My buddy Ian and I went over to my house the other day and filmed this little observation.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” – Isaiah 55:9

It’s funny how these blogs just sit out in cyberspace like little time capsules. You go back and read through them and remember what you were doing and thinking when posted a particular thought or link, and then you think about all the time and life in between.

It’s been a few years, but the reason can be summed up in two words, Facebook & Twitter. Blogging was hip and cool and trendy until you could quickly burp up 140 characters or a mobile phone pic and get 12 comments about it in 9 minutes.

The goal back then of course, on a blog, was to see how many peeps were reading it.

Now I don’t care so much.

Go read Brian’s stuff…it’s much better anyway.

I’m not quite sure yet how I might use this in the near future, but it’s possible that I might begin to post thoughts and book responses again…maybe a movie response too. We’ll see.

If not, check my twitter.

Pi on the raft and the Tiger in the Lifeboat

So, this book came out a few years ago.  I had heard about it and have had it on my bookshelf for four or five years now.  Recently, I picked it up, and subsequently devoured it.  I loved every page.  The slow, thoughtful Part One that meanders through Pi’s childhood, his search for God, and his experiences growing up in an Indian zoo.

This is not a review…this is me processing my hate for the last 8 pages of the book.  If you have not read it and would like to, stop reading this post.

For those that want to continue, let me sum up the story.

Pi Patel, an Indian boy in Pondicherry is son of a zookeeper. He is Hindu. He finds Jesus, becomes a Christian…then finds Allah and also becomes Muslim. He practices all three, much to the chagrin of the dudes who run the three institutions that he attends. It’s my favorite scene in the book. Favorite quote…(when seeking out the Christian Church) “Christianity’s reputation was strange: very few Gods, terrible violence, but good schools.” haha…anyway. First part of the book is him growing up. Second part of the book is what happens after his family tries to move to Canada by taking a cargo ship across the Pacific. The ship has a menagerie onboard because they are selling some animals to American zoos. Shipwreck leaves him a lone human survivor on board a lifeboat with an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra, and a Bengal tiger. The book is about his survival…scratch that. The book is actually one big sham to get you to see how everyone believes in something. Why believe in “dry yeastless factuality” when this is the “better story.” If you want it to be true…it indeed becomes true to you. Postmodern spirituality at it’s most nausea inducing. Ack…can you tell I’m still hot about this? haha. Curse you Pi!

So…my main beef with the book. My problem is that the end negates the entire book. Some may say that this is the beauty of the book. Some may say that it is the very thing that points us toward God. The fact that Pi changed the horrific story and truth of what happens to him out at sea to an amazing story of courage, survival and a tiger makes me ticked for taking the time to read Martel’s story. For 130 pages, the book became an amazing and pain-stakingly detailed, page-turning story that I fully became engrossed in. As the story became increasingly wondrous…especially the beautifully horrific island of algae I fully bought it all, because a) Martel is a brilliant writer and shapes his world around you and b) I had no reason not to. Pi was an honest, highly religious boy who loved God…I had no idea that the story I was reading was going to end up simply being coping mechanism for the horror and dehumanization he suffered at the hands of the human survivors.

I wish I could go back to yesterday at sunset. I had just taken a break from reading it…just as I learned the truth (ha-truth) about the algae island and went to dinner with my family. We left the restaurant.

The sky was lit up with amazing orange colors. I thought of Pi and the skys he was seeing. The various hues, the symphony of color that moved from yellow to orange to magenta and finally a dull blue. I pictured the world from his perspective. I wondered how he would be rescued and whether he and the tiger would remain together.

I couldn’t wait to get home and finish the book.

I wish I had never picked it up again.

Ahh…the 80′s.  Loved this series the first time.  Hope this one is good too.

After four airings, NBC has decided no one really cares about “Kings.”  Trouble is, it was/is a terribly interesting show and Ian McShane as King Silas was/is the baddest, scariest, smoothest and most “hate ‘em and root for ‘em at the same time” character on television since Benjamin Linus first weaseled his way into our hearts on “Lost.”  He plays the King on a show that was most likely going to show in a contemporary setting, the story behind the transfer of power from King Saul to King David in the Old Testament.  It was an intriguing idea. In fact, a buddy of mine and I have been prepping a western about this very story.  It’s a gripping story about loyalty to God, to country, about peace and the purpose of war.  It’s about power and how the people who most desire it are the ones who should not have it. It’s about God…and it wears it right on it’s sleeve.

So I got to thinking the other day, when I heard that “Kings” was moving to the graveyard of Saturday night television, that Christians love to say things on their facebook status like, “Hollywood, we want more movies like ‘Fireproof’” or “If Hollywood would just tell some decent stories about things that matter, we would watch it.”  Well…only 3,999,998 of you watched this along with my wife and I.  Apparently, not enough for NBC to continue this risky venture.  It’s not cancelled yet, but most likely it will be.

I read the following article about this very quandry by John Ridley on NPR:

The thing about working in Hollywood is that at some point you really get tired of hearing how godless you are, and how if you and the rest of the heathens in Tinseltown would put more God-centric shows on TV, people wouldn’t be abandoning prime time in favor of their Bible study classes.

If that’s true, then why isn’t NBC’s Kings the biggest show in the history of humanity?

If you haven’t been watching Kings — and you haven’t ’cause it’s been averaging less than 4 million viewers a week — it’s this alt-world royalty/palace intrigue allegory set in the mythical near-future Kingdom of Gilboa. Kings stars the great Ian McShane who would be worth the price of admission even if you actually had to pay to see him.

But forget for a sec the great acting, the wonderfully rendered CGIed New York capital of Shiloh, the intrigue… Here’s the disconnect I can’t connect with: Kings is “a contemporary re-telling of the timeless tale of David and Goliath,” according to the official NBC press release and the $10 million pilot episode that revolves around a character named David who single-handedly takes out an enemy tank called a Goliath. Yes, a Goliath.

(read more)

I suggest you give it a chance…catch up on hulu or NBC.com and if nothing else, witness the miraculous work of Ian McShane. The dude’s amazing. Then start watching the remainder of the season.  It’s one way to vote that at least a few folks in Hollywood will take risks on stories like these.