Says our youngest: “I will do anything you want today!”
Say my bride and I simultaneously: “Anything?”
Says Trevvy: “I will do anything except go to sleep without Froggy [his much-loved one-armed, gnawed-eyed, unstuffed purple best friend] and clean the whole entire house!”
Happy Mother’s Day, sweetheart!
I would rate it a solid PG-13. It is violent and emotionally intense at times, and characters are juxtaposed to show virtue and moral ambiguity. Numerous people die in battle, and others die from assassination, murder, suicide, illness, and (thankfully) natural causes. Most of the deaths are not dwelt upon, however, there are a few relatively brief but bloody scenes. There is no nudity, relatively little sexuality (implied or actual), especially for a PG-13 movie in 2011, and a sprinkling of strong language throughout (it is a war movie, after all). Our 13-year-old, Brendan, will see it tomorrow with a friend of ours and her son. Our almost-11-year-old, Gabe, wants to see it, too, but despite his desire to be a priest, and the film’s beautiful portrayal of the priestly vocation, he will wait until we can rent it and I can watch and discuss it with him, pausing as needed.
I knew very little about Fr. Escriva, Opus Dei, and relatively little about the Spanish Civil War, and yet followed everything well enough. The structure of the movie, which features a handful of complex relationships between people shown at different ages and times, and used flashbacks and a present-day narrator to convey the story, can be a little disorienting, but again, I followed well enough. I was struck early on that this is a film shot in an old way: somehow it looks to me like a classic film of the 1960s, and some of the scenes (particularly of the main characters as children) seem more deliberately acted, almost theatrical. It occurs to me that this may help convey the sense of a young boy’s memories, but I will admit, I noticed it as film-making (assuming it was intentional).
Two final thoughts:
The reviews I’ve seen for this movie have been mostly mediocre to terrible.* I thought it was a very good movie, but I’m Catholic and had some idea what I was getting into and what I hoped to get out of it. See it!
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*The USCCB has a complete review of the film online, which may also help parents decide which kids to take. I find they are more conservative than me, and they suggest that older teens could see it, so I think we’re in the ballpark…
Blogger’s Note (unnecessary): This Second Third post was supposed to come before last week’s post. Last week’s post wasn’t posted until yesterday. And both are a slow build of sorts, toward a completely different post that needs more time and stewing. In my head, it’s going to be great.
I mentioned in “Less TV Is Good TV” that I used to love to watch This Week with Sam and Cokie. I used to devour news: I worked as a journalist, then as a media relations manager; I watched Peter Jennings (and sometimes Tom Brokaw); I listened to Morning Edition and All Things Considered and supported NPR with my ears and my dollars. I daydreamed about launching a Slashdot-style web site trafficking in political news and rumors instead of tech stuff. I even had a name and a URL at one time: Rabblerooster. Get it? Like a “rabble-rouser” combined with a rooster…wake up and smell the coffee!
I used to get emotionally wrapped up in the news. Still do, in fact. I get angry, or choked up, or joyfully buoyant based on things happening half a world away, to complete strangers. And that’s beautiful…to a point. But over time I’ve come to realize that A) we’ve got plenty of news and compelling stories unfolding right next to us, and B) nobody’s got the straight scoop, so nobody’s giving it. I’d get riled about stories that were only half true, and wonder what I could really know for sure about what’s going on in the world…then realize that the only thing I can really understand and influence is what’s going on with me, right here, and to a lesser extent, with my family, neighborhood, and community. As a result, I installed tighter filters and began to tune out.
The timing was perfect, actually. TV news is entertainment now, and there are so many faster, easier sources of information. I try to track a variety of online news sources enough to keep tabs on what’s happening out there, and when something catches my eye or interest, I try to read accounts from the Right and the Left, then make sense of it myself. And I ignore a lot more “news” that I once would’ve obsessed over. And my heart is at peace.
I rarely watch TV news at all anymore. (I did flip it on the other night; I was in bed, setting my cell-phone alarm, when a friend posted something on Facebook about Bin Laden’s death. My laptop was already packed up for the morning commute, so I flipped on the tube.) I still listen to the news on the radio — I’ve always been an auditory learner (hence my regular attendance of college classes and lack of reading) and love good radio — but today I balance my NPR with Relevant Radio and Garage Logic, and keep my filters clean. And sometimes I willfully secede from the news stream. On a beautiful spring day like this one, for example, no news is good news.
Fraggarackincarklefargis…
Remember when your parents told you TV would rot your brain? I think perhaps the most compelling evidence of the truth of this statement is what passes for TV today. Those who are passionate enough about television to choose to make it their career were likely exposed to it as children, and the fact that their brains were affected negatively is evidenced by what they produce.
For example: until I rented a Looney Tunes DVD, my kids didn’t know TV cartoons were meant to be laugh-out-loud funny. Everything they had seen up to that point either A) taught them Important Life Lessons and Thinking Skills, B) counteracted A with brainless humor and bodily functions, or C) was primarily meant to sell collectible cards and toys. Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, Daffy Duck, and the Roadrunner were comic revelations (not to mention the music)! They laughed until they fell from the futon, laughed until tears fell from their eyes, laughed until they hurt and begged between great gasping breaths for more.*
Then we sent the DVD back, and they returned to Blue’s Clues, Dragon Tales, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Sponge-Bob.
Earlier in our marriage, Jodi and I watched a handful of shows regularly. Most were sitcoms: Seinfeld and Friends, the short-lived Sports Night, Mad About You, Everybody Loves Raymond. We were hooked on Alias for a few years, and I used to love This Week (with Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, and George Will) each Sunday morning, just to get the juices flowing.
I remember the Seinfeld finale: how the joke was on us; how it drove home that we had spent countless hours over the past countless years watching four awful people behaving like selfish children and hurting those around them. The friends on Friends were also whiny and self-centered, and Raymond made a career out of the miseries of married life. Don’t get me wrong: I laughed at these shows — but sometimes afterward I wondered why.
Today my bride and I watch two sitcoms: The Office and Community. We used to watch 30 Rock, but found the humor less and less to our liking. Community is now in the same tailspin for me. It’s still funny at times, but some of the jokes are beginning to clog my filters. Like 30 Rock this year, next year I suspect I won’t miss missing it. The Office edges into that territory from time to time, then redeems itself…we may stick with that one.
So this spring we found another show. They hooked our whole family with a free burrito at Chipotle. (Good bait.) We watched America’s Next Great Restaurant on NBC, a reality show in which people with ideas for a restaurant competed for the chance to partner with four chef/restauranteur/investors to open a new chain of restaurants in NYC, LA, and (yes!) Minneapolis. Aside from about 43-too-many jokes about the Joey’s original name for his meatball shop (Saucy Balls, which ultimately became Brooklyn Meatball Company after the 43-too-many jokes), the show was clean, the food was good, the winner had a great story: his father rescued him from a bad spot with his mother when he was little, and the soul food recipes that helped him win were his Dad’s. The winner was the favorite of all of us except Trevor (he was Trevor’s second pick); a great cheer went up in the Thorp house when he won; and Emma has asked that her belated birthday dinner be at the new Soul Daddy in Mall of America.
And now it’s over. We enjoy a few other shows that we watch online or on demand — History Channel’s American Pickers and Top Shot and Travel Channel’s Man v. Food, in particular. They are fun, interesting, educational…but they insist (in the case of Pickers and MvF) to edge toward adult humor at least once an episode, or (in the case of Top Shot), machismo and obscenities (bleeped and unbleeped). I used to watch Nature on PBS as a kid, which was narrated with a sense of wonder and mystery; the recent LIFE series on Discovery Channel (with Oprah narrating) seemed to relish describing the mating habits of the creatures they filmed as though both the subjects and audience were lusty teenagers.
I want a TV show in which I never have to say, “Okay, gang — what that guy just said? Never say that.” Or, “Yeah, you don’t need to worry about what she meant just yet.” Or, “Sorry, Trevvy, if he was your favorite character; nice people don’t act like that.”
Yeah, I know. I’m getting older, and older-fashioned. The good news is, in my Second Third, we watch way less TV than we used to. And I don’t miss it.
Now get off my lawn.
A few years back, a dear friend and former colleague of mine was going through a number of big changes and difficult transitions in her life. Everything seemed to be hitting all at once, and I could tell she was freezing up a bit. Do you know that feeling? When there seems to be so much you have to do, and so much you want to do, and so much you feel you should do…and very little overlap, so no matter what you accomplish, you feel you should’ve done more, and feel guilty for what you failed to do?
You don’t have that problem? Well, you’re blessed. Show some gratitude.
We got together, for lunch, maybe, or else I was helping her with some project, and I gave her a card that said something like, “The easiest way to move the mountain is one pebble at a time.” She read it, and saw immediately: You can only do what you can do. Baby steps. “Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.” — Matthew 6:34
It wasn’t long after — a few months probably — and I was telling her how I’d promised to read more and write every night after work, but I was so tired once the kids went to bed and couldn’t stay awake and focused. “I need to get in shape so I’m not dead tired all the time,” I said, “but how can I find time and energy to exercise if I can’t stay awake to read or write?”
I told her I needed a wholesale lifestyle change. She said, “The easiest way to move the mountain is one pebble at a time.” I had forgotten that when we worked together, we took a couple of personality inventories, and were nearly identical in score and profile.
That feeling’s been creeping in again lately. I look at what needs to be done, and what I want to do, and get that knot in my guts as I gradually…grind…to…a…halt. Then I think, “That’s it. I need to change. Everything. Now.”
When I was in college, a coworker in the School of Music had the Desiderata hanging over her desk. It struck me back then as wise; today the only parts I remember are the first four lines and this one, which I refer to often: “Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.”
These Second Third posts, as a body, seem to point to things I’d like to change about me: weaknesses I’d like to overcome, or goals I’d like to achieve. I need to remember to take it easy on myself and remember what’s important. One pebble at a time — I should be well along when I reach my third Third.
Archangel Stomp 