Archive | Life RSS feed for this section

The Manchurian Candidate

12 Nov

Allow me to describe the quaint scene at the Lord house on Saturday night at 9:30 PM: the wee ones are all nestled in their beds; Hallie is over on the couch watching girlie shows on her computer with a pair of earbuds on. I’m in my La-Z-Boy wannabe with my own pair of earbuds and my own computer.

Is this the 21st century, or what?

Ironically, I’m not watching a 21st century movie. I’m watching a really excellent film from 1962—one year before the Council Fathers published Sacrosanctum Concilium—only a theology nerd like me would make that connection. Anyway, the film is The Manchurian Candidate. This is maybe the third or fourth time I’ve seen it. It’s brilliant. With the aid of a couple of Hienekens and a couple of Jose Cuervo shots I’m PARTICULARLY perceptive, and I can tell you: The Manchurian Candidate is a great movie. Every scene is meticulously crafted. The casting is perfect; Frank Sinatra is so very good—truly an underappreciated actor. My other favorite from the film—excluding the slithery asian Communist brainwasher named Dr. Yen, of course—is Janet Leigh.

I really am an anachronism; Hallie is, too. We are both in love with bygone eras. Modern guys get all hot and bothered over modern film bombshells—but I’m left cold, people. You can keep your Megan Foxes and your Jessica Simpsons. The two most beautiful ladies in film are long dead: Marilyn Monroe and Janet Leigh. Marilyn’s just awesome: fun and silly and lovely. Janet Leigh, though: beautiful, sultry, smart, sophisticated, and, sadly, doomed to be hacked to pieces by Anthony Perkins. These women from a bygone era…there’s something there that I rarely see anymore. I know my wife’s got it—I guess that accounts for why I laid lips on her in the first place: she’s smart, sexy, silly, cute, glamorous—a Monroe/Leigh combo!!

Assuming she hasn’t been put in place by a hostile Communist regime to manipulate me into performing some heinous act, I have to admit: Hallie’s a dream come true.

My New Book! And Other Items…

21 Jul

 

Sticklebats! I can't finish this book for OSV with all the confounded relatives hanging on the bell all day...

 

You read that post title right, people! Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, mistaking me for a writer, has asked me to write a book for them! I’m extremely honored and thrilled. Unfortunately, I am contractually bound to say nothing about the topic of the book, but it IS definitely about something and I have to turn in my work this Fall.  So, pray for me, please—I mean really.

Item #2: Thank you to all of you nice people who have purchased my CD, Thumbwrestle. It gives me a lot of pleasure to keep producing music, even in my own humble, D.I.Y. way. Your support is encouraging, and it literally puts food in my multitudinous children’s mouths. I thank you on their behalf, since they aren’t supposed to talk with their mouths full.

Item #3: Speaking of CDs, I am waiting for a new batch to arrive, so you peeps who have purchased recently will have to wait an extra few days. I’m truly sorry about that, since ordinarily my middle name is Prompt. Not really…it’s Francis. Shut up.

Item #4: Finally, the book I’m writing for OSV is not Frontman, which I talk about here. I’m not sure what’s going on with that. What I’ve decided to do is write another Trilopost, similar to my How I Made Friends With the Devil Trilopost, but this one will be anecdotes from my days in Pain and how I found my way back to da Choich (that’s “the Church,” spoken like Jimmy Durante).  Look for the first SUPER-exciting installment this Friday!

So there you have it: lots of big news and exciting stuff. God bless!

Sing?!?

25 Apr

Hi everybody! If you get a minute, go read my article over at Fathers For Good–it’s about singing, or not singing, in church. A tough subject for you fellas, especially.

Also: Happy Easter, peeps!

A Quiet Day At the Abortion Clinic

7 Apr

 

why am I here?

Planned Parenthood needs a happy mouse logo with a "PP" on his shirt. Wouldn't that be cute?

It can be hard to feel like you’re accomplishing much in the Pro-Life movement sometimes, can’t it? The Planned Parenthood in my town is on a quiet street, surrounded by incongruent patches of field or squat, ugly medical supply buildings. Oddly, there’s a Chuck E. Cheese across the street. It’s a crazy juxtaposition: hey, everybody! If you have any children left after your visit to Planned Parenthood, stop by Chuck E. Cheese for fun and games!

 

Yesterday wasn’t an “abortion day;” they open the clinic randomly, with no official schedules, in the hopes of avoiding us. Which in this case was just me. Just one badly dressed guy, plodding up and down the sidewalk (we’re not allowed to step foot in the parking lot) with a gnarly old Rosary missing a bead on the 5th decade. Yeah, that guy’s rosary is missing a few beads—wink, wink—to be hanging out all by himself on the sidewalk in the middle of the day.

My mind kept wandering over the faint possibility that a local news crew might, just might, choose that hour to come racing up on the curb and unload a well-groomed man with a microphone, accompanied by a sloppily dressed cameraman, to fire off earnest questions about the purpose of my presence here today, and what I think the future of the abortion rights issue is in this country, and what about the rights of the woman, anyway? Don’t I care about women? What about rape? Do I advocate rape?

None of that happened. Lovely spring breezes blew across the Planned Parenthood Parking Lot Which Must Never Be Trod Upon. The sun shined. Nobody stopped. The place was closed.

Mr. Gervais

But, seriously, what would I say? Ricky Gervais, the brilliant co-creator and star of The Office (the original BBC one, not that stinky American copycat), was discussing the way his ideas for the show were, in part, born of the observation that people talk a big game about things—they have all of these strong opinions and complex theories about the world and the way they think it ought to work—but the second you put a camera on them and give them their big chance to expound, they blow it. Laughable nonsense comes out, most of the time. That’s me, don’tcha know. But I hope I would make a statement like this:

“We’re supposed to be a country that loves people—especially the defenseless ones. We have this vast self-image as a people who helps out the Little Guy, who protects the innocent, who fights off injustice. Our national icon is Superman, for God’s sake! Even our grisliest, most hard-hitting war films always show us as defender of the helpless, even when our own kind are against us, even when the government is opposed to our efforts (no, really. Watch Full Metal Jacket, When We Were Soldiers, Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, Born On the 4th of July…at the heart of all of these movies is at least one character who is the American As He Should Be—noble, merciful, concerned with the defenseless)…”

There, see? I’m already blowing it. A babbling digression that few people would be impressed by. The well-groomed interviewer starts to look restless. The sloppily dressed cameraman is clearing his throat as a signal that it’s time to move on. In a rush, maybe I could get in something like this:

“Everyone has a right to life—it’s in the Declaration of Independence! We have an entire body of laws designed to prevent people from killing each other. Why is this place here across from Chuck E. Cheese somehow exempt from all that? Why are babies safe everywhere else except here, where we allow ourselves to do whatever we want to them and then toss out the discarded body parts in a medical waste bag?”

Whoa, woah, woah…the interviewer gives his cameraman an uncomfortable glance. Got a live one here. Why can’t this guy discuss the issue without using inflammatory language like that? Why can’t we all just stay calm, be reasonable, wrap everything up with a smug joke and then meet over at Chuck E. Cheese for fun and games?

Well, I’m a terrible spokesman, I guess. I can’t even succeed in the scenario in my own mind—I shudder to think how I would bumble a real-life interview. It’s O.K.—I’m not discouraged. I keep plodding up and down the sidewalk, and my rosary tosses in the wind, and nobody sees anything. I’m not discouraged, because I know that prayer works like water, “flowing underground,” like the old Talking Heads song. Good always wins in the end. Yep, I really believe that.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 77 other followers