Liminal Spaces And Why Gen Z (and myself) Are Obsessed With Them

Even before the huge popularity of the movie "Backrooms" - an idea that originally appeared on the internet as just a picture of an empty furniture store in Oshkosh, WI - there was an immense interest in the idea of "liminal spaces."

What is a liminal space?

There are two categories of liminal spaces from what I've noticed.

One is an actual physical space. It's a bridge that goes from one barren place to another barren place. It's an empty parking lot or hallway. It's essentially a space between two paces where it's neither one nor the other. An empty mall is a liminal space because it hasn't been torn down, so the mall still exists; yet it's not a mall because the stores have long moved out and the mall itself hasn't been used in years. There is a mall on one of my mail routes like this. You can't go in anymore; but several years ago I would take my lunch inside and eat on a cushioned bench where a light shone through an above window.There was music playing throughout the mall still. The only people in there was usually me and some elderly mall walkers who were getting their steps in. When I went to the restroom in the mall, it was obvious that I was the first one in there in quite awhile. It was a little creepy, especially when I was alone, but it was kind of cool as well. I became drawn to the mall and became interested in actual physical liminal spaces.

Here's a picture I took inside the mall on March 26, 2019 (I knew I still had a picture of it on my phone haha).

I'm not the only one interested in liminal spaces. Gen Z is obsessed with them. In fact, the director of Backrooms is part of that generation. He started production on the movie when he was only nineteen years old. He also has a bunch of YouTube videos about the Backrooms, and there's another series he did called The Oldest View (which I find creepier actually), and some of that footage I swear could have been filmed at the mall I used to take my lunch to.

Why is Gen Z drawn to physical liminal spaces? Here are some reasons:

• Pandemic Trauma. The formative years of many young people were disrupted by 2020 lockdowns. My own daughter did not get to experience her own high school graduation. Experiencing normal bustling spaces - like schools, offices, and malls - completely empty created a collective psychological imprint that is visually mirrored in liminal photography. I have said over and over again that at some point, both individually and collectively, most of us are going to have a difficult time processing what actually took place during the Covid year, once our brain catches up with our body dealing with the shock of what took place. Interest in liminal spaces, I think, is just another way to process all the changes we've experienced in our lives.
• Disappearing "Third Places". As physical gathering places for youth have disappeared due to the rise of digital socialization and retail closures, the nostalgia for these abandoned, often retro environments (like 1990s shopping malls) has intensified. (A third place is a gathering place different than one's work and home environments)
• Algorithmic Escapism. In an era where online life feels highly controlled by rigid algorithms, liminal spaces represent an off-putting but liberating detachment. There's a sense of freedom, or randomness that is appealing to younger people, and some old people like me.
• Anemoia. This is such a fascinating word and concept. It refers to a feeling of nostalgia for a time period during which you weren't alive, or a past you never actually lived. This most definitely applies to me, because I've become fascinated with the real Victorian time period of history, and also the fictional steampunk universe that comes from the Victorian era. (More about that in future posts)

However, as I mentioned above, there are two categories of liminal spaces. One is the physical version. The other? The psychological version.

As Kim Egel puts it:

"It is that in-between zone where you're no longer who or where you were, but not yet who or where you're becoming. It's an empty stretch full of uncertainty and the unknown, which makes it deeply uncomfortable - and, not to mention, easy to want to avoid.

Walking through liminal space can feel like moving through a pitch-dark room. You can't see what's ahead, and you're not quite sure where you are - often leaving you hesitant, and searching for something solid to land on."

A psychological liminal space is a threshold space. It's a transition. It's a pause. It's a space that appears usually with big changes. Leaving a career. A failed relationship. Outgrowing your identity. A shift in your worldview. It can be a hard place to be. It can be tough moving out of it. You can be there for a short time, or you can be there for a decade.

My advice if you're in one? Don't worry about where you are. Don't fret about being "stuck." As Mike Yaconelli, one of my heroes when I was a Christian and a minister said,

"Getting stuck can be the best thing that could happen to us, because it forces us to stop. It halts the momentum of our lives. We have no choice but to notice what is around us, and we end up searching..."

Well, he says we end up searching for Jesus.

Which in my book, is perfectly fine if you're a Christian. Please search for the actual Jesus though, mmmmkay? Like, actually take his teachings to heart? Notice his compassion for the poor, for the needy? Don't conclude that what Jesus is about is some dumb libtard woke agenda, ok? /rant

But to those of us outside of faith, it does lead us to searching for something. To examine ourselves. To perhaps wake up from the stupor of doing the same thing over and over and over again, for years. To perhaps begin to being open to a new way of thinking, a new way of behaving, a new way of living.

Liminal spaces can be frightening, both physical and psychological versions. But all the young kids are doing it, so if you're there, embrace the uncertainty. Challenge your presuppositions, those preconceived notions of yourself and the world around you.

Embrace the void. It will be ok.

The End Of A "Vision"

 As most may know who read this blog (all tens of you haha), it's been ten years now since I left church and religion behind me and have spent the last decade without going to church, without following a deity, without hanging out with Christians for the most part. It's not necessarily that I have been opposed to being in contact with people who believe in the god I used to believe. It's that most unfriended me when I announced my decision, and those who didn't I don't have a real reason to hang out. When you go to church, that becomes the catalyst for hanging out with the friends you have there. No church? No catalyst.

Anyway, even though it's been ten years, someone who has left faith tends to have some tendrils of the life they used to live. Obviously it takes awhile to change your vernacular. It takes awhile to let go of some of the toxic beliefs that are ingrained in you. (example: the threat of hell) In my case, one of those tendrils was my sponsorship of children through World Vision.

When I was involved in fighting human trafficking (a part of my life that I've been thinking about often as of late. I'm proud of what I did in that arena, and I'm sometimes sad I'm no longer in the arena), I was on a panel about human trafficking at a church in Dayton. I don't remember what the conference was about, I know there were other causes represented there, because in the gym they had something called a World Vision Experience. You walked through a maze that had information about countries that WV worked in, and pictures of kids and at the end you had the opportunity to sponsor a child.

The experience moved me greatly, so I signed up. And for the next fifteen years or so, I was a sponsor of children through World Vision.

My first sponsored child was named Clementine. My daughter was young and interested in what was going on, so she would send gifts and I would tell her what was going on in Clementine's life. It was a good way to teach her how to be a person who doesn't just think about kids in our community, or in our city or in our state or even in the country. I wanted her to have empathy for kids globally. This was one way that we could have an impact on someone all the way across the world. I was very pleased with World Vision and their sponsorship program at the time.

And then 2014 happened.

On March 24 of that year, World Vision made a change to their hiring practices. For the first time in their history, they would consider hiring people who were in same sex marriages. I remember this vividly. I wasn't a huge ally of LGBTQ+ people at the time. It wasn't that I was against them. I'm not sure if at the time I thought they were "sinning" but as someone who believed that we all struggle with sin, I did not put them in a different category than the rest of us. And I thought it was a good move for World Vision to do so.

Right away, evangelical Christians freaked out.

Now note that World Vision said they were only considering hiring gay people. They didn't say they had. They didn't say that they were going to actively seek out gay people. And they made clear that the hiring was only in the administration and call centers; they were never going to hire gay people to go out into the field and work with the children, god forbid.

But the backlash was fierce. Christians who sponsored kids through the organization called World Vision and canceled their sponsorships in the thousands. It was all over the news. Every Christian pundit decried World Vision's decision. And in 48 hours, due to all the public and I'm sure private pressure, World Vision rescinded the decision. In two days' time, it was over.

But the damage was there. And then - and this part gets me so mad every time I think about it - the same Christians who pulled their sponsorships, the same people who decided the life and death of a child who was unaffected by the decision didn't matter because the organization was considering hiring gay people started calling back and asking if they could have their kids back.

My friend Bart Campolo talks about how when his faith died, it was the death of a thousand paper cuts. (I use that phrase often myself) One of those paper cuts for me was this. I wasn't as mad about World Vision's decision to go back on what they had decided. I think they considered the cost of all these kids not having sponsorships because of a hiring decision and felt it was better to take the L and have these kids have sponsors again. I was furious at these Christians who played a life and death game with kids.

I told myself later on after I had left my faith that even though I chose to continue my own sponsorship regardless of me being a Christian anymore or not, that my sponsorship with Clementine was coming to an end as she turned eighteen and graduated out of the program so I would just end my partnership with World Vision. But that's not what happened.

World Vision transferred another child for sponsorship to me - without asking if I wanted to continue - and so I once again continued to sponsor a child through them (her name is Alice, she seems lovely). 

And then 2020 happened.

World Vision once considered hiring gay people. And decided not to. But then in 2020, a woman by the name of Aubry McMahon applied for an adminstration position. In 2021, she was offered employment but then that offer was rescinded when World Vision discovered that she was married to someone of the same sex. Aubry sued, the ACLU took the case, and it was finally decided last year and Aubry won the case, but World Vision appealed and won the appeal. I was mad about what happened because it felt like World Vision hardened its stance even more against LGBTQ+ people.

But I did not cancel my sponsorship. I didn't want to be a hypocrite, getting mad at the Christians for choosing to use a child as a statement. I told myself that I would continue to support Alice until she graduated out of the program.

This spring, I got a letter that said that Alice and her family were moving out of the community and so my sponsorship was ending but look, here's another child that I would be sponsoring starting the next month.

I called World Vision. A nice woman answered. I told her that before I started supporting this child (again, she seems great), that I was canceling being part of World Vision.

"May I ask why?"

(Oh ma'am, you don't know what you're getting yourself into.)

So I told her. All the stuff above. My own walk away from faith. How what happened in 2014 was one of the things that caused me to walk away from controlling religion. She seemed stunned. But still really nice. When I got off the phone, I became emotional. It felt like one more last death knell of a life that I still vaguely remember. Lots of good memories. Lots of bad memories. 

Yesterday I finally received the confirmation letter that says I no longer support a child through World Vision. And I'm sad again. But I'm going to take the monthly support that I used to give them, and I'm going to donate it monthly to organizations that are more in line with where I am now. I've already chose three of them.

Wikipedia. Seems kind of funny. But for some reason a couple of weeks ago that really annoying popup that comes up every time you are on their web page made me actually decide to support them. So I am, monthly

Honeyverse. I adopted a beehive in Italy. They're gonna send me eight jars of honey from those bees every year. Bees are dying off. That's really bad for the world. I'm getting more involved in environmental causes, so this is one thing I can do to help.

The Trevor Project. This organization works with LGBTQ+ kids. I've made one time donations to them on occasion. Now I'm supporting them every month. There are people close to me who are LGBTQ+ and I want them and those I don't know to thrive and to experience love and acceptance.

I'm sure there will be more, and I'll inform you all when it happens. But for now, I mourn a little for the end of an era. The end of a Vision, if you will.

Dealing With The Covid Year

"Trauma is not a flaw or a weakness. It is a highly effective tool of safety and survival. Trauma is also not an event. Trauma is the body's protective response to an event - or a series of events - that it perceives as potentially dangerous."

- Resmaa Menakem

I've been watching a lot of movies lately. Partly because I have the time after work to do so, partly because I wanted to see as many of the Oscar nominated movies as I could, partly because it's a pretty good escape mechanism to not deal with the craziness that is happening in our country right now. There's a new movie on one of my favorite unknown to most streaming services (Mubi) called Grand Theft Hamlet. It's a documentary of two British actors who were struggling during the Covid lockdown and decided to attempt to put on the Shakespeare play Hamlet inside the world of Grand Theft Auto online. It's amusing - as you can probably surmise, a lot of people in that world just want to cause mayhem and violence, which means a lot of these two guys asking people if they want to be part of the play only to get killed in the game. There are also some pretty powerful moments. It's an interesting movie and it's a reminder of how insane the lockdown year during Covid actually was.

As the year that Covid took over our lives gets further and further away, I think most of us think that we have left that virus behind us. I follow a very good account on threads and instagram that provides up to date information on pandemics and epidemics that are still happening and are possible. (email me at young [dot] adam7 [at] gmail [dot] com if you would like to follow this account as well) The other day, this account informed me that Covid19 has not only not disappeared; it's at one of its peaks. More than 3 million new cases of Covid-19 has happened this week and transmission rates are now higher than at any point during 43.3% of the pandemic.

A year ago I remember talking to someone about that year of Covid and I said something to the effect of "you know, someday we are each individually going to have to deal with what happened that year. Some of us are in deep denial; some of us have turned to pretending that the threat was never real; and a lot of us never really dealt with what took place. The body doesn't forget. At some point we will have to deal with it."

I've spent the last couple of weeks during my free time - especially as I have finally gotten my hot tub up and working again! - trying to process what happened four years ago. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, as I said above, we all need to deal with what took place. For some, it was really no big deal; for others, major changes happened in their lives - deaths of people close to them, health scares, dealing with the effects of long Covid. This is a process for me that is continuing to happen, but part of my attempt to dig deep and come to terms with that year is writing this blog post.

Personally, for me, as I think about it, there are a couple of things that really affected me about Covid. Before I go into them, let me say that according to medical professionals, I never actually got the virus. Now at the very beginning, before the lockdown and before it started really spreading, I contracted some kind of illness. It was hard to breathe, I felt like there was an elephant on my chest at all times, I couldn't sleep. However, I went and got a Covid test at a health clinic, paid my hundred bucks, and was informed that I tested negative. Part of me thinks that I did have it, that the test was wrong; but the other part of me thinks I may have just had some weird illness that wasn't Covid.

Here are two things I'm processing right now.

First, I am a mail carrier (I joke and say I'm a mail escort but no one thinks that's very funny). Therefore, I was an "essential worker" during the pandemic. Whereas other people were sidelined from their work - either they were furloughed or they were able to work from home - mail carriers had to continue working and interacting with people. The drive to and from work was great when the lockdown happened, and at the time I was doing Uber Eats delivery as a second job and there was a lot of demand for that service, but the rest of it sucked. In the early days of Covid, no one knew how it was spreading and for awhile scientists thought it could live on the surfaces of objects, which meant that we were delivering mail and packages not knowing if we were going to get infected at some point. Later on, we discovered that wasn't the case but the fear that we all had in being a hands on worker was palpable and real. I was an early adopter when it came to wearing a mask, and I continued wearing one all the way through that year even though most of my fellow workers stopped doing it long before me. Every time a customer without a mask walked out of their house because they wanted to take the mail from me, it took everything within me to not scream "GET AWAY. I DON'T WANT YOUR GERMS. JUST LET ME DO MY JOB AND YOU CAN GRAB IT OUT OF THE MAILBOX WHEN I LEAVE!" The body is pretty good at inuring itself from past fear and trauma, but I do remember those days. I remember every time I felt a little sick if it was finally my time to get it. That year was crazy from a work perspective.

The second thing I'm processing is a relationship that took place during Covid. Right before the pandemic and the lockdown hit, my partner of a year and a half decided that she didn't want to be in a relationship with me anymore. But then because of what was happening around the world, she postponed the decision and we were still together through that year. 

Big mistake.

Because she was romantically and emotionally detaching from me, I was caught in a limbo world where there were times where I felt like someone cared for me; but other times where I was being emotionally and psychologically abused. And because I didn't know she had planned on leaving me, it was a very confusing time where I blamed myself, that perhaps my actions weren't doing enough. I started starving for connection and intimacy, and was only being given breadcrumbs that would satiate me less and less the longer it went. This relationship has been over for awhile now, and it's only recently that I can look back and see all the signs. She finally did tell me what she had planned early 2000; however it was two years after the fact. I felt constantly like I was walking on eggshells during that time and no matter what I did, it was never enough nor was it appreciated. I recently came across this quote:

"Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives." - Bessel van der Kolk

I hope that if you haven't started your processing journey through the things that happened with Covid, that you do so as soon as you can. Why? Well, there's a chance that we may have another pandemic on our hands with the bird flu and you don't want to have to deal with two past crazy situations at the same time. As van der Kolk says:

"We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present. Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It not only changes how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think."

Top Ten Movies of 2024, part deux

 Before I describe in detail my top five movies of last year, I need to throw in a movie I saw a couple of days ago that I've been thinking about ever since. This would have definitely made my list, but I'll just include it here as an addendum to the list.

Would have made my top ten: Red Rooms

Red Rooms is a psychological thriller about a man who is on trial for brutally assaulting and murdering three young girls and showing it on a webcam on the dark web. There's a strange beautiful woman who keeps showing up to the trial and the movie is ultimately about her obsession with the trial and how that obsession can change a person for good and for bad. Incredibly well acted, it's a brooding and sinister look at the dark places in a person's soul. There is one specific scene at the trial that I won't be able to get out of my head for a long time. Highly recommend.

5. Heretic

Another surprising horror movie/psychological thriller on my list. In this movie, two Mormons show up at a house to try and make converts of the houseowners but the husband knows quite a bit about their religion as well as others and lures them into a twisted game to truly test their belief. Hugh Grant is phenomenal in the lead role, and the two Mormon women are excellent as well. Some of his arguments I thought were really well done, and you will never look at Blueberry pie the same way ever again.

4. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

No one believed that George Miller could ever top his masterpiece "Mad Max: Fury Road" but still the expectations were super high when it was announced that the next movie in the Mad Max franchise was going to be a prequel focusing on Imperator Furiosa from Fury Road. It's true that we didn't get the completely batshit crazy non-stop action that we got from that movie. What we did get was a really good backstory, an actual plot, some world building (something new to this franchise to be honest; usually you had to fill in yourself what this world was about), and a tremendously flawed villain, with Chris Hemsworth playing the true to his name Dementus. I can't believe this flopped at the box office. The action was still there (there's one setpiece that might rival Fury Road in how epic it is), Anya Taylor-Joy did a great job stepping into the role of Furiosa, and there is some stunning stunt work here. I'm sad that Miller will probably never be able to return to Mad Max ever again; these type of movies just don't get made anymore.

Note: I have changed the order of my top three movies after thinking long and hard about in what order these movies really moved me.

3. Conclave

I was mostly free of religion up until my junior high years; however what religious experiences I did have in those early years was due to my grandmother, who was a devout Catholic. I remember going to Mass at a church near her house; and it was confusing but it was always interesting. The priest of that church was an incredible man - funny thing is that a couple of months ago my brother asked me if I knew his name and it came to me immediately.

This movie was way better than I thought it was going to be; after all, a movie about cardinals gathering together to choose the next pope sounds like a dreadful snore. However, it was riveting and I will give anyone a hundred dollars who can guess correctly what happens at the end. You think you know, and even if you get one part of it right, the reasons behind the ending is something no one could possibly predict. A large group of Catholics are up-in-arms about the ending; I thought it was beautiful and inspiring and hopefully the direction the Catholic Church will steer towards. I'm not holding my breath though.

2. Civil War

This Alex Garland written and directed movie has been my number one movie of the year from the moment I saw it. I only changed it number two literally as I wrote these out because I revisited my number one, formerly number two movie and I have to give it a slight nod over this one because the themes of that movie, although different from my personal experience as a straight white man, are themes I have only realized recently that I have been wrestling with my whole life.

Many people found this movie disappointing because of several reasons. For one, this movie is not one that deals with a black and white worldview. The normal good guys might not actually be the good guys. The normal bad guys might not actually be the bad guys. Florida and Texas according to this movie have seceded from America and are fighting against...a fascist right wing president? For most people this made no sense. However, if you take your focus off of the backstory details of this world Garland has created, and live in the uncomfortable chaotic tension of a country in the middle of a civil war, I think you will understand what a masterpiece this is.

There are so many themes that are applicable to today's time: the role of truth telling and cold observance by our media; the horror of not only the machinations of war but also the unflinching acceptance of what happens to normal life during war; it's a movie that will challenge your idea of what America would be like if we continue down the path we're going on. There are so many scenes that I can't get out of my head. One in particular involves Jesse Plemons as a white supremacist so cold and calculating - and yet a character that totally makes sense in the context of today's time - that I've revisited it at least five times. 

Alex Garland in my opinion never disappoints - even his movie Men, although very flawed, made me think about its themes for months. I only wish I would have seen this in IMAX; the sound design in the last twenty minutes must have been both super impressive and nightmarish.

1. I Saw The TV Glow

This is a movie that I would have never watched ten years ago. Back then, I was definitely on the side of supporting and affirming the "gay lifestyle" but I never felt a desire to actually inhabit that world. It was foreign to me and I honestly would have felt like an intruder. I think this started to change when I was listening to a podcast and a friend of mine from college shared his story of coming out and the amount of pain yet hope he experienced. And it made me realize that to a certain degree, almost all of us can relate to feeling like a stranger in a foreign land, living in a world where you feel like no one truly understands who you are, and fighting constantly the societal pressures of conforming to a life of similitude. At what point do you give up and give in and just become another cog in the normality machine?

I am not a gay person. But I can relate to the themes of this movie because for thirty plus years I felt like an alien in a world that felt familiar and that I could take comfort in at certain times but ultimately the box that that world kept trying to keep me in could not contain my struggles, my doubts, my differences. That world was religion.

I Saw The TV Glow is about two people growing up who never fit the typical teenager mold and who take solace and togetherness in a shared experience of a TV show called The Pink Opaque. (it felt kind of like a Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibe) They both desire to escape the constrictive nature of their upbringing. One ultimately gets out; the other one resigns themselves to slowly conforming to the banality of their existence. A review of this movie puts it very well:

There are plenty of films that feature queer misery. There are even more fandoms that feature it. These works, whether they intend to or not, can betray our desire for affirmation and lead us to despair, but they are still valuable. In recalling them, we learn the limitations of searching for oneself in media. The difference is that I Saw the TV Glow doesn’t just feature queer misery, it’s specifically about it—the brutality is a feature, not a bug. It’s playing with the same tropes as bad faith queer films and fandom media, often with a bit of a wicked grin, but it’s a controlled environment. This is an exploration of what a ‘darkest timeline’ version of adolescent development might have looked like for a trans kid in the 90s. A timeline where development was stymied constantly, and in the place where identity and relationships were supposed to form, a dependency on a TV show emerged instead. It walks you right up to the brink of despair, but never forces you over it. 

I highly recommend this movie. It is different than anything I've ever seen and the fourth wall breaking feels transgressive at times, but give it a chance. It may make you think about your life and upbringing and what could have been different if you only had the courage to make a choice instead of letting that choice be made for you (something I have struggled with my whole life).

Top Ten Movies of 2024, part 1

 2024 feels like a year where there weren't that many great movies, but looking at my list, I realize that some of them on here are some of my favorites of the last few years. It seems like every year, there is somewhat of a central theme that runs through my viewing adventure of that year, whether it be movies or TV shows. For example, the year where Parasite was my favorite movie, the theme of rich vs. poor was prevalent throughout my media consumption.

This year is no exception. It seems like a common thread for this year has been identity. Who are we really? As individuals? As a country? Are we truly living our authentic self, or are we hiding who we really are because society tells us we have to? This is something I've been thinking about all year, and it was interesting to see it also reflect in my media consumption.

First, let's do my honorable mentions. There is one that I didn't include in my original list so I'll mention it briefly: The Substance. I am not a big body horror fan so this movie made me squirm the entire time. However, Demi Moore puts on an incredible performance and Margaret Qualley - who I've liked ever since The Leftovers - shines as well. The reason it's not in my top ten besides the body horror aspect is that it seems to deliver its metaphor about aging and how women are treated in society as they get older with the largest hammer ever. This movie is certainly not subtle.

Honorable Mention: Hundreds Of Beavers

A delightfully crazy romp of a movie that feels like a Looney Tunes cartoon come to life. Creative and expressive with little dialogue and a lot of people in mascot suits running around causing mayhem.

Honorable Mention: Late Night With The Devil

I don't know why this year I gravitated towards a genre I often overlook: horror. If I was a therapist, I would probably tell myself that it's because watching horror movies helps me escape the horror of living on this earth during this time of existence, but I'm not so I'll just say that this year had some great horror movies, this one being one of the best ones. It reminded me of the Satanic Panic of the 1970's and some of the effects in this movie were truly jaw dropping. 

Honorable Mention: A Quiet Place: Day One

I agree with a couple of the hosts at the filmcast podcast that the title of this movie definitely doesn't pay off and was marketed wrong. We were told that we were going to get a movie that explained how everything began and how humanity discovered that silence was the key to survival against the horrifying aliens. We didn't get that. What we did get though was a beautiful story about a woman coming to terms with her mortality. Lupita Nyong'o is fantastic in this. And so is the cat. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time worried about that damn cat.

Ok, now here is my top ten, from ten to number one.

10. Challengers

Not very many people know this, but I was a huge tennis fan in the mid to late eighties. I didn't play the sport much, but the first time I saw Andre Agassi play on TV I was hooked. This is a tennis movie; but more than that it is a movie about friendship, the cost of obsession, and how thruples are super sexy and super impossible. The tennis is great, but the three main performances are even greater. I had a really great time watching this movie.

9. The Wild Robot

Another Nyong'o performance that was outstanding this year; this one being the voice of a futuristic robot sent to a land full of animals. It's main theme is about adoption, but there is so much more going for this film. I cried a few times, and although it seems like animated films are designed to do just that these days, it wasn't forced. I only wish I could have seen the animated movie Flow before deciding this was my favorite animated movie of the year.

8. Will And Harper

I try to include at least one documentary every year that challenged me and made me see the world in a different light. This is a movie about a road trip by Will Ferrell - the comedian, SNL standout and comedic movie star - and his long time friend, Harper. Harper was a writer on SNL during Ferrell's tenure. One day she told Will that she was a trans woman, and they agreed to go on a road trip to some of Harper's favorite parts of America. Such a fascinating look at friendship, the way trans people are treated in different parts of the USA, and the fears and challenges of finally accepting who you are vs. who others think you are.

7. It's What's Inside

Oh man, what a fun movie this was. I don't remember who recommended this to me; I was a bit skeptical about it but having loved Bodies Bodies Bodies even though the gen Z-ness of it kind of irritated me, I gave this movie full of gen z actors a chance and I'm so glad I did. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so the basic detail is that a group of friends are getting together and one of them brings a tech machine that allows you to swap bodies with others. Hilarity and horror ensue and the director does such an amazing job of helping you keep track of who is in who's body. So much fun.

6. Dune Part Two

Another little known fact about me: I grew up devouring the Dune books. I brought one of them to a trip with my best friend when I went with him and his family to Alaska, and because it was summer and there was twenty hours of sunlight, I read it over and over again over those two weeks. I remember the David Lynch movie when it came out; it was strange and crazy and could have been good but the technology just wasn't ready in the eighties to really make it work. Denis Villaneuve is one of my favorite directors of the last decade and he got this story right. I did miss Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck holding a pug in one hand and a blaster in the other leading the charge of the Atreides against the Harkonnens and the Sarduakar, but everything else was perfect. And he made the right call with the ending of this movie, changing the triumph of Paul Atreides as not a good thing but rather an ominously bad thing.

Next Post: Top Ten Movies of 2024 (5-1)

Christmas Time Is Here

Christmas time is here

Happiness and cheer

Fun for all that children call

Their favorite time of year

I've been thinking a lot about Christmas right now. It's funny that I've chosen careers in my lifetime where this season is incredibly busy and demanding of my time and attention. Being a mail carrier is really tough this time of year. You have way more packages, and the post office is always trying to find ways to screw us over, so this year just like last year, we aren't allowed to come in early to deliver packages. We have to take everything on our route, so we come back super late in the dark.

My position has changed though since September, and my job has become easier and better. Before, I was a city carrier that did just one route every day. But then a T6 position opened up and I was the winning bidder on it. As a T6, I get paid more and I take five different routes off days. I love the variety of having five different routes. And most of them are pretty easy. I used to have ten to twelve miles of walking a day; now I have maybe a couple of miles. Which means I have to find other ways of not being fat haha.

Of course the first career that I had was ministry, and the last several years was worship ministry, so Christmas was a big deal. Now, when I assess myself as a minister back in the day, I think I was a much better youth minister than worship minister. And honestly, I think I liked youth ministry better, mostly because I didn't have to really interact with the senior minister that much. It seems like most of my problems being on a church staff has been with the relationship with the senior minister. I'm sure some of it is my fault, but I've also worked for some senior ministers who had some serious control issues.

Anyway, as I said I thought I was better as a youth minister. But where I think I excelled in worship ministry was Christmas. I never wanted to just do Christmas songs the way they've always been done; I wanted to find new versions, new songs, and I'm not tooting my own horn here because this comes from people at the churches I worked at, but I really tried to make Christmas special from a worship ministry standpoint.

Not everyone appreciated that though. I remember one Christmas I did some very different things at the Christmas eve service. I did not do anything traditional, I did some very interesting versions of Christmas songs. We got some really good feedback from that year. However, the senior minister I worked for did not like it. I think he may have appreciated it, but the conversation went kind of like this:

Him: why didn't you do a more traditional Christmas eve service? People really like the traditional stuff at that time.

Me: not according to the comments we got from people. One person said that they hadn't been to a Christmas eve service in years but wanted to come back in January because they enjoyed the variations we did on Christmas songs. Another person said that if this is how we did regular church, they would be there every week.

Him: well my parents didn't like it. (his parents went to the church)

Me: your parents are Christians right?

Him: yes...

Me: well the people I'm talking about aren't, or are nominal Christians, so what we did Christmas even might have helped them get closer to god and perhaps we may see them become part of our church.

Him: but my parents didn't like it.

Me: I'm sorry that they didn't, but isn't our Christmas eve service designed to help move those who only come on Christmas and Easter to become members of our church? Your parents are already members and have been Christians for decades. 

Him: I want my parents to be happy about going to the Christmas eve service.

Me: So what you're saying is that really you want me to tailor a Christmas eve service for your parents and their generation who already are in the church, to get away from our mission as a church and to basically say "too bad" to the other people who like the edgy version of Christmas eve.

Him: I guess so.

And that's what I had to do for the next several years at that church. And we never got another positive comment about Christmas eve services in the time I was there. No negative comments, just no positive ones.

The good thing is that I had more leeway on the Sundays of December so I could pour my creative energy into those services.

I know this post is kind of all over the place, but I'm glad that I can appreciate Christmas music again. It took several years after I left ministry and faith in order to do so.

Also - Relient K has the best Christmas album of this millenium.

And - I just discovered another new favorite Christmas song. It's called "Christmas Lights" by the band Yellowcard. Check it out! It's so good.

One of my goals for next year is to get back into playing guitar, grabbing a few friends, and playing some Christmas songs somewhere in December.

Merry  Christmas, everyone.

It's been six years...

 It's been six years since I've done anything with this blog. Does anyone read blogs anymore? Doubtful I'm sure. Blogs are most likely over as we know it. I don't think people have the attention span anymore to actually read anything, let alone a blog post on a computer. I know that my attention span has changed drastically. I have a hard time reading a real book. I can listen to an audiobook; but actually reading a book, I fall asleep quickly. 

So maybe this is a bad idea, bringing back something that no one will read. But I know I will read it. And I feel like I need a place to vent, a place to ruminate on what is happening in the world, where I can process what is happening in the world and my role in it.

Anyway, though no one will read this, I think I will attempt at restarting this.