Encounter with a Fast Woman

In case you didn't already know: as men grow older, they tend to retain their vanity, expanding it whenever possible. Though greying or balding, with ridiculous bags of fat hanging pendulously from every section of their bodies, they retain the fantastic notion that they remain attractive to women. Even young women.

I recall an episode from my days in The Episcopal church. Our parish Men's Club was enjoying an evening of billiards and food. Our waitress was a hot, young Asian girl of perhaps 23. Many of us aging male Episcopalians were ogling her beauty. The more circumspect among us might have described this activity as opening our eyes to behold God's gracious hand in all his works; that rejoicing in his whole creation, we might learn to serve him with gladness (1928 BCP, p. 596). But one among us put it in more earthy terms: "Just because there's snow on the roof, it doesn't mean there's no fire in the fireplace."

Indeed.

Which brings me to this morning's frantic dodge down I-696 and the Southfield Freeway, in which I flatter myself that a very attractive woman flirted with me. Given what has been discussed above regarding the vanity of old men, I accept that the entire episode may have been a fabrication of my own vain mind.

She had jet black hair and raven eyes that looked directly into mine as she slid her low-slung silver Mercedes into an empty pocket in the traffic, directly to the left of my menacing black Marauder. Her features struck me as being Italian in origin. As our eyes locked, she gave me a mischievous grin. I was thinking how the two of us would look in a black-and-white movie ... her glistening black hair, her silver coupe, my silvering hair, and my big black Mercury. We played tag in the slow crawl on I-696, and on the faster jaunt down M-39. Sometimes I pulled directly behind her, to look at her in her rearview mirror. Sometimes, she pulled up behind me to do the same.

We were both advancing through the traffic. Not racing, not taking chances, just efficiently cutting through the sea of Toyotas and other similarly soulless automotive appliances. Once, on Southfield, as I roared down the left lane, she pulled left to follow, but an ancient red Aerostar minivan cut her off. She'll catch up, I thought. And by Warren Road, there she was, right on my bumper again. I pulled over to let her past. She didn't go past, but tucked in behind me.

I was impressed by her driving. Fast, but not showy. Efficient, calculated, immensely confident, but always safe. Competence is sexy, I think.

I managed to maneuver myself behind the sleek silver Mercedes one more time before she pulled off at Ford Road. I got behind her to look at her license plate number, to see if she had a vanity plate.

No. All the vanity was with me.

The R. Crumb Genesis!

I don't have this volume in hand yet, but I plan to soon. Yes, that icon of Lowbrow Art, R. Crumb, has published an illustrated volume based on the Biblical book of Genesis. For a number of reasons, this is tremendously exciting to me.



For those who don't recognize the name "R. Crumb", this might refresh your memories:



I knew from a pretty early age that R. Crumb and I were kindred spirits in a lot of ways. His description, in word and drawing, regarding his career as a school kid, made me like him right away.

In high school, the cartoonist was a nerd who could not get a date. As his autobiographical drawings of his high school days illustrate, he was permanently wounded by his adolescent peers' rejection.

Later I learned that, like me, he had experimented with LSD, and was a fan of female bodybuilders.



So, I have a lot of reasons to be interested in the work of R. Crumb. And I love the Bible, including the book of Genesis. So, the confluence of these two streams in the release of an R. Crumb Genesis Illustrated is just an amazing thing to me.

I will be very interested to see how he treats subjects like the destruction of Sodom.



Crumb's reasons for being interested in Genesis are probably complex, but would certainly include the lurid, earthy nature of the stories in Genesis:

HUGHES: Is God going to look like Mr. Natural?

CRUMB: Nah. He has a white beard but he actually ended up looking more like my father. He has a very masculine face like my father. My problem was, how am I going to draw God? Should I just draw him as a light in the sky that has dialogue balloons coming out from it? Then I had this dream. God came to me in this dream, only for a split second, but I saw very clearly what he looked like. And I thought, ok, there it is, I've got God.

HUGHES: And what did she look like?

CRUMB: I went through that whole thing too; maybe I'll draw God as a black woman. But if you actually read the Old Testament he's just an old, cranky Jewish patriarch. It's a lot of fun doing Genesis, actually. It's very visual. It's lurid. Full of all kinds of crazy, weird things that will really surprise people.

I will give a report on this volume after I've had a chance to look it over for myself.

A Re-run, But Well Worth Watching!

I've posted this before, but I cannot help posting it again. It is SO good!

Thingie Fest 2008 - Slot Car Drag Racing

I am only about 11 months late in processing this drag racing video, a grudge match between my Anglican Beach Party Anglia, and Eliot's Royal Oak Public Schools S'Cool Bus.

Lying and Evangelism

Before I "asked bodybuilding into my heart" I used to be a runner. I did a lot of 5K and 10K races, and even ran the Los Angeles Marathon one year. To get ready for the races, of course, I had to train a lot. This meant running on local streets.

In those old days, despite having no gift for running, I used to push myself pretty hard, certainly to the point of discomfort, on every run. But I developed a habit of smiling as cars or pedestrians passed me. My idea, which seems crazy to me now, was that I didn't want to be a "bad witness" for running. I didn't want pain on my face to dissuade anyone from taking up this healthy activity.

I believe that we Christians often do the same thing in our lives. When in the presence of unbelievers, for whose conversion to The Faith we pray, we often mask our pain, our disappointments. We want our unsaved friends to know that if they follow Jesus, they will be well taken care of, free of trouble and concern. Sometimes, though, this amounts to lying. Just like I lied with my face when I was running.

I now believe that more good would be done were we to be always authentic with our friends, believers and unbelievers alike. The fact that God's will for us may be to be in difficulties and pain does not refute His lordship. If we lie to make converts, and we succeed, what will our friends think of us or of God when they face difficulties as new Christians ... difficulties we pretended not to face?

My sense of this is that you cannot advance God's kingdom by deception.

TEc Re-Imagines Itself

As you know, I rarely have anything good to say about The Episcopal church ... but this time I must applaud them.

As this video signals, they have re-defined themselves. No longer are they a church. They are now an International Health and Wellness Advocacy Group.



Congratulations on their new mission. It is a good fit for them. They were no good at trying to be a church.

YouTube Schadenfreude ... RUINED!

There. He did it again.

God, as is His wont, has once again ruined for me a perfectly good moment of schadenfreude.

I was just minding my own business, watching this most excellent YouTube offering, in which a foul-mouthed fatty "goes off" on some fast-food restaurant workers.



And just as I was thinking what a loser this guy was, and how beautifully he had PWNED himself by angrily yelling "a whole ... half hour" God taps me on the shoulder. I hate it when He does that. "Umm ... son?" He didn't even really have to say what came next:

You are the man!

But, you see, when the Almighty says this to me, it is not like your sports buddies lauding you with "You da man!". It is, rather, a recapitulation of the prophet Nathan's words to King David.

You see, while I might not share the YouTube fatty's level of Gluttony, there is another sin I have shared with him: Wrath (a.k.a., Anger). Just last night, I flew into a similar (though, mercifully, shorter) rage against my son, because he forgot some Geometry fact I had taught him.

This kind of sinful display is not nearly as much fun to watch once you realize you have done similar things yourself. And then, I thought: What if my daughter had been there, and had captured my wrath on her cell phone camera ... and posted it on YouTube. It is a chilling thought.

And then, I thought about Andy Warhol, and how he famously said that in the future (we now live in his prophesied future!) everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. And I wondered to myself: Did Andy also imagine the corrolary: that each of us would have our 15 minutes of photojournalistic fame, behind the camera, as well as the 15 minutes in front of it?

And then, my thoughts flew to Flannery O'Connor, and her story A Good Man Is Hard To Find, in which the character called The Misfit says about the grandmother he has just murdered:

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

And then, I thought: What if there was someone to take video of me every minute of my life? Would I, perhaps, be a better man? As Christians, we all tend to laugh at the notion of Jack Chick's Big Screen, but we forget that it is, at root, true. My resolution for today is to live as if my daughter is filming my every word and action, and will post it all to YouTube.