As it’s Sunday morning, and much of America is at church, allowing another human being explain God to them, it’s a good opportunity to spotlight one of the thousands of great country gospel songs. There are so many — and none that I’m aware of have prosperity theology as its subject. Most of these country gospel songs address the concerns of regular people: what will become of loved ones who die, will the afterlife be less painful than life on earth, will I be accepted into Heaven despite being a relentless sinner. There are few country gospel songs that are …
Month: April 2008
Elsewhere Online: Going Up
The New Yorker’s online edition has a fascinating article that combines everything you might want to know about elevators (“The Otis Elevator Company, the world’s oldest and biggest elevator manufacturer, claims that its products carry the equivalent of the world’s population every five days.” I did not know that!) with the frightening story of Nicholas White, who in 1999 was working in Manhattan’s McGraw-Hill Building and returning from a smoke break, when his express elevator stopped a third of the way up, in a section that had no outlet for many floors in either direction. Oh yeah, and it was …
Elsewhere Online: Spending Time With Big Star
Will Rigby, drummer for the DBs, writes a post on Ted Barron’s always-entertaining Boogie Woogie Flu blog about a road trip to Memphis, hanging out with Alex Chilton and Chris Bell, and a visit to an abandoned Sun Studios. There are oral histories of rock, like Please Kill Me and Jim Walsh’s book on the Replacements, All Over But The Shouting, and I bet there’s a history of Big Star waiting to be told. Rigby’s recollection includes meeting a very depressed Bell, who was managing a family restaurant prior to recording I Am The Cosmos, not long before his death. …
Movie Review: Into The Wild
2007. Starring Emile Hirsch, Catherine Keener. Directed by Sean Penn. In 1992, Christopher McCandless graduated from college and began a mission — the point of which has since become the speculation of a best-seller written by Jon Krakauer and a film by Sean Penn. His journey winds through the American Southwest, to the corn fields of the Dakotas, but always — as he reminds everyone throughout the film — to Alaska. There he would he would finally escape other humans, then discover how much he needs them. McCandless, here portrayed by Emile Hirsch, comes off as wise-beyond-his-years free spirit and …