Film, Television, Sex, Music, Literature, Pop
Confusing Movie Dream Trailers.. Somber music. Winter. A man examines a cottage bedroom with an empty crib by the window. He sits on the bed, alone, and puts his head in his hands. Summer: he is running across a meadow with his wife, a child in his arms. Winter. Alone again, he looks down the..
Which Cable Gets you to Heaven? I spent my 58th birthday organizing my USB cables and engaging, half-heartedly, in a theological debate on Facebook. I wasn’t “all in,” because you get the sense, sometimes, that some fellow believers just don’t share the same assumptions, even remotely, about the faith, and so there is very little..
The Man of “Science” I took a call years ago from one of my father’s business friends. We had Stanford in common; he had graduated a few decades before and his daughter was on her way there at the time. I recognized, in his voice, a kind of nerdy, technical view of the world. I..
I try to start my day in an ancient text. I scold myself if my mind wanders, because I’m trying to treat it with at least the reverence I give Scottish shortbread. I’m trying to savor the stuff—even when the words feel dry and tasteless. The point isn’t just to read, but to think, and..
Wormwood Imagine you’re a small boy and two men from the government let your mother know your father has had an accident. He fell, or jumped, out of a 13th story hotel room in New York. It is 1953 and your father is a germ warfare scientist. Over the rest of your life, you will..
A brief inventory of human conflict I have witnessed, first or second hand, over the years: My father is preparing a ski boat for a sales/business trip down to Baja. He’s giving my mom a hard time about helping him out, barking orders. They have words, and when dad drives off, boat in tow, mom..
..and viral marketing My most recent Facebook Jailing is a good excuse for me to think out loud about what I’ve come to conclude is the false hope of viral audience building on social networks. But first, read my offending blog and see if you can tell me how that might offend Facebook Community Standards…
Something to think about My blog yesterday earned a heartbreaking response from a man who identified himself as “Just Another Sad Husband.” I think our exchange is a reasonably good read. Since I started writing about sex here and there in my blog, I’ve had people confess similar sorts of problems, and even a few..
“..come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control…” I’m blessed not only with a good wife, who has abiding contempt for feminism, but lots of female friends who hold toxic man-hatred in contempt as well. This is more or less a planned reality on my part, because..
Are we even allowed to love plant managers? I’ve written about this before, but during a conversation the other day about the role of sex in redemptive films, I thought of another way of illustrating it. Picture a father and his adult son pondering a serving of Atlantic lobster in a fine restaurant: Son: Drawn..
