Farewell...(Sort of)

As some of you may know, GravyBoat has a rabidly casual readership that, at its peak, reached well into the ones. However, despite ambitious plans to the contrary, I took most of the summer and fall off from blogging to give the other writers on the site a chance to grow. Turns out there AREN’T any other writers on the site, so here I am coming back to you all a little ashamed at having abandoned you so abruptly.

To make up for it, I’m moving the blog to a new, easier-to-remember address. No longer do you need to type in the long and unwieldy “gravyboatstayinthenow” if you’re looking for armchair musings on politics, art, religion, and pop culture. Instead, just visit GravyBoat.WordPress.com.

Most of the classic GravyBoat posts from yesteryear have made their way over to the new place (although some of the videos are going to take a little while longer to get up and running), so you can peruse them at your leisure.

I’m still working on the site, putting together sub-pages, finding the right layout and the right shade of orange to really capture that badly home-made gravy we all remember from horrible, horrible Thanksgivings past. However, you won't find any new content here at blogspot. Bear with me as I put the finishing touches on the new place, enjoy yourself, leave a comment, and above all, “Stay in the now!”

Presidential Candidates and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea

I snapped awake sometime before four o’clock this morning, and my first thought was that I was going to have to vote for a write-in candidate come November.

Sen. Barack Obama has said that he wants to expand federal funding for faith-based social initiatives. Under Obama’s plan, which was announced this summer, funding for such projects would be increased to over $500 million per year, delivered in the form of grants to churches, and on-the-ground religious institutions. The money (and accompanying training) is meant to expand the neighborhood organizations’ ability to provide social services to their communities. Groups receiving grants would be precluded from proselytizing in any program funded with federal money, and from hiring with discrimination in regards to religious affiliation.

Putting aside the question of where the funding will come from (his position paper offers ideas but no hard numbers on the subject), from a Christian perspective, this is a horrible idea. Too many churches and para-church community ministries already run impersonal “outreach programs” rather than sincerely and humbly serving their neighbors.

During the 2006 primaries, I was working for a gubernatorial candidate and often campaigned for him at various central-Brooklyn events. One Saturday, I was visiting a series of block parties to make announcements, distribute literature, and talk with local residents. Several of the block parties I visited that day were sponsored by churches, and at one of them the church was giving away bags of staple foods to people in the neighborhood who couldn’t afford it for themselves.

I was sitting at the food distribution table and speaking with the pastor of the church when an anxious-looking man walked up and muttered something inaudible over the music and the shouts of the children.

“What?” the pastor asked. Again, the man muttered. “Do you want the food?” He nodded. “Have a seat, show me your ID.”

While the pastor took the man’s ID, recorded some information, and picked out a bag for him, I watched the man quietly. Looking at his face, his feelings were painfully plain: shame, guilt, failure, and helplessness. I’m tempted to say “emasculation.” This man was broken, and utterly ashamed to be himself.

Not once did the pastor look him in the eyes.

I’m very young, but I really can’t imagine that I will be forgetting the look on that man’s face or the bizarre mix of disgust and indignation and pity and love that swelled up in me when I saw the way the pastor dismissed him. Just feeding people or giving them job training or giving kids classwork over the summer isn’t enough. That man didn’t just need food, he needed to know that he was worth that food. He needed to know that he was loved. He needed to be told that he had inherent dignity as one made in God’s image.

Too few of our churches are active in showing real mercy to the downtrodden around them. Out of those that do, too many do it out of duty rather than love. Churches accepting money and a muzzle not only tells the church community that the government is going to relieve them of the biblical injunction to pour out their blessings for the sake of others, it prevents them from serving living water and the bread of life to those who need it most, those for whom it was given in the first place.

John McCain offers a similar plan, but without preventing the recipient organizations from hiring with discrimination toward religious affiliation, but that still doesn’t address the most flawed part of this proposal: churches that become dependent on the government cease to be a prophetic counter-culture. They stop being churches, and start becoming institutions of the civic religion.

I make no secret of my distaste for the pandering, Darwinian policies and deceptive general election campaign that Sen. John McCain, who throughout my teens and twenties has been an intelligent and usually-principled political figure, is now advocating and running. It’s a betrayal of everything I expected from him: honest, independent thought.

That said, if Sen. Obama is going to move forward with the plan he has said would be the “moral center of his administration,” I can not support his vision of government.

Cressbeckler it is, then:


Old, Grizzled Third-Party Candidate May Steal Support From McCain

From The Desk Of Gotham City Mayor Anthony Garcia...

Hey folks!

Don't ask me how, but I recently got my hands on a staff-only memo from the mayor of Gotham City to his senior staff. Given how much national attention Gotham has been garnering this summer, I figured it would provide some interesting insight into the political life of one of our country's most dire cities.

###

FROM THE DESK OF GOTHAM CITY MAYOR ANTHONY GARCIA

Memorandum: For Senior Staff Only

It has been two months since the murder of District Attorney Harvey Dent.

We’ll excuse for a moment the fact that this is the second District Attorney to have been murdered in a year (though, believe me, we’ll be taking that up with Commissioner Gordon in short order) and instead focus on simple steps that must be taken to refocus our priorities and political strategy in light of what the departed has left undone.

As I’m sure you’ve read in the papers, philanthropist Bruce Wayne was recently called into city hall for questioning. Wayne threw a “fundraiser” for District Attorney Dent on the evening of Commissioner Loeb and Judge Surrillo’s murder, and the questioning was regarding any correlation said political event, which was reportedly interrupted by the Joker and accompanied by the death of a police officer, may have had with the deaths of District Attorney Dent and Assistant District Attorney Rachel Dawes.

According to Mr. Wayne’s own testimony, and the testimony of a Russian ballet dancer whose passport is being frozen until all suspicion is cleared, Wayned persuaded Dent to accept the fundraiser even three years out from re-election by telling him, “One fundraiser with my friends, and you’ll never need another cent.”

This exposes a massive liability in Gotham City’s electoral process: namely, the complete lack of oversight of campaign finance laws and donation limits. The late Mr. Dent managed to give us an 18-month window of reduced crime in which we can pursue other policy initiatives. I am calling a three-day strategy session for this weekend in order to discuss how to best push forth an aggressive campaign oversight package.

I know that this has been a stressful few months, and I know that introducing the concept of campaign oversight to Gotham’s political life may be unpopular with our colleagues, but I feel that if we start flirting with the idea of not allowing Sal Maroni and Carmine Falcone to funnel unlimited amounts of cash into the pockets of any campaign they please, maybe there would be fewer public officials in this state (which, to be honest—this is embarrassing—I still haven’t been able to identify) who seem to legislate with the mob’s best interest at heart.

However, one of the primary difficulties we will face in terms of public opinion is how to keep the importance of a campaign oversight package in the forefront of people’s minds in the wake of the significant across-the-board increase in corporate and personal tax liability necessary to cover incidental budget expenses that have arisen since the emergence of the Bat-man:

- $79 billion in public property damage
- $100 billion in partial public compensation for landmark private property damage
- 100% increase in SWAT team salaries
- 50% increase in MCU officer salaries
- 30% increase in all other law enforcement salaries
- 25% increase in across-the-board hiring for all police precincts
- 30% increase in hiring for precincts 7, 35, 61, 77, and 78 in the Narrows
- 135% increase in expenses related to clearing of traffic accidents
- The still-delayed estimate on the repair of monorail and utility centers

Please start brainstorming ideas for communication strategy and come prepared with a short list of key members of the city council we can safely approach to be political cover. I think Councilmember Cobblepot may be willing.

Amy Hempel

I ran into Amy Hempel this evening.  As usual, she radiated graciousness.  Also as usual, and maybe this is just her talent influencing my perception, she was absolutely stunning.  We made small talk for a few minutes about various topics before continuing on our ways, but the encounter got me thinking about perspective in fiction.

Hempel makes no secret that for her, composing fiction begins with voice (and a good last line).  After spending so much time reading her work, along with that of Lydia Davis, George Saunders, and Sam Lipsyte I'm convinced that one of the reasons I find so much other contemporary fiction hard to engage is that there is so little voice.  Yes, it's true that many of the authors I just listed write primarily in the first person.  Maybe that has something to do with the degree of intimacy they seek with their characters, maybe it's more about the fact that they are just in love with the way their characters sound.  Either way, though, writers like Jane Avrich prove that third-person reportorial fiction can be just as engaging, whether it openly features opinion and personality (as many of Fitzgerald's better stories did) or not. 

A few months ago, I started reading Adam Haslett's You Are Not A Stranger Here, but I had to toss it aside after two or three stories.  Nothing about the language drew me in, leaving to the characters and the plot the work of engaging me.  Sadly, they weren't up to the task.  Compare it to a band with serviceable lead and percussion sections, but whose rhythm section has decided to sit one song out: the song is going to sound off-kilter, feel less catchy, be less powerful.  

The elements of a fiction (indeed of any piece of art) need to work in concert with one another if the piece is to be successful.  While Amy Hempel says that plot is the last thing she thinks about, there are clearly definite plots to all of her stories.  What she is adept at doing is giving us a snippet of that plot and bringing up the volume on all the details--ensuring that we hear the way that every note in the snippet interacts with every other note--so that we can hear the whole plot playing out in just those few moments.

It may have spoiled me for anything else, but I love her for it.

For No Good Reason

Five Things to Love About LOST, Day One

Well, today I kick off a (hopefully) week-long series, Five Things to Love About LOST.

Before we start, let's get a few things straightened out:

First, there will likely be a few groups of people I refer to. "The Survivors" are a group of 40-odd characters who survived the crash of a commercial flight from Sydney to Los Angeles and are now awaiting rescue on an as-yet-unnamed island somewhere in the Pacific. I might also call them "The Castaways," because "The Survivors" is probably going to get boring. "The Natives" are a mysterious group of people who were already on the island and who the survivors understand to be malevolent kidnappers. On the show, they are called "The Others," which has obvious sociological implications. There are other characters that may come up, but I can explain them as they come up, and with one exception, they are only significant in their relationship to the survivors and the natives.

I'm warning you up front: every entry in this series will contain spoilers. If you aren't caught up with the show and plan on watching it eventually, skip this. Seriously. I don't want to ruin the fun. We're on the honor system here.

Today's topic: The Fact That We're Four Seasons In And Still Don't Really Know What The Show Is About.

Whenever I talk with someone who isn't familiar with the show, the first question they always ask is something along the lines of, "How long can a show about people stuck on an island be interesting?" That's a hard question to answer, because LOST stopped being about people stuck on an island and whether or not they are going to get rescued less than halfway through the first season.

The scene: The camp's resident hunter (the mysterious, miraculous John Locke) and his inept acolyte (island prettyboy Boone) are walking through the jungle, looking for a survivor who has been kidnapped by a native. Locke tosses Boone a flashlight. Boone fumbles the catch, and the flashlight hits the ground with a loud, metallic clang that changes the premise of the show.

The two freeze, look at one another incredulously for a moment ("What was that?" Boone asks. "Steel," Locke replies.) and then start sweeping away the dirt and vines on the ground to reveal a hatch door, sealed and locked from the inside, with no handle. For the rest of the season, the two secretly work to excavate the hatch, and after they find that it is immense and must lead to some kind of underground facility, they begin to try to open it. While the rest of the survivors are hiding from the natives, building rafts, and overcoming their deep-set guilt, shame, fears, and neuroses as each hang-up is conveniently personified in events happening around them, the question the audience really has is no longer, "Will they get off the island?" but rather, "What's in the hatch?"

Over the course of the next three seasons, the show evolves (organically!) from a weekly morality play dressed up as a psychological thriller about surviving against the unknown into a domestic drama into a military story into a Grecian-style epic about industrial espionage and quantum physics in the face of the gods.

By the time we learn that some of the survivors do, in fact, get off the island, and start seeing what their off-island lives are like, not only do we not even care that they got off, but we are beginning to realize that our main characters aren't even significant to the real story driving the plot. In fact, the showrunners have said that while they have always known how the series would begin and how the series would end, they've given themselves leeway in the route the story will take to get there. This flexibility comes naturally from your audience not realizing how irrelevant the characters they are most invested in actually are.

The fact that the writers waited until the start of the third season to introduce the real central character, and then waited another year before beginning to reveal the important role he plays in the "real story" of the show, speaks incredibly well of their patience and of their trust in the audience's attention span. I know that there are people who will say that they were making it up as they went along, but it's easy to see that the seeds for everything--I mean everything--that has developed during seasons two, three, and four were planted during season one.

And it all started with a dropped flashlight.

And Now, A Taste Of Things To Come.

Well, now that we’re more than a month into the summer, I figure it’s time to roll out an ambitious slate of topics for summertime posts.

I’ve set a(n arbitrary) goal of thirty posts for the summer, assuming that the summer ends with the beginning of October:

First up is the hard-hitting five-part series Five Things to Love About LOST. Like all great journalism, this series is going to contain spoilers—Upton Sinclair spoiled the meat industry, I’m just following in his footsteps. I swear, if this hastily-written, poorly-thought-out series of posts on a blog with a weekly readership that literally reaches into the ones and sometimes even beyond doesn’t win me a Pulitzer, I don’t know what will. (Sadly, ABC is considerably touchier about posting covert LOST clips on YouTube than they are about Sports Night, so I won’t be able to provide A/V aids.)

Next up is an idea that occurred to me as I was preparing to leave work this evening but that seems decent enough: a ten-part series re-visiting the movies that I most consistently list as my “top ten” and deciding if each one still deserves to be there or if it should be kicked to the curb, forced never to come ‘round here no more.

Also, starting this month, I’ll be introducing a new monthly series called Just As I Thought! Each month, I’ll be featuring a book, album, movie, or TV show that is exactly as bad as I thought it would be. (I wanted to kick this off with the latest movie from the director who inspired it, M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, but I think I’ve missed my chance to catch it in theaters.)

Those of you who paid attention in pre-calc may be able to see that I’ve only accounted for eighteen of the thirty posts. Well, my count is retro-active, so those two other posts I did in June count (though this one does not). That brings us to twenty, leaving plenty of space for me to deliver all of the lightweight political and theological commentary you’ve long-since given up hope that I’d be producing. (In fact, in one of those rare instances in which I don’t have to inject my faith into a political story, I’ll be back within 24 hours with my thoughts on Mr. Obama's terrible idea.)

I’d also like to commit one of those posts to the first draft of a new short story in order to get feedback, but I don’t know if I have the discipline necessary to get a draft out in the middle of what promises to be a busy couple months. Until next time, vote Edwards/Huckabee in 2008!