Pop Culture Roundup

By
I started re-reading Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor, but I'll have more to write about that in a few days. I was reading All That's Holy, an account of a road trip to encounter a wide variety of faiths. I may return to it, but I've been meaning to re-read Leaving Church and this felt like the right time.

We watched Definitely, Maybe this past week. Ryan Reynolds plays a soon-to-be-divorced dad telling his daughter the story of how he and her mom met. The bulk of the story takes place in the early '90s, as Reynolds' character works for the first Clinton presidential campaign in New York City. His love life swirls between three women: his college sweetheart (Elizabeth Banks), her former roommate and friend (Rachel Weisz), and a free spirit also working on the campaign (Isla Fisher). As he tells this story to his daughter, he changes names to get her to guess which one turns out to be her mom. There's also a humorous early-'90s sentimentality, such as references to Kurt Cobain and the rise of cellphones. It's a cute story.

Entourage seems to be treading water at the moment. One of the main overarching stories is Eric's on-again, off-again relationship with an old girlfriend. A few weeks ago, he finally got fed up with waiting for her and has been with one of his neighbors ever since. So this past week, his ex once again pops into the picture as the co-organizer of a celebrity golf tournament (Hey look, it's Mark Wahlberg and Tom Brady and Jeffrey Tambor!), where the head of a major management company asks Eric to come work for him. Eric turns him down after finding out that his ex set it up, accusing her of trying to make him "acceptable" before coming back to him. This doesn't go very well. And this has been one of the main stories this season. I thought it'd be more of "the boys are branching out," but they all seem to be sticking pretty close to Vince and his success.

From around the web, here's another graph from GraphJam that I thought was timely:

song chart memes
see more Funny Graphs








Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: The Awakening of Hope by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

By
Image
As a pastor, I read a lot of theology. I read it in preparation for my sermon each week. I read it while planning Bible study. I read it while preparing for my next spiritual direction class. I read it to stay caught up on new trends developing in response to society and culture. And occasionally, I read it for fun.

There come points, however, when I get sick of theology, especially in its abstract form. How many different ways can I read basically the same things about God's love, grace, forgiveness, presence, and on and on and on? It all blends together and, quite frankly, gets boring. There's only so much of it that I can take, especially if it doesn't seem very tied down to something tangible; some way it's being lived out in real time. I'll admit that reviewing the last book by Doug Reed was difficult for that reason: I'd hit one of those points where I was tired of bodiless ideas about God.

The irony of such bodiless ideas might be obvious to some: we cl…
Read more

Book Review: The Silent Years by Alan W.C. Green

By
Image
It's not a terribly new or original thing to attempt to envision what Jesus' life was like before he began his public ministry. Before describing this 1- to 3-year period where he begins teaching, healing, and scandalizing the establishment leading to his death, the Gospels only provide a few fantastic infancy accounts and one episode as a 12-year-old during a visit to Jerusalem. The rest is left up to imaginative questioning: How did he discover his identity or his sense of call? What was life like for him growing up?

As mentioned, trying to answer questions like these is not a new idea. Dating back to the first few centuries of the church, there are non-canonical accounts of Jesus as a boy such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which feature Jesus discovering and using his powers in selfish and reckless ways like an X-Men Origins story. In more modern times, popular authors such as Anne Rice have made their own attempts at such storytelling, and Mel Gibson added a few imagin…
Read more