Letters from Kamp Krusty

The Tyranny of Mattering

"Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God."

-- Karl Barth

Two things I know about the world:

1) Everything matters.

2) This can be a real problem.

It wasn’t always this way for me. I was taught, via hymns like “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus”, that only one thing mattered: God. Everything else was to “grow dim”.

But, like Flannery O’Connor, and probably you, I now see that it’s precisely because of God that everything takes on meaning. Everything is interesting. Everything matters. Nothing grows dim. It’s all fascinating. I’m serious.  Snails and snorkeling and quarks and quarter-notes; Shakespeare and shrubbery; neural paths, base paths, mud, Mongolia, and melody;  linguistics, light, and Liechtenstein; gravity, garbage; corpuscles, Cassiopeia, and Captain Crunch.

Everything matters.

And this is a problem, because, like Oscar Wilde noted about a rival worldview to Christianity, Marxism, it "takes up too many spare evenings.”  So much to be serious about! To be angry at!  So much injustice!  So much suffering!  So little time!  Do something!  Panic!

This is a real problem if you are prone to taking yourself too seriously, like, say -- oh, let me think -- me.

And hey, maybe I've had it right, this serious-taking, right?   Two reasons to be duly burdened, for starters: There’s suffering everywhere. And I’m a moral failure. That's quite enough, but there's more where those two came from, like mortality, nuclear proliferation, the Dolphins' draft strategy, etc.

And then we’re supposed to be like Jesus, right? And wasn’t Jesus the “man of sorrows”?

But this is where I’ve been changing my thinking. Forgive me for being late to the party. I’m now thinking that Jesus was the Man of Sorrows because he had to carry everyone’s burden in a very specific way. This is not something I am asked to do.  He did it.

And I’m also noticing -- I knew this, but never knew it -- that Jesus loved to party. In fact, his favorite topic was, in a way, the ultimate party. To the Jews, hungry ancient-types that they were, the Kingdom of God would ultimately be about food and drink and laughter and storytelling and reunion, and yet more food and drink.  With, like, actual alcohol.

We have no record of Jesus ever turning down a party.

My mom used to tell me to lighten up.  She was first of a long line.  I’m intense. I can’t help it. God made me intense, dangit.  But I’m trying to be intense about lightening up.

Our motley church group here is a party waiting to happen.  (We were musing about logos and marketing mottos:  "Our church is your church's party.")  Seriously:  We all love subversion, and man, there’s something subversive about joy.

Oh, yes, everything matters. Everything's interesting.  And, when you get right down to it, you know what? 

Everything is pretty dang funny.

Denise Richards and The Hoff. Pretty Much Nails it.

This is a brilliant facial-recognition program.  You can't argue with this: I look like a girl, and specifically, Denise Richards.

And if I hear one more, "You know, you look like Daryl Hannah...?" reference, I'll go Jackie Chan on everybody.

Mike doesn't look like any girls.  I look like several girls.

24 Theater: A Very Special Edition

This week's Family Friendly 24 Theater features a special guest star:  The very cool Candace Cameron Bure, formerly "DJ Tanner" on "Full House".

Plus:  Jack tortures some Russian guy!

Click here on this link thing to listen, take it all in, and wonder how I got a job in radio.

Terminally Unhip

In "Almost Famous", Lester Bangs gives us a great line, (HT: Seth): 

The only true currency in this bankrupt world … is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.

To that end, I give you a Top Five List:  Reasons I'm Profoundly Uncool.

I could go well beyond five, of course, but I'm hoping you'll play along.  It occurs to me now, having already written the below, that I neglected to mention that I play the flute, once thought I was cool for wearing a bandana around my ankle, own a minivan, and last week tripped and fell, for no apparent reason, while jogging. 

Friends, I recently broke my pinkie, which prevented me from playing my accordion.  That sentence -- I shudder at the sentence I just typed -- should suffice.  But here you go:

----------------------------------------------------------------

1.  I do stuff like this. 

2.  I've got this, and it's very pronounced.  I was born with it, and frankly, it's made me somewhat shy in person.  To compensate for the condition, which causes pronounced eye movement, my head moves involuntarily.  The compensatory head movement has creeped people out my entire life, but I can't control it, and it allows me to do fun things including, but not limited to, seeing straight.

How severe is it?  I went to the University of Illinois on a full-ride scholarship for the handicapped, or disabled, or however it's to be put.  Only once have I met someone with the same condition, with the same severity, and he was defined by it.  Couldn't play sports, couldn't drive, and he continually made reference to his, and by extension my, freakishness. 

I read in wikipedia that one actor has the condition.  And it says, quoting here, "A typical adjective used describe the appearance of actor Pruitt Taylor Vince's nystagmus is 'creepy'." 

Thanks.

I tend to forget about it -- but not for long.  I'm snapped out of forgetfulness, quickly, when the gas station clerk says, "Yeah?  And you're problem is...?" or the grocery store lady says, "What's the matter with YOU?" because I'm unwittingly shaking my head "no".   This happens all the time.

I've grown up trying to get in and out of social situations without much eye contact, and I enjoy not being seen.  This may explain why I'm in radio.

But I didn't let it stop me from playing sports, which leads me to...

3.  I never got a hit in eight years of organized baseball.  Eight...years.  And no hits.  I batted 0 for holy-crap-I-don't-even-want-to-think-about-it.

I did hit the ball once.  Once.  Some kid caught it for an out.  It was a blazing fastball, too.  I'll never forget that pitcher.  The pitcher's name was Tricia.

I played basketball, too.  I got off the bench long enough to take one shot, total, in my career. 

It went backward.

4.  I go to other hemispheres to help the afflicted, apparently through Komedy like this.

5.  In high school, I was the president of the Illinois Student Librarians Association.  You will not find it on the net, because, after 80 years of thriving, it voted to dissolve under my leadership.

We had two annual conventions:  The "Fall Convention" was to plan the "Spring Convention."  The "Spring Convention", however, was to plan for the "Fall Convention."

Also true:  We played Dewey Decimal bingo.

Your turn.

Submitted for Your Approval

My grandma don't care what you think.

No offense, she just doesn't.  Nothing personal.  Wreatha Peters turned 90 last week, and you may have noticed, 90 year-olds don't really give a rip about their approval ratings.  90 year-olds aren't fashionable, and it's not because they can't get to the mall.  They just plain don't care.  And -- let's face it -- when you don't care what other people think, you don't tend to go to the mall.

A well-established concept in psychology is the "imaginary audience", and one particularly great experiment plumbing this had college students, given new t-shirts, attending a large lecture.  The shirts had oversized, and embarrassing, pictures of Barry Manilow's face.  After the class, they were asked, "What percentage of fellow students noticed you?"  They all guessed around 80 percent. 

Reality:  Almost no one noticed. 

To be young is to be attuned to the adoring, or mocking, crowd that isn't.  To be attuned, and to care, deeply.  Grandma don't care.  Grandma's imaginary audience done got up and went.

Her hearing is fine, but don't applaud her.  You'll just sting your hands.  Applause only means something to us when we're young, because applause, at its deepest level, bodes something for us:  some future advance in station, some future payoff, some future...something...that will make us more powerful, more able to get what we want, and maybe(!) that something will satisfy us. 

Applause is a promissory note.

When you're 90, you don't accept promissory notes.  You're too smart.  You know you're going to die, and it's not going to matter.  Earlier in life, you knew that, too, but you didn't allow yourself to think about it.

Poet Austin Dobson:  "Fame is the food that dead men eat." 

Grandma isn't hungry anymore.

One Heck of a Test-Post

I'm just checking this out, trying to see how stuff will work.

I'm not sure I like this format.  It just looks so...not cool.  I don't know how to put it.

That's a picture of some water.  I like some water.  Not all water.  Some.