Signs Of A Fine Establishment, Pt. 28

(Dubois, WY / 06 Aug 2005 / Canon S110)

Travelzoo Temptation Of The Week

Our ongoing mission here, as ever, is primarily one of public service. Each week we try to save a few more lost souls from themselves. Call it carpe diem, i suppose, if you must. Or just a much-needed reminder of the big, big world outside your cubicle. Trust us; we've had to learn.

So here's how it works. First, we present you with something like this.

And then, we present you with something like this: If you're still moping around your gray little office after reading that, call me. First i will verbally abuse you. Then i will give you the nine dollars. So do us both a favor.

Just go.

Mildly Interesting Photos Of The Week

[All New Enough-With-The-Saint-Augustine-Already Edition]

(Amelia Island, FL / 16 Jan / Casio EX-Z750)

The Bonfire Of The Vanities Of The Pillars Of The Earth We Now Know

(A 3-for-1 Book Review And Society Column, With Craftily Orchestrated Moral)

It's been about two weeks since the Mercy Ships gala here in Jacksonville.

Ordinarily there's nothing like time to bring a little perspective, but in this case, it would probably have been more fun if i'd have written about it right away. I think i'm feeling more charitable now.

That said, i suppose it was a success. I don't know how much money was raised, but the goal was two million dollars, and from the sounds of things, they were well on their way. Mercy Ships needs the money, and i'm glad for every dollar that was guilted out of the local elite. But by the same token, K. and i certainly would not have been invited had we not been former crewmembers and available to work behind the scenes. We were right around twenty grand short of the qualifying (estimated-donation-ability) cutoff.

In a sense this was quite understandable, given the cost of the production. It does take money to make money, and when you invite a Mayor, a Lord, some Congressman or other, and a former British Prime Minister (who is also a knight), well, you're looking to skim the heavy hitters. No British royalty was in attendance, though the Mercy Ships royal family was there, which was quite enough. It was just that the timing was so unfortunate. See, i'd just finished Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire Of The Vanities, and it was too absolutely lovely a juxtaposition. I sat at our rear table looking around at all the aging lawyers and jowled Rotarians, and i had a Realization: I disliked them, in part, because part of me wanted to fit in.

If you've read Bonfire, you know. If you haven't read it - well, it made me think, sitting there at our rear table in front of my lemon tart dessert. About ostentation, and insecurity, and basically, how life is pretty short to spend chasing so remarkably unfulfilling a thing as money. These are obvious thoughts, if you've already thought them yourself, but then, look how many haven't. I was surrounded by them.

This made me think about wealth and aristocracy in general (this was during Lord McColl's speech) - and the simplicity with which the two have combined to control the fates of most of humanity since the beginning. I think this particular detour was due to another book i'd just read: Ken Follett's The Pillars Of The Earth. (yes; don't laugh yet.) This is an epic-sized novel, a meticulously plotted chronicle of European life in the late Middle Ages, and what i mainly took away from it was that the happiness of the vast majority of humanity was pretty much subject to the whims of the wealthy (-and-therefore-powerful; or vice versa). Living as we do in a basically democratic society, we easily forget that life in many lands has changed really not at all. Now, i've met Lord McColl; he's a wonderfully humble twinkly-eyed old guy with a fine sense of humor. As an accomplished surgeon, he's a regular on the Anastasis outreach roster, and when he's not straightening injured limbs in the onboard O.R., he's twisting arms in support of Mercy Ships back home. But there are nasty Lords, too; and in years past, they had a lot more room to be nasty. Or any way they felt like being - and that was that.

This made me think of a third book. I'm not a poser, really i'm not. I skimmed this one, and i probably will not finish, because it has to go back to the library tomorrow. It's John Lewis Gaddis's We Now Know, a look at the Cold War armed with all kinds of newly declassified documents. Gaddis tosses off anecdotes on everyone from Nikita "I Squeeze The Testicles Of The West" Khruschev, to FDR (whom i now respect even less than i used to), to Churchill (whom i now respect even more), to Chairman Mao (whom - at 27 million of his own people - Gaddis crowns above Stalin as the most proficient mass murderer of all time). And this, too, made me think. When i was small, the Cold War was still going on. It shaped my views of the world. I imagined huge, ponderous states carefully considering well-informed actions on a scale so great as to be faceless. And now i find my fate was bobbing lightly on the mercurial emotions of a handful of certifiable psychopaths. Which - really - it still is.

Cheerful thought, that.

So the next time you're at a gala hobnobbing with Prime Ministers and such, remember these things: Be humble, and be proud. And if you happen to shake a famous hand, think this: Will i vote for you because i believe your character to be so high that you are worthy of holding my very life and death in your hands? Or because i think you'll give me things for free?

Mildly Interesting Photos Of The Week

(15 Jan 2006 / St. Augustine, FL / Casio EX-Z750)

An Inappropriate Observation, Second In A Series Of A Lot

Boy, when someone says something about my beliefs that i disagree with, i gotta tell ya, there's just nothing i love to do more than go burn down a bus station. And a cell phone company office. And a Pizza Hut. And then three movie theatres, just for good measure. Those idiot imperialist thugs in New Orleans were on the right track last year, but true Expressions of Protest are not content with mere thievery. For the maximum effect from your righteous anger, you have to hook up with a raging mob of seventy thousand or so and burn things to the ground.

Anyway, destroying movie theatres usually does it for me. But if i'm still not feeling like the world is getting the message, i kick it up a notch and torch a KFC. Damn the Western infidels and their tasty white meat! After that, i like to hang out awhile and scream "Death to Denmark" for the TV cameras.

Then, i grab my assault rifle and head out to shoot a small child in the face.


What? YOU DARE TO CALL US VIOLENT???



*Ed. note: Due to bandwidth concerns, please direct all fatwas to my main website at http://www.michaelmoore.com rather than posting them here.

Travelzoo Temptation Of The Week

"We fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine--and some form of working activity that yields a sense of accomplishment.

That's all--in a material sense, and we know it.

But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, and playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade...."

--Sterling Hayden
(Hollywood actor, skilled sailor, WWII OSS agent, and U.S. Marine)

Click here for your carefully selected means of salvation.

Don't worry. When it's gone, they'll make more.

It's Profanity Monday Again!

Just keeping you on your toes.

Mildly Interesting Photos Of The Week

(15 Jan 2006/St. Augustine, FL/Casio EX-Z750)

A Brief, Shining Epiphanal Moment Of Near-Perfect Irony

If, say, the Southern Baptists of the world were to take offense at a cartoon in, say, the New York Times, and if they chose to express their disagreement with it by raging through the streets of New York and Chicago in violent mobs, firing assault rifles, terrifying the public, overwhelming the police, destroying property, firebombing government buildings, and screaming "DEATH TO THE BLASPHEMERS! 9/11 WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING! FREEDOM CAN BURN IN HELL! BEHEAD THE SLANDERERS WHO CALL US VIOLENT!!!"--

--well, i'm sure NPR and CNN would take great pains to stress the validity of the Southern Baptists' reasonable concerns, and to sensitively explain that Christianity in its pure form is a totally peaceful religion, and that even if some Christians choose to express their totally understandable indignation in "demonstrations," still, everything that they might do or say is completely justified, and we should immediately adjust our society to accomodate every demand they make.

Cuz after all, fair is fair.

Right?

Thought so.

I know, sorry, no one cares. I'll shut up.

_______
Update (2/11):

(image credit: middle-east-online.com)

The above was taken in London, by the way.

The End Of The Spear

They say that living well is the best revenge.

Where to begin....

Okay. End Of The Spear: Several oddities in one. A mass-market Hollywood film, all about missionaries, containing almost no overt Christian content, directed like an art-house sleeper...and advertised from the pulpit.

From the start, given the genre, i assumed this would be a typically crappy movie. I was surprised to discover the opposite. Conversely, i took for granted that production on the recent Narnia film would be high-quality and predictably professional. I was wrong there too. What made the difference?

To me, Narnia felt halfhearted. Where Lord of the Rings was lavish down to the last detail of production, Narnia felt like someone had a deadline to meet. Not in the big picture, maybe, but in the details. There was just an overall feeling of cheapness to it - the faint aroma of condescension, the thumprints of handlers certain their intended audience will never know the difference. I couldn't point to anything specific, really, but that's how it felt.

The End Of The Spear, on the other hand, managed to win me over, and in doing so, it had to overcome a number of notable obstacles. For one, it had a very large cred problem from the start, in that it was being pimped on the James Dobson circuit. Then, too, it couldn't have had much of a budget, and the actors were unknowns. But it knew its limits, and knowing those, it set its goals and met them. To me, that's the difference between a crappy film and a decent one. The step from decent to really good is something else, but that's another story. In any case, i think what surprised me most was that this movie's goals were set as high as they were. I hate to say this, but this is the reason: It was not designed for a Christian audience. I regret this not because i wish it had been aimed at evangelicals, but rather because if it had been, it would have been crap. There are enough examples of that. If the producers were smart, they knew they could count on the proven knee-jerk Christian grassroots market to fill its share of seats.

But finally, i think what intrigued me most about these two movies was what the critics had to say. For Narnia, they apologized away the "Christian content" as a bit of dreck in an otherwise nice film. One month later, they took End Of The Spear - which had a comparable amount of such material, but presented it more naturally - and slaughtered it as hamfisted religious tripe. Aside from the typical liberal snobbery ingredient, i think they just saw in Narnia an established (and popular) genre, following Tolkien and Harry Potter as it did, and they just didn't have a pigeonhole ready for End Of The Spear. I didn't either. Was it hamfisted? Certainly. But with a remarkably light touch, considering. It wasn't Kristof Kieslowski, but it wasn't trying to be. Subtlety may be the essence of art, but it's still relative.

I do wonder what the director and producers envisioned for this film when they set out to make it. If i had to guess, i'd say they were very intentional about making it accessible to the average moviegoer - but at the same time, they included gentle reminders of what it was all about. Box-office receipts will be modest at best, certainly, but the recurring thread of "living well" - while hardly the most novel of themes - probably accomplished its purpose.

One of the Waodani said of the finished product that he "saw it very well." If one considers the true story behind the film, this is perhaps its highest achievement - that everyone involved is not only "living well," but is pleased with the movie about their collective life story of conflict and forgiveness. Will the average (unchurched) moviegoer connect the dots and see how remarkable this is - and wonder why? I don't know. But when i watched it, i was surprised to be refreshed. Don't expect too much, but do go see it.

Travelzoo Temptation Of The Week

Los ojos azules dicen, Ámame o me muero.

Los ojos oscuros dicen, Ámame o te mato.

Que tú escojas bien.

Free Wireless Lost: An Elegy

(In Most Excellent Haiku Form)

"Fuwayatami"*

Alas for old days
When nice neighbor shared booty
No, not that booty

Internet was free
Email that i did not use
Could read news all day

Now Andy move to
NC, and we move back to
Public library



*Translation from the original Japanese: "(n.) The condition or situation of not posting often to a blog or other website for the next few weeks."

Mildly Interesting Photos Of The Week

(Jacksonville, FL / 14 Jan / Casio EX-Z750)