This 2008 file photo taken at Historic Jamestowne, Virginia, captures a very rare moment of the author in a pulpit.
Confession time: when I launched MCC eleven months ago, I didn’t expect that aspect of my life to receive such short shrift here compared to the other parts of my life. Truth is, writing about my faith is challenging because the majority of examples set before me from other writers, family, and friends (in writing or in simple conversation) are either memorized Bible verses, Christian song lyrics, or common quotes that sound so much like real verses that everyone assumes they are and keeps passing them around. For the purpose of self-expression, I have a hard time settling for that.
Years before my life took a conscious turn toward a new spiritual direction, I was once an English major who had one critical writing lesson drummed repeatedly into my head : “Put it in your own words.” While the Bible contains a wealth of advice more useful to me than Bartlett’s Quotations or Twitter, I’m not sure what I’m accomplishing — either for the Kingdom or for myself — if all my writing and speaking consists of recycling the exact phrases and paragraphs of everyone who came before me. Becoming a living, walking re-blogger holds no appeal to me. I’m hardly the most original guy in the world, but I’d at least like to try to form my own sentences into useful structures. Problem is, all the best wisdom and aphorisms are taken, leaving me to cobble together what I can from my own odd experiences and pale talents in hopes that it doesn’t reek of copy/paste plagiarism. More often than not, my frustrated approach is if I can’t say something different, I don’t say anything at all.
I don’t recommend that mindset to anyone else. I’ll concede that’s me being stubborn. Arguably, I’ve set the bar too high for myself. We’ll see how my thoughts on the subject progress as I age and hopefully keep growing. Until then, here I am, doing the best I can with what I have. That usually means I end up focusing on my other specializations here, those that predate my faith, originated in my childhood, and are sometimes at odds with it. Thus is the conflict that fuels some of the fight scenes in the Midlife Crisis Crossover.
I had been looking forward to last week’s new episode of Community, “Conventions of Space and Time”, which invited us into the inner workings of an official Inspector Spacetime convention, a place where Troy and Abed could meet other fans of the obscure British TV series, indulge in a few hobby-related purchases, and generally be themselves. As someone who’s been to C2E2 twice, Wizard World Chicago four times, three GenCons so far, two Star Wars Celebrations, and several local Trek conventions, I was curious to see how the generally geek-approved series would approach such a setting. I tried to keep my expectations modest — without creator Dan Harmon around anymore, this season’s first two episodes were a little shaky. I’ve stuck with the show and keep hoping for the best.
If my entire comic book collection were in mint condition, one of the more valuable modern-age collectibles would be Amazing Spider-Man #300. Not only was it part of the run that cemented Todd McFarlane as a bankable superstar, it also introduced Venom, who in my teenage eyes became one of Spidey’s scariest adversaries, up until Marvel later saturated the market with tons of Venom miniseries and crossovers. Though he wore out his welcome, I still hold a few fond memories of that era in the field.
Longtime MCC readers are surely aware of my addiction to writing lists. I confess before you now that my lifelong listaholism extends beyond what you’ve seen here in the past. In our household I appointed myself Chief Grocery List Officer. I keep track of all the comic books I own on Excel sheets. From 2000 to the present I’ve kept Notepad files of every single movie I’ve seen in theaters. Many a Post-It has died in service to my never-ending attempts to remember what chores and repairs need to be done around the house. All the odd sights we see on vacation each year have been made possible by lists, though those are always collaborative efforts with my wife the list-enabler.
The advance screening of Broken City I attended last night was made possible through a marketing promotion run by a social-event notification service, from which I’d considered unsubscribing months prior. Lucky for me, their very first useful offer crossed my path at just the right time.
In recent months I’ve received notification not once, but twice by fellow bloggers who were kind enough to think of me and notice my low follower count when brainstorming their nominations for the Liebster Award. For readers new to the blogosphere: most blogging awards aren’t decades-old ceremonial traditions determined by committees or democracy. Most of them are congenial badges passed from blogger to blogger as a way of promoting each other’s talents, encouraging networking, and spreading good cheer whenever our malicious Site Stats page is lying to us about our traffic stats. In my mind, I think of them as Mega-Likes.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 