pitchfork interview with glen hansard and marketa irglova

hey people
here is an interview that pitchfork does with the folks from the movie once. they are coming to st. louis may 6th at the pageant. what fun huh? also, if you like glen hansard's style check out the band the frames.

Drainage!

so, after viewing the movie, there will be blood, i had the idea that it would be pretty funny to make the line, "i drink your milkshake" into a t-shirt. lo and behold, someone else did too. obviously, they're brilliant.
so. here it is:

you can buy the shirt, here. and while you're at it, here is an article on the widespread i drink your milkshake phenomenon.

jon stewart is my hero

after recieving her oscar for her part in the song, falling slowly, marketa irglova was cut off by the dumb music when she tried to give her thanks. after the commercial break jon stewart asked her back onto the stage to give her thanks. and given the usual tripe that comes out of these peoples mouths, what she said was pretty good. she gave a shout out to all the independent artists who toil and sweat in the shadows...anyway. nice moment.

falling slowly

at least they got this one right. glen hansard and marketa irglova won the oscar for best original song...really stiff competition from the movie enchanted. haha. anyway. good for them. go see the movie once. it's really wonderful.
and what's up with the damn music cutting people off...enough. crap.

Oscar!

i hate awards shows, especially this one...just the self-congratulatory tone of the whole thing. a bunch of overfed, narcisistic yahoos slapping each other on the ass...no thanks.
having said that, i hope p.t. anderson gets best director, and that blood gets best cinematography, and best picture. ddl should get best actor, if not, the whole things crap. oh wait, the whole thing is crap, never mind. javier bardem should win best supporting actor. best actress: i'm guessing elen page, not because it was an overwhelmingly nuanced performance but just cuz she's really cute. and i would think that kate blanchett will get it for her performance in the dylan biopic i'm not there.
there you go, those are my predictions. crap. all of it. crap.

another mccain bit...

another bit from hannity and colmes (Yuck! bleghh, cough, spit) this time it is a lawyer who once worked for bill clinton and is a registered democrat. someone else said this, and i think it is true, there isn't anything that will rally the republican base quicker than a hit piece by the new york times on a presumptive candidate.
the thing that makes this story have the possibility of sticking is mccain's previous involvement in the keating five. the keating five were five senators who received substantial campaign contributions from charles keating, president of the lincoln savings and loan, and subsequently discouraged investigation of him after the lincoln savings and loan went belly up in 1989. none of this is new of course, and mccain has done much to ammend the mistakes of that time, most notably his writing of the mccain-feingold bill. it will be fascinating to see what happens in the coming weeks.

Link: sevenload.com

it has legs!

this is from hannity and colmes (Yuck! bleghh, spit, cough).

Link: sevenload.com

Give Up Yer Aul Sins

thanks to brian steadman for sending me this.
it's beautiful!

Shockin' holy saint!

let the games begin

local farming

listen. for those of us that long to promote a more communally focused lifestyle, and want to promote those businesses that do things the right way i want to promote your local CSA. Community Sustained Agriculture seeks to provide local, mostly organic, fresh food. The setup is that you bay a basic price for each of five categories (meat, fruit and veg, dairy, grain, and misc.). You don't get to choose your food, you simply get a certain amount of whatever is fresh and in season. For 50$ a week you can get a smattering of each category. Each week food is brought to a central pick-up place and you pick up your food. Also, you can contribute some of your food each week to a food charity if you so choose. This would be a great thing to encourage in your local churches, especially if it is a city church...
click here to see one of the CSA groups in St. Louis.

4 Weeks, 3 Months, 2 Days

to anyone who reads this blog and lives here in st. louis and would like to see this movie, let me know. it opens friday february 29 at the tivoli, and will only be here for one week. the movie follows a young woman in communist romania as she seeks an illegal abortion. unflinching in its portrayal of the cost of such a decision, it has been universally praised as one of the best movies of last year, and will almost surely win the oscar for best foreign flick.
click here to listen to the director cristian mangiu talk to terry gross about his film.
lemme know...

modern slavery

friends there are a few issues that i believe define the level of our christian commitment, this is one of them: human trafficking.
trafficking strikes at the very heart of who God is, and who he has created us to be, namely image bearers. and the consequences are widespread and profound, and it impacts society on many levels, from the food we eat and the clothes we wear to arguments about illegal immigration. this is a defining issue for the 21st century.
take time to read the article linked above and read the other articles linked on that page. if this does not simply rip your heart apart, then perhaps you don't have one.

king of california

a big thumbs up...to the movie king of california.


a fun watch. worth the price of admission just to see michael douglas strut his stuff as a crazy dude. i bought it.

david caruso can eat my shorts

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worst show on television

truthfully there are too many shows that would qualify for such a distinction. but the object of my ire tonight would have to be csi:miami.
a few years ago when 24 was on mondays, my wife and i would switch from fox to cbs to watch the first five minutes of csi for just one reason. horatio caine's (david caruso) ridiculous one liners. this is the way every show starts off. sweeping shots of miami/south beach, a scene involving numerous scantily clad women and some studs in wife beaters. a murder. then horatio caine comes on the scene, dramatically puts on his sunglasses and says something ridiculous.

frank: he should have known.

horatio caine: (in a way too dramatic voice) "frank, knowing (pauses and puts on sunglasses) is half the battle" (cue theme music)

my favorite, the last one was made up, is: "you don't get up and run away after you fall four stories." Horatio: "you do...(pause, put on sunglasses) if you've got something to hide."

mmmm, mmmm, good

enough about politics. on saturday i went down to the soulard market. i was in heaven. the food, the people - city life at its best. anyway...i love food and if that picture doesn't whet your appetite than i don't know what would. by the way it comes from a web sight claiming to describe the perfect process for poaching an egg. i haven't tested it's claims yet, but i plan too.

the problem with politics

it's simple, all politics is driven by a misguided meta-narrative.
the political meta-narrative is this...we may be screwed up, but the only reason is that the proper person/persons are not in office. if elected, this person will... if passed, this bill will...

the biblical meta-narrative is this. we are fallen, and this fallenness extends to every area of our life and thus brings a brokenness to bear in those areas as well.

some folks i know might say, "that is why the founding father's created a system of check and balances." forget for just a moment the historical problems with such a statement...my answer to that...so what? even if i were to grant you that point for a moment, what difference does that make now? even if that were true, it has no affect on whether or not the current narrative driving the political machine is one that has as its foundation a decidedly un-biblical stance.

discuss...

the messianic character of american politics

so...there's a group of guys from my church that gather together every wednesday night at a local pub near tower grove park and we drink and smoke and talk shit. all the guys that currently comprise the group are also in the small group that i co-lead with my wife and another guy. this past week we were rehashing some political talk that we had been tossing around during our small group. earlier that day i had been thinking about christians and politics and whether or not we should even be involved at all...this is my theory: the expectations placed on politicians are messianic. and thus idolatrous. by participating in the process christians run the risk of being idolatrous themselves.
i realized that this theory is problematic for a number of reasons, but this is what is driving my thinking. it is not simply secular liberals who have a messianic expectation of politicians, but christians do as well. what do i mean, messianic expectation? "if we could just get so and so in office, such and such would be changed." "the only way our country can be healed is to have so and so elected." these kinds of statements and millions more like them which are made every day, by christians and non-christians alike speak to the messianic expectations we place on politicians. this is in short a form of idolatry. i fear that christians, unless we simply back out of the process, will continue to be caught up in this kind of thinking. at the very least, we need a moratorium on political involvement and then use that time to rethink what it means to think christianly about politics and what that means for our involvement.
it has been said before, and by far more articulate folk than me, but the church has sold its soul for the lure of political power. we have replaced gospel suffering with political maneuvering. in attempting to get a seat at the table of politics we have sacrifice our prophetic voice in the culture.
politics stands alone as a unique danger area to christians, because the basis of political action is power. and power is in fundamental opposition to new testament ethics. what i mean by that is power consistently eschewed by the figures of the new testament. we are not to pursue it, we are not praised for having it, it gives us no advantage in the economy of the kingdom. what does this mean then for political involvement in the here and now? what about our responsibility as citizens? what does it mean to render to caesar?
so...i threw out this messianic expectation thing on wednesday night. i came home to read this about obama. and then i saw this today. it would be easy to say that obamamania captures everything that i am talking about, and it does, to be honest, represent messianic expectation more clearly than anything i can remember in the past twenty years of electoral politics. but it does not stand alone. it is only the most recent, and the most extreme example of our tendency to deify those who we place our hopes in.

another reason...

here's another reason why i think huckabee's a hoot...

huck and chuck

i surprised myself today. i was decided prior to today's vote, i was going to vote mccain. but, i voted for huckabee. i don't know. i figured in so many ways it was a free vote if that makes sense. plus, i just like the guy. perhaps you heard about this...he has managed, as an evangelical candidate, to appeal on some level to the late night crowd.
not to mention he has had a budget of zero. he spent, in winning iowa, 400,000 dollars in comparison to romney's 8 million. holy smokes people.
okay, the reason for this post. this one just takes the cake.

Super Tuesday

for the politically inclined today is an historic day. it is the first time in the history of electoral politics in this country that a nation wide primary has been attempted. 24 states in all are participating. regardless of where you come down politically, even if you find politics completely irrelevant or corrupt it is still a fascinating drama to watch.

i have a brief thought on immigration and the current imbroglio that has been stirred up by the mccain bashing regarding his pro-immigration stance. the first political act regarding immigration was the naturalization act of 1790, and somewhat infamously offered naturalization to "free white persons." Obviously this was designed to leaved out slaves and other africans/blacks that might otherwise gain naturalization. this law wasn't changed until 1870, which allowed blacks and former slaves to become naturalized citizens. and the final change came in the 1950's which allowed asian peoples to become citizens. clearly the element here is that the immigration issue has always been run through with a racist and racially motivated element. it stands to reason that the current climate of anti-immigration is similarly fueled by racist/racially motivated reasons. i realize that things are often more complicated than we allow them to be, but i think that because of the substantive historical legacy of race informing our immigration policies it is undoubtedly informing and influencing a large portion of the debate now.
amnesty makes sense. i don't know the financial numbers on this, but i would assume that the cost of "rounding up" illegals would be prohibitive. where as simply processing those already here makes the most fiscal sense. to be honest the amount of ambiguity on this issue is pretty profound. as for me, i am continuing to wrestle with what is just and what is compassionate regarding this issue...
enough for now.