Selling Out This Christmas

I had a boyfriend in high school that was into the straight edge, hard core scene.  It was there that I learned you could “sell out” to “mainstream” music.  It was cool to use this language.  While I get that there was an element of not “selling out” to big business, the comments were primarily reputation and socially driven.  We wanted to be unique and have our own little corner of coolness.  I laugh.  After all, we were in high school.

This morning I surfed the Internet with the “Occupy Christmas” lense and continue to be delighted with the growing number of companies and entrepreneurs that are launching fair-trade, artisan craft businesses and the like. 

At the same time I have been hearing social media and social circle murmurs of how it is now “trendy” to go this direction for the holidays…negatively-ish.  As if, now – crap – more people are getting intentional about their purchasing power…???...!!!  Lets just go ahead and put a big old BS sign on that bull.  It reminds me of high school.  Praise God for this social trend, that really does justice to our society.  Jump on the bandwagon, friends.  

There Be Dragons and Whitney Houston's Funeral

I just found this blog post that I never posted...sometime this year around Whitney Houston's funeral.  I can't really understand what I was trying to get at, but I put it out to my brilliant public nonetheless. xo,People.  xo.


Dan is in the middle of his four day, 12 hour a day work week.  Today is the one day I will have "off" for weeks.  So, I am embracing it.  I am by myself, which is really the way I like it (for a while).

Last night I watched "There Be Dragons" about the 1930s Spanish Civil War.  That bit of history in that part of the world was as brutal as only civil wars can be.  It is a story of two boys that were friends: raised in the same time, in the same town, that loved riding bikes.  And then family values, relationships, and experiences; "seeds"; grew into the men finding themselves working out their own enmity towards themselves and one another on opposite sides of the dividing line. "Many seeds are planted in a child's heart, and you never know which one's will grow up..."

This morning I am watching Whitney Houston's Funeral.   It was on CNN and Tyler Perry was speaking and I am kind of fascinated with him recently, so.  And I am kind of blown away; in a few paragraphs he shared the Gospel in the context of her story.  In some ways, these are my people: Christian, Baptist (with a capital B).  (And yet maybe a little different: mostly Black, Famous (with a capital F)).  It is fascinating to see my faith background, and some ways my family history, represented in such a public way. 

So, these two storylines are dancing through my mind, weaving together.   I know the doubts that shroud star-studded events and figures like Jesse Jackson.  I'd rather not kick that sleeping giant, but just acknowledge that he is there.  And that he is there in all of us: seeds that are growing, dragons that will be.

50/50

Dan suggested it.  He really did.  It wasn't me.  "Do you want to go see that movie 50/50?"

I won't review the movie, because I don't really know how to do that.  But, will say this: while it was too Hollywood for words at some points, dirt-ball at some points, and I was bored at some points (only a few), I laughed, I cried, and I think I finally have a compelling dissertation idea: Acute Illness Incidents During Young Adulthood and Its Impact on Lifelong Human Development.  You know you want to read it.  (And to those that actually would, I know I need to be more specific).

But here are some less academic take aways:
1.  Everyone in their 20s that is very sick, very suddenly should have a friend like the Seth Rogan character.  He is crass and raunchy, but faithful.  He saw his friend and the sickness, not denying either the sickness or especially his friend.  And he used the F-word a lot.  (I personally thanked my dear girlfriend that said, "for "f***'s sake" a lot during those years of my illness over a glass of wine Thursday night.  Invaluable).
2.  The relational dynamics are exaggerated, but real.  The girlfriend/boyfriend really does freak out, but is not honest about it with themselves and, as Seth puts it, basically, "suck as a person;" ... at least in that way.
3.  The scene with Joseph Gordon-Levitt getting ready and then going to the hospital is pretty true to life: feed the dog, get in the car, watch your neighbors go to work, drive to the hospital, hug your friend, and walk freely into the building that will change your life either way.
4.  I love the play with chance in the movie, albeit narrowly themed through out, and that real, raw, imperfect relationship comes out of moving through the odds of life.