The Priesthood

Catholicism's a tricky subject for me. I've designated myself an ex-Catholic for two years now, and I still get uncomfortable when my mom refers to me as an atheist, mostly because of the disdain she has for the word. Mind you, I've actually been to church more than her in the past two years, but I think my faltering faith kind of hurt her because I was, to certain family members, destined to become a priest.

And it almost happened. From age six to sixteen, that was the goal. Church, the bible, the ritual mass--it mesmerized me. The two priests I grew up listening to every Sunday, Fr. Child and Fr. Don, were the two nicest men I'd ever met. They helped people. They were unafraid. I alter served for ten years, could recite Mass forward and backward, and chose to learn Latin when I was enrolled in Catholic grad school. On a good day, I can still recite a few prayers.

I think Catholic school is what killed my desire to be a priest. For years, I blindly wanted to do it, not really knowing what it'd entail. The Jesuit education I'd received encouraged hard questions. I began asking them. Were it not for my earning a scholarship (to a Catholic college), I probably would have gone to a seminary and learned the hard way. Instead, I went away to school, started going to Mass on my own, and felt a loss of connection. It just wasn't there anymore. I went without telling anybody for a year. My mom found out when she came to visit, we went to Mass, and I didn't take communion. Once, she told me that I'd come back, and I've heard her use the word "phase" to describe it, but we've never really had a discussion. If she asks what I believe in, I'll quote Whitman and tell her that if I follow that quote, I'll be doing pretty good for myself:

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants...have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

This nickname is still relevant!

My sister took this picture during a protest in San Francisco today. I'm just glad to see that some people are still using this somewhat outdated, soon-to-be-irrelevant nickname for the Greatest Actor Alive.

And this is just awesome...

I wouldn't quite compare it to Republicans trying to co-opt Born in the USA...

But Mastercard's new "Break in Your Jeans" commercials are somewhat brazen in their ability to, well, miss the freaking point.



In the span of 30 seconds, you see Marlon Brando, John Wayne, the Ramones, Maralyn Monroe, and, if I'm not mistaken, some clip from Woodstock, along with some rebelous text about how any article of clothing that aren't jeans are for big, rich douchebags, narrated by the familiar Mastercard narrator, who may as well be the voice of my generation (sorry, Kanye).

I understand that business is business, and that making yourselves look cool is often a way of ensuring business with my crowd, but at least three of the five clips used in this commercial, to speak nothing of David Bowie and his iconic 70's material, spoke against conformity. Mastercard: You are a credit card company. I hate to point that out, but it's the truth, plain and simple. You are the man you're so keen on rebelling against. Instead, you should have gone with this:


Jimmy Clanton - Venus in Blue Jeans


The Blue Collar Comedy Guys


Nickleback


This douche.

With that being said, I will now present myself as an awful hypocrite:



This Levi's ad, directed by Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre), is stunning, combining hipsters with two enduring figures of Americana: Jeans, and Walt Whitman. For one minute and two seconds, I was not annoyed that movie theaters have taken to playing unescapable, often terrible ads before their movies--I was overtaken by this most excelent reading of Walt Whitman's "Pioneers! O Pioneers!," a poem that is somewhat overlooked because we take Whitman for granted, especially if the poem isn't "Song of Myself" or about Lincoln.

The reading is from a 1957 album of recordings from Whitman's seminal Leaves of Grass, by a group called The University Players. It would be long out of print were it not for Smithsonian Folkways, a non-profit record label opporated by the Smithsonian Institute. It is, for my money, one of the unhearalded aspects of our government; that somewhere, someone is preserving our history of recorded sound. They do this with movies too, via the National Film Registry. Films as diverse as All About Eve and The Terminator will be around as long as there is a United States, ready to be chopped up and regurgitated into Levi's ads at a moment's notice. If they're as good as this one, and don't shill as hard as the Mastercard one, I'll allow it. Hell, I might even like it enough to not mind that it's standing between me and my movie.

Pioneers! O Pioneers!
by Walt Whitman

Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental
blood intervein'd,
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O resistless restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress,
(bend your heads all,)
Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

See my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

On and on the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill'd.
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the pulses of the world,
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Life's involv'd and varied pageants,
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Lo, the darting bowling orb!
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you daughters of the West!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work,)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Not for delectations sweet,
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious,
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding
on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call--hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army!--swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

No wonder Asia stands to dominate us...

Their kids hit puberty and start talking like clean versions of Notorious B.I.G. albums from the tender age of eight. We're lucky if kids ever escape that phase.

Hey guys, did you hear? Barack Obama's a natural-born American!

Barack Obama has a serious problem...

Common sense dictates that Barack Obama wouldn't hate white people, being half-white himself, but Glenn Beck hasn't proven that he has a lick of common sense; it's just the title of his new book.

How sad is it when the pushovers on Fox 'n Friends treat your theory like you just said the Hamburglar shot JFK?