Avdat

The year that nothing happened

Ethan turned 14 last Friday. As we were celebrating his birthday it occurred to me that his arrival is about all that I remember of the year 1997. I scratched my head, but all I could recall was that the comet Hale-Bopp appeared in 1997--that plus the accompanying cult mass-suicide. And I'm sure that the only reason I remember the comet is because of something personal--in this case, work-related. I had to attend an Easter sunrise service at 6:00 AM that year, and the comet in the eastern sky was breathtaking.

Was 1997 really such a forgettable year? Or do memories of my petite wife's swelling belly crowd out all other memories? I've looked up 1997 on Wikipedia and it turns out that yes indeed, it was the year that nothing happened.

True, there was a plane crash, but there always is. Gianni Versace was gunned down, but somebody always gets murdered. Bill Clinton attended his second inaugural, but someone always gets inaugurated every four years.

Ah! How could I have forgotten? That was the year that Princess Diana died! (I'm scanning the Wikipedia article while I write this post). I know. That was 26 days after Ethan was born. I must have been sleep-deprived.

We need another year like 1997. 2011 is barely half-over, and look at the toll it's taken:

• Earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan.
• U.S. credit rating downgraded.
• Eurozone on the edge of collapse.
• No jobs, no jobs, no jobs.
• Partisan paralysis in Washington.
• Tornadoes destroy Joplin, Missouri, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and plenty of other places.
• War in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Iraq.
• Mass shooting of teenagers in Norway.

On the other hand, if the Arab Spring and the death of Bin Laden put Arab despotism and militant Islam to bed, perhaps 2011 will look better in retrospect than close up.

Nevertheless, 1997 can not possibly be "the year that nothing happened." Why, that's the year we procreated! The advent of our firstborn! A year of magic and portent!

Unsolicited fashion advice

I'm no Peace Bang, but I'm not letting that stop me. I am here to tell you. Yes you, the hipster sitting in the bank lobby with me today. You are out of your frakking mind wearing that knit hat on your head in Richmond, Virginia in the summertime.

I don't care how obscure the vintage clothing store was where you bought that thing. Your life is at stake. Your reputation is at stake! If you stroke out on a 99 degree day in Monroe Park, your well-meaning mother may insist that the mortician wash your hair before you're laid out for public viewing. She might even go shopping at (God forgive me) The Men's Wearhouse to buy a blue blazer to bury you in.

These things happen. Did you know that people have gone to their eternal reward wearing white bucks? Don't let it happen to you. Don't be a slave to fashion. The life you save could be your own.

In which I sound like my old man

So I went to Busch Gardens Saturday and did a little people-watching amongst The General American Public. I didn't see too many naked muffin tops, but we remain stuck in a period of fashion history extremely hostile to all women whose bodies haven't been sculpted by playing both soccer and lacrosse since age four.

You know the teenager/young adult woman whose body is transitioning from that prepubescent Teletubby shape to the apple shape they've inherited from their mother? They look like eggs with arms and legs attached? Invariably these were the women wearing the shortest shorts and a spaghetti strap tank top so tight that, to quote Anne Lamotte, it'd take the jaws of life to get her out of it.

OK, I understand. They want to tan, and they don't care about skin cancer. They're 19. I get that. And I get the meat market aspect of a theme park. But Dear, let me tell you something: his imagination can run wilder than your reality. So leave something to his imagination, OK?

No. Don't let me tell you. I don't want to have this conversation with you. But I do want somebody to have this conversation with you. A classy, female mentor. An older sister? A cousin? A co-worker? A teacher?

A mother? Nope, cause Mom was at Busch Gardens wearing the same thing! Only with more stretch marks and jiggle.

As for the guys... well, I didn't see any hipsters. Nor did I see any preps; they were all at Colonial Downs, I assume. But I did see a whole lot of this ugly, ugly guy look that I don't know the name for, but I recognize it as an almost pure type of... something. It's like Jersey Shore without the muscles, like Kid Rock on meth, something along these lines:

Head shaved with a two guard. Scrawny goatee somewhere between "I haven't shaved this week," and, "My kingdom for more testosterone!" Zits. Buck teeth. Sad or vacant eyes. I'll say vacant. Sad suggests an emotional complexity that may not be there. Top it off with the humongous saggin' jeans, the wife-beater, and letters in the newspaper masthead script spelling out the girlfriend's name on the upper arm.

Friendly advice, gentlemen. Unless your girlfriend's name is Jennifer, don't get her name tattooed on you. Jennifers are a dime a dozen. Laquandas are not a dime a dozen. Get Laquanda tattooed on you, and Laquanda better be special. She better be for life. Cause that tattoos are for life.

This guy--I just wanna smack him between the shoulder blades and say, "Stand up straight, son! Smile! You're at Busch Gardens, dammit! Look like you're having some fun!"

OK, gonna quit blogging. If my wife reads any more stuff like this, she's gonna get me some Sans-a-Belt slacks and Hush Puppies for Father's Day.

Are you a Christian hipster?

Brett McCracken says that one way you can tell is by perusing the following reading list (HT: Lee). "If you’ve read more than 20 of them, there is a good chance that you are a Christian with artistic or intellectual tendencies. If you’ve read more than 30 of them, you are most likely a Christian hipster."

So I'm posting his list with the books I've read in bold. I'm generous with the verb "read." If I've read part of the book I've highlighted it. If haven't read any of the book, but it's on my shelf, I've highlighted it. Lastly, I've highlighted two books I haven't read and probably never will read, one for each pair of skinny jeans in my closet. Can you guess which two?

Augustine – Confessions
C.S. Lewis – Till We Have Faces
Walker Percy – The Moviegoer
Dorothy Sayers – The Mind of the Maker
G.K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy
George MacDonald – Phantastes
Evelyn Underhill – Mysticism
Terry Eagleton – After Theory
Jean-Paul Sarte – Being and Nothingness
Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings
Annie Dillard – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Donald Miller – Blue Like Jazz
Kathleen Norris – Acedia & Me
Marilynne Robinson – Gilead
Shushako Endo- Silence
George Steiner – Real Presences
William Shakespeare- King Lear
Anne Lamott – Traveling Mercies
Plato – The Republic
Jacques Ellul – The Technological Society
Flannery O’Connor – Wise Blood
Chuck Klosterman – Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs
Dave Eggers – A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Martin Buber – I and Thou
Neil Postman – Amusing Ourselves to Death
Lauren Winner – Real Sex
Douglas Coupland – Life After God
Tim Keller – The Reason For God
N.T. Wright – Surprised by Hope
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
A.W. Tozer – The Knowledge of the Holy
Henri Nouwen – The Return of the Prodigal Son
Dietrich Bonhoeffer – The Cost of Discipleship
Jack Kerouac – On the Road
John Steinbeck – East of Eden
Jean Baudrillard – Simulacra and Simulation
Rob Bell – Velvet Elvis
William P. Young – The Shack
Shane Claiborne – The Irresistible Revolution
Thomas a Kempis – The Imitation of Christ
Dallas Willard – The Divine Conspiracy
Eugene Peterson – The Message
Paul Tillich – The Courage To Be
Francis Collins – The Language of God
J.I. Packer – Knowing God
Andy Crouch – Culture Making
Madeline L’Engle – Walking on Water
Mark Noll – The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
Jim Wallis – God’s Politics
William Faulkner – As I Lay Dying

What's awesome is that, according to this list, even though I'm a PhD student, I have no intellectual tendencies because I didn't break 20. And maybe I don't. I mean, really; I'm 40 years old; why haven't I read The Republic yet? BECAUSE PLATO WAS A PAGAN, THAT'S WHY! "What do Athens and Jerusalem have to do with each other?" OK, Mr. Hipster Christian, can you identify who coined that slogan before you drain the last drop of your PBR? Dat's what I thought!

McCracken writes, "One of the best ways to learn about the type of person someone is is by looking at the books that populate their bookshelves. Books, I’ve found, play a large role in shaping how any of us understand and inhabit our worlds–so naturally they are a good place to go when seeking to understand a subculture."

Looking at my shelf right now, I see a book about the Scottsboro boys and a Marx-Engels reader. What this shelf says is that these people belong to the subculture of those who didn't sell back their books at the end of the semester, and who, being liberal arts majors, haven't had money to buy books since they were in college. Is there a term for my subculture? How about "Lower middle class?"

So, is Hipster Christianity the dead-end of Emergent Christianity? Or is it its own thing?

You know, I'm old enough to remember the days when people debated the merits of praise bands in worship. Now it's apparently about the necessity of IKEA light fixtures and corrugated steel coffee bars. Yet the number of people who self-identify as Christian continues to shrink. Are we whittling away the dead un-cool wood? Or is Christianity's problem not one of style but of substance?

So much to wonder about

Jennifer:  I'll see your dislike of gargantuan eyewear and raise you disdain for A-line dresses:

But isn't the A-line/Empire Waist/Baby Doll look preferable to the muffin top?

This helpful article does recommend A-line dresses for pear-shaped overweight women.  It minimizes the hips, she says.

And that does bring up a interesting question:  Are we in the middle of a horrible decade for women's fashion, or are we in the middle of a horrible decade for women's obesity?

Another question:  Is it me or does the frequency of visible tattoos correlate with BMI?  Is the body art a kind of jedi mind trick that's supposed to divert my attention from the, eh... jiggle?  Or maybe it's just that I've been reduced to shopping at Wal Mart where everyone is both fat and tattooed.

I'm just sayin'

I'm not a big fan of these humongous sunglasses all the ladies are wearing these days.

I'm up for it

Tomorrow is National Bike to Work day.  HT.

I'd do this every day, but in mainline congregations of older members there's an expectation that the minister make pastoral calls in pressed slacks and clean shirts, preferably free from sweat rings extending down the sides of one's trunk.  And, unlike some of my relatives who work for corporations, or megachurches, there's no shower facilities here at good ol' John Calvin Presbyterian Church.

But since all that's on my schedule tomorrow is sermon writing plus a little disc golf with a teenager, it fits my lifestyle for this particular day.

I think it's worth wondering about how certain cultural expectations are at variance with good common sense.  I hear that everyone but lawyers have abandoned suits in south Florida, but honesty, they could be done away with in most places in the United States, at least in the summer.  Even far northern cities like New York and Philly are south of those latitudes from whence came the bulk of immigrants accustomed to wearing wool even in July.  And not only are they far to the south of Great Britain, Ireland, Germany and eastern Europe, but they're hot and miserable in summertime.

I know.  Part of what makes fashion fashionable is willingness to submit to a certain amount of physical or financial discomfort.  But heat and humidity and the prospect of even more on the horizon, thanks to global warming, do make me wonder when convention has taken leave of its senses...

Hoops

Is it just me, or are there other college basketball fans out there seriously disturbed about the trend away from a bona fide tank top to a muscle shirt look?  What's next?  Short shorts?  Leggings?  The 80s were my decade, but some things need to be allowed to rest in peace.

Breasts

I was reading this article by Christopher Hitchens's brother Peter about what's wrong with his militantly atheistic brother's views (hat tip to Eric Lee), but I must admit that I found myself distracted by a link to this article about the experience of a woman who transformed herself for a week from a 36A to a 36DD with prosthetic breasts worn under her clothes.  She, um, they, had an impact.  Men snapped to attention.  Women looked daggers.  Working out became a chore. 

It reminded me of that old SNL skit where Eddie Murphy painted his skin white, and discovered what the world is like when there are no black people around.  They serve hors d'oeuvres on the bus!  (I haven't seen White Chicks, so I don't know if it's the same in that film or not).

It also made me feel vaguely guilty, in a Kafka-like sense, like that time I was sitting in the office of a non-profit agency on whose board I served, listening to another (female) board member and a (female) staff person talking about how they won't get fooled again.  You keep your own savings account your man doesn't know about, with three months after-tax savings.  And so on.

I'm not a miscreant.  But fellow-Y-chromosome travelers make me feel like one.  And I don't even get to balance it with the pleasure of behaving badly!

And speaking of fashion...

There was a lot of talk yesterday about the Iggles and 'Skins in their throwback uniforms.  But for my money, that Seattle Cincinnati game was, hands-down, the worst color combination I have ever seen on a football field.  A photo doesn't do it justice.  You really ought to catch some video today on ESPN.  Yuck!