Progress I've stayed away from politics for a bit, so, I suppose that now is as good a time as any to dip my toe back in the water.
Let's talk about words.
What are the so-called "neoconservatives" actually conserving? As the horribly misnamed "Healthy Forest" or "Clear Skies" initiatives demonstrate, it's clearly not the environment.
It certainly isn't the federal treasury, which, by all accounts, will make the full faith and credit of the United States roughly equivalent to a ball of lint in your empty pocket if we continue on the current fiscal policy.
Remember when Bush raised his hand during the Republican National Convention in 2000 (you know, the one where they paraded all six of the Black people deluded enough to run for office on the GOP platform (who were subsequently shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that other Blacks might think they were sellouts) on stage to prove how diverse they are?) and pledged to restore honor and dignity to the White House?
Nice one, George.
My point? The conservatives pretty much suck at conserving anything. Are we self-styled progressives any better at living up to our moniker?
Well, Arianna Huffington, who is an interesting figure on the political landscape, to say the least, is trying her best. Here, on her website, she's proposing a new progressive platform intended to push both the Democrats and the country into a new, bold direction. It's an attempt to envision a country that actually lives up to the ideals we espouse, instead of the vapid rhetoric of Bush & Co. Along with MoveOn.org and Joe Trippi, she's hoping to push John Kerry to officially adopt this agenda.
She Does It All Many of you may remember how I sung the praises of Kobina Elaine Wright last fall when she launched her blog as a first step to blessing the world with the words of her hypnotic pen.
What many of you may not know is that the smattering of verse she rationed out on that blog where just the tip of her artistic iceberg.
In the months since, she's completely sold out her first volume of poetry, "Growth Spurt".
She's continued to expand her original language, Anibo, to a vocabulary of well over a thousand words.
She's putting the finishing touches on a second volume of poetry, dedicated to the memory of the Rwandan genocide, due out today.
AND, in addition to finishing her first feature script and outlining a second, she's hosting and performing for her very own spoken word event, tonight, May 19th, at Shelly’s Courthouse Bistro in Santa Ana, starting at 7:30.
I don't know about y'all, but I'm exhausted.
But I'll still be in Santa Ana for her show tonight. If you're in town, you should join me. And tell her I sent you.
Oh, and buy Growth Spurt AND the Rwanda book. It's well, well worth it.
In fact, Joe is one of my dearest friends in the world. We go back to the days when we were just a pair of wee lads, loudly arguing in a stadium in Cambridge, MA, which sucked more, Yale or Harvard?
(Of course, the astute among you already know that the answer is Yale. Harvard, after all, does something that sounds like those lovely birds that return to San Juan Capistrano every year. Go, Tigers.)
Anyway, we've long since left behind my box fade and his mane of shoulder-length hair. And, while I busy myself these days with edutainment, cleverly wrapped in the guise of the written word, Joseph has become the consumate performer. His rhymes, moves, and just the sheer force of his conviction hits you like a brick through a store-front window.
Now, after years on stage with renowned L.A. theatres like Zoo District and Sacred Fools, countless open mic victories where he tells you exactly why McDonald's Fiesta menu is NOT COOL, and endless hours of pop-locking from the Windy City to the streets of London, Joe is bringing it all home for his multi-dimensional one-man show, "You Want A Piece Of Me?", from July 8th through the 11th, right here in the City of Angels. Check out his site, PochoJoe.com for details.
Buy his book.
And, if you're in town, check out his weekly high-school open mic event, Downbeat 720, on the 2nd & 4th Tuesday of every month at the Miles Playhouse in Santa Monica.
I love comics (can you tell) and I love science. So, sci-fi comics are like nectar for me. Which is why I'm surprised that I'm so underwhelmed by Alan Moore's Tom Strong series.
However, one of my all-time favorite characters has always been Adam Strange - an archeologist who finds himself riding an intergalatic transport beam that takes him to the futuristic planet Rann. There, he gets to play with all the toys, be a superhero, and get the girl. Except, every few weeks, the transport beam wears off and sends him back to earth. So, he has to scour the planet to figure out where the next transport beam with hit so he can go back to his preferred life.
Well, it looks like comic writer Andy Diggle, whom I've heard alot about, but never actually read any of his work in The Losers or Swamp Thing, is going to resurrect Adam this summer. And, if the story is anywhere near as juicy as the sample art, I'm in.
Out Of The Shadows
In this corner: a horde of intergalactic vandals who rape and pillage entire planets, leaving the charred corpses of whole worlds in their murderous wake.
And, in the the other corner: a triple-jointed guy with a knife who can see in the dark.
Amidsts all the well-deserved Spider-hype, disaster epics, and the freakin' Illiad on film, don't overlook "The Chronicles of Riddick", the sequel to Vin Diesel's "bogeyman in space" movie, "Pitch Black".
For the life of me, I cannot remember the last, honest-to-God, space opera that I've seen on film that was actually good and original, from top to bottom. But this sounds like it.
Uncle Joe The last head of state to preside over such an extensive system of extra-legal prisons where gross human rights violations where a norm justified in the name of national security was Stalin.
Way to bring honor and dignity back to the Oval Office, Mr. President.
Coming from someone who is a self-professed storyteller, that very statement may, in and of itself, sound like a lie. But I've always had an easier time finding really sophisticated ways of telling the truth without getting in trouble. I suppose it comes from the assumption that I'm probably not a very convincing liar.
Of course, this is not to say that I never lie. That statement would ABSOLUTELY be a lie. But I try to avoid situations where I might be tempted.
Which is why the news I read on ArtBomb's blog absolutely floored me tonight. On more than one occasion, you've heard me herald the work and writing of Micah Wright, author of one of my favorite comics, Stormwatch: Team Achilles. Wright said he was a former Army Ranger who took part in the invasion of Panama back in the '80's, which made his stinging critiques of Bush & Co. all the more powerful.
Micah Wright is a big fat honkin' liar.
He never even did active duty service in the military. The closest he came was ROTC. And even though he tried to clean it up on his forum by saying he just couldn't live with the lies anymore, the truth of the matter is that the Washington Post was about to come out with an article based on a bunch of Freedom of Information Act requests that completely debunk him.
Would that there was a single word that could encompass both "angry" and "disappointed" to accurately portray my feelings right now.
"Angry" because I don't like being lied to, particularly in an instance where it was wholly unnecessary. Micah is a great writer, and his work in Stormwatch speaks for itself. He didn't need the padded resume. "Angry" because I have plenty of family who were active duty in the military, one of whom is a Gulf War veteran, and he's basically taken a big steaming dump on their commitments and sacrifice. "Angry" because Micah wrote reams on how much damage Jayson Blair did to his contemporaries and how awful George W. Bush is for inflating his military service. Jesus, at least Bush went through basic training!
"Disappointed" because so much of what he had to say was spot on, but will now be completely invalidated because everything he ever says will now be prefaced by the byline "Micah Wright, Liar". "Disappointed" because Stormwatch really was one of my favorite comics and, quite honestly, I'm simply not going to buy it or recommend it to anyone anymore because I refuse to support someone who would abuse his supporters and fans in such a way.
You'll notice that I've removed the links to all of Micah's books on Macroscope. I've promoted him so much, I figure it's only fair to let you all know the deal.
The Black Pages [UPDATE] My apologies for having the incorrect link to GettoSake. Everything should work know. Please go check them out. As most of you know, I'm a life-long comic book fan who has absolutely no intention of outgrowing that particular habit.
Of course, the problem with being a little black boy who reads The Avengers or Justice League of America is that there aren't very many superheroes I could reasonably expect to grow up to be without pulling a Michael Jackson. And the few Black superheroes out there always wore their blackness like a giant billboard sign.
Black Panther was an African prince. Black Lightning had a mask that actually included a prosthetic afro (needless to say, I appreciated the costume and name change to "Black Vulcan" for the Superfriends cartoon). Rage was 10 year old boy trapped in the body of a big, scary, angry Black man. It was just alot of cliches to me.
Sure, there were exceptions. Amazing Man was a Black World War II era hero created in the early 80's who was still accutely aware of the fact that he was black while not making a particularly big deal of that aspect of his personality above and beyond the fact that he was a hero. And what can I say about Blade that hasn't already been said?
Of course, now, there are enough kids like me who now create comics for a living, so they have a bit more to say about it. Hence, Dwayne McDuffie's Milestone Comics, a subgenre under D.C. that was an entire universe of Black superheroes, like Icon (Superman analogue), Hardware (Iron Man analogue), and, most notably, Static, who still appears to this day on Saturday morning cartoons.
Of course, while I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for superheroes, I also just kind of like comics as a vehicle for storytelling, just like all movies don't have to be Westerns and all TV shows don't have to be cop shows. So it's so refreshing to see my people on the printed and drawn page in new contexts.
So, I am WAY WAY proud to re-introduce to some of you and present to others the brothers (literally) at GettoSake.com. For years, they've been quietly doing Hip-Hop inspired online comics and animated web shorts. Well, after an extra-fly revamp of their site, it looks like they're ready for their close-up with a whole line of comics, from all different genres, featuring Black protagonists, courtesy of Dark Horse Comics. I have to tell you, the very notion of "The Life And Times of Credence Walker", kind of a Black Doc Savage, is down-right nerdgasmic. Check the article which describes GettoSake Comics in detail in the main link for this post, and be on the look out for the books in the coming months.
In the meantime, take a gander at their site here.
"Now Dinah, daughter of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob, went out to see the girls of the place.
And when Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he seized her, lay with her, and humbled, defiled, and disgraced her.
But his soul longed for her and clung to Dinah, daughter of Jacob, and he loved the girl and spoke comfortingly to her young heart's wishes.
And Shechem said to his father Hamor, get this girl to be my wife."
-Genesis 34:1-4
So, I few things before I get to the point.
I'm struck by the really sick pathology on display in this story. This guy violated this woman, and then decided to whisper some sweet nothings in her ear so he can keep her because he'd had just such a good time.
Of course, never let it be said that the Bible lacks irony. Since Dinah was a daughter of Israel, her father insisted that Shechem and every other man in his kingdom be circumcised before he would even consider letting this marriage take place. And then, three days after every man in the town was trying to recover from a radical penile adjustment, Dinah's brothers snuck into the town and killed EVERY male.
AND they took all their land and livestock.
AND they enslaved all the women and children.
Like most men, Dinah's siblings do better with wrath than with empathy.
Now, while you're all pondering the full meaning of the term "payback of biblical proportions", consider this: poor Dinah, who had been held captive, presumably as a sex slave, in Shechem's house this entire time (why does this sound more and more like a prehistoric episode of "Special Victims Unit"?), is rescued, but never mentioned again. Cast aside and forgotten in the sweep of Judeo-Christian history.
Why I'm I spinning this little told yarn from the Old Testament?
One of my very favorite people in the world, Dr. Monica A. Coleman of Bennett College, is releasing her very first book, The Dinah Project, named after the program she created in her church in Nashville to support victims of sexual assault and informed by her own experiences as a survivor of sexual violence. Given the fact that churches are notoriously bad for providing substantive help to their parishoners who are victims of incest, molestation, rape or any other manner of sexual assault, the book is intended as a guide for church leaders on how they can organize more effective programs for their own congregation.
Yes, gentle reader, I know that I can count on one hand those of you who are clergy or some sort of church leader. I know that a lot of you aren't involved in any sort of organized religion.
But I also know for a fact that each and every one of you knows AT LEAST one woman who's been raped, if not more, and probably at least one man who's been raped or molested.
Head to Head
Now that the weekend is over, I'd just like to state, for the record, that, despite better actors, a bigger budget, and a major studio release, the 1989 Dolph Lundgren "Punisher" movie is still waaaaaay more fun than this year's version of "The Punisher" with Thomas Jane & John Travolta. While the two principles are pretty good and Laura Herring is quite bootylicious, but, there simply wasn't enough action in this movie for my tastes. Clearly, I'm a degenerate product of Reaganomics, but I like my action movies to have, well, you know, ACTION.
Somebody, anybody, please tell me why is it so hard to make an action movie that actually has action? I'm begging somebody. ANYBODY.
This gets back to my larger complaints about movies today. Now that everybody in this town has read McKee's Story a billion times, they're all so obsessed with character arc & development and seem to have completely forgotten the purpose of these movies. Who gives a crap if the characters are sympathetic, or even realistic, if the movie made me want to gouge my eyes out with a straw because I was so goddamn bored?
It's very simple. I don't care about how great a dad Hugh Jackman is in Swordfish. I don't care if The Rock is going to get to open his dream restaurant after The Rundown. If I go see an action movie, I want to see people running, people fighting, people shooting, and things blowing up. And I want to see them frequently and at regularly scheduled intervals.
The Storm Is Over I'm sure you've all heard me sing the praises of writer Micah Wright's ongoing comic series, Stormwatch: Team Achilles, about a United Nations team of normal human special ops charged with policing the world's superhumans, for months now. Well, unfortunately, it looks like you'll only hear me wax nostalgic about the good old days after July, because the title was just cancelled, largely due to slow sales.
In retrospect, I suppose it was only a matter of time. Micah used his comic to relentlessly skewer modern America's political landscape, with characters like Patrick Kent, the illiterate President of the United States who is also a former Klansman, or the utterly inept morons who make up the official U.S. sponsored superteam, the Homeland Security Squadron, or their leader, who quits to go work for Corporate America as the Hallibastard, or Sonny Terns, a racist Southern senator that Stormwatch kidnaps and keeps tied up in their basement, forced to watch as they replace him with a pod person who redirects all his legislation to fund historically black colleges.
Who knows what was the straw that broke the camel's back? Was it the use of George Washington, now reincarnated through Freemason witchcraft, who's so horrified by what he sees as the perversion of America, that he becomes a terrorist and leads a guerilla army to try to overthrow the government?
Or maybe, just maybe, it was the most recent issue, where the real Merovingian, i.e. the Holy Grail, the descendent of Jesus & Mary Magdelene's love child, asks Stormwatch to assassinate his brother so that he can consolidate the power of the Mysterium Tremendum into himself and initiate the Second Coming.
And, when confronted with the descendant of the Word made flesh, Stormwatch's leader, the ultra-Machievellian Ben Santini, replies, "Superpowers don't impress me", and then cooly shoots a totally innocent bystander in the head and insists that the Merovingian raise him from the dead to prove his identity.
Just hardcore stuff. I'm really sad to see it go.
The interview in the title link above features Micah's thoughts on what worked, what didn't, and some of the things he was planning to do down the line. Check it out.
Once, I met a porcelain rose
Lying on the floor on the corner of a train.
Her pedals curved into a soft bulb
So precious and delicate
She begged to be cupped, cuddled, caressed
With the lightest touch
And the sunlight slipped over her ruby frame
And her scent conjured dreams
Sweeter than a field of poppies
And yet,
Only I seemed entranced by this gentle flower
All shades of men stepped
Over, and around, and behind, and sometimes on
The rose.
One or two snatched her from the ground,
Heaving her aroma with a great snort
Before dumping her
Back to the floor.
To them, my rose was just like any other bud
Decoration for the walls,
Or maybe an addition to a box of potpourri,
Mementos of flowers long since clipped and forgotten.
They make vases out of Yankees beer mugs
And ration out water until her pedals begin to wilt,
When the façade rapidly comes to an end.
Perhaps they avoid the rose because of the thorns
She’s grown, not realizing that they themselves
Plant the seeds for such defenses.
But I’ve fallen in briar patches before,
And I see past the thicket of thorns to the flower underneath.
I see her on a pedestal in my home,
Embraced by a soft bed of earth,
Bathed in sunlight that finally lets her blossom
I see the eternal spring she can bring,
Because, you see,
I love the rose.
But, then, the bell rang, and I could see that
This was my stop,
So I had to leave her behind.
I saw Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" about a month ago. I started writing this post the day after and, well, as you can imagine, it started to get a little out of control.
So, let me take a step back.
Mel Gibson's father Hutton is a complete loon. The man has gone on record denying the existence of the Holocaust, and Mel refuses to rebuke him. Gibson himself belongs to a branch of Catholicism that rejects the reforms of the second Vatican council, one of which is the Holy See's official statement refuting the idea that Jews should be held accountable for Jesus's death. By his own account, he is not a good person.
Media accounts of the near-Fangoria level of violence in The Passion really made me reluctant to see it, let alone pay $14 at the Arclight for the privilege. I saw pictures of devote churchgoers, who probably won't see another movie from godless Hollywood all year round, walking out of theatres in tears. I worried with my friends that many of these folks aren't particularly media-saavy and will have a hard time keeping in mind that this is simply a movie, a distinctly interpreted exercise told through the prism of Mel Gibson's mind, and not a documentary about Christ's final moments.
A very large and vocal part of me did not want to see this movie. In fact, a large part of me even resented the existence of this movie. But I felt like I had to see it. I can't NOT talk about it, and I can't talk about it without seeing it.
Of course, it helped that I had a friend with free passes to the Magic Johnson Theatre at Crenshaw Plaza.
My initial reaction?
That was a great movie.
Surprised?
I am a Christian. Born and raised as a Protestant - United Methodist to be exact. I consider myself pretty faithful. I pray daily. I try to read the Bible daily. I tithe. On the other hand, I haven't regularly attended church since high school. I like to say that I haven't found a church that moves me yet. The ones that I have seen, either back at Princeton, or in my old home in Montclair, New Jersey, or, most recently, here in Los Angeles, always seem so contrived. After spending all of my formative years at Mt. Zion United Methodist Church back in Baltimore, I've probably heard just about every cliche` and overused Christian phrase on the planet. I can instantly tell when a minister is simply going through the motions and when he's actually speaking "The Word".
For those of you who may not be completely up on the Bible, one of the most interesting scriptures to me is the Gospel according to John, Chapter 1, Verse 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"
What's interesting to me is that, way back in the book of Genesis, the first thing God does is speak. And God's speech, the formulation of words, is the original creative act. Everything in existence, everything that IS, spawns from that Word.
Christian theology goes on to tell us that Jesus is, in fact, The Word, made into flesh. The power of God, squeezed into the form of a prehistoric Bob Villa.
I'm a writer. I've written my entire life, in one form or another. But I think I've only recently become truly aware of the power of writing, and of words. Stephen King once said that writing is a form of telepathy - a vehicle by which the author can insert their own thoughts into the heads of others. In Mark Millar's Superman: Red Son, Lex Luthor is able to defeat a Stalinist Man of Steel with a simple phrase, written on a slip of paper, that drives him to the brink of suicide. I wrote a poem to my ex-girlfriend that, when I recite it, even brings other women to tears. The right word from the right person can take you past Heaven.
There's a scene in "The Passion", where Pontius Pilate questions Jesus to determine his guilt, and Jesus tells him "whenever you hear Truth spoken, you hear my voice".
The point is, I know the Word when I hear it. Sometimes it's from the voice in the pulpit of my family's church. Other times, it's the casual comment of a total stranger. It's a song on Hot 92.3. It's the rhyme from a poet in a dank coffee shop. It's the affections breathed into my ear with a kiss at midnight.
Of course, that's the trick with the Word. It can come from anywhere, at any given time. As I struggled over the seemingly decadent lives of so many clergy, a very good friend who happens to be an AME minister told me that being called to preach in no way means that you're a good person.
I'm saying all this to say that, yes, Mel Gibson is an extremely imperfect messenger, but this movie forced me to confront issues with my own faith that I've been dodging for years.
Case in point: I've always tried to conceptualize God and Jesus in almost mathematical terms. For instance, if sin, theologically speaking, is the state of being separated from God, it's impossible for God to understand, and, therefore, absolve sin, without God somehow separating from himself. Which is, essentially, what Jesus is. He's a sliver of God. A slice. A portion of the whole.
But, to me, that's always meant that Jesus was not an ordinary man as we think of it. After all, he can see the future, heal the sick with a touch, walk on water, feed thousands with just a loaf of bread and a pair of fish, turn water into wine, tell demons to hit the bricks, and raise the dead, including himself.
Superman has nothing on this guy.
So, when people talk about how painful and costly the crucifixion is, and they're all so impressed with the sacrifice Jesus made, I always felt like they missed the point. To me, Jesus was not an ordinary man and his entire reason for being here was to die. It wasn't some great sacrifice. It was his mission. And, since he knows the future, he knows he'll succeed. Where's the drama and sacrifice in that?
Ironically enough, my daily Bible reading took me through the Easter story in the week before I saw The Passion, so the story elements were fresh in my mind. I'd forgotten that, according to the Bible, Jesus pleaded so hard with God to find another way, ANY other way, to complete his mission that he sweat blood. I'd forgotten that, as he hung on the cross, Jesus found a moment of abject dispair where he literally screams to the Heavens why has God forsaken him.
These two things helped to highlight for me what is the essential paradox about Jesus - he is the Word Made Flesh, but he still acts like a man. Because that's what he is.
Which changes a great many things. When Jesus does all of his miracles, and then says to his disciples that they can do these things, too, if they only had faith, it makes you wonder about the nature of faith.
I have a very good friend who speaks constantly on manifestation and energy and tapping into the intelligent source of creation. She'd sooner shoot herself than ever actually use the word "God" (which, needless to say, gives me pause), but she is also completely confident in her world view. There isn't a single doubt in her mind.
I really, really hate people who don't have doubts. I want to attack them, to know what gives them the nerve to actually think that they've got it all figured out. But, I've forced myself to realize that my problem isn't with them for their arrogance. It's with myself, because I'm riddled with doubt. I always have another question. I can always conceive of the alternative. In many ways, I think that much of the really harsh criticism of this film from the left, from people like Christopher Higgins, starts in this same place - an utter disdain for the faithful. Mel's issues only make it easier.
But I also realize that you can't really acquire faith. Just like when Morpheus says that no one can ever actually be TOLD what the Matrix is. You have to use building blocks. Use the fact that I have faith that I'll wake up tomorrow morning in my right mind and with all my fingers and toes as a way to expand my faith to bigger things.
The Passion also made me re-examine the nature of sin. As I've said before, sin is that which separates you from the divine. So, in many ways, we define our own Hell. We all have our own interpretations of what it means to be God-like, and we all have a sense on how close we, individually, meet our own standards. I've always taken the fire images of Hell to be metaphors for the state of constant longing, when you know that you must spend all eternity outside of God's presence.
The Passion paints a different picture of sin, as illustrated through it's depiction of the final fate of Judas Iscariot. As Judas agonizes over his betrayal of Jesus, a pair of kids start to taunt him for being a crazy man. But their taunts become more violent, to the point that they actually snap and bite at him. Their faces contort into grotesque monstrous images. In the end, they form a horde, like a pack of wolves, that drive Judas from the city and into a hangman's noose of his own making. It's as if they were conjured by his own spiritual torment.
I'm reminded of a passage in Genesis, where God tries to warn Cain, as he senses his growing anger and jealousy towards Abel, that, if he does wrong, "Sin crouches at his door, seeking to consume you." Somewhere else in the Bible, Satan is likened to a lion, stalking the Earth, in search of souls to devour. Which must have been what Dante had in mind in his image of the final circle of Hell in the Divide Comedy - Judas, trapped in Satan's mouth, chewed on like Prometheus, but never dying, for all eternity.
It's an interesting contrast to what we see of Jesus in the movie, on his arduous journey to Golgotha, where the crowds and the Roman soldiers continue to whip and kick and beat him, even after he's been lashed to within an inch of his life and forced to carry a giant log up and down city streets. In the very beginning of the film, Satan warns Jesus that no one man can bear the sins of the entire world. if the demon children are a representation of the sins of one man, it gives new meaning to the enormity of the task that is set before the Messiah.
Now, for those of you who aren't Christian or interested in theology, who've managed to stick around all the way down through my missives about this film and my religious faith, my hats' off to you. I'm simply saying all these things to illustrate one point. As a Christian, particularly as a media-savvy, jaded, non-church-going, somewhat secular Christian, this movie had a tremendous amount of meaning for me, and, for that, I'm grateful to Mel for making it. And, as a filmmaker, I applaud the absolute artistry that went into its construction. Since it seems to be on track to be one of the highest grossing films of all time, I'm curious to see if it gets remembered next year at Oscar time.
But, just like I believe that this is a film made by Christians and intended largely for Christians, I don't know that I can adequately gauge how offensive it is to Jews. Personally, I don't think it's particularly anti-Semetic. Yes, some of the main villains are the Jewish high priests, but I didn't get the sense that the film was saying that they were bad because they were Jews and, therefore, all Jews are bad. After all, aren't Jesus and all of his supporters Jewish? Moreover, a point could be made that the film illustrates what the Jewish high priests may have felt was a legitimate greviance with Jesus. After all, they're living under an occupation, and some dude who seems to have his own cult appears out of nowhere, claiming to be God incarnate, and that he's mad at his own priests so he's going to destroy their temple and make himself king of the Jews. Blasphemy & insurrection, all wrapped into one package. It would almost be like what you'd expect most pastors to do if some guy showed up today and claimed to be the second coming. Conservative Christians would be calling for his head on a platter.
On the other hand, I can see how it would be uncomfortable at best for Jews to see guys wearing their religious regalia and acting like Snidley Whiplash. In fact, I have a friend who felt that the depiction of Judas' demon childen tormentors was also an anti-Semetic statement because, presumably, the children were Jews. Or the fact that Satan is seen lurking among the high priests during the scouring.
At the end of the day, I don't think it's anymore helpful for Christians to tell Jews that the movie isn't anti-Semetic than it is for White people to tell Blacks that a movie like "Traffic" isn't racist when it shows Erika Christiansen being used as a sex slave for a Black drug dealer. The issue isn't intent, but, rather, how much these things play into and, perhaps, legitimize existing stereotypes. Ultimately, no one can tell anyone else what they can or cannot be offended by. Whether you intended to offend is irrelevant if offense is actually taken. If Jews say they find the movie offensive, it is, by definition, offensive to Jews. The issue, therefore, creates what one of my friends in academia calls "a teaching moment".
Until this movie came out, I had no appreciation for just how Christian our culture is from the perspective of non-Christians. That, in and of itself, makes its existence worthwhile.
Moreover, now that I have some perspective on it, I can see just how much the fact that I am a Christian colors my profound reaction to that movie. Conversely, I'm now aware how much, if you were not raised in a Christian tradition, that "The Passion" probably appears gratuitously violent and exploitative. In many ways, if you don't know the basics of the Gospels, the movie may not even make any sense.
But these conversations, both with the larger community and within myself, wouldn't even exist if the film did not exist. And for that, despite all the egregious faults of the messenger, I am deeply appreciative of the message.
P.S. - but I'm still angry that, after all the trouble to make it authentic by using Latin and Arameic, they STILL couldn't get a brown-skinned Jesus. "Historically accurate", my ass. I guarantee you Jim Caviezel does NOT have hair like wool or feet of brass. Ya dig?
p.p.s. - and when is somebody going to do a Mary Magdelene movie? This book, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala REALLY has me intrigued.
Apparently there's a forgotten, non-Canonical gospel (one of the Dead Sea Scrolls? not sure) written by Mary herself, where she is actually one of Jesus' apostles and one to whom he revealed some secret knowledge. Needless to say, this didn't make Peter and the boys happy. Was there a bit of Hater-Ade served at the Last Supper?
I must admit, despite my good Christian upbringing, Gnosticism fascinates me. Like looking at the deleted scenes on a DVD.
Hearts On Her Sleeve Part of being an engineer involves getting past the theoretical and moving to the practical. It's not enough to conceive of a problem - we also have to propose solutions.
Here, I'm going to talk about a big problem, and how one sista is trying to make her contribution to the solution.
Forget what Jay-Z tells you. He does not, in fact, love girls, girls, girls, girls. Consider the utter disdain for women most of his lyrics and the lyrics of the lion's share of mainstream hip-hop today. Now, whether he loves Beyonce is, quite honestly, not my concern. But, at least according to this article in the Village Voice, there are at least 15 slang terms for Black women in modern hip-hop vernacular.
And they're all bad.
Hoodrat. Skeezer. Hoochie. Trick. Ho.
The insidiously disrespectful "Wifey".
And, of course, the old stand-by: Bitch.
And, while the study examines the overall trends away from love, commitment, and lasting family relationships and the unpleasant corrolations with HIV infection rates among the hip-hop generation, it also touches on the degree to which sistas have completely internalized the notion of their own worthlessness.
Which is why I was so geeked to read the article about Black Girl Apparel in the L.A. Weekly.
Basically, fashion designer Reny Monk decided that the easiest way to proclaim the joy of being a Daughter of the Nile was to simply stamp it in big bold letters on every conceivable piece of clothing: Tops. T-Shirts. Shorts. Even underwear. So, the black woman and those of us who love to watch her will find her being affirmed at every stage of her dressing (or undressing) ritual.
There is genius in simplicity, folks.
Check her out, and send her and the Black ladies in your life a little love.
Those of you who are familiar with Los Angeles geography know that there is very little that is glamorous about the part of town that bears the moniker of the entertainment industry.
Case in point: roughly 3 hours ago, I heard a series of gunshots from about a block away from my bathroom window. Now, when I say a series of gunshots, I mean three distinct bursts of of about three to ten shots each. I know these were gunshots because the next sound I heard about 10 minutes later was a police helicopter zooming into position above my neighborhood.
What's ironic to me is that the bullets seemed to emmanate from the north side of Franklin Avenue, which I would normally consider the demarcation line between those of us still storming the gates of the industry and the hillside homes of those who've long since laid claim to the palace china. You'd think that The Hungry would be more likely to cap off a few rounds.
Then again, Charles Manson did lead his entourage to pick a house in those same hills at random to continue the second night of their killing spree.
Maybe I shouldn't invest in any real estate up there when I blow up.
Did I mention that the movie I just happened to be watching about an hour before all Hell broke loose in my neigborhood was The Silence of the Lambs?
This is on my mind because I just watched an interview on Charlie Rose with the producers of a documentary appearing on PBS this Thursday night called "The Ghosts of Rwanda", following the legacy of the genocide in that country, ten years later.
In April of 1994, I was a junior in college, recovering from a NSBE National Convention in Pittsburgh where I really thought I might have partied enough that I might never need to go to another party again for the rest of my life.
Needless to say, that wasn't the case.
Meanwhile, as I was reminiscing about a girl from Rutgers-NSBE who was way too fine to have such a heavy Jersey accent, half a world away, a some ethnic Hutu men paid a visit to their sister's house and proceeded to murder their young nieces & nephews with weapons ranging from machetes to hammer claws because they were half-Tutsi.
There's a whole lot I don't know about the Rwandan genocide. I haven't the slightest idea what the difference is between a Hutu and a Tutsi. And what little I did learn, I probably got from the "Sense and Antisense" episode of Chris Carter's Millenium, which, in and of itself was a very heavy exploration into the mental and spiritual costs of human evil.
Apparently, the Hutu government had enough of a problem with the Tutsi minority in that country that they armed the militias and ordered them to kill ALL the Tutsis in the country. By the time the killing stopped, they managed to kill about half of them. The number of corpses were estimated to be between 800,000 and one million.
Now, by shear numbers, the Holocaust has it beat. But the Nazis had really industrialized the process, literally creating death engines, where bunches of people were horded into a room, gassed, incinerated, and then blown out smokestacks in ash so thick it looked like it was snowing. As far as the actual executioners were concerned, they just had to press a button and brush off their shoulders at the end of the day. The Shoah was all the more horrible because of it's utter banality.
Rwanda was massacre the old fashioned way. Every one of those 800,000 to one million people was individually stabbed, bludgeoned, and/or raped, and not necessarily in that order. At its height, the death squads were said to be able to kill as many as a thousand people every twenty minutes.
There is a moment in the documentary where one of the few UN peacekeepers who actually stayed as the killing began recalls a meeting he had with one of the death squads, in an attempt to negotiate an end to the massacre. These men came to the meeting with fresh blood still on their shirts. He says that, as he looked into their eyes, he saw nothing but complete and utter darkness. "The face of evil", in his words.
"And the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'."
Now, that may or may not be a rhetorical florish. I can't really say because I've never come face to face with a man who's taken a coffee break from killing his neighbors with a machete, non-stop, for the better part of a month. I suspect that it might be a somewhat life-altering experience. One would think that you'd almost have to start seeing other human beings as something other than human. Like, perhaps, walking, talking slabs of meat. Or food. Or puddy.
Of course, at that point, you yourself have stopped being human in the process, right?
Many of these men who participated in the genocide were not trained killers or hardened criminals or anything of that nature. Did they have families to go home to, wives who'd wash, press, and fold the blood-stained shirt? And, after wallowing in the flesh of their victims all day long, could they draw the distinction between that and lovemaking with said dutiful wife?
But, at a deeper level, acts of evil are committed on a daily basis right under our noses. I recently found one of those websites that lists if any convicted sex offenders reside in your neighborhood. Apparently, there are three or four guys, like, on my block.
There are kids everywhere in my apartment complex. Who knows what's happening to them behind closed doors. Do those same people have these dead eyes? Would I know a killer or a rapist or a whatever just by looking at them?
Anyway, I could pontificate on the nature of evil ad naseum. However, I strongly recommend watching PBS Thursday night. I have a sense that there's alot to be learned. In addition to the filmmakers, Charlie Rose also had the author of this book about the genocide on his panel.
I don't really have a point to all of this, other than, perhaps this:
I recently had an argument with a friend of mine that began as a discussion about The Passion of the Christ but branched off into religion in general. One of his complaints was that he didn't like the exclusive nature of organized religions.
To which, I would say this - there are some things that are simply not OK, such as, for instance, hacking biracial members of your own family to death with an ax.
Of course, for Christians, our challenge is to find a way to offer forgiveness and even fellowship when faced with the horror. But how can you do that when you look into someone else's eyes and only see the abyss?
Clark was the senior White House official for counterterrorism for the last four American Presidents. Clark claims that, not only did G.W. Bush & Co. ignore personal warnings from Bill Clinton & his entire national security team that Al Qaeda was the biggest threat to America, not only did Bush ignore Clark's repeated requests for a coordinated effort among top staff, not only did Bush ignore DAILY admonitions from CIA director George Tenet about the threat posed by Al Qaeda, but, even AFTER 9/11, after Tenet, the FBI, and Clark all said Al Qaeda was responsible and Iraq had nothing to do with it, Bush deliberately withheld resources from going after Bin Laden & the Taliban in anticipation of an invasion of Iraq that he ordered the Pentagon to start planning on September 16, 2001.
The Charlie Rose interview was particularly stunning to me for several reasons. Clark makes Bush sound almost like Ahab, and Saddam is his white whale. Clark also states that, even if we catch Bin Laden now, it will actually have a negligible effect on stopping future terrorist attacks because, if I may use my comic book analogies, in the 2 years since the invasion of Afganistan, Al Qaeda, which used to resemble Cobra Command, where Bin Laden personally approved every major attack, has now transformed into Hydra, with huge, unknown, independent cells that can continue to function in conjunction with local terrorists (see Spain) in the absence of a centralized command. He makes the point that, while roughly the same number of terrorist attacks have been thwarted consistently since 1996, the actual number of successful Al Qaeda attacks have actually INCREASED since 9/11 and the start of the so-called War on Terror.
And, to further demonstrate the incompetence of the Bush administration, Clark also responded to those who accuse him of releasing this book now, in the thick of the Presidential election season. Apparently, there's a law that says the White House has to actually approve any book written by a staffer regarding their tenure with the President. Clark says that he submitted the book to the White House for approval in NOVEMBER, and that they are largely responsible for the book's release at this time.
Which also says to me that they had to approve Paul O'Neill's book as well.
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders what advantage they could gain by allowing such books to be published. But that would be just crazy, right?
If you can catch the rebroadcast or a transcript of Clark's interview on Charlie Rose, watch it. It's well worth it.
In the meantime, in my ongoing quest for self-gratification, you can buy both the Clark book and the O'Neill book right here. Either click on the link in the main title above, or use these spiffy little Amazon buttons below.
As a side note, Charlie's first guest tonight was Rashid Khalidi, the director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, to talk about the Israeli assassination of the founder of Hamas. Now, to say that Sheik Ahmed Yassin was a moderate among the Hamas camp is kind of like saying our sun isn't very hot relative to other stars. However, the dude was at least open to the idea of a long ceasefire with Israel. Now, the only people left in charge in Palestine are the ones who want to destroy Israel and make Palestine into an Islamic theocracy. But, as Professor Khalidi pointed out, Israel has seemed to target the most moderate members of the Palestinian leadership first, and then work their way down the extremist scale throughout the entire rebellion of the last three years. Even when it started, where Hamas was clearly responsible for most of the suicide bombings, the IDF choose, instead, to go after Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, who had about as much control over Hamas as I do. Which leads Khalidi to speculate whether that was the entire point - eliminate the moderates so we can get on with this whole "clash of civilizations" thing, better known as the Ninth Crusade.
But, given the choice between some bad people who hate you who might be willing to sit in the same room with you while they hate you, and some killers who will do everything in their power to try to take your life rather than share the room with you, who in their right mind would actually prefer to deal with the killers?
Switch Hitters One of the GOP's favorite attacks on John Kerry these days is that he's a flip-flopper, i.e. he tries to have it both ways. Which is, of course, yet another case of the pot calling the kettle black. Consider, as my fellow blogger Daily Kos has, all the myriad ways in which George W. Bush has said one thing, then done the exact opposite, and THEN, more importantly, claimed that he'd still done the first thing he said.
Sometimes I truly believe Bush has some kind of psychological disorder. The man is clearly delusional.
And shall we get into the Bush claim that Kerry is weak on defense because he voted against certain weapons systems & intelligence funding bills? First of all, it seems to me that alot of these pet military projects are relics from the Cold War, when we still expected to meet another big army on a battlefield. In other words, they're not a whole lot of help against guerilla fighters.
And, again in the pot-kettle category, Bush himself has underfunded basic stuff for troops in Iraq. They're actually encouraging military units to ask local businesses to donate steel to armour their vehicles. Families of soldiers are being asked to raise money and, instead of sending care packages, they're sending body armour to their loved ones in the Gulf because the Pentagon hadn't paid for enough of them before they shipped out.
Now, I know there are a lot of folks who support Bush because he's allegedly "tough on terror". How can anyone who loves the military support this man? He's so busy transferring the nation's wealth into the hands of his kleptocracy, that he won't even pay for the war he's tricked us into fighting.
Not that I haven't tasted new sounds in a long time. As long as I have Rhapsody and music-loving friends with CD burners, I manage to keep growing my collection.
It's just that, like so many other things in my life (books, comics, movies, etc.), my music tastes have become much more selective and specific than they were in the past. There was a time that I bought anything that made me move. Which explains such unfortunate additions to my rack as NORE's "Superthug". Of course, that was back when I was perpetually planning for some mythic house party in the ill-defined future, when having 6 different versions of Luke's "Work It Out" actually made plausible sense.
Now, I'm older and my living room entertaining has become much more, shall we say, personalized. Isaac Hayes and other 70's artists my father can't stand have slowly but surely replaced any and all club anthems and left them for, well, the club.
Interestingly enough, my mother loves Isaac Hayes. They also disagree over Muhammad Ali. Mom loves him from when he was pretty and talked trash, while Dad, missing the obvious similarities between The Greatest of All Time and his good-looking, trash-talking self, merely respects him. But I digress.
Moreover, as a writer and a resident of Los Angeles, my regular habits play a much bigger place in my musical appetites, and, unfortunately, Nelly rarely makes music I want to drive to and never makes music I want to write to.
I look for music that inspires.
Frank Sinatra for the magic of New York City.
Godsmack for the horror that hides in your bedroom closet.
New Wave Top 40 from my teenage years for unrequited love.
Roy Ayers for the agelessness of the Motherland.
The point, of course, is that I already own or can access most of these at my leisure, some from other discs and others over the web.
So the fact that I heard an album online, then felt strong enough to buy it here in the real world means a number of things to me.
The album in question is the latest from Meshell Ndegeocello, entitled "Comfort Woman".
If memory serves, comfort women were the daughters of Japan who were pressed into service as sex slaves for the army of the Rising Sun during World War II. And my sense of the album is that the title is oddly poetic and totally appropriate. It seems to both acknowledge and still revel in the shackles that love seems to place on us - our willingness to plunge into the deep end of another human soul and let it mingle with our own, sometimes even at the risk of drowning.
Because the world is hot and the water is just so very, very cool.
So happy I'm here
Born on a black star
I've come so far
To give you love
Beautiful, beautiful love
Beyond the stars
Is where I'm from
Come with me
We can live in love
I come from a world made of love
I want to take you there
I come from a world made of love
I want to take you there
We can fly butterflies
Don't leave
Stay
Stay with me
Say you love me
Look in my eyes
I love you
I just want to love you
With beautiful, beautiful love
Which brings me to the real issue at hand, namely love.
A new friend recently told me that she didn't like Male R&B, because she thought most of it was bullshit. "Let's Get It On" she could handle, because she felt like it just cut to the chase. Anything beyond that, to her, was simply a lie that men tell to lasso ass.
Which is interesting to me on two levels. On the first level, in my opinion, most contemporary Male R&B, populated with the likes of Justin Timberlake, Genuwine, R. Kelly, and the rest of their cohorts, seem to be pretty crude and direct about their intentions ("I wanna rock your body", "You owe me", "You remind me of my jeep...I wanna ride it."). On the second level, it sounds like she's presuming that no man is ever actually sincere when he professes to love a woman.
I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm a fan of Male R&B. But, as my good buddy in Harvard Square likes to say, I am a "'sucka for love".
Maybe because I was raised by two people who can't seem to agree on music or old-school fighters or what movies to watch or how much they love church or any number of things they don't have in common, but still manage to stay silly and lovey-dovey after 43 years of marriage.
Maybe because the sight of a 70 year old widow, beaming as she walking down the aisle in a no-frills burgundy dress to marry a 70 year old widower was, without a doubt, the single most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my entire life.
Maybe because I'm an obsessive movie fan and I've internalized the Hollywood notion of the happy ending.
Whatever the reason, the fact of the matter is I believe in love. Love in all its forms.
My aunt once told me that she didn't know what unconditional love was until the day that she became a grandmother. A very good friend of mine said that he really considered the full ramifications of the idea that God loves him, no matter what he's done, and that it nearly brought him to tears.
But if we don't ever think to question the love between a parent and a child, or of a worshipper for their God, or of a patriot for his country, or among old friends, how did romance become so farfetched?
I'm sure it begins with sex. After all, our bodies are very much like a recording device. And no matter how much you love mama's home cooking, it doesn't quite leave the same mark in your memory as looking into someone else's eyes as you both share a moment of ecstasy. Even the most delicate kiss is looped on our lips and our hearts a thousand times more than any dap you receive from your boys. Someone once told me how she once got it so good that she actually shed tears of joy amidst her screams of passion. We never forget the things that make us cry.
And yet, offering our bodies is far easier than our hearts. In fact, I suspect there are many people who'd sooner have sex with someone to distract them from actually looking at who they really are (or who they THINK they really are) on the inside. As if helping someone achieve an orgasm will make them stop asking all those annoying questions about your interior life.
Romantic love is the only kind of love that operates in two dimensions.
And sometimes, even more than that, because beyond our hearts and bodies, there's also history. How many relationships have had the seeds of their destruction sown years before when a child couldn't escape the unspeakable appetites of a fiendish adult, or the rubberstamping of violence in their parents' relationships, or the hard choices forced upon them through their responsibilities to their own children, or the complication of an STD, and so on, and so on, and so on...
But does the fact that the equations are more complex mean that they're simply unsolvable? No, but they are harder, and I think many simply give up. They just ignore one variable in the equation and stick with the easy one, because it's simply not that hard to sleep with someone (or someones) you don't love.
Of course, I personally don't believe you can ever completely ignore the other half of the equation. Your body is still recording the experiences. They still have more meaning than last night's steak. Those who delude themselves into thinking it's just an endurance sport do so at their peril.
And let's be honest for a moment. For each and every person who talks about how cynical they are, about how much they don't believe love exists, and that all men are dogs, and that they don't love these hoes, and all the other crap we tell ourselves to make it OK that we aren't getting the love we really want, there was probably someone, somewhere, sometime, who made them float on air. Someone who made them want to call every single person they've ever known in their entire lives to tell them just how absolutely grand they've made them feel, body and soul. Every last one of them has had at least a taste of love. They're just mad that they were only given the sampler before they were kicked out of the restaurant.
And this applies to both men and women. Every dog was once just a precocious little boy who had his heart broken and then decided he'd have to teach every other girl a lesson for what the first one did to him. Does it excuse his behavior? Of course not.
But when the Dramatics say they want to go outside in the rain so she can't see them cry, or Teddy Pendegrass says he's been thinkin'-thinkin'-thinkin', and then started drinkin'-drinkin'-drinkin' because he missed her, or Earth Wind and Fire asked if she minded if they touched, if they kissed, if they held her tight 'til the morning light, I know for a fact that they are speaking SOMEONE'S truth, even if it's not their own.
On the other hand, I'm saddened that I have to reach back at least 15 years to find a preponderance of songs by men talking about more than just "I'm really glad I get to bone you on a regular basis." I'm sickened by all these stupid falsetto Romeos who have nothing to offer women on wax but a ride in an overpriced car, a good lay, and maybe some really nice jewelry for their troubles. And that fact forces me to at least acknowledge the reality that spawned my friend's lack of faith in love.
I miss the days when more brothers had the stones to actually love women.
At least I'd have some company. :-)
And I really miss the days when more women knew what to do with love when they actually got it.
I guess we're all out of practice. Maybe we need some lessons from the old folks. Hey, if Mom & Dad can do it for four decades, they might be on to something.
Anyway, I love this album, so here's my first truly shameless Amazon.com plug. Buy it. You won't regret it.
And, while I'm on the subject, I'd also like recommend "Salvation: Black People and Love", by bell hooks. I'm sure you can guess it's relevance to the topic of the day.
