LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE: GODZILLA IN THE 60’S & 70’S

One of the first movies I ever reviewed here at the B-Movie Catechism was Gojira, the original 1954 Japanese version of Godzilla. If you’ve never seen the film in its uncut original form, you owe it to yourself to seek it out as soon as possible. Gojira is sci-fi at its finest, offering a combination of fantastical adventure mixed with insightful commentary on the human condition in Japan at the time the film was made. Viewing Godzilla in his original incarnation, it’s impossible not to see the monster as an allegorical representation of the physical and psychological damage the Japanese people suffered as a result of the atomic bombs dropped during World War II, as well as the subsequent atomic weapons tests that continued after the war ended.

But that was in 1954. Beginning with 1964's Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster, The Big G’s personality began to undergo a bit of a change. No longer was he portrayed as a mindless force of nature smashing his way through a helpless Tokyo. Instead, the King of the Monsters began to soften up a little towards the tiny creatures scrambling out of the way of his royal footsteps and actually started to protect them from others of his ilk. By the end of the 60’s, Godzilla was officially a good guy, a friend to children everywhere. Sure, he still managed to knock over more than his fair share of buildings while protecting mankind, but amidst the destruction he also managed to pass along lessons to his young viewership, instructing them in a wide range of topics ranging from the evils of bullying (Godzilla’s Revenge) to the dangers of pollution (Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster).

But what has that got to do with me, you might ask? More than you might guess. As longtime readers might recall, one of the primary reasons this blog was started was that it spurred me to study the Church’s teachings more, which in turn would (hopefully) make me a better teacher for the room full of high school juniors and seniors I was put in front of at my local parish. Life goes on, though, and a few years back a combination of health, work, and family issues required me to step away from my volunteer catechist duties for awhile.

Well, guess what?

That’s right, I’ve stomped my way back into the classroom. Now it’s a bit different this time around for a couple of reasons. The first one is that, ostensibly, I’m only in there as an assistant, with the duties of formulating lessons and activities being somebody else’s responsibility. This is because my own child, who has Asperger’s, is enrolled in the class, and there’s the very real possibility that I might have to leave at a moment’s notice if he starts to have a meltdown. Thank God, after two sessions, that hasn’t happened yet. In fact, so far, he’s been the best behaved kid in the room.

Which brings up the other big difference. This time around, it’s not teenagers I’m locked up with, it’s a 5th grade class. And let me tell, you, I was not prepared for the sheer level of silliness, noise, and in-your-face disrespect we’re getting from a bunch of 10 & 11 year olds. Now I do feel a little sympathy for them. After all, it’s a 4:30 weekday class and most of the kids are picked up at school and then directly dumped into faith formation with no break, so I understand there’s some cabin fever at work. But still, the behavior I’ve seen so far goes beyond simple rambunctiousness. It’s such a tough room that the main teacher is already hinting around for a transfer to a younger age group and happily passed the second half of last week’s lesson to me to finish. It’s a mess. Or as I used to call it the first time around… business as usual.

As always, everyone involved will do their best to make sure these kids not only advance in their knowledge of the Church, but hopefully in their relationship with Jesus as well. It might be sloppy and noisy and a few buildings might get knocked over in the process, but God willing, it’ll get done. Pray for the catechists at your local Parish, folks, I’m sure they would appreciate it.

LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE: THE DENTIST 2

Well, if you read my last post, then you know I began my Labor Day weekend at the dentist’s having two teeth extracted. In my case, that apparently required one person to lean on my skull while the dentist clamped my jaw open and used two hands to saw and twist and saw and twist until the stubborn things finally came loose. As it turns out, the wisdom tooth that had grown in at a 90 degree angle and was jabbing into the root of the one next to it (anybody passed out yet?) wasn’t really what was causing most of the pain. After all, as I mentioned yesterday, they’ve been in that condition for over decade. No, the problem was that an infection had finally settled in over the past couple of weeks and the tissue surrounding the two teeth was a mass of raw hurt. The downside to this was that despite the extra painkiller the dentist helpfully dumped into the area, I still felt quite a lot of what was going on during the procedure. The nurse’s comments about the impressive amount of bleeding didn’t help things either.

I have to admit, about two thirds of the way through this very long hour the thought crossed my mind that if it had been anybody else but a doctor brutalizing me this way, I would have already beaten the holy hell out of them by this point. But of course I didn’t, mainly for two reasons. One is that it was all my fault to begin with for waiting so long to have the problem addressed. Why did I put it off for over a decade, you ask? Because I’m a typical man, that’s why. If somebody shot me, the only way you’d get me to go to the emergency room is if I couldn’t chew the bullet out myself. So basically I was paying the price for ignoring the problem. The other reason is that, unlike Corbin Bernsen in The Dentist 2, my doctor was not some escaped mental patient intent on doing me harm, but was instead a professional who was actually trying to help me by scraping and ripping out the results of my own obstinacy. The fact that it was painful was simply unavoidable.

In short, I received a small taste of Purgatory. As the Catechism explains, “All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven… The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire.” Now whether that cleansing fire is meant to be taken literally or figuratively, who’s to say, but the idea is that this process of purification will involve some amount of pain for the person undergoing it. I suppose tearing rot out at the root, be it from your mouth or from your soul, always does. But it’s a pain with an element of joy attached to it, because just like the thought that kept me sitting in that dentist’s chair, you know the end result will be worth it. Still, in hindsight, I would have preferred to avoid the chair, just like I wouldn’t mind skipping Purgatory if at all possible when the time comes. Hopefully I’m taking better care of my soul than I did my teeth.

LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE: THE DENTIST

So, after a couple of weeks of laughing off the growing discomfort inside my mouth, I woke up yesterday with the distinct impression (by which I mean stabbing pain) that the situation wasn’t all that funny anymore. And, of course, my worst suspicions were confirmed when my local hygienist strapped my head into one of those new fangled spinning x-ray machines and the results came back looking like this…

Now, my wisdom teeth have been bothering me on and off for about fifteen years, but never to the point where I felt the need to have them removed. However, when the dental assistant remarked, “The doctor will have to say for sure, but I’m guessing this tooth that has grown in sideways and is boring into the root of the one next to it might be your problem,” well, I figured the time had come. Unfortunately, my being who I am, all I can think about before my extraction tomorrow is this…

I mean, really, as nice a guy as my dentist is, how do I know he didn’t go home tonight and discover his wife was cheating on him just like in the movie, and then he’s going to show up tomorrow morning with homicide in his heart while I innocently lie there waiting on him to rip things out of my skull. Wonderful.

This sounds like a job for St. Appolonia! As legends tell it, Appolonia was one of the many Christians who suffered martyrdom under the reign of Emperor Philip the Arab during the mid third century. As detailed by St. Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria at the time, “Apollonia, parthénos presbytis, was held in high esteem. These men seized her also and by repeated blows broke all her teeth. They then erected outside the city gates a pile of fagots and threatened to burn her alive if she refused to repeat after them impious words. Given, at her own request, a little freedom, she sprang quickly into the fire and was burned to death.” Because of what happened with her teeth, the Church has declared Apollonia the patron saint of dentists and toothaches, and you can often find her depicted with pincers in which a tooth (sometimes glowing) is held.

You can even find reliquaries around which reputedly hold one of her teeth. This one’s from Portugal.

So rather than sit here and worry that my dentist is going to go all Corbin Bernsen on me, I think I’ll just say the following prayer instead.

0 Glorious Apollonia, patron saint of dentistry and refuge to all those suffering from diseases of the teeth, I consecrate myself to thee, beseeching thee to number me among thy clients. Assist me by your intercession with God in my daily work and intercede with Him to obtain for me a happy death. Pray that my heart like thine may be inflamed with the love of Jesus and Mary, through Christ our Lord. Amen. 0 My God, bring me safe through temptation and strengthen me as thou didst our own patron Apollonia, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE: THE SIMPSONS

Okay, so this is actually a scene from The Simpsons television show and not the movie, but hey, blogger’s privilege or something like that. Anyway, I don’t know about all of you out there who probably have perfect families, but as for me… well, something came up recently that reminded me how much, even though I love my own brood with every fiber of my being, I can’t help sometimes but feel like poor old Homer does in this clip…

The Simpsons _ Family From Hell by hulu

And I’m sure they feel the same way about me sometimes. Maybe lots of times.

Now what brought this clip to mind was a conversation I had earlier this week with a fellow Christian who up until recently had never had any real trouble with his children. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he and his wife have had to put up with all the typical things parents have to deal with; the disobedience, the disrespect, the unearned arrogance, the odors… you know, the usual stuff. But now one of their children has begun engaging in activity that lies squarely in mortal sin territory and it has them pretty shaken up. You see, by his own admission, they’ve always held themselves up as a family to emulate, one for others to look at and see how good their own children could turn out if they just raised them with the same strong Christian values found in my friend’s household. But now…

I’m just guessing, but I suppose he felt comfortable discussing this situation with me because I’ve talked with him in the past about some of the difficulties my own family has gone through. We’re Christians, you know, we help one another, or at least listen to one another, when stuff like this happens. And if we’re smart, we also try to discern what God may want us to learn from these types of trials. For my acquaintance, who has always been the one driving off into the clouds with his picture perfect family, he sees his present difficulties as an opportunity to learn some humility and maybe rethink what Christianity does and does not promise you in this life. And as for me, the guy who rarely gets to drive off into the sunset, well… I’m human, so I’ll admit that for just a moment I had a feeling of smug satisfaction over Mr. Perfect’s dilemma. Let him see how the other half feels. But thank God it lasted for no more than a second, because we’re talking about a soul in danger here, and there’s no taking pleasure in that no matter which car that person happens to drive off in.

So if you get a moment, maybe you could say a prayer for my friend and his child as they go through this rough period. After all, when it comes to who needs God in their lives, everybody is one of us.

LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE: THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

So I crank up the engine the other day and and lo and behold, it seems my truck has decided to start communicating with me through binary…

Now I couldn’t quite place it at the time, but there was just something about the number 101010 that was familiar, which for me usually means there’s a related snippet of some movie or television show tucked away somewhere in my skull. And sure enough, once I had the time to look it up, the connection was obvious. It turns out that in the binary numeral system the number 101010 = 42. And 42, as any Sci-Fi fan worth his or her salt should already know, is the very number which is the answer to the ultimate question of LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING as calculated by the supercomputer Deep Thought in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Now, just in case you’ve managed to avoid science fiction for the past thirty years and are not familiar with the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in any of its many incarnations, it’s the story of the last two earthlings in existence (our planet having been blown to smithereens by a Vogon construction crew to make way for a hyperspatial express route) who traipse around the cosmos in a stolen starship accompanied by the alien Ford Prefect, his cousin Zaphod Beeblebrox (the three-armed two-headed President of the Galaxy), and Marvin the Paranoid Android (a morbidly depressed robot with a self-proclaimed brain the size of a planet). This band of misfits eventually make their way to the planet Magrathea where they are indeed presented with the ultimate answer to LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING, only to be informed that nobody knows what the actual question is.

Now, lots of people have spent way too much time trying to figure out what Douglas Adams meant by making the answer to the ultimate question be the number 42. Was he referencing the angle in degrees at which light reflects off of water to create a rainbow (awww, sweet), or maybe the number of rules in the game of cricket (Adams’ favorite sport), or perhaps even the forty-two-lettered name of God from Jewish tradition (though an atheist, the author confessed a lifelong fascination with studying religion). Adams never said, passing the whole thing off as a whim. “The answer to this is very simple.” he related in an interview, “It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story.”

Of course, there’s still a lot of people to this day who refuse to accept Adams’ own explanation, so the speculations continue. But whether or not there is a hidden meaning to 42 is probably missing the point. Being that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a farcical satire written by a (mostly) committed atheist, it’s seems more than probable that Adams was taking a potshot at what he saw as the seeming futility of posing such metaphysical questions in the first place. After all, if life has no externally determined purpose, as atheists believe, then to ponder what meaning life has is nothing but a big waste of time. Or as it plays out in the Hitchhiker’s Guide, if you ask something nonsensical like ‘what is the meaning of life’ then all you’ll get in response is a nonsensical answer like 42.

And yet, as noted, despite atheism’s general disdain for anyone’s claim to having at least some of the answers to life’s big questions, Douglas Adams admitted in interviews that he just couldn’t seem to stop thinking about God, philosophy in general, and the questions they both raised, things like why are we here and does anything we do really matter in the end? And that ultimately says something good about the man. Peter Kreeft, renowned Catholic philosopher, wrote that “anyone who is simply not interested in these questions is less than fully human, less than fully reasonable. Reasonable persons, even if skeptical about the possibility of answering them, will not dismiss them as unanswerable without looking (that is not reason but prejudice) but will examine the claims of philosophers to have given reasonable answers to these questions before settling into a comfortable, fashionable skepticism.” Professional atheist Austin Cline actually agrees with this, writing that “although there is a role for dispassionate research, philosophy must derive from some passion for the ultimate goal: a reliable, accurate understanding of ourselves and our world. This is also what atheists should seek.” So, while on the surface the eternally morose Marvin the Paranoid Android might seem like the epitome of atheism as he bemoans, “Life? Don't talk to me about life!”, the opposite is actually true for the mature atheist.

Which leads to a strange instance in which a thinking atheist can actually agree with something in the Catechism, at least where it states “Catechesis on creation is of major importance. It concerns the very foundations of human and Christian life: for it makes explicit the response of the Christian faith to the basic question that men of all times have asked themselves: ‘Where do we come from?’ ‘Where are we going?’ ‘What is our origin?’ ‘What is our end?’ ‘Where does everything that exists come from and where is it going?’ The two questions, the first about the origin and the second about the end, are inseparable. They are decisive for the meaning and orientation of our life and actions.”

The difference is that the subsequent answer to the ultimate question of LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING arrived at by Christians turns out to pretty simple, to know and love God, and from that to be able to know and love his creations. That’s how we’re to orient our lives (and we even manage to do so on our good days). But what about the atheists? By asking the same questions, yet rejecting the religious answer, to what ultimately are they orienting their lives? The pursuit of one’s own self interests? Meandering from one fleeting moment of happiness to another? Resignation to nihilism? I guess they still have a lot of questions to ponder, huh? Me, I think I’ll stick with the few answers provided so far by faith. They make a lot more sense.

And to think, I was reminded of all that just by looking at a odometer. Well, that and the fact that I needed an oil change, but still. Funny the weird places you find God in sometimes.

(Oh, and speaking of Binary, feel free to go here and listen to the song of that title by the Catholic folk duo Popple. It’s pretty catchy)

LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE: BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET

The acting is spotty (there’s a very fine line between authentic and downright amateur), the story meanders aimlessly like only an indie film can, and home movies probably have a higher budget, but you know, Brother From Another Planet is still pretty enjoyable. The movie tells the story of an unnamed mute three toed alien who flees to Earth in order to hide from his former masters, only to run into a whole new set of problems due to the color of his skin. Yes, The Brother From Another Planet is a ‘message’ movie about bigotry, but it’s a fair message. Plus, by the time the credits roll, the film goes a little deeper than just the basic black vs. white thing (though that is front and center) and embraces the whole immigrant experience in the United States. At the very end (SPOILERS), when it looks like the Men In Black (no, not the ones with the hit theme song) are about to capture The Brother, a large number of people dressed in various uniforms relating to their occupations emerge from the shadows and takedown The Brother’s pursuers. It turns out The Brother is not the only escaped three toed slave on our planet, and even though they all have experienced some bigotry since landing, it’s a whole lot preferable here than where they came from.

I couldn’t help but think of Brother From Another Planet while attending the Rally For Religious Freedom in downtown Atlanta today.

As you can see, down here in Dixieland we had to hold more umbrellas than protest signs, but that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm too much. Despite the rain, we still managed to get over one thousand people at the rally. Not too shabby for the “city too busy to care”. But more interesting than that was the speakers that were on hand. While we had the obligatory politician (actually, a nice guy who’s also a member of the Knights of Columbus), a good number of those who spoke turned out to be immigrants, including our very own Bishop Luis R. Zarama.

And, let me tell you, the immigrants are a little pissed off. The type of unconstitutional overreach which the U.S. government is attempting with the HHS mandate is not what these people moved here for. This is supposed to be the land of freedom, a place that’s better than where they came from. I think it’s safe to say they feel somewhat betrayed.

Still, even though their irritation was evident, the rally was a positive event overall. Which hasn’t stopped the local paper from trying to put a different spin on the event. Having no luck finding a dissenter in the crowd (assuming he was even there), the reporter from the AJC had to call up a representative of Catholics for Choice in Washington just to get an opposing viewpoint. Sigh. But that’s the fight we’re up against. The powers that be will do whatever they can to shape the narrative and marginalize our voices. That’s why today can only be a start. Please, everyone, keep sending those letters and making those phone calls, keep talking to whomever will listen, and most of all, keep praying. Let’s keep this land of ours a place where immigrants want to flee to, not flee from.

LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE: INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE

ADVANCED WARNING: SKIP READING THIS POST IF YOU DON’T WANT TO LISTEN TO ME INDULGE IN A BUNCH OF NAVEL GAZING. BUT IT DOES HAVE A POINT. I HOPE.

I doubt if too many people reading this blog don’t already know the plot of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. Just in case, though, let’s summarize. The story kicks off after everyone’s favorite adventuring archeologist receives his father’s diary under mysterious circumstances. Following the clues contained in the book, Indiana manages to track down his missing dad and the two are soon involved in a series of adventures which ultimately leads them to the final resting place of the Holy Grail. The action scenes are great as usual and the interplay between the Jones’ is a blast, especially since the elder Jones approves of very little of his son’s actions, especially his choice to use the alias Indiana instead of his given name.

Now I’d love to say this post was about to segue into describing how I was preparing to embark on a series of globetrotting adventures involving ancient religious relics but, alas, that’s not the case. Instead, the only reason this movie came to mind recently was because of one thing…

Yep, the diary Indiana receives that once belonged to his father. Sorry, no Nazis, no zeppelins, no mystical knights still alive since the days of the Crusades. Just the book.

But to explain why I’ve had that on my mind, I’ll have to give you a little boring background on myself. See, I’ve made no big secret that there were times in my past when I wasn’t exactly living the Christian life, but I have managed to spare everyone all the messy details. And I’m not about to get too deep into them now. But I will say that many years ago I was involved in a relationship that I was way too immature to be in, and that it ended badly, especially for the girl. Don’t get me wrong, I was never violent or anything like that (I’d eat a bullet before I hit a woman), but I was a completely self-absorbed teenager oblivious to how my actions harmed others. I don’t want to say too much more, only that for a long time after that relationship was over, the poor girl still pursued me, even after I’d begun dating my future wife. I won’t say she was a stalker, because that’s too harsh and implies danger. Let’s just say she was obsessive, and because of that, I had to keep a low profile for awhile. So as you might imagine, when I started interacting on the Internet, I was very careful about handing out personal details, never stating exactly where I lived and almost always using aliases. It’s a practice I continued even after I thought it unnecessary because, not only did it give my wife peace of mind, but aliases on the Net can take on a life of their own. Take EegahInc for example. More than once I’ve left a comment on someone else’s blog only to get the response, “Hey, it’s the B-Movie Catechism guy!”

So when I was recently approached by a Catholic website that wanted to feature some of my writing, I had to give it a little thought because it would mean using my real name. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. And that was when my mother called and said she was mailing me this…

Back in 1984, a few years after my family had left its decadent days behind it and started going to church, my father was looking for something to carry in his shirt pocket to replace the ever-present pack of cigarettes he was giving up. So for Father’s day, I bought him this. Honestly, I never gave it another thought, but according to my mother, he carried this little book with him every day until he died some 18 years later, often bringing it out to discuss the wondrous things Jesus had done for him whenever the opportunity presented itself. I was never as close to my father as my older brothers were, so the fact that he kept something I gave him on his person at all times is a bit… overwhelming.

But to get to the point, on the night he entered the hospital for the final time, this pocket testament went missing. My mother figures it just got misplaced in the rush to try and save him, and in the days following his death, nobody really gave it any thought. That was ten years ago. A couple of weeks ago, there was a knock on the door at my mother’s house and there stood a man who used to do yard work for my father after he got too ill to do it himself. He explained how he had been having a conversation with a woman when she asked him if he still knew how to find my mother. You see, she had come into possession of something she thought my mother might want and asked him if he would deliver it. And so ten years after it disappeared, this little book of my father’s, dirty and much the worse for wear and having passed through who knows whose hands, had found its way home. And after holding it and crying over it for hours, my mother finally got up and called me, saying she couldn’t explain why, but she knew God wanted me to have it.

I’ve got it next to me right now. It’s just one of those little pocket King James New Testaments with Psalms that you can pick up anywhere. No big deal. But thumbing through it, I can’t help but notice the verses my father had highlighted, most of which I assumed he would use to share the story of his conversion. But then I ran across these from II Timothy 2: “And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all [men], apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” I had to think about those verses for a minute, because those aren’t ones you’d read to a non-believer. Those verses are speaking to someone who has already accepted Christ, instructing them to be gentle and respectful with non-believers when we evangelize.

And we are supposed to evangelize, through our words, our deeds, and the way we carry ourselves during our day to day lives. But given the no-longer-hidden war on religion which has begun in earnest, a lot of us are going to have be a little more public with our faith than we have been in the past. Now more than ever, it’s important that the world see our faces. Oh, there’ll be much derision, sure. And probably some outright hatred. But it will all be to the greater glory of God in the end. And that’s why my father highlighted those verses, not for others but for himself, for when he faced times like these when evangelization isn’t all that appreciated. And, just maybe, for me to find all these years later right when I needed to. Thank you, daddy.

And with that, I have only one other thing to say…

Hi, my name is David Ives. I’m a Christian. And God has done great things for me, even though in my days I’ve been mean and selfish and hurt others who in no way deserved it. He brought me out of that. That’s just how much He loves me. And He loves you just the same. I’d be happy to talk to you about it sometime if you want.

LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE: MONSTERS INC.

Monsters Inc. isn’t the best Pixar movie, but it’s pretty far up the list. And I’ve always argued that the first ten minutes of this movie is a master class in how to introduce your characters and the world in which they live. That’s especially true of this scene in which the two main characters sit down to watch the new Monsters, Inc. commercial in which they’re both supposed to be featured. Not only does this quick scene provide in a funny and entertaining way the necessary exposition needed in order to understand how the scream factory works, but it also advances the characters of Mike and Scully while doing so. Just brilliant.

I couldn’t help but think of this scene the other day after my mother called up to scold me. I know, I know. I’m a middle-aged father of two who runs his own business and volunteers up at the church. But if anyone thinks those things exempt a person from getting scolded by his mother… well then, you just don’t know mothers. Anyway, what she was calling about was the fact that she had heard second hand from a friend who was browsing Facebook that I had posted a picture from the Walk For Life in Atlanta last week. This one in fact…

The reason she was upset is that I never told her I would be attending the march this year, which means she didn’t get to say a prayer for me and, more importantly, she didn’t get to tell all of her friends that her son was going to be there. Never, ever deny a mother her bragging rights. But more important than that, she was right. (Which being a Catholic and a Southerner, the fact that momma is always right should never be in question.) As she knows, and as I ranted about in my last post, now’s the time to make ourselves seen and heard standing up for what we believe in. “Participation is the voluntary and generous engagement of a person in social interchange.” the Catechism reminds us, “It is necessary that all participate, each according to his position and role, in promoting the common good. This obligation is inherent in the dignity of the human person. Participation is achieved first of all by taking charge of the areas for which one assumes personal responsibility: by the care taken for the education of his family, by conscientious work, and so forth, man participates in the good of others and of society. [But] As far as possible citizens should take an active part in public life.”

Well, if momma says to do it, and the Catechism says to do it, I ain’t about to be the one to argue. So, in the spirit of Mike Wazowski, and with a little help from the photographers at the Atlanta Journal Constitution…

LOOK, MA! HERE I AM! DID YOU SEE ME?

LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE: INVISIBLE HANDS

A little while back a package arrived in the mail which contained a small surprise…

Actually, the surprising thing wasn’t so much the contents of the package (you wouldn’t believe some of the stuff that appears on my doorstep), but the fact that I hadn’t ordered them myself. They just kind of showed up out of nowhere. And because of that, I couldn’t help but immediately think of this…

Pretty easy to spot the connection, huh? I’ve always loved Invisible Hands. Back when the folks at MTV only spent about 80% of their time being a corrosive influence on the culture of the world rather than making it a full time pursuit like they do these days, you could still run across the occasional worthwhile program such as Liquid Television, an animated series showcasing the works of various artists whose works were a bit off the beaten track. Invisible Hands, a loose adaptation of Richard Sala’s comic  book Thirteen O’Clock, was one of my favorites, capturing as it did both the language of noir and the lunacy of giallo. The whole thing’s only about 10 minutes long, so here’s the entire serial if you’re interested…

EPISODE 1, EPISODE 2, EPISODE 3, EPISODE 4, EPISODE 5, EPISODE 6

Now, not to worry, the eyeballs which mysteriously appeared in my mailbox turned out not to be connected to a cult of one handed assassins in any way, but rather were part of an advertising campaign for a computer repair and data retrieval company (which, now that I think about it, is almost just as weird). So, I’m relatively safe as far as that goes, unless there’s some other reason a cult of one handed assassins might take an interest in me that I’m not thinking of (maybe the Free Will Baptists are still ticked off I joined the Catholic Church).

But just like any other time some odd little thing like this happens to me (more times than you might suspect), it did make me think. Just because no masked killers were involved, that didn’t necessarily mean there was no hidden message for me. After all, just how often do you receive a pair of eyes in the mail? Has to mean something, right? Well, within a few minutes of opening up the package, the thought that popped into my head was the number of verses in Psalms which reminds us that “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but speak not; they have eyes but see not; They have ears but hear not; no breath is in their mouths. Their makers shall be like them, all who trust in them.”

Well, I had definitely been given a pair of eyes. Was there something I wasn’t seeing? The Catechism warns us that “It is important for every person to be sufficiently present to himself in order to hear and follow the voice of his conscience. This requirement of interiority is all the more necessary as life often distracts us from any reflection, self-examination or introspection.” So maybe my special delivery was telling me it was time for a quick “examination of conscience made in the light of the Word of God. The passages best suited to this can be found in the Ten Commandments, the moral catechesis of the Gospels and the apostolic Letters, such as the Sermon on the Mount and the apostolic teachings.” That’s a whole lot of reading, so it’s fortunate I was able to find plenty of websites out there with good premade lists of questions for conducting an examination of conscience. (Catholic-Pages.com has a pretty decent one to get started with.) Perhaps I was reading too much into an advertising stunt, but hey, better to be safe than eternally sorry, right?

Now, what to do if a jewel encrusted hand shows up tomorrow…

LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE: FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER

So there I am coasting along through the North Georgia Mountains on one of those roads where it’s sheer cliff on one side and long plummeting death on the other when I round a particularly sharp curve and see this…

Blood Mountain Cabins. Who in their right mind is going to stay in a cabin at a place named Blood Mountain? Especially when I notice, as I stop to take a picture of this foreboding sign, that there is absolutely no cell phone signal where I am. That’s right. Blood Mountain, campground, no cell phone signal, less than 20 miles from where Deliverance was filmed. Yeah, you know what I’m thinking, don’t you?

Ki, ki, ki, ma, ma ma.

And to make matters worse, after I got back home, I looked Blood Mountain up and found this on the Historical Marker Database, “In Cherokee mythology the mountain was one of the homes of the Nunnehi or Immortals, the “People Who Live Anywhere,” a race of Spirit People who lived in great townhouses in the highlands of the old Cherokee Country… Before the coming of white settlers, the Creeks and Cherokees fought a disastrous and bloody battle in Slaughter Gap between Slaughter and Blood Mountains.”

So, yeah, Blood Mountain, campground, no cell phone signal, less than 20 miles from where Deliverance was filmed… AND location where Indian spirit people died. Seriously. And from the looks of it, if you end up having to run away from BLOOD Mountain, you’ll most likely just end up on neighboring SLAUGHTER Mountain. Unbelievable. Staying there would just be asking for it, wouldn’t it? You’d have to be like those dummies in the later Friday The 13th movies who just keep coming back to Crystal Lake to party even though the morgues in the area are practically overflowing with Jason’s victims.

You can understand the kids in Part 2 because the headless Mrs. Voorhies is about as dead as you can get. And you can kind of forgive the kids in Part 3 because Jason has only just gotten started. But by Part 4 (The Final Chapter), any kid who plans on spending the Summer at Crystal Lake drinking, taking drugs, and engaging in pre-marital sex may as well just go ahead and stab themselves 6 or 7 times before they leave the house. At least they’d save themselves the gas money it would’ve taken to get there.

Look, everybody makes bad choices, and being stupid, while not desirable, is not a sin in and of itself. But willful ignorance is, as St. Thomas Aquinas so eloquently explains in the Summa. “It is clear that not every kind of ignorance is the cause of a sin, but that alone which removes the knowledge which would prevent the sinful act. …This may happen on the part of the ignorance itself, because, to wit, this ignorance is voluntary, either directly, as when a man wishes of set purpose to be ignorant of certain things that he may sin the more freely; or indirectly, as when a man, through stress of work or other occupations, neglects to acquire the knowledge which would restrain him from sin. For such like negligence renders the ignorance itself voluntary and sinful, provided it be about matters one is bound and able to know.”

Now obviously the concept of willful ignorance can be applied broadly to any situation where a person ignores evidence that appears to contradict his or her preconceived notions (modern politics seems practically overrun with willful ignorance), but in Church terms, it specifically means the purposeful darkening of the intellect so it doesn’t interfere with any sinning. The term is usually associated with those people in the Church who don’t take the time to educate themselves in their own faith, i.e. those who know the Church has something to say about masturbation, but aren’t really going to listen to what it is because they feel it’s none of the Church’s business and, well… they just like it.

Most likely, we’ve all engaged in willful ignorance at some point in our lives. But take it from the unlucky visitors to Crystal Lake (154 and counting), it’s something to be avoided. The end results just aren’t worth it.

LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE: THE FUNHOUSE

Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Well, that’s what Kermit The Frog sang anyway back when The Muppet Movie first came out. But even though Ol’ Kermie was just a bunch of green felt with some guy’s hand up his posterior, I kind of took his saying to heart anyway. Which means, believe it or not, that this whole mash-up of bad movies, cult cinema, and Catholicism isn’t just some shtick I keep up for the Internet. There are actually plenty of moments during my day to day routine when I find myself viewing life through a pair of stained glass 3-D spectacles as well. And it happens enough that I thought I would share some of those instances where the movies seem to collide with my reality. (I won’t say it’s life imitating art because, let’s face it, you can’t really call too many of the movies I watch “art”.) To get the ball rolling, let’s start with 1981’s The Funhouse.

On the surface, this Tobe Hooper directed creep-fest is just another slasher movie. You’ve got a group of teenagers who attend a local fair and hit on the idea of staying in the funhouse overnight for a bit of sex and drugs (but no rock and roll, they have to keep things quiet, you know). Unfortunately, while roaming about the unusually huge corridors of the ride, the kids inadvertently witness the hideously deformed son of the funhouse’s owner commit a murder. And when the teens accidentally reveal their presence, the father sends his boy to track them down and finish them off. Pretty standard slasher stuff.

What makes The Funhouse rise a little above average for the genre is the setting. Fairs are weird places, or at least they’ve always seemed that way to me. As a kid, I was especially a bit spooked (and fascinated) by the sideshow attractions. You know the ones; the two-headed calf, the tattooed marvel, the double bodied girl. And they were always being incessantly hoisted on you by the amplified voices of barkers calling out “ALIVE, ALIVE, ALIVE!” as you walked by. And if you were there at night, the whole experience was even more dreamlike and surreal thanks to sensual overload of the smells, the lights, and the strange auditory mélange of screams and laughter. The Funhouse captures all of that perfectly and it gives the movie a real visceral sense of place, especially during the scenes where the kids wander the midway amidst booths full of the kind of people your mother warned you about.

Alas, for better or worse, sideshow attractions all but disappeared over the past decade or two. I suppose modern sensibilities just found them too demeaning to man and animal alike. Until this year, that is. This year, as my family walked towards the fairgrounds, my ears were treated to a sound they hadn’t heard for ages. “ALIVE, ALIVE, ALIVE!” And there it was, right as we came through the gate…

For a moment I was a kid again. If only it had been nighttime, the moment would have been perfect. And if only there had been a gigantic lumbering geek in a Frankenstein Monster mask, it could have been a scene right out of The Funhouse. Still, it was great to see the sideshow back. And I’m proud to say my 8-year old son demanded we see the Giant Rat before doing one single thing else at the fair. That’s my boy.

Now, of course, once we paid our admission and went in to take a peek, it goes without saying that we didn’t see the vicious cat-eating creature depicted on the banners. (I love midway art, by the way. One of my most prized coffee table books is Weedon & Ward’s Fairground Art.) No, instead of one of nature’s most fierce killing machines, we got this…

Quite a pleasant looking fellow actually. Now I’m sure some of you good Catholic boys and girls out there recognize this ferocious beast as the capybara, the largest rodent in the world typically found along waterways in South America. But for those of you who aren’t familiar with the capybara, you should become so, because… we get to eat this thing on Fridays during Lent.

As legend has it, approval was given by the Vatican sometime way back when to eat capybaras on days of abstinence because the beasts spend so much of their time in the water that they don’t really qualify as forbidden warm blooded land mammals. (Notice the little guy above has a nice dipping pool right next to him for when he starts to feel dry.) The truth behind that claim, however, is a little fuzzy. An article entitled Personal Narrative of the Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America During the Years 1799-1804 which appeared in a publication called The Port Folio in 1821 mentions Jesuit missionaries in Venezuela considering the capybaras to be aquatic creatures. And there is supposedly a reference in a 1974 book by Eduardo López de Ceballos in which he claims his great-great-grand-uncle traveled to Italy sometime in the 18th century and obtained a Papal decree declaring the capybara suitable for Lenten tables. Unfortunately, nobody seems to be able to find the decree, so maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t. Either way, it’s easy to see why folks like Jimmy Akin are skeptical. But Papal decree or no, the standing custom is that during Lent, if you’ve had all the popcorn shrimp from Captain D’s you can stand for one season, then it’s perfectly acceptable to have a capybara burger as a substitute.

Regardless of what you put in your mouth on Fridays during Lent, though, be it a slice of cheese pizza or a slab of giant water rat, the point is to remember why you gave up your regular menu to begin with. As the Catechism reminds us, "The seasons and days of penance in the course of the liturgical year (Lent and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord) are intense moments of the Church's penitential practice. These times are particularly appropriate for spiritual exercises, penitential liturgies, pilgrimages as signs of penance, voluntary self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving, and fraternal sharing (charitable and missionary works)". Sadly, that “concept of penance, which is one of the fundamental elements of the Old Testament message, is something we have increasingly lost.” Pope Benedict XVI said recently. “People somehow wanted to say only positive things. But the negative things do exist: that is a fact. The fact that one can change and allow oneself to be changed through penance is a positive gift. The early Church viewed it in this way also. It is imperative now really to start over in the spirit of penance.”

In the above trailer for The Funhouse, the voiceover ominously declares the freakish son in the movie to be “not in the image of his father”. But in a certain sense, that’s kind of true of all of us, as our sin deforms our souls and makes us not in the image of our heavenly Father. So maybe this Lent, we can join in with Pope Benedict and put the emphasis of the season back on penance so that we, and the Church as a whole, can experience the conversion of heart we so desperately need in order to conform ourselves to the image of Christ and truly be ALIVE, ALIVE, ALIVE! At least that’s what I’m going to try anyway.

Although I may find some other way than eating rat burgers to do it.