This last weekend Kelly's family came to Denver for the Easter weekend. We took a tour of the Celestial Seasonings tea factory in Boulder, visited Red Rocks amphitheater, and spent Saturday afternoon in downtown Denver. A good time was had by all.

Sunday night, Kelly, myself, and Jeff (Kelly's brother) went to go see The Devil and Daniel Johnston, at Jeff's suggestion. It is a documentary about musician Daniel Johnston. His biography on the film's website is a good reference to find out more about him. Before seeing the film, I knew only one song by him - a remake of "Unpack Your Adjectives" from the School House Rock! Rocks album.

The short of the story is that Daniel Johnston wanted to be a famous musician and recorded himself on tapes in his parent's basement. After joining the carnival, he ended up in Austin in the early 80s, became a local hero, and began to show signs of severe manic depression. Since then, his career has had several dramatic ups and downs.

The movie covers his life story up to present day, and benefits from the extensive footage that he shot, or had someone else shoot, of himself, as well as an audio diary he recorded onto cassettes. Much of his life seems improbable, and improbably sad, but seems to have at least become more stable. I would absolutely recommend seeing the movie should it be playing near you, or renting in when it comes out on DVD.

Since Sunday, I have listened to some of his music, and right now "Silly Love" is a favorite. It is one of three songs with the potential to make me cry.

So since I read the Da Vinci Code I started hearing about all these Christian groups that want to boycott the release of the upcoming film. The boycotts range from avoiding anything that has to do with the movie to going to see a different movie to sort of "cast an opposing vote" on the opening weekend. My problem with either of these is that a) if Christians don't see it, how can they know how to discuss it with non-Christians? and b) they were actually telling you WHICH movie to see instead of the Da Vinci Code, which sounded all too much like a perfect marketing scheme.

Then I heard about how Campus Crusade is doing this Da Vinci Quest thing. McDowell has released a book called The Da Vinci Code: A Quest for Answers, in which three college students see the movie and then decide to read the novel and research the ideas Dan Brown presented in his book. The Campus Crusade project aims to get as many copies of this book out there as possible so people can easily read for themselves what is actual fact or fiction in the Da Vinci Code, including the descriptions of places and artwork that Brown claims are completely factual but actually aren't.

To me, it's just a better idea to put out something like this than to try and boycott it or go see another movie. The Da Vinci Code simply gets people started thinking, and I don't think the average Joe would actually do any research, so having a book like this where a ton of research is summed up in a mere 100 pages is just right. Christians and non-Christians alike have an easy-to-read (okay, so easy it's absolutely lacking in literary finesse) book that tells us what is fact and where Dan Brown uses dramatic license to make his ideas flow together by giving us a little bit of a history lesson. It's good for either discussing or reading on one's own.

Like I said, McDowell ain't no Shakespeare. Some of the characters' dialogue can be painful or ridiculous, but the book gets the ideas across clearly. I think the book coming out at the same time as the discovery of the gospel of Judas is perfect timing, because this book explains about Gnostic gospels in its discussion of the gospel of Mary. Actualy, I think the book could have been even longer to discuss a few more ideas, but I understand that they needed to make it a quick read, and the most important ideas were covered sufficiently.

Anyway, a good little resource, which only costs four bucks, so it was worth the read for me.

We haven't talked about this for a while, but today I heard a very informative and balanced report on China's internet censorship on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer podcast (feed). The report talks about a company called UltraReach that provides technology to Chinese citizens to get around the Great Firewall. I'm sure they use technology that's similar to what Brendan and I used to give him full access to the web. The report includes a round table discussion on the issue. They deal with the impact of companies like Google and their choice to cooperate with the Chinese government. You can subscribe to the feed or download the mp3 file directly.

I saw this at The Beat

Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon have created a comic book adaptation of the 9/11 Commission Report, including an objective and factual account of the terrorist attacks.

That is a very intriguing idea. They apparently take advantage of the graphic medium to represent events happening simultaneously, making the Commission's findings easier to understand. This is a reminder of the great untapped potential comics have for conveying information. The Army has found through research that technical manuals are more easily understood when written in a comic book format. Will Eisner spent many years during the middle of his career creating such manuals for the United States government. But I've never heard of someone actually adapting a public-domain historical document into comics to be read by the general population. I'm definitely interested in reading it.

This is NWS by any stretch of the imagination.

http://www.mostweirdporn.com/bizarre-weird-funny-porn/chinese-sex-education/

And it's actually Japanese, not Chinese.

Still, it looks more like a game show than anything else.

My Boring Ass Life » 2006 » March

In respnonse to recent tabloid articles about Jay's exploits, Kevin Smith has written an extensive 9 part article about Jason's journey through drug use and his eventual sobriety. I had heard a good chunk of this tale at a Q&A a few years ago but to read the whole story is both heartbreaking and inspiring. I had met Jason once when he was on drugs. It was pretty darn sad. To be able to attend his Welcome Home party many years later and see him totally sober and stay that way has really been encouraging to me. No, I'm not a drug addict but we all face adversity an it's safe to say that Mewes has faced an extremely enourmous amount. To see him not give up on his quest for sobriety and finally achieve his goal, while still admitting he still has challenges to face really puts things into perspective.

*Standard Kevin Smith language warning applies. Nooch.

Snap.