The Cat

I know I promised a while back not to talk too much about our pet, but I think this warrants being mentioned.

A lot of people, after meeting Banjo the cat, have told us that he is probably at least partly a breed known as Maine Coon. We thought this was nice, but didn't think much of it.

From the moment we got him, we were always afraid of him getting really really large, because large cats are a little less loveable in our minds. But everyone would take one look at his big paws and say, "Oooo, he's gonna get big." Well, he's nearing his first birthday and is still a pretty manageable size (see how perfectly he fits in my arm?), so we were pleased, thinking he was probably close to done growing.
That is, until we did a little research. Some quick reading revealed he is definitely a Maine Coon. And a quick Google Image search confirms they are definitely the largest cat breed around. But he's done growing, right? Nope. Maine Coons are also the slowest to mature, not fully grown until 4 to 5 years! So this, ladies and gentlemen, is what we have to look forward to..................
Transporting him with us to France might be more of a challenge than we expected.

Bagel Balance

If I were that man across the street, the older one sitting on the bench seemingly doing nothing with all the time in the world, I'd be watching me, the kid eating the bagel.

First, he gets situated, pulling out iPod and book and organizing them strategically, then doing the hard work of unwrapping the honey grain bagel with cream cheese smothered inside.

I'd watch the cream cheese squirt out from between on the first bite, right onto his favorite summertime shirt, and then the cleanup ensues while trying to hold on to wind-blown napkins and brown paper bag, balancing the open book with earbud cord just getting in the way like a tether pulling in the wrong direction.

It doesn't get much easier for the poor boy after that. Even though the bagel is successfully being eaten, cream cheese is smeared all over the mouth and each individual fingertip, so that the stack of napkins gets used up fairly quickly, as he's looking mostly like a toddler devouring a cake on his first or second birthday.

But it really is mostly a humorous balancing act with crumpled napkins in one hand, piece of bagel in the other, book on the lap and the paperbag halfway on top to catch more squirting cream cheese, with that anchor of an iPod holding back, full mouth chewing and chewing, not to mention the Main Street traffic noisily passing by only 4 feet from the table.

Does he really expect to retain any of that reading? Kids these days.

What happened to the slow life of intention, where a bagel was enjoyed independent of distraction, unless that distraction was a good cup of coffee? After the pleasure of the bagel comes the focus of a good book all by itself. Next is spending time alone on Main Street, watching cars go by, just breathing in the air, or enjoying entertainment like this if you're lucky. Then you'd end the day with nothing else but by putting on the record and only listening, maybe singing along, the only distraction being getting up the nerve to ask your wife for a dance.

One thing at a time, boy! That's the secret of life!

Once that bagel is consumed things get a bit easier for the kid, though traffic and singing still vie for attention over the words on the page.

And he'll stay there until the sun comes up over the east side of the building spilling onto him, spoiling his shade and forcing him to squint for the words on that bright white page, and then making his computer screen almost impossible to see when he feels the need to pull it out and, for some odd reason I'll never understand, express the scene to the world in words of his own, showing me that while he was eating a bagel, dodging traffic, cleaning up, listening to music, watching pedestrians, and reading a book, he must have been composing a diary entry as well.

No, I'll never understand. I get tired just watching.

getting ready for an imaginative autumn

Wes Anderson directing Fantastic Mr. Fox...
And Spike Jonze directing Where the Wild Things Are...

(Video removed...a featurette with Maurice Sendak...watch it over here.)

I'm already giddy!

The Bird

College Life, Sacred Life

Yes, I've been pursuing a masters degree slowly but surely, but I wouldn't really consider any of those classes masters level classes. Tomorrow night marks something different, though, in that it's the start of my first seminary class. The pre-course work alone has been enough to do me in, with hands down the most reading I have ever completed for a college class.

I was putting off one of the assignments--at least putting it behind the first I decided to work on--thinking it was only four chapters of reading and could be done relatively quickly before the class. I looked last night and discovered the book--230 pages long, mind you--only has four chapters. Whoops.

But probably what makes the reading so difficult is the way these guys go in and out of different languages. It's Latin, I assume, but they just drop them in the middle of English sentences like they don't know it's Latin, and they just keep on going without realizing I really don't know Latin. Come on, guys! This is America!

So the four chapter book I'm reading is Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane, and I'll be honest in saying I don't know a whole lot about the guy and after the first chapter (64 pages) I don't know a whole lot about what he's trying to say.

But I do know he's pointing out the differences between life in the sacred, or people who see and experience spirituality in the world around them and life in the profane, or people who insist, more or less, this world is all there is.

All I know is I got excited when he started talking about certain trees being sacred, breaking up the homogeneity (no, that's an English word, actually) of space. Yeah, I don't really know what that means, either, but I do know I've seen a few sacred trees in my day.

I guess it's one reason I like them so much. Maybe it's part of the reason I always dreamed of having a treehouse as a kid.

It's Isaiah talking about the day when all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

It's Tagore praying "Be still, my heart, these great trees are prayers."

So I was a little sad when a little bit ago--before arriving at Johnny's Bagels to read and read and read some more--I walked through the cemetery right by my school. Yes, the oldest cemetery in town is adjacent to my school, and it's even used as a track during gym classes for the elementary students. Sounds a little weird, but it's not as bad as it sounds. It's called God's Acre and it's a fitting name, because right in the middle of town is this somehow quiet and secluded and peaceful place paying tribute to people of all genders, social classes, and races, lying side by side, all of them equal in death. In God's Acre are the most glorious grandfathers and grandmothers of huge stately trees that provide lots of shade and solace and a feeling of deep and profound history.

But the reason I was a little sad is they had to cut one of them down recently, and it was the biggest one of all. If this is God's Acre, this was God's Tree. It's sad to see him go, like the great patriarch breathing his last and saying goodbye after fighting many years of disease.

And even if you don't think the tree was sacred, even the profane can admit it's now letting way too much sun into the cemetery.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta get back to interpreting Latin.

Music Monday

Yikes. Somewhere between panicking about the new class I started today and preparing for the other class I'm starting Friday night, I decided to go on a music rampage.

Heard about Aaron Strumpel and listened to enough snippets and read enough reviews that I was convinced to buy his super unique take on a lot of the Psalms right on the spot.

Wondered why I never knew about WHY?'s live recording called Almost Live from Eli's Live Room. It's a perfect compilation of their greatest hits featuring their super-tight and extra-creative live arrangements. Holy moly! Passed up the hard copy and used an iTunes giftcard and enjoying it as I type.

How could I pass up using the rest of the gift card once I started? Added Joanna Newsom's Milk-Eyed Mender and Y's Street Band to my library.

Geez, now that I type all this I realize I'm in a really oddball music mood today.

Had a dollar left on the iTunes card, picked up Sufjan's track from the I'm Not There soundtrack, which I didn't know about, and sounds beautiful as ever.

But as I was browsing at options, I decided to use a Best Buy giftcard to pick up something I am way behind on: the Dark was the Night compilation, which just looks absolutely wonderful featuring all of today's greatest music makers.

Started browsing at shows while I was at it, and I'm a bit bummed that some great looking shows in Philly will all be on weeknights this fall. The Books, whom I don't know a lot about but would enjoy getting to know live, are playing Tues 9/15. Mum, who only come around ever so often from the other side of the pond, are playing Thurs 10/22. And good golly yes! Do Make Say Think, who also only comes around so often from the Great White North, is playing on Mon 11/30.

I might be showing up to school a bit sleepy this fall.

cell phone swim

I've heard numerous stories of cell phones being dropped in water and surviving after ample time to dry out.

But does anyone know about any success stories of cell phones surviving a 30 minute-or-more swim in the back pocket of a swimsuit? Yeah, we're not talking a quick dip or anything here. We're talking a full game of Marco Polo, throwing my nephew and niece around, and starting a whirlpool.

It laid in front of a fan yesterday, on the bathroom heater overnight, and the next step is putting it in a bowl of white rice to absorb the moisture. My brother told me that tip and I wasn't quite sure I could believe him, but then I found a few other people on the web recommending the same thing, so I figured it had to be true.

So, it's still drying and I haven't tested it yet. Needless to say, if you're trying to call, I won't be getting your message for a little while.

Also looking forward to...

Also just found out about this movie, Paper Heart. Part fake documentary, part Michael Cera puppy-love-fairy-tale, not quite the obvious hipster-fest that Away We Go might have been, I think I'm sold.

Now if anyone can explain why some YouTube videos get cut off like this one does and how to fix it, let me know.

Who's with me?

Just found out this is coming...and close to home! Granted, it's one of the worst venues I can think of, but at least I won't have to drive an hour and a half. Who's in to join me in Allentown on August 29th?

"Fans of mewithoutYou will get to see another side of the Philly experimental band this fall when the Weiss Family hits the road this August for a tour with Damien Jurado and Psalters. This will be an intimate version of the band for fans and an alternate take on their classic songs that you won’t want to miss!

Joining brothers Aaron on acoustic guitar and Mike Weiss on electric guitar will be Mike's wife Sarah on keyboards, along with Matt Chapin on trumpet. Look for a few surprises, friends and additional instrumentalists as well. This is most definitely not an “unplugged” outing; however, the percussion section will be far from the traditional “rock drums” mewithoutYou fans are used to. It is a chance to hear mewithoutYou songs interpreted in a new way as the Weiss Family puts a new twist on their impressive body of work. They’ll also be mixing it up with an eclectic selection of covers, but you’ll have to check out one of these shows to find out what they’ll be!

Joining on this tour of family and friends with be songwriter Damien Jurado and gypsy tribal activist band Psalters."

Tips for Surviving Adulthood: Volunteer at a Farm

Adulthood can be tough. Here's another tip for surviving.

My friend Dan has been getting awfully obsessed with gardening in the past few years. This summer, he's been volunteering at a local farm about once a week in exchange for a little bit of the produce. When he was looking for a ride to the farm this week, he gave me a call and tried to convince me of how much I needed to spend some quality time on a farm. I was skeptical.

But the boy sounded desperate. I wasn't convinced I needed some quality time doing manual labor, but time outside didn't sound bad at all, and neither did some of the free, fresh produce, and a little labor this summer definitely couldn't hurt me either, so I agreed.

So, this morning I went to a quaint little 1 acre-or-so farm on Limeport Pike and helped to dig up 150 pounds of potatoes. Some Gold Yukon, some Red Yukon.

The farmer's description when he was showing us what to do was, "It's easy as that...kinda like an Easter Egg hunt...for adults...who like potatoes." And he was right on. Just about as much fun as an Easter Egg hunt. Very therapeutic.

From there we moved on to what he called "Operation Save Lettuce" which consisted of pulling weeds around the lettuce to give them "breathing room." Surprisingly, the catchy mission title did in fact make weeding a little more enjoyable.

I enjoyed my time a whole lot longer than I expected, and when it came time to leave, I wasn't needing much in the way of payment at all. The farmers were nice enough and I was glad to help them out for 4 hours. I really could have gone home empty handed and content, but when the offer stood to take home some of my freshly dug potatoes, how could I refuse? I accepted some salad mix and some zucchini, too, but I was mostly modest in what I chose to take home. Dan admitted he also is a bit conservative in what he takes at the end of the day saying, "It's their livelihood."

Yeah, but when you add up the market value, I think I got paid about $1.50 an hour today. Maybe I could have taken a bit more of their livelihood after all. But no need to be greedy.

Anyway, if you're looking for another way to survive adulthood, find some time to visit a local farm and help out a bit. It's the perfect setup. You get to be outside. You get your hands a bit dirty. You get a little exercise. You don't have to carry all the responsibility of farming. You skip out on most of the hard work. You get the excitement of harvesting (without the hard work). And you get some free, fresh produce to put on your dinner table that night.

Why not?

Away We Go -- spoiler free!

I spent my birthday going to see Away We Go, starring "Jim from the Office" and "That one girl from SNL." It's the kind of movie that had me at the trailer:

...Yes, the kind of movie the typical 20-something hipster can't refuse.

But as I watched it all unfold on the big screen, part of me grew indignant that I was suckered in. It was just TOO hip. Take the heart-on-sleeve dialogue and a couple of cool camera shots from Garden State, the outrageous characters from Little Miss Sunshine, and the pregnancy and all-for-love-prove-the-world-wrong naivete of Juno, and you've got something close. Throw in coming-of-age (which happens in the thirties, these days), a road trip (in a Volvo, of COURSE!), a beard and a pair of Clarks (on JIM of all people!), the perfect little soundtrack (which IS pretty good), and the line-drawing movie poster (hat tip to Wes Anderson, really) and you've got all the ingredients for a smash hit.

I didn't want to like it. I told myself it was getting old. Too predictable. Too formulaic. Too cliche. Too easy.

My point to Erica in the car the next day was about the isolation. It seemed the outrageous characters were simply serving to make the main characters feel further isolated. Any script can do that. Of course you'll feel isolated when interacting with lunatics. I said I would much rather see a script convey isolation when interacting with friends and family, the kind of isolation most people like you and me experience on a daily basis.

But the more I gave it the chance, the more I realized the movie was actually a fairly admirable feat. The issues it tackles are many and serious and never dismissed lightly. While the isolation might be dealt with through caricatures, the main issues aren't, and yet enough gracious humor is woven throughout to keep it light and hopeful.

And ultimately, it's a movie where love -- as in the true, messy, determined, committed (as committed as you can get with a woman afraid to marry) kind -- actually wins. And hope wins, too, as in the kind of hope that acknowledges it won't be easy, and that's just the point. And patience and kindness and sanity and simplicity and a good sense of humor? They all win too.

Idealistic? Sure. Naive? Maybe a bit, but it can't be all that naive with all the issues they're facing along the way. Idealism and naivete aside, it sounds a bit like the fruit of the Spirit, too. And if that's the case, maybe this kind of hipster movie isn't so bad after all. Maybe we could use a few more in Hollywood.

When the movie finished, my friend asked how it felt to watch myself on screen. I had to laugh about it. But if that's me and my life, I can't complain, and I'm kind of honored.

Tips for Surviving Adulthood: Make Smoothies

More and more young people I know are making the adjustment to adulthood lately. Take my brother-in-law, Wes, for example. The kid just bought a house and gets married in a month. Yikes.

And adulthood can be tough. It can eat you alive and swallow you up if you're not careful.

So, here's a tip for surviving adulthood, inspired by completing the very act just now...

Make smoothies.

There will be rare moments where you happen to have a lot of fruit on your hands. And there will be less-than-rare moments where most of the fruit is on the verge (or past the verge) of rotting because you are too busy to remember to eat it. So what do you do? Blend them into a delightfully refreshing and healthy treat to give you a break from the daily grind.

Here's today's recipe, which happens to be absolutely perfect in my mind. But remember, it's not about recipes, it's about using up as quickly as possible whatever source of fruit fly infestation exists on your kitchen counter.

• 1 large peach. (Leave the moldy rotten ones in the bowl. But don't forget to throw them out a little later.)

• 1 and a quarter bananas. (Cut off the really black spots.)

• 6 strawberries. (Use the super the red ones now, save the others for later.)

• A handful of blueberries. (Don't worry about using the mushy ones, they'll blend better anyway.)

• 1 scoop vanilla ice cream. (You can improvise by carefully scooping just the vanilla out of the neopolitan ice cream left over from your birthday.)

• 6 ice cubes.

• Blend well.

Serve and enjoy while listening to music and writing a blog post. You can thank me later. Good luck surviving.

But remember that cleaning up is part of being an adult, and the longer you put it off, the worse it gets. And don't forget the rotten peaches in the bowl. Those won't be getting any better, either.

UP & Sugar: Finding joy and contentment

I've been to the theater twice so far this summer and enjoyed both movies quite a bit. The two were very different in many ways, but I came away from both thinking on the same theme.

Pixar's latest, UP, which will very likely earn the studio their first Best Picture nomination with the Academy's new rules, was just as marvelous as its predecessors. Erica and I recently tried to name our top five favorite Pixar movies and had an extremely difficult time. Each one is just as great as the next.

The emotional poignancy is perhaps its greatest strength. It starts in the first ten minutes and it remains on the surface for the rest of the film. But its character development is admirable, too, particularly with a woman named Ellie. In the first five minutes, we meet her at a very young age. In the following five minutes, we watch her life silently unfold. That's all we see, but in those ten minutes alone, we not only know her, we love her, just as much as her husband does.

Its unlikely heroes--a cantankerous elderly man, a mostly helpless boy scout, a charming talking dog--are tackled in a way completely endearing and with depth rather than with one-dimensional gimmicks or innuendos for the adults.

And its most important theme, along with the need for community and relationships, is that the extraordinary adventures of life are found in the everyday and ordinary. The heroes we find on TV aren't all we make them out to be, and the real heroes are the close friends we find along the way. It's Russell admitting it's the boring things he misses the most, it's Carl finding the real adventure inside his wife's adventure book.

The other film is Sugar, from the same writers/directors of one of my all-time favorites Half Nelson. It's the story of a Dominican baseball player that makes it to the minor leagues in the states, one step closer to the ultimate dream of playing the major leagues. It is ultra-realistic in its approach, and winsome in the everyday characters it portrays.

It succeeds extremely well in its tale of culture-shock, and even shows an interestingly real picture of American Christianity: kind and hospitable, sweet and innocent, but ultimately a bit out of touch. It's a fascinating perspective on a subculture larger than we realize, an overlooked demographic of immigrants.

Most surprising about Sugar is its propensity for side-stepping expectations. Whatever you think is going to happen, well, never does. It never takes the typical screenplay route; don't even expect to see a simple victory, let alone a ninth inning or a championship. On one hand, this makes for a film refreshingly real. On the other hand, it leaves you wanting a bit more from the plot. But that could very well be intentional. Sure, it could easily give us big underdog victories and satisfied dreams, but we've all seen that movie plenty of times before and it hasn't left us with a joy that's any more lasting.

Along those lines, Sugar ultimately presents a theme similar to UP. The big dreams aren't all they're cracked up to be and neither is being the hero. In the end, pursuing the joys in everyday things including relationships and personal interests are just as fulfilling, and probably more so.

Is it just me, or is this an incredibly refreshing theme to see in summer films? The typical romances are telling you not to be content in your mundane marriage. The typical action flicks are telling you not to be content in your 9 to 5 job. The typical thrillers are telling you not to be content being a nobody. UP and Sugar, on the other hand, confront these misleading messages and reassure us that there is in fact joy and contentment in being married, in sitting in your favorite chair next to your beautiful wife, in selling balloons for a living, in eating French Toast for every meal, in woodworking, in playing ball with friends at the community sandlot.

It's Ecclesiastes, looking everywhere in everything the world offers for meaning, joy, and contentment, and ultimately finding it all meaningless, joyless, and unfulfilling. Something within the human nature longs for significance in fame and fortune and success and wild adventure. Films like UP and Sugar seem to say to me that significance and adventure come from following Christ, giving and receiving love in relationships, appreciating his "good and perfect gifts" in the everyday and commonplace, or as Ecclesiastes concludes, in fearing God and keeping his commandments. Perhaps all this is one small part of what Christ was getting at when he tells us about his peace, saying, "I do not give to you as the world gives." No, he gives in a way unexpected and subtle, but so much better and infinitely more lasting.

Currently Obsessed With...

...LAKE's performance on Phoning it In.

Here's a band that really knows how to melt my heart with a simple keyboard riff (can keyboards have riffs? or only guitars?), complementary guitar dialogue, or an innocent, airy vocal line. And who knew what a little good-natured telephone static could do to make a band sound so magical.

I'm only two songs in to the six song set, but the second--I think entitled "Don't Give Up"--was good enough to write this post.

And now I just found WHY?'s session in the archives and I'm downloading furiously.