the very bad landlord 2

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST

7/3/07

you see, a long time ago, say two and a half years, mr. pastor guy was my landlord--apparently leading the mars hill flock doesn't pay as well as playing slumlord in north greenwood.

that wasn't a misprint; after graduating from SPU i spent one year in a two-room apartment across the street from love zone and the liquor store, but aj's basement was the closest i've come to a tenement.

the house boasted 5 dorm-sized rooms and alex, nathan, and i found our way into the smallest. the room was just big enough for alex's bed, a bunk bed, and a dresser. if our blood alcohol level was really low and we timed things just right, we could just manage to walk from one end of the room to the other without knocking a knee against a wall. thankfully, it only took a step or two to cross that vast expanse, enter the hallway, and grope at my dresser, which was sandwiched between the water heater and some cobwebs.

and i had it good. as far as i know, nathan stowed most of his belongings in his jeep cherokee. for those two months of tenement bliss, he lived like a modern gypsy.

i can't blame the minister for our sardine state. nathan was getting married in a couple of months and i was searching for a new roommate; we were too cheap to fly solo in the cruel world of seattle rentals, and alex was too nice to knock us on the head with a crowbar of common sense. i suppose he could have thrown the RCW our way too--there must be a city ordinance against cramming 500 pounds of human flesh into 5 square feet.

which brings me back to aj.

in some sense, aj was charging alex a reasonable price for the room. they were mars hill brothers, so aj probably thought it would be good of him to cut alex a deal. but when alex told aj about his closetmates, the kindly hearted preacher grew stony.

OK, that's a true story, but i don't know where i meant to go from there. at the end of the post i wrote the following:

back story to backbackstage tale of intrigue

this obscure phrase was then followed by a list of names. well, i don't see the intrigue (except in not telling you who was on the list), and i can't recall the story that was supposed to be revealed through the telling of all that back story, but i can tell you this: i can't imagine myself ever doing that again.

a wedding and a precursor

7/1/07

as of this date, my former roommate, alex the indie music hookup, is married. there were three highlights to his wedding:

first, it was the best wedding i've ever attended that consisted entirely of recorded music. well, i can't be entirely certain of that, but generally i tend to think that live musicians provide weddings with a special, unique feel that is noticeably absent when another recording of pachelbel's canon hits the stereo. somehow sappy wedding music that's live is infinitely more tolerable than sappy music from a CD. however, despite my strongly pro-live perspective, i was happily suprised by alex and katie's wedding. they picked a satisfying selection of contemporary songs that lent their wedding a fresh gravity. the only potential for a musical frown during the event was that they didn't hire our band--that's right, they marched out of the sanctuary to sufjan's "chicago" (!) and they didn't hire us. maybe they thought i was too busy with my usher duties.

second, the food was delicious.

and third, the pastor. he wasn't delicious, and he wasn't a highlight in the traditional sense of the word. it was his first wedding and his sermon aimed at the epic rather than the simple. i think he was trying to read through the bible in 80 days or three wedding services, whichever came first. still, he didn't stutter, stammer, or stare blankly at the waiting couple. it was a decent first time.

no, his highlightyness was more related to his role as the protagonist in a behind-the-scenes tale of mystery and mayhem than any personal trait.

TO BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT POST!

i watch a lot of movies

in preparation for the upcoming film, faith, and justice event, here's another movie-related post!

on january 9, 2008, my favorite movie critic, jeffrey overstreet, provided a list of his top 25 films of 2007. he has since updated the list, but i have pasted the original list below. i have bolded the films that i have seen. of course, i'm not sure why i'm doing this, but everyone likes lists, right?

1. Into Great Silence
2. There Will Be Blood
3. The Devil Came on Horseback
4. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
5. Lars and the Real Girl
6. Ratatouille

7. Zodiac
8. Paprika
9. I’m Not There
10. No End in Sight
11. This is England
12. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
13. Away from Her
14. Once
15. Juno
16. No Country for Old Men
17. The Savages
18. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
19. The Wind That Shakes the Barley
20. Into the Wild
21. La Vie en Rose
22. Climates
23. God Grew Tired of Us
24. Manufactured Landscapes
25. Jindabyne

Runners-up:

• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
• Waitress
• Eastern Promises
• The Darjeeling Limited
• The Namesake
• Offside
• The Lookout
• Dan in Real Life
• The Simpsons Movie
• The Bourne Ultimatum
• The Host
• Bella
• Amazing Grace
• Hot Fuzz
• Knocked Up

Others that Jeffrey hasn't seen

• 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
• Gone Baby Gone
• Syndromes and a Century
• Ten Canoes
• Great World of Sound
• Ghosts of Cité Soleil
• My Kid Could Paint That
• Rescue Dawn
• Persepolis
• Talk to Me
• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
• Rocket Science
• American Gangster
• The Great Debaters

i have to get ready

i really like this video.



and also, if you happen to know anyone with a commercial popcorn maker that i might be able to borrow for the Film, Faith, and Justice festival at Mars Hill Graduate School next weekend, please let me know!

events!

in case you haven't heard, the other journal is putting on the third annual showing of their film, faith, and justice (FFJ) festival. i haven't been yet, but it seems like a great event--award winning documentaries from the human rights watch traveling film festival, crazy cool speakers from around the nation, discussion panels that include local community leaders, nonprofit volunteer opportunities--wow.

generally speaking, when i watch films like hotel rwanda or the devil came on horseback, i'm paralyzed by a stark understanding of my own monetary, time, knowledge, and geographical limitations; i'm caught by that ugly question, what now? however, with FFJ, i'm hopeful that the illuminating lectures, discussions, and nonprofit booths will help provide some context, thought, and directive for how i am to respond to these kinds of films.

you can check out FFJ on facebook or the FFJ site (buy tickets here).

you can see some of the movie previews here:

• up the yangtze: this one seems like a must-see.
• a promise to the dead: the exile journey of ariel dorfman: the story in this film seems interesting, but the music at the end of the trailer really catches my attention--it seems so eerie, beautiful, and disquieting.
• the greatest silence: rape in the congo: this one looks tough. it reminds me of a dan allender essay we're publishing in our book remembering the future this month.
• project kashmir: this one looks beautifully filmed and rather engaging.

also, monday night at 5pm (october 12), there's a mock debate at the SE senior center at rainier and holly. if you go, be sure to say hi to mike and mari, friends of the 17 point scale, and perhaps me.

my vocation

10/18/07

i sometimes wonder about the utility of my vocation. if society is sucked down the tubes of economic ruin, my job would be one of the first to go. if the global market crashed, my wordsmithing skills and knowledge of grammar would make me an eloquent beggar, but a beggar i'd be. and when i'm feeling doubtful about my career path, these thoughts make my skills seem insignificant: i don't have a practical skill, i think, i can't build houses, kill deer, or fix automobiles. i can't heal insomniacs, calculate foreign tax returns, or operate an oil refinery.

i'm not sure where i was going with that--in fact, one of the labels for this post was originally "soccer"; i don't know how that fits in--but i suppose it's all true. if you think of maslow's hierarchy of needs (remember, that pyramid from your freshman psychology class), art is somewhere at the top. but does that mean that my intended profession is less valuable than the professions that may occupy the bottom? or, conversely, does that mean that my intended profession is more valuable than the professions at the bottom? does it matter?

good 17 points scale news!

at the request of my reader, i have prepared a little bit more content for the 17 point scale, at least 8 posts in fact!


[photo by andrew david. "we shall be happy again!" somewhere in the cascades, wa.]

if i were reviewing this film: smart people

smart people follows the awkward relationships of a sorry, self-absorbed professor, his family, and an ex-student now-MD love interest. if i were to review smart people, i might liken the film to its professor-protagonist: like dennis quaid's character, the film has a pretentious, elitist feel that lacks beauty and soul.

for a full review on the film, see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24001511/

PS i do find it interesting that the filmmakers decided to cast the intellectual grump as an english prof. when conjuring academic stereotypes, my first instinct is to cast hypothetical english profs as individuals who are passionate about literature, otherwise mousey types that become strangely animate in the presence of language and writerly minutia. i suppose this reflects my own experiences in college and my belief in the transformative power of art--in what department might you cast a brainy, cynical jerk who's all ego and no soul?

my girlfriend's a cosmo girl!

that's right, i'm dating a cosmo girl. you can find her at http://www.cosmogirl.com/guys/love-stories/love-stories-wet-kiss.

the photo was taken as part of an extensive photo shoot. cosmo paid me somewhere between $0.17 and $1.56 for this image.

Kierkegaard in '08

in case you're not sure who to vote for yet, here's a convincing campaign ad:

i like this band

whoohoo! now you can listen to synthar while browsing the 17 point scale ratings, which i intend to update a bit more frequently during the upcoming three months.

well, now that i've posted this, i realize that the sampler tends to fade out before the songs really bloom. generally speaking, i would recommend sampling tracks 5 (a post-apocalyptic warning), 9 (the sampling function fades before the amazing life-changing beat), 10 (very sad), and 11 (very happy).

and then later, you can buy their album.

armies clash by night: some war films

12.no end in sight

build me a ladder of logic up to the sky, a string of carefully constructed proofs that creatively illumine the uncertain state of this world and that beyond. that's my charge to any issue-oriented documentary; do that and i'll happily climb the rungs of your rhetoric. i am so charmed by logic that if a filmmaker sugercoats truth or skillfully twists on-screen action away from one view or another, i'm likely to miss it, likely to fall into the rational trap of the film's narrative.

all that to say, although i can't be sure of the objectivity of no end in sight, the movie makes me angry, angry that the occupation of iraq was undertaken in a fog of idiocy. no end convincingly argues that our leaders had access to effective means of avoiding a full-scale insurgence but they chose to plug their ears, close their eyes, and clash by night.

still, i don't know where to go from there. i obediently followed no end's story arc, and just as the title might suggest, it left me without a conclusion, without some sense of what to do next. this frustration is complicated by the increasing optimism of the war in iraq. no end leaves us in 2007, when things were still going horribly wrong, but now in 2008 the latest AP reports suggest that there may in fact be an end in sight. and so, while no end may be a fine piece of cinematic rhetoric, i seriously question it's timelessness and application for the world today.

11.stop-loss

and here's another rhetorical success. this film (not a documentary) successfully demonstrates the injustice of "stop-loss," the US military's doctrine of reinstating soldiers after their tours of duty have already been completed, that is, sending them back to iraq against their will. i might gripe that some of the film's characters behaved incongruously to their personalities or life scenarios, and that the film may have went a little overboard in some places, but like no end in sight, stop-loss is a likely candidate to make you mad. oh, and get these guys some prazosin!

leave it be

The world is full of wonders, great big wonders and little tiny wonders. Yet we are often so caught up in our routines and single-minded sense of purpose, that we barrel right by these God-granted glories.

On a recent bus ride downtown, I was having one of those moments. My eyes were locked on the seat in front of me, but my mind was elsewhere. I was worried about our fare or the next stop or what was for dinner, and then Beth nudged me and directed my attention out our window. She was pointing at a rather ordinary looking rose bush.

"What?" I asked.

"Look at that leaf," she said, "If you think about it, that leaf is in a constellation of other leaves, a rose bush universe."

That's not quite what she said, but I think it sums up her point. Beth was highlighting the miracle of life. That leaf, albeit it an ordinary, brainless bunch of chloroplast, experiences rain storms and beetle migrations, Metro exhaust and pedestrian chatter. I doubt there's a mansion in heaven for that leaf, but here on earth God has provided it with everything it needs; He has even provided it with purpose. That tiny, insignificant leaf is responsible for some of the earth's oxygen. We breathe because of that leaf (and his leaf buddies).

So pause and smell the air. Taste the food. Listen to the sounds. Live in the moment.

And remember, God wants you right where you are: That leaf makes air, and you sit there reading this blog.


[adapted from a letter to someone traveling abroad]

the 17 points of attraction

i guess i'm not the only one to see the scientific merit of 17 point scales. check out this site to hear the informal findings of some engineers who used a 17 point scale to gauge the perceived attractiveness of their 70-some subjects. as one might expect, their scale ranged from 0 (disgustingly ugly/repulsive) to 17 (perfectly attractive/marry this person right now!).

photo: blb, "the 17 builds a dam" great smoky mountains, tennessee

change

the next issue of the other journal will focus on the 2008 election. although i'm interested to see how theologians will address this topic, and i think it will be an interesting issue for our readers, i wonder how creative writers will take to it.

if poets and writers are our modern prophets, our contemporary truth-tellers, then it makes sense that their work might be politically noisy, that it might voice protests or hoorahs over policies and potentates. and perhaps we should listen.

but when i sit down to read a poem or a short story, i don't want to bullied into belief. i don't want a writer knocking me up side the head with the moral bush is bad. if this is their point, i'd like the message to sneak past my defenses, settle in my mind, and convince me via the rhythm, images, and story.

so, yes, i'm afraid that some writers will forget their subtlety and fly headlong into the role of teacher. therefore, when i think of our next issue, i'm most excited by the lens we're hoping to use for election '08: change.

it's a word that's on the lips of all our pundits and politicians these days, but i also think it's a potentially rich word for christian writers. when you think about it, nearly all great literature is about change. we read books that have shifting plots, characters that are melded by their stories. and at the heart of the christian faith is change.

and speaking of change, here's the point of today's entry: today i'm on the brink of change. after battling a nasty cold, i'm starting to feel much better. this seems small and shallow, of course, but to me, at this moment, it feels big and important.

and i just finished haruki murakami's the wind-up bird chronicle, which i hope to say more about later.

and after several years of off-and-on practice, i'm finally learning debussy's "claire de lune" in its entirety.

so hooray for change!

bad decisions

it's a dark day in seattle--thunder, lightning, ruptured community.

today, on the verge of a courthouse victory in their case against clayton bennett, the city caved. they got cold feet, or perhaps greedy, and agreed to a cash settlement. mayor greg nickels claims that the settlement will keep seattle in the good graces of the NBA--commissioner david stern has even reversed himself, stating that a remodeled key arena will meet the NBA's standards. in exchange for stern's weak promise that if the washington state approves funding for the remodel, seattle will be on the short list of cities to receive the next expansion team, bennett gets a get out of jail free card. already he is whisking the sonics away to oklahoma city.

after hearing the news, i turned my radio to 950 KJR and then made my way to www.sonicscentral.com. i listened as choked-up fan after choked-up fan bitterly torched the city of seattle, called for starbucks boycotts, vowed to never watch another NBA game again. some seemed close to tears as they talked of their memories, torn from them, perhaps forever. others talked of the future and their children who will have no shawn kemps or gary paytons, no kevin calabro.

and they said goodbye. a community 1000s strong suddenly deemed irrelevant by the powers that be. a community that in a flourish of ink, suddenly lost its reason for being.

perhaps there's still some hope.

(1) the city may have acted with prescience--balmer's still around, so this seeming betrayal of fan interest may actually result in seattle getting a second shot with the supes someday in the far future.

(2) howard schultz's lawsuit to rescind the original sale of the team is still on the table. if successful, we could be cheering in the streets once again.

in the meantime, here's my list of annoying people that deserve an otter-pop spanking:

howard schultz
clayton bennett
commissioner david stern
governor chris gregoire
speaker frank chopp
mayor greg nickels
city councilman nick licata

bad movies

04.be kind rewind - on NPR this morning i heard that the supreme court ordered the military to confiscate several copies of be kind rewind from guards at guatanomo. apparently the jokes in the film were so bad and the plot was so far-fetched and stupid that its use on prisoners violated the geneva conventions.

06.picnic at hanging rock - this is a film that makes me think that despite the popular knee-jerk criticism of twenty-first century hollywood productions, movie-making has progressed a great deal during the last few decades, and perhaps my officemate, who heartily recommended this 1975 film, hasn't. OK, james and i usually see eye-to-eye on films, but in this case the scenery, sound effects, storyline, and overall picture experience did nothing for me. there's a novel concept in the film, but it only works if you can overlook the aforementioned flaws and suspend your critical thinking skills.

the greatest literary figure of our century

i have a new favorite author.

he recently won the national book award for the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian, but i didn't read it. he has had several novels honored as new york times notable books, including indian killer and the business of fancydancing, but i haven't read them. he received the PEN/hemingway award for best first book of fiction for the lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven, but i didn't read it. my newest favorite literary figure has even appeared on a new yorker's best writers list.

so who is this fellow that wins my praise without hardly a glance at his novels?

he is sherman joseph alexie, jr., S-H-E-R-M-A-N, last name A-L-E-X-I-E, the great champion of sonics basketball and the gabbiest witness ever known to seattle law.

as an aspiring literary editor, i sometimes feel constrained by the categories of good literature, as if my life should be a series of witty remarks, fine wines, and twisting metaphors, as if everything must add up to transcendence and truth, as if anything less than poetic is second rate.

but that's all wrong.

and today, as mr. sherman alexie, one of washington state's great writers, testified about the value of professional sports, especially the sonics, i was reminded again that the value of everything in this life is to some degree a function of artifice, emotion, and quality. and inasmuch as sonics basketball typifies these characteristics, it is valuable.

later this year, if the city's lawsuit is unsuccesful, the seattle courts may attempt to put a price tag on that value--is sonics basketbal worth $10 million to the city? is it worth $50 million? $100 million?--but really it is invaluable.

OK, so why is alexie so great? well, besides knocking me on the head and reminding me that i need not make excuses for liking the sonics, or cheeseburgers, or gas-powered motorboats, alexie also gives a crazy diverse testimony. he takes the courtroom and transforms it into a canvas where he paints NBA basketball as a unifying force for families and cultures and, you got to see this to believe it, a playground for our century's hercules and athena.

i love this.

Q: Say they plan to leave at the end of the lease term, why renew for those final two years?
A: . . . I want two more years of the Greek gods.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2008/06/19/2008007865.pdf (search for alexie)

some thoughts on quotation marks and italics

+updated 6/19/08+

I wrote this for another context, but I haven't posted in a while, so I thought I'd bore the world rather than just my colleagues.

As you may know, my day job is as an editor for a university. In this position I work for a bunch of academics, and over the last five years I’ve developed the bias that many academics are not great writers.

This is compounded by a few factors.

First, the overarching goal of most academic writing is not the creation of good writing, it’s the generation of new ideas, or if I’m a bit less generous, the goal is to sound smart and innovative. Thus, academic writing is by its very nature flush with field-specific terminology and verbosity.

Second, because academics are bright and successful within their field, many seem to naturally assume that they are also good writers. Actually, this is probably true of non-academics also, but in my department, I’ve found that it takes a long time for the higher level faculty to seek editorial assistance. But they all need help, and once I find my way to their manuscripts, they hardly ever bat an eye if I swap some quotation marks for italics or make a few nouns roman type (I suppose they’re usually too busy!).

Likewise, I think the academics that write for nonprofit theology journals could use some help, and I doubt they’ll really care if lowly journal editors assert their will on matters of emphasis. But if they do care, such editors have the big guns in their arsenal: (1) they’re using CMOS, the king of style since the early 1900s—it happens to be the stylebook of most book publishers, the stylebook of most scholarly work in the humanities—and as far as writing style is concerned, CMOS is like the US constitution, and the journal editors are the Supreme Court; (2) they’re attempting to keep all of our articles consistent, so an author could be consoled that there’s nothing wrong with their style, they’d just like it to match the rest of the issue’s content; (3) they’re attempting to make their content relevant to a larger audience than just other theologians; (4) they’re an interdisciplinary journal with a creative writing section, so unlike other theology journals, great writing will never take a backseat to great theology; and (5) even if the author is a big name that they just have to publish, they are still the one’s pulling the strings, so authors are really beholden to their editorial decisions.

My perspective is that academics, especially in the humanities, attempt to compensate for their lack of writing genius by using artificial means of emphasis like the quotation mark. In most instances, a word can be emphasized naturally in the sentence or paragraph construction without stooping to quotation marks or italics. Moreover, by making sparse use of this convention, words that are set off by italics will stand out more. Also, many writers seem to use (or overuse) quotation marks for ironic use (see CMOS 7.58) when it really doesn’t make much sense.

So given that it’s generally best to trim a manuscript of excess italics and quotation marks, here are the guidelines that I'd recommend for a theology journal:

• Foreign words unfamiliar to readership = italics
• Emphasis (try to avoid) = italics
• Terms, words used as words, letters used as letters = italics
• Nonstandard, ironic, or other special sense (try to avoid!) = quotation marks

Of course, ultimately, the author is always right. Editors can usually get away with enforcing matters of style, but if there’s an impasse, an editor's only options are to give in or reject the piece.

pizza, pirates, and laser tag!

when my dad concocted 3d pirate black-light mini golf, we thought he was crazy, but now he's managed to combine pizza, pirates, and laser tag. check out this video:

by the way, i've tasted lou malnati's deep dish in chicago; i've tasted the pesto in the cinque terre; i've tasted pagliacci, pegasus, and tutta bella, but despite my far-flung pizza-eating experience, pietro's is still my fav.