2025-11-24T20:47:58+00:00

Panic!

November 24, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Today, I’m listening to Panic! at the Disco (that strange, misplaced exclamation point is not a typo on my part – though it was dropped for the 2nd album, as they attempted to become the Beatles, and the Beatles didn’t have a strange, misplaced exclamation point. Then, when that album wasn’t as commercially successful, they brought that punctuation back for the rest of their existence. Maybe people just were disoriented & confused, maybe there were 2: Panic! At The Disco and Panic At The Disco, and we couldn’t like them both.

I don’t hate that 2nd album, Pretty.Odd, and in fact, it has one of the songs I listened to most for a several year span (according to my iPod), “Nine In The Afternoon.”

I know we aren’t supposed to love them, for some of the same reasons we aren’t supposed to love Fall Out Boy (pretense, ridiculous song titles, etc.), but whoever decides what we’re “supposed to” love is wrong. That person (or group, or board) is always wrong, incidentally. There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure.

Guilty pleasures are those things we like that we “shouldn’t” like, like the Bravo Network, Growing Pains, Matchbox 20, and cargo pants. Nonsense. If you happen to like ‘80’s Kirk Cameron (actually, if you happen to like ‘20’s Kirk Cameron, for that matter), then who is anyone to tell you you’re pleasure is misplaced or shameful? Cargo pants are the coolest and Mad Season is a GREAT album.

I recently discovered that Panic! At The Disco is problematic, and that might be a reason to move away from them. Apparently, they’ve been accused of being sexist, transphobic, homophobic, and/or racist. I think there might be more, but I didn’t go any further than the AI headline.

The truth is, I don’t know if I care.

I’ve asked a form of this question before. Does “Baby Be Mine,” by Michael Jackson, suffer under the weight of a mountain of allegations? Is the “Himself” stand-up special from Bill Cosby stained so badly that the jokes are no longer hilarious? What about Kevin Spacey and Seven or The Usual Suspects? And what are the transgressions that warrant a reconsideration of the artwork? I think Hemingway was a terrible person, now what? Brandi Carlisle was absolutely awful TO ME, personally, and that did totally change the way I hear her output. But that seems a little selfish, that it only counts if it happens to me.

I’m listening to the Vices & Virtues album right now, and if I was forced to decide now, I guess I don’t care. I can’t help from dancing (a completely involuntary response!!) to “Baby Be Mine.” Maybe that makes me a bad person. But I bet, if you listen to “Trade Mistakes,” you’d be a terrible person, too.

I think I do care, though. I want to care. I want to expect more of humanity, of my neighbors, of us. I want us to love and take care of each other. Is that too much to ask?

And is this similar to shopping at Walmart or buying Nike’s or anything from Shein? If we want our corporations to behave better, shouldn’t we withhold our money until they do? And wouldn’t that make sense to carry that into our record stores and theaters?

Is this what a guilty pleasure is? In that case, maybe it’s not so nonsensical, and maybe it requires even more thought. (But maybe that consideration shouldn’t happen while I’m dancing to Panic! records…)

Culture War

October 20, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I am a man who was raised on pop culture.

I use the term “pop culture” often, but I don’t know why I add that first qualifying word. Why isn’t it just culture? And why does adding pop, or popular, immediately feel reductive? In a world such as ours, where every single aspect of our lives is touched/manipulated by the breakneck speed of advancing social technology, is there really any separation?

Whatever. I guess maybe I don’t actually know what we’re talking about when we refer to culture. Here are 2 definitions. 1. the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group. And 2. a set of meanings, behavioral norms, and values used by members of a particular society, as they construct their unique view of the world.”

When I started this post, I planned to talk about Chuck Klosterman. But now I’m wondering how we construct our “unique view of the world.” Of course, we all have lenses through which we see everything around us. How we think, believe, act, take in and interpret information, and what we do with that information are all included, but are these parts of us so integral to our identity a conscious decision? I guess what I’m asking is are we intentionally constructing this “unique view of the world,” or passively, mindlessly accepting what may be the most important thing about us??

Why do you do what you do? Why do you believe what you believe? Do you ever think about the social institutions and/or achievements that define us and our time? There is a real danger, as history gets faster and faster, eras become compressed – what took decades now happen in months – that the dog we were comfortably walking is now dragging us along as we struggle to hold on and try to stay alive.

Where are we?

In the Talking Heads song, “Once in A Lifetime,” David Byrne sings (talks), “ And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. And you may find yourself in another part of the world. And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”

How did I get here?

I have always hated Talking Heads, and I think this song is mostly dumb (maybe I just think it’s dumb because I have no idea what he’s talking about) and unlistenable (I think Talking Heads songs are unlistenable because they are), but it’s interesting, in this context. How often have I “found myself” somewhere, with someone, and the only thing I can ask is, “How did I get here?”

The next verse begins, “And you may ask yourself…” And I guess I think that’s the answer. My sons are 18 and 20 and making decisions independent of the Angel and I. Now, of course, this is terrifying, but it’s also the design. These 2 young men need to discover who they are, and that process only happens through a messy differentiation. I don’t want them to live like me. I want them to live like them. I don’t want them to love Jesus like I do, I want them to love Him like they do.

And I think I was joking earlier when I said it was terrifying. I mean, yes, this breaking away to identify themselves includes so many, um, questionable twists and turns, decisions I might not have made and certainly would have advised them against. And that is not easy or smooth, but terrifying? No. What is terrifying is if they wake up some morning and find themselves as these new people and have no idea where they are or how they got there. If they trade my “unique view of the world” for someone else’s, if they just simply adopt another’s perspective without the wrestling that comes with individual formation and growth.

That doesn’t just go for them, it goes for me, too. What do I think, and why? Hm, this wasn’t at all the water I meant to splash around in, on this Monday afternoon. I probably should have just stuck with a nice long post about how awesome Chuck Klosterman is.

Sheen

September 17, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The special new Netflix documentary is about Charlie Sheen. Now, I have always regarded Charlie Sheen as some sort of sideshow oddity, like an embarrassing example of the worst of celebrity culture. His is a life built only upon the religion of excess. Like the writer of Ecclesiastes, he devoted his life to tasting every single thing there was to taste, as much as a human could manage, then much, much more. I didn’t think he was a particularly talented actor, thought he built a name and career on his family name. (Yes, of course, I loved Platoon and Wall Street, everybody did/does, but figured they had little to do with him, and much more to do with the scripts and director. I’ll be open to the possibility that I am wrong.) We all saw the tiger blood and “winning” debacles, the wild drug abuse, and insatiable sexual appetite. Was there really any more to him than a tabloid caricature??

The best documentary films say, in all cases, yes, there is more. (This is one of those.)

And it made me think about our current cultural obsession with the opposite – that there is no more to anyone than one small sliver of the whole. We are all fighting all the time because we are no more than our political affiliation (or any other ideology), divided sharply along party lines. That man/woman, who is this, who has done that, is, has been, will always be, this.

There was a running back for the Baltimore Ravens several years ago (actually, it’s 11 years ago!!!) who was arrested for abusing his then fiancé (whom he would later marry). Maybe this is a poor example, as the brand from domestic violence might be one that should never fade. Should it? Never? But Charlie Sheen was also arrested for domestic violence. And it might be the perfect example because it is one of the most heinous offenses, one of the most difficult for me to forgive.

What does it matter if I can forgive, neither Ray Rice or Charlie Sheen asked me, and I’m quite certain they don’t care if I do or not. But it does matter, because Ray Rice isn’t the only abuser in the world. There’s probably at least one on every street all over the globe, in our schools, grocery stores, churches. Now what?

Are they monsters?

Over the last few days/weeks/years, I’ve heard many different types of people referred to as something less than human: serial killers, school shooters, politicians & presidents, CEOs, pedophiles with their own private trafficking islands, and on and on. Are they sub-human?

Charlie Sheen was a maniac with a massive illness hellbent on self-destruction. Is that an excuse, or a reason? It doesn’t change what he did, but it does expand the tiny slice of the identity pie. And maybe that’s the important thing. Maybe the Menendez brothers (Menendi) should face consequences for the rest of their lives, but what they endured as children sure does shift the perception of what they did. Maybe each time we learn more and more, each time our incomplete outline gains a new dimension, each time we ask questions like “should it?” or “never?” about a professional athlete, that produces a shift that – well, it doesn’t really change them, or what they did, but it does change us.

Then, when we sit across from a Trump republican or a Harris democrat and argue about immigration or government departments, we can quickly understand that how they see this issue is not even close to the entirety of who they actually are. Then, when we want to shut them down as unfeeling, ignorant, uninformed rage-monsters, we remember Charlie Sheen and, instead, maybe we could ask why, maybe we could discover who they are and, consequently, why they feel the way they do. Then, maybe we could stop fighting narrow-mindedness with narrow-mindedness and have a conversation, one with patience, kindness, and respect. Maybe this Charlie Sheen doc can give us the key to unlocking, and setting free, a shared humanity.

Or maybe it’s just a celebrity train wreck. I guess it’s whatever we want it to be.

Catfishing Again

September 8, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

There’s a documentary on Netflix called Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, about a 15 year-old girl who starts getting absolutely horrible, menacing texts from numbers she doesn’t recognize. No one else recognizes them, either, because they’re from a text app that seems to be designed for exactly this type of thing. Why do they exist? Why would I want a randomly generated phone number for text messages? I cannot think of even 1 time I thought, “I wish I had a different number to text ____.”

I guess it’s pretty much like the Ashley Madison website. These sites & apps are for what they’re for, with no pretense or apologies. Ashley Madison’s business model is infidelity, period. Text apps are for catfishing. I don’t need burner accounts or phones, and I don’t need a super secret special number because I don’t mind if you see that it is from me, Chad. Maybe you do. But if you do, maybe you can also not use it to send abusive texts to your children? (I recognize I just gave away the reveal in the film, but it was bound to happen. My mom spoiled it for me, too.)

Anyway. The doc wasn’t great. At least, that is to say, I didn’t really care for it. It was so provocative you couldn’t look away, like the junkyard fire I saw 2 days ago. But the best documentaries paint pictures and tell stories to ask questions we don’t necessarily want to ask. People are almost never monsters. We hear their stories and end up understanding, even if we don’t like them. We see the tiny, incremental steps it took to cross the lines they crossed. They become more than the caricatures we see in headlines and click bait, they’re complicated & nuanced. We see ourselves in them.

After enough exposure, the judgment begins to be siphoned out of our hearts. Slowly. But if they are human beings, like us, then what? If we can forgive them, give grace to others, allow them to fall and be redeemed, then maybe we can be forgiven, redeemed, too. Maybe we shouldn’t be defined by the worst things we’ve done. Maybe we shouldn’t define others by the worst things they’ve done.

That’s what I love about documentaries.

This one had a villain. She did the thing, barely took responsibility, continued to lie, pretend, cried, thought she had been punished too harshly, and at the end, we didn’t understand. They didn’t ask the questions that would’ve invited her into the introspection that might have given depth. We didn’t, couldn’t, see ourselves.

[I do not blame the filmmaker, Skye Borgman, who has made many films that are brilliant. She deserves all of the awards she’s won. This makes me wonder if she simply couldn’t impel this woman to walk through the door out of villainous caricature. Maybe she did ask all of the right questions, but the answers gave so little, all that was left was the shocking story itself.]

Scooby Doo and other cartoons (and cartoon’y movies) have good guys and bad guys, but it’s hardly ever that defined in real life. When it is, it’s jarring and uncomfortable. They are usually great characteristics for documentaries – jarring and uncomfortable – but for different reasons altogether. I was happy when it ended.

Then, next time I turned on the tv, I could get back to rewatching Fisk.

Top Ten

August 20, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

As you might have guessed, I have been making lists of “Top ___” lists as long as I can remember. Top 5/10/25/100 albums/songs, soundtracks, top 10 moments in professional wrestling history, top 3 MLB pitchers/shortstops, top 5 pizza shops, etc. You get the idea. This is not a new idea to me.

A very good friend once had a husband who made a list of his Top 500 songs. It was mostly awesome, (he turned out to be not awesome at all), but when you get past the first few, it gets pretty muddy and begins to be governed by little more than which one you listened to most recently. It’s obvious “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” is #1, but is “Rebel Yell” or “Possession” 14 or 15? I’d say “Heartbreaker” by Pat Benatar is somewhere in the area of 153, and so is “Overkill,” by Men At Work – who is to say which is 153 or 154 or even 171? AND are we including all Morrissey/Smiths songs? Because if we are, then the kind of list we’re making starts at, roughly, 40, with the exception of “I Can’t Help Myself” by Gene, which is either 1 (if Morrissey is omitted), 2 (if we’re only including “…Light That Never Goes Out”) or 6 (if everything is in play).

My Top 5 songs, incidentally, are 1. “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out,” The Smiths. 2. “I Can’t Help Myself,” Gene. 3. “Good Enough,” Sarah McLachlan. 4. “Hey Jealousy,” Gin Blossoms. 5. “Just Like Heaven,” The Cure. The 5 don’t change, but when “Just Like Heaven” is on, it’s #3.

Movies are an interesting proposition, though, as far as rules. Do you count entire series/trilogies as 1 or each individually? Will there be all 3 Lord Of The Rings films, or do you call it Lord of The Rings and leave it at that? What I’ll do is give my favorite of the series/trilogy and not include any others. And are there any genre limitations? Nope. Documentaries alongside fiction? That’s right. Here we go (maybe I’ll expand, if I feel it’s necessary). And we’ll decide at the end if this is the actual order…

Fight Club. Pulp Fiction. Kill Bill, vol 2 (and ONLY vol 2 – if I were to make a list of the movies I hated the most, vol. 1 would be high on that list). Point Break. Star Wars, ep. 8: The Last Jedi. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier (this will be the only entry from the MCU, although it probably could have been the first Avengers, Endgame, or Thor:Ragnarok. Any of those would be fine, too). Into The Spiderverse. LOTR: Return Of The King. The Dark Knight.

Now, I’m thinking about movies I loved that might have been high at different points in my life. I loved Dogma and Vanilla Sky. (Yes, I recognize Vanilla Sky is not the greatest, but for about 15 minutes in 2001, I thought it was just the cat’s pajamas.) Fraternity Vacation was exactly the kind of movie to really matter to a 13 year old. The Matrix, Adaptation, We Bought A Zoo, 12 Monkeys, and Knives Out all could’ve maybe made the list on a different day (with many others). But looking at the list – which is not in order, except Fight Club, that is #1 – maybe they couldn’t have. Those 10 are just about right.

I wonder what that says about me. Do we become the people we are because of the art we choose, or do we choose that particular art because we are those kinds of people? The Angel can’t get through 5 minutes of Pulp Fiction. Of course, she’s wrong, but why? What happened to make our interests so varied? Or did nothing happen, are we just pieced & wired together differently? Who knows? And honestly, who really cares?

When I took the Angel out on our first date, the first thing I did was look at her cd collection. It was cool and quirky, and it made me like her even more. As it turned out, the collection was her roommate’s. The Angel had about 15 cds, including Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, John Secada, and Backstreet Boys; it was like a traffic accident. Why would anyone possibly own these particular albums? After 25 years together, I still can’t answer that question, but what I did learn is that what we like isn’t nearly as important as I thought. Maybe it isn’t important at all. She finds no joy in Sarah M or The Cure, either. And I think she’s just the greatest, #1 in my list of favorite people.

I still make the lists, they still matter to me, I still care…I guess I just don’t need you to care anymore.

Get Off My Lawn

August 3, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

This post is being written under protest, with great hesitation. You see, I’m going to complain about the younger generation. I’m going to tell you what’s wrong with the “kids today,” and probably wax nostalgic on how it was ”back in my day.” I won’t really like it, and it’ll be very uncomfortable, but I’m going to do it because I hated the new Netflix Train Wreck: Storm Area 51 documentary that much.

As you know, I love the Train Wreck series. The filmmakers dive deeply into these strange, sometimes sad, sometimes hilarious, events that illustrate the insanity of you and me. This is great, for so many reasons, one of which being that we can see our penchant for ambition that is selfish, uncivil and often criminal. We are mostly all like this, any argument is simple arrogance, and it gives us a window into the human condition if we are allowed to descend into a Lord of the Flies-like environment. They are warning signs along our society’s roads.

Now. This last one, Storm Area 51, felt different. A vape shop kiosk employee called “shitposting” (or something equally mindless and depressing) created a social media event called Storm Area 51, where a group of people would, well, storm Area 51, because “they can’t possibly stop us all.” Why? Aliens, I guess. (As if any of us have any doubts and need more proof.) Area 51 is a highly guarded military base. The vape shop guy, called Matty, thought it was funny, but didn’t account for the basic desire of influencers to desperately solicit clicks. (How “shitposting” can not account for the neediness of social media is beyond understanding and the textbook example of a lack of self-awareness.) Many millions of people said they’re going, driving citizens of nearby towns, law enforcement, and the military, into a state of terror. As it turns out, almost nobody showed up, no one caused any problems, and it cost everyone many more millions of dollars.

Now.

The younger generation has an alarming lack of spacial awareness that comes from 2 things: they spend most of their time inside, on devices, populated by 2-dimensional screen names instead of human beings. And a refusal to acknowledge that our actions have consequences in real life. You see, 2-dimensional screen names don’t have mortgages, children to care for, dreams, feelings, or needs of their own. We are the stars of our own story, as a matter of fact, like the Truman Show, we are the only living boys and girls in this construct.

So, when the woman who owns sinks everything she owns (and much more) into a partnership with an absolutely clueless Matty (with a sociopathic inability to empathize with anyone) to prepare for the millions of YouTubers, only to be shafted by the same Matty in the end, he has no idea what he has wrought. He only sees his own tiny circle of one, and he’s deathly afraid that he will have to take a shred of responsibility (gasp!) for his actions.

Whatever. It’s my truth, my reality, my way, and if you don’t like it, Boomer/Karen/etc, I can’t possibly begin to care. I have my next videos to plan & promote.

I think all of the kids involved were genuinely surprised that their actions weren’t just fun, and that a massive cost was attached to an irresponsible prank. That’s not awesome.

I have a friend who is super sweet in person, and as mean online and in texts as you have ever experienced. He’d never say the things he writes. And when the actual human beings on the other end of the screen get their feelings hurt and block him, he can’t understand why, either. What do you mean? There aren’t consequences, everything is a vacuum. You’re just too old to understand.

Maybe that’s true, but I am concerned for my lawn when the new caretakers don’t understand that if they dump weed-killer, it can kill more than weeds.

I think the new age is exciting and wonderful, we are connected in ways that are astounding. I like YouTubers and want them to continue. There is so much fantastic content out in the cyberverse, we could never get to the bottom of the well. They’re funny. Memes are funny and often quite smart. I see things I would never otherwise see. This is an amazing time to be alive.

But, like everything, there is a cost. We just need to know & understand what it is, before we decide if we’ll pay.

(There, thankfully, it’s over. I’ll try not to write such a negative post again. Rainbows and puppy dogs from here on out!!)

Hulk Hogan Instead Of Terry Bollea

July 29, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Theo Huxtable, Hulk Hogan, and Ozzy Osbourne died in the last several days, and so did big parts of my childhood.

I loved the Cosby Show. I probably would now, too, if Bill Cosby, paragon of (what turned out to be) hypocritical virtue, wasn’t so problematic. Malcolm Jamal Warner was the best in a perfect cast of bests. I haven’t thought of him in years, but I still might miss him. I wish his family peace. But I think I miss the show, and my pretend idea of what the show was, what the show represented, even more.

I didn’t much care for Ozzy’s music. Maybe that’s a terrible thing to say, maybe I should think Black Sabbath “changed my life,” like I’m supposed to think about wildly overrated Radiohead. Whatever. Who has time for what we “should like?” “Barbie Girl” sounds & feels better than anything Radiohead created after The Bends.

However, Ozzy is a very important footnote in my life. In my middle school hell years, I thought about suicide often, and wrote about it in some awfully dark poetry. My mom found these poems, and, appropriately frightened, confiscated my cassette tapes. She had, apparently, bought into the common belief of the moment that heavy metal bands were killing our children. I raged against her for taking my Ratt, Quiet Riot, and Ozzy tapes. She was THE WORST. She said she threw them in the garbage, and was willing to suffer my wrath forever. But my thoughts about suicide faded into a depressed rhythm, never too real after 8th grade. I discovered that it wasn’t always going to be that/this dark. As it turns out, she didn’t throw them away, and I got them back eventually. I was happy to listen to Ratt and QR again, but not really Ozzy. I don’t think he caused my depression, it was just probably timing. However, what my mom did remains one of the very finest things anyone has ever done for me. It means something very significant that you would be loved enough that someone will go to any lengths to hear/listen/help you, even to risk your hatred of them. She put my life before her comfort, our relationship, or anything else. She gets an A+ for that. And every time I think of Ozzy, I feel really, really important and loved.

Now. Hulk Hogan. I don’t know how to express to you just how much of my attention and life went to professional wrestling, and Hulk Hogan. And to tell you the truth, for some reason, I don’t want to try.

What I notice right now is that I refer to these 3 by their character names, Hulk Hogan instead of Terry Bollea. That’s telling. They weren’t people, they were someone’s invention, and they are that to me. I don’t know Malcolm Jamal Warner, I only know Theo Huxtable. I know how these fictional characters made me feel, or what they represent. And what they represent is other places and people, real places and people. My mom, sister, girlfriends, and my best friend. The ones who loved me, who I loved, who cared for me, the ones with whom I shared the most valuable moments of my life. I guess that’s why I love art – and artists – so much, for their ability to reach into our real lives through connected imaginations and find commonalities, emotions, events, giving hope that where we are is awesome, but where we’re going can be even better. They asked us to believe in them, in each other, and ourselves.

And I still believe.

Nostalgia, pt II

July 16, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I’m 2 episodes deep into Death And Other Details on Hulu right now. The Angel and I watched the George Clooney-Julia Roberts vehicle Ticket To Paradise last week, and The Devil Wears Prada this week. I had not seen either of them, even though I had wanted to see The Devil Wears Prada since it was in the theater. Recently finishing the 9 seasons of Seinfeld, my son and I began to watch Arrested Development.

That’s the equivalent of a photo dump on Instagram. This is what I’ve watched, and there isn’t much to say about any of them. I loved the Clooney-Roberts romcom, probably not as much as Prada, but there are lots and lots of worse ways to pass an evening with your special lady. We laugh out loud at Arrested Development often. Death And Other Details feels like something I’ll continue to really like. It fills a void left from The Residence (which was awesome).

I’m listening to many, many songs. The modern age is still a huge adjustment. I’ve always been an album guy, and now there aren’t too many albums, just singles, and the medium doesn’t really support/encourage album listening. Vinyl was great for that. You would put a record on and listen to an entire side, it was never background music. It was intentional and rewarding. Cassettes were a product of the time – the music was pretty disposable and hit-and-miss. You’d fast forward the garbage, rewind for the singles. CDs were both, easy enough to hear one song over and over, but versatile enough for laying down in bed with the liner notes and letting the whole thing play.

As I write, my ages old iPod is playing the first 6 or so albums from Alkaline Trio. It’s purposeful background music. I miss a few songs here and there, but when I get up & go to the kitchen for a drink or the bathroom, I sing every word.

Very little is intentional, as far as the art I consume, right about now. I haven’t even listened to the new Sarah McLachlan song more than once or twice. Maybe I like it, maybe I don’t, who knows after 2 listens? I mean, I know I like it (after all, it is Sarah McLachlan), but do I really love it? Do I really love anything anymore?

I think I saw Point Break in the theater 25 times, and another 200 times on VHS. I know all the lines and subtleties. Yes, I was in high school and didn’t have a job or a wife & kids, but that was a part of me, a part of culture, I quite liked. Listening along to the new album, reading the lyrics, was great. I felt like I knew the artists, why they created the stuff that meant so much to me.

Now, I listen to a lot of EMELINE. I have no idea why it’s all capitalized, don’t even know if it’s a band (I think it’s just one woman, but I wouldn’t bet on it). Maybe she has a long career behind her, but I don’t know. I could find out easily, but… Well, just but. I don’t know if she writes these songs herself, with a team, or not at all! I suppose I could follow her on social media and know everything she wants me to know, blur the lines between us, and probably buy the clothes she wears in her posts.

This might be an age thing, I am a thousand years old, but aging requires a certain amount of nostalgia. Everything was better when I was young, right? It sure was, even when it wasn’t. Maybe not every song in the 90’s was amazing, but truth honestly doesn’t play too much of a role in my memories. It’s the feeling, maybe it’s the simplicity that I miss. Maybe we’ve seen too much to be so naive and innocent.

I do know nothing about Diff’rent Strokes or Blood Sugar Sex Magik compares to the Angel, and I wouldn’t go back there for all the money in the world. Maybe I just wish I had been more intentional about holding on to some things, instead of leaving them all so far behind. Or maybe I never had a choice at all.

What a strange post this has turned out to be. I don’t know what the point is, or why I’m writing. I’ll have to make dinner soon. It’ll be spaghetti in a big pot, and we’ll each eat when we get time.

You know, there is a thing called a liturgical calendar, with seasons like Advent and Lent, separated by Ordinary Time. This post is like that, Ordinary Time. Maybe it’s a rebellion against that notion at all, the notion that any time is Ordinary. Maybe we reclaim the Ordinary when we notice it’s happening as it’s happening, and acknowledge it’s tremendous value.

Train Wrecks

July 7, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Netflix has a series called Trainwreck, where it details certain cultural, um, train wrecks. The first one I remember seeing was Woodstock ‘99. It was fascinating, a nearly perfect documentary, and must have been well received, as it became a series. Woodstock ‘99 was a chimaera of greed, poor planning, ego – I could continue, but I guess it was just a chimaera of the lowest human experience. It was an account of our tendency to sink to Lord of the Flies (mis)behavior, if only given the opportunity.

I guess all of these Train Wrecks follow that same formula.

The Cult of American Apparel and the unfortunately named Poop Cruise are the newest additions.

Poop Cruise is exactly what it sounds like. A cruise ship set sail, with as many warnings as passengers, and once at sea, the electrical system burned up and left the floating skyscraper dead in the water. Apparently, the toilets on a cruise ship are somehow tied into the electricity, so when the engines & lights went out, so did the toilets. After a day or 2, the floors were covered in raw sewage. The doc is an hour long account of manufactured suffering. Carnival escaped catastrophic financial punishment by absolving itself from anything at all in the contract everyone signed. Some kind of utterly shocking “we are not responsible for safe passage, clean, working facilities or the food, in any way” rider that either no one read or believed.

American Apparel was a clothing company that was allegedly enormous in the mid-2000’s. I say ‘allegedly’ because I had no idea it existed. This is unusual, as I make it my business to know what’s going on in the popular culture. The ads were soft-core porn, the clothes were unremarkable, and the CEO Dov Charney is a psychopathic monster who assaulted (emotionally, verbally, sexually) everyone who happened to cross his path. He’s not a nice person, was fired after a mountain of horrific lawsuits piled up against him, and today works for Kanye West. That sounds about right.

Money is the American god, and business is our religion. If it pays, we’re in. We’ll excuse any, and all, means to those ends. Travis Scott’s AstroWorld disaster is the subject of another Train Wreck. People died at this concert, with almost no accountability. Apparently, much like the famous Spiderman meme where several Spider-men are pointing at each other, no one was in charge, no one was to blame. Safety was no one’s job. There wasn’t an adult in the room. And when it came time to get some answers, the only answer was cash, and as it turns out, that’s good enough for us. Oh well, it’s just human lives.

The shows are pretty depressing, to be honest. Mirrors often are. Is this really who we are? I have to believe we are not, even in the face of conflicting evidence, stories replayed on a loop, just with a different company logo and new shell game.

If learning about our history is the way to assure we don’t repeat it (and that’s what we’re always told, right? Those who don’t learn about history are doomed to repeat it, right? Maybe it’s true, I’ll take your word for it), then these Train Wrecks are public services. I’m imagining conference rooms full of CEO’s watching them, weeping and tearing their clothes, immediately overhauling their policy manuals, creating ethical, humane paragons of virtue. Probably, the reason we haven’t noticed this revolution is because it takes a while for the effects to reach the consumer. It should be any moment, now…

People

May 12, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I finished a book last week, called Mastering Fear, by Dr Robert Maurer. It’s probably the 10th time I’ve read it, and it never fails to change me in some pretty significant ways. One of the main ideas is to emphasize that, in stressful, anxious, difficult situation, we are created, hard-wired to find others. The best example is when a child is scared, (in healthy environments) they climb into their parents bed for comfort. As we grow, that positive impulse is conditioned out of us. We believe we are on our own, we hold up independence as THE primary characteristic to success, not to mention the myth of the self-made anything.

Friday, my boys and I all knocked off of work/school and went to the theater to watch the Thunderbolts*. It’s the latest offering from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the asterisk is a totally intentional plot point that I won’t spoil for you.

The MCU has followed the law of diminishing returns since Endgame, this multiverse business is boring and hollow, an excuse for cheap gimmicks, and has effectively eliminated consequence. Whatever. It’s fine. Disappointing, but fine. I see the movies when I do, but they are no longer vital to me, like The Winter Soldier or Infinity War was. (I have heard a “reboot” is coming to rescue us all from this nonsense, and it is desperately needed. Fingers crossed.)

Thunderbolts* is an exception, it’s fantastic, really great. At their best, superhero films are about big, real life issues, just in a science fiction context. When critics bemoan the explosions and unrealistic elements, as if those bells & whistles are the only reason for their existence, they have missed everything authentic and important and meaningful.

Yes, I recognize that I just called these movies ‘important,’ and they can be. I am not sorry. This is one of those times. Thunderbolts* is the modern human experience laid out before us. It’s super soldiers, enhanced superhumans, and genetic freaks. It’s also about mental illness, isolation, loneliness & crushing depression. Mostly about those.

And, like Maurer’s book, the solution is a team of super-people. Those who show up to hold our hands and help us lift giant pieces of falling skyscraper, to listen, and to save cities. (Of course, that is somewhat simplistic – a buddy isn’t a cure for mental illness, but a buddy always helps. Always. Someone who cares, someone to turn to, to climb into bed alongside of when we’re scared, and sometimes someone who will remind us that pharmaceuticals aren’t a flashing neon sign of weakness or faithlessness or anything else other than a crutch for an injury that may or may not be temporary. Depression and mental illness are complicated. They are also nothing to go through alone.)

These people in our lives are complicated, too. They can be full of contradictions and drive us crazy. The more we allow them in, the more power we give to wound us deeply. They can annoy. They can just be the worst. And they are also the ones who make this life so wonderful.

We don’t save worlds from “the Void” alone, and we don’t build beautiful lives alone, either.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: pop culture