You can't make this stuff up...

Star Wars - The ultimate space fantasy for a 7 year old kid. A young man learning to use his father's light sword to defeat the very evil Darth Vader with the help of a kindly old grandfather, a bad ass space pirate, and his furry alien sidekick who kind of looks like your teddy bear on steroids. There's a princess and a space battle, and then, literally with seconds to spare, the young man's new best friends come out of nowhere to save him so that he can make one of the most unlikely lucky shots of all lucky shots, thus destroying the Death Star and saving everyone he loves. How about that for a story?!

I think I've always been drawn to that ultimate story. Star Wars set the bar so high for most kids of my generation that I think we've all been trying to top it ever since. Bigger explosions! Bigger suspense! More sexy damsels! Better looking space pirates! Better dialog! Better special fx! But never that sheer surprise of that story that seems so familiar to us and yet was something we never saw coming. You can't outdo that. Once it's been done, you have to find something else that is even better - but not the same.

LOST was an original story too. A group of survivors of a plane crash trapped on a mysterious island. The story dealt with issues of life, death, redemption, betrayal, love, etc... all the good things a story ought to deal with. And yet, when it came time to go big or go home, many of the show's fans felt as if LOST had let them down. What expectations did they have for the show's finale, I wonder?

LOST was a fantasy and a bit of fluff, but it dealt with some heady human issues. Unfortunately for its ultimate success, it's formula was always to keep something back - to hide some aspect of its truth and wisdom from viewers so that they kept coming back for more... but also, by hinting that there was some other truth and wisdom hidden away from the audience, the show promised its audience some answers to things that quite frankly could not have answers without improving on real life. I mean, really, what did the audience think the writers were going to disclose about the Island that would have solved all the shows mysteries and explain its mythology and mystery all in one fell swoop to the satisfaction of all people? Such expectations about a fictional show are at best, unrealistic. And those few writers that have had the misfortune of trying to meet those expectations have ultimately fallen on the sword of hubris.

I bring all of this up because there is one story that trumps both of these stories, and the best part is that its a true story. A true story that is more heart pounding, thrilling and entertaining than Star Wars and that has an ending that beats the mystery and thrills of LOST? Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying.

I think the story is somewhat familiar to you all. A world of corruption. A once proud race brought to ruin by its own greed. An oppressive regime. A people crying out to be saved. And, of course, the all important prophecy of a savior that will bring the people out of ruin and defeat the evil empire! That is the background in which we find our savior Jesus Christ on the road to Jerusalem after three years of fulfilling the prophecies concerning him.

But this is where our true story diverges from the rest and that is what makes our story so much better than any human scripted drama. Because like most humans today who pay $12 to go to a theater for some light entertainment, the people of his time expected Jesus to arrive in Jerusalem and administer the beat downs of all beat downs on the corrupt rulers of the City and the oppressive Empire that held them all in thrall. They were expecting a kind of real life battle royal - where Jesus, the savior, would bring forth all the power of Heaven to bear on the earthly power of Rome in a winner takes all kind of fight. And Jesus did enter Jerusalem as a mighty and triumphant savior and the people did rejoice. But what they didn't know, and what most people still can't understand, is that this story had a very different ending in mind - an ending that would solve all the mysteries and explain its mythology and mystery all in one fell swoop to the satisfaction of all the people.

Instead of liberating the people from Rome, Jesus liberated them from death. And in order to do that, he had to be arrested, tried, beaten, and horribly murdered by the same corrupt officials that everyone had been expecting Jesus to beat down. There was no last second reprieve of Jesus crying out, "Father, please!" and then God dumping Pontius Pilate down an endless pit into the center of the Death Star. This was no fake sacrifice. This hero really died. Brutally. And his followers were scattered, demoralized, heartbroken and probably hunted.

But the conclusion is what makes this story incredible... Jesus defeats death and returns to Earth even more triumphant and radiant than anything the people could have ever imagined.

The thing that always strikes me about this story is that it is the Ultimate Story. There is no other story like it, nor can there be. Anything similar will always fail in comparison to the original... and so the only way the story can be topped is by finding something that is even more over the top, even more truthful, even more moral, even more compassionate, even more hopeful, even more good news than this one. From a writers stand point, I can assure you that no such story exists - nor will it ever.

So when people question my faith by throwing logic at me - how can you believe a story that's 2000 years old and often contradictory in parts? - I think about what they have to say and then I remember that tearing down a story is nothing unless you can find a better story to replace it. I can find flaws in Shakespeare, but that takes away nothing from the brilliance of his prose. I can find flaws in the Bible (or at least they seem like flaws to me) but these flaws can not diminish the fact that the story of Jesus is so perfect and so integral to history and explanations of life that no amount of flaws can diminish its essential truth.

Or to come full circle... this is a story you just can't make up. We're human. We just don't create stories that are better than the truth.

Adventure Saturday #2 - The Hiller Air Museum in San Carlos

On Saturday, February 18th, my brother and I went to the Hiller Air Museum in San Carlos. The museum has a fascinating collection focusing on the history of air travel, with specific emphasis on the San Francisco Bay Area. I learned so much about airplanes and air travel in the course of one morning that I was ready to don some goggles and hop in a WWI Biplane by the time I was done. I highly recommend this museum to any and all people who want to learn more about air travel.

Our day started with a nice quiet drive to the Hiller Air Museum. Considering the Bay Bridge being shut down this last weekend for construction, we were surprised at such a quiet and fast journey to the museum arriving just a few minutes before it opened.

The Museum, itself, is housed in one large building - about the size of a modern warehouse or very large car dealership. As you enter the vast main lobby, to the left you will find an incredible gift shop, to the right you will find the main exhibit space, and in the lobby itself there is a glass paneled meeting room (for lectures and such) and a few large aircraft dangling overhead.

The tickets for the museum can be purchased in the gift shop. Now normally I'm against such a blatant grab for dollars by forcing people into the gift shop in order to enter the building, but in this case I'll let it slide because this was quite the gift shop. Almost any kind of airplane or aircraft related item could be found in this gift shop - all of it quality stuff and reasonably priced. I think we spent a good fifteen minutes walking through the gift shop looking at all the wonderful stuff to buy. It actually put me in a great mood for the rest of the museum. We bought our tickets ($11 for adults), got our wristbands, and headed back into the lobby area.

We were immediately met by one of the museum's very friendly and helpful volunteers. He asked us if we'd been to the museum before and when we said we hadn't, he gave us the 19 Cent tour... pointing out where everything was and then showing us on the map. I hadn't even walked into the exhibit space yet and I was already impressed.

We crossed the lobby and entered the exhibit space. The various aircraft and exhibits in the space are presented, more or less, in chronological order from dates prior to the Wright Brothers flight all the way up to the future of air travel and NASA research area. The entire exhibition space is open air with many aircraft being so large as having to be suspended from the ceiling. There were plenty of information cards, plus a cellphone audio tour available at no extra charge.

I learned more about the history of aircraft in the first twenty feet than I had ever learned at the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.. Some of the more interesting things that I saw at the museum - a giant picture of a very early aerial exhibition at the area now occupied by Tanforan Shopping Mall, the actual mock up of the nose cone of the SSST plane that was never built by Boeing, a hover disc simulator that Hiller had been building for the military but that was never put into service (think of a one man hovercraft that can fly and you kind of get the idea), and an eastern bloc communist fighter craft still being built today that is so cheap that many westerners (with lots of money) are buying them as pleasure craft - imagine owning your own Top Gun fighter craft!

Upstairs in the main exhibition hall is a observation area where you can see the planes suspended from the ceiling at closer to eye level. There is also an area set aside for flying computer aircraft simulators (much like the ones you can buy for your computer at home) with the assistance of an actual flight instructor. It's an extra cost - $3.00 per 20 minute session - but you can get actual flight instruction while you do it. Naturally, this is where the kids gravitated.

Back into the lobby, looking for Dave, I discovered a vast aircraft maintenance and preservation lab that could be observed through glass. At the back of the lobby there is an open air courtyard that opens on to the San Carlos airfield. In the courtyard is the nose-cone section of a real life 747 jumbo jet. My brother Dave called me on my cell phone from the cockpit of the jet as he was busy playing with all of the myriad controls. I walked out to the back of the jet and entered the nose cone section at approximately first class.

The nose cone has the entire first class section of the 747 - both upstairs and downstairs - as well as the cockpit. I enjoyed sitting in first class - a section I doubt I will ever visit in real life - while my brother pretended being a pilot. Closest thing I've had to a playground experience in 30 years!

We finished our tour in the gift shop again where I managed to avoid temptation... mostly. I shall definitely be returning to this museum in the future. I really had a great visit and am ready to go back and learn some more.

Adventure Saturday #1 - The Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa

First a little background: Consider this Season Two of Adventure Saturday. Season One was about four years ago and it was a video blog of my various "Saturday" adventures. I shot about six episodes, but I could never find a narrative that I liked in all that footage. It's probably something I'll throw on the website Archives section before too long. In the first season I visited Central Idaho for fishing on the Salmon River, Boot Jack Trail out of Muir Woods in Marin, Land's End Trail in San Francisco, Butano State Park near Pescadero, and took an Alaskan Cruise.

I always liked the idea of Adventure Saturday though and I recently realized that I was still going on these Saturday adventures even if I wasn't filming them. So I decided to continue the idea via blog. And now that you're caught up... on with Season Two.

This last Saturday, my brother and I decided to travel to far away Santa Rosa (60 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge) for a visit to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. Neither of us had ever been to the Museum, so it was going to be a first time adventure for both of us.

Unfortunately we got off to a slow start on Saturday and by the time we reached our usual Marin breakfast place at The Bayside Cafe in Sausalito/Marin City, the restaurant parking lot was full. I had to skip my wonderful waffle and bacon and try to enjoy a McDonald's breakfast burrito at the nearby Seminary Drive location - definitely not an even exchange. However, we used the time at McDonalds to wisely download the directions to the museum onto our smart phones. And then, once we were done eating, off we went.

Depending on the traffic, driving north through Marin can either be a delight or a pain in the ass. Most Saturday's, however, its usually a nice drive. That was definitely the case this Saturday as it took us only a little over an hour to cover the 60 miles to Santa Rosa. Once off the exit, it was easy to follow the signs to the Museum which is located about ten blocks from the freeway.

The Museum is actually three buildings and two different parking areas. The first building you come to is a gift shop with all things Peanuts related. The second building is the Redwood Empire Ice Skating Rink that also houses the Warm Puppy coffee shop. In between these two buildings is the first parking area which mostly serves the ice skaters that are coming to the rink. The third building houses the museum itself and there is a museum specific parking lot behind the museum. All parking is free.

The Museum is two stories tall and has a courtyard in back and a garden/maze out front. Inside the museum there is a theater that shows Peanuts related cartoons all day long and also serves as a meeting space for guest speakers and artists. There is also a small museum specific gift shop off the main lobby. The rest of the museum is devoted entirely to the Peanuts and to its creator, Charles Schulz.

The first floor of the museum has a couple of rotating galleries of Peanuts strips as they relate to particular topics. On our trip, the first gallery was showing The Peanuts and Women In Sports, which covered how Charles Schulz and the Peanuts gang were strong advocates of Title IX and other women in sports. The second gallery was all about the Peanuts and Travel showing all the various strips where Snoopy went on visits to places all over the world and what prompted the travel.

The second floor of the museum is devoted to the life of Charles Schulz. In addition to the creation of the Peanuts, there is an excellent timeline of his life, many displays of the influences on his career, and finally, his entire office is preserved for you to see. The man had an excellent library.

There is a short film on the first floor that talks about the creation of the museum, but also gives some interesting facts on the daily life of Charles Schulz in Santa Rosa. He used to eat breakfast at the Warm Puppy Cafe and then go back to his house to work before heading back to the cafe for lunch and for a chance to watch the ice skaters on the rink. He also started and hosted an International Seniors Hockey Tournament every year and usually participated with his own team. This year the Tournament will draw over 50 teams from all over the world!

For lunch, I walked over to the Ice Skating Rink and went to the Warm Puppy Cafe and ordered a Tuna Fish sandwich - just like Charles Schulz used to eat every single day. There was a table still reserved for this kind and gentle genius. Outside the ice skating rink and cafe, many of the top ice skaters in the world have been invited to sign their name in the cement. It was fun to walk around the rink and find all the names of my favorites.

The entire museum would have taken all day to go through. Each of the strips are the normal original artwork size - about 1 by 3 feet and certainly easy enough to read. There are hundreds of them and plenty of information behind their design, and back story. That and all those wonderful Peanuts specials playing in the theater and you could easily get lost in Peanuty goodness. We decided to save something for our next visit.

The drive back was just as pleasant and we ended our Adventure Saturday with a nice drive down the Great Highway.

Next Saturday, we're headed to the Hiller Air Museum on Highway 101 near San Carlos. If you're interested in meeting us there, let me know.

I find my lack of faith disturbing...

First of all; the new website will not stop me from posting. Website is creative. Blog - decidedly less creative ;) But that brings me to my next blog post...

In cataloging all of the myriad projects I'm working on, I often give short shrift to the religious aspects of my life. Currently if I add up the long list of items that I do for my faith it might seem like a formidable pile o' stuff. Besides being an active church attender (a feat in and of itself in this hectic world), I am an active Church Elder and have recently been participating in the church on the regional level (San Francisco Presbytery) and the local level (San Francisco Urban Ministry group). Beyond that, I am a member of the choir and the bell choir, and am still an active participant in the Kenya Children Mission Project. As for other projects, I am still editing my KCMP video and am re-writing my church's Lenten play on the Last Supper. It seems like a lot except when stacked against all the other things I do.

Recently the KCMP has been discussing the disciplines we pledged ourselves to do as part of our solidarity with the Kenyan children and also as a way to seek a closer relationship with God. Of these disciplines, I do exactly NONE on a daily basis. On a monthly basis, I maybe do two or three. Despite having all of these "projects" that I do for my Church and for my God, when it comes to my own personal relationship with Christ, I really don't have much of one.

What it really comes down to is that fact that I lay my relationship down so that I can deal with "real" things and not intangible things that are little more than hocus pocus and wishful thinking. Prayer? Really? What does that accomplish? I be quiet and think things to an imaginary presence in my mind. That's not entirely true, of course. I've seen God's power in real life. I've felt his answers to prayer before. And yet, when push comes to shove and I need to decide whether to pray or whether to "accomplish" something, I choose my own power over God's every single time. My faith in God, it seems, only applies when I'm so far in over my head that I have nowhere else to turn.

It makes me wonder whether I am just human and flawed and failed or if I should be applying more effort to the task of turning my WHOLE life over to Christ and not just the parts that I can't do myself. Perhaps its a bit of both. God clearly wants me to write... He wouldn't have given me a talent for it otherwise. But at what point do I stop writing for me and starting writing for Him?

I will be returning to my disciplines in the near future and I hope that you'll find the time to pray for me so that I might discover the time to pray as well. In the meantime, God, can you please allow me to be reminded every once in a while of your awesome power? (I fear the answer to this question... and that shows that my faith is active).

I Get Knocked Down...

So the extremely brief "relationship" ended before it really got started. I'm not angry about that, just sad because it didn't work out. Still, I'm not sure it would have worked anyway. What I find depressing about the entire experience is the cumulative nature of my defeats. It can feel, at times, that I'm always on the losing end of life.

But I think that's what makes human's human. Its not our victories, its our defeats. Its not our triumphs, but our failures. That the ultimate human being humbled himself to the point of being convicted and sentenced to death while being blameless in anything shows us this dichotomy - fully human (can't get much more of a fail than being rounded up by a mob, beaten up, star in a gloriously fake sham trial, sentenced to death and killed in just about the most gruesome manner possible), and fully God (and yet, at any moment, He could have stopped the sun in the sky, breathed on any person in Jerusalem and turned them to dust, or called down an entire army of angels to not only save Himself but to destroy anyone that might have sought to harm Him). He didn't. He died. He allowed Himself to be murdered - brutally - and with all the weight of the greatest empire the world has ever known behind the murderers. Talk about your ultimate perspective test. Compared to crucifixion, everything else seems pretty hunky-dory.

Time to soldier on. I can pick myself up. Dust myself off. And move on to bigger and better things. For a guy who draws on his past so often in writing stories, I sure don't like to live there.

Oh, and what a perfect time to plug my revamped web-site. It's simple. It's straight-forward. And so far, it is filled entirely with new content. So go there to read my billion dollar franchise idea (Die, Bond, Die), or to see my new teaser trailer or behind the scenes look at The Amazing Mole Too, or to read up on the other projects winding their way forward (like my Kenya Children's Mission Project DVD - so almost done! - and my Folk Music documentary). Here is the website: www.tacopdet.com

Enjoy!