Monthly Archives: June 2007

WC Arts Conference Day 1, Opening Session

June 13, 2007 – 11:08 am

USB bracelets for entry. Brilliant. 128 mb, but to be expected considering there’s 5,000 to give out.

The David Crowder Band opened the conference leading worship. They debuted a new song, also brilliant. Driving, building, layered, complex, live, and loops – everything I’ve come to love about that band. The hoedown was excellent, and Pocket would be happy to know that the banjo was out in full force. DCB is reminding me of Coldplay in a few ways, but their use of backing loops and some techno beats separates their music into something almost entirely different.

Dewitt Jones led the first session and spoke on Creativity. As a photographer for National Geographic for 20 years, he knows a few things. His images were breath-taking. My notes from the talk:
Find new perspectives.
Don’t see redundancy, see opportunity.
Creativity means falling in love with the world.
“Does your camera have juice?” – from the 5 year old Yoda.
“I live in Creation’s dawn…” – John Muir.
Make your life your art.
Life is not separate from art.
Don’t live in scarcity and fear. Believe in love and possibility.
“Unite my avocation and my vocation.” – Robert Frost (and Dewitt did a great Frost impression).
How do you fill your cup?
Quit flapping.
Take it all in, give it all back. Breathe.
Do what you love; forget the critics, including yourself.

Off to Session 2!

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Travels

Chicago: Day One

June 12, 2007 – 11:43 pm

A summary of my first day in Chicago, in flashes, imagery, ellipses, and utterances:

Seen in the stowaway overhead bin of my first flight: lots of safety equipment, fire extinguishers and the like, and, tucked away beside these life-saving devices – a Bible. I wondered as I was passing it why it was there. I never got an answer. Last rites? A real life-saving device?

10 degrees cooler than Texas. This is why Texans should always travel in the summer. Anywhere is nearly cooler than a Texas summer.

Drove into downtown Chicago. I didn’t keep track of the time, but it took forever. Bumper to bumper for miles on end. We finally got to the exit for Wrigley Field and saw a massive line. My guess was a Cubs game. My guess was right.

We found fairly cheap parking and started walking. This is our path. (I’m not sure how long these links stay alive. Gmap-Pedometer is an awesome site by the way. Plot your walks or rides, see how many miles you’ve covered, even how many calories you’ve burned. I’m using it more and more these days.) Our path is a rough estimation. We ran into more than a few dead-ends, but Google’s Maps are a little out of date, and there is a lot of construction going on in Chicago.

Ate at Bice, which I’m not even sure how to pronounce. Great Italian food. We were under dressed, but we didn’t care. I had the Ravioli Verdi, a.k.a. the Green Ravioli. Finished with Chocolate Gelato. Delicious, especially after the long walk.

Car trip back to the hotel, away from Chicago, was much faster. Then I had work to do, so I had to connect to the Internet in the hotel room via an ethernet cable. (That’s where you actually have to use wires – why are some places so backwards?) It wasn’t working, so I delved into some of my settings and realized I had disabled my network port a few months ago when I was trying to fix a connection problem. I enabled it and – voila – I’m online.

I realized, as I was looking at the map of Chicago, that it looked extremely familiar to me, even though I’ve never been to the city. Turns out I’d been in the city quite a lot; I’ve even driven through the city more times than I can count, albeit many years ago, when I was still a teenager, sitting in front of my computer, playing Midtown Madness on my PC. Would I want to navigate the real city without a map? Heck no. I’m glad I didn’t have to drive today.

Finally, what caught me most off guard, even though I’ve been to NYC a few times, was the sheer number of people in downtown Chicago, both in their cars and on the streets. They were everywhere. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I was surprised the other day when I saw one guy on a bike by the Wolf Ranch development in Georgetown. There were thousands of people in the streets, all busily going somewhere. Constant movement. A swirl, no, a typhoon of humanity coalescing, funneling, racing, existing separately but making something whole – a thriving city.

And that brings us to the reason I’m in Chicago: the Willow Creek Arts Conference. Maybe I’ll learn a few things about what it means to touch that mass of humanity through the language of the popular arts, to make that busy, bustling person plant their feet in the ground and realize there’s even more to life than the multiple and myriad opportunities of a metropolis like Chicago, and that there’s something higher than a skyscraper.

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Books

The Zero, by Jess Walter

June 10, 2007 – 10:57 pm

There is only one feeling better than finishing a book – finishing a great book. Next to that is finishing a book before it’s due back at the library. The Zero, while a good story that keeps the reader guessing throughout, belongs in the latter category.

The Zero is a fictional rumination on grief, memory, trust, politics, patriotism, and national tragedy. Written with oblique yet transparent references to the fall of the World Trade Center and the ensuing aftermath, Walter creates a story that may well have been true. Described as Helleresque, this part political satire starts out well, delivering dark laughs in a gray world of dust and tragedy. Unfortunately, yet maybe necessarily, the humor lessens as the plot increases, racing you (against time) towards a tragic end. The narrator is seldom trustworthy, even denying his own point of view. Gaps, zeroes, and negative space repeat themselves throughout the work: 0 x 0 x 0 x 0 = 0. It’s a stark metaphorical reminder of the void created in NYC, what memory does with tragedy, and the seeming meaningless of it all.

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Television

Jericho's Peanuts

June 6, 2007 – 5:19 pm

According to this CNN article (and a few other sites around the web), 20 tons of peanuts have been sent to CBS in response to the cancellation of Jericho. It’s a smart, suspenseful, and relevant show that the missus and I both enjoy.

To make matters worse, they ended the season (and what could have been the show) with an all-out firefight between Jericho’s inhabitants and a neighboring, war-mongering city. The last thing you hear is rapid-fire gunshots, with no resolution at all. Like LOST, there are lingering plot lines that need answering at some point, so a premature cancellation was not CBS’ best choice.

The nuts, by the way, are in reference to a line from the last episode, when Jericho’s unassuming leader is asked to submit, to which he says, in the words of General Anthony McAuliffe to the Germans in WWII, “NUTS!”.

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Movies Television

Evan Almighty

June 5, 2007 – 10:22 pm

The wife and I just got home from a free pre-screening of Evan Almighty, the follow up to the Jim Carrey-starring Bruce Almighty. Our new favorite actor (and has been ever since The Office began running in the States), Steve Carell, stars as Evan Baxter, a secondary character from Bruce, but also one that stole scenes.

He’s now a Congressman. God visits him and tells him to build an ark. See the movie for the rest of the story. Or read your Bible.

As for our experience, I received an email directing me to a website to sign up for a free pre-screening. Free movie? Sure. That it’s a movie we actually wanted to see made it all the better. This review is my small way of paying for the ticket, since the only benefit I can think of for the studio providing a free screening is word of mouth publicity. There were multiple cities with free screenings. Our theater easily filled up.

We arrived 30 minutes early and saw the line…outside of the theater. We joined the line, met up with a coworker from my church, had our hands stamped, our bags checked for cameras, then found our seats. The air was sticky, damp, and hot. Although we were given word that the A/C would come on, it never did. Oh how we suffered.

But the movie made the trickling beads of sweat disappear into a fairly engaging story with ultimately thrilling visuals. If you know your Bible, and this particular crowd did, then you’ll be in on all the jokes. I wonder how more secularly oriented people will take the movie – if they’ll get the jokes.

The morals of the story were well presented and went beyond repeating biblical platitudes into actual, heartfelt words of biblical wisdom. The touching moments are small, but memorable.

The effects, especially the climactic scene (guess what kind of cataclysmic event occurs?), are breathtaking. I felt like I was on the boat…er…ark. It’s worth seeing this movie on many accounts, but make sure you see the last scene on a big screen.

My last thought was this: if an event happened in real life anything like the final event depicted in the movie, it would change a lot more than what the movie shows it changes. At least, I hope it would.

Final words: Go see it.

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