the moment, so I can’t really say it’s a farm of any sort) in southwest Wisconsin. I had no Thoreau-ian or Chesterbellocian desire to “Flee to the Fields” and begin a life devoted to distributist principles. My wife and I were living in a bad section of Dallas and decided we wanted to have a lot of kids (we have seven and counting). My father-in-law’s parents had lived on a farmstead adjacent to his own but had recently moved back to the city. The house and property were deeded to my father-in-law, Barney, after their death and he in turn handed it over to my wife and I. We live on it now with our seven children, and in community with my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, and sister-in-law with her husband and four children.
It’s not peachy keen by any means, but it is a way to sidestep, for our children’s sake, much of the “yuck” of modern culture. We don’t live a bunker mentality as many of our friends are secular, some non-believing. We have regular jobs which force us to confront the “yuck” of the modern world, yet we have greater control of how much gets filtered to our children, who are by all means Homeschool Normal.

There are great advantages to living in community with like-minded Catholics, though. Dinner conversation varies from the fate of the Green Bay Packers to the implications of the latest papal encyclical. We’ve all been more or less classically, or at least liberally, educated. There’s also a great satisfaction in being able to pray together in an expanded setting.
In fact, plans are being drawn up to include Christ Himself in a visible literal way in our community, as within the next three years we hope to have a chapel built on the property. We have many priests as friends and look forward to letting them use our property as a place of retreat. But that’s all in the future, of course.

Paging Chuck Klosterman...

...or some other King of Low Culture who can maybe somehow explain why REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling" has endured as a radio staple...




...while Survivor's "The Search is Over" has languished...



...along with Foreigner's "I Wanna Know What Love Is." These are the questions that try men's souls.

Today in Porn, Let's Make a Movie Edition, Part II

In Part I, we had kids making porn to make money. (Didn't they read the Portfolio piece?) In Part II, the old-timers get in on the idea. Behold The Amateurs:



Because nothing helps a town come together like porn.

Oddly enough, the film didn't get much further than NY and LA back in December, and is headed for DVD in February.

Today in Porn, Let's Make a Movie Edition, Part I

Well now, looky here - Kevin "I Owned The '90s" Smith has gone and hopped on the Seth "The Oughts Are Mine!" Rogen Express - destination: Porn! The Mayor and Mayor emeritus of Slackerville have joined forces to make Zack and Miri Make a Porno, the story of a bunch of crazy kids who somehow figure out that there's money in filmed sex acts. But wait! Apparently, "as everybody starts 'doing' everybody, Zack and Miri realize that they may have more feelings for each other than they previously thought." It's like Babes in Arms meets Boogie Nights - with a heart!

BAM.

Hey, aspiring authors! Steve Jobs, the Big Cheese at Apple, has a word for you!

"Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading. 'It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,' he said. 'Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.'”

Well, okay then!

Today in Porn, Ur-Text Edition

Many years ago, I was researching the lives of the saints in the library at the University of San Diego when I happened upon* this article in Esquire about Gregory Dark, the porn director who managed to go mainstream enough to direct videos for (pre-meltdown) Britney Spears and Mandy Moore. (He has since directed some episodes of the TV series Oz, and a horror flick, See No Evil - how's that for a title from a former pornographer?)

It was a pretty fine piece - writer Tom Junod does an amazing job of drawing Dark out, quote by juicy quote. What follows is something of a hit parade. Language advisory in effect.

Junod on Dark: "He was making pornography then. He was famous for it, sort of--famous for making the worst pornography, a pornography of transgression and violation, a pornography that seemed intended less to glorify sex than to advertise the death of the soul...I went to watch him make a pornographic movie out in the Valley and saw something so irredeemably obscene that I figured, Okay, Gregory Dark really is the devil, or at least someone I should stay away from."

Junod on Dark, Dark on his talent: "HE WAS GOOD AT IT. That's what always seems to surprise and excite him, even now. He was a good pornographer. He was good at pornography the way he's good at making music videos. You see, at first he didn't know that it was his calling--'I just had to make a living! I just needed a job!'... Their first hit was called New Wave Hookers. It came out in 1985, and it was a big success, not only because it featured sixteen-year-old Traci Lords rutting like a hog--of course, um, back then no one knew she wasn't legal--but also because Gregory Dark asked people to do things ... curious things ... and they did them. And do you know why? 'Because I was good at it!' he says now. 'I was good at getting people to behave like animals! I was good at tearing away all their socialization, everything their parents had taught them. It was weird. I never even had to raise my voice. I just appealed to their egos, to the sin of pride. People will do anything for the sin of pride, even become beasts! And that's what I was good at getting on film--that moment when human beings become something else, other than human.'"

Junod on porn's relation to reality: "Once he filmed a girl getting gang-banged, and when it was over--the second it was over, when she was still lathered in sweat and spunk, when she was still breathing heavily, with a dazed look in her eyes--he asked her, on camera, if her stepfather had sexually abused her. And he made her answer. Creepy? Sure. But his audiences knew they were seeing something; they knew that this was for real ... and you know what? There were people who loved it! They lapped it up, especially the kids."

Junod on porn and pop culture: "He was a pornographer, sure, maybe even the worst pornographer ... but it's not like he sits around plotting to direct Britney Spears, Mandy Moore, and Leslie Carter so that he can corrupt them and the little girls who idolize them. And it's not like he has to worry about making them pornographic, either--about straying over the boundaries of taste, about eroticizing them, about fetishizing them, about doing all the things he used to do as a pornographer. They've already been eroticized and fetishized by the culture itself. In 1985, he directed Traci Lords and he was very nearly a criminal ... but now the entire culture is besotted with the erotic promise of teenage girls, and so by the time they come to Gregory Dark, the girls have already been, well, pornographied. Britney Spears? That's a porn name if there ever was one, no matter if it's her real name or not. That Rolling Stone cover of Christina Aguilera with her shorts unzipped and her athletic tongue licking her lascivious lips? That's a porn box cover, though without the usual accoutrement of bodily fluids. The lure of jailbait now supplies the erotic energy to a popular culture desperate for what's new, what's young, what's alive; and the pornographication of the American girl has proceeded at such a pace that, as curious as the phenomenon of Gregory Dark directing a girl like Leslie Carter in a music video seems even to Gregory Dark himself, it also makes perfect sense."

Dark on his own motivations: "So I made a couple of porno movies. Big deal. Brian De Palma made a porno movie! I didn't hurt anybody. Am I proud of everything I did? Am I proud of driving the final nail in some girl's coffin, of making her more of a whore than she started out being? No, I'm not. But do you know why I did it? Do you know why I made those movies the way I did? Because I needed to be entertained!"

Junod on Dark the new man: "No, you don't mend your ways because you stop liking what you like; you mend your ways because you, like Gregory Dark, grow scared of liking what you like forever, of liking what you like alone, of liking what you like unloved--because that would make you the devil... And as it turns out, Gregory Dark wants what everyone else wants: He wants to love and be loved. He wants someone to talk to as he grows old. He wants a child. He wants a family. He wants to reconcile with his mother before she dies. He wants to make a real movie, so he will finally be thought of as a director--'a member of the club'--rather than as a reprobate ex-pornographer. And he wants to inspire someone with his success; he wants someone to look at his life and say, If Gregory Dark can change, then so can I."

*What? You don't believe that the USD library keeps its lives of the saints books right next to its Esquire archives?

The Latest from MIFTA

(My Imaginary Friend the Atheist)

"The cruelest part of knowing that life is a cruel joke? That there's no one telling it."

Mudflap Girls

Today in Porn, Squeamish Edition

I don't think Gawker ever recovered after Alex Balk (the late T-Muffle) decamped for Radar Online a few months back. Now, even the NYT is sounding the knell. Possibly a case of looking too long into the pop culture abyss. But the best part of the NYT article is this little bit of decorum:

"Gawker Media now runs 15 Web properties, including io9, a science fiction blog that made its debut this month. Gizmodo, about technology, and a site that is about pornography draw far more traffic than Gawker."

Hm - one of these things is not like the other. I see that the sci-fi blog is called io9, and the tech blog is named Gizmodo...but what follows after is the typewritten equivalent of an awkward stammer - "and a site that is about pornography"? It's called Fleshbot, people. A funny title for a porn blog! I'm not gonna link to it, since "it's kind of porny inside." But who knew the bold souls at the Times were so hesitant to even name names when it came to porn? I mean, they managed to mention Jenna Jameson's "32 double-D breasts."

It's Tough Out There for a Time Lord

January Snowflakes, continued.

First Daughter:


Third Son:

January Snowflakes

First Son:


Second Son:

Jump for Joy

First Son got a digital camera for Christmas. Said digital camera had a video feature. The boy set about directing his siblings post-haste, and then set about editing the footage on iMovie. I have no idea how he did all this. Two days later, he was working on a skateboard video with some friends, and trying to get someone to drag him along in a wagon alongside the boarder during the shot. "Isn't there some way to get a smoother ride?" he asked me. Not yet a week into his career as a filmmaker, and he's realizing the need for Steadicam.

Staircase of Death!

This week over at Cal Catholic, Ernie and I chat about Amazing Grace.

And just because everybody's talking about it, I suppose I should point out our exchange on Juno. My colleague steadfastly refuses to get on the "Juno is everything that Bella wasn't" train - keeps things interesting.

Call for Friend-of-Godsbody Artists

Come to find that FOG Lindsay has a husband who takes fancy pictures, and even dabbles in movies. Darwin is thinking about writing fiction. Anybody else? I wanna update the Artist's Co-Op links on the sidebar.

Oh, and AC - how do I add an RSS feed to this thing?

Emo Song Lyric of the Day

I hope to God that there's a God that I can hope to.

Aphorism of the Day

Christianity has the only story worth telling. Everything tends toward decay and corruption - the whole universe falling apart and tending toward nothing. Only love keeps things together. Only love makes things endure.

(Hey, nobody said these would be original, or even particularly true...)

There It Is.

Last week, Ernie and I chatted about Once, a lovely, small film about art and love, set in Ireland. Ernie's opening comment: "Five hundred F-words notwithstanding, there was a lot of neat stuff in this movie." That did it. Cue the discussion about the Church and the arts...

Posted Monday, January 07, 2008 7:09 AM By bob
500 f words and movie is ok????? language leads to belife

Posted Monday, January 07, 2008 7:43 AM By Fred H
So I wonder what the point of filling the movie with F-words was? Just to get an R-rating?

Posted Tuesday, January 08, 2008 12:07 AM By Lickona
The point was probably to reflect the way the Irish talk.

Posted Tuesday, January 08, 2008 6:48 AM By John L. Sillasen
A survey was done correlating the use of the "f" word with ethnicities, and it was not the Irish who stood out, but the hollywood culture. You know, silver screen silver tongue.

Posted Tuesday, January 08, 2008 3:24 PM By Lickona
So is the Hollywood Culture an ethnicity now? One that oversees films made in Ireland by the Irish?

Posted Tuesday, January 08, 2008 6:25 PM By John L. Sillasen
Yes, hollywood has become an ethnicity, a nation, an empire, a universe, a pan-language group, new creation with its own gods, goddesses, and numerous godlies of all sorts of persuasions both spiritual and fleshly. Hollywood is not only transnational, but also transpiritual and transtemporal: the only thing hollywood has not succeeded in conquering is the Church and Her affiliates. Even India's media entertainment industry is a vassal state of hollywood.

Posted Wednesday, January 09, 2008 8:55 AM By Fred H
I would guess that to many people around the world, Hollywood *is* America, because of what they see on the screen, distributed all over the world. A bunch of disgusting, over-sexed, perverted, foul-mouthed immoral thugs and sluts.

What I did on my blogging vacation, Part III

Why, I wrote my annual Christmas Card Letter!

Dearest Dear Ones,

With only a couple of weeks left in the year, it seems safe to say it now: 2007 will mark the first odd-numbered year in the history of our marriage that we have not so conspired as to give birth. And yet, all told, we are more tired these days that we can ever remember being. The obvious conclusion: if you want to feel good and be full of pep, try PROGENEX!* Because it’s not just a life – it’s a lifetime.

So! Where were we? First Son is 10 now, and watches TV for the ads. So amazed is he by the marketing machine’s power to influence his own soul, he has set out to master its secrets for himself. We can only pray he uses his powers for good. Maybe he’ll figure out how to sell chastity to teenagers! (Three years and counting down…) He also continues his artistic career – writing books, drawing comics, folding origami…

Second Son governs our family’s chi, absorbing and redistributing positive emotional energies as required. It takes a toll, but his serenity is never long in returning. Now if we could only get him to wear shoes…but bare feet help to keep him rooted.

First Daughter and Third Son have acquired bunnies. It is as yet unclear how the bunnies will fit into her elaborate, nay, dizzyingly complex, social network of dolls, stuffed animals, and tub toys. Third Son no doubt plans to use SCIENCE to create a race of super-bunnies (überhöppen) that will aid him in his quest to charm the world into submission.

Second Daughter’s straw-blonde hair has grown past the point of disaffected-Brit-rocker to full-on Debbie Harry, and is usually Styled with Lollipops.

I have taken a pledge not to cut my hair until I get something published, and it’s getting scary. The Wife has taken a pledge to love me anyway, and continues to amaze us all. Merry Christmas, and may God bless you richly in the coming new year.

*WARNING: PROGENEX may include side effects lasting up to 18 years or more.

What I did on my blogging vacation, Part II

The Big Boss was kind enough to pair me with Gideon Rappaport, a wonderfully learned and large-hearted Jew, for an inter-religious back-and-forth about, of all things, Christmas. The opening exchange:

Matthew: The last time my father visited, I learned what seemed a remarkable thing: all three of his best friends in high school were Jewish. He grew up in Poughkeepsie, an hour from New York City by train. But I grew up four hours north of Poughkeepsie, and what a difference a few hours' drive can make. I remember only one kid from my high school whom everybody knew as Jewish: his name was Ben, he played tennis and the violin, and he put up with an awful lot of abuse from his circle of friends. He'd make a joke, and one of them would say something like, "Shut up, Jew." I don't think his friends actually cared about his being Jewish -- it was just an easy, stupid shot. For a long time, I couldn't understand how he took it the way he did. Finally, I decided that it must be that these were his friends -- where else was he going to go? So he learned to swallow it. It probably helped that they weren't really serious. As for me, I was friends with a half-Jew in elementary school, but his mother was Catholic, so you can bet he celebrated Christmas like the rest of us.

Gideon: It's interesting that the place you decided to start was with the Jews, your father's friends, your own friend. Christmas has to start with the Jews, I guess, no matter where you start. It was Jews who were killed by Herod and Jews who were chased into Egypt by him, pregnant with the future, and Jews whose testimony later became the Christmas story. But though in my childhood I would sometimes help neighbors decorate their Christmas trees with tinsel -- we would never have had one and never felt deprived: "That's what they do, not what we do" -- in later years much of the holiday involved explaining over and over that Hanukkah had nothing to do with Christmas; it was just an accident that it came at the same time of year, and it was not the most important Jewish holiday by a long shot. I didn't know at the time that the Christmas celebrations we all know were more or less the invention of 18th-century Germany and 19th-century England (and Charles Dickens), while Hanukkah had been celebrated more or less the same way for over a thousand years. When I was a child, Christmas was the world, Hanukkah only at home.

Today in Porn, "It's Kind of Porny Inside" Edition

Remember when William F. Buckley took note of the pornification at Abercrombie & Fitch?

"I stopped by at the local Abercrombie & Fitch for sailing wear. I waited, at the counter, for my package and looked down on the A&F Summer Catalogue. You could see the handsome young man on the cover, but the catalogue itself was bound in cellophane. My eyes turned to the card alongside. 'To subscribe: Fill out this card and head to the nearest A&F store with a valid photo ID.' With a valid photo ID? I thought that odd and asked the young man behind the counter, who was perhaps 19 years old, why IDs were required for purchasers of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. He said, 'Well, uh, it's kind of porny inside.'"

That has to be our favorite porn-related line ever. But let us back to Buckley:

"The lead page gives us a jaunty blonde clutching her hair, wet from the ocean she has just emerged from. [Ed. note - You can tell the man is upset if he's ending sentences with prepositions.] If she is wearing anything, it would be below her pelvic joint. Above it, which is all the viewer can see, there are no clothes...Next, a two-page spread of above-the-navel photos, six young men and one girl. One does spot a shoulder strap on the girl that may be a part of a bathing suit, subterranean and not reached by the camera. But lo, she does wear a watch, sheltering the wristnudity. The men wear nothing. A few pages on, a boy wears tennis shoes (unlaced) and a towel over his head. On his knee a camera rests. His shorts are given perspective by the young man's erection."

It goes on, but you get the picture. It's getting so a guy can't go shopping for sailing wear without being subjected to erections and unlaced tennis shoes. Hue and cry followed - the parents of American mallgoers prefer their porn-culture and homoeroticism barely submerged, thank you very much - and the A&F Quarterly left the field to become an eBay collector's item. (Beefcake ahoy!)

Now, Radar Online points us toward this story in Vogue about A&F's rebirth in the UK: "'The tolerance for less-regulated publications is higher, while the hunger for the Abercrombie brand is only on the rise,' comments The Daily on the decision." Jolly Good Jollies, what? Good show!

At any rate, all this is to note that, while we're not going to link to the nakedy pix on at Radar Online, we can't help but include one or two for the sheer joy of captioning them. Feel free to add your own in the comments...



"Dear Jesus, please help me to get this zipper unstuck so that I may zip up my pants before class. Also, please put remorse into the heart of mean Billy Johnson, who hid everybody's shirts while we were showering after gym."



LOL HANDSOME LAD SAYS: IM SQWEEZIN UR BALL, MAKIN U GRIMACE!

Swimming With Scapulars read aloud on Catholic Radio International

(Possibly the most matter-of-fact post title ever on this little blog...)

Those Northern winters can do funny things to the brain. How else to explain that the good people at Catholic Radio International have gone and selected the little book for their Cover to Cover treatment? And just in case you had any doubts as to whether or not it was a small world after all, they went and got the Wisconsin Poet to do the honors. Needless to say, I'm both honored and grateful, and I hope the venture proves fruitful. I may pop up now and then on the site to provide additional commentary of sorts. I hope it will be of some interest. Shameless plug: if you think of someone who might find this enjoyable, please do pass the word. I'm kind of thrilled.

Guess who came to dinner?

Casa Godsbody: proud host of the Korrektiv Summit IV. Meat was had, and wine. Poker was played, and music. The talk was better than the poker, but only because the talk was so diverting. Hank Williams v. Johnny Cash, opera, Tolkein, Percy and converts... Suffice it to say that enough Cazadores was poured that by midnight, FOG Ernesto was belting out part of Nessun Dorma, and by two in the morning, I was singing my own songs. (Note to Rufus: you need to put that one about the circus to music, and get it on the blog.) Good times.

Hawk's nests, briefly unhidden.

For about one month out of the year, the ash trees in our backyard (and those in our neighbors' backyards, seen here) lose their leaves. The hawks probably don't mind much - they seem to decamp in winter, and return after the new year's leaves have provided fresh camouflage. And they say we don't have seasons in San Diego.

What I did on my blogging vacation...

Otherwise known as, "Killing time before the dance recital..." Starring Second Daughter.

Hello?

I do believe

This is working now. God be praised...