I'm sitting here writing with one cat licking the walls and the other trying to make off with Stephanie's iPod, both signs that they are hungry. Stephanie is at work, her second shift this week. She has been doing a lot of reading most days to make up for lost time last week. She puts on her skinny jeans and faces the world like a champ. She even rocked an interview for a promotion earlier this morning.

I've been back to work as well, and was excited this week to purchase for the school a new MacPro with a 23" Apple Cinema Display, Final Cut Studio, and Adobe CS3. The computer comes tomorrow. My friend (and boss) Matt said it was an answer to prayer. I know what I would trade this computer for, but I don't think it helps anyone to say it. It's just that maybe I could have been clearer in prioritizing my requests.

This weekend I take my new student chaplains on a retreat to bond and plan for the upcoming school year. They don't know that my real desire is to follow the plan that Jesus outlines for the disciples he sent out: don't take any extra clothes, don't take any money, just go and minister and find someone to stay with in each town you visit. If no one offers you hospitality, then go on to the next town. If something goes wrong, I will certainly be fired, possibly go to jail, and the school will be sued.

I guess that's why Matt told me I couldn't do the retreat that way. At the end of our conversation about security, control, personal responsibility, and faith, I looked him in the eye and said, "So what you're telling me is that I can't take Jesus at his word."

Then, just for comic effect, I yelled, "I quit!" and stormed out of his presence, straight to my car and left for the day without another word. He has called a few times, but I have been too busy to answer. I am guessing he wants to tell me how impressively funny it all was.

The thing that was funny, really, was that when I told him, "So what you're telling me is that I can't take Jesus at his word," I don't think I was really talking to him.

It's more on the tragic funny side of comedy, now that I think of it.

Why does it feel like going back to normal is the same as acting like we never wanted this baby? And why does it feel like faith means pretending like we get it--life and why things happen the way they do? And why does Jesus say we aren't worthy of him if we don't hate our father, mother, wife, and husband?

Or child.

Maybe we're not quite back to normal.

How have I never heard about this movie until this year? I actually discovered it by a happy mistake. I was sitting in the lobby of my chiropractor's office, waiting, and playing Tetris on my phone. I couldn't see the TV but could hear what was going on, and what I heard was the pleasantly familiar voice of Dean Jones talking about using NASA monkeys to pick olives from trees on an olive farm in France. What the?? I forgot about it and forgot to ask the receptionists about it, but months later finally remembered to look up Dean Jones and found this movie. I don't know how I managed to see all of the other kooky 1960s flicks like the Misadventures of Merlin Jones but missed this one.

Well, maybe I know how. It's not necessarily as good as the other movies, but is still entertaining in its own right. Dean Jones plays an American man who inherits an olive farm in France and moves there to enter the olive business. He was formerly a space monkey trainer and buys his old trainees from NASA to employ them as olive pickers on his farm. The first person he meets out there is none other than a priest played by Maurice Chevalier. The priest encourages and aids him when the town's other business men plot to take down his monkey-picking business because they are afraid of the competition. And there's a girl. Of course there's a girl.

As far as plots go, this is perhaps the most bizarre one I've seen come from Disney. Yet, I'm thinking kids would probably be entertained by it, especially since the monkeys (actually chimps) eventually get put in dresses (yes, they're all female). Add to that a couple of pleasant songs from father Chevalier, and it all comes together.

Let's talk about Dean Jones. First off, it's frightening that when you look up Dean Jones on imdb, the first result is not the actor featured in several classic films--it's a makeup artist. Jones seems so young to me in this movie, but looking it up I see that he did The Ugly Dachshund and That Darn Cat before this one, so perhaps I just thought of him as being older when I was a younger person. He has a friendly face and great screen presence. Honestly, only an actor like him could get away with making the plot of this movie seem somewhat believable.

While the movie suffers from some slow moments and a general "what the heck?" sentiment from the audience, I had a good enough time watching it and am glad I found out about it. It won't rank as high as some of the other classics from this Disney time period, but I'd watch it again, and the songs are darn catchy, even when they're sung in French.

I wasn't planning on seeing this story of Truman Capote because I had already gotten my (much enjoyed) fill of his story from the movie Capote and from reading his novel. I had a hard time envisioning Toby Jones as Mr. Capote as well. But, good reviews won me over and I checked it out. In the end, I think I'm glad I did.

If you're wondering why two movies came out about the same thing at almost the same time, it's only because they both feature the same man. In fact, they are different movies with different focuses. While the first really seems to capture the essence of the story of In Cold Blood, I think this one captures the essence of Capote himself, and his relationship with Perry Smith is looked at more deeply. Not to say that Philip Seymour Hoffman didn't deserve his Oscar OR that Infamous is a truer depiction of Capote's story.

Douglas McGrath wrote the screenplay for Infamous, and just as Capote himself took true events and brought his own light and color to them, McGrath takes facts and messes with them a bit more to give his theories on Capote's true emotions. Psychologically, this is a more interesting movie because of the capote/Smith dynamic. McGrath takes a look at the effects of Smith's death on Capote. If you listen to the commentary, it's quite interesting.

However, structurally I find this movie more flawed. While the sets and costumes are beautiful and there is a stunning cast (Toby Jones, Daniel Craig, Sigourney Weaver, Isabella Rossellini, Gwyneth Paltrow, Juliet Stevenson, Hope Davis, and a suprisingly refreshing Sandra Bullock as Harper Lee), the way it's set up is sometimes irritating. I felt like the story didn't really begin until Truman and Harper set forth towards Kansas. Truman's social friends are definitely an important aspect of who he is, but the way in which the movie introduces them is irritating - through mock interviews (even with titles on the screen that introduce who they are), sort of like a documentary. This structure begins the movie and seems to be resorted to when the story needs explaining that isn't able to be easily conveyed through normal acting (see also: narration in Flags of Our Fathers). Honestly, every time the movie broke to these moments, I lost interest and felt jerked out of the more genuine emotions that were being conveyed by Jones himself.

I'd also like to note that Daniel Craig is proving to be much more promising than I had expected. I liked him in Layer Cake, Munich, and Casino Royale, but never pegged him for a deeper role like he has in Infamous. His portrayal of Perry Smith is dead-on, and he's actually almost unrecognizable at first because of his changed hair and eye color. The psychology of Perry Smith is an interesting one, and Craig is able to handle the many aspects of his personality, being a scary criminal, a victim of poor upbringing, and a man who could draw in the love of a prominent author.

All in all, I'm very glad to have given this one a chance. While it has its flaws, I think the performances of the main characters make it worthwhile, as well as McGrath's interesting perspective on Capote's personal life.

Phew! And with that, I just might be ready to start up my Best Of list for 2006. Haha. I just remembered the other day that I never put it together.

Ric and I saw The Simpsons Movie at the theater uptown. Wow, that theater is still in classic mode, even though it has stadium seating. The sound quality was lacking, but not enough to be bothersome, and we had a good time.

The movie opens up with a great observation: the movie's audience is paying money to see something they can normally see for free at home. I'm glad they got that out of the way right at the beginning, because that was one of the main reasons I was tempted to wait for the dollar theater. If you haven't seen it, I'd suggest waiting. It's not that the movie is bad - it's just not much more different than watching a really long episode of The Simpsons. Marge has questioned her relationship to Homer several times, and we've all seen Homer get people mad at him due to his ignorant behavior.

Speaking of which, the plot centers around Homer and his new pet pig, and in his laziness, Home dumps the pig's waste into Springfield's lake, which has finally reached its breaking point with the town's reckless dumping. Discovery of mutated animals causes the EPA to quarantine Springfield in a giant glass dome, and the whole town is ready to kill Homer for shutting them off from the outside world.

The story is funny, and there are plenty of treats for longtime Simpsons fans, who get to see references to older shows and have a glimpse of pretty much every resident of Springfield. Was it worth the wait, after all these years? Sure, I guess so. I love the show and was entertained by the movie, which certainly got a lot of laughs in our theater (my favorite line was Ned's quip about "baking up a batch of frownies"). It's worth a viewing, but since we do get to see it for free normally, I just wasn't wowed enough to feel like I should have spent a full ticket price on it. Eh. It was good, and I probably would have wasted the money on something like coffee, so I don't regret it.

I was just outside eating lunch with my son and daughter while listening to my iPod. Mae's "The Afterglow" came on, and my 2 1/2 year old son looked at me with an extremely serious look on his face and said, "This is a really good song, yeah," and nodded his head up and down. Then he began dancing in his chair.

A few months ago, I was listening to Eso-charis, which features somewhat growling vocals. He called it the Dino song, believing that a dinosaur was singing. Another time I was listening to an album called "Sideways Soul" by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the Dub Narcotic Sound System. Two songs featured the word "banana" in the title and the word was used throughout each song. Aidan asked me, "Are these guys monkeys?"

Yet another time, I had an L7 album on and he told me, "That guy is screaming." I shrugged my shoulders.

"It's actually a lady, but close enough," I replied.

So, as you saw on my last post I have been on a missions trip to Nairobi, Kenya for about the last three weeks. It was quite possibly one of the best experiences I have had in my whole life. It was just amazing.

Anyways now on to the trip itself.

We left on Monday June 18th, however with some flight problems we got there a day later than planned, and our actual first day of working was Thursday the 21st. That day we started out in a slum around Nairobi known as Mathare. Just go here and check out what has been happening in Mathare recently, as well as the type of place it is all the time.

The team and I worked at the Mathare Family Hope Center. Our first day there we were welcomed by each class. Most just sang a couple of songs and recited a Bible verse. They had great enthusiasm for what they were doing and seemed incredibly happy to see us there at the school with them. The most intriguing thing that I heard was a poem that was recited by the oldest class. It was a poem. Not a poem about flowers or trees or fields, but a poem on how to stay clean, healthy, and avoiding AIDS. I can't imagine anyone in the US saying or reciting this poem. However I thought it was a great tool to help the children there learn, and hopefully the poem will stick.

Of course the event which made me feel the most comfortable and the most accepted nothing that happened in a classroom, yet it was with a young boy who was probably about 2 years old, that I met outside the classrooms. He was named Bashir. He was the grandson of a 19 year old grandmother. His grandmother would take people in and take care of them and help out people who really needed help. I believe that she had 19 people that she had taken in to live with her. Bashir was one of them. I saw him outside and was introduced to him by Kathy, one of the missionaries my team was there to help, and I picked him up and carried him around to each of the classrooms we went to. I tried setting him down a few times, he didn't really like that, he really enjoyed being carried around by me. He was also very interested in the hair on my arms. However walking around with him allowed me to realize that despite many of my differences between the people there, that I could still be effective.

After going to the classes we took time and walked around the slum of Mathare. That was a humbling experience. I was walking through some of the poorest streets in the world. If of course you could call them streets, they were more like alleys. After getting off the "main road", which was nothing more than packed dirt, the allies were usually just wide enough between tin houses to fit one or two people through. We went through Mathare with social workers from the center, who find the family's with the greatest need, a very difficult task, and prayed for and with people in their houses. There I walked through the streets and being a mouth breather found it difficult to breath and felt sick. There was sewage everywhere and even at the Mathare "River" it was basically a river of sewage. Once again I realized I was in extreme poverty.

After visiting the classes and walking through the slum we prepared for our next day of work. We put the finishing touches on VBS for the next day, and we went back to where we were staying.

Vacation Bible school went well. While I only taught one lesson, I found my role to be very interesting. I was mainly in the Bible memorization part of the rotation. So I was in the one that was no fun at all. Yet the older children in the school memorized very fast. Which led to probably the most fun time of all. That being question time with Andy. The thing that the children seemed most fascinated with was the amount of hair I had on my arm. I answered why I had so much hair pretty often. Then again I was also surprised with the questions that they had about American politics. So I answered those as well. It was quite strange to see that the most famous candidate in Kenya was Barack Obama. Apparently his dad is Kenyan.

However the most interesting thing that happened during VBS was on the first day. I was working on a difficult craft with 4 year olds, and while we were doing the craft, the kids kept saying to me "Cha, Cha, Cha," and I was wondering what this word meant. I heard it for over and hour and a half directed at me. I was so confused and I was also wondering if I had been the only one who had heard this strange new word. So I asked the other members of my team what this strange Swahili word could be. They said they didn't know. So we tried looking it up in a dictionary, but to no avail. So we asked one of the workers at the school what it meant. We were told what it meant. It was short for teacher. Oh well.

Our time in Mathare ended when the Children did a farewell performance for us. It involved them painting their faces white and stuffing sweaters under their shirts to look like old me. It was funny, and we also danced.

After working in Mathare we moved onto the second part of our trip, in which we worked with New Life Homes. New Life Homes is an orphanage. It has several different homes in Kenya, however we were working in the main one in Nairobi. This was the most difficult part of the trip for me. Well at least the introduction to the Orphanage was difficult for me.

It is an odd thing about Kenyan Hospitals. They do not take care of babies. They are not equipped to take care of babies, they don't even have formula. They leave it up to the mother to take care of the baby. While that is a good idea in principle, it leaves much to be desired. For whatever reason, HIV/AIDS, poverty or any other reason, Mothers abandon there children in Kenya, which is against the law. New Life Homes brings abandoned children in. They are taken care of and given a home. Its pretty cool. New Life has space for about 50 children in Nairobi and they do whatever they can to keep all their beds full.

However my team had a few different goals with New Life. The first was to paint the inside of a house which is called "The Ark". The Ark is for children above the age of two who are "not adoptable". Their reasons for this can be anywhere from being HIV positive to blindness or autism. However they were still really cute kids and they were all really excited about us painting their house. Of course there were a few problems, but we fixed them. We made the mistake of thinking there was only one color of paint to paint the walls with. However we were given paint to paint walls with and enamel and a latex which were soft white and a brilliant white for the ceiling. This eluded us, and thus we ended up painting a room brilliant white in our first 3 hours of working. It was alright though, we called it primer and redid the room the next day. The other problem we ran into after painting the walls. We told the children no to touch the walls. Of course this in its self was not a problem, but a problem was created by our command. One child said "Jaleena," who is blind, "uses the walls to walk around." Well I think she survived.

Nevertheless the children and their mother, the lady who is in charge of the house is their mother even though it is not recognized legally, were incredibly pleased with the house.

The last little bit we had at New Life, we spent just spending time with the Children at the orphanage. I tell you what, if you have never volunteered for working with kids age 0-2, you should. It was truly great to do so.

Lastly on our trip, we did go on a Safari. That was cool.

Links

Mathare Pictures
New Life Pictures
Safari Pictures