Tonight's showing has been rescheduled for Sunday at 1:30 PM.
SUNDAY!?!?
This really sucks.
We have the second showing of the week scheduled for tonight between 6:30-7:30. We do not have any other Intel on it, nor have we heard a peep about Wednesday's showing.
This is soooooo hard...
The other book about zealots I read was on a much lighter topic than religion, violence, polygamy and society: Scrabble.
The book “Word Freak” from Stefan Fatsis chronicles the author’s foray into competitive Scrabble. Initially, Fatsis (a Wall Street Journal reporter) had decided to cover competitive Scrabble from a human interest story – a get to know ‘em piece, but also one with a bit of “hey, look at these crazy obsessed folks” angle – and in the “walk a mile in a man’s shoes” idea, he begins playing competitively. And he gets hooked.
The book covers a couple of years of Fatsis’ obsession as he tries to climb the ladder towards the top ranks. He’s a good writer and his self-observations are pretty funny as he goes from smirking observer to obsessed insider. He interleaves his story with those of some of the more colorful players that he meets and gets to know. These folks are really savants – memorizing tens of thousands of words, and analyzing (and re-analyzing) game-strategy – as much as any chess champion. The ultimate back-handed compliment is “pretty good for a kitchen table player”. It's a really fun, easy read, and I recommend it for anyone that enjoys the game.
This has been especially fun for me since (as many of you know) I’ve been playing a fair amount of online Scrabble these days – the book was lent to me by a friend who routinely wipes the board with me. Fortunately, I’ve got enough other things going on in life that I probably won’t fall into a pit of obsession about just-one-thing (like the players described in the book), but memorizing a few word lists couldn’t hurt, right?
* I know, I know – there’s a DLS in there and if you play all seven letters you get an extra 50 points, but I was going for simple.
I realized that when I was traveling this past weekend that two books that I had read back-to-back possessed a common element: they both* were about groups of people that are outside the mainstream of society and had completely dedicated to the activities within their respective communities. Fanatics. Extremists. Zealots.
In “Under The Banner of Heaven”, Jon Krakauer describes the founding of the Mormon faith, the growth of the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS), and a particular splinter sect, the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints). The book interweaves the historical research with the details of a brutal 1984 double murder in which two brothers (FLDS members) murdered their sister-in-law and her infant daughter because (they claimed) of a revelation from God. Whoa.
Now, San Diego has a large Mormon population and most of what I know of Mormonism (and its fundamentalist off-shoots) comes from HBO’s “Big Love”, which while entertaining is probably not exactly 100% based-in-fact. (Though curiously, I recognized several plots from the show in the accounts of modern FLDS communities and incidents…) I was glad to get a less fictionalized account, though Krakauer was definitely trying to sell books by staying focused on the prevalent violence and prurient aspects of polygamy associated with the FLDS.
I’m sure the book caused a firestorm in the LDS community, but I found the book both educational and at times riveting. I thought it was best though when it forced the reader to consider their preconceptions about faith and society. For example, what distinguishes a “cult” from a “religion”? When does a faith-based code trump civil authority (lots of “Law & Order” episodes there…)? Why do we consider someone that says God talks to them as crazy, when billions of people believe they communicate with God everyday through prayer?
* I’d thought to juxtapose the two in a single post, but the content didn’t seem to mesh well, so I’ll try it with adjacent posts.
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]]>Next weekend is Comic Con in San Diego and I've got tickets for all four days and the preview night on Wednesday where, assuming we get into town on time, we'll get to see the pilot for the new JJ Abrahams show "Fringe" months before everyone else.
We booked a hotel room in May and it was already too late, just about everything was booked solid; we were looking at a hotel online, deciding whether or not to stay there and when we refreshed the page five minutes later it was booked.
In the end we found a hotel about 30 miles from downtown, not a bad drive considering our former commutes to work (hers 60+ miles one way, mine 30) but far enough to be inconvenient too.
A few weeks later Office Wife said that we could stay with her for a couple days before their friend from out of town came to stay with them.
This is where the fun starts...
I called the hotel to change our reservation.
The automated attendant picked up and said "press 1 for blah blah blah,
press 2 for reservations, press..." I pressed 2, I needed to change my
reservation.
After being on hold where the "celebrity" hotel spokesperson actually read part of "A Tale of Two Cities" in lieu of hold music a man named Thomas picked up.
I explained the situation to him and he said "Oh yeah, you'll need to press 0 for that."
"But this is the number for reservations, I pressed 2. I'm trying to change my reservation."
"Oh yeah, it makes sense that you did that but just call back and press 0."
Begrudgingly I did so.
I pressed 0, the phone rang once and then someone picked up.
It was Thomas again! I couldn't believe it.
"Um, I just talked to you."
"Oh yeah, I needed to change desks so I had you call back."
Had he been able to see my face
he might not have been so nonchalant with his lazy explanation for why
I had to call back.
]]>Show us a bird native to your habitat.
This little guy was just on our front porch this week.
I called the cops, of course.
From Airplane II:
Mr. Hammen: And how about the time we hopped in the family car and drove all the way to Woodstock?
Mrs. Hammen: Oh, that was a time. You got hold of that bad acid and didn't come down for two weeks, you kept telling everyone that you were Jesus Christ and then you jumped off a roof 'cause you thought you could fly!
Mr. Hammen: What a bummer.
Mrs. Hammen: No shit.
So, I went to the gas station this morning to fill my car and realized one thing I really Really REALLY dislike is the invention of the video-embedded gas pump. Does everyone have these??
When you activate the pump, the screen lights up and a “host” appears and starts “Welcome to Shell…” and then goes into a spiel extolling their wonderful $4.50/gal product.
Now this wouldn’t be so bad I suppose (how much white noise is there in our lives?) – but the truly maddening thing is when there’s 10 pumps all going off at different times.. “Welcome to Shell…” “…better than other low quality gasolines..” “Welcome to Shell…” “…keeping tires properly inflated can lead to…” “Welcome to Shell…” “…one way Shell is helping the envir….” “Welcome to Shell…” – talk about maddening!
There’s a circle of Hell full of these things, I’m sure.
