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With all the talk about Blue Like Jazz the movie, I’ve failed to mention a children’s show I’m producing here in Portland. We’ve recorded nine episodes so far and it’s going well.  The show is called Biggles the Bigger Bee. I’m Biggles and each week I put kids from the ages 5 to 7 through various competitions in which they are rewarded based on their ability to find certain products in grocery stores and malls. The coolest thing about the show is it is completely commercial free because in each episode the children are trying to find products that have been pre-determined by our in-house ad agency. But it’s more than just a commercial, of course. I’m trying to somehow marry consumerism with love. The last episode we recorded, for example, was called “Make Mommy Happy” and it focussed on make-up, romance novels and simple carbohydrates. The kids ran around the mall (think “the amazing race” style) and bought products, using a Capitol One Visa, to a central place in the mall where they prepared gift baskets for their mothers complete with Mary Kay eye-liner, the latest novel from Stephanie Meyer and Toblerone chocolates. The team that won got stung by [...]

Originally, the plan was to attend inauguration with Jeremy Cowart and have a bit of a photo contest. Jeremy and I actually used the same camera, and even the same lens, and on our first day, shooting the exact same shot of the capitol dome, his LCD screen revealed a whole different planet. After that I hardly took my camera anywhere. So, a slight adjustment to the contest. I’ll just print the winning photos, which are his, and offer some literary snapshots. A couple days before Inauguration I was to speak in chapel at Georgetown. We showed early and walked along M street to grab lunch. While there were crowds along M, it wasn’t too bad. Many had headed down to the mall where U2, Bruce Sprinsteen and others were putting on a free concert. We stepped into a gallery where a dozen or so artists were displaying their campaign-inspired work. Jeremy ran into his friend Herb Williams whose work is created entirely of crayons, not drawn with crayons, but actually created by laying crayons side by side next to each other or pointed out toward the viewer. Shepherd Fairey was also present, mostly doing interviews for the press. Shepherd [...]

As talking heads create tension in order to sell advertising in a twenty-four hour news cycle, we are beginning to hear the old phrase “culture war” once again. It had been a while since I’d heard the phrase, to be honest. But I grew up hearing about this supposed war and it brought to mind a paradigm that has become slightly foreign to me. It reminded me of a time I believed there was a large group of liberals attempting to do in my Christian way of life. As I got older, and met many of the supposed enemy, I found, essentially, the same personalities I’d experienced in my church upbringing, that is I found objective, rational people who were kind-hearted and other centered, even if they disagreed with the religious right. They were frustrated, sure, but most people maintained a balanced view. Were there fundamentalist liberals that could be categorized as extreme? Certainly. But there weren’t that many. But it was that kind of rare personality singled out by the media (including the Christian media) to paint a false picture of our culture and further increase the tension.  This dynamic applies to more than just political or cultural tension. Watching [...]