NFSC - Not For Safe Christians

Blackness. I'm Lord knows where. Not thinking. Don't even know if I'm breathing. Doesn't matter. I'm in the sweet embrace of the unknowable, the unseeing, the unbeing. Shattered, by the sound of a large gray metal trashcan crashing down the aisle. I shoot up in bed, bewildered, shocked, and in that moment before I know where I am, images come flooding into my brain.

I am nearly forty - how the hell did I get to be nearly forty?! My life has not turned out at all like I expected it. But the disappointment is hidden behind a genial smile and a punishing schedule of new activities and goals. I am still at church (well, there's something good at least), but I seem to be seeking something, some answer. I'm not even sure I know what it is.

Back to the course wool blanket and the hard bunk, back to the uniform blue sailors storming through the barracks yelling, "Get up! Get dressed! Get out of beds!" My eyes go wide in shock. How the hell did I get here?

She is before me, her curves melting into my thin straight line. My young mind explodes with heretofore impossible thoughts. There is a nagging thought somewhere in the back of my mind, a wisp of a bad dream remembered from youth group, something about temptation and desire and... oh hell, she looks good and her skin is so warm and smooth. My brain shuts down.

I want to scream, but I can only manage to blink back the sleep deprivation hard. I spin in my top bunk, my face already feeling as tough as the stiff, cold clothes that I slip on the second my feet land on the frigid tile floor of the barracks. I watch as a complete stranger is roused out of his bunk by two uniforms who prod him with yelling and cursing. Chaos swirls around me, but I'm stuck in slow-motion, as my brain tries to make sense of it all.

How did I get to be like this? Forty years of broken dreams lie behind me like the remains of an archaeological dig. I sift through the wreckage to find the clue. While everyone else is prospering, I don't seem to be going forward. Its like my life is in neutral. I go back through recent classes, back through family issues, back through one job, back through another state... I see friends with kids, friends getting married, and I keep going back, back through a crappy job, back through college, back into the Navy. I see nothing, nothing at all to point me on to this path.

We are rushed out of the barracks. Pushed, prodded, the cold black air assaults us like nothing else. Nut to butt, we are thrust together like puzzle pieces from the opposite end of the box. Cold, shivering from more than the physical sensations, we are told things - words that wash over us. My watch calls to me and I look at the time through tired eyes - 3:30am. What the hell have I gotten myself into?

She reclines under my weight. Long past the point of no return, I pause, briefly, and I hear this screaming admonition - STOPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!! - but I ignore it and plunge ahead. It feels so good. This must be love.

We stumble through the cold morning to stand under harsh street lamps in a big square. I expect to see German Shephards dragging guards around the perimeter, straining to be set free on defenseless fresh meat, but there is only the cold to keep us at bay. More blue clones arrive and depart, and we stand there - first to arrive, last to leave into the nice warm confines of a chow hall. Food is on our plate and we sit, only to be told that we're done. We snatch something off our plate, shove it into our mouths, and lunge to our feet. Poked and prodded again. Why am I here? Why am I doing this?

Back through my tour in Hawaii (Hawaii... cool!) Back through my school in Virginia. Back to boot camp... I see me standing there, outside the chow hall, looking dazed, confused, and completely miserable. I pause... but realize that this is not it. This does not explain me at 40. I keep going back.

I catch a fleeting glimpse of me at 40 and I know it must be a trick of my sleep deprived mind. We are marching again, if you can call it that. Marching to who knows where. We don't ask. We just move. Move forward without knowing what we're doing or why. We obey. As we enter another room and watch our hair fall to the ground, and another room and watch as we're thrown into matching blue uniforms, each room peeling back a layer of who we are and who we wish to be - I feel like I'm losing myself to this place and I can hear the screams of outrage coming from my pampered inner self. Don't let me go down into that good night! Don't let me die! But I'm too cold and numb to try and save me. I succumb. I give in. I don't fight it. I become something else.

She is beauty and love and warmth and I embrace her. Her face looks to me like heaven. Her lips feel like promises of things to come; good promises, factory warranties and blue ribbons. I brush those lips with my own and I can't help but thinking that I would do anything for those lips, and that because of that resolve, I will be able to conquer the world and be its master. It is a good feeling.

We are no longer people with names. We are part of something greater. Individuals with a combined purpose. We struggle daily to accomplish simple tasks and work together. But there are occasional flare ups of individuality and we work hard to stamp them out. We temper those feelings with hard labor and work to strain them from the whole. Because we have an important mission to perform and we can't have any one going off in their own direction when it might have an effect on the lives of everyone else.

Back to my life before the Navy, back to High School, back... slowing now... back to her. Stop. Back to that moment... yes, that moment. That first moment. I see it now from the vantage of forty years. I see us lying there and we think we know it all and we think that we will conquer the world. But what I see is someone who ought to know better, who thinks that the rules don't apply to him, who is so desperate for love and understanding that he is going to delude himself into thinking that he can find it in her. She looks young and indifferent, clearly not in the same place as him, clearly not seeing him as the end all and be all of life. She has become his idol. She has become his icon of hope and glory. And I just know that this is it, that this is the moment where he rebelled against God.

The moment where the sun shines upon you and suddenly you are basking in its glow. Part of something bigger than you now. You have been broken down, destroyed, left in despair, and bewildered, so that you can then be put back together again in a new mold. Now, I belong to something bigger. Now I am just a small part of a large whole. I take orders and hopefully I follow them. But I understand and appreciate the consequences of failure now. I know the difference between life and death... and I've decided, finally, to choose life.

Total gibberish

I'm so totally exhausted right now. I've been basically firing on all cylinders for the last five days, with at least two days more to go. This on top of the previous four weeks of nuclear scheduling and academic Armageddon. Besides dealing with the cluster**** created by the new government safety regulations, I've been fighting through the opening weeks of basketball season, upcoming preparations for church holiday season, completion of all my final film projects, finishing the edit on my film, and my own financial meltdowns. But this morning I woke up woozy and I haven't stopped feeling woozy all day long. I think my synapses have all decided to take the day off and are sipping margaritas on a sunny beach somewhere without me. Its hard to take serious things seriously when you feel like you're rolling end over end in the tumble dryer of life. Drum roll... and WIPE OUT!

Its probably just fatigue mixed with hay fever or something, but stress induced pre-cardiac arrest sounds more in keeping with the rest of the economy right now.

(Its really hard to spew depressing rotgut in my blog when I'm too busy smiling - one of the curious side effects of wooziness. I seem to be happy in my misery).

Anyway, ignore me until I feel myself again... which should be sometime after January 20th.

When the credit crisis hits home

On Sunday, my Mom had two of her credit cards credit amounts slashed to $500. On Monday, my Step-Mom had a credit card lose about $1400 of credit. On Wednesday, my Dad had a credit card drop to just $100 credit. And yesterday, it was my turn - one credit card lost $1100 credit.

The Great Depression hit America a full six months after the market collapse. There have been many reasons credited for the start of the Depression, but the main factors included a tightening of money, a loss of jobs, and extremely low consumer confidence. I'm not making any predictions, but when we're daily hearing about companies slashing thousands of jobs, and extremely low consumer spending trends, do we really want to add fuel to the fire by also cutting off people's access to what funds they do have?

I should point out that all four people mentioned here have EXCELLENT credit. So, if we're being targeted already, how much longer until the rest of the country finds its credit gone?

These idiots were the ones who got us into this mess. Are we really going to expect them to make wise business decisions now?

Its time to start fixing up a nice cozy cardboard box for a house and to find a nice, defensive place in the park to live in. The Greater Depression is coming. Its as unavoidable as stupid people on the highway.

Beach Nut

I'm either a little early or a little late, but I always remember the birthday of a certain blog celebrity falls right around Veteran's Day, and so I'd like to wish him a happy birthday.

When I met my friend, he lived a little bit less than a mile from the beach (maybe 500 yards as the crow flies?). We were fellow youth at Lakeside Presbyterian Church. We grew up together in boys choir, then youth fellowship, then bell choir, and youth group. Basically just our entire formative years together. I can relate hundreds and thousands of adventures we shared, laughs we made, and a few tears we shed. I was a co-best man at his wedding and met his children when they were both very newly born. Through it all, through all the good times (2002 World Series) and bad times (1985 Giants season), we've remained best friends.

So I'd just like to wish my fellow beach person, Andrew Lie, a happy 30-somethingth Birthday (actual age shall not be disclosed for reasons of the fifth amendment!) and hope that he has many, many, many more adventures in his lifetime.

Just no more sailing in Lake Powell in a leaky boat... okay?

The Greatest Songs of the 80's

I usually ignore "Greatest of" lists because I tend to find them to be very self-selective. The basis for the rankings on these lists tend to be as subjective as, "Well, this is what I like." But half the people voting will have no idea what they're in fact voting for. I lived through the 80's and, quite frankly, I'd have a hard time coming up with a personal list of the greatest songs from that decade, but if I did, I guarantee you that it would look remarkably different than a list of songs generated by someone half my age. So, it was with some reservations that I flipped on this special on VH1 the other day to watch.

I happened to catch the top 13 songs (out of 100) and I couldn't disagree with any of the songs being on the list - but in the top 13? Maybe only a couple of them belonged there. Tops. And there were some definite omissions (presumably they ranked lower in the top 100).

I remember watching lists like this from earlier time periods and invariably the greatest song of the 1980's would ALWAYS be Thriller. This time it was Living on a Prayer from Bon Jovi. It got me to thinking about the nature of these kinds of polls and how we are influenced by current events into how we think about the past.

Clearly Jon Bon Jovi is still a very vibrant and sexy singer to most of his fans. Does this play into the fact that Living on a Prayer is now the #1 song versus Thriller - from a guy who has most recently been linked with alleged child molestation? Surely that was a factor in most people's decision to vote. One interesting fact given on the VH1 show was about the Journey song, "Don't Stop Believing" that was in the Top 5. They noted that the song set a record for Amazon downloads after it aired as part of the soundtrack for Laguna Beach. Did that have an effect on it being in the top 5?

Now, I don't want to sound bitter. As I said above, I doubt I could come up with a list myself and quite frankly, I don't care where songs rank on a hypothetical list. I know what I like and to heck with the rest of you. But I was wondering why we constantly feel the need to come up with these lists?

Culture seems so intent on justifying itself and we seem intent on justifying our beliefs in our culture that these lists keep appearing for everything. Its not enough to read a book and like it; we seem obsessed with making sure that others like it as well - as if our opinion on matters isn't important if it doesn't have the backing of millions of anonymous people as well.

But we humans have been at this justification game for a long time, asking questions to certify that we are on the right path with the right opinions and the right decisions. Even Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment.

He answered that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, mind and soul. And the second was like the first, to love your neighbor as yourself. That in these commandments was the law and the prophets - meaning everything that God had been trying to tell them for years.

Here is God's answer to our need for Greatest lists - its simple, "Love God and love everyone else." God's answer to the greatest songs of the 80's - He loves all the musicians equally. God's answer to the greatest novels of the 20th century - He loves all the writers equally. God's answer to the greatest philosophers of all time - He loves them all equally. Every single one of us is precious in God's sight and every time we love God or love one another, God approves. Everything else is either a variation on that, or its not. God doesn't need 100 top commandments, He only has two.

Experiment Gone Awry

I have a shocking confession to make.

Back in 1991, when I was in the intelligence field, I became part of a secret government experiment called Operation - 1M. After scouring the African continent for years, the United States of America had finally amassed one million primates for a dubious project.

Secretly smuggled into a hallowed out volcanic crater in Hawaii, these monkeys were fed, housed, and ultimately trained. Strapped into chairs, in eight hour shifts, and placed in front of keyboards, the monkeys tapped away - all day and all night. The government thought that we could finally prove the theory, one way or another, that an infinite number of monkeys pecking away at a typewriter will eventually write the great American novel.

But the folly doesn't end there.

Some politicians discovered the project and derailed its original intent by getting the government employed monkeys to start writing political dialog for them. However, this plan was quickly scrapped when it was realized that the monkey's spelled potato with an "e". So, instead, the monkeys were set loose to write, once again, anything that they felt like writing.

At first, random nonsense escaped from their typewriter keyboards, but eventually, through neuro-motorized autanomic feedback responses and other technological mumbo-jumbo, their nonsense became less randomized. The experiment was finally released onto the unsuspecting public when the monkeys started posting randomly to newsgroups in the mid-1990's via the internet. When no one suspected this, new avenues for expression were sought - first with homemade websites, then with social networking sites like myspace and facebook, and finally with comment driven interactive media available everywhere.

Most people assume when they read comments on the web these days that there are some pretty ignorant people out there typing this stuff, but the truth is, all of these comments are written by a bunch of randomly writing monkeys in a lab in Hawaii. The government experiment has clearly gone too far and its time to return to normal civil discourse again.

So, if you'll all please join the outcry and tell everyone you know to Stop Monkeying Around On The Internet so that we can get back to our normal peaceful conversations, I would appreciate it.

Towards a better world

Regardless of what both candidates might want us to believe, change begins with us. To that end, I've been reading a lot lately about a movement out of the Catholic Church (USA) towards a Sanctity of Life. The idea is a profound one - that before we can simply embrace an end to abortion, we must adhere to an idea that ALL LIFE is sacred - not just the life in the womb. I think this idea has resonated with me because although I've been labeled pro-choice my entire life, I've really been pro-sanctity of life my entire life.

The way I see it is that we'd be hypocritical indeed to just ban abortion without also addressing the very real problems of what happens to all humans after they're born. While I recognize that all life is sacred, I certainly don't feel comfortable forcing others to conform to my beliefs. But I would feel differently if I felt that society wasn't just claiming that life was sacred, while doing everything in its power to show that it was otherwise. It seems that if you're going to claim that life is sacred, then you can't advocate the taking of life whenever it suits your other needs or fears. You can't be pro-life and pro-death penalty, for instance. Or pro-life and pro-war. Those things, in my opinion, don't mix. However, to balance that, I'm wondering whether such a sanctity of life movement can really work or if I'm just being naive. Is it possible to live in a world where all life really is sacred? And, if so, what sort of world might that be?

I'm not convinced that Jesus wanted us to create an equitable society where everyone had equal opportunities to succeed and such, but I do think that Jesus was interested in creating a just society where goodness and mercy thrived and evil and condemnation did not. Amongst the very basics, to create such a world, I think we'd need to address the issues of adoption and foster care for all unwanted children. They need to be able to grow up - if not equally - then certainly safely. I've heard so many horror stories about orphanages and foster homes that I wouldn't condemn the worst child on the planet into such a state as a punishment, much less an entire generation of unborn children. Education is, naturally, a priority - though I'm not sure we need to provide a college level education to every child. Health care for all is a good idea (even if its just the basics of a place to go when you're sick and dying) and not necessarily a separate issue. And, of course, there's the real question of capitol punishment. These are all aspects of the Right to Life debate, but I'm not sure they all have solutions.

What I'd like to do is invite anyone and everyone who would like to leave a civil comment to address what they would do to make this a better world if they could just snap their fingers and make things happen. It seems to me if we could at least agree upon what sort of world we want, then the matter of figuring out how to get there should be much easier to address.

Some valleys are deeper than others

You might say its because I'm getting closer to 40, or it might be an attack from the Enemy, or it might even be some sort of depression, but I think its just exhaustion. No matter what the cause, lately I've been feeling bluer than normal. Its hard to remain optimistic when you slog into yet another hard period of your life and know that there will be little to show for it on the other side. It makes you start questioning things that ought not be questioned.

I know that God loves me, but there are times when I just feel like paraphrasing Dr. Evil and saying, "Could you throw me a frickin' bone here, Jesus?" I look around at other more settled lives and I think, why not me? What did I do differently? Where's my happiness? Am I just meant to be lonely and tired and sad my whole life?

See, it's clearly a case of the blues.

Happiness, like sadness, is usually just a matter of perspective. If I were a Katrina refugee or a hunted tribesman in Congo or Somalia or something, my problems wouldn't amount to a hill of beans. Others might chastise me for worrying about being lonely when I have a ton of friends and family that care for me. And still others, more poignantly and pointedly might just say, "You don't look like your starving... for attention or otherwise."

In the famous poem, "Footprints," the author wants to make it clear that there are hills and valleys in every life and I'm not sure that comparing one life to another, for good reasons or bad, is very helpful. No matter how well off I am or how bad off, I still have feelings of joy and sadness, hope and despair, like everyone else. It is in those bad times that faith in Jesus carries us... even if we question whether He has our best interest at heart.

So, somehow I'll muddle through until the sun comes out, and then I'll be right as rain again. I'm not sure when that'll be since I don't see an end in sight until the middle of December for all this hard work. But I can guarantee that by early to mid-January, I'll be getting back to myself by doing something that I know will make me feel better.

Until then...

I work all day...
And edit all night...
don't make no money...
but that's all right...
Ain't got no one...
to spend it on anyway...

I've been so down...
but I don't gotta pay...
Cause da Blues is free
for one and for all
Whether you want'em
They come to call

Da Blues Is free...

The True Barack Obama

And now it can finally be revealed... we've been hearing rumors for months, Barack is the anti-christ, or a muslim terrorist, or a communist infiltrator bent on destroying democracy, or he is "that one," but the truth is far more insidious and I am here to tell it to you.

Barack Hussein Obama is actually Darth Opraspictakis - a Sith Lord - and Joe Biden, aka Darth Futindamowthakis, is his Sith Apprentice.

Warned, you are... Take seriously this, you must... Forget all that you have learned, and studied, and experienced, and vote on this rumor, you shall. Your brain shall you leave at home. Trust your rumors, you know they are true.

(Okay... I'm officially sick and tired of the election! I'm definitely tuning out now. Someone tell me how it ends.)

The First Thing To Go...

As President, here is the first thing I would eliminate... The Consumer Product Safety Commission - a group of well-meaning, but completely inept people who will use a bull-dozer to find a china cup (to paraphrase Belloq).

In trying to craft sweeping legislation to prevent the sort of boondoggle we had last year with lead contents in children's toys, they've created new laws that go into effect November 12th that, amongst other things, require:

1) A certification of compliance with all current safety regulations on the books be sent by the manufacturer, importer, and any other interested party to all distributors and retailers for every single product covered by an existing safety regulation.

2) That this certification show the date and time the product was tested to meet these regulations and the name of the certified testing agent (of which there are only a handful worldwide).

Okay, here's the problem with this legislation in a nut shell. Paper. Ordinary paper. Paper is covered under the Federal Hazardous Substance Act where it says, to wit: Paper is safe. However, since Paper is under the FHSA, by this new law, certification must be obtained from the manufacturer that claims that this product is in compliance with the FHSA, and it must provide the name of the testing company that proves that this product is in compliance with the FHSA. So, Paper companies need to get their manufacturers and testing companies to agree that paper is, in fact, paper and therefore safe. And they need to do it for all of their paper products and by November 12th.

All this because some cheap ass Chinese products were found to be bathed in lead paint.

Gee, I'm so glad the government is looking out for me. I feel safer already.

Keep in mind, that all of this testing and labeling and certifying costs money and takes time. And who gets to pay for the cost of this colossal waste of time - the consumer.

So the next time you buy paper, you might want to ask your local retailer if they can prove that its safe. After all, we wouldn't want to think this was just paperwork for paperwork's sake.

P.S. If I'm not around between now and November 12th, guess what I'll be doing.

Doom and Gloom

I admit that one of the things that I generally found annoying about the otherwise excellent An Inconvenient Truth was the ending. After being told the entire planet was about to crap out, Al Gore comes along and says, "Now, wait... there's something you can do. Inflate your tires. Use CFL lightbulbs. Drive less. And Global Warming will GO AWAY! YAY!" I'm paraphrasing in a South Park kind of way. The argument, while giving us some hope to cling to, always came across a little bit like Duck and Cover in case of a nuclear attack. Extremely optimistic, to say the least.

Which is why I was extremely pleased, and entirely disheartened, to watch the Frontline report on PBS the other night, "Heat" about the Global Warming crisis. Make no mistake about it, Frontline doesn't sugarcoat anything. When things were bad in Iraq, they told us just how bad they were. The same thing with Global Warming. By the end of the episode, I was fairly convinced that the planet was screwed.

The problem is that whether we like it or not, Americans tend to be the leaders of the free world. And, as Americans, we tend to react to things rather than act preventively. I mean, let's be realistic, we've known about the concept of global warming since the 50's (one of the rather amusing highlights of the Frontline documentary was a TV show clip from the 50's where the scientist explains the concept of Global Warming and what it might do if it happens, and everything he mentions has pretty much happened). But we've never done anything to act upon it. We knew about Hitler and didn't get involved in the war until 1941. And many of us suspected the financial crisis that is destroying us now, and we did nothing to stop it either. How much more so are we reacting to global warming?

Well, that was the truly scary part of the documentary - so far, we aren't. We've paid a lot of lip service to the idea of attacking global warming, but on every single issue that's come up as a potential solution, the American people, the American government, and, most obviously, American business have worked hard to successfully thwart the solution. Electric cars - flattened. More robust fuel standards - slashed. Clean burning coal - too expensive. Anything that we've come up with as a solution has been stopped.

In the meantime, the world keeps getting hotter. And whether its man made or not - the situation is getting dire. In twenty five years, Peru could lose up to 70% of its river water as the last Andes glaciers completely melt. In thirty to thirty five years, over 500 million people in the Indian sub-continent might be out of water and over 250 million people in China, as the glaciers in the Himilayas disappear. The desertification of a good portion of the world that once fed our growing 6 Billion Plus population is an ongoing problem - one that will spiral out of control if we can no longer water these lands. We are literally a world civilization on the brink of destruction.

Like I said, they don't pull any punches. At the end of the episode, Al Gore didn't come out and tell us to use more peanut butter or some such nonsense. The entire gist of the show was, we're screwed, and if you're expecting big business or government to bail us out, you're also delusional.

Now, that being said, we Americans do tend to bounce back from hard hitting disasters - whether it be the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor or 9-11. If global warming really does start to impact the United States, I've got to believe that we're going to do something about it - something really profoundly good. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that it'll probably already be too late. We basically need to change the entire world society in the next ten years or we're all toast.

Is it any wonder that I stayed up late last night to watch South Park and SNL? When faced with doom and gloom, sometimes the only response is to laugh about something a little more tangible. And by those standards, maybe Al Gore was right.

Friday Light

DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- In the beginning, there was a long line for Judgment Day ale.

Shortly after the doors opened on the 27th Great American Beer Festival, a crowd congregated at the booth offering that and other pours from The Lost Abbey of San Marcos, California, where the tap handle is a Celtic cross and the legacy of beer-brewing monks endures.

Standing under a banner promising "Inspired beers for Saints and Sinners Alike," proprietor and former altar boy Tomme Arthur had a confession: He's using God to sell some beer.

"It's the oldest story ever told -- the struggle between good and evil," said Arthur, 35, a product of Catholic schools in his native San Diego. "There is a battle being waged between those who make good beer and those who make evil beer."

Without question, unholy excess is in evidence anytime 18,000 gallons of alcohol is served to 46,000 people over three days. See: women in Bavarian maid outfits and "Beer Pong" tables.

Yet perhaps surprisingly, God could be found at last week's Great American Beer Festival -- in the crassly commercial, in homage to religion's long history in brewing, in needling faiths that turn a suspect eye on drinking, and (if the prophet of home-brewing is to be believed) at the bottom of every glass.

While alcohol and religion don't always mix, no less a figure than Benjamin Franklin once said: "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

Charlie Papazian, author of "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing," the undisputed bible of the craft, can cite many intersections of beer and the divine. Mayan and Aztec priests controlled the brewing of beer in pre-Columbian days, monks in Bavaria brewed strong bocks for sustenance during Lent and the first brewery in the Americas was founded by Belgium monks in Ecuador in 1534.

Before Louis Pasteur pinpointed yeast as the culprit in the 1850s, brewers didn't know what caused fermentation, said Papazian, president of the Boulder, Colorado-based Brewers Association. So they invented one run-on word to describe the mysterious stuff at the bottom of the bottle: "Godisgood."

"As you drain a glass of beer, look at the yeast at the bottom and be reminded that God is good, because that's the way it feels," Papazian said.

Like most business owners, brewers tend to avoid politics and religion out of fear of alienating customers. At the same time, microbrewing has become an intensely competitive industry, so putting a saint on a bottle can help a guy stand out.

When Brock Wagner was looking to name his new brewery in Houston 14 years ago, his search took him to the library of a local Catholic seminary. There, he found the story of St. Arnold of Metz, the French saint of brewers and one of many patron saints of the brewing arts.

As the tale goes, Arnold (580-640) urged his people, "Don't drink the water, drink beer" because he believed water boiled in beer was safer than tainted water sources.

Centuries later, St. Arnold Brewing Co. became Texas' first craft brewery, with a "divine reserve" single-batch beer and 21 fermenters named for different saints.

"One purpose of religion is the formation of communities, and our brewery kind of has that effect, of bringing people together," said Wagner, who describes himself as spiritual but wary of organized religion. "Some of our regulars say going on our brewery tour is going to church."

Jeremy Cowan, the marketing mind behind He'Brew (the chosen beer), was absent from his company's booth on the festival's first day; it was Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement.

Established in 1996 (or 5757), Cowan's Schmaltz Brewing Co. uses Jewish humor, scripture and imagery in packaging its beers, all of them kosher. There's Genesis Ale ("our first creation") Messiah Bold ("the one you've been waiting for") and Jewbelation ("L'Chaim!").

"I am passionately Jewish," Cowan said. "I don't get as caught up in the legal minutiae. I'm more fascinated in the project of Judaism as a civilization. This is the way I participate."

Some faith traditions reject alcohol as an intoxicant that invites bad behavior and abuse. Observant Muslims and Mormons, among others, abstain from drinking on religious grounds.

Last year, an evangelical church targeting young adults in the St. Louis area got in trouble with the Missouri Baptist Convention for holding a church ministry at a microbrewery. (The Southern Baptist Convention opposes making, advertising, distributing and consuming alcohol).

At Denver's Great American Beer Festival, four ex-Mormons who met at Utah State University ran a booth selling "X-Communicated Mormon Drinking Team" T-shirts, sweatshirts and other products.

"Our business model is to sell enough T-shirts to pay the cost of a group of our friends getting together and having fun for the weekend," said Mike Hansen, 36, of Whitefish, Montana.

Another entrepreneur peddled "WWJB: What Would Jesus Brew?" T-shirts, with an image of a smiling Jesus with a mash paddle in one hand and a pint glass in the other.

Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing Co. in Santa Rosa, California, brews a series of religion-themed beers that began with "Damnation." A strong golden ale, the beer's name is a nod to the great Belgian beer Duval, which comes from the Flemish word for devil.

A restaurant around the corner from Cilurzo's brewery refused to stock it.

"It all started with 'Damnation,"' said Cilurzo, who has no religious affiliation. "I felt like if we started with 'Damnation,' we needed to be redeemed. We needed 'Salvation."'

Cilurzo's latest creation, Consecration, was a festival hit and an answered prayer -- a richly textured sour ale aged for nine months in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels with black currants.

God is good.

The End Is Near?

I received this e-mail yesterday (it wasn't the first time) and it really ticked me off:

According to The Book of Revelations the anti-Christ is: The anti-Christ will
be a man, in his 40's, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with
persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says
that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace,
and when he is in power, will destroy everything..

Do we recognize this description??

I STRONGLY URGE each one of you to post this as many times as
you can! Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet..do it!
I refuse to take a chance on this unknown candidate who came out of nowhere.

So, I just had to respond. Let's first examine what Revelations 13 actually says, shall we?

Revelation 13

1And the dragon[a] stood on the shore of the sea.
The Beast out of the Sea
And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was astonished and followed the beast. 4Men worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, "Who is like the beast? Who can make war against him?"

5The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months. 6He opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. 7He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. 8All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.[b]

9He who has an ear, let him hear.
10If anyone is to go into captivity,
into captivity he will go.
If anyone is to be killed[c] with the sword,
with the sword he will be killed. This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints.
The Beast out of the Earth
11Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. 12He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. 13And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men. 14Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth. He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. 15He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. 16He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, 17so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.

18This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.

Okay, so let's look at the e-mail and figure this out:

1st: The Anti-Christ will be a man.
Actual: Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon.

Um, it says he's a beast. It says he has two horns like a lamb, but speaks like a dragon. I'm not exactly sure where people interpret that as a man, but we'll let this one go for now.

2nd: He will be... a man, in his 40's...
Actual: Doesn't mention his age at all.

3rd: He will be... of MUSLIM descent...
Actual: Doesn't mention that at all. In fact, ISLAM wasn't even created until four centuries after the writing of Revelations.

4th: He will be one... who will deceive the nations with
persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says
that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace,
and when he is in power, will destroy everything.
Actual: Well, Revelations 13 says some of this. But some of it is only an interpretation of the rest of Revelations. The truth is that the Anti-Christ will not win, so he can't destroy everything. Ultimately, he will be destroyed in Christ's second coming. This, of course, is the whole reason this e-mail is so preposterous.

You see, IF BARACK OBAMA was the Anti-Christ, then all of you whose names are not written in the Book of Life are pretty much screwed anyway. The Bible says:

All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.

All inhabitants... which includes most of us. But here's the thing, this is a pre-ordained thing, right? That means that whether you VOTE for Barack Obama or not, it doesn't matter. If he really is the Anti-Christ, he will still come to power. There will still be the mark of Satan. And the world will still come to an end at its appointed time. In fact, if you really truly do believe that Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ, you'd be better off not even worrying about this election. You should be getting your religious house in order, praying for forgiveness and getting your soul in line with Christ in a big hurry, because the END IS NEAR!

I'm growing sick and tired of people selectively reading the Bible as a means to score points - political, social, or whatever. The last group of people who did this, as I recall, were the religious leaders of Jesus's day - who found justification to murder God in the scrolls of the Torah. How many times do we have to use the Bible to destroy people's hopes, dreams, and lives, before we stop reliving that day some 2000 years ago? Well, if this e-mail is correct, maybe not much longer.

In California right now, we have a very contentious amendment to the California State Constitution on the ballot - Proposition 8 - which seeks to forever clarify marriage as being that of a man and woman. Now personally, I don't really care where people stand on this issue one way or the other. What I really hate is when people argue the issue on religious grounds. The Bible tells them that its okay to persecute a population and that, as a result, we all have the right to persecute these people. I see "religious" rallies on the News where people say such venomous things because the Bible tells them that its okay, so long as the outcome conforms to what the Bible says. Kill Jesus for being unclean! He ate with the lepers and the tax collectors! Kill him! KILL HIM! He HEALED people on the SABBATH! Doesn't He know that's against the Bible! It says so right here!

I think the perfect solution might just be a taste of their own medicine. After all, if Proposition 8 passes, it will amend the Constitution of California. There will be no other debate about it, unless you can get the Amendment repealed or overturned by the Supreme Court. So, instead of fighting for the right to marry, I think those affected by this proposition ought to put a new Amendment on the ballot defining marriage as Permanent before the Eyes of God - I.E. No More Divorce! I say, if they love marriage that much, let's follow the strict Biblical interpretation and outlaw divorce again! It'll never pass... but it will expose the hypocrites for what they are.

Of course, I think we all know what happens when hypocrites are exposed... someone is arrested in the garden late at night and executed the next day.

The more we change, the more we stay the same. Only God can heal our sinful hearts.

Alternate Views on Tonight's Debate

WHAT WE'D LIKE TO HEAR:

"You know Senator McCain, that's a really good idea and when I'm President, I'll be calling on patriots like you and others with great ideas to figure out a way out of this crisis. Its time to end the partisan bickering that has paralyzed our nation and that still cripples us to this day. I'd like to pledge an end to the negative ads, the lies, and the distortions over the final three weeks of my campaign so that the American people can hear, for once and for all, the truth from both Senator McCain and myself. Will you join me, John?"

"Yes I will Senator Obama. I, too, have been ashamed by some of the nasty tactics employed by both parties in this election. They are Un-American and dangerous in these tough times. We would both be completely cynical indeed to continue these false attacks at a time when the American people need us to be entirely up front and straight forward with them. From here on out, my campaign pledges to be truthful, honest, and respectful of the high office that I seek."

WHAT WE'RE LIKELY TO HEAR (*sigh*):

"My opponent is, IN FACT, the mastermind behind the entire economic crisis and the one who has been pulling George Bush's strings for the last 8 years. Senator McCain actually collaborated with the Viet Cong during the war and has never once voted for a single bill in Congress that didn't help destroy this great nation."

"My Arab counterpart is so much of a terrorist that you can't believe a single word coming out of his lying, Al-Qaeda mouth! If Osama's elected, you'll all be blown to bits by terrorists and then taxed for the bomb making equipment!"

Is anybody else ready for the election to be over yet?

Things hoped for

I never claimed to understand God's plan - just to follow it. But there are times when I feel like I'm just doing things and claiming that God has sanctioned it because HE hasn't said no. Day to day things or, sometimes, even life altering decisions can FEEL right, but are they God's design? Sometimes, I just have to have faith that God will let me roam forward and rein me back in whenever I get too far afield.

It's really felt that way when it comes to making films. I can't deny that I've always loved films and always assumed that I would be a film maker someday. But life intervenes, and to be fair, the few times that I've tried to become a film maker, things have not gone well and I've never really bonded with the process. But this time has been different.

I started back into the film world because I was asked by my youth group members to help them make a film. I did, but was so disappointed with the outcome that a crazy idea came to me - go back to film school. I did... without any idea where this would lead me. When I realized that it was time to make my first film, I became enamored with the idea of shooting the film at my church. Something told me that this was the way to go and that the church would be open to the idea. They were and I shot the film there. I thought that would be the end of the story - that my church shooting time was over and I was glad to move on to more professional film shoots that had nothing to do with my church.

Out of the clear blue, I got a request from one of the film makers who helped me with the film if they could use my church for a film (a film, not too ironically, about redemption and faith). In the back of my mind, in my wildest dreams, I had imagined that I might someday plant a seed for someone to remember my church. It hasn't been two months since I stopped filming and already those seeds are growing.

A month ago my sound class was assigned a documentary film to shoot. When I met with my group to discuss possible subjects the first idea floated was to interview a crack addict that lived near one of the guys jobs (he's a bouncer at a downtown club). I started to wonder what I was getting myself into. Fortunately, someone else suggested doing a documentary about a group of people who train formerly homeless people to install solar panels. This group was going to have an installation training in Richmond and we all agreed that this sounded like a good idea. But, the training was canceled and our documentary was without a subject. I then remembered that my church was giving a concert in honor of the International Year of the Organ and because it was the fifth anniversary of our new pipe organ. It being a sound class, I thought this might be a good subject for the documentary. So with a little trepidation, I mentioned the idea to my group, and they all liked it.

I bring this up because this weekend we shot the film. Not only did the filming go smoothly but, to my great surprise, my organist suddenly discovered two new fans. They loved the organ. They loved to hear about how it was built and how it made sound. They promised to go to the concert. Then we spent two hours going around my church sanctuary in a love fest of beautiful film making to match the beautiful organ music we'd recorded. I can't wait to see the final documentary because my church might not ever look that good again.

The lesson I learned this week is that God is the ultimate producer. He maneuvered all the pieces around this weekend in a way that not only accomplished the task of making a great film, but also of glorifying His name and His church. We are amateurs when it comes to planning things out and getting pieces in place and then hoping that things turn out the way we planned. With God, completion is a guarantee and the results are never in doubt. He maneuvers things years in advance before any of us even suspect that we are being maneuvered; so that in all things, whether it be crossing the street or saving the Earth, His plan is the one that is accomplished. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, but I think its also the only chance we can ever get to seeing some of God's plan in action. To see, you must first believe.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

History of Thanksgiving in Canada

The history of Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to an explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Orient. In the year 1578, he held a formal ceremony, in what is now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, to give thanks for surviving the long journey. The feast was one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in North America, although celebrating the harvest and giving thanks for a successful bounty of crops had been a long-standing tradition throughout North America by various First Nations and Native American groups. First Nations and Native Americans throughout the Americas, including the Pueblo, Cherokee, Cree and many others organized harvest festivals, ceremonial dances, and other celebrations of thanks for centuries before the arrival of Europeans in North America [7]. Frobisher was later knighted and had an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean in northern Canada named after him — Frobisher Bay.

At the same time, French settlers, having crossed the ocean and arrived in Canada with explorer Samuel de Champlain, also held huge feasts of thanks. They even formed 'The Order of Good Cheer' and gladly shared their food with their First Nations neighbours.

After the Seven Years' War ended in 1763 handing over New France to the British, the citizens of Halifax held a special day of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving days were observed beginning in 1799 but did not occur every year. After the American Revolution, American refugees who remained loyal to Great Britain moved from the United States and came to Canada. They brought the customs and practices of the American Thanksgiving to Canada. The first Thanksgiving Day after Canadian Confederation was observed as a civic holiday on April 5, 1872 to celebrate the recovery of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) from a serious illness.

Starting in 1879 Thanksgiving Day was observed every year but the date was proclaimed annually and changed year to year. The theme of the Thanksgiving holiday also changed year to year to reflect an important event to be thankful for. In the early years it was for an abundant harvest and occasionally for a special anniversary.

After World War I, both Armistice Day and Thanksgiving were celebrated on the Monday of the week in which November 11 occurred. Ten years later, in 1931, the two days became separate holidays, and Armistice Day was renamed Remembrance Day.

On January 31, 1957, the Canadian Parliament proclaimed:
“ A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed … to be observed on the 2nd Monday in October.[1]

From Wikipedia

My own experiences with Canada began in 1986. As my last family vacation, we drove north from San Francisco stopping in Portland and in Seattle to visit relatives along the way before arriving in Vancouver for the 1986 World Expo.

This incredible event was well attended by major corporations and governments of the world including huge pavilions from the USSR (a warehouse sized model of the Soviet Union complete with model trains that had to be seen from a catwalk above), the United States (a recreation of the up and coming International Space Station), Disney - (in essence, it was the entire Space Ship Earth ride from Epcot), and Belgium (entirely dedicated to Tintin - yay!). They had decent rides including a two loop roller coaster whose loops were in between two separate sections of a freeway, a really great log ride, and a giant parachute drop.

But the thing I remember most about Vancouver from that trip was Fog N Suds - a local brew pub that is still in existence. They had a FogNSuds burger there that is still one of the all time great burgers ever. It was basically two 1/2 lb patties served Big Mac style on a double decker bun, but with an additional deck that included a fresh off the grill sausage. The entire thing was bigger than my mouth and I literally had to crush the entire sandwich into a thin pulp just to fit it in my mouth. But not to worry, because while I was trying to satisfy my teenagerish stomach, I had plenty to keep me entertained as a local cheerleading squad was across the street in the parking lot in bikini's doing a car wash for charity. Ah, Canada... I will never forget thee.

I've been back to Vancouver once more, Victoria twice, and Toronto and Montreal once each. I really loved Toronto, but wasn't a big fan of Montreal. But overall, I've loved Canada every time I've visited. It seems to me like they're our nice, kind, and respectable neighbors to the North - the Ned Flanders of the North American Continent.

So, Hi-dee-hoe neighorette's... and have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, eh!

Volunteers needed

So what have I been up to lately?

Besides an Advanced Cinematography class and an Advanced Sound for Film class, both of which have had me shooting assignments pretty much every weekend for the last month, I've been busy doing things for the website and other projects. I'm hoping to finish filming 12 Step Jedi this weekend, for one. And I've been working on the new website for another (about 40% done so far). I should have a preview up for 12 Step Jedi and the first episode of Adventure Saturday up as well when the new website launches. I would have had it online by now, but all this extra work made me vulnerable to the flu and I've only just recovered.

But the biggest news, for me anyway, is that I've been actively working on my second novel. You see, only about ten days ago, I had an idea out of the clear blue (after the Mudpie idea, Andy) and I liked it so much that I just started writing out the outline of the entire novel. It took me only three days to figure out the entire story from beginning to end (although I have two endings in mind, depending on the outcome of the poll from the previous blog). Since then I've been using every spare moment I've had to write the first draft of the synopsis for this new novel.

So, here's the gist of the new story in a word or two - Amelia Earhart, time traveler.

Of course, nothing I write is that simple, but that was the hook that got me into the story.

Anyway, I thought that instead of handing out 250-300 page flawed novels to my friends and family and begging them to read it and tell me what was wrong with it, that I'd start this time by having people read and comment on a much more manageable 20 page synopsis. That way I can fix the story problems before I actually write the darn thing. So I need some volunteers who are willing to thumb through a very basic synopsis and tell me what they think and whether there are any obvious flaws in the story. Its kind of like getting to taste the cookie dough to determine if there's enough sugar before the cookies go into the oven.

So, any volunteers?

Help me with Novel #2 - simple poll!

Blindness

You know how people always say that hindsight is 20/20. Of course, we all know that it means that if we could look backwards, we'd never make a mistake. But I'm not entirely sure that's true. There's a very good reason that history repeats itself and I think that it has something to do with the source of blindness, or nearsightedness, that overcomes us all from time to time. When it comes to the human heart, greed makes us all blind.

There is no mistake in the fact that Jesus was born into the poorest of poor families - with just enough to get by in this world. Not only did the young family have to rely upon God to feed them and keep them safe, but there was no real chance for any upward mobility. The irony of the statement, "The poor will always be with us," is that Jesus was poor himself. If you think about it, a great many parables of Jesus speak to money - whether it be talents being put to use or the daily wages of workers or lost coins, Jesus was a poor man who spoke to the poor about a kingdom not of this Earth where wealth and worth were to be measured in our value to others in service to them.

It is hard for us to imagine the Kingdom of Heaven, let alone see it, because of this blindness that engulfs us all. We want our lives and we want our homes and we want our friends and we want our money and then we want even more. And every time we want something we don't have and we don't need, we grow more blind. Like Children running a muck in a candy store, we are gorging ourselves on greed.

Its not just a recent issue. In 2001, when I first started at this company, the decision was made to switch over from a profit sharing plan to a 401K plan. The entire company was brought into the conference room and we sat down across from some bankers. The bankers started throwing out their numbers with smiles and rosy pictures. It was all going to be SO golden. Now, at that point, I had not invested a single dollar into either program, but many of my co-workers had their entire retirement savings in the plan. So I asked, "What happens if this rosy picture you're painting isn't as rosy as you expect?" It was like I had popped the party balloon. Everyone, and I mean everyone, looked at me as if I was insane.

"Well, there are risks, of course," the bankers hedged, "But really, the market always keeps going up. So any money you invest will eventually pay off with huge dividends."

"But what if it doesn't?" I persisted.

"It will," they replied.

Two months later, our 401K plans went into effect, transferring all the money that my co-workers had earned over the previous twenty years with the company into these stock market plans. For my own part, I contributed nearly $100 of my hard earned money to my 401K. The next day, crazed Muslim extremists flew two planes into the World Trade Center in New York and one plane into the Pentagon. Every single person in my company lost 25% of their savings from a plan that would, "eventually pay off with huge dividends." I lost $25. Some of my co-workers lost a thousand times that, or more.

Of course, nobody learns these things. Its like they no longer explain the concept that things too good to be true, usually are. Housing costs continue to go up... so they always will. Stock Markets never go down, so they never will. It can't happen here, until it does. What is the one underlying cause of this blindness?

Greed. Pure and simple. Not the kind of salivating Lothario with the twisty handlebar mustache kind of greed, but the kind that says, "I have a pretty good life, but I still want more." Its a more benign form, but still every bit as dangerous and disastrous.

Those bankers weren't bad people. They weren't trying to mislead the people of my company. They, like my co-workers, were convinced that what they were saying was true. But they were basing their convictions on false evidence and on their own assumptions about the world and about the unchanging nature of things. They assumed that since everything was doing fine today, it would continue to do so into the future. Their faith in the financial institutions was based upon a very limited knowledge of the future. My response to them was borne out of a faith of a different nature - a faith in God who tells me that, "Even these walls shall one day crumble." The only thing that is constant in life is God and His love for me - all other things are sketchy at best. Their view of the world was skewed by the idea that because they had gained so much wealth before, the world would continue to provide it to them and to all who did as they did.

So at the core of the world's problems right now is a fundamental blindness caused by Greed. Those who had, wanted more. Those who didn't have, wanted in. It was the world's largest and most elaborate Ponzi scheme ever devised - most bubbles are. And, as usual, the repercussions will be felt by everyone - guilty and innocent alike.

I read the other day of a "poor" couple who were about to become homeless with their three kids. It seems that this Northern California couple invested the equity in their long held family home and bought another home with it, which they rented out to tenants - whose rent was used to pay off the mortgage. This worked so successfully that they used the equity on the second home to buy a third, and then a fourth, and then a fifth. And it all worked so wonderfully. For a few years, they were very well off and enjoying life. And then the market collapsed and the values of these new homes plunged. And suddenly this family couldn't afford the mortgages on the new homes, nor on their own home. In the end, I can only assume that they lost everything.

Its easy to look back and ask, "What we're they thinking?" But I'm telling you my friends, if you want to keep from stumbling in the darkness of blindness, you need to keep your eyes open now, not in hindsight. What they were thinking is that they didn't have enough already and that with a few quick and easy "turns" of these new homes, they could become even more wealthy than they already were. And as a result, they lost everything. They gambled their own home on four others, and temporarily won, but ultimately lost. How much more the Kingdom of Heaven?

This is the attitude that has brought us to this point. It is nothing new. It did us in in 1988. It did us in in 1929. It did us in in 1898. It did us in in the 1870's. It has done us in in every nation and every land we've come from. It did in the Kingdom of Israel. It did in the Kingdom of Judah. It did in Egypt. It is a human condition that goes back to the fall of Man.

The only hope is to humble our ambitions and walk closely with God. All other paths will leave us stumbling in the dark in a state of blindness of our own choosing. We can have perfect clarity in God and avoid the pitfalls and snares of this world, but to do so, we first have to renounce the importance of things and embrace the omnipotence of God.

Work and Pray

"There are many rooms in my mansion... and they all need cleaning!"

Sometimes I get really strange ideas in the shower. My mind tends to drift with the hot water and I make connections in ways that I never made them before - sort of a bi-partisan creative mode that brings ideas from one side of the mind over to mingle with ideas from the other side of the mind to create new ideas that are the best of both worlds. Often times the path that these thoughts take is lost in the hot water. But in this case, it was painful memories that dredged up the above quote.

A great servant of the Lord passed away last week - a man who served at my church for many, many years. Most of the time we got along well, but there was one stretch where things were very disfunctional at my church and he said something to me that just shocked me. It was a reminder of that quote that led to the above quote.

You see, I was the head of a Welcoming Committee at my church and it was my job to find ushers every week. The ushers not only greeted people who came to church on Sunday, but also collected the offering. There were always four ushers. Now, normally, it was no problem finding ushers. It's like a three minute job and there are usually a ton of volunteers. But during this one stretch when things were so disfunctional, I suddenly found my supply of volunteers dwindling to the point where a couple of times, I was the only usher.

Finally, at one point near the end of all these troubles, said servant of the Lord came up to me and explained that he and his group of dissenters would not be volunteering any more because of the disfunction in the church. Like I said, I was very shocked.

I admit at times that it feels as if we're all overburdened with our jobs. Heck, I was just replaced as youth leader at my church (unofficially - I think they're hoping I'll come back... and I might ;) because my real life load was getting too burdensome. I know that on one particular fund raiser after I'd organized, set up, cooked, and served, someone was still upset because I didn't help clean up as well (though I was actually helping clean up at the time, I guess I hadn't quite helped enough ;) But I always like to think that I've chipped in and helped as much as humanly possible whenever I could reasonably lend a hand. But to willfully go on strike to make a point that has nothing to do with Christ but has everything to do with church politics made no sense to me.

It seems that when we are called to be servants of Christ, we are explained the rules of our employment. We are told that the road will be hard. We are told that there is a lot of work to do. We are told that this path is not for everyone and that, indeed, many who start on this path will not reach the end. And we are told that our decision to join is entirely up to us. It is a decision that we get to make. Its not made for us. And its a decision that should be made joyfully, fully aware of the burdens we are about to take on.

How many of us know people who have arrived at the Mansion and at the first sign of chores have quietly slipped out the back to soak in the sun by the pool? Work is for others. It is beneath them. They have not joined this religion to do work. They have joined for all the fringe benefits. And when they are cornered and asked to work, they do so with grumbles and complaints and then talk up their accomplishments as if they're secretly running the entire household behind our backs.

I think we're all given to fits and piques over the hard labor of the Lord. There are times where we all grumble, but then we keep going, we keep doing, because there are many rooms... and they all need to be cleaned... and they're not going to clean themselves.

Some Changes Coming - A Friday Response

In response to Andy's blog over at A Mile From The Beach, I've decided to make ten changes to my blog on Monday. To wit, these changes are:

1) Starting on Monday, in order to make more money, I will run advertising on my blog for the Republican Party, Fox News, and, of course, ENRON.

2) Also to boost my blog ratings, I will be changing the name of this blog to IDOL.

3) I will be leaving all reference to my Christian name behind and adopting my blog name of Lanz Franco so that I might more easily defame my enemies from the anonymity of my, by then, world famous blog.

4) I will write my blog 7 days a week (twice on Sundays!)

5) I will thoroughly trash anyone who comments, pointing out how obviously inferior they are to me.

6) Anyone who posts to my blog will be subject to character assassination. Be warned! My ninjas are already warming up!

7) We will have a weekly discussion on how I can get into the sack with the newly married Scarlett Johansen.

8) All of my content will be liberally borrowed from other bloggers so that I don't have to taint my pure writing talent by talking down to the masses.

9) I will talk endlessly about Andy's shady business dealings with the Hanso Foundation.

10) I will not rest until my blog stock is as high as Andy's and my counter clicks over twice as many times as his does.

I hope everyone appreciates my new changes. I think they will give me a better life like good old King Ahab!

Sincerely,

Lanz Franco - an American Icon today, a worldly Idol on Monday!

Another film, another protest ...

Blindness Film Facing Protest

1 October 2008 12:01 PM, PDT | From wenn.com

Members of the U.S. National Federation of the Blind (NFB) are planning to protest the release of Julianne Moore's new movie Blindness - because the film portrays the blind as "monsters".

The movie, a big-screen adaptation of Jose Saramago's 1995 book of the same name, is about a small town which is thrown into social chaos when the residents are hit by a sudden epidemic and go blind.

But the plot has angered the NFB's 50,000 members and the organisation's leaders have called for a boycott of the movie when it hits U.S. cinemas on Friday.

Marc Maurer, president of the NFB, says, "The movie portrays blind people as monsters and I believe it to be a lie.

"The Nfb condemns and deplores this film, which will do substantial harm to the blind of America and the world. Blind people in this film are portrayed as incompetent, filthy, vicious, and depraved. They are unable to do even the simplest things like dressing, bathing, and finding the bathroom.

"The truth is that blind people regularly do all of the same things that sighted people do."

The Nfb's planned boycott action has "saddened" bosses at Miramax, the studio behind the film.

In a statement, they say director Fernando Meirelles "worked diligently to preserve the intent and resonance of the acclaimed book, that is a courageous parable about the triumph of the human spirit when civilisation breaks down".

You know what I find discouraging. These people are protesting a film they haven't even seen.

Killing Two Birds!

Here's just an idea. I tried to pass it on to Nancy Pelosi, but apparently e-mail being what it is, my message was derailed. SO, if she's paying attention to things like this, maybe she can read this and see what she thinks. As usual, all my good ideas are free of charge and open to pilfering.

One of the biggest problems with the potential Bail Out is that as an American I feel like I'm funding the very same people who screwed up and I'm not getting anything in return. Oh sure, the potential for return on the investment of my tax payer money is decent, but what am I actually getting for that money? Any money earned will just go back into some nebulous government bank account to be used for something like subsidizing GM to build more SUV's, or something equally useless.

So here's my simple proposal... Any money gained through the sale of bad debt mortgages should be put in the Social Security fund so that we might re-fund Social Security.

Let's face it. Spending 700 billion bucks is a bit of a boondoggle. Getting anyone to agree to re-funding Social Security is also a bit of a boondoggle. Now we can kill two birds with one stone. We have to bail out bad mortgages. We have to re-fund Social Security. With one fell swoop, we can do both, and Congress can actually be seen to be doing something positive.

Voila! Lemonade out of lemons!

The Greater Depression Watch Continues...

I was hoping that I wouldn't have to sound the bell of doom and gloom and that some semblance of reality would set in, but, alas, we're too far beyond reality for things now. We seem to be stuck on a course of disaster not unlike the course that fateful ship, the Titanic, seemed to be set upon - where everyone seems to be an expert after the fact.

I'm not a financial genius, but I know when things are screwed up. It might feel good to say, Screw Wall Street!, but the reality is that we're only screwing ourselves. As one Republican congressman so eloquently put it, when a man is drowning in front of you, you don't first yell at him for going swimming in dangerous waters.

You see, its fun to say that we don't want to give tax money to rescue the financial markets. But these arguments are too late. That house is already burning. What we're trying to do is prevent the next house from burning. With the no vote by Congress today, we've set the entire block on fire. First, more banks will collapse (we lost four more banks here and abroad over the weekend). Then credit will dry up - and not just credit for home loans and car loans, but everyday credit. "Well, I won't borrow anymore," you say. But you really don't have a choice. Like my company here, most companies don't have large reserves of cash lying around to pay for goods and services. If they need to buy product, they do so by financing it. I pay for six months stock now, and by the time that six months have passed, I've made enough money to pay off the bill and then also enough profit to keep my company afloat. But if they can't finance the purchase of products, then they don't have anything to sell and their companies go belly up. So, very quickly, without credit available we're going to see the financial crisis spread to other businesses (Sears, JCPenney, etc...) and these companies will collapse, adding to the unemployment rate and also driving up the price of goods available in other markets. Think of where you're going to shop when WalMart, Target, and J.C. Penney all disappear? And its not just retail companies that are in trouble, but just about every area of the economy. Doctors are going to be hard pressed to pay their bills when all of these companies shut down their medical insurance. Construction companies are going to stop building new buildings when there's no credit to fund their construction. Etc...

We are really only about one step away from complete collapse. Once these things start occurring, it'll be too late to put the genie back in the bottle and the entire financial landscape will be forever altered. But then, its probably more important to determine who to blame than to actually fix the problem.

Some guys just don't get it

I watched the debate on Friday and, as a whole, I'd say that the candidates were evenly matched. Really, I'd say that under other circumstances, both candidates might be good Presidential material. But John McCain did say something almost totally insignificant that still has me thinking about it three days later and makes me wonder what point he was trying to make.

The question was about the need for economic bailout and John McCain's gist of an answer was that our government already spends way too much money on useless pork-belly programs (which is something that most people would likely agree with). However, his first example was one that I had to question - nearly 3 million dollars to map the DNA of the Grizzly Bear. Is this wasteful?

I suppose the question really points to the underlying values of the American people. Sure, scientists and tree huggers are going to embrace this program as having extreme value. Any time we can discover the genome map of any creature it has extreme scientific value - and especially an endangered species like the Grizzly Bear. So, scientifically and environmentally, this plan receives kudos. On the other side of the equation, it doesn't exactly save people's homes from foreclosure nor put food in the mouths of the poor and desperate (unless something goes wrong and they like bear meat ;) So, from the fiscally conservative side, this plan is ridiculous and the money could definitely be better spent elsewhere (all 3 million of it... which will really go far ;)

I guess, though, the question is what do the rest of the American people think about this project. I'd say that for most of us the fact that we are exploring the DNA of a Grizzly Bear is news, in the same way that we're spending 30 million dollars to promote the sale of Chrysler automobiles in the UAE is news or the 100 million dollar budget of Radio Free Europe is news. If we started reading the 2008 budget right now, we'd probably finish in about 2010. There's a lot of stuff that we buy with our tax dollars (or there used to be anyway ;) So, really, 3 million bucks for DNA research into Grizzly Bears. Why not?

Or maybe I should ask the question another way... what SHOULD the American people think about this project? Should we even care that DNA research is being done? Should we care whether its being done for Grizzly Bears or are there more appropriate animals? Should we care that it costs 3 Million of our tax dollars to do this research? Might that money be better spent elsewhere? If we allow politicians to tell us what to think about a project (I'm John McCain and I tell you that its wasteful spending, therefore it is!), then why do we even vote? Many of these so-called entitlement spendings are the only time average tax payers actually get to see some of their pet projects get funded by the Federal Government with the money we give them.

As for me, I didn't really care that we were giving 3 million bucks to study the DNA of Grizzly Bears - one way or the other - but now that you mention it, I think its probably a good idea. IF something should happen to Grizzly Bears in the near future, I'd like to think that somewhere down the line we might be able to bring them back from a man-made extinction and restore them to the gene pool where they belong. But even if that scenario never happens and Grizzly Bears go on living just fine for thousands of years to come, I think the accumulation of knowledge more than justifies the expense of 3 million bucks. And I certainly don't like a politician telling me that not spending 3 million dollars on Grizzly DNA is going to somehow solve our financial crisis and end the greed on Wall Street. If you ask me, we'd be better off spending 700 billion dollars on programs like this than on Wall Street any day of the week - at least we'd get something for our money.

John McCain was trying to score a quick political point in a debate that will decide who the leader of the free world would be. Quite frankly, I'd rather have someone in charge who thinks that Grizzly Bears are worth studying than someone who'd be willing to throw the Grizzly Bears under a bus in order to score quick political points. But then, some guys just don't get it... do they?

Somebody Open My Eyes, Please?

I'm sorry. I really do try to be even handed. I try to stay right in the middle and really see things from both sides. But this is one I just don't get. First of all, I really can't see why anyone hasn't made up their mind yet, and second of all, I really can't see why anyone would still vote Republican. Now, I don't mean this to sound like a Democratic rally here. I'm serious. As a thinking adult, who has weighed all the issues, and who doesn't always agree with the Democratic leadership (in fact I sent them a rather nasty e-mail a couple of weeks ago), nor do I swallow campaign hype and regurgitate it as fact, I just can't see why anyone would vote Republican at this point.

I didn't understand it in 2000, but I thought, "Well, 50% of the American people voted for Bush - maybe I'm missing something here?" But then, well, he didn't do anything except show his ignorance. And then, after 9/11, he sent us off into a disastrous war that had nothing to do with anything either. Our economy took a hit, gas prices rose, we were forced to make tough moral, legal and constitutional choices and all the while Bush kept telling us that didn't agree with him that we were wrong. I looked around at the way the world was crumbling and I kept thinking, "What are these people smoking?" But clearly, I was still not seeing it correctly because 51% of Americans voted him back into office.

The train wreck continued. And now our economy is in a free fall and I'd like to think that the Republicans might fix it, but just as I'm not eager to give over tax payer money to the companies that caused the collapse, I really can't see why anyone would want to hand over their vote to the people in charge of the country when the collapse occurred. I don't know what people are looking for in a President. But I can't imagine that the color of one's skin or their "inexperience" or their charisma would exclude them from the highest office when we've already seen what the other guy has to offer.

I didn't understand why people would vote for Bush in the first place and he proved to be the biggest disaster of a President this country has ever seen. And now I can't understand why people would vote for McCain at this point in time, and I worry what that means for the country over the next four years.

Of course, I only get one vote and I have to go along with whatever the American people decide - just like everyone else. My criteria for electing a President might be different that yours. I happen to think that the main reasons for electing a person ought to be 1)their intelligence (We've seen what stupid CEO's, Baseball Managers, and elected officials can do, so why do we keep electing them?), 2)their patriotism (I've got to believe they love this country and not just the perks of the job), and 3)their can-do attitude. This last quality is the most difficult to define, but its that quality of leadership and potential that you see in the rare individual that would make you want to follow them into any situation. It's the Kennedy mystique and the way we think about Abraham Lincoln (after the fact). It's that little bit of Knute Rockne and Jimmy V. and the 1980's Olympic Hockey team rolled up inside of us. It's that spirit of Rocky, that eye of the tiger.

To be fair, I don't question two out of three of these qualities for John McCain. In fact, I mostly downgrade him for his integrity. Had he stuck to his guns over the torture of enemy combatants, I'd probably be voting for him right now (I'd at least be conflicted). And so that makes me wonder if McCain really wants the job for the right reasons and whether he'd become beholden to the special interests who practically ran the White House for the last 8 years. And, of course, Sarah Palin as President scares me even more. Not that she's not a good person, or that she couldn't be a capable leader, but President of the United States? This isn't a fantasy where some ordinary joe shmoe becomes president and saves the world. This is reality.

But again, I must be seeing things that others are not. So will somebody please enlighten me as to what trick of light I'm missing that suddenly makes putting the Republicans back in control of the country for the next four years a good idea? Otherwise, I just don't get it.

Cool Fantasy Jobs

Someone was talking about a celebrity who had a gigolo on speed dial and it got me to thinking about career paths that we've all fantasized about at one time or another (whether seriously or not). I mean, who didn't want to be a fighter pilot after Top Gun? Or be the captain of a submarine after Hunt for Red October? And I know that I still want to be a Jedi Knight.

So here is my top ten list (in no particular order) of all time best fantasy jobs...

1. Baseball Player (and not some journeyman dude either... I'm talking Babe Ruth!)
2. Ice Cream Tester (come on... you know you wanted to at some point!)
3. Imagineer (Doesn't everyone want to design rides for Disneyland?!)
4. Spy (James Bond makes it look so cool!)
5. Gigolo (But only with incredibly hot women with lots of money!)
6. Movie Star (pretty self explanatory)
7. Astronaut (who doesn't want to bounce on the moon someday?)
8. Fighter Pilot (anyone can be the Red Baron after all)
9. Royalty (I think this is a universal fantasy)

and...

10. Accountant (to play with numbers in columns of A and B and... okay, I'm only kidding ;)

And now for real...

10. Toy Store owner (to think you get to play with toys all day long - like Willy Wonka with toys!)

Most of us, of course, don't get to do these things. We end up as inventory managers or CFO's or lawyers. And, of course, there's always that odd individual job that some people fantasized about - like I always wanted to be a truck driver because you get to spend your entire life traveling, and I think working on a cruise ship could be cool or being a travel agent. But there's the job you want and the job you've got and those two don't always go together.

So, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Righteous Indignation

What a complicated mess! God has tumbled all of my beliefs and counter-intuitive thoughts together in a giant battle royale and I've spent the last two days fighting between anger and laughter. Mostly I've just been depressed. I feel like I was really put through the ringer.

Failure #1: "Do you mind?" I hate it when people ask me that. It forces me to decide whether my interpretation of God's judgment is correct. Would God mind your behavior is what I'm being asked? Because I see so many wicked things in this world, I've become immune to them. Grand Theft Auto, R Rated Movies, even the Evening News - these are all things that I shouldn't watch and shouldn't enjoy, but do. So when someone asks me if I mind being part of something that might be questionable, I'm forced to confront my feelings about the appropriateness of entertainment and whether God would be pleased by my choices. I told "Quint" (see yesterday's blog) that I didn't mind based on the description of the project he had given me - because it was right on the fence between good taste and bad. I think what I should have said was, "I would prefer if you filmed something different, but if that's your choice then I will be there so long as the film doesn't go any further than that."

Failure #2: The Drunk Actor. I hate that when the inebriated actor asked me whether I'd be willing to drive him home, I said no. In my opinion, that was inexcusable. Of course, in context, the question was hypothetical at that moment - would I be Willing to drive him home? Willingly? No, I don't think so. I'd like to think that if he was clearly intoxicated and heading for his car that I would have stopped him and taken his keys away. However, I do think that my response forced the actor to sober up before leaving. And I have to add that I didn't know he'd left until he was gone - so I have no idea what condition he was in when he left. But still, my initial failure to agree to offer a ride bothers me. I have no right playing dice with other people's lives merely because the guy was a complete jerk.

Failure #3: When the half-naked priest appeared I was so shocked that I didn't do anything. I simply shut down my responses to doing whatever I was asked and continued to film. The failure here is that I knew Quint was screwing up his film. I knew it. And I said nothing. I didn't try and tell him what he was doing wrong, I let him continue to make mistakes on purpose. I keep thinking back to Cain's response, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Though Quint had clearly mislead me and placed me in an incredibly awkward situation, did I have the right to let him fail?

Failure #4: I let this film get made and sent off to a lab. Had I known what was going to be shot, I would never have gone. But I did go. And I stayed for the shoot. And now its done (albeit poorly) and I had something to do with it. I feel dirty and I feel like I failed God.

Do I mind? Yes! Damn it! I do mind! I mind that I was put in a position that repeatedly caused me to fail this weekend. I mind that in the end my artistic belief in everyone's ability to create discourse by any means necessary betrayed me by forcing me to help produce something that I don't want to see or be associated with and that goes against pretty much everything I believe. I'm angry and confused and I simply refuse to be put into that situation again.

I'm adding a new requirement to my filming standards. I will not shoot in any unsafe environment. And I will not shoot anything that might be considered exploitive or pornographic by me (not by society, but by my own standards!) And if someone has a problem with that, tough.

Mr. Nice Guy has left the building!

24 Hours of Heck! - Definitely "R" Rated!

The Following Story Takes Place During a 24 Hour Period From September 20th to 21st. During this time period, many unusual and scary adult things happened. Viewer Discretion is STRONGLY advised.

You have been warned.

You will receive no further warnings.





















My First True Taste of Hollywood
or
The Actor, The Priest and The Bullwhip

Our assignment, as simple as it sounds, was to film an actor carrying a lit candle from one location to the next (like a hallway or across a room) etc... This is a technical assignment requiring some creative thinking about the placement of lights and all of the technical strengths and weaknesses of camera, film, and other equipment. My group was well-prepared. (Real names have been omitted for reasons of obvious displeasure) Bob has been in all of my film classes. Tammy is a director, producer, and editor in a group that has won film festivals previously. Cassius is a passionate amateur film maker. And then there was Quint. I didn't really know Quint, but I knew that he had problems with filming on weekends and he was looking for a group. I figured, why not? Not only was it the right thing to do as a good person, but also there might be some advantage to having a fifth film maker.

Right off the bat there were problems. Quint lives in a remote location and had already asked his actors to be at his home on Sunday at 6pm. That's right - Sunday Night in a remote location. Okay... not as cool as it could have been, but I agreed to help out anyway. I'm always up to an adventure. Well, so's Jack Bauer, and we all know how those adventures usually turn out.

Our story begins on Saturday. We all arrive and begin setting up the equipment and things are going slowly - but that's typical with film shoots. When we finally get things set up, we have a big problem with our new camera. We can't quite figure out what it is. So, being so incredibly behind, we switch to the back up camera and start filming. Everything, more or less, goes smoothly from here. My shoot comes out brilliantly! A surefire "A"! I'm ecstatic!

After the shoot, we pack up all of the equipment and lug it downstairs (three flights - no elevator) and start to load up Quint's Jeep. At this point, Quint turns to Bob and I and tells us about his film - its a silhoutted film being shot against a back drop of white sheets (think Austin Powers second movie) about two gay priests "pretending" to abuse each other.

Now, I must digress here, and say a little bit about my college. City College of San Francisco is, at the best of times, Bohemian - but most of the time it can be downright counter culture with the worst excesses of the artistic world. On the one hand, I usually find suggestions like the one above to be artistic crap that offends me, but on the other hand, I defend people's rights to make art that offends me - its that dichotomous nature of being a Christian artist.

So, I'm offended, but I'm also committed to helping out. I try to balance what I know about Quint with the film he's describing and I think, "Maybe this will be okay - more of a wink and nod!" Bob and I look at each other with misgiving, but then confirm that we will be there. To be honest, I seriously thought Bob would make an excuse and not show.

On Sunday, I hop on BART for the 75 minute ride to regions unknown. When I finally arrive, Bob and I wait for a ride to Quint's house. Quint comes to pick us up minutes later and then tells us that he hasn't managed to get anything set up because his actors have been flaking on him all day. But he's finally got a replacement actor to come and GOOD NEWS, the replacement actor had taken the same class we were taking - so he could help out.

While Quint gets to work setting up the sheets for the set, Bob and I figure out where to put the lights and we set them up. As we’re finishing our job, the replacement actor arrives – Dick. Dick turns out to live up to his namesake. Almost before introductions begin, he starts to offer us advice on how to do a proper shoot from his vast experience. Dick then proceeds to raid Quint’s refrigerator for the beer – which he then goes out on the deck and starts drinking while somehow still finding things to fault us with. When he hears about our camera problems from the day before, he starts to “fix” them. (To be fair to Dick, I did learn something from him – something that we had not been taught and that was not in the instruction manual that came with the camera but that was essential to the basic operation of the camera. This sort of “Forgotten” information seems fairly common in film classes). While he didn’t call us idiots outright, the tone was there.

As the Actor continued to drink beer he became more belligerent. At one point, while trying to set the lights, I said, “Wait, I just had a thought…” at which point he yelled out across the backyard, “Well congratulations! That makes one for today!” I was seriously ready to kick his ass, and I’m generally an easy going guy. He kept trying to give me advice. He even told me that “Story” was the key to good filmmaking. Well thank you, Sherlock, that hadn’t occurred to me.

So, after about an hour of this, the other actor calls to tell us that he’s just leaving the wedding he’s been at and that he’ll get there as soon as possible. Where was the wedding? In Pacifica… where I live… which means that he was at least 75 minutes away (not counting traffic). Dick didn’t like the idea of waiting. He demanded that Quint order a pizza (he did). Then he took Quint’s cigarettes and start smoking them.

At one point, Dick turned to me and asked me whether I had my license and if I’d be willing to drive him back to Berkeley. I politely declined (and yes, all the thoughts of another drunk Dick on the road did occur to me – but I didn’t particularly want to be a victim either). At another point Dick asked to see the bullwhip that was going to be in the film.

Bullwhip? Bob and I looked at Quint who laughingly said, “Yes, one priest is going to be pretending to whip the other priest… you don’t mind, do you?”

Quint gave Dick the whip and he proceeded to flail away with it right where we had been setting up lights. Had we had a car, Bob and I would have made one of those excuses (Oh, I just remembered the stove that I left on!) and fled with our lives. But we didn’t.

“I need to practice,” said Dick. “One of you go over there and pretend to be the priest.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” said Bob, in response, “Hand me the whip and I’ll practice on you.”

Needless to say, Dick got tired of the whip and went back to drinking in quiet while Bob and I tried to figure out what to do.

“Someone needs to run one of the lights,” I noted.

“You do it,” said Bob, “I’m not going to stand there while a drunk actor starts whipping everyone.”

When the pizza arrived, Dick promptly consumed half of it, burped loudly, and then told Quint that he was tired of waiting – and he left. (Only later did I find out that he used the fact that he was uncomfortable with the scene as his excuse ;) Bob and I watched him go with relief.

“One of you will have to put on the Priest costume and use the whip,” Quint said, “Do you mind?”

“Um… Not going to happen,” I replied and Bob agreed eagerly, “However, I think you can still do the assignment without the whip and just add the whipping later.”

So we waited… and waited… and waited… and in the meantime, we got the lights fine tuned, had the camera perfectly set, adjusted everything that could be adjusted so that when the other actor arrived, we were ready to shoot.

Finally, the other actor – we’ll came him Chris – arrived and immediately began to change into his costume. Things were finally starting to look up. I pointed out to Quint that we were going to have to leave the second the shooting was over and that he should make it quick. He agreed.

And then the actor came out – half-naked.

Yes, he was wearing the top part of a priest costume, but it only came down to slightly below the buttocks. He was naked below that.

Now I was not only offended, I was pissed as well. But, by this point, everything was so totally out of control, I just rolled my eyes and finished the shoot.

The first thing Quint wanted to do was readjust all the lights – completely destroying the perfect lighting we’d set up. We let him. Then he wanted me to follow the actor with the “candlelight” even after the candle was no longer in the picture. It had nothing to do with the project, but I didn’t care. I let him do that too. He started shooting his scene like he was holding a video camera and I just continued to move that light until he finally called cut.

Bob and I shut down the entire lighting scheme and were ready to go out the door in five minutes. As Quint finally let us off at the BART station, Bob turned to me and said, “I feel violated.” We simultaneously laughed, cried, and vented our anger during the 75 minute trip back to civilization. And we both agreed that we were never going to do that again, no matter what the situation.

I could go on and tell you about Dick’s sleeping buddy or the non-artsy fartsy movie to be shot entirely at sunset or the fact that I’ve now lost my equipment borrowing privileges for an entire week (they can have them!), but I think I’ve said enough. I’ve been Jack Bauered enough for one 24-hour period. I’m starting to get cranky. And next time, they might not be so lucky and I might have to “interrogate” someone with a gun or a machete or something equally 24-ish.