Friday, 31 August 2012
Friday, 24 August 2012
Lewis and Josh meet Tim and Eric
Today my good friend Josh (centre with the glasses) and I went to the UK premiere of Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie at the Prince Charles Cinema just off from Leicester Sq. London.
The Screening was preceded by a jocular introduction from the wizards themselves, and rounded off with a pretty hilarious Q&A.
The evening began with me running out for a quick wee just before show time. It was then that I bumped into Tim Heidecker in the men's room. Aaaarh! I've just come face to face with a cult-famous wizard and hero. I panicked throughout the duration of my urination. As I returned to the cinema I realised the lobby had cleared - I was the last one in, but wait - who await me in the corridor? Aaaaaah its Tim and Eric. I don't know what to do! I go all awkward and gushy as they start berating me for being late with a standard 'What the F%$£ are you doing?' and a moment of being ushered into the cinema by two living dream weavers. I did what any grown man would do when put on the spot by famous masterminds - I pointed to my willy and tried to explain that I had been for a pee.
They gave a wild introduction to the film, which included sprinting round the cinema high-fiving the audience and invoking a group deep breathing session. We watched the film - I had seen quite alot of it already (not strictly legally as it came out in America a few months ago and obviously leaked online). I had been pretty disappointed watching it alone on a crappy website - the narrative formula just didn't work for Tim and Eric's type of comedy in the same way that the 11 minute Awesome Show episodes are a wonder to behold. However, from the opening sequence with Schlaaang incorporated and Jeff Goldblum's cameo as Chef Goldblum, I found the whole thing a lot more entertaining and genuinely funny. It helps being in a room full of Tim and Eric fans.
Given that the vast majority of people that I've tried to convince about Awesome Show have failed to appreciate its brilliance, there is very little chance that the already unconverted will find anything enjoyable in Billion Dollar Movie. The jokes range from excessively vulgar and pretty dark to being entirely ludicrous. It certainly crosses lines in a way that Awesome Show or Tom goes to the mayor don't. The tone is a bit more like their Just three boys sketch. Nevertheless, if you find the world of Tim and Eric one worth inhabiting there is plenty here to find great amusement at. Even when it isn't laugh out loud it is engagingly moronic. I've seen people compare Billion Dollar movie to something David Lynch might make (because if anyone makes anything slightly surreal it must be 'Lynchian' Duuuuurgh!) but Tim and Eric are certainly not trying to make thought provoking art house cinema. The only real Lynch connection is a cameo from the amazing Ray Wise (Leeland Palmer in Twin Peaks). Billion Dollar movie is meant to be funny and silly, and it is, but I will never watch it with my parents.
After the show Tim and Eric came out and did a Q and A session. I resisted the urge to join the queue. I can't cope with that much pressure. Josh joined the back of the line. I panicked. (please Josh don't say something stupid and get destroyed in public...) There are certain rules about speaking to famous people, especially professional comedians in public. Never, ever try and be funny. Never try and out-funny them. Never try and make the moment about yourself. Unfortunately a good few people in the line went either for funny quip or major sucking up. Of course they were absolutely destroyed by T and E. They actually came across as quite mean in their willingness to make people look completely stupid in public, either through flat refusal to answer stupid questions, or by highlighting an unfortunate feature of their questioner. That said, they answered proper questions seriously and respectfully, but this would be a brief interlude before more berating and making people uncomfortable. It was pretty great.
Afterwards we all left, a few of us went to the fire exit out back where we were told to wait if we wanted pictures. 5 minutes later T and E showed up. Amazingly all the people queuing for the later showing with live T and E commentary completely failed to notice that the stars of the film were right next to them. This was good news because it meant we got to actually meet them, shake hands, exchange a few words and get a photo with them. They were incredibly friendly, patient and obliging with the fans and got in the spirit of things. Great job!
L
Wednesday, 22 August 2012
google book discovery
For those of you frequently confounded by a) the terrible selection of books available at your university library (let alone standard local library - waste of everyone's time - especially in Brighton's eco-library travesty) b) the fact that the cheapest you can get the book for is from the book depository or some other third party through amazon, and while it is a pretty good price, its still £16 more than natwest can give you right now:
Google books - is it any use? Sort of. You can find a lot of things on there, even quite obscure stuff. The problem of course is the limited previews. There are ways to try and get more out of it - i.e. resetting your browser/ deleting cookies, making sure you are not signed in to a google account when you use it, switching to a different computer etc. But these are time consuming and inconsistent when you want to dodge the limits.
Solution?
It never crossed my mind until this week... what about using google books through a proxy? (proxy websites are sites that allow you to access websites while hiding your computers ip address (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address) - basically the thing that all computers have that give them a unique identity when you go on the internet. For a long time people have used proxys to do things like go on facebook at work without getting caught, or to look at dirty things on the internet without being found out. But what, I asked myself, if you could look at BOOKS without restrictions by using a proxy.
Well I put it to the test, and huzzah! I managed to trawl through a preview of a book on google books without any cap on the page preview. I'm not entirely sure how this works and I need to spend a bit more time working out what proxy sites work best but it seems to do the trick. The only downside is it takes a bit longer to load each page - you can't just scroll down from page to page. This means its not so good for reading from the site, but if like me you take screen shots of the pages so you can print out whole chapters, this is a massive triumph for studying.
I will post again with a proper guide as to how to do this in the near future.
L
Google books - is it any use? Sort of. You can find a lot of things on there, even quite obscure stuff. The problem of course is the limited previews. There are ways to try and get more out of it - i.e. resetting your browser/ deleting cookies, making sure you are not signed in to a google account when you use it, switching to a different computer etc. But these are time consuming and inconsistent when you want to dodge the limits.
Solution?
It never crossed my mind until this week... what about using google books through a proxy? (proxy websites are sites that allow you to access websites while hiding your computers ip address (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address) - basically the thing that all computers have that give them a unique identity when you go on the internet. For a long time people have used proxys to do things like go on facebook at work without getting caught, or to look at dirty things on the internet without being found out. But what, I asked myself, if you could look at BOOKS without restrictions by using a proxy.
Well I put it to the test, and huzzah! I managed to trawl through a preview of a book on google books without any cap on the page preview. I'm not entirely sure how this works and I need to spend a bit more time working out what proxy sites work best but it seems to do the trick. The only downside is it takes a bit longer to load each page - you can't just scroll down from page to page. This means its not so good for reading from the site, but if like me you take screen shots of the pages so you can print out whole chapters, this is a massive triumph for studying.
I will post again with a proper guide as to how to do this in the near future.
L
Saturday, 11 August 2012
71 minutes of older and wiser Robben Ford
This gig is so ruddy bloody good. Tone, phrasing, controlled aggression. Masterful.
Tuesday, 7 August 2012
Very brief rant
Evangelical churches (in much of my experience - and from what I gather based on other people's accounts) tend to place a high value on the role of the Bible in their weekly activities, whether Sunday preaching, midweek home groups or shipping people off to teaching conferences. Despite this, I find myself increasingly conscious of the lack of serious engagement with interpretative matters. In the church's I have been a part of the sermon typically follows a descriptive reading of the text, selectively employing pieces of socio-historical description. This description is typically interrupted with little points of application, or a slightly longer application at the end of the talk - usually abstracting timeless truths or fairly uninspiring principles from the text that frankly you could have found in any number of interesting non-sacred texts. The result is that application often seems superficial, and the text still feels very distant and slightly irrelevant to one's personal experience and Christian identity.
I suspect many ministers (who are typically between 40 and 60) received a good theological training back in the day from evangelical colleges (I can't knock this as I took undergraduate study in just such an institution). Nevertheless, the methodology employed often comes across as a piecemeal combination of enlightenment historical critical ideology unreflectively wedded to evangelical doctrinal convictions. There is often the implication that a text has one intrinsic meaning, it's usually deemed to be the plain or obvious meaning to anyone with 'common sense', and all we need to do is use the right tools of careful reading under the guidance of a Tyndale commentary (not to bash these commentaries) and 'bingo!' the right meaning of the text comes out. There is something to be said for close and careful reading of course, but unfortunately it is 2012, and Foucault, and Derrida, and Iser and Eco and liberation and feminism all happened in the past one hundred years, challenging the fundamental naivety of the quest for authorial intent and the 'plain meaning'. The climate for interpreting the bible is radically different now - the academy is in something of a fluster and doesn't know how to handle the plurality of possibilities on the table. Efforts are being made by some to bring together the long segregated realms of biblical studies and theology, and this should be welcomed with open arms by the evangelical community (though a fair amount of the current literature is jargon filled drivel).
I'm not suggesting that those who preach in church need to have a comprehensive understanding of the academic trends of the past century - some of it is of little use at all. But I do think that for a Christian movement (and a jolly big one) that puts such high emphasis on the bible (too much at times), one would think that a concern for greater sophistication in its interpretation and communication would be on the agenda. Historical information isn't enough, nor are abstract 'truths', nor are personality driven topics where pop-psychology is loosely draped over a proof text. Surely preaching is about appropriating the central claims of the gospel - the life transforming message of Jesus Christ's death and ressurection and our reconciliation with God and neighbour - to the lives of regular people today who stand in theological and historical continuity with the people of the book? If so we need a clearer idea of how exactly Scripture interacts with theology, preaching and ethics, and how the theological lenses of our tradition shape the way we read the text.
These are very broad and unhelpful points of appeal - in due course I hope to refine them. It is always easier to identify problems than it is to present viable solutions. My main point is that if evangelicals are going to hold up the Bible as the primary mode of God's communication today (where is the Spirit? Who knows..) then surely it can't be a good thing to be 100 years out of touch with the issues that inform biblical interpretation in academic circles. There is much more to be said on this in due course - I am merely expressing some frustrations.
L
I suspect many ministers (who are typically between 40 and 60) received a good theological training back in the day from evangelical colleges (I can't knock this as I took undergraduate study in just such an institution). Nevertheless, the methodology employed often comes across as a piecemeal combination of enlightenment historical critical ideology unreflectively wedded to evangelical doctrinal convictions. There is often the implication that a text has one intrinsic meaning, it's usually deemed to be the plain or obvious meaning to anyone with 'common sense', and all we need to do is use the right tools of careful reading under the guidance of a Tyndale commentary (not to bash these commentaries) and 'bingo!' the right meaning of the text comes out. There is something to be said for close and careful reading of course, but unfortunately it is 2012, and Foucault, and Derrida, and Iser and Eco and liberation and feminism all happened in the past one hundred years, challenging the fundamental naivety of the quest for authorial intent and the 'plain meaning'. The climate for interpreting the bible is radically different now - the academy is in something of a fluster and doesn't know how to handle the plurality of possibilities on the table. Efforts are being made by some to bring together the long segregated realms of biblical studies and theology, and this should be welcomed with open arms by the evangelical community (though a fair amount of the current literature is jargon filled drivel).
I'm not suggesting that those who preach in church need to have a comprehensive understanding of the academic trends of the past century - some of it is of little use at all. But I do think that for a Christian movement (and a jolly big one) that puts such high emphasis on the bible (too much at times), one would think that a concern for greater sophistication in its interpretation and communication would be on the agenda. Historical information isn't enough, nor are abstract 'truths', nor are personality driven topics where pop-psychology is loosely draped over a proof text. Surely preaching is about appropriating the central claims of the gospel - the life transforming message of Jesus Christ's death and ressurection and our reconciliation with God and neighbour - to the lives of regular people today who stand in theological and historical continuity with the people of the book? If so we need a clearer idea of how exactly Scripture interacts with theology, preaching and ethics, and how the theological lenses of our tradition shape the way we read the text.
These are very broad and unhelpful points of appeal - in due course I hope to refine them. It is always easier to identify problems than it is to present viable solutions. My main point is that if evangelicals are going to hold up the Bible as the primary mode of God's communication today (where is the Spirit? Who knows..) then surely it can't be a good thing to be 100 years out of touch with the issues that inform biblical interpretation in academic circles. There is much more to be said on this in due course - I am merely expressing some frustrations.
L
Saturday, 4 August 2012
Essays in honour of Max Turner
Last month saw the release of a new volume - The Spirit and Christ in the New Testament and Christian Theology, edited by I. H. Marshall, Volker Rabens and Cornelis Bennema. See the link here for a full list of contributors:
http://eerdword.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/party-in-a-book-on-festscriften-max-turner-and-the-spirit-and-christ-in-the-new-testament-and-christian-theology/
When I was an undergraduate at London School of Theology (2007-10) Max Turner interviewed me when I first applied to study (No pressure!) and I was fortunate enough to be in his classes on the ministry and teaching of Jesus, as well as some sessions on pneumatology. While there were a number of first class lecturers at LST, Max stood out to myself and many as belonging to some sort of higher order of great thinkers. His lectures were so rich in content, deeply engaging and always very tough. Asides from his academic prowess, he is a thoroughly warm and welcoming man who invests in his students at a personal as well as academic level. He's also a mean shot with a BB Gun (but that's another story).
In some ways I have felt that Max is a bit of an unsung hero of NT scholarship. He is not as well published and widely known as some of the contributors to this celebratory volume. I would imagine few, for example, have not at some point encountered Gordon Fee's massive book on the Spirit (God's empowering presence) in the course of NT studies or theology. Max's mighty book 'Power from on hight - Spirit in Luke Acts' is perhaps not so well known, and I rarely see his more accessible volume 'The Holy Spirit and Spiritual gifts' made reference to. This is, quite frankly, a disaster. I've not read the former, but his undergraduate pitched book HSSG is so blindingly brilliant I think any student or pastor should buy it immediately and read and re-read it. Max's writing is dense - each sentence requires considerable effort to fully appreciate, yet it is never victim of poor writing. Rich in content and remarkably lucid and un-pretentious. The content of HSSG is highly compelling - it offers a thoroughly considered position on pneumatology in the NT and with respect to the work of the Spirit today. Not only should it be read for its content, but also as an example of how to write a good book. I'm very easily irritated by poor writing - as I currently chew through the mass of recent literature on the theological interpretation of Scripture (which incidentally Max has published on) I find myself confronted again and again by poor writing - incoherent sentences, no clear point or train of thought, gaping holes in arguments, terrible to non-existent referencing and the theological equivalent of management-speak (jargon that sounds awfully good but has no obvious relationship to real life or concrete solutions). Max's writing struck me as an undergraduate and remains a sterling example of how to write well.
Despite having said that Max is not so widely read as say, Don Carson, he is a constant presence in NT reference volumes, journals, and essay volumes. Some of his more recent contributions have been directed towards the problem of bridging New Testament Studies and Theology (see his volume 'Between Two Horizons' co-ed. with Joel Green). This is a crucial and current discussion and I for one am jolly glad voices as sound as Max's are involved in furthering the cause (especially as a bunch of the literature isn't very good, as already mentioned).
Anyway - I look forward to getting this new volume and working through the essays from an amazing list of contributors. It was on amazon for over £30 and seems to have disappeared. I imagine it won't come cheap, but you ultimately get what you pay for.
L
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