2024-06-26T13:35:18+00:00

What Happened?

June 26, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Brittany Murphy was a super talented actress who died at 32, in circumstances that were cloudy and subject to a bunch of suspicious guesses as to ‘what really happened.’ The documentary on Max is awfully sad, and after 2 hours, the circumstances aren’t so much cloudy as they are unimaginable. A 32 year old woman shouldn’t just die of pneumonia in her bathroom with her mother and husband in the next room. And the husband shouldn’t then die months later of the same cause. But it did happen, so now what?

The husband, Simon, was (by most of these accounts) not a terrific person. He had the gift of overwhelming charisma, and when that was combined with a lack of character and/or morality, he became a very dangerous influence. It’s hard to know what was true, because he so rarely was honest. He had 2 children that some of those purported to be closest to him found out only in this documentary. He was ridiculously controlling, isolating both Brittany and her mother, Sharon, making all decisions on all matters, big & small, personally & professionally. Probably, if Brittany Murphy was married to a different person, she would be alive today, but she wasn’t. She was married to this one.

I loved Brittany Murphy in all of the films I saw (of course, nobody saw all of her films, her later work was far beneath her talent). I found her electric and engaging. As we all saw her wasting away in front of us, a victim of anorexia and drugs and whatever else contributes to a woman’s public disappearance, we mourned well before the news reports. The story starts as an uplifting, hopeful comedy, but is quickly revealed as tragedy, and that’s just the worst – not because she’s a celebrity, or because we loved her, but because she was a human being in a world that wholly consumed her.

So, what really happened?

I’m thinking how we all have our self-destructive impulses. Drugs aren’t mine, and neither is anorexia, but maybe they’re yours. No matter, we have buttons of insecurities and inadequacies. We have fears and voices in our heads that whisper some of the nastiest things anyone has ever heard. We aren’t celebrities whose every choice and picture is eviscerated by armies of Perez Hilton’s, but if we were, maybe we’d live in a filthy apartment and swallow handfuls of pills and not go to the Dr. Or maybe it would be something else. Maybe we’d drink bottles of wine all day. Or eat m&m’s on the couch, mindlessly scrolling through TikToks. Or run for miles and miles, never escaping the pain & pressure of staying alive, never dodging the arrows. I think it’s mostly the height of arrogance to think Brittany Murphy is so different from us. Maybe we had relationships that were unhealthy, where we changed so much we didn’t recognize ourselves. Maybe we’d go a little crazy, too, lonely & small without a community of people to love us in real life (instead of on screen). Maybe it’s just by the grace of God that we are here and she’s not.

What happened is heartbreaking, but not so strange. What now, then?

Kathy Najimi said, through tears, that she wished she’d have gone over there and pulled her out, called the police. Even if Brittany Murphy hated her afterwards. And Kathy Najimi is right. We all wish she did, too. But we all figure we wouldn’t have, either. Maybe minding our own business, pretending everybody is so divided, isn’t the answer. Maybe it never was. Maybe we should start to know our neighbor’s names and stories, to laugh with the comedies, and call the police in the tragedies. Maybe we can reach out, and maybe we can show up. Maybe it’s a cliché, but loving each other might be the answer. Maybe not, too, but it’s worth a shot. We’ve tried the others for way too damn long and they haven’t worked, even a little bit. Maybe it’s time for a revolution.

Luxury Living

June 10, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site wants to know what luxury I can’t live without. The definition of luxury is “the condition of abundance,’ so I suppose that’s The Angel. She is a walking, talking, smooching illustration of the abundant blessings that have rained on my life. The definition also says, “…that isn’t necessary,” but she is, right? Not everyone is married to The Angel, just me, and lots of people live wonderful lives without her. Maybe they have their own The Angel, and that’s probably their luxury, whether it’s a job or car (though I certainly hope it’s not), or a Sally or Kristen or Helen. We all hopefully have our own Angel.

In my marriage book, Be Very Careful Who You Marry, I talk about an Angel Paradigm. The idea is that I love marriage – the idea of, as well as the actual manifestation – but is that because I have The Angel and, of course, anyone who is married to The Angel would love it?

Well, yes and no. The anyone who is married to The Angel is me, and I didn’t have such a high opinion before her, when I was avoiding any hint of marriage as a reality. So, yes. But no, because nobody else has this particular Angel. But everybody has the opportunity to have their own, and work like crazy to build their relationship in a beautiful way (like we did.) So, no with an asterisk.

Of course, it’s a little dangerous to write in such a way about a great anything. JLo and Ben Affleck told everyone who would listen about their great, persevering Love. And, according to celebrity gossip, after a little over a year, that great Love isn’t persevering the way it once did. If you gave a lecture on how to be a rad salesperson, and then 2 weeks later were shown the door, how would that lecture sound in hindsight? Or if you wrote a marriage book called, say, Be Very Careful Who You Marry and then a thousand posts on abundant blessing in marriage…then, that spouse got wise to the undeniable fact that she married down and took off, then what? The man who wrote those many things might not feel so terrific about them.

But, so what? There’s nothing embarrassing or shameful about a failure. I watched this silly documentary about a trek across the Amazon, called Expedition From Hell, that purported to be the account of a maniac who led regular people on a walking tour across the big part of South America. About halfway, he was arrested and contracted dengue fever, and took a secret solo pathway (without cameras) to avoid the authorities. He, then, reappeared in Guyana for the final leg (with cameras). So, he did it, and loudly proclaimed his success. As it turned out, he lied his buns off and the secret solo pathway was a flight back to Florida for a few months before flying back to Guyana. When the producers confronted him, he continued to dig his feet into the deception.

A guy that the lying wildman earlier kicked off the tour said (something like), “So what? It doesn’t make him a failure. He tried something awesome and that’s never a failure.” And he’s totally right. JLo, Batman, The Angel & I are trying something awesome, and that something is hard and doesn’t always work out. (Maybe it could, but that’s not what we’re talking about today.) Our luxury is love and, on second thought, it IS absolutely necessary. We take our gear into some treacherous terrain, commit 100%, see if we can survive, together, and if we happen to make it, we know what abundant blessing it all is.

Why I Hate Politics

May 31, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I don’t actually hate politics. Politics is simply the way we organize ourselves, how we enact & legislate rules of law, how we govern ourselves. There isn’t anything distasteful about that at all. In fact, it’s a beautiful responsibility/opportunity to build a free society. But it’s a little like socialism. Socialism is the distribution to each according to their needs, everyone gets enough, which sounds like the Biblical Church. We take care of each other, right?

The breakdown, in socialism as well as in a democratic government (or, more accurately, a republic) or any other political system or organization, is the people in that system: the politicians.

First, as you know, I am not a political scientist, or a social studies teacher. I have business & ministry degrees. But I am interested in people, generally believing in our inherent goodness. My solutions are dreams, and I usually keep them to myself. But a seismic event occurred yesterday that I do feel compelled to offer my skewed commentary.

I am part of a generation that has never trusted our government. We were too late for Camelot or the faith in an elected official to fix anything. We were raised to Rage Against The Machine – all machines, especially in Washington D.C. We saw our government arm enemies of enemies (using the woefully misguided philosophy: the enemy of my enemy is my friend), then lied about every bit of it under oath as those ‘friends’ traded places and became the new enemies. Nations & people get very rich in a machines of war. We didn’t believe when we read lips that promised “no new taxes,” so we were never surprised.

When President Clinton was involved in, um, extramarital activities, as he was his entire life, we didn’t care. But when an intern’s dress became public record, we pretended to care. Ok, we didn’t, but the opposing political party sure did. To them, character became the most important requirement in a politician. We immediately knew that was bullshit. Clinton’s party defended him by minimizing marital integrity. What does that matter in running a country? We knew that was bullshit, too.

I’m using Clinton & Trump as examples, not because there is a limited number of illustrations I could make, but because it’s so obvious. This is the normal violent dance of politics. Each side flips to suit their interest right now, and respects the citizenry (you & me) so little that they flip right back when the names and the now changes.

Donald Trump is at least as much as a womanizing heel as Clinton, caught on tape demeaning and sexualizing any and all women. He is now a felon, convicted of paying to quiet a porn star with whom he had sexual relations. This won’t hurt his campaign in the least, and if you think it will, I don’t know what to tell you other than I admire your sweet naïveté.

The parties play musical chairs, to switch sides, and the donkeys hide their faces and act appalled at his lack of character, and the elephants don’t even try to manufacture any conscience. We don’t believe any of them. Can we elect a person who is in prison? WIll he pardon himself? Who cares? It’s just the next act in the circus.

Yesterday I wrote about authenticity, and that’s what I meant when I totaled this essay “Why I Hate Politics.” There’s none here, they’re all such bad actors. My dream is that we wake up to the disdain these people have for us, how little they think of us, and begin again. Clear the board.

They lie because they think we are as crooked and dumb as they are. So far they’ve been right, but that can change anytime we decide to stop settling for so much less than we deserve. We are absolutely not slimy and we’re undoubtedly not ignorant. It seems to me that we can start to let them know we’ll stop playing down to their expectations. I don’t know why we started to accept this sort of behavior, but we don’t have to anymore. We can have a revolution of the mind and soul. And we can do this today, and forever after.

The Best All

May 25, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Today, the blog website is asking, “What does ‘having it all’ mean to you? Is it attainable?” I can’t say that I’ve ever considered this, even as the phrase “have it all” has been used in songs and advertising campaigns pretty much forever. It reminds me of that other mindless, subjective cliche, “live your best life.” What is this best life? Doesn’t that sound like having it all?

So. What is this ‘all?’ Is it money? How much is enough? Does anyone actually have enough? I heard a statistic once that, when people were asked how much money they needed to be comfortable, everyone, regardless of income, answered 10% more. Greed (or the lust for more) is a wild contrast with the process of transformation (or the desire for growth.) Success? What is that? Is it a great job? Is a great job one you love or one that pays very well? Great is awfully subjective, too. Is ‘all’ marriage, children, pets?

Marriage and children is fairly controversial now, I guess, but pets aren’t. Do I need a pet to have it all? And will a fish do? Or a guinea pig? A nice car? Hot tub? White picket fence? Perfect white teeth and washboard abs? Do other people have to envy me? Does this have anything to do with anyone else? Is this concept of all, or best life, universal? Or is it as individual as we are?

What about spirituality or education? Or mental & physical health? Is it as simple as having out needs met? But in this country, do we even know what we need? Or is it a matter of want? Or have we completely conflated the two? Is there a practical difference? Significance, meaning, purpose, connection…do these things matter?

If these prompts are designed to spur thought or conversation, this is a fantastic success. I suppose everyone’s answer is unique, but what probably isn’t is a sense of gratitude & contentment. It doesn’t really matter what the what is, it’s how we hold it. If we wrestle our lives and aspirations, squeezing them into submission, as we continue to climb higher and higher, desperately looking for the next rung, or mile-marker, nothing is (or will ever be) all. But if it’s what we have, here and now, and we can hold what we have been given with soft careful hands for as long as we have them, those things become treasures that are absolutely priceless. We become the kind of people who fall in love with all of this beauty, and that sounds exactly like a best life, if you ask me.

One Small Step

May 13, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life? That’s the site prompt today, and probably deserves an answer.

I watched 2 documentaries and a movie this weekend. I’m still recovering from a cold that I am getting more and more resigned to carrying for the rest of my life. And it was raining, so it was a perfect weekend to climb under a blanket and watch something other than the NBA playoffs.

Finding Andrea is a 3 episode series following the disappearance of a woman in Kentucky who, incidentally, belonged to an organization that searched for (and was instrumental in finding) missing persons. She was complex, hiding the many facets of her life to the point that very few would claim to have actually known her. She died having lived a mostly dishonest, inauthentic life with lots & lots of secret compartments. She was probably killed by her sister and her boyfriend (at least that’s the implication I took from the doc). I don’t imagine we’ll ever know, because Andrea wasn’t the only one in the family who wasn’t interested in honesty. Her own dad would rather protect the possibly guilty daughter/boyfriend (who didn’t participate in the film) than be further torn apart by the truth. I guess I can’t blame him, who knows what I’d do in his place??

Max Joseph was a co-host of the Catfish TV show, and created a documentary called 15 Minutes of Shame with Monica Lewinsky. Lewinsky knows of what she speaks, as her life was torn apart by a series of very public poor decisions and behavior. This film looked at a guy who tried to sell and sanitizer at a ridiculous price during COVID, a woman who sent an ugly joke on Facebook and became the object of national scorn, and a man who was “cancelled” over a mistaken hand gesture in a company van. We think we know these people based on 1 small aspect of their personalities or an isolated incident, sometimes misunderstood, always without any shred of context. I don’t know Andrea’s dad, and to assume I know his motivations based on 2 or 3 clips is the height of arrogant condescension. Of course, he seems like something, the hand sanitizer guy seems like a scumbag, the woman seems heartlessly callous (as do the political pundits who condemned her). The hand gesture guy is obviously pretty silly, and the product of a culture gone power-crazy. But how do we actually know? I bet I seem all kinds of ways, based on extracted phrases in any one of these posts, or in overheard conversations at my dinner table.

The movie was My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and was absolutely as great as I remembered. It’s funny and feels good. But what’s notable is that no one is played as only a fool. Everyone acts like a fool at times, everyone is embarrassing in moments, but they all just seemed like “normal people.” Sort of. Admittedly, most are caricatures, but the caricatures leaned towards a positive, good nature rather than the mean, minimizing, debasing cartoons we are usually fed. I would guess that Ms. Vardalos sees the rest of us, sees “normal people,” through beautiful lenses that believe the best. I would guess that she likes us. That her idea of “abnormal” is abuse, betrayal, and violence. I believe the same.

We are made to walk together, to hold hands, and to love each other, and I’ll never be convinced otherwise. Maybe the shamed examples in 15 Minutes weren’t sorry they were caught as much as they were heartbroken they were led down a path so antithetical to their design. I thought the fiction of the movie was far closer to truth than the documentaries, because it showed the world in which I live, where the overwhelming majority are like you, trustworthy and awesome. Monsters exist, but in such small numbers, they stand out like neon signs at midnight. We’ve just bought lies for too long, choosing to acknowledge the missteps and failures as complete pictures, that we stopped seeing the beauty in each other.

I don’t know who Monica Lewinsky is, no matter how many pages I can read on the internet about her. And I’ll say the improvement I can make is to stop pretending I do.

Hellville

May 8, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

So, I watched the Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion documentary on Max last weekend. Brandy Melville is, apparently, a wildly popular clothing store for young-ish girls that I have never heard of. I don’t know how to feel about that. Of course, a middle-aged man (and I don’t know how to feel about that, either) maybe shouldn’t be too concerned with the fashion trends & habits of girls. There is an argument to be made that a middle-aged man maybe shouldn’t be too concerned with fashion trends & habits, at all, but whatever. I happen to like to be familiar with popular culture, as it is what we generally regard as our principal connector, and as I happen to like to connect, the popular culture is important to me.

Brandy Melville was created and operated by an older man named Stephan Marsan. Maybe that’s weird. The men are pretty creepy, sexist and racist, which is worse than weird, but if we knew who runs all of the companies we patronize, it might not be a collection of the best people in the world. This guy might not be such an exception.

The idea is that our clothes are disposable and our conscienceless consumption is unsustainable. In the service of providing them to us inexpensively, the supply chain is overflowing with slavery and human trafficking. This obviously isn’t only clothing, I’m typing on an iPad that’s production story would absolutely horrify us. And our phones and tvs and food and furniture. Everything probably has a similarly sordid path to our nameless big box retailer. And afterwards, we discard the old without thinking, and they end up in landfills or on, as this doc details, on the beaches of Ghana.

Why do we need so much? When will we finally see the manipulations of marketers/advertisers as the lies that they are? These solutions for modern life that we neeeeed will not fill our holes or our broken parts. They never did, they were never supposed to – it’s how they stay in business. If those jeans or that car did make us whole, we wouldn’t buy next season’s models, which would leave them all unemployed. The consumption is an issue, but not the one I am interested in today. The disposability is.

Everything in our culture is made with a shortened shelf-life. We use them today and throw them away when they no longer serve us, and get a new one. This is troubling when we’re talking about t-shirts, but exponentially more so when we begin to talk about people & relationships. The t-shirts are cheap, temporary, and we carry that to our commitments, friends and marriages. The second they stop serving us, making us feel a certain way, we toss them aside and get a new one.

I just don’t think this sort of perspective should be allowed to exist any longer, anywhere. Maybe 4 friends we’d die for are much, much better that 4,000 “friends” we barely know. Maybe 1 pair of jeans that’ll last for the rest of our lives is preferable to 8 or 10 to last the month. Instead of trading our partners in, maybe marriages should last, even after the excitement of falling in love fades. Maybe we all feel that we’re only as good as our last conversation or report, and maybe that’s causing us all to feel very, very anxious. Maybe that’s the birthplace of everybody’s increasing perfectionism.

Maybe not, of course, maybe it’s progress, and maybe I’m just hopelessly old-fashioned… Either way, I’m going to buy less cheap garbage and keep the Angel forever.

You Just Are.

April 29, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Here’s the first thing I read today (from Morning Brew): “In unsurprising news, middle school kids in Norway have been feeling mentally healthier and performing better academically since a public health initiative banned smartphones in schools, according to a new study. After three years of the policy, girls’ GPAs increased, while visits to mental health professionals decreased by 60%—and girls from lower-income families benefited the most. There wasn’t much effect on boys’ academic standings, but both boys and girls experienced 43%–46% less bullying after putting their phones away.”

And here’s the second (from Mark Manson’s newsletter): “We are often drawn to chaotic romantic partners because their chaos guarantees that we will feel needed…We can become insecure around stable romantic partners because we worry that they’ll never fully need us. And that’s because: they won’t.”

The first one is something we would call fairly obvious, right? Social media and screen time are behind any number of concerning effects. So, why will we not follow in Norway’s footsteps? And further, why do we need studies to make decisions to eliminate our phones in schools? Why wouldn’t we just choose to ban our own phones for hours, during the day? Why don’t we turn them off from time to time? We won’t, but studies like this make me ask why not.

The second is less apparent, maybe. I’ve often wondered why we stay in overly dramatic relationships, is it really as simple as our own insecurity? We’re not actually needed, chaos doesn’t require us, just more chaos. Drama doesn’t care what the drama is, or who is involved, as long as there is drama.

Now, is it possible they’re connected? If our phones are the new most important relationship in our lives, our de facto romantic partners, do we allow the chaos and damage they inflict, because they make us feel needed? We quickly, instinctually, reach when it beckons. Silence is evidence of loneliness, a lack of “likes” shows our irrelevance or unworthiness. I only exist if others see and comment. The internet is chaotic by nature, it doesn’t neeeed us, wouldn’t miss us if we unplugged, the ocean doesn’t care of we drown. Mental health is of no consequence to the machines in our hands. But that doesn’t mean we don’t believe we’re necessary, important, and valuable to their survival, especially the quality of their lives.

Your value isn’t tied to followers or subscribers. Or to your girlfriend or boyfriend, for that matter. All of this is based on lies that our performance is the most important thing about us, bringing us back to the first question we ask (and keep asking ever after): Am I good enough?

That answer is yes, no matter how crazy your life is or how many messages are in your inbox. You just are.

Face-Melters

April 22, 2024April 22, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

A session musician in the terrific documentary I watched yesterday (called Hired Gun) said he only plays on songs he likes. If he were to play on songs he hates, just for the paycheck, it would be a violation of his soul. Not only were they buying (renting) his skill on guitar, they were also buying everything that had ever gone into his development to get to this point. Every experience, every hour, every broken string, every ounce of sweat, disappointment, and joy. Every opportunity forgone in service of his passion & craft.

I am the pastor of a church, and when this faith community began, I promised I’d never take a salary. The lines between religion and commerce could not be crossed. To enmesh God and business is wildly offensive.

Now, here’s the problem with narrow, closed-minded thinking. On one hand, I was right. It IS offensive, having a sanctuary that exists for the merchandise table is gross. But on the other, always/never is pretty dangerous. Maybe it’s not always so disgusting. Maybe there’s a space between using offerings for private jets and closing the church doors because we can’t afford to keep the light on.

The other problem is promising, or saying, “I’d never ____,” is that sometimes, people and circumstances change. I worked full time (+ on call) delivering medical equipment, full time for the church, and much more than full time being a husband and daddy of 2. Either I suffer a painful, absolute break down (where I am not a full time anything), or something had to go. An adjustment had to be made, and that adjustment, if it was to continue the ministry we started in my living room, I would have to accept some kind of compensation.

I felt dirty for a long, long time. Then, I began officiating weddings. My first few I didn’t charge any money, accepting only what they’d put in cards handed to me as I left. Of course, this meant I did Saturday weddings away from my family for nothing at all except the beauty of the moment. These experiences were wonderful, but were they worth the cost? On my family, on my heart, on the church, on my mental/physical health, worth missing the people & things I missed?

So, I started to charge, I was always the cheapest option, and even then, always with a certain embarrassment. Some people wouldn’t pay before being asked several times. Once I had to ask up to, on the wedding day, and afterwards. Months later, my last message said, “I guess you won’t be addressing this (still too embarrassed to call it a “fee” or “payment”), so I won’t ask again.” Now, I get it before, but it’s never easy and never without the familiar, “I hate to ask this, but ____.”

Yes, familiar, but is it true? Do I honestly hate to ask? Can I love to do the thing and still charge to do it? Do you like your job? Would you do it for free? Is ministry different, in that regard? Paul writes in plenty of his letters that everybody, even ministers of the Gospel, should be paid for what they do, but the distance from our head to our heart can be very, very long.

I wrote a book on marriage that I believe could help everybody in the whole world. (Of course I do, why else would I write it? Well, I suppose also, like all art, because it’s on my heart and has to get out or I’ll never sleep again.) Yet, I apologize sheepishly for charging. Why do I do that? Because of that whole church-commerce separation, that’s why. I am not housing a fleet of Rolls Royces in my massive garage. I am not wearing suits that cost thousands of dollars. I drive a Focus with real transmission problems and wear thrift store sweaters. I’m not amassing an empire.

But I am trying to take a sledgehammer to all things that could separate anyone from the love of Jesus. And what separates us quicker and easier than greed & fortune in His name?

But that guitarist is absolutely right. He didn’t just roll out of bed today to play a face-melting solo in a vacuum. And neither did I (but a face-melting sermon, or wedding ceremony, in my case;). Everything I say on Sunday mornings or Tuesday evenings or Saturday nights was forged in middle school hell, and the grunge-ish band I was in, and my degree, and my issues, and my pain, and my family dynamics, and the times I had my heart broken, and the years I spent raging agains the machines of government and religion. My words come from hours and hours of study funneled through my unique perspective, that came from countless experiences, positive and negative. My ministry is a flaming ball of passion, life, divine gifts, and failures.

And so is yours. We’re all face-melters. My perspective is unique, but not in how it came about. We are not just slices of pie, we are pies. And to think we can have a bite without all that went into the creation of the whole is remarkably misguided. You became you in midnights and 4pms, in makes and misses, in sweats and suits, and you wouldn’t be you without all of them. And there’s enormous value in the school that produced you – it’s a priceless process and we wouldn’t have the joy of me or you any other way.

I appreciate that guy. I don’t know his name, and that’s sort of the point of the doc, but I’ll remember him forever. In fact, I’m going to double my prices, starting today. Ok, maybe tomorrow, but they’re going up.

Weirdos

April 17, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I watched Asteroid City and Red, White, & Wasted last weekend. They’re quite different, but they share some characteristics. Or, at least I thought they shared some characteristics.

Asteroid City is a film made by Wes Anderson, the famously quirky creator of gems like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. He’s totally unique, his movies look like no one filmmaker’s. Not only did no one else make them, no one else could possibly have made them As a matter of fact, he’s a pretty big exception.

Every genre, begins with a true innovation (inasmuch as anything is true innovation), and is immediately followed by a B group that drives roads recently paved, then C, D, E, & F groups, that simply copy a commercial blueprint. When this happens, the genre is “Dead,” and we all mourn the A’s and move on. Take grunge music, for example. Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, and others were the A set, cutting paths into landscape where none exist. Then, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, et al, came along, who were sometimes great, followed by a few averages, then by absolute trash like Puddle of Mudd and Ugly Kid Joe, who looked the part and sometimes sounded the part but lacked the soul of the A’s and B’s, for whom the music wasn’t a moneymaking enterprise, and was dna.

Wes Anderson has no B’s. No one even tries to be as idiosyncratic as he is.

I liked Asteroid City very much, but I love weird things. I love cultures, people and ideas that are different from my own. This is an odd movie. I don’t pretend to know what it means, or really even exactly what happened, but my understanding isn’t always necessary to an experience.

Now, Red, White & Wasted is a documentary that, on the surface, seems up my alley. I appreciate weirdos doing their weird things, freaks who are freaks – in other words, people being just who they are, who are different and embrace that other-ness. They’re weirdos, just like you and certainly like me and probably all of our favorite people. The caveat to my love of these films is that the filmmakers cannot judge the subjects. If the people behind the camera are making fun of the people in front of it, it’s mean, smug and condescending, and I can’t stand mean, smug, and condescending. Different people aren’t lesser people, obviously, they’re just different. Wes Anderson knows this.

ANNND, the documentary has to have an arc; a beginning and an end. That’s the genius of documentary filmmakers, they find the narratives in our real life clusters. Maybe Red, White, & Wasted didn’t laugh at it’s people, but they didn’t celebrate them, didn’t appreciate them, and didn’t show any sort of movement. Now, it’s entirely possible there was no movement among all of the gross -isms and the horrific degradation of human beings, especially the women. But I have trouble believing that. There is always movement, always understanding. (Ok, maybe not always.)

So, Asteroid City was beautiful and weird, and it didn’t matter too much that I didn’t perfectly understand what in the world was going on. That sounds just like life, and I sure love that, so maybe that explains my perspective.

Red, White & Wasted, on the other hand, was weird and ugly, and I knew very well what was happening. I just love people too much to like it.

The Josh Lucas Situation

April 8, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

2 weeks ago, the Angel and I watched a movie called Life As We Know It, starring Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel. It falls squarely in the often disrespectful and dismissive rom-com genre. To trash an entire genre is pretty unfair, some romantic comedies are solid, well written, and deep. This is not one of those. This is one that deserves to be dismissed. This is a great example of why rom-coms are not taken seriously. But it’s something else, maybe something that’s not entirely harmless.

But to get there, we have to talk about Josh Lucas. In the movie Sweet Home Alabama, Reese Witherspoon is engaged to marry McDreamy, but was previously, secretly married to Josh Lucas. She goes home to find him and secure the divorce papers to re-marry. The movie is mostly unremarkable, except for the fact that McDreamy is awesome. He’s full of class and grace, even when she leaves him at the altar, saying “So this is what this feels like,” loving her by letting her go. She leaves him to return to Josh Lucas, who is a not a nice person. His love for her is so great he treats her terribly.

In Life As We Know It, Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel are the best friends of the individuals in a married couple. When that couple is killed in an accident, the 2 leads have to assume the parenting of their baby. Duhamel is an overgrown boy, using and disposing of hordes of women (this is somehow played as charm), and is desperately trying to avoid the responsibility of fatherhood. Heigl is cold and focused, being chased by local pediatrician Josh Lucas, who is (in a nice reversal) a great dude. Like Reese, Heigl also chooses poorly, choosing the selfish boy who expresses his love through disrespect and being super nasty.

It seems to me that, for a woman, romance should be marked by a mean emotionally stunted child who “loves” so much they just can’t possibly be expected to be kind. Swoon!

My friends and I, in middle & high school

[Incidentally, the solar eclipse is happening RIGHT NOW, as I write this]

Anyway, my friends and I used to lament the fact that all of the girls seemed to not be able to get enough of the boys who treated them the worst, in direct correlation. And we, who did not act as if the girls were something we stepped in or only for meeting our physical teenage desires, were alone. As I got a little older, I realized that maybe this scientific theory was more anecdotal than scientific, and only felt like the horrible people always had dates while we watched Point Break on repeat together.

But what we can learn from Josh Lucas is that we were right. He is beautiful in both movies, the only difference is that he’s a heel in Sweet Home Alabama. The other difference, of course, is that he also gets the girl in Sweet Home Alabama. Holding doors and listening are a direct road to nowhere, while pouting and shouting down at your date like a jackass is the only way to mutually fulfilling relationships.

In the brilliant Nick Hornby novel High Fidelity, our hero wonders whether we liked the music we did because we were a certain way, or if we were a certain way because of the music we liked. Did the movies follow reality, or did they create it? Do women love jerks because they loved rom-coms first, or do they love jerks and the rom-coms that described their lives followed?

Life As We Know It was, honestly, pretty offensive, but maybe that’s just because I have been trying to love the sweet Angel through soft words and doing the dishes, telling her how much I appreciate her and proving it in my actions, believing she is someone to be valued and cherished, as we lean into her independence and great strength. Maybe this has been my problem, maybe she’s left crying herself to sleep, after we lay like spoons and I fall asleep always next to her, wishing I would drink too much and cheat just enough to assert my sharp-edged machismo. Maybe she has been dreaming I’d berate her with long strings of curse words, turn the table over and throw the plates of the dinner she made against the wall. Will she then run into my arms in the rain like in The Notebook??

My message to the Angel is that I guess I can try for her. But maybe it’s those last 2 words that show how predictable my failure is. Nothing is “for her” in these movies. Hm. Now I don’t know what to do. Maybe I’ll watch a few more to find out how to do romance. Wish me luck.

Love With A Capital L

A journey towards living an inspired life of love in the modern world

Tag: culture