Bodybuilder Sherri Gray Turns Pro!

One of my favourite bodybuilders, Sherri Gray, earned her IFBB Pro card last night at the Masters Nationals in Pittsburgh!!

Congratulations, Sherri!

Here is an interview I did with Sherri back in 2009.

Hot Rod Monstrance

Since becoming (relatively) Anglo-Catholic, I've always wanted a monstrance.  Once, I posted a question in an online religious forum asking whether it would be appropriate to personally own a monstrance and to display it in my home.  Reactions were mixed, but most of the people I respected seemed nervous about it, feeling at the very least that it would have to be deconsecrated first.  Some went so far as to say that I would bring myself under the condemnation of Exodus 30, where there is a prohibition against emplying the holy incense for personal use:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Take fragrant spices—gum resin, onycha and galbanum—and pure frankincense, all in equal amounts, and make a fragrant blend of incense, the work of a perfumer. It is to be salted and pure and sacred. Grind some of it to powder and place it in front of the ark of the covenant law in the tent of meeting, where I will meet with you. It shall be most holy to you.  Do not make any incense with this formula for yourselves; consider it holy to the Lord.  Whoever makes incense like it to enjoy its fragrance must be cut off from their people.”

So, I decided not to go shopping on ebay for monstrances.  I don't want to be cut off from God's people.  That was 5 or 6 years ago.  Lately, however, I have been re-thinking this.  Yesterday, I started working on this "hot rod monstrance" ... a monstrance built entirely out of spare car parts from my garage.  I used a fan clutch, a distributor, a headlight bucket, a sprag clutch outer race, and an instrument panel bezel.

 

My daughter thought it was an evil thing to do.  Her objection was one I had not heard before:  that it was simply too dirty.  But is any monstrance, crafted as it is by the hands of sinful men, "clean" enough to house the body and blood of our Lord?  I think not.

My defense of this monstrance it two-fold.  The first argument involves what this is not:  it is not consecrated for use in a Benediction (or Adoration) service.  In that sense, it is not an actual monstrance, but the image of one.  

The second argument is more positive and, to me, more forceful:

My view of the world is that we should seek clues to the invisible, to the holy, to the sacred, and to the eternal.  In part, at least, we seek these clues in the worldly, the profane, the dirty, the fallen, and the temporal.  We seek signs and glimpses of the next, perfect world in exactly this present, imperfect one.

Even if this were to be actually used as a monstrance, does any of you truly believe that something sinful, common, or unclean cannot house the perfect body and blood of Christ.  If so, I advise you not to receive the elements of the Eucharist, either by hand or on the tongue.  Because your hands and your tongue (and mine!) are at least as unclean in God's sight as the car parts used to create this Hot Rod Monstrance.

The Power of Validation

In high school, I had a few very influential teachers.  These were true mentors, people who shaped and guided the course of my life, who encouraged me to go on and pursue things that I might otherwise not have had the courage to pursue.

I have recently interacted with one of these great teachers on facebook.  No matter what negative things we may say about facebook, it has done some marvelous things.  If we forget about all the trite motivational posters, the thousandfold sharing of cute puppy photos, and the political vitriol, we are still left with the fact that it has almost miraculously brought us together with friends we thought were lost to us forever.

My interaction with my 10th Grade English teacher caused me to go back and re-read the words she had written in my high school yearbook in 1976, the year I graduated.  I almost didn't need to look at them because I nearly have them memorized.  Over the years, I have read and re-read these words many times.  If I have ever in my life received a more powerful validation from someone whom I so greatly respect and admire, I don't know when that could have been.  These words have guided me my entire adult life.

Dear Paul,

You are without a doubt one of the most talented and creative people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.  I hope that your talents will continue to find expression in many varied forms.  It would be a crime to limit an imagination such as yours.  I hope to read about you in the future.  Do something fabulous, so I can say, "I knew him when!"

Love,

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

I don't know if I've yet done anything fabulous, but the wish in the second sentence seems to have been fulfilled.  I am so grateful to have had this teacher, and her words to guide me.

Bobby Freeman - "C'mon and Swim" (1964)

Just a few nights ago, my son introduced me to this song.  (Funny, I thought it was supposed to be the other way around.)  I cannot comprehend how I have not heard this song before.  I will make a bold and only mildly hyperbolic statement:

If you want to understand the essence of 1960s pop music in its entirety, you only need to hear and absorb one song:  Bobby Freeman's 1964 masterpiece, "C'mon and Swim".

This song is incredible.  It has as its foundation a driving surf beat.  In fact, parts of this track sound very much like surf music.  But, hark!  What is that I hear?  Sam & Dave style soul horns?  Okay, groovy combo.
 
The singer seems to be coming from a soul genre, too.  And he is telling us how to do a dance move, just as you'd expect from Chubby Checker or Freddy Garrity (Freddie & the Dreamers).

But wait, that's not all!  Over the surf drums and the horn section, is the wild, serpentine line of a double-time blues-derived lead guitar line that would become the mainstay of ... psychedelic music!

This track literally has the entire 1960s music scene packed into a single track.  And Bobby Freeman did it ... in 1964!!

Oh yes ... in case you have trouble imagining the Swim dance step, just watch this:

My 1975 Film: Mind Games

This is a Super 8mm film that I made in 1975, at the age of 17, but only recently converted to digital format so that I could share it with the world.

It is basically the story of a little stick man who is seduced by the promise of quick joy and happiness through drugs.  Essentially, it is my imagination of an acid trip, created about 3 years before I first experimented with LSD.



Some of it still impresses me; other parts underwhelm me.  All in all, I am pleased with what I achieved in this film, given the primitive equipment I had to work with.  The camera was a non-zooming, non-adjustable focus plastic camera that my dad bought me as Sears for $10.  It was a gift to me for Christmas, 1971.  Animation was a challenge, because it did not have a single-frame feature.  Rather, I had to quickly press and release the trigger, like a drag racer side-stepping the clutch.  Sometimes this ended up shooting 2 or 3 frames.  So, the results were not consistent.

For sound, I had available two cheap cassette tape recorders and a "record lathe" (a cheap, hand-me-down portable phonograph from my uncle).  For the parts in which I have 2 songs playing together, I first recorded Song 1 from the phonograph onto the first tape recorder.  Then I played Song 1 on the tape recorder while playing Song 2 on the phonograph.  To fade the songs in and out, I controlled the tape recorder volume with my left hand and the phonograph volume with my right.  Primitive stuff.

Perhaps the most interesting parts of this film are the trippy, psychedelic colors, which an artist friend described as being "like a live Kandinsky painting".  I produced them by various techniques.  For some of the footage, I began by using my mom's Clorox bleach to strip off all the color from a section of scrap film.  I then used every technique I could think of to mark the film:  I burned it with a match, colored on it with colored Sharpie markers, used India ink on it (the black India ink soon cracked, making beautiful hexagonal crystal patterns), poked holes in the film with needles, scratched the film.  For other sections, the base image was created by filming a projected slide image while continuously changing the focus on the slide projector.  It then added color and other effects over this manually.

Here are some still frames from the film:

Miss Galaxy

Here is yet another poem I've written for my wife:

Miss Galaxy

(for Cynthia Lou Erlandson)

Some three cubed years ago, I felt your pull:
The heartward tugging of a heart most full.
The law of Isaac Newton bade me enter,
Falling through your gates, to find your center.

To know your inner depths, I chose my goal,
And rocket toward the center of your soul.
I’m eight-point-two-eight parsecs closer now,
From speeding quick as Einstein will allow.

Your bright and fiery acts of love, your suns,
Go blazing past me as if shot from guns.
Though some are dim and in periph’ral vision,
Others, closer, scorch and risk collision.

My world, my heart, my Apostolic See,
My burning love, my own Miss Galaxy.

© 2012, Paul Erlandson

Episcopal Church Prays for AIDS to spread?

From here and other places:


Early reports indicate that the proposed changes to the liturgy that The Episcopal Church will consider at its General Convention this summer will include a "Litany for the Planet" that contains this prayer:

On eukaryotes and prokaryotes, archaea and viruses; on microbes of endless variety, the complex and the simple, Creator have mercy.

I thought that The Episcopal church had lost its ability to surprise me.  I have grown so used to its godless innovations and overturning of sound doctrine and worship, that I thought I'd "seen everything", as the phrase goes.

But the proposed inclusion of a blessing on viruses (not on those who suffer the ravages of viruses, but on the tiny creatures themselves) has proven me wrong.  There is no limit to the insanity of The Episcopal church. 

One can only assume that this is a petition which asks God, among other things, to bless and propagate the common cold and the AIDS virus.  Most interesting.