Waiting for Vader

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Episode III is almost here. I’m excited.
After the two prequels (I loved them, I hated them), I have managed to dispel my illusions about Lucas’ storytelling abilities; with my somewhat lowered expectations, I’m hopeful that Episode III will be at least a mildly pleasant surprise. At worst, it’ll be like the previous two, which I managed to love despite their many failings. At best, it’ll actually be really good.
Of course, George Lucas seems to be almost frantically attempting to deflate my enthusiasm for this movie. The latest such effort is his Cannes revelation, in which we learn that the Star Wars prequels are actually ham-fisted critiques of the war in Iraq. You know what the Star Wars movies really needed, George? A clunky real-life political agenda!
Knowing Lucas’ skill at writing sublimely nuanced dialogue, I can only imagine the subtlety with which these political sentiments will be expressed.
But you know what? If I can overlook midichlorians, “Greedo shoots first,” Ewoks, the dance scene in Jabba’s palace, the Picnic Scene, Gungans, poop jokes, midichlorians, and did I mention midichlorians, I think I can find it within me to overlook a bit of clumsily earnest politicking.
So I’m going to just ignore it. Lucas can try to provoke this Star Wars fan all he wants, but I won’t give in to hate.
‘Cause you know what else? I can’t wait to see this movie.

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Your friendly neighborhood harbinger of the Apocalypse

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I gingerly dropped the CD into the tray, put on my headphones, and pressed Play. This was a new album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, which meant that I had absolutely no idea what was about to happen.
My first encounter with Nick Cave’s music took place several years ago and is an experience I remember well. The song was “The Mercy Seat,” and by the time it drew to a close–in a cacophany of strings, distortion, and tortured vocals–I felt emotionally exhausted. The song opens (as instruments are messily tuned and warmed up in the background) with a defiant declaration:

They came and took me from my room
And put me in Dead Row
(of which I am nearly wholly innocent).
And I say it again: I am not afraid to die.

I was instantly hooked. The song continued, building slowly in intensity, telling the story of a death-row inmate’s scared but defiant mental journey to the electric chair. He insists he’s innocent, but he knows he’s lying to himself. He looks to the cross of Christ for mercy, but knows he cannot escape the all-seeing, judging eye of God. He yearns for the release of death, but is terrified at the prospect of dying. You, the listener, feel the terror and panic and relief of the long walk towards the Chair, the Mercy Seat.
It’s an amazing, disturbing, glorious song.
Like I said, you never know what you’re going to get with Nick Cave. Musically, he’s what you’d get if you mixed rock, blues, and folk together and stirred in a healthy dose of Nine Inch Nails. He’s an agnostic fire-and-brimstone preacher, he’s a honey-tongued crooner, he’s a murderous prophet of doom. He can pull off a love song that opens with this line:

I don’t believe in an interventionist God
But I know, darling, that you do.

…and somehow not sound completely ridiculous. (Actually, Nick Cave can be a bit ridiculous.)
So I wasn’t sure what was going to come out of the headphone speakers. A ballad about murder? A tender love song? A tired and angry tirade about a broken world? What I actually got managed to catch me completely off guard: Cave as an electrifyingly earnest street preacher, his booming baritone shouting out an actual sermon, backed by cranked-up-to-11 guitar riffs and an honest-to-God gospel choir:

Get ready for love! Praise Him!
Get ready for love! Praise Him!
Well, most of all nothing much ever really happens
And God rides high up in the ordinary sky
Until we find ourselves at our most distracted,
And the miracle that was promised creeps quietly by.
Calling every boy and girl
Calling all around the world
Get ready for love! Praise Him!
The mighty wave their hankies from their high-windowed palace
Sending grief and joy down in supportable doses
And we search high and low without mercy or malice
While the gate to the Kingdom swings shut and closes.
Praise Him til you’ve forgotten what you’re praising Him for;
Praise Him a little bit more.
Praise Him til you’ve forgotten what you’re praising Him for;
Then praise Him a little bit more…
Get ready for love! Praise Him!
I searched the seven seas and looked under the carpet
And browsed through the brochures that govern the skies
And I was just hanging around, doing nothing
And looked up to see His face burned in the retina of your eyes.

This is weird and wonderful and ludicrously catchy. I have no idea how serious Cave is being, or how many layers of irony I need to dig through before coming to the meaning and intent behind this tune. So I think I’ll just turn up the volume, lean back, and enjoy it.
Preach it, brother Cave!

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Silence is golden

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Sorry for the long break from posting there. I know you’re hurt and disappointed, but it could’ve been worse: I could’ve been here posting about Terri Schiavo, the Pope, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears’ pregnancy, the Iraq War, what I had for dinner last night (ham and potatoes, quite delicious!), and/or the latest efforts by [your favorite politician] to undermine Truth, Justice and the American Way.
My absence is partly due to lack of motivation, and partly because Michele and I have been working on a little blog project of our own. Take a look at what we’ve been up to. (Comments, and participation, welcome.)

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Long, dark night: reflections on Scandal

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This evening, I finished reading Shusaku Endo’s novel Scandal. (I very much enjoy Endo’s writing; his excellent novel Silence is fairly well-known, and The Samurai would rank as one of my top five favorite novels.) I’m still trying to process exactly what Scandal “means;” feel free to read along as I mull over the novel. Spoilers will undoubtedly abound, so proceed with caution.
Scandal tells the story of Suguro, an aging Christian novelist who has, at the twilight of his literary career, found both critical success as a writer and personal fulfillment in an ordered and moral life. (I don’t know enough about Endo’s personal life to recognize which parts of the story are autobiographical and which aren’t, but I have a feeling that the protagonist’s life and thoughts bear more than a passing resemblance to Endo’s.)
Unfortunately for Suguro, just as he is preparing to “settle down” for a well-deserved rest from his long and difficult literary career, his reputation is threatened by scandalous rumors. Rumors surface that Suguro has been spotted in Tokyo’s “red light” district frequenting S&M clubs and other unsavory venues. Suguro is disturbed by the persistant rumors even though he knows they are untrue, and something about them seems to threaten the neatly-arranged, happily-married moral life he has constructed for himself over the years. The novel tells the story of Suguro’s search for the suspected impersonator, but also walks us step-by-step through Suguro’s reasoning as he comes to grips with his own morality and Christian beliefs.
That’s the surface story, at least. Beneath the surface, Endo is exploring a lot of difficult issues. A number of questions and themes surface briefly or are hinted at throughout the story: what it means to be a Japanese Christian; how a Christian artist can approach his craft with artistic integrity; how can Christians relate to and talk about a world tainted to its core by filth and sin. It seems clear to me that these are all issues that have troubled Endo, and the lack of firm resolution to any of them makes me suspect that he was still looking for answers himself while writing this novel.
But while these issues get some treatment in the story, the core of the novel is about one thing: sin. Sin, depravity, the unspeakable desires and urges that live at the heart of every human being. Suguro, and the characters he meets during the story, are walking contradictions: on the one hand, they can be polite, kind, generous, or innocent on the surface, but beneath each mask is an insatiable corruption that renders every good deed, every happy marriage, every kind word, every noble achievement hollow and meaningless.
As Suguro’s investigations continue, the actual question of whether or not he committed the scandalous acts becomes almost irrelevant–because the deeper he looks into himself, the more he realizes that he, the good husband and influential Christian Suguro, is as hungry for depravity as the worst rapist or murderer. Suguro has made it almost all the way to the end of his life living morally and righteously, but in the end he is utterly undone by sin. The perfect life he has created is a joke, a mask, a meaningless act of self-deception; in his heart, he is utterly depraved, a monster.
As Suguro learns about the nature of sin, we, the readers, learn with him. Endo is saying something profound about sin in Scandal, something that I haven’t seen since my college readings of Dostoyevsky and Flannery O’Connor. Endo wants to break down any notion that we can save ourselves. As the novel begins, Suguro believes that man’s capacity to sin contains the seeds of his own salvation–he believes that sin can have noble intentions, that it is undertaken in a twisted but nevertheless sincere desire to find spiritual fulfillment. Suguro sees sin as the misguided excess of humans who want salvation but don’t know quite how to attain it.
It’s a comforting notion of sin; it’s a sin that God will surely forgive, because He can understand why you’re doing it. That’s an attractive idea to me, at least. But after luring you into this mode of thinking, Endo springs his trap. Sin, Endo shows us, is not natural or misguided: it is vile. It infects every corner of our heart and every thought of our minds; it’s ugly and destructive and hateful. For Endo, real sin–the kind that lives in the human heart, that separates us from God–is not the moral failing of the disciples who doubted Jesus but who later felt bad for their actions and repented after the cock crowed. No–sin is the person who stood at the side of the road to Calvary and jeered at Jesus for no reason other than the pleasure of defiling something that’s pure and innocent. The kind of deliberate depravity that no just God could possibly forgive, let alone tolerate. The kind of sin that offers no hope of salvation or escape.
That’s the message Endo leaves for us: no resolution, no easy answer, just an awareness that human beings are truly and utterly wretched. Endo does not question that God forgives our sin, but he does not profess to understand it, either. What kind of love looks at the human monster and chooses to purify it? What kind of God could stand to look at a creature so corrupt with rebellion?
Flannery O’Connor famously hoped that, by exposing the dark heart of humanity in her stories, she would shock her readers into crying out for God. Endo, while his writing style is very different from O’Connor’s, bears a similar message in Scandal. Humans are never more aware of God’s mysterious, incomprehensible grace than when they have hit the absolute nadir of the soul.

Through the large glass window of a tearoom next door, he saw a cheerful group of three or four young women seated around a table. One of them noticed Suguro and pointed him out to her neighbor, not even knowing he was a monster. –from Scandal

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“Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

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Who could forget those memorable words? I see that Bill has beaten me to the punch and acquired season 1 of the Sledge Hammer! TV show. (Wait–that show went for more than one season?) My first reaction to learning that Sledge is available on DVD was rapturous joy–how many times over the last few years have I wished that show were still around? Now is my chance!
But something inside me is telling me to be cautious. When I was younger, I felt that there was truly nothing in the world funnier than Sledge Hammer. But nostalgia has betrayed me before. Other things that I thought were Totally Rad during my youth include the Dragonlance novels, Mask, Garfield (“Don’t look now, but it’s Monday again!”), and the Thundercats. Without going into the grisly details, let’s just say that these and other relics from the ’80s didn’t stand up terribly well to retrospective analysis.
So what should I do? Should I try to re-capture the awesomeness of Sledge Hammer by watching it, but risk finding out that it’s actually a terrible, terrible show? Or should I resist the impulse to watch it again, and leave Sledge and his crazy antics to rest comfortably on the pillar of Nostalgia?

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Chilling effect

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I’ve removed a blog post from last week after it sparked some heated discussion. I don’t normally like to delete blog posts or comments–I prefer that people’s statements stand, for better or worse–but in this case I felt prompted to do so. I’m not criticizing any of the commentors, and in fact a number of worthwhile points came up in the discussion. If you want to discuss it further, feel free to drop me a note. I don’t plan to make deleting posts or comments a habit, nor do I want to muffle feisty discussions in the future.
And if you’re chafing under the iron fist of my censorship, look at it this way: if you had the foresight to save or print out that post and comments, you now own a genuine collector’s item. I bet you could sell that sucker on Ebay for major bucks.

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Too much of a good thing

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As I’ve mentioned earlier, Michele and I are slowly making our way through the first year of The X-Files. It’s fun to watch the show as it introduces us to the characters and establishes the “rational science vs. open-minded faith” tension that made the show so interesting.
Reflecting on the X-Files has led me to a conclusion about our relationship to stories and entertainment: it’s very hard to let go of a good thing, even when that good thing is past its prime and needs to be retired. I’m not talking about lackluster shows that “jump the shark” by pulling crazy publicity stunts to re-ignite interest in a flagging series; I’m talking about excellent shows that make their point and tell their stories, but then just keep going past their expiration date without any compelling artistic reason for doing so.
The X-Files is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Over the course of 5-6 years, it told the fascinating story of two quirky personalities and their entanglement with government conspiracies, alien invasions, and supernatural horror. It was a great show; it was generally entertaining and it featured a great story arc in which both protagonists grow and mature and re-evaluate their worldviews. And then, not long after the (excellent, in my opinion) movie, the story was wrapped up: the long-running Syndicate plotline came to a close, Mulder and Scully had both grown to be better people after years of interaction and tribulation, and it was time for The X-Files to bow and gracefully exit, its point made.
But instead, the show just… kept going, even with one central actor gone and despite the fact that the major plotlines were either resolved or had become so mainstream as to lose their edge. I’m told by friends who watched the show’s final years that it continued to be an excellent and well-written television show. But why? Anything truly provocative or interesting that show had to say had been said quite effectively already. Sure, we all like the characters, but is there a compelling narrative reason to keep them around any longer? Wouldn’t we be better off if the show’s creators and writers just wrote “The End” on The X-Files and turned their creative efforts to a fresher project, instead of working desperately to squeeze several more years’ worth of marginal relevance out of it?
Or take The Simpsons. Why are they still making new episodes for this show? It has been brilliantly funny in the past, and has had a profound influence on comedy and animation. But the last two episodes I tuned in to, while probably no less competently-created than any past episodes, hardly convinced me the show needed to be around: one episode centered around mocking Walmart (“Sprawlmart”–zing!), and the other was truly pushing the envelope by being the 37,648th television show to feature gay characters/marriage. I think we can all agree that The Simpsons has said its piece and carved out its place in history, and should go gracefully into the good night.
There are exceptions to this phenomenon, although they’re rare. Babylon 5, my favorite sci-fi television series, set out to tell a story over the course of five years, and did so spectacularly. Once the story was told, it stopped, and is a much better show for not trying to eke out any more life out of its basic premise. The Star Trek shows limit themselves to seven years, but I personally wonder if seven years isn’t a bit excessive in some cases. I got my hopes up when 24 promised to tell the story of a single day, only to have those hopes dashed when the same gimmick was repeated in successive years. I found the show Scrubs hilarious for a year–but how many years of the same joke do we really need? Arrested Development is funny–will it still be funny in a few years? We can be sure neither of those shows will end because their creators decide they’re satisfied and finished; they’ll be cancelled when the ratings drop below a certain level, and not a minute before. Why doesn’t anybody ever produce a truly great show for one year, then move on to produce another good show the next? Why can’t we just enjoy a good idea for what it’s worth and move on? Why are low ratings the only reasons that shows are ever cancelled? Why must all good shows end their days having been run into the ground several years after their peak?
The answer is fairly obvious, I suppose: good shows get stretched into emaciated, purposeless shells of their former glory because we keep watching them, and because they’re “safe bets” for television networks in search of a good long-term investment. But I have this crazy dream that one day, we’ll see fewer open-ended, long-running sagas that lose their edge well before the end, and more short, concise, well-executed shows that make their point and then stop before pressing it too far. One can always hope.

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DSL update

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Thanks very much to those of you who offered suggestions and ideas regarding the big cable/DSL/VOIP/etc research. After much number-crunching and hand-wringing, Michele and I are going out on a limb and springing for DSL (through Speakeasy) and VOIP, with cellphones as emergency backup.
It’s uncharted territory for us–will we find a new paradise of telephonic freedom, or will we come crawling back to Comcast and SBC in shame and defeat, begging like prodigal sons for scraps from their monopolistic table? You, my friends, will be the first to know.

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The siren call of the Midwest

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Allow me to congratulate Mark and his family on the new job, and to wish them luck as they get ready to make the big move from southern California to St. Louis!
I must confess that I am pleased by this development, although I’m sure many of Mark’s family and friends in southern California are dismayed by the news. For years, I’ve been waiting for Escondido’s seemingly unbreakable grip on my childhood/highschool friends to loosen. I’ve been patient for years, content to let the lure of the Midwest do its work. And at last, I can claim a victory of sorts. St. Louis is not quite within easy driving distance, but it’s a lot closer to Grand Rapids than Escondido is.
So Mark, allow me to officially welcome you to the Midwest. Once you get used to our charming ten-month-long winters, you’ll come to truly love it here. It’s a good life… yes, very good. You’ll see.

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This is the way the world ends: thoughts on Gehenna

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I read an interesting roleplaying book a while back, and for some time I’ve been meaning to talk about it here.
The book is Gehenna, the final sourcebook published for the Vampire: The Masquerade game line. Gehenna is the end of the road for Vampire and its elaborate setting; after many years of publishing Vampire books, White Wolf (the publisher) decided to end the game line and setting by publishing an end-of-the-world sourcebook which would detail ways to roleplay the End Times in a manner fitting Vampire‘s themes.
Gehenna is that book; it includes four different scenarios for ending the world (as well as some general advice on tailoring Vampire‘s End Times to fit your game). One of those four scenarios, titled “Wormwood,” struck me as particularly interesting, so I’ll discuss it briefly.
[Warning: major spoilers follow.]
First, a quick primer for those not familiar with Vampire: in it, you create and take on the role of a modern-day vampire. As a vampire, you are an inheritor of God’s curse on the Biblical character Cain. You are part of a hidden (from mortals) society of undead who are constantly scheming and trying to acquire power over both their fellow vampires and the mortal world. Most games involve backbiting politics as the characters try to survive and thrive in this predatory world of vampire politics. There is a strong apocalyptic tone to the game; in the Vampire world, the signs of the End are everywhere, and when it finally comes, legend holds that a handful of ancient vampire gods will rise from their slumber and destroy everything. That’s the abbreviated version, at least.
“Wormwood” proceeds something like this: one day, God sends a killing cloud that envelops the world and simply kills off every vampire on the planet in a matter of hours or days. The only survivors are a handful of vampires (including, of course, the players’ characters), who are specifically spared by God in a “Noah’s Ark” sort of situation. These vampires are placed in a church that they cannot leave (because of the killing cloud outside), and have a short period of time in which to prove themselves worthy of being spared from God’s wrath. For several days, the vampires are subjected to a series of difficult moral tests and choices; at the end of their allotted time, the surviving vampires are judged by God and either destroyed (if they succumb to their bestial nature) or spared and restored to mortality (if they demonstrate that they can overcome their predatory nature).
That’s the story in a nutshell. This scenario really appeals to be on a narrative basis for several different reasons.
For one, I think it’s the perfect horrific ending to inflict on a society of arrogant, uber-powerful undead predators: in the end, vampires just… die, and are forgotten. The vampires have spent dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of years seeking power and pulling the strings of their human puppets from the shadows, secure in their supernatural superiority to mortal man; and in the end, they’re just wiped away almost nonchalantly, in a matter of days. For all their raging against God and all their arrogance, for all the supernatural power they have accrued over the centuries, they don’t even get to go out in a blaze of glory; nobody even knows they ever existed. What a thematically fitting end—tossed aside by God, reduced to utter insignificance. That’s a good horror story, in my opinion, and Vampire purports to be a game of horror.
The second reason this tale interests me is the way it depicts God. In “Wormwood,” the true nature of God is finally revealed, and it stands in stark contrast to what we’ve been led to believe about Him. Vampires, descendants of the Biblical character Cain, have long attributed cruelty and arbitrary vindictiveness to God, seeing Him as the source of their vampiric curse and portraying Cain’s sin as a praiseworthy act, rather than a vile one. In “Wormwood,” however, God turns out to be loving, kind, and patient—nothing at all like the vicious and uncaring deity so hated by the vampire community. God is shown to be a merciful God who has waited for millenia for vampires to repent and accept grace and forgiveness. It is the vampires’ own pride, not God’s malice, which has kept them from divine grace; all this time, all they needed to do was humble themselves and repent. In “Wormwood,” time has finally run out, but even then, God gives a chosen few the chance to be spared the richly-deserved judgment that lays waste to the vampire world.
Why is this so interesting to me? Well, for one, it’s practically bursting with substantive Christian themes and ideas. It’s not quite a truly Christian message—in the end, the chosen vampires are saved because of their own good deeds—but it’s far, far closer to a genuine Christian roleplaying scenario then most other games I’ve read (including, I’m afraid, most specifically Christian roleplaying games). I’m not saying that one needs to completely “Christianize” the scenario in order to fully appreciate it, but for those looking for such things, it features a lot of opportunities to explore, in the roleplaying medium, topics like sin and grace.
Unlike just about every other religious-minded roleplaying game ever written, “Wormwood” portrays an actual, no-strings-attached, loving God. When a Judeo-Christian-esque God is portrayed in roleplaying games, He is almost always portrayed as having what you could call a “lawful jerk” personality: He’s usually good and righteous, but in a callous might-makes-right fashion. He smites evil in a scorched-earth manner, with no room for genuine grace or mercy. This is true even in games that attempt to portray God in a somewhat positive light; even most “Christian RPGs” seem to think that “onward Christian soldier” is the only Biblical model for behavior.
And so, I find it fascinating that (of all things) a Vampire scenario hits so much closer to the target than do decades’ worth of other religion-focused games. It’s not perfect, and I’m not saying it’s a “Christian game,” whatever that is. But the God of “Wormwood” bears more than a passing resemblance to the Christian God of the Bible, and I, for one, am happy to see it.

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