Churches and shopping malls

It used to be that churches were built with expensive materials--gold, brass, marble, stone, etc. Artists were hired to create original works of art. Houses of worship were designed to meet the spiritual needs of people. Now they are built economically for the comfort of the worshipers with decor selected from church catalogs. Other churches are in storefronts and converted buildings

Shopping malls are grand with light from clerestory windows. Shoppers enter thru large, sparkling class doors with brass handles to see floors and walls of stone and marble. There are abundant chapels of consumer worship along the aisles that lead to the main altar, the anchor store. There are domes and cupolas, and the art is often original. The baptismal font has morphed into a gurgling fountain for stray pennies.

And of course, which one of these spaces gets the most worshippers on Sunday?

New motto?

When all else fails, do the right thing.
New motto for corporations and government?

Art

Art is art that challenges art to prove that it's art.

New reality shows

The competition for the reality show audience is heating up with these new fall offerings:

Ellen DeGeneres hosts “Orgasms of the Rich and Famous.” Celebrities openly discuss their onscreen and offscreen pleasure sounds with Ellen in a chatty, informal setting.

“Morbidly Obese Housewives of Atlanta” follows the day-to-days lives of 6 Atlanta housewives for the coveted Venus of Willendorf award.

Plenty of laughs and abound as pat Sajak talks frankly and empathetically with Hollywood stars and professional athletes about their heroic struggles with STDs. We learn that these high profile individuals are just like you and me.

Be sure to tuns in.

Consume

You wake up one day and realize:
You don’t need perfect white teeth to achieve and be respected.
You can distress your own jeans, save money and feel good about yourself.
You don’t need to be ashamed of toenail fungus.
Celebrities don’t know shit about the products they endorse but don’t use.
Spending on fashion is spending on obsolescence.
It’s not your life goal or your job to save the economy with your Christmas spending.
You don’t have to buy anything just because the commercial is funny.
You’re being manipulated by billions of dollars spent on test marketing, highly paid creative professionals, psychologists, surveys and celebrity hawkers.
In effect, you’re being trained to consume.

The race for love

The race for love is like the hare and the tortoise. The tortoise is the heart and the hare, the libido.

Helloooooo there

Helloooooo there. Like you, I’m just one of those middle class sub-millionaires who works hard and likes to party. And like you, I’m tired of all this downer news about rapes, war, corruption, racism and stuff like that. Just such a drag. That’s why I was so glad that today people are talking about homemade slime, Kim Kardashian’s new cosmetic line and man bun Ken. I don’t know much about fake news, but this is certainly fun news.

info downpour

These days we are all under a downpour of information, opinion, commercials, robocalls, media pundits, spin news, online and social media gibberish. So we get out our umbrellas. Some are black, some have logos, some have crazy designs on them. 

Some of us just stand there. Don’t move an inch. Don’t go anywhere, hoping to stay dry. Others scurry ahead in the wind, getting wet here and there, stepping in puddles. Some stand under their umbrellas, inviting another in for protection and maybe a hug or a kiss. Some just give their umbrella away. They walk and splash, maybe even like Gene Kelly. They let themselves get soaked, take it all in, then dry out, a new fresh person.

Wazzup?

Wazzup? I’m a professional football player. Truth be told, a sometime thug, too. But I score touchdowns, so my fans pretty much ignore that thug stuff I do. Yeah, I hit my girlfriend sometimes, but she can be a bitch. You don’t know how hard it is to keep that on-the-field violence off the field. I slap the towel and slap asses in the locker room, and, like I said, maybe slap the woman. Maybe my old neighborhood, maybe my arrogance or sense of entitlement, or I don’t know. I get interviewed a lot on TV because I know how to string those sports clichés together. I love my mama, my money, my big-ass house and my sculpted abs. Fame ain’t bad.

Hard work

Honesty is hard work.
Truth is hard work.
Integrity is hard work.
Love is hard work.
Compassion is hard work.
But this is the kind of hard work that builds character.

Hi, I'm handsome

Hi. I’m handsome, strikingly so. I have jet black curly hair and a 2-day beard. My wife is a former model with naturally blond hair and perfectly shaped and symmetrically placed breasts. We have two children, twins. The boy is 3 and reads at a 10th grade level. The girl speaks three languages, fluently. We have two homes, one in LA and an apartment in Trump Tower. We pledged to one another that when we become billionaires, we will put aside a few dollars to build a shelter for homeless miniature poodles. We once met Stephen Colbert at a Met gala. I’m certain you would like to meet us.

How it goes

Here’s how it goes. Evolution has the advantage of billions of years at work. For earth, it meant nature that was powerful, brutal, inventive and random. Then us.
What do we do with this power, brutality, invention and randomness. We invent gods. We turn nature into the combination of beauty and horror. Art and poetry. Then we notice we have a brain. We do all kinds of wonderful things with it. But nature is still powerful, brutal, inventive and random. We become suspicious of God. We somehow manage to kill, starve and enslave one another and make tepid efforts to do better. We give a nod to the real human beings among us while we drool over empty celebrity. God won’t go away and throws love in our faces. Hmmm. Calvin Klein underwear, cosmetic surgery and home theaters or a real empathy for the global helpless.

Nursing home

A day spent in a nursing home is an exercise in patience, humility, sadness, absurdity and  mortality.

Terrorism

We fear being killed by terrorists. But we kill ourselves in much greater numbers by smoking, drinking, bad diets, suicides, gun violence, drugs and auto accidents.

Love

Romance, friendship and family closeness are all examples of starter love.

Your brain

Treat your brain right. Feed it healthy food. Take it for a walk or a run every day. Introduce it to brains that will challenge it. Let it play. Let it think for itself once in a while. Let it grow up.

God

let's just go ahead and dump God. So no one to pray to for help. We're left to our own resources, individually and communally. So let's see what we can do.

Knowing

I can't fully know myself.
I can't fully know you.
We are each mysteries to one another.
As tiny specks of matter in the universe, we work to find meaning in life and and life in meaning.

PQ

So what is your PQ?
My PQ? What is a PQ?
It’s your Privilege Quotient.

For example the PQ of a white, wealthy American male is off the charts. The PQ of a black female trans is barely measurable. The Constitution gives us freedoms, but it doesn’t give us privilege. That comes from societal, cultural, historical and educational factors. Education, justice, wealth and celebrity are tied to the PQ. Equality comes with equity in the PQ.

So what is your PQ and how do you plan to use it?

National Apologize to Your Mother Day

Today is National Apologize to Your Mother Day. Mother’s Day is for candy, flowers, dinner out and expressions of love and gratitude. But we all know that our mothers once had to be bitchy because we once had to be teenagers. 

So don’t bring any gifts.

Just go home today and give your mother a good, genuine mea culpa.

Reasons

There are lots of reasons to make art. But the one that seems to me most compelling and relevant today is telling people what they need to hear not what they want to hear.

National Stick Your Face in the Grass Day

Today is National Stick Your Face in the Grass Day. What’s below your feet is another world that deserves some careful attention. It’s full of life and death where cycles of nature play out. All kinds of critters roam around in synergetic interaction. Seeds patiently await their time. A red-eyed cicada pops ups hoping not to be crushed or de-winged before a chance at a long-awaited orgasm.

Thoughts on the Comey Hearing

Thoughts on the Comey Hearing
1. In these times of great cynicism about politics, I believe we have, in James Comey a gold standard for a public servant who has competence, dedication, commitment to the public good and most of all integrity.
2. The Senate committee was well prepared and professional in its conduct of the hearing. I wish they could do that on their debates ad votes.
3. While there were generally fair and relevant questions for Comey, there were the inevitable “holier than thou” questions of the kind they asked Comey but rarely ask themselves.

Hug an Artist Day

Today is National Hug an Artist Day. Artists are people, too. They labor in musty, dusty studios to give the world meaning. They exhibit their work to handfuls of people enticed by free food and alcohol. They try so hard. They need big hugs.

Penis Awareness Day

Today is Penis Awareness Day. Recent sexting, out-of-wedlock births and incidents of sexual harassment have demonstrated how dangerous a penis can be. All men are armed with a concealed carry penis, but not all know how to use it safely and effectively. So today, be sure to attend one of these local events: Healthy Penis Workshop, Making Your Penis Your BFF, When Penises go Rogue, Effective Ways to Share Your Penis, Penis 101 for Women.

World Naked Conversations Day

Today is World Naked Conversations Day. Find a willing stranger. Both of you get naked. No clothes, shoes, jewelry, makeup or other adornments. Just your humanity. Then have a conversation, human to human.

International Day of Dancing

Today is International Day of Dancing. Find a stranger and have a dance together. If your partner can’t dance, teach them. If you can’t dance, learn. Touch one another. Hold one another.

Dance is a process of cooperating, getting in synch, two working to become one in a beautiful moment. Let the whole world dance if just for a day.

Degrees of separation

How many degrees of separation between me and the starving, bloated child in South Sudan? How many degrees of separation between me and the Syrian refugee flailing helpless in the sea? How many degrees of separation between me and the young black girl lying shot and bleeding in the street?

Perhaps a better question is whether these degrees of separation are stepping stones to healing or stages of reaching out or whether they are just walls and closed doors.

Do all the tears and news reports and poems and laments really make any difference? Do they just assuage our guilt for our own complacency and personal inaction? 

Do prayers help at all? Opening the checkbook, maybe a little? How much courage can I muster to act? On which disaster? Are we just paddling upstream against the rushing waters of humanity forever broken.

Panacea

Learn about love before you learn about sex.

Learn about forgiveness before you learn about hate.

Learn about wisdom before you learn about knowledge.

Learn about dignity before you learn about hate.

Learn about work before you learn a career.

Learn to listen before you learn to speak.

Learn empathy before you learn to judge.

Learn humility before you learn vanity.

MAN and GOD

MAN: God, please help me. You haven’t answered my prayers.

GOD: I don’t answer prayers. That’s a common misconception. Whatever you need, is already there. I know. I put it there.

MAN: But I’m on my knees.

GOD: So get up and do something. Action is real prayer.

MAN: No wonder so many doubt that you exist.

GOD: Well, doubt is prayer, too.

MAN: I’m confused. I really am.

GOD: Good. Take it as a sign you’re alive and then do something about it. All it takes is a little courage and some faith.

MAN: Faith in you?

GOD: In both of us, because the only place I really live is in you.

Misconceptions

For a long time I labored under the illusion that I was making art, when in fact it was art that was making me.

I believed that I could make a good living as an artist, when it was art that gave me a good reason for living.

I thought that my goal in art should be fame, when I discovered that the real goal was deep meaning.

I’m grateful to art for straightening me out.