Gethsemane...The Moment of Doubt...

There are moments in stories, and in life, where a person's guard drops and we see the oppressive doubt that comes with a sense of purpose.

We see this moment in Cool Hand Luke where Luke's been recaptured and his spirit is broken. He's exhausted and frustrated and just wants to be left alone. But there he is in the bunkhouse, surrounded by these convicts who look up to him and admire him. They want to know about his time in the free world. They want stories of his exploits. They want him to be their savior.

In his moment of doubt, Luke gets fed up and tells them to leave him alone. He renounces their adoration. He doesn't want to be their hero. He just wants to be left alone, quietly serve his time, and maybe have a normal life. He wants to be a man, not a hero.

Gethsemane is probably my favorite moment in the New Testament. Jesus Christ alone praying while the disciples sleep. Christ knows that he's about to be taken prisoner. He knows his death is assured. He knows that it'll be painful and brutal. And he thinks it fucking sucks.

"Let this cup pass from my hands."

This is the most beautiful moment in the Jesus story. This is the moment where the duality of Christ really shows. When he makes this plea to God, he's not the savior of the world. When he weeps blood as he considers his pending fate, he's not King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He's Jesus. He's just this guy whose friends think he's awesome and insightful. He's a man who thinks he has more to do with his life and isn't ready to die.

It's my favorite moment of every hero story. It's the moment you realize that this guy is just like you in so many ways. My favorite version of the Gethsemane story is Jesus Christ Superstar (which, next to Last Temptation of Christ is my favorite religiously derived piece of entertainment). The song Jesus sings at Gethsemane is beautiful. Every note and syllable is anguish. It screams for mercy. It drips with the inner conflict between wanting to fulfill a destiny and just wanting to be freed.

"Could you ask as much from any other man?"

It's a beautiful moment in any story.

No More Emo...

Lately, I've been breaking one of my biggest rules here, and I apologize for it.

As a reminder to myself and a renewal of my promise to you of less emo blogging...

I want to reiterate that I'm not here to whine.

http://zombiekiller.blogspot.com/2006/05/not-here-to-whine.html

Getting Older - Again

It's just about three weeks until my 31st birthday.

Now, I'm always introspective. I'm always taking an inventory of my life and weighing outcomes against expectations - especially lately. However, there's a special brand of self evaluation I do about this time every year. It's less about my frustrations and disappointments about life in general, but more about whether I've developed personally at all during the previous year.

Last year, I posted that my goal was to have an even better year creatively than last. I think I achieved that goal (we'll the zombie rock opera still needs completing). First of all, I'm writing more than ever. My hard drive is full of stories that need to be fleshed out and I've got notebooks full of ideas. And the great thing is, these ideas and stories aren't being abandoned like they usually are. I'm actually working at it. This is a huge deal to me.

And this stuff isn't just sitting in a file somewhere waiting for me to die. I'm submitting. I've had two 10 minute plays stage locally, the play in Singapore, and just saw closing night on my 45 minute one act just this past weekend. I'm working on an entry for another play festival in Australia and starting next month, I'll be sending some stories out to various magazines.

A friend of mine made an offhand comment a couple of weeks ago that you can't really call yourself a writer if you're not being published/paid for it. The comment wasn't really directed at me, but it's stuck with me. That's what this past year was for. I decided on my last birthday that I was either going to take this "hobby" to a different level, or I was going to stop spinning my wheels. It's been a decent start towards that goal.

I've mentioned in other posts that I've been reading Gibran's The Prophet lately. My copy of the book was given to me by Spinster, shortly after we became friends (I didn't realize until recently that I hadn't told her how many times I've read the book from cover to cover in the last four years). I'm not quite the type of person who draws wisdom from every page, but there's some damned good stuff in there on most of the subjects that bother us daily. It's good stuff.

If I concentrate on some of this stuff over the next year, who knows what the next birthday post will be like.

Creation Museum - Pt. 2 Rant

The book American Theocracy, by Kevin Phillips, outlines (among other things) the rise of the fundamentalist churches in the U.S. and how they've seized enough power here to be a political and social force that must be dealt with. This building in Petersburg, Kentucky is the embodiment of that problem.

Everyone is entitled to their own religious beliefs. I won't say I understand the need to believe in a god or whathaveyou, but I respect that you can make a decision to do so. Religious beliefs are strange to anyone who doesn't believe in your particular religion, so I try not to judge to harshly. But the beliefs reinforced by this "museum" are dangerous. Maybe not dangerous in the way that we're told fundamentalist Islam is, but dangerous none the less. If the supporters and builders of this museum had their way, this brand of creationism wouldn't just be the stuff of fairy tales and Sunday school classes, but it would also be taught in our school systems. It would be put alongside actual scientific theories and given the same respect - just as it is with a large portion of home-schooled kids. Worse, they've adopted the brilliant tactic of calling anyone who'd mock their ridiculously untenable beliefs as "intolerant."

Every day, rational people fight the encroachment of the extremely religious into our bedrooms, our classrooms, our bodies, and our governing institutions. As this institution begins producing new fundamentalist soldiers bent on dismantling a nation born in enlightenment and replacing it with one that embraces mysticism over reason, we have to give our children the tools necessary to defend against this onslaught.

A few weeks ago I joked about declaring war on God. I was wrong. The are a number of religious people who somehow frame their belief system around the reality of the physical world in such a way that the two support each other. These people are not the problem. But as Sam Harris indelicately points out in Letter to a Christian Nation - when you hear about the Christian vote, these are not the people doing the voting. If those of us in the atheist camp would do more to foster good relations with the religious folks who promote only the positive elements of their religion, we can work together to push the fringe back to...well...the fringe.

I know Richard Dawkins will roll his eyes if he ever accidentally sees that line on a Google search, but I don't know of any other way we can make sure that Kirk Cameron stays a has-been teen sitcom star instead of someone who may someday have the ear of a U.S. president.

No answers here, but a friend of mine made a good point a few weeks ago. I complain a lot about how the left and the right in this country have reduced our political process to the intellectual equivalent of a high school football game. I've always felt that the solution for this problem is for people to realize that both sides of the spectrum are equally ridiculous and are keeping us divided just so they can maintain power. If we, the people, stood up to the blustering of ideologues from both sides and called them on their bullshit, we'd see a revolution in this country on par with the one fought by farmers and store clerks two hundred years ago. Our nation would change.

Maybe this is just a further extension of that same problem and that same solution. Several vocal atheists and fundamentalist Christians may be dragging all of us who exist between their dichotomous argument into an area where even the moderate among us won't be able to co-exist. Perhaps we need to do whatever it takes to stop them from hijacking our conversation and creating the next grassroots war.

Dragon's Lair

If you’ve never felt this, I can’t explain it to you properly. Just accept that this is the greatest feeling in the world – this feeling you get when you’re sitting in a room, watching something you’ve created, and hearing the crowd behind you laugh and yell in approval. I’ve only been high a few times in my life, but this feeling is a million times better than that.

As mentioned elsewhere, Dragon’s Lair, a “one-act” play I wrote for the Tin Ceiling is currently being performed. Simply put, it’s about a guy who’s not happy with his current position in life and wants more – even though what he wants is completely impractical. Aloicious, clerk to Sir Gawain, wants to be a knight. Throw in two knights of questionable moral character and with time to kill before they ride off to battle, and hilarity ensues as Sir Gawain and Sir Lancelot put Aloicious through their own special “knight training program”. Think Revenge of the Nerds meets Excalibur, with a dash of Full Metal Jacket thrown in. This is the hour long version of the 10 minute play I submitted to Short & Sweet Singapore that came in 2nd place for people’s choice. So I knew at least 10 minutes of the play was good, but I was really worried that maybe I’d written an hour long Saturday Night Live sketch.

So, as is becoming my thing, I sat down last Friday night and waited for the first minute to be over. If no one laughed, I was ready to walk out. I’d been careful not to eat anything all day, but my stomach still waited to empty whatever contents it could find all over the theater floor. The lights came up, Aloicious walked out on stage, and within moments came the first chuckle. Then more. And finally, the whole theater is in stitches. I relaxed and let the euphoria settle in. It was going to be a good trip.

I’ve had this desire to entertain people as long as I remember. I’m a known attention whore who’s loud in a bar, louder at a party, and dangerous around jukeboxes and microphones. It’s not so much a desire to be seen as it is a desire to control how people think of me. “That Chris,” I want them to say, “he’s a funny mother fucker.” That’s why this play was so nerve wracking. If I bombed, I was ready to quit. I was ready to admit that my talent for writing may not have extended any further than a paragraph of dick and fart jokes in a blog somewhere. Luckily, I got that much needed external validation that the socially retarded crave. Now I can handle if I fail in the future, because I know what I’m capable of.

The perfect moment for me was about half way into it. The crowd is crazy about the over the top way a scene is being played out. My wife and my parents are all sitting in the same row as me and when I see my dad, he’s doubled over laughing. My father, for any quirks he may have, has entertained me with his guitar and his paint brushes as long as I’ve been alive. Not being his biological son, I didn’t really inherit his artistic eye, and both of my younger brother’s have far surpassed my guitar playing skills. The private nature of my only real artistic outlet, my writing, hasn’t offered many chances to hear him remark on my talent. To see him laughing though, and to have him tell me afterwards how good he thought it was, made the night great.

As everyone told me they liked it, the feelings I experienced were bittersweet. It’s definitely great to get myself out there creatively. I never feel as good, or as comfortable as I do when I’m writing. However, the knowledge that on Monday, I’m back at my desk adding up columns of numbers bugs me. I’ve gotten out my copy of The Prophet and have been reading it a lot lately. When I’m down, there’s usually something in there to help me.

“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.”

That pretty much says it all.

So for now, I’m a clerk. Maybe someday, I’ll be a knight.

Enough of that. On to the production.

Derek Simmons’ directing is amazing. I was banned from rehearsals, so I can’t tell you what his style was like. For all I know he carried a collapsible baton with him and threatened to beat his actors regularly. But when you watch the play you get the feeling that he showed up at rehearsal with a 24 pack of Pabst and said, “Here’s some beer. Make me laugh.” I think his attitude towards the material is one of the reasons it works so well. His directing immediately sets the audience at ease as they realize this play isn’t “THEATER”, it’s just a casual time with some friends who are going to tell you a story. Derek was obviously comfortable with the script and made additions and subtractions that just made the damn thing funnier. So odds are that while people are saying how good the writing is, they should be praising the director instead. Considering he’s also responsible for the set design (my settings didn’t make this an easy task), costume design (which turned into some of the coolest knight outfits ever – created by Becky Dorough), and sound…he was a pretty busy guy.

Somewhere in middle America is a secret government lab where a team of scientists and engineers are staring at an empty surgical table with broken restraints on it, and they’re wondering exactly where in the hell specimen 23 escaped to. Well, specimen 23 is going by the name Joey Walsh and he can be found onstage at the Tin Ceiling as Aloicious. Walsh is endearing, frenetic, and kinetic in his portrayal of the meek victim of a cruel hazing. Now he’s a stage actor so he may cringe when he reads this, but watching him on stage is the only time I’ve ever been reminded of Jack Black and Frank Oz at the same time. His portrayal of Aloicious is so sympathy drawing that at one point my wife leaned over to me and punched me for putting the character through so much torture.

Chris Macke (pronounced like “Mack Daddy” with out the “Dadd”) as Sir Gawain, and Chris Wilson (that’s three guys named Chris involved in this production for anyone keeping track) as Lancelot, are Maverick and Goose. They’re Wayne and Garth. They’re that one guy and that other guy. The two play their characters very well and have an almost palpable chemistry. Macke’s Gawain is the more mature of the two knights. He’s not above taking part in Lancelot’s plan, but he is the one who’s mindful of the consequences – or at least how those consequences will affect him. Wilson showed that he understood exactly what I was going for when I wrote the characters. Knights are dicks – and he proves it over and over again. Seeing them together as they torment poor Aloicious is beautiful and evocative of every jocks vs. nerds movie you’ve ever seen. You want to hate them for what they’re doing, but you can’t – because you’re laughing right along with them most of the time.

Andy Byrd completes the cast as Roland of Slychester, an innkeeper who had an unfortunate encounter with a dragon. While the rest of the cast is allowed to bounce around, Byrd has to sit still for his entire part. His exaggerated facial expressions and natural sarcasm though make you forget that Roland is no more animated than the rock on which he sits. He’s a damned funny guy.

The reviews:

Riverfront Times

KDHX

Edited to add:

From you can't please them all category, here's the review from the shitty little "news"paper that exists solely so rich folks can stroke off to pictures of other rich folks at parties.

The Ladue News



A note about Blackbird White…

Richard Greene’s KDHX review suggests that you sneak out after Dragon’s Lair is over. Not only would that be rude, but I think it'd be wrong. I’m not going to go into a long defense of the production, as I’ve nothing to do with it, but I will say that I found it pretty damned entertaining, and I've seen it twice. English has his criticism of his own play up on his blog and you can read it there.

Creation Museum - Pt. 1 - The Actual Museum

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear."

- Thomas Jefferson

It's a muggy, gloomy, summer morning in Petersburg, Kentucky. Somewhere outside of my car, it's independence day. In honor of that, I've just finished playing Credence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" as the car glides down curvy road after curvy road. I and a few friends are heading for The Creation Museum, a haven for fundamentalist Christians who believe that their faith is under constant attack by scientists who refuse to give any respect to theories that claim the Earth is only 6000 years old.

We came because we thought it would be fun. Having once been a member of one of these fundamentalist churches, I remember some of the outlandish ways science was discounted. The faithful told us everything from "Fossils were placed where they are by God, who wants to test our faith," to "Carbon dating is not trustworthy at all, so there's no reason to believe that the Earth is over 4 billion years old." Having been removed from that for the last 10 odd years, I've grown up obsessed with the dissonance in the minds of seemingly rational people who hold beliefs completely opposed to scientific thought. So, why not visit this new institution dedicated to helping these people support those ideas. Besides, rumor had it that they had an exhibit where dinosaurs watched two children play together. It sounded like comedy gold.

When we first entered, all looked okay. The lobby featured what we'd expect to see throughout the museum - the true age of the Earth as described by Biblical timelines , dinosaurs and humans living together, and mockery of evolutionary thought. Oh yeah, there was also a dinosaur with a saddle on it. Good stuff all around. We balked a little at the $14.95 price of admission (it's actually $19.95 but you get $5 off if you give them your name and address) which didn't include tickets to the planetarium. However, since I can't imagine anything young Earth creationists have to say about cosmology would be informative, we stayed away the planetarium.

Having purchased our tickets and taken our required photo ops, we stood in line for Men in White, the piece of video that hopes to get you into the mood to visit the rest of the museum. The video starts every 15 minutes, so it wasn't a terribly long wait before we were settled into a very comfortable auditorium with three giant video screens and an animatronic woman posed in front of them. The seats were covered in soft leather and had enough padding to put you to sleep.

It was the last time we were comfortable for the entire 3 hour visit.

The video featured the animatronic girl looking at the sky and asking "Are we all really just mistakes?" No sooner does she voice her pathetically trite question, the presentation turns into a full frontal assault on your senses. The theater becomes a storm of strobe lights as two "angels" show up and snarkily accuse the woman not being open minded about creation.

"I don't want people to think I'm dumb," she tells the screen. The angels proceed to tell her that she doesn't have to turn her back on science, she just needs to see the right science. To illustrate their point, they show a number of stereotypical science teachers forcing their beliefs about evolution and origin on to impressionable students. Never once in this production does the author show legitimate views held by evolutionists. Instead, the video sticks to caricatures and misrepresentation.

This is to be expected though since its refutation of evolution is limited to making very basic statements without backing them up any further than saying "the Bible says so". As an example, when "discussing" the age of the Earth, one angel - in character as Matthew Lillard apparently - tells a science teacher "that'd be great if we didn't find these rocks with helium in them" and then acts as if he's just won the argument.

This wouldn't be so terrible if it didn't include the truly evil portion of the video. In order to show the truth about the creation of the world, the video gives the Genesis (well, one of the Genesis accounts) of the creation of the world. When it does it, your seats rumble and shake, strobes go off everywhere, wind blows by you, and when they get to the great flood, water squirts in your face.

I'm not making that up.

By the time the thing's over you're tired and exhausted at the brutal manhandling your senses have just taken. Which is pretty much how they need you. Now that you're too tired to think critically (like, why is light around on day 1 when the sun didn't arrive until day 4?) you're ready to walk through the museum and hear the same message over and over. These are brainwashing tactics right out of A Clockwork Orange.

It becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that this is not the type of museum where you'll be allowed to casually walk around and see what you want, especially if it's crowded. Once you enter the first exhibit, it's more like you're on a ride. Everything is very linear in nature. The crowd around you keeps you from skipping anything or backing up to far. It's nearly impossible to get out of the exhibits from anywhere other than the official end of the line. And, best of all, there's no one to answer questions about the museum or its exhibits. Questioning would be bad and they don't want to give you the opportunity.

So there you walk among exhibits that show the scientific evidence that the biblical accounts of creation are accurate. This scientific evidence ranges from "Well, science is wrong about this one thing, so the Bible wins," to "God says so." Loudspeakers blare over head to let you hear the true message of creation. At some point though, you realize that this is why so many people laugh at the U.S. and you stop being annoyed or amused...you get pissed.

good point

How about this instead...

I'm gonna practice what I preach:

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
-Albert Einstein

What the hell else are you gonna do this weekend?

Starting Friday, 7/6 at The Tin Ceiling, A Clash of Swords opens.

The evening features two plays, one about knights and one about pirates. One play written by an honest to god kid from the south side of St. Louis. The other, well, its writer is from a fancier place where kids wore long pants instead of cut-offs and called cookies biscuits.

Biscuits! You can't put gravy on a cookie. Why would you call it a biscuit.

Honestly, we won't hold it against him. Sure he talks funny, but the guy can write and the mad Englishman's play "Blackbird White" will not be a waste of your money. It's got pirates. It's got heartfelt moments. It's got a mutiny. It may have a wet t-shirt contest. How can you go wrong?

Now, the director has banned me from seeing my play until opening night, but I've bribed information out of some cast and crew. It seems like "Dragon's Lair" is set to a fun look at how knights of the Round Table truly acted. And...it may even have a dragon.

Call ahead to reserve your seats, and if I know you, let me know when you plan on seeing the play. I'll try to be there as well so you can punch me in the junk or give me a massage based on how you think the play goes.

Apparently the number on the website is wrong though. So to make reservations, call 314-374-1511.

Depressed? Why Not Watch Two Hours Of Stuff Blowing Up?

If you want to forget about whatever is ailing you, I recommend watching Live Free Or Die Harder. With the exception of the movie's desire to convince you that it has a plot, it is a nonstop orgy of violence, glib witticisms, convenient timing, and a man falling out of a truck onto an F-18.

As my friend PBR would say...Bacon Wrapped Glory.

And no matter how much your life sucks, it can't suck as much as Detective John McClain's. I mean, come on, the guy has walked into not one, but four terrorist attacks in his life. And in each case, he was the lone man who could save freedom. It just makes your own problems seem small.

"If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills...maybe the landslide will bring it down."

When did it happen?

When did life become less about you and more about your responsibility to others? When did you decide that standing in a field with your face up and arms outstretched as rain fell on you took a back seat to making sure that you were dressed and out the door by 7:30? When did you stop thinking "I've got a story to tell," and start telling yourself "I have to finish this?"

Why do you have to check your email because you've been offline all day?

It's not an original train of thought, but it's been mine all weekend. In a year where I've probably been my most creative ever - I still feel every ounce of that creativity being stolen from me the crushing mundaneness of daily living. I don't want this any more. I don't want this nine to five, ten cups of coffee just to make it to the end of the fucking day existence anymore.

We work. We come home. We sleep. We go back to work. We get 104 days a year to ourselves. Any thing else, we have to ask for. Les than a third of our time belongs to us. Even my friends who work for themselves don't seem to have what they want. They're always moving towards the next thing. Trying to get to the point where they can stop and take a breath. Sure, they have more time for themselves than the rest of us, but when they go back on the clock they're working twice as hard and for all the marbles.

I want those nights where it didn't seem like a waste to sit in the backyard drinking the stolen six pack of Busch, and pretend that you're qualified enough to have opinions on everything from the meaning of life, to foreign policy, or to the best sexual positions.

I want to slow down the train.


I don't have a point. I'm whining.

I'm ranting so I don't sit down and write bad poetry for an hour.

Why am I rereading Fight Club on a Sunday night? It always makes me a weepy bastard.