Amazing Trivia for October

Back in 1976 I watched a made-for-TV movie titled The Lonliest Runner which was the story of a  fourteen year old bed-wetter who ran home from school every day to retrieve the wet sheet his mother had hung from his bedroom window to punish him. He races to get there before any of his friends pass the house.  All this running helps him become a gold medalist in the Olympics.

The kicker is... At the end of the movie the adult Olympian is played by Little Joe Cartwright, Michael Landon, from Bonanza.  (... and Little House)   Turns out, Michael Landon wrote the script and directed the movie.  Turns out, the script was autobiographical.

Michael Landon (born Eugene Maurice Orowitz) wet the bed till he was 14, and his mother would display his unwashed bed sheets on her clothes line for the entire neighborhood to see.  Landon ran track and field in high school and performed well enough to win a scholarship to USC.

I'm pretty sure that everyone named Eugene Maurice wets the bed.

Amazing.

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Sununu Trips Over Black Stereotype

Last night on Hannity, John Sununu said, "Look, let me tell you what the big problem with this president is in my opinion. He is absolutely lazy and detached from his job. When he doesn't go and attended 60% of the detailed presidential daily briefings that come from the CIA and thinks he can just skim it..."

I think we will hear calls of racism over this statement.  You don't tread even close to black stereotypes these days, much less come right out and use one, no matter how on target it is.  And by the time the dust settles, people may think Sununu called Obama a porch monkey.

You can call a black liberal president careless... negligent... imprudent... inattentive.  But you must not call him lazy.

Note:  The term porch monkey is not a part of my upbringing or Hoosier societal experience.  I'm sure I read it on Black and Right or Hip Hop Republican... two interesting Black Conservative sites.

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Airport 2012

Back in the spring of 1970 I took my girlfriend to see Airport at the Markland Mall Theater in Kokomo.  When the bomb went off on the 707, she sunk her fingernails into my arm.

Airport was the best disaster movie ever made.  Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno... None came close to Airport.

One thing all these movies had in common were the subplots... Stories beneath the main story that made you care about the characters. 

All that to say this:  I look at the world, our economy, the decay of our morals and culture, and I feel as if my life is just a subplot in a disaster movie. 

The bomb will detonate.  But like everyone else, I'm puttering around in my own little subplot, trying not to think about it.

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I believe someone from Harvard claimed this was Jesus' Marriage License, or something like that.  My gut tells me that this is actually Obama's Kenyan Birth Certificate and the Lefties at Harvard are trying to confuse us.

As a Christian, someone suggesting that Jesus had a wife makes me very angry.  In fact, some Christian friends and I are driving to Massachusetts tomorrow  to burn Harvard's Embassy.  It seems the reasonable thing to do.  We'll make sure the Dean is safely out before we light it up... We're not animals.

Allah oxen free.

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The Spirit of Aunt Miranda

I grew up watching Shirley Temple movies and one of the best was Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. 

Rebecca's Aunt Miranda evidently had heard enough radio to know that it challenged the traditions, beliefs, and general way of life of God-fearing people.  She said, "I know what you show people are, a no-good lot! I took Rebecca out of that unwholesome atmosphere, and I'm not going to put her back into it! She's staying on the farm where I can keep an eye on her."

I've often wondered if the God-fearing people of the 1920's and 30's were concerned about the effects that radio and movies had upon the young of that day.  I wonder if they sensed a gradual decrease in God-fearing and a general increase in world-revering as movies and radio grew in influence.

This morning a little girl, maybe nine years old, was baptized after the worship service.  She was the very picture of innocence.  But by the time she graduates High School, she will have logged thousands upon thousands of hours watching network television whose content would cause Aunt Miranda to have a stroke... And this 18 year old will most likely leave home with a world-view more akin to the writers in Hollywood than the writers of the Bible. 

Oddly, I think that is OK with just about everybody I know.

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Quote for the Day

"I believe there is far more harm done by unholy and inconsistent Christians than we are aware of. Such men and women are among Satan’s best allies. They pull down, by their lives, what ministers build with their lips. They cause the chariot wheels of the Gospel to bog down. They supply the children of this world with a never-ending excuse for remaining as they are."
--J.C. Ryle 1860-1900  Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties and Roots

I humbly submit this quote to Organized Religion in America... The "Cult of the Moral Lifestyle."

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