1)   Seven Samurai – It’s almost a cliché to list this film in your top 10, as it’s never far from the top in any honest list.  But it’s that good, in part because it’s so many things—a black comedy of manners, an epic adventure, a tragic love story, a complex fable of traditional morality and agnostic doubt, and swordfights, swordfights, swordfights.  One could easily fill a top ten list with Kurosawa films, but to pick only Seven Samurai is to choose a work that encapsulates all of what he does best.  If I was on a desert island, and could only bring one movie (and a DVD player), this would, in all likelihood, be it.

One of the great things about the Criterion Collection is the packaging, and Seven Samurai has the best of any film I’ve seen.  The black and white outer case is luminous, and possesses the almost transparent feeling of the finest Japanese Sumi-e painting, though it’s just ink on cardboard.  There’s a short book (book!) inside the case with essays about the film in addition to a 3 disc set.  Criterion really knows how to package.

2)   Stagecoach – What Seven Samurai did for the period-set epic, Stagecoach did for the Western action film. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kurosawa himself was thinking of John Ford as he directed his Samurai films.  In Stagecoach, a formula is both created and perfected: A handful of travelers of various ages, social stations, and philosophies are stranded in uncomfortably close physical proximity on an increasingly dangerous journey.  One man with a dark past and an uncertain future must keep them all alive, even as he falls in love with one of them.  This could, of course, describe any number of films, from Daylight to Speed to Die Hard.  But, of course, when the man of the hour is a young John Wayne, the film ascends from predictable cliché to indelible archetype.   This is also the first film I know of to employ the “send in the cavalry” trope, so ubiquitous in action movies, and it’s the literal cavalry in this one.

3)   Hard Boiled – I’m realizing that my top three criterion films are all basically action films; I’m not sure what that says about me.  John Woo’s Hard Boiled, however, is the father (or foreign uncle?) of contemporary action films, wherein a young Woo pretty much perfects the slow motion gun-fight.  The story, like Seven Samurai and Stagecoach, is so familiar it almost seems cliché—the cop (played by Chow-Yung-Fat and named, inexplicably, Tequila) who will stop at nothing to bring down the criminals terrorizing his city, the police chief who thinks he’s reckless, the other cop (a melancholy Tony Leung) who’s deep undercover, morally confused, and at the end of his rope, and a ruthless gang of Triad baddies who enjoy public bombings and shooting up hospitals.  All of this crescendos in one of the most epic sequences I’ve seen, topping the climax of Die Hard (is that possible?) for best action climax ever.  Let’s just say that one aspect of the scene is that Tequila has to shoot his way out of a hospital under siege while the hospital is on fire/exploding, while protecting an infant (don’t worry, Tequila puts cotton in his ears so he won’t hear the shotgun blasts).  Subtlety?  A long way away.  Action Perfection?  Bingo.  Sadly, this film is not currently available from Criterion, though I hope that will change eventually.  I bought the “Dragon Dynasty” version, which will have to do for now.

4)   Chasing Amy – At last, a non-action film.  Chasing Amy is arguably director Kevin Smith’s best film, and is most representative of what he does best: frank, scathing conversations about romantic relationships and sexuality.  His characters are, not a one, likable.  But you grow to love them.  Or maybe it’s the other way around.  This iteration of the “Kevin Smith movie” focuses on two recurring characters, Banky—a fast talking, crude-but-pitiable Jason Lee—and Holden—a nice if romantically naïve Ben Affleck—both  of whom write comics.  The story picks up when Holden meets a fellow comic book writer, Alyssa, played with spit and verve by Joey Laurel Adams, who seems like the perfect girl (she likes comics, she can joke around with the guys, etc).  But it turns out she’s a lesbian.  For the rest of the movie, we watch Holden struggle with his uneasiness (and often repulsion) at her past, even as he tries to establish a heterosexual relationship with her.   Because Smith is Smith, he doesn’t pull punches (the film is a hard R, and that’s all for language), and lets his characters struggle and fail with humbling and heartbreaking results.  While the rest of the actors are capable (even Ben Affleck!), it’s Joey Laurel Adams who really shines as a homosexual woman who has to “come out” to her lesbian friends and attempts to rearrange her life around a man.

5)   Henry V – I have a funny relationship with movie adaptations of Shakespeare.  On one hand, I never want to watch them as much as I want to watch most other films.  On the other hand, I usually want to watch them more frequently than anyone else I know.  Thus it’s probably beneficial to us both that I put this on my list.  While Kenneth Brannagh has ruled the Shakespearean screen for the last 30 years, he learned most of what he knows about making Shakespeare films from Laurence Olivier.   Criterion has released three of Olivier’s Shakespeare films, of which this is the first.  Of course, this is Shakespeare’s famous and beloved history about Henry V’s contest with France, but Olivier also makes it a meditation on the boundary between mediums of theatre and film.  The first few scenes are shot as if from the back of a theatre—the stage, the curtain, and the audience are all visible and even prominent.  But by the end of the film, the camera has moved forward, and the wooden stage has given way to the hills and battlefields of France.  Still the clothes retain the feeling of costumes, and even the large chambers of the French castle have a stage-like simplicity.   Branagh may have made a Braveheart era Henry V, replete with a soaring soundtrack and blood-spattered camera, but Olivier’s, while cleaner and dated-feeling, is about the uneasy medium of Shakespearean film itself.

6)   Rashomon –  If anyone, Kurosawa is the one who deserves two spots on this list.  Framed by a torrential rainstorm, Rashomon is the yang to Seven Samurai’s yin.  The former is as messy, fragmented, and disturbing as the latter is ordered, formal, and illuminating.  Rashomon is ostensibly a film about perspective; instead of, like Olivier, telling one story once while changing angles and frames as the story progresses, here Kurosawa tells one story five times with only the story-teller changing.  The story is a short one—a samurai and his wife are attacked by a robber in the forest; the robber kills the samurai and rapes his wife.  On my initial watching, after the first story is told, I knew that four more tellings would wear my heart and mind thin and brittle.  They did.  As the story is turned over and over, each character changes hue from hero to villain to victim to coward and back again.  And it soon becomes clear that the film is more truly about the worth of existence than knowledge or perspective.  Some of the tellings are a better argument for nihilism and pure despair than any I’ve ever found on film.  And yet a deep, joyful humanism, more simple and clear than on any other film on this list, rises like a reflection in a puddle, and cleanses like spring rain.

7)   Army of Shadows – France deserves its due on this list, and this film is a pinnacle of worthiness.  It’s the most unique, and possibly the best, film about WWII I’ve seen, told from the perspective of the Resistance in Nazi-occupied France.   It’s also by Jean-Pierre Melville, maker of such beautiful and brutal gangster films as Le Samourai and Le Circle Rouge.   Refreshingly, the hero of Army of Shadows is neither a James Bond nor a Schindler, but a pot-bellied civil engineer named Gerbier, who, along with a group of civilian rebels, go on truly thrilling adventures in their increasingly desperate resistance of Hitler’s soldiers.  The film is as sad and morally frustrating as Saving Private Ryan, yet the fact that it is not about soldiers, but regular citizens, intensifies the significance of the violence to an almost unbearable pitch, and raises the few, small victories to the level of bright, fragile miracles.

8)   Life Aquatic – Wes Anderson has made a name for himself directing films that fit together like large, colorful schematics.  He started with a film about friends (Bottle Rocket), then rivals (Rushmore), then a family (Royal Tenenbaums), and finally in Life Aquatic, about shipmates, some of which are family, some friends, some rivals and even enemies.  The ship and its crew are ostensibly on a revenge mission (Moby Dick lurks in the subtext, though this time its a shark), but it wouldn’t be a Wes Anderson film without some bittersweet family dysfunction.  Also, there’s some thrilling swashbuckling that creeps up out of nowhere, and many passages of lyrical beauty.  At the heart of the film is Bill Murray, playing what he plays best: a man older and more vice-ridden than he wants to be, but scruffy and lovable despite it, which works perfectly for the role of a postmodern Ahab, crippled less by hate and revenge than by boredom and fear of responsibility.  Also delightful is a turn by Cate Blanchette as a pregnant reporter along for the ride, whose mannerisms and expressions are some of the most natural and interesting I’ve seen in a comic character.

9)   Kind Heart and Coronets – This old gem is one of the funniest films I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a dark comedy to end all dark comedies about a young man, Louis, who is cheated out of his father’s inheritance by a judgmental extended family.  With wit, slink, and even swagger, Louis gleefully kills off everyone standing between he and his title in increasingly absurd ways (exploding photography and hot air balloon disasters are involved).  In a spirit of high farce, the indomitable Alec Guinness plays most of the members of Louis’ doomed family, including several women.   Class warfare, social injustice, and family loyalty loom large as themes through the veneer of amoral fun, and by the end of the film, one has been presented with one of the most incisive and bleak portraits of Edwardian British society found on film.

10)   The Last Emperor – One of the reasons I watch foreign films is to be transported.  “There is no frigate like a book”, Emily Dickinson wrote, and I think “film” can be easily substituted as the last word in her famous line.  In this film, Bernardo Bertolucci recreates the late Ching Dynasty, as its last emperor comes to power as a youth, and watches his empire crumble in the rising tensions of the 20^th century.  By turns a lavish period piece, a bleak concentration camp tale, and a portrait of a crumbling marriage, this film is nothing less than a story about the 20^th century.   What makes this film special is partly that Bertolucci is careful to be realistic about the period’s complexity: the young emperor longs to be modern in his dress and possessions, but resents the Chinese embracing of modern political ideas; though the communists run a brutal and deeply unjust concentration camp, one guard is kind and empathetic, even wise).  For the three, colorful hours of this film, I no longer lived in California—I was an inhabitant of the Forbidden City, a freedom fighter, a tortured monarch, as in all great movies, a tourist of time and space.

Part of my inspiration for writing about beer is my discovery of “The Opinionated Beer Page”(tobp.com), an extensive beer blog run by a few guys who love and know beer.  If you’re unsure about how much experience these guys have with beer, I’ll just say this – they list beer reviews by country, and there’s over 30 countries listed, excluding the US.  They boast around 1400 reviews total. While I don’t agree with all of their reviews, I’ve found the blog quite inspiring, and highly recommend it if you’re a lover of brew.  Thus, without further ado, I present my 5 favorite beers alphabetically:

1. Anchor Steam Beer: Even if I wasn’t listing beers alphabetically, I’d probably still list this as number one.  I love three things about this beer: One, though it’s strong from tip of the tongue to the back of the throat, it’s not thick or syrupy, and has plenty of carbonation.  Too often a beer that’s quite strong like Anchor Steam will also feel a little like molasses, consistancy wise, which I find gross.  Second, I love the bitterness of the aftertaste.  It’s not a bitterness like that of a pale ale or IPA, but a bitterness more reminiscent of an English Bitter Ale.  Further, the lack of floral hoppiness in the aftertaste allows the sweeter, malty taste at the front of the beer to linger…  Finally, I love that this is a California brew (SF to be exact).  The only complaint I have about this beer is that its strength relegates it to an after-dinner, or with-spicy-meat-dishes beer, so forget about drinking this with fettuccine alfredo unless you want to completely miss out on the buttery subtlety of your noodles.

2. Firestone Double Barrel Ale:  This was the first beer of which I ever drank a pint.  It was my 21st birthday, and my 3 best friends ordered a pitcher for me.  I had no taste for beer, but I loved it.  6 years later, I have a better taste for beer, and I still love it, which is a little odd.  It’s odd because I actually don’t care for pale ales, of which DBA is definitely one (English Pale Ale to be exact).  I think the reason I like DBA is that the strong hoppy flavor is so well balanced by the caramel malts that I don’t mind the hops so much.  This is a beer I’d drink with any dish, from alfredo to albacore to asada.  It’s also the ultimate camping beer, and the beer I’ll drink the day my doctor tells me to give up alcohol.

3. Firestone Porter:  I feel a little bad putting two Firestone beers on this list, given that the Firestone Brewery is in my home-town, and it makes me sound a little provincial.  Still, it’s simply the best-tasting beverage I’ve ever drunk.  It’s definitely a porter – dark, thick, sweet – a “potent potable” par excellence.  I wish I had a pint beside me so I can do justice in my description of the taste, but alas.  In my memory chocolate, creamy caramel, and espresso are foremost in the flavor.  To drink this quickly would be a crime.

4. Old Thumper Ale:  This beer was originally only available in England, but recently a state-side brewery started brewing it to original specifications and distributing it in the US, which I’m quite thrilled about.  This beer is all about the smell. Once poured into the glass, the scent is of freshly sliced granny smith apples, or even sour pears.  The ale’s taste is typically English – malty, a hint of creaminess, a stab of bitter at the back – , but what sets this apart from your run of the mill Boddington’s-type bitter is the fruit introduced in the nose and more intimately known on the tongue.  It’s almost as if the beer’s maternal grandmother was an amber cider.

5. Sam Adams Octoberfest:  To name this beer “octoberfest” is cheating, because it’s so clearly American in origin (the label has red, white, and blue as predominant colors).  But every year when September rolls around, I pay full price for a 12 pack the moment I see it back on the cooler shelves; I come home, sit down, pop one open, and taste Fall itself – golden caramel, a hint of spice, the zest of bubbles, and two cheeksful of malt.  Hops, you ask?  Miles away.  Those of stouter mouths and thicker throats may reach for an IPA come autumn, but this beer is king of my fridge till December, when it’s time for Sam Smith’s Winter Welcome.

So, there are my 5 favorite beers, all ales, all with dominant malt, only one with much hops to speak of.  I suppose that classifies me as a welter-weight beer drinker.  For those of you who prefer lighter lagers or stronger pale ales, I’ll list 4 more beers I enjoy:

1.  Session Lager:  This is an easy drinking lager with many touches of flavor: a little wheat here, a little hops there, just enough to make it a step beyond anything made by anheiser, miller, michelob, or coors.

2. Kronenberg Blanc:  I really shouldn’t even put this on here, because I’ve never seen it anywhere but a confusingly bro-ish sports bar in Edinburgh, Scotland.  I drank 2 pints while watching the NFL playoffs on a jumbo tron, surrounded by confused Scots.  It’s one of the most dessert-like lagers I’ve tasted – more like candy, or creme soda than beer. If you like wheaty, creamy, and sweet, you’ll love it.

3. Firestone California Pale #31:  Firestone again, and for good reason: this is a lighter Pale ale, but there are plenty of hops, and it’s so very drinkable, especially on a hot afternoon when you want strong flavor, but no heaviness in your pale ale.   If you ever go wine tasting on the Central Coast of CA, stop off at the Firestone Brewery on the 101 and try some of this beer, the DBA, and the reserve porter.  But stay away from the Union Jack Pale Ale.  It’s not so good.

4. Stone Ruination IPA: I don’t like or really watch football (except in Scotland, apparently), but even I can tell when a play is executed perfectly.  I feel the same way about this beer.  The sweet, floral kick at the front of the tongue twists and splits into a flavor razor-wire by the middle, and becomes something like a raging forest fire of hops by the time it’s in your throat.  My mouth was almost numb halfway through this beer from the sheer power of the hops.  I probably will never choose to drink this again, but I can see that if you like aggressive, unapologetic IPAs, this is the one for you.  Just don’t expect to be able to taste anything else for the rest of the night.

1. The burning of books seems to me beyond luddite; it’s barbaric, a practice historically associated with the censorship of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia.  If America’s enemies in the past have burned books, how much more should we avoid such behavior? But I promised not to make this political.

2. You should always have a very good reason to burn a book, a reason that outweighs the time, sweat, and talent that went into the writing and printing of that book.  I’m a writer, and when I so much as see a book that hasn’t been read for decades moldering on a shelf, I get sad.  When I see a book, any book, burned, I feel anger at the insult to the author and the printer, just as I would if I saw a painting scored or a sculpture broken.

3. Yes, brutal, viscous things have been done in the name of Islam.  But Islam’s Holy Book is a HOLY BOOK for crying out loud!  Whether or not it is the Word of God, it is a book that deserves at least the respect of a fair reading and an attempt to understand the doctrine and practice it teaches.  To burn it is not just to insult those who devote their lives to following the book, but also to reveal the burner as someone who obviously has forgotten what books, especially world-changing books like the Koran, are for.

4. The Koran – even if it is, as some say, the ravings of a mad-man or the lies of a deceptive man – is a beautiful work of literature.  I haven’t read all of it, which is my loss, I believe; still, the little I’ve read was poetic, earnest, and well crafted (not to mention painstakingly translated).  Even if it is a lie of Satan, it is also work of human genius, and like other devilish books (the works of Nietzsche and Hitler come to mind), I would defend its un-burnt existance against those who would destroy it.  I need Nietzsche’s books in my life, I think, to be a good Christian; but that’s a conversation for another time.

5. The Koran contains (and I write this as a Christian) much deep and profound truth.  Its language about God is phenomenally beautiful and humble. Some of its teachings about the unified essence of God are absolutely imperative to a correct conception of (not to mention relationship with) the God of the universe.  It is quite sad that the Koran, and Islam because of it, misses the Holy Trinity in its defense of Divine Unity, but that does not make many of its teaching about Divine Unity, nor its teachings about humility and submission to God’s commandments any less true nor applicable to our lives today.

6. Western Culture, both secular and sacred, owes a tremendous debt to the Koran-inspired Arab culture of scholarship and textual preservation.  Most of the Ancient Greek texts we take for granted (Plato, Aristotle, etc…) were preserved and translated by Muslim culture at a time when the West had lost them, either through negligence or dumb luck.  The bookshelves of the West, both mental and literal, would be smaller and poorer were it not for our Muslim friends.  It would be an insulting and idiotic way to repay their love of texts and scholarship by burning their most prized book.  It would be tantamount to saying we didn’t learn our lesson.

7. Finally, hasn’t anyone read Farenheit 451?  Bradbury was not kidding.  What is our culture coming to when we wantonly destroy books, a pillar of our culture?  I for one refuse to support anyone who plays Russian Roulette with the foundations of Western Society.

Stacy Germanotta, AKA lady Gaga, has, since the release of her debut album in 2008, been everywhere in popular culture. From the airwaves to the blogosphere to a Glee episode, she’s the face that launched a thousand fashion mag covers. And I’m tired of it. Here’s why I’m tired of it; I’m tired of her clothes.  Yes, gaga has worn some great outfits; Alexander McQueen’s (may he rest in peace) designs, especially of the lacy and metallic variety, work quite well on her. But, and I know I’m not the first person to say this,  the flash of fashion obscures the fact that Gaga’s music is so-so, and not much more. Yes, it’s catchy. So is Katy Perry’s.

So I’m offering an alternative musical icon to those sick of Gaga’s fashion antics – Janelle Monae. Her latest album, The Archandroid, is stunningly diverse, sliding from pop to hip-hop to folk to rap and back with ease, flair, and swagger. The fact that her voice sounds just as at home playing mo-town diva as it does running verbal circles around Lupe Fiasco’s guest rap spot on the “Tightrope” remix shows that Monae is both aware of and steeped in the dedication and practiced polish of her influences. When people talk about Lady Gaga, they don’t so much reference the artists like whom she sings (a poor man’s Christina Aguelera?) as the pop-stars her makeup resembles (a more masculine Bowie?). But to listen to Monae sing is to hear threads of Ella Fitzgerald, Lauryn Hill, and, yes, Gwen Stephani spun, braided, and – at just the right moments – frayed.

I further mention Monae as a more enjoyable and talented alternative to Gaga because Monae has an equal talent for careful, detailed grooming of her artistic image. Monae sports what I can only call an “afro-pompador”, and is a frequent model in Vogue. She sports, almost exclusively black-and white formal-wear of a masculine variety, of which she raps on Tightrope: “Black and white tux, ain’t no need for no other colors. / Talking about ‘why don’t she change her clothes’. / Well they ain’t seem to mind the last three times I posed in Vogue”. Elsewhere, Monae has explained that the tuxedo communicates that she’s working, that music is a job. Then again, those tuxedos are made by Thom Brown, and she cites Katherine Hepburn as a golden-age tux inspiration, so contextually the concept “job” seems squarely located in the world of art and entertainment, and not so much a blue-collar labor union.  Still, her philosophy of clothing impresses me more than Lady Gaga’s, which is, from what I piece together from quotations, something about how wearing weird clothes expresses the fact that she (and, presumably, America’s youth?) feel weird and freak-ish on the inside.  Yawn?

My point here is that Monae is a fantastic, maybe even game-changing pop-artist that can play the fashion game with the best of them, but clearly spends her most careful and passionate creative energy on making good music, music that will, I predict, sound fresh and perfected long after “Bad Romance” goes the way of “Genie in a Bottle”.

I promised to mention Avatar, which won a handful of technical awards at the Oscars, and was, in one way, game changing for the film-making industry.  Yes, it did prove that 3D can work as an organic quality of a film, not a cheap gimmick.  But when it comes to Avatar‘s other qualities, especially the much lauded and discussed “environmental theme”, I think television has it beat.  Lost – a show that that has been praised, panned, and everything in between – may not have ended very satisfactorily or clearly, but over its 6 years, it did more with the theme of the healing power of nature upon the human body and soul than Avatar, Pocahontas, Fern Gully, and Dances with Wolves combined (I do adore you, though, Kevin Kostner).  Further, it was just more straight-up melodramatic, geeky, sci-fi fun than Avatar was.  James Cameron reportedly wants to beat Star Wars and Star Trek at their own game.  But Lost is already several touchdowns ahead, James.

But all that is a bit silly.  Perhaps television is doing well with the comic-con-going-nerd-dom, but surely film still reigns when it comes to serious drama.  Let’s compare winners again: this year in film saw the Hurt Locker, Precious, and Crazy Heart top the list of the grittily realistic and dramatically angst ridden.  But with Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Pacific looming large at the Emmy’s, how could we deny these shows their place beside the three films when it comes to acting, directing, writing, cinematography, not to mention beauty, verve, and wit?

And speaking of wit, how could we forget comedy – can it be that television has seen better written, better acted, better conceived, and just flat out funnier comedy than film has seen for a decade or two, or three?  I did laugh, and pretty hard, at The Hangover.  I even chuckled a little at Land of the Lost.  But Glee, one of the less funny comedy series of the year, gave me, at least, more laughs and even more memorable characters than the Hangover.  And with shows like Modern Family (congrats, guys!), and Bored to Death on the air, I almost feel bad for film.  Judd Apatow, one of the bright hopes for film comedy in recent years, got his start (and did his best work?) in television with Freaks and Geeks, the momentum of which even still propels fine comedic actors like James Franco through middling comedy films like Pineapple Express (I’m sure the Spider Man money doesn’t hurt, either). Further, Apatow-ites and their imitators (think guys like Jason Seigel, Zack Galafianakis, and Danny McBride, not to mention Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin) are finding funnier, more stable, and more interesting roles in television, even as their faces adorn the nation’s movie theaters.

It’s true that films still do some things TV can’t, or at least hasn’t yet.  The mystery and puzzle of Inception would fizzle in a TV series – just look at some of the “unanswered questions” that Lost fans still grumble about, or the only tentatively interesting, question-filled “thriller” Rubicon, which I fear will not have the staying power of its sister AMC shows.  Also, film has Pixar.  That’s all that really needs to be said about that.  Still, when it comes to acting, directing, and especially the exploration of theme, character, and humor, television is here to stay as a medium as full of high art, mediocre trash, and everything in between as film has ever been.  There’s more to say, but I gotta go – Mad Men‘s on soon.

This is a Weatherby over-under shotgun. For some reason, I've been thinking that old-school shotguns are awesome. Someday I want to be that old man in a wife beater and sock-garters yelling at people to get off his lawn while wielding a shotgun.

This is a Triumph Bonneville Motorcycle. I will probably never be able to justify buying this machine, but there's something that happens to the American man's psyche when summer hits, and it involves vague, gigantic cocepts like "the open road" and "classic motorcycles".

This is a Barbour International Motorcycle Jacket. In my conception of the ideal American summer, the ideal American man is wearing this jacket, riding the above motorcycle, shooting (non-endangered) elk with the shotgun.

I’m not talking about the sin of gluttony.  Surely that is a sin, and much can and should be written about it; no, I wonder whether I’ve committed the sin of “eating non-ethically”.  I’m still trying to figure out what exactly this sin is, because everyone seems to be talking about it, not least of all Alan Richman,  who wrote an article in this month’s GQ called “Eat No Evil”, which I’ve been reading while moaning about my stomach. The article is worth reading, and not only because he writes things like “Buying 11 grain bread instead of 7 grain bread does not make you a better person”.  But even this quotation betrays that fact that the North American middle class already has an entrenched moral compass concerning food.  Jack Falstaff’s famous self-deprecation “to be fat is to be hated” may not be linguistically PC, but it does seem true that the less offensive “to be obese is to be morally suspect” is an unacknowledged legislation of contemporary culture.   And while we’re on the subject of linguistics, how many times have we seen chocolate desserts described as “decadent”, “tempting”, or just downright “sinful”?  Yoplait’s current commercials all feature yogurt eaters as (usually female) temptation-overcoming saints admired and respected by (usually male) piggish slobs who lack the moral fortitude to resist an ice cream sundae.  I know that these examples are from the world of advertising, and that advertising intentionally appeals to the lowest common denominator, but mightn’t that be the point?  Our dubious moral assumptions are obvious to even yogurt purveyors.

I must admit that I’m pretty ignorant about what’s currently accepted by those in the know as “ethical eating”.  I often eat vegan for religious reasons, and I’m familiar with the words local, sustainable, organic, and fair-trade, but even these fads may be out of date by the time of this post.  I’m also familiar with the old notions of fasting and feasting, but those notions have little to do with the history of the consumed products, which seems to be the main concern of the current food morality.  While I’ve been trying to fast and feast according to the church calendar for a few years, its only been lately that I’ve realized I’m quite ignorant of the history of the food I eat.  I don’t know where the beef I ate came from.  I don’t know where the coffee was grown, or by whom.  As I spoon this frozen yogurt into my mouth, I realize that I’m only now wondering where the milk came from (I did mention that I’ve also been eating cheesecake-flavored frozen yogurt didn’t I?).

Sometimes I remember that have a degree in philosophy, which usually leads to me waxing metaphysical about simple topics.  I’ll try to keep it to a minimum.  It seems that one of the most pertinent ethical question when it comes to food is this: to what extent am I morally responsible for knowing the background of the food that I eat?  If, for example, the ground beef in my “Baconator” came from a cow that was treated cruelly by its butchers, then am I implicated in that cruelty by buying and eating it?  And how morally responsible is the foodseller for informing me about the background of my food? Is my morning coffee provider unethical for boasting that they wouldn’t “bore” me with the origin and history of the coffee beans?

Of course none of these questions are new, but I do think that the detail at which we worry about them in contemporary culture does shed light on how vague and unexamined other areas of our life are.  How ethical is my treatment of my co-workers, my attitude toward my wife, my thought life?  It has been true that in some periods of our history we have cared much more about the morality of our relationships and mental life than we did the ethics of consumed products, and it strikes me that the extreme focus on the ethics of what we consume is not particularly an indication that we live more examined lives than our carnivorous, non-organic predecessors.  We just examine other areas of our lives than they did.  Still to be found is the man who examines all things, who lives a life of holistic responsibly, who has been taught, as T.S. Eliot said, the appropriate times “to care, and not to care.”

Maybe I don’t understand the Emergent Church enough.  This could be my own lack of research, but I wonder if it’s also a fault on the part of McLaren, Jones, and others to sufficiently explain what in the world they’re trying to do with the church.  I’ve heard vague language about “getting back to new testament Christianity”, but I’m not sure what this means.  If they mean “the church structure and doctrinal emphasis of Ignatius of Antioch”, then the current Evangelical descryers are right about the Catholic/Emergent identification.  But I’m pretty sure that this is not what our friendly neighborhood Emerges mean.

So, what’s a Christian to think?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/fashion/shows/02fash.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

The article tackles the strange place of fashion in the public consciousness, and the special hostility toward fashion conscious in the halls of academica and the world of politics. Guy Trebay takes a different stance than those who would denigrate fashion to a superfluity as he quotes Muiccia Prada and elborates:

‘”Even when people don’t have anything,” Ms. Prada said, “they have their bodies and their clothes.” They have their identities, that is, assembled during the profound daily ritual of clothing oneself’

Now, surely, as Christians we could remind Mr. Trebay that our identity is found in Christ, not in what we wear. Yet I find it interesting that Paul uses clothing metaphors when speaking of our relationship with Christ. We are “robed in Christ’s righteouness”. Forgetting what this implies concerning imputed-righteousness, notice that Paul here and elsewhere resorts to physical metaphor to speak of metaphysical realities. Of course, it is possible that Paul is being quite literal when he says we are “in Christ”. Either way, the body and its attributes seem quite vital in the understanding of any sort of relational or communicative interactions.

We do communicate with what clothes us. Condemn them for it if you will, but most people (all people?) form their first beliefs about us based on their physical sight of us. And condemn yourself, but you often dress with this in mind. Yet perhaps when most dress, they do it in much the same way that a six year old paints. They have a general intuition of what they want to paint (are all children representationalists?) and they paint it in shaky-handed smears. We do this with our dress. We do not know the nuances of dress, nor do we have the patience to practice those skills of manner and subtlety that are required for the art of dressing well.

I have not yet said that these things are good. I have only said that we do not have them. Should we? Mr. Trebay assumes that his readership cares about high art. He attempts to convince them that fashion can be legitimate high art. Christians are not yet convinced that art is worth caring about. I do not have the time and talent to convince my audience of such a thing.  A look into the essays of Dorothy Sayers or Flannery O’Connor will soon show a discerning reader that artistry and creativity are not only worthwhile for a Christian, but perhaps the most essential Christian activities of all. Sayers says that we are most like God when we create. O’Connor warns us that art must first be high quality art before it can be called Christian art.  Jehova is not the God of shoddy jobs.

If one comes even to the point of believing these two empresses of 20th century letters, one may still be unconvinced that actaully knowing about high fashion is important. Is it not a better thing to wear clothing that proclaims Christ? How about a “Got Jesus?” shirt? Is that not the most direct way of using our clothing to serve God in a creative, culture savvy way?

Beyond the obvious answer to this question, I think that those who see t-shirt-slogans as the most creative and Christian sort of apparel for the gentleman or lady are falling into a two-fold folly. First of all, it is very interesting to me that Christians, especially protestants, are very quick to turn everything into a book.  For some reason protestants have got it into their head that Christ can only, or at least should primarily, be proclaimed verbally. When someone says that we should proclaim Christ with what we wear, we assume it to mean that we need to have the word “Christ” on our clothes. Does this seem a little elementary? Perhaps. Christ, I believe, is proclaimed more through a well fitting suit than He is through His Name on a shirt.

Why? Well, this leads me to the second pitfall of the Jesus-shirt people. For some reason we have fogotten about tradition. Forget for a second the high-churches or liturgy. Think about the history of painting. It would be unfortunate for a painter to go through his whole life without knowing about Rembrandt, about Caravaggio, about Monet, even Hokusai or Picasso. This painter would have paint, but not know how to use it to the best of its ability. We are like this with clothes. If you do not know how to wear a suit, gentlemen, you are choosing through ignorance or will to ignore a resource and skill that men have been using for centuries to creatively express and interact. We all have a failing grade in fashion history, and it deeply retards our ability to glorify Christ though how we dress.

When a suit fits perfectly, when a hat is tipped in gentility, when a sweeping skirt twirls on a dancefloor, when a high-heel’s arching bow creates a seeming vault of sky for a woman to walk atop, it is then that God is glorified in our dress, then that, for a moment, we can see, even from an initial glance, the image of God accentuated and made manifest in our own feeble attempts at entering into that most holy of activities–creation.

Fibbonnaci and the Golden Sonnet

You are
fire and

earth

and space is
interval
between things–

the strings
of earth.

I have tried to put
words to things to see
table, star, and face
reveal their faces
in the space of speech,

yet think on
how they hum
without words.

This sonnet is the lyric to
the pre-found pulsing in all things,
that pre-plucked chorus of six strings
of Christ, face, table, stars, me, you.
What strains of music, old or new,
Adventure seeks, what space she brings
in dreams or backpacks, what she sings
to match earth’s music she once knew

at morning–dew-start;
she dawned and tarried
in a humming heart;
her fire harried
earth. It fell apart.