Soppnerism? Sort of, but not quite.

So I was doing a bit of typing today and when writing the word "opportunity," I accidentally transposed my o's and p's. I kind of giggled to myself as I sat in a coffee shop surrounded by strangers.

Just thought I'd take this pooprtunity to let you all know.

Bros before schmos

So I have a new band I'm in love with. This doesn't happen all that often as I'm pretty picky about the kind of music I'll listen to 15 or 20 times in a week's span. The music I become obsessed with has to have a balance of instrumental and vocal performance (or no vocals at all works well), and a pleasing mix of virtuosity and accessibility. Now of course, certain albums have snuck past the gatekeeper (John Mayer's Continuum is one that immediately comes to mind) So if your qualifications are in any way similar to mine you might also love this new band: Punch Brothers. Their first album, released a week and a half ago is aptly called "Punch."

The frontman for the freshly-formed Punch Brothers is Nickel Creek mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile (Thee-lee), one of my favorite musicians in recent years. Actually, to be honest I get a little jealous of people my age who have such amazing levels of success, but it's so danged good. If you're a fan of Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, Newgrass Revival, Nickel Creek, Tony Trischka, music, art, sweaters, cats, Precious Moments Figurines, guano, spelunking, historical-fiction, or crepes, you just might like these guys.

Oh, and I wasn't exaggerating about 15 or 20 times in the last week. It's been something like that. Mmmmmm... meaty music with emotion and intellect... delicious.

"Come on... You can do it... Just a little bit more... A little bit more... Almost there... Almost... there..."

So one of the hard parts of my job is that I have to be really careful about talking about the students. There are certain confidentiality issues that can not be breached, and in the interest of complying, I'll tell you a completely anonymous story about a student, a human male or female or hermaphrodite, of school age at the public or private school I work at nestled comfortably at the edge of a Western Hemisphere ghetto. This particular unit was having a particularly difficult morning, and was having a hard time engaging itself in our class's morning check-in time, wherein all units and educational facilitators describe how they are feeling at the moment, something they did the night before, and a goal they have for the day. This particular unit often has a hard time pulling itself together in the morning, and in a frustrated state will put its head down on its desk and refuse to get up. In an effort to encourage said unit to sit up and engage in check-in, I leaned in closer, lending a stream of encouraging words to its ear in the hopes that its spirits would be raised to an adequate degree of functionality. As I spoke, the unit began his own stream of encouragements, each phrase said slowly and deliberately, likened unto a scene from any number of Disney sports movies where the crushed hero is raised from the edge of despair by a single clap which slowly and deliberately leads to an entire stadium, city, county, state, region, nation and hemisphere taking on that applause with great gusto, thereby encouraging the hero to take up his burden and complete the task. This was the gist of this unit's self-encouragement. (Note: To be read extremely slowly, each phrase being raised in pitch as it reaches any punctuation, in the exact fashion an educator would encourage an emotionally fragile student, male, female, or hermaphrodite.)

"Come on... You can do it... Just a little bit more... A little bit more... Almost there... Almost... there..."

And all the while the unit is slowly raising itself off of its desk in the exact position it had started with, arms crossed, forehead pressed against the arms. It was perhaps one of the funniest things I've seen in the last couple months. Yeah, Disney certainly doesn't have a death-grip on the minds of children, and certainly not to the end that emotions are learned by watching a screen instead of direct interaction with real people... But that's a different blog entirely...

ONE LAST HURRAH!!!

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So I'm back at it again. And I think it's going to be for the last time. I'm arranging one last showing of "Bible Camp" at Abbott Loop in Anchorage, March 28, 7pm. Well, I've already arranged it, and am pretty much ready to go with everything. Just need to put some things together, and I'll be all ready to go with plenty of time to spare. So here's the thing, I need as many proponents with all this as I can get. I have three freshly updated trailers, a new 6 minute featurette where I actually sit IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA and explain why I made this DVD, and how important it is for people in Alaska to take care of their own. These are all posted on youtube, at www.myspace.com/BibleCampDVD , and will be available on a special DVD, which will also include a 4 minute clip from the full-length DVD. I need y'all to talk to the people at your church and tell them you can get a DVD with all the info they'd need, posters and fliers to hang, and a butt-load of postcards as a way to support ministry in the interior (and also Christian documentary filmmaking, eh?). Seriously, let's get on the ball with all this. It'll all be available in Alaska within the week if you wish to hand-deliver the goods. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your congressman, tell your mailman, tell your grocer (is there such a thing anymore?) Tell people to go to the Bible Camp myspace page (www.myspace.com/BibleCampDVD) and become a friend, and go onto youtube and subscribe to my channel, or at least take a look at it. I no longer have the energy or resources to keep doing this, as it's certainly not bringing in enough capital to keep it going, so I'm planning on making this my last showing, at least the last one I organize myself. It's time to move forward, but not without one last hurrah. So mark it on your calendar, March 28, 7pm, Abbott Loop. Last chance to see it on a big screen, and let me tell you, it looks pretty sweet on the screen at Abbott Loop. Anyway, there it is. Enjoy.

Like a rope-curtain for your neck!

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I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Now, I can't really be critical of people's hair since I haven't had a haircut since last July, but I saw what can only be seen as a mistake: the elusive dreadlock mullet. So here's what I think happened when this poor guy was at the barber.




"So what can I do for you, sir?"
"Well, I've been growing my dreads out for a while, and they're getting pretty nappy, so I want to cut them off."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Yeah. I'm trying to get a job in Portland Public Schools and need to look presentable."
"Okay then. You know, once I start cutting, there's no turning back."
"Yeah, I know. I've psyched myself up pretty good for this, so let's just do it before I change my mind."

And so the barber began cutting, starting in the front and working toward the back. He had to sharpen his hedge-trimmers a couple times in the process, but eventually managed to hack his way through the front half of dreads. At this point, he began untangling the ends of the dreads that were still stumpily-attached to the young man's head. He worked slowly but meticulously, and in an effort to forget about the haircut that was about to erase years of unwashable bliss, the young man fell asleep at the chair.

The front was starting to come along, and a fresh, presentable young man was emerging from the nappy forest. Stopping to admire his work, the barber slowly rotated the chair back and forth in front of the shop's enormous plate-glass mirrored wall. The rotations startled the young man out of his slumber. Fortunately the barber's scissors were sheathed at the time, because the young man jumped a little as he came to. Groggily his eyes focused on the enormous mirror, and seeing the business front he'd just been given, and smiled with naive content. As he admired his new potential for mainstream social-acceptance, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the reflection of a clock mounted on the opposite wall.

"Oh crap! I'm late for my interview!"

And with that, he whipped out of the chair, slapped a twenty into the hand of the barber and was out the door, back-door-dreads whipping in the whirlwind of complete unawareness. And the rest was history. He arrived at his interview six hours early, got the job, but spent the rest of his money on an FBI fingerprinting, a requirement for working for the school district. So he didn't have the money to get the rest of the dreads taken care of, and ended up keeping them out of sheer poverty.

And then he found a dollar.

The end.

Utopian Cinema

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Back in October I wrote about my visit to the Bend Film Festival. Without expecting to, I met a couple documentary directors, both of whom gave me some really sound advice. (For that advice, see my October blogs.) One of the directors, Tom Putnam (Red, White, Black and Blue) told me that I could send him my film, and that while he wouldn't be able to watch it anytime soon, he would eventually watch it and let me know what he thought. I decided I needed a few more things together before I went ahead and sent it to him, and ended up sending it a couple weeks ago. Well, within 10 days of sending it to him, Mr. Putnam sent me an email saying that he had watched it, and that if I wanted to talk with him about it, I could give him a call at home. So I did.

So in a perfect world, my Bible Camp film would have looked much different. I would have chosen three or four kids in different villages (probably something like Galena, Nulato, and Selawik because of their differing sub-cultures) and periodically followed them around for an entire year, culminating in coming to Kokrine Hills (or not) in the summer. The actual formation and story of the camp would have become the backbone of a film about life-change as evidenced in the lives of a few kids. This would have eliminated the need for so much narration, and would have created a real bond between the viewer and the subject. Now if I had spent $50,000 of someone else's money, I could definitely have gotten that done, and would have had a far superior (well, at least a more universal) film. But I spent over $8000 of my own money because I didn't know of any other way to get this story out there. So it was great to talk with Tom about how my film could have been better, but ultimately his advice was exactly what I would have wanted to do if I had had the budget (and time...) to do so. So while it was slightly disappointing that I didn't feel like I had received some incredible jewel of wisdom, I did feel like I was far more knowledgeable about this stuff than maybe my experience alone would dictate. Score one for understanding.

So what did I come away with after my 25 minute conversation with Tom Putnam? Pretty much a little more confidence that someday I'll have the chance to really make something stellar, and I think I'll know how to do it, or at least I'll think I know what I'm doing and will dive headlong into some project which will completely absorb me, and eventually I'll have something to show for it. Maybe. Oh, I also came away with a home phone number for a real-life filmmaker. Prank calls anyone? Just kidding. (I'm only explaining that I'm kidding on the off chance that Tom Putnam accidentally runs into this blog someday and is totally creeped out by that last phrase, which would be completely understandable... He said as he nervously rocked and giggled to himself... Heh... Go get a copy of "Red White Black and Blue!" It was 7 years in the making, and it's really good! Props to Tom.) The end.

Take it with a grain of salt. Heck, take it with a BAG of salt if necessary...

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So I've been thinking about grief lately. And I understand that there is plenty of Christian literature out there on the topic, but because of my own personal prejudices, I haven't read them, so if I write something that sounds like a copy of what someone else said, props to them for thinking it first. (It's not that I'm opposed to Christian lit [anymore] it's just that I know so many people who take to heart so much of what a particular author says, there's no longer any room to take things with a grain of salt. Just a single grain of salt, that's all I ask for... That and a 17" macbook pro. But I already mentioned that in blogs past. Wink.)

This evening I saw a rather interesting film called "Across the Universe." The film follows the lives of a half dozen characters as their lives and relationships change from the ultra-conservativism of the 1950s to the radical upheaval of the Vietnam war in the 1960s, and winds down near the beginning of the 1970s. The film itself is definitely worth a viewing, though I recommend it with reservation (there is some drug use, sexual content, and brief nudity that keep me from freely recommending this to everyone and their mom.) The filmmaker does a great job showing the contrasts between where each character starts and where they end up at the end of the film. There are two main characters from a rather well-to-do family, who make some rather radical turns away from the lifestyle of their upbringing. One poignant moment is when the daughter of this family is making a phone call to her mother from a phone booth just outside a demonstration she's planned to join. The mother says something to the effect of "I don't want to lose my beautiful daughter," and I was struck by that for some reason. The mother didn't think she'd be able to bear the grief of losing her daughter. This is certainly not revolutionary thought, but it really seemed to connect with other events today, events I've been pondering.

I've been thinking a lot about the way we deal with hardships. For we Americans, pain is something we avoid, something we loathe, something we fear. So much of what we do in our lives is to further aid us in our blind quest for comfort. And we won't be happy until we're comfortable. (Now, ever so slowly take a heaping tablespoon of salt and slowly grind it whilst reading on.) I need an iPhone. I need a new jacket. I need (gulp) a new 17" Macbook Pro. And yet in all our quest for comfort, we have become some of the world's most mal-adjusted people. We are the ones who have sheltered ourselves from pain and grief and discomfort so much that when we do experience those things, we don't know how to deal with it. It's like the little kid who never quite engages socially, and from then on has a hard time relating to people. (And as you're still grinding, you quietly think to yourself, hmmm, that last part seemed a bit on the auto-biographical side. Crunch, crunch, crunch...) We have become a nation of socially-retarded little kids who don't know how to deal with our own problems. Broadly speaking, of course. In a general and stereotypical mindset. But hey, if I fit that stereotype, there's a good chance someone else out there does too. (Crunch. And you're now only half-reading because you're imagining Dayn awkwardly sidling up to other kids on the playground, hoping someone would have some strange desire to talk with him and be his friend even though he doesn't have the juevos to initiate any sort of conversation. Crunch. Grind.)

From my observations of other cultures, so many people groups are either content with little, or don't know any better, and are at the very least not a society of over-medicated angst-ridden little social-lepers. I certainly don't begrudge those in that position, myself included. I grew up with very little grief other than the very American self-inflicted kind, and therefore I am not able to condemn as much as I'm able to observe. Does anyone else think, generally speaking, that people in the good old US of A we don't understand that life that is not tempered with grief leads one to a path of inability to deal with problems later in life? Of course we all deal with grief in our lives, but sometimes I think what we call grief is often just dissatisfaction with discomfort. Or maybe I'm just ranting because I feel like it. (Okay, you now have two options: A, you can spit out the salt, thereby beginning to rid yourself of its negative properties, or B, you can swallow the salt, providing a much needed amount of grief, and potentially followed by the need for a deluge of water to quench the salt's fury. Choose wisely...)

Voices for the voiceless?

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So I'm becoming increasingly convinced that certain people never learn to speak properly. And I'm not talking about parts of speech or grammar, or any of the usual things I complain about. I'm discovering that certain people never got beyond using some sort of weak falsetto. Unfortunately I've only observed this phenomenon in women, so this may seem fairly gender-biased, though that's hardly the point. Anyway, some women don't know how to use their voice.

I don't know if the problem is that some women discover they have a low voice and just try to bump it up a few notches, or if it's simply an inability to access the strong part of their voice, but I know of a few women whose voices are so piddly, it's a wonder they ever made it this far in life. So the specific person I'm thinking of is the art teacher at the school I work at. I try not to bask specific people in my blog, people who can be discovered by certain sleuthy-type people who happen to know all the right people, but I think I can make an exception this time. No real names, but if you work at my school you'll know who it is, though I can't imagine anyone from my school reading this... ANYWAY, to start, this woman has no classroom management skills. Threats may be made, but the kids know she's the furthest thing from threatening. Once a sickly kitten subbed for the class and held things together with greater ease and panache. The kids certainly don't respect her, and I think the number one problem is her lack of a voice.

For a moment, imagine my voice, which projects fairly well, and gives me some sort of initial credibility to those who don't know me. Now imagine me talking half as loudly, but in a mock-woman's voice, laden with frustration and apathy. The longer I keep this up, the more foolish I appear. Ugh. And on top of it all, every silly art project is given weeks to be finished, while the kids I work with finish each one in fifteen minutes, leaving the rest of the week nearly completely devoid of structure. Oh joy. And all because this poor lady never learned how to use her voice. Amazing.

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So how did it go?

Well, that depends on your criteria.

Explain that.

Well, I was hoping for a lot more people than came. Ultimately most of the people came not because of the subject matter, but because they knew me. It's certainly nice to have the support of people in Anchorage, so no big complaint there. Between forty and fifty people showed up, which was cool, but I was hoping for more. Well, maybe I was hoping that the amount of effort and worry I put into this thing would somehow mathematically equal the results in the end. Maybe people didn't come simply because the holidays can be a hectic and busy time of year for anything, let alone some homemade movie some nobody put together. Maybe a lot of things happened to keep people from coming or remembering when this was happening, but the fact remains that nearly fifty people came, and that's nothing to sneeze at. Maybe cough at, but certainly not sneeze-worthy.

But, all numbers aside, it was a success in every other definition of the word. Though I spent more money getting up there and renting a space than I took in from attendees, I only lost a hundred dollars or so, which is not bad at all. And now that I've put aside all numbers, I'm going to pull one back in. We sold eighteen DVDs at the showing, and the next days I sold another four, which was very encouraging, especially with a couple people buying two or three at a time. And now let's re-put that aside. People expressed their appreciation of being this subject to the light and really appreciated the film itself. One man told me that while he knew its purpose wasn't to entertain, it WAS entertaining as well as being informative. It has certainly taken me a long time to appreciation the balance in film between entertainment and information, and that comment spoke worlds of encouragement to me. The heart and information is the most important part, but the entertainment is what makes it watchable, tolerable. As the showing started, I got those goosebumps I only get when I either feel cold, or that the Holy Spirit is doing something cool, and while it was a little chilly in there, I'm quite certain it was the latter that gave me the goose flesh. Holy Spirit goosebumps are the best thing in the world, I think. At the very end of the film, I got the same feeling, and it was at that moment that I knew this had been a huge success. Though the numbers may deny my feeling of success, the sensation of the Lord blessing the room gave me all the affirmation I needed.

It's taken several days to come to these conclusions, but I'm very encouraged with the way things turned out on December the twenty-eighth. It was good, and I look forward to the next time, and the times after that. Woo hoo!

Lessons learned, etc...

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So I started writing a blog about three weeks ago, and then the fit hit the shan, so to speak, and I got super busy all of a sudden. And then our internet at our house went out, and it won't be back up for another few days. I'm like a computer vulture right now, scavenging on other people's computers whenever I can, and when I can't, I fly up to 5,000 feet and make sweeping circles above what will soon be carrion. Heh, I wonder what carrion luggage would look like. Take a moment to pause like I am and quietly laugh to yourself about some dead animal being stuffed into an overhead bin while the huge line of impatient people behind me gripe about me blocking the aisle. Double-heh. But I digress... (Oh, and props to Denee and Steve for letting me borrow their computers, further planting seeds of dissatisfaction with my ginormous desktop and it's proliferation of jet-engines for fans. Sigh... Someday I will have my 17" Macbook Pro, and all will be right in the world.)

So I think recently I've been learning a thing or three about prayer and trust in God. As has been typical in the last 6 months, I'm thinking about showings of my film Bible Camp. I'm also thinking about the fact that every showing I've done has been an extreme disappointment. Some of you may disagree with that statement, and it is worded awfully strongly, but rather than retract the statement with a barrage of backspace, I'll just keep wordily spewing forth some sort of jilted stream of consciousness, which may or may not make sense in the end. (Oh big words, how I love thee...) And I'm back. Anyway, I've always hoped for some semblance of a sign of success with each showing of Bible Camp. My very largest showing was the very first time I got to show it to my friends in Anchorage in early July. I think there were a dozen or so people there. I showed it at my parents' house, and four people showed up. I showed it at my parents' church and I think 8 people showed up (mostly repeats from the house showing.) I showed it at Jason Reando's campus house at Multnomah, and 2 new people showed up. I talked about it and showed the trailer at my own church, and nobody showed up. I tried to show it at a large camp-supporting church in Gresham, and they wouldn't even host a showing. Basically every avenue I've tried has been a failure, in terms of number of people coming. So what have I taken away from this, aside from a unhealthy level of cynicism and sense of failure? Sometimes it's hard to say. But I'll try anyway.

So one thing I've learned through all this has been that I, like so many other people, have an innate tendency to gauge my success in terms of numbers. We all do it, I think. Bigger numbers show greater success. A graph that is taller than it is wide, shows that you're a winner. I completely understand that having that perspective is like trying to make teddy grahams out of a pile of horse dookey. It's just not realistic. I know that individuals have been greatly affected by this thing, which should make it all worthwhile. And sometimes my mood allows me to genuinely feel this way. But there is one other thing that I've really been learning, especially in lieu of my potentially-biggest showing ever: I don't pray about it.

Seriously, if there's one lesson I've learned throughout this project, it's that I can't do any of this on my own. AND YET I TRY SO HARD TO DO THAT VERY THING!!! Sorry for shouting, and all the exclamatory punctuation, but I'm kind of an idiot and I think everyone should know it. After analyzing every showing, I realized that I almost never prayed more than once for a lot of people to show up, or at least the right people. The only force anywhere that can affect whether people come or not, and I forget to place it before His enormous feet and say, "Here it is. Do with it what you will." So that's what I'm trying to do. I'm actually praying, and praying multiple times throughout the day, and not necessarily in some desperate state, but in genuine desire to communicate with God about something very important to me. It's so simple, and so good.

So I've been stressing about all the details of showing Bible Camp on the 28th in Anchorage, but have this underlying peace about it, a confidence that God's work will be done, and great things will come out of His faithfulness. It's so good! I want all you who are willing to do the same thing. Please pray for the 28th. I think significant and valuable things will come about because of it, which is a very exciting prospect. And if you're in Anchorage, please come. Bring everyone you can. It may not click with everyone, but the more people we have there, the greater chance we have of affecting someone for all eternity. So please pray, please come, and please give blood. And also forget that last one. I'm terribly excited, and I want to share it with y'all. Talk to you all soon, and in person!