TV Sitcom in a Coma

Posted on March 5, 2013 by awtraughber

Girlfriend in a ComaIt’s not every day that one of your favorite books becomes a television sitcom.  This, of course, is probably a good thing.

When word got out that NBC was developing Nick Hornby’s About a Boy into a television show, I was pleasantly surprised.  The novel was solid, and the movie held its own as a romantic comedy back when rom-coms were plentiful and pleasant.  The show makes sense, really, and I’m looking forward to it.  It’s NBC’s development of a show based on Douglas Coupland’s Girlfriend in a Coma that I’m worried about.

The part of Coupland’s apocalyptic novel that is TV-friendly is obvious: a young girl (Karen) gets pregnant and ends up in a coma.  She wakes up seventeen years later to find that she has an almost-grown daughter (Evie).  I’m guessing that they plan on leaving out all of the apocalyptic, which is a shame.  You leave out the drug-addicted friends, the angelic friend-figure, the quest for “the noble and the holy.”

I hope that I’m surprised.  Christina Ricci is a good choice to play Karen.  I haven’t heard of Miranda Cosgrove, who has been cast as Evie.  I guess we’ll see if Rick gets to be around at all.  I’m guessing there will be no scenes on the dam at the twilight of the world.

You always hope that the things you love will cross mediums, become a bigger part of the broader culture.  I didn’t see this one coming.  Regardless of how the show turns out, I can’ recommend the source material highly enough.  It’s brilliant.  You can check out more on Douglas Coupland at coupland.com.

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Spring Break Reading Two Weeks Early

Posted on March 4, 2013 by awtraughber

Imagining the KingdomMy order from Amazon got here a little earlier than I expected.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been plotting and planning my spring break reading.  As it stands right now, I’ve got three books and one movie to make the most of.

Usually there’s a new Eugene Peterson or N. T. Wright book to read through during my breaks.  This time around, my “developmental” book is James K. A. Smith’s Imagining the Kingdom, which is the second in his Cultural Liturgies series.  The first book, Desiring the Kingdom, helped me fill in some of the gaps that my “worldview education” inadvertently missed.  Smith admits that he has written this series in a way that tries to meet the needs of both church and academic institution, which can make it a frustrating hybrid for some.  In many ways, his work strikes me as being in the same vein as Steven Garber: serious philosophy mixed with cultural touchpoints (in the introduction alone we’ve got Wendell Berry and David Foster Wallace).

Simon Garfield’s On the Map was the first book I purchased for break.  It kind of fits my “anthropological” book fix.  The book is “a mind-expanding exploration of the way the world looks.”  I’ve got maps on my mind because some of my students are working on their own (in the same vein as those based on Pilgrim’s Progress).  I’m always in need of understanding how to represent things graphically.  Maps seemed like a good place to start.

My fiction for the break is a brand new novel with a good bit of buzz: Ned Beauman’s The Teleportation Accident.  Besides the buzz, all I know about the novel is that it is supposed to be a wonderful blend of multiple genres.  I’ll see how that goes.

And the movie?  Thanks to 50/50 and Warm Bodies, I’ve become a fan of Jonathan Levine.  So I tracked down a copy of his first movie: The Wackness.  It’s been called “hilarious and heartfelt.”  The heartfelt part is pretty evident in Levine’s other movies, so I’m hope that stands true for this one as well.

I’m sure other things will pop up in the two weeks leading up to break, and I’ll take those as they come.  But these three books and one movie are my goals.  I’ve already started in on one, and I’m loving it.  I may not be going anywhere for break this time around, but I’m ready for good things anyway.

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Ten Years of Reading and Believing

Posted on February 27, 2013 by awtraughber

The Believer StackMarch 2013 marks the tenth anniversary of The Believer.  Originally named The Optimist, The Believer was founded by McSweeney’s with the intent to be a positive presence in the literary world.  No snark here, in other words.  I came across the journal a short while after I moved to Hawaii and joined a contemporary fiction reading group.

The biggest draw of the journal for me was Nick Hornby’s mostly-consistent “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column.  Each month, the writer of books like A Long Way Down and Juliet, Naked wrote through the best of what he had been reading that month (and inspired me to finally read Great Expectations).  Authors I met through other means would drop by the journal often, too.  It’s because of The Believer that I read things like The Book of Disquiet and Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.  So I’m glad to hear that the journal has made it to the ten-year mark.

If you have some free time today, here are three articles from The Believer‘s ten-year catalog that I’ve enjoyed and been challenged by:

I may not always agree with The Believer, but I have always appreciated its optimism and sense of engagement with a culture we all-too-often don’t hear because of the clammer of today’s pop culture.  I think it’s well worth our time to listen to its voice a little more.

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Commitment versus Being Locked-In, a Thin and Blurry Line

Posted on February 26, 2013 by awtraughber

Locked-In from Flickr.comA friend once told me of a church that starts each year by recommitting to their beliefs, their church, and one another.  It’s a brilliant way of staying or or opting out that many long-standing systems could adopt and adapt.

A thin, blurry line stands between commitment and being locked-in.  We commit to things for many reasons, though I think the two greatest reasons are people and mission.  We find people who share similar core convictions or who bring us challenge and joy.  We find a cause that we believe and can invest in.  But what do you do when the people change?  What if the sense of mission, of direction, changes?  That’s when you look around, see different people and priorities, and find yourself locked-in.

What happens next is tricky.  Do you stay in hopes of waiting things out?  How do you summon the energy to do repetitive emotional labor?  Or do you bail, call it quits because the people and purposes around you have changed?  Is it possible to find and use a key that reverses the effects of being locked-in, or is that just a kind of whistling in the dark cell?

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Creativity and Content

Posted on February 25, 2013 by awtraughber

Writing Pen from Flickr.comI recently met a friend for breakfast soon after he started advising a college newspaper.  As glad as I was to hear his news, I was especially excited about a phrase he used at least twice: it was important for his students to start “creating content.”

Content is a regular part of the academic experience.  Teachers pass on content through lectures and assigned readings.  And while I didn’t understand it as such until a few years ago, student writing (papers or poems) are also content of a kind.  It might not all get published, but it is putting thought and information together for the purpose of sharing with others.  Anyone who has survived high school knows that content can be a killer, especially if you want it to be meaningful.

Donald Miller recently posted something about creativity and content.  Like many of us, Miller seemed to take the phrase “write what you know” as an imperative to write on what is inside us without necessarily seeking out more things to “bring in.”  It was Jon Foreman (musician and writer) who helped him understand otherwise.  Miller concludes:  Rather than the words being in me, the words were out there. The inspiration was out in the world, and all I had to do was go digging for it. All I had to do was brush away the dirt and sand and keep an eye out for anything that could be polished.  I encourage you to check out more of his thoughts here.

Robin Sloan, of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore fame, recently posted a few words from the teacher that helped him be a more effective writer, too.  The 2002 article by Chip Scanlan gives the best part away in the title: writing is all about rewriting.  I remember hearing years ago that “the art of art is revision.”  Same thing said slightly differently.  You can read the whole article here.

Writing well is rarely an easy thing.  The important thing is to persist and to say something.  I’d like to think that over time you learn to say things well.  But to persist at saying something, often something from beyond yourself, is a great place to start.  The world would be a better place if we all took some time to create some real content.

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“We Dreamed a Dream. . .”

Posted on February 22, 2013 by awtraughber

This week has been unexpectedly busy and unexpectedly good.  On top of a packed work week, I’ve had the opportunity to catch up with dear friends, to bring people from times past into times present.  So even though a lot of what I intended to post has been put on hold, I thought I’d pass along this gem.  Michael Giacchino said that the following was a video that showed true commitment.  I have to agree.  This guy sells it well, makes me wonder if the scene might be in the director’s cut of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. . .

Back to other stuff tomorrow.

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Professional Sports: A Strange Source for Alienation

Posted on February 18, 2013 by awtraughber

Bill Simmons, the head honcho over at Grantland, recently posted an intense article about the issue of performance-enhancing drugs and professional sports.  The same can be said for the reader response that Simmons posted a few days ago here.

What was most interesting for me was Simmons’ admission of a split in his perspective because of things that happened at the end of January: Something of a disconnect had emerged between my private conversations and the things I wrote for Grantland/ESPN. In essence, I had turned into two people. . . Sports Fan Me is candid, jaded, suspicious of everyone. Sports Fan Me repeatedly gets involved in arguments and e-mail chains centered on the question, “Do you think he’s cheating?” while ESPN Me sticks his head in the sand and doesn’t say anything. ESPN Me occasionally pushes narratives that he doesn’t totally believe in.

Anyone who mixes passion with employment runs the risk of an oddly-divided self.  I wasn’t expecting to find such a real-life example of casual-but-not alienation on a sports-and-culture site. I thought alienation was something I’d only read about in Nouwen and Walker Percy and the random psych book published in the 90s.  But it’s real, seeps into the least-expected places, does a weird kind of internal damage that many aren’t even aware of.  It’s definitely something worth talking about.  Until then, let’s hope alienation doesn’t lead to this:

Existential Calvin

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The Truth of Pam Halpert’s Decision

Posted on February 17, 2013 by awtraughber

Pam Halpert from E OnlineSay what you will about the slow death of NBC’s The Office: chances are, it’s probably true.  While the show has never recovered from the loss of Michael Scott, it still has moments (or at least touches) of greatness (and by greatness I mean an elevation of our very human condition in the midst of ennui and dysfunction).

Case in point: Pam Beasley Halpert’s decision in this past week’s episode, “Moving On,” had the receptionist-turned-sales-associate interviewing for a new job in Philadephia, where her husband had recently joined a start-up company.  At she walked into the real estate office where the interview was to take place, she met the office boss.  As she watches his mannerisms and and hears his spiel, she realizes that she has seen this all before: in her days of working for Michael Scott (whose name gets a rare mention this episode).  My first reaction: this would be so easy for Pam!  She’s already had to learn to deal with this!  And then my second reaction: don’t do this, Pam!  You’ve outgrown this!  And that was the decision that she had to make by episode’s end.

It was with great relief (for a television show) that Pam turned the job down.  It was a moment that showed how much she had grown.  I know that there are those that would say she should’ve taken the sure-bet job for the sake of her family, and I understand that.  But there is this sense that some things are about moving forward, even if it makes life a little more difficult.  Not to go all “Donald Miller” with the episode, but I think it became clear (to Pam and to the audience) that “Pam knew she was part of a story bigger than that.”  It’s a struggle many of us face, often on a regular basis: settling verses striving.  But Pam handled it well, this decision about her life’s story.  I’m curious to see where the show’s writers take her over the next few and final months.

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Ash Wednesday Illustration

Posted on February 14, 2013 by awtraughber

The following uncredited story was shared in the Ash Wednesday service I attended last night:

There was a couple who already had one little boy and had another on the way.  The boy would often ask where little brothers came from.  “Your little brother is a gift from God.”  The answer seemed to do well by the boy.

Weeks and months and trimesters passed until the second son was born.  A few days later, the second son was brought home by his parents and the oldest son slowly got used to having another brother around.  Time passed, and eventually the older son asked for permission to talk to his little brother . . . alone.  The request seemed strange to the boys parents, but he didn’t drop the request.  The parents called their family doctor and asked if it would be okay for the brother to speak to his brother alone, with no one else in the room.  While he, too, thought the request strange, he didn’t see any real problem with it.  “Just turn the baby monitor on and sneak it in the crib as a safety precaution.”  They did, and so the older brother finally got a chance to speak to his brother.

He went in alone, walked gingerly up to his little brother in the crib.  He said hello.  And then he asked his little brother this: “Little brother, mom and dad said that you were a gift from God.  So I was wondering- could you tell me what God was like?  How did it feel to be with him? Because it’s been a long time since I saw him and I just can’t remember.”

“Lent is about remembering,” the speaker  said.  And while there were many things said and done in the service, it’s the story that I’ll remember.  I’m not sure about you, but as I read through the Gospel of Luke this Lenten season, I look forward to remembering the stories of Jesus and working to shape my life around them, rooting my life in them.

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The Dangers of Accumulation

Posted on February 12, 2013 by awtraughber

Accumulation from CBS NYOne of the coolest words of childhood during the winter months is accumulation.  It’s not enough for there to be flurrie of snow: there must be enough snow to get a principal or central office to cancel school for the day.  The more snow, the better the sledding and snowmen and snowball fights.

Unfortunately, accumulation isn’t such a good thing in adulthood.  In fact, it can be quite dangerous professionally.  Starting one meeting late isn’t that big of a deal.  The same can be said for not finishing a class on time or missing a deadline of the minor kind.  But multiple late meetings?  Multiple missed deadlines?  Those things add up, flake adds onto flake, until you have a completely different landscape.  It’s a landscape that you can get trapped in and that others have a difficult time maneuvering through.

Be careful of accumulation.  The joy of winter is one thing.  The day-in and day-out of work and ministry is a different thing entirely. It’s the accumulation that can turn questioning people off or away.  That’s the kind of accumulation we cannot afford.

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