Archives for November 2005

Jeremy Irons in Dungeons & Dragons or Ben Kingsley in Bloodrayne?

What is it about Oscar-winning Englishmen and the lure of playing evil tyrants in wretched fantasy movies?

Reader Adam passes this along in response to my Folk post. Do click the “Listen Now” button at left.

What is it about the Midwest? I haven’t dug too deeply yet, but the first impression is that this is a measured, non-hysterical, even thoughtful attempt to actually do some good.

…and yeah, you’ve heard the argument before, and yeah, it’s just too darn smooth, but gosh all, the good people at JibJab have a good time with Big Box Mart.

…maybe it’s that document. I don’t have much to offer, but this morning, I did just happen to put on the one shirt I own from International Male, and I thought a few words of explanation might be in order.

I started receiving the International Male catalog when I was around 14, living at home in a small city in upstate New York. I do not know quite why I started receiving it – I was usually a Land’s End/J.Crew kind of catalog shopper, and then only rarely (i.e., back to school clothes shopping with Mom). But I leafed through it as I would any other self-conscious 14-year-old, hoping to find cool clothes to cover a deep-seated (ahem, document, ahem) lack of cool. I did think the banana hammocks a little odd, but I was something of a naif, and didn’t give it much thought.

I did, however, find a pair of jeans (Code Bleu!) and a button down shirt that I really liked. When I called to order, the gentleman on the other end of the line must have been surprised by the youthful timbre of my voice. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Fourteen.”

“Well, if you ever want to talk, just call me, anytime.” I think he said his name was Steven.

Now, I’m not about to ascribe predatory motives to Steven. I think he probably thought he had a young homosexual on the line, possibly a young homosexual who was confused and frightened. He probably wanted to help me. At the time, I just thought it was really, really weird for this sales dude to be letting me know that I could call him if I wanted to talk.

The jeans wore out – I got holes in the knees (having fun yet, Matthew?) But the shirt, which I purchased some 18 years ago, is still with me – the cotton is somehow both fabulously tough and fabulously soft.

…we are so sorry. Just two posts ago, we called you mean. What’s worse, we called you dull-witted. We take it all back. As fine a send-up of media hand-wringing over its recent failures, combined with a sly self-laceration over the fixation on gossip (guilty as charged) in times of crisis, as we’ve read. And so dry!

(Link via The Transom.)

Given Rocco’s devotion to both The New York Times and U2, we here at Godsbody can’t help but wonder why he hasn’t posted about this. He must be distracted by that document that’s getting talked about in some circles these days.

(Last link via Amy.)

Dear New York Times Book Review (click on Multimedia),

If you’re going to be mean, it helps to be witty about it. Or stylish, or clever, or funny, or whatever, just something besides just blunt-instrument mean. Even people who hate Dale Peck must be cringing with embarrassment over this.

Teachout has a sobering number to share with the would-be Catholic novelist…

There is little that can top, for quickness,

The dramatic reordering of priorities and general emancipation from worries about the mortgage or your childrens’ future brought on by an acute bout of intenstinal sickness.

Put another way, when you’re hunched over a midnight toilet,

It doesn’t matter too much whether the addition of another stanza will serve to perfect the poem you’re working on, or, more likely, to spoil it.

…which means my oranges are finally getting ripe. Life could be worse.

…courtesy of glarkware. Of course, they are doing their whole post-modern sarcasm job on the notion, but that’s where the loony Catholic can trump them with his own brand of post-post-modern literalism and sincerity! On the other hand, if the good people at glarkware had any idea of the glories of NFP, they would see the silliness of this sentiment. For virgins? That’s only the beginning…

Attended Mass yesterday (Thanksgiving) at the chapel of the Little Flower Haven, a Carmelite convent/convalescent home. The chapel is a box, nothing too great, nothing too awful. The old chapel is now Little Flower Hall. There’s a picture in the hallway of what it used to look like. It was gorgeous. Sigh.

Smallish chapel + very enthusiastic guitar group up in the loft = the temptation to actually put my fingers in my ears so that I could pray after Communion. As they busted out

We have come to share our story
We have come to break the bread
We have come to know our rising from the dead

…the same song, incidentally, that we droned again and again when our parish made a magnificent Eucharistic Procession through Little Italy (they had some classic Eucharistic hymns on the song sheet, but the people with the guitars kept repeating that one)…

anyway, as they busted that one out, I thought, “Maybe I was wrong. I always used to complain that this stuff was faux-folk, crafted in some Frankenstein hymnlab. But it’s been a generation now, and it’s what keeps getting sung. It’s what I heard when I grew up. It’s what my kids are hearing as they grow up. Maybe, whatever its origins, it’s becoming the true folk music of the American Catholic Church. There’s certainly nothing competing with it, nothing offering an alternative musical aesthetic. Sigh.”

“Thank God for the gift of music,” said my wife as we left Mass. She’s a sharp one.

Reese Witherspoon is our generation’s Holly Hunter.

Go watch Raising Arizona again. Then The Incredibles. Then go see Walk the Line.