"The Americans"

"The Americans," a serial spy-thriller set in 80's Washington, is an excellent show. The sharp writing and wonderfully tangled morality spiced with just a touch of nostalgia for the Cold War is terrific fun, and I do commend it to you.

That is all!

120

I'll fight anyone who doesn't agree with me that Battlestar Galactica (I mean the 2004 edition) is one the finest television series of our time. Well written, superbly acted, and deeply insightful about leadership, military culture, and human drive for survival. It also had much more to say about theological matters than pretty much any TV series I have seen in a long time. The re-boot of BSG began with a two-part miniseries aired in 2003. After that, it began a convention run as a series that finally ended in 2009, though future movies set in the BSG world are still a very real possibility.

Anyway, the series kicked off with an episode entitled "33." It is the favourite of many of the actors, fans, and production team for good reason. The plot is relatively simple--the last humans have formed up into an armada of civilian ships and one "Battlestar." The Battlestar is a kind of combination aircraft (err.. space craft) carrier, battleship, and battlecruiser. They are running from a militarily superior force of artificial beings called the Cylon determined to wipe out all human life.

In this episode, the fleet "Jumps" with faster-than-light travel to a new location. The jumps are untrackable. Yet 33 minutes after each jump, the Cylons appear at the new location and attack the fleet. The fleet jumps away to a new location and, 33 minutes later, the Cylons appear and attack again. The episode starts the story after several days of this cat-and-mouse. Most of the fleet, especially the military-ops folks, are suffering from severe sleep deprivation. 33 Minutes isn't long enough to do much more than refuel, rearm, and get in a quick briefing before the next attack.

(Side note--besides consulting psychologists and medical doctors about the effects of sleep deprivation, some members of the cast actually went without sleep for several days to get an even deeper sense of what this scenario would be like in real life. It's a good anecdote about how seriously the cast took their roles in this series.)

Anyway, imagine having to fight or flee every 33 minutes? Scary.

These days, in our house, we are experiencing something similar. Every 120 minutes or so our little guy wakes up and needs to be fed and changed. It not exactly every 120 minutes, of course, but it's close. We have a little timer called an "Itzbeen" that helpful tracks how long it has been since he was last fed or had his diaper changed. And sometimes that timer will go beyond 120 minutes.... But even as it does you know it will be by much before he begins to fuss and smack his lips like the hungry little guy he is.

I'm lucky, most of the time at night I can sleep through this 2-hour cycle. Betsy is the one who bears the brunt of it, and I can see the effect. Of the two of us I was always the better one for day-time naps and night-time wakefulness, so this really isn't fair. Ah well.

Even now I can tell that it will soon be time to take our little Henry to his mother. The cycle continues....

-t

Ice Pilots NWT

My new favourite show is "Ice Pilots: NWT" on the history channel. It's a reality TV show about a small airline (Buffalo Air) in the Canadian North that keeps some very remote villages and towns supplied. These are the sorts of places that are only reachable by road three months of the year! One of the things that makes Buffalo Air unique is that they rely mostly on piston-powered airplanes, many of WWII vintage. We're talking PBY's, C-46's, DC-3/C-47's, C-54's. The extreme cold, poor weather, rough runways, and short hauls make these tough, un-pressurized propeller aircraft ideal.

Good times for you aviation buffs out there!



-t

Sermon - Easter 5 2009

I was very pleased with how my sermon turned out on Sunday. As is often the case, it's hard to predict what the finished product will be like--but this one turned out solid. I used the examples of the shows "Twin Peaks" and "Lost" to discuss how communities and individuals deal with the darkness and evil around and within us. Ultimately I argue that the Christian community strives to be more like "Twin Peaks," with a grounded sense of identity. That rootedness is to be found in Christ.

Sound is better this week, the new mic placement works okay, though it's not ideal. Closer to ideal would perhaps be a shotgun mic aimed at the ambo from 15 or 20 feet away. But I'm certainly learning. I'm not entirely happy with the sound mastering I did in post of this clip, but I don't have time to monkey with any more than I did.

I'm bothered more and more by the light. Far too bright on one side of my face than the other thanks to the sunlight coming in through the windows. What I really need is a light on the other side to act as a fill to balance it. Hopefully before this summer I'll have some extra cash to buy a light that could work in this application as well as for doing the Holy Cross interviews. A cheaper option would be a reflector, but this would look pretty obnoxious in the space! Compromises, compromises.



Here's the audio...


Here's a direct link to the MP3 file...

-t

Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks is one of the greatest Television series ever made. For a while it was also one of the most popular until the increasingly stylized storytelling and network-management meddling alienated the masses. I think the series is best understood as a dream about communities and the way individuals struggle within them to deal with darkness encroaching from without and within. Like a dream (itself a common trope within the story), the characters and places are drawn with such vibrancy that they come close to charactiture. In fact, I had to actually turn the saturation levels on my TV down when watching the series on DVD recently!

The basic plot revolves around the murder of a high school prom-queen-type in a rural Washington town near the Canadian border. Due to the connection between this murder and others as well as the limited resources of local law enforcement, FBI agent Dale Cooper is sent to investigate. Almost immediately we begin to discover that underneath a nostalgically sweet and wholesome American town are dark, dark secrets. As the series goes on paranormal aspects of this struggle between light and dark are revealed. The storytelling becomes increasingly poetic and cosmic in scale. The allegorical character of the story becomes somewhat murkier and obscured in the last episodes, but I'm still quite moved by the poignant moments Frost and Lynch were able to create in the midst of all the abstraction.

These are similar themes as those developed in some of David Lynch's movies, especially the earlier Blue Velvet and later Molholland Drive. Dreams inside dreams that often drift from meditating on one poignant moment to another. Yet the total effect in a film like Blue Velvet is stunning. Molholland Drive was a bit harder to achieve satisfaction from, but rewards investigation with a later "a-ha" moment. I only "got" that movie after reading an article online that translated Lynch-into-English, but I'm glad I did.

One of the reasons Twin Peaks had such a cultish following was the compelling quirkiness of the world and characters they created. Dale Cooper is a loveable odd-ball--unquestionably competent yet also weird. I think he foreshadows some other geek-heroes of pop-culture by several years. Watching the series again for the first time in many years, I recall that I've actually modeled some of Cooper's mannerisms--like the way he gives an over-earnest thumbs-up sign.

Incidentally, shows like Lost have Twin Peaks DNA. The creators of Lost often refer to Twin Peaks. I remember reading one article about their conviction that Twin Peaks really ran into trouble because it revealed the answer to the central mystery ("Who killed Laura Palmer") too soon. That turned out to be a ratings ploy by the network that backfired. The creative team behind Lost has apparently used this as argument to win greater freedom from network control!

But besides the fact that they are both intricate, serialized mysteries, with cultish-following, there are important similarities, too. Note the large, ensemble casts, exotic setting, and the encroachment supernatural elements. But whereas the spiritual temperature of Twin Peaks was set by the cool, dark and foreboding woods, the temperature of Lost is set by the alternating feelings of orientation/disorientation felt by character and audience alike. Lost is about being, well, "Lost." Twin Peaks was about confronting darkness and how that encounter changes us. It's telling that the certainty felt by the John Locke character from Lost (often referred to as "faith" within the show's dialog) is rare in that series. But in Twin Peaks almost all the characters are oriented to place and themselves at all times--indeed, many give touching soliloquies about their highest aspirations and beliefs. Perhaps this difference says something about our changing spiritual climate, the grand and extraverted aspirations and vision of the early 90's replaced with the fear and isolation of the end of this decade.

One feels that every character in Lost, even the coupled ones, are profoundly lonely. In Twin Peaks many characters are brokenhearted, but there are also many examples of deep love and friendship (between Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman, for example). Another compelling love is between Cooper and Annie Blackburn (played remarkably well by Heather Graham). In the Twin Peaks universe, real connections between people are indeed possible, and may offer the only possible response to the existential darkness that creeps into each episode as the sun goes down and the shadows lengthen (each episode takes place over one day). I think it was this vision of the moral universe that I found most compelling when I saw the show for the first time in junior-high and high-school. I enjoy Lost, but it doesn't resonate for me like the coffee-and-pine world of Twin Peaks. At the end of the day Lost leaves me feeling selfish and isolated, whereas Twin Peaks made we want to hug a tree or talk to a log or compliment someone for their coffee and pie.

-t

Kings

I just want to commend to you all the new NBC series "Kings." It's sort of a midrash (retelling) of the Book of Samuel. It stars Ian McShane (whom I loved in Deadwood) as King Silas (aka Saul). In the pilot a young soldier from a farming family (David Shepherd) manages to destroy a tank named "Goliath" with an anti-tank missile while rescuing the King's son (Jack aka Jonathan). Thus young David is brought into the court and the drama ensues.

I always appreciate a series that is willing to give room for God to be a character. In "Kings" God's presence is shown through occasional signs and prophesies mediated by the characters' experiences of them. Reverend Samuels (aka Samuel) seem to have more such experiences than most of the characters, and these are handled in a way that is poetic without being cheesy. The writing is sharp and stylized in a way that reminds me of "The Wire," "Deadwood," and the early seasons of "The Unit." I appreciate dialog that rewards those who put down the laptop and pay attention to what's being said.

Here's a promo:


-t

Super-Bowl Snacks...

Check out this bad boy: a model stadium built entirely from snack foods:



I'll quote the recipe from the Holy Taco blog:

The Greatest Snack Food Stadium Ever Built

Ingredients:

The Field:
1 Pound of Guacamole
15 Oz. Queso Dip For The Steelers End Zone
15 Oz. Salsa For The Cardinals End Zone
2 Oz. Sour Cream for the Field Lines

The Players:
15 Vienna Sausages
Helmets - 3 Oz. Sharp Cheddar Cheese

The Goal Posts:
1 Slim Jim for Each Goal Post
1 Oz. Monterey Jack Cheddar To Anchor (each)

The Stands:
58 Twinkies
1 Pound of Bacon
1 Bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos
1 Bag of Cheetos
1 Bag of Corn Tortilla Chips
1 Bag of Chex Mix

The Blimp:
20 Oz. Football-Shaped Summer Sausage (optional) (on second thought, no, this isn't optional. Go buy one.)

TOTAL CALORIES: 24,375
TOTAL GRAMS OF FAT: 1,285
TOTAL COST: $86.47
TOTAL DELICIOUSNESS: 1 Billion trillion, dude. One billion trillion.

Directions:
1. Put all your ingredients on an empty table and take a really crappy photo.
2. Take one pound of guacamole and smear it on the center of a baking tray, leaving a section on either end for end zones.
3. It's important here to fill one end zone with one filling, and one end zone with another, so that neither team receives home field deliciousness. We chose salsa for the Cardinals, and Queso dip for the Steelers.
4. Take sour cream and put it into a turkey baster, then squeeze gently to make the yard lines across the field.
5. Vienna sausages make delicious players, and tiny cheese wedge helmets help keep them from getting concussions. Two different types of cheese helps to distinguish the teams. The goal posts are made from Slim Jim's, that we cut up, then stuck together with tooth picks. Monterey Jack cheese was used as an anchor to keep them standing, with a tooth pick linking the two together. At no point was it necessary to "snap in to" any of these slim jims. Cutting worked better.
6. Now that the field is finished, you can begin constructing the stadium around it, which you will also eat. It's important to lay down some paper towels, so that no food comes in contact with your disgusting table top. (Because if you're a person who makes this, you definitely have a disgusting table top.)
7. The twinkie is nature's brick. You can make your stadium as large as you want, depending on how many twinkies you have at your disposal. We had 58. And probably could have used 90. Use tooth picks to secure the twinkies to one another. This outer stadium wall will provide a delicious dessert when the contents of the stadium have been eaten.
8. The bacon wall is the most important part of the stadium, because it keeps the throngs of screaming fans, in this case chips, from falling on the field, in this case the guacamole and salsa. Insert tooth picks into the first row of twinkies, and then weave the bacon in and out of them, so that it forms a pliable wall.
9. Without the fans, there would be no game. It's no different in your snack stadium, so select four different kinds of snacks to fill the stands. Be sure to use pieces of bacon to separate your crowd into sections.
10. As you can see, the chips give the feeling of a crowd of crazed fans. Especially the cheetos, who can barely contain their excitement at Vienna Sausage Roethlisberger and his delectable team.
11. At any major sporting event, a blimp shows up. In this case it's a 20 ounce summer sausage, that's shaped like a football. It doesn't float, we just took out the wire in photoshop, so don't get freaked out. (source)

Happy People Don't Watch TV

From the NY Times comes this thought provoker:

Although people who describe themselves as happy enjoy watching television, it turns out to be the single activity they engage in less often than unhappy people, said John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and the author of the study, which appeared in the journal Social Indicators Research. ...

“We looked at 8 to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more — visiting others, going to church, all those things — were more happy,” Dr. Robinson said. “TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less.”

But the researchers could not tell whether unhappy people watch more television or whether being glued to the set is what makes people unhappy. “I don’t know that turning off the TV will make you more happy,” Dr. Robinson said. (source)

I would be curious whether the same holds true for playing video games...

-t