Breakfast with Mr. Avery

Recently (April, 2010) I was able to get to Indiana, and had a meal with Ben Avery. This is a rare occurrence to me, and a seemingly rarer and rarer occurrence to those of us who exist in this tech-savvy generation. I was in Indiana to visit another friend whom I had never seen, and to actually be a part of his wedding party! Sight unseen, we made our acquaintances in person the eve of his wedding, and spent a great 24 hours together (punctuated by some much-needed sleep - my flight from Boston necessitated my wake time to be before 4AM that morning) before he and the new Mrs. left for their honeymoon. Being in town (or, at least, within two hours of the town) until the next day, I decided to see what Ben was up to.

Getting together with long-distance friends isn't the easiest thing in the world, unless you send out your feelers early enough that everyone concerned can wrap their lives around yours. This was the case here as well, as I actually tried to squeeze many more visits into my 48-hour stay in the Hoosier State. One friend was in a hospital 4 hours away, and I didn't think I was prepared to sink 20% of my time driving to and from the hospital. He wasn't dying, so I figured it could wait until next time I'm in Indiana. If ever. I toyed with getting to some events while I was there a well, but again, decided against them as they would have been an investment in time that could be used better somewhere else. I soon discovered what that time was for.

Since I had been up before 4AM, not slept on the flight, and hit the ground running once I landed in Indianapolis Int'l Airport, after a three-hour drive, rehearsal (and rehearsal, and rehearsal...), rehearsal dinner, and a boys-night-out to pick up the tuxes and see a movie, I rolled into my hotel room around 11:30 and crashed. Unfortunately, it had to be a controlled crash, as we still needed to do the actual wedding on Saturday. So, up around 8, dress, eat, get to the church, wait for the late-arrivals, get into tuxes, pictures, etc. (I assume you know how weddings work) got me back to the room around 5PM. There I waited for Ben to let me know how our schedules could dove-tail.

When you have a hard-and-fast time that something must happen, you can mark free time by counting backward from the H-Hour that is your must-do time. My 2PM flight on Sunday meant that I needed to be at the Airport by Noon, and a 3-hour drive from the restaurant that Ben chose meant that breakfast needed to be over by 9AM, so 8AM is what I was shooting for for breakfast. A 90 minute car trip to the restaurant and my inimitable penchant for getting lost while driving (even with maps and GPS systems) meant that I would like to have left the hotel around 6AM. Luckily, I was able to really crash this time, as this was my first trip without my family, and after 11 blissful years together with my wonderful wife I no longer know what to do when I'm on my own with no real responsibilities. I had eaten, I don't watch too much TV, I knew no one else in Indiana, Ohio or Michigan that wouldn't require too much time/energy/effort to reach, and to tell the truth I was really tired. So I slept.

I missed my wife and kids. We tried to set up times where I would still be able to interact with them, but their hectic weekend schedules apparently had them at odds with mine. Throw in a wife losing her cell phone and that doesn't leave much of a window for good contact. But we did talk a few times, and wifey and I had a nice conversation by text around midnight between extended sleep-times for me (a few hours-long stretches, ending in a 1AM-5AM mini-marathon at the end) so I was good to go.

Now we get to the point of this post. Ben and I had never really met each other, even after talking for long hours as friends, and as co-hosts of the podcast. I had seen pictures, of course, so I knew at the very least he would be an elaborate hoax on par with Bigfoot flying UFOs around the faked-lunar-landing site. But he is real, if you can believe me, and we finally got together after I was only slightly lost trying to find the restaurant. And it was a good meeting. Somehow, when believers come together to do things, it doesn't seem to matter if you’ve ever actually met. Things just start rolling. We had a great breakfast, but better yet was the camaraderie and fellowship we shared for that brief 45 minutes. The conversation ranged from personal interest to movie reviews, and hopefully won't be the last meeting of the minds live and in person.

As I write this (still in April 2010), on the flight back to Boston, after a great trip meeting two good friends and hours and hours of driving, I am only about a half hour away from seeing my family again, and I wouldn't trade them for the world. But if I was forced to trade them for two days, getting to see my two friends for the first time wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

Latchkey Studios

Hi everyone-

I wanted to let you all know about my latest venture: I'm now part of Latchkey Studios (latchkeystudios.blogspot.com)! We are "a group of working artists [which now includes at least one writer!] that have come together to help tackle 'The Industry'. We travel, critique, eat, drink and sell sell sell together." So, who knows, I might even get paid at some point!

For those of you new to me and this blog (coming from the Latchkey blogsite), I’m Steve MacDonald, the newest (for now) Latchkey kid…although calling me a kid is kinda stretching the definition to the breaking point! Unlike most of the others here, I’m primarily a writer (and editor, and story consultant, and collaborator, etc.), but hopefully that won’t get me kicked out of the sandbox. I have a lot of stories for you all, and I’ll get someone to draw them for me soon!

When it comes to story-telling, I like classic literature as well as comic books and strips, movies and even story-songs, as long as they are well-told and seem to have a purpose for having been told. Stories that have a strong underlying theme and accomplishable character goals capture my attention (depending on the goals and themes, of course), and I tend to prefer fantasy stories (including science fiction, fairy tales and superhero stories) for their applications of metaphors and allegories.

Fiction authors who have inspired me include (alphabetically) John Bunyan, Lewis Carroll, Chris Claremont, Charles Dickens, the Brothers Grimm, Norton Juster, Jim Krueger, CS Lewis, Edgar Allan Poe, JRR Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Finding where stories impact culture and faith is a large part of the thrill I get from them. Representing them visually so others can see through my eyes is a challenge, especially when another person is doing the actual art, but it is a challenge that I find worth the effort, and I hope you will too!

I have a new story in the works right now, and more details about it and the universe it inhabits will be coming soon.

Comics + Christianity = New Podcast!

Okay, so I haven't posted in a while. But now I'm back with PROOF that I've been doing something real since I posted last! My friend Ben Avery and I have put together our first podcast, the Comic Book Crossover Podcast, and it's almost ready for public consumption. I was going to make a lame joke about the disease once called 'Consumption', but thought better of it - tuberculosis jokes usually aren't that funny. But, anyway, the podcast will be about comic books and other media (usually television and movies, but we've been known to drag in old time radio, web comics, and other stuff as well) and how they are both an influence on and influenced by Christianity.

We're going to try to keep the podcasts under a half an hour for now, until the public outcry for more of our witty banter becomes overwhelming, and probably put one up every 2 to 4 weeks. Some of what we plan to feature includes our Icons Series (Episode 1 features the legendary Aquaman!), and finding out what comics Ben and I are reading. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, as we usually dive right into whatever we need to in order to support our theories about mass media, culture, and how everything relates to Christianity.

If you’d like to find out more about us or the podcast, or if you’re interested in what Christianity is really all about, please e.mail us at ComicBookCrossover@gmail.com. We’d love to hear what you have to say about any of the topics we’ve covered or about any topic you’d like us to cover (you could even suggest a hero for the Icons Series). You can also find us online at http://web.me.com/benavery/Comic_Book_Crossover_Podcast. Thanks to Ben for setting up a website with the worlds longest URL.

At our online site you'll find links to the podcast as well as Ben's arsenal of websites - professional and personal, both with great stuff to read - and my attempts at social networking as well. Let us know what you think!

Mr. Mom Moment #1 - The Bathroom Break

I thought I’d share some “Mr. Mom Moments” with you. I’ve been thinking that someone should remake this movie. After a few more of these moments I’m thinking that maybe I’ll take a crack at rewriting it!

As I have not been taking care of kids for most of my life, I sometimes have to make things up on the fly. Like when my 10-month-old boy and I were home alone and nature called. He’s in his ‘learning to walk’ stage, which is also his ‘stand up and take a few steps then bang your head on something coming back down’ stage. We don’t have a 100% childproof room, and he doesn’t much like being put down in a crib and walked away from (unless he’s sleeping, of course). The playpen was upstairs and the bathroom was not. Thus my dilemma.

Using the limited tools within arms reach, I pulled his ‘piano-toy-thing’ into the bathroom and put one end of it up against the door. This thing is open on both ends and has toys on the sides with big piano keys for him to step on as a floormat. If that doesn’t explain it, it’s not really that important, just that there was still one open end after I put it up against the door. I had time to pull in a footstool from right outside the door as well, so I pushed the footstool up against the open end. Problem solved – until he started to push against the footrest! I quickly grabbed the diaper pail, clothes hamper and waste basket and propped them all up in a line against the offending footrest. Problem solved for the second time!

Then he started to learn how to climb…how do mothers do this 24-7?

That's 'MISTER Mr. Mom' to you, buddy!

Since I've been working from home (or attempting to work from home...sometimes I think of my self as 'self-unemployed'), I've heard the term "Mr. Mom" thrown in my direction more than once. John Hughes wrote the script and Michael Keaton and Teri Garr are the stars in the 80's comedy, and it has some humorous scenes (in fact, it's a wonder that no one has thought to remake it - and why aren't comedies remade as much as, say, dramas or action flicks? And what's the deal with all the parenthetical rhetorical remarks?), but ultimately resolves [SPOILER ALERT!] with Keaton regaining his job and Garr going back home to take care of the kids. True, my wife is now the main wage-earner, and true, I am in charge of the kids during the day (and nights sometimes, if Christa's work is especially harrowing that day), but I initially took offense to the term, until I decided to break down and finally see the movie.

Very traditional values for a Hollywood hit, and, I must say, one that I would prefer for our family (Christa COULD go back to part-time...or work from home...or they could just pay her the money she deserves for running the entire office single-handed), as the stress is compounding at my wife's job!

The problem with being a writer (okay, 'ostensibly being a writer', but that doesn't roll off the tongue as well) is that you kinda need to have something written to get paid, and unfortunately I didn't see the layoff coming soon enough to have something to roll with right out of the gate. And running a week-long Vacation Bible School (I played the part of Paul the Apostle - chained to a desk with writing his only past-time...hmmm, where did I put that chain?) while making sure three kids have a great summer vacation means very little writing time for me in the last few months.

Now it's getting down to crunch time (and hopefully I'm not the one who will be getting crunched!) so, since the kids are close to going back to school, I'll be writing much more often. I should have something to shop around soon, and other piecemeal sidelines should become more prominent in providing a few extra bucks.

So, while I'm nowhere near the basketcase Keaton became during his descent into madness, I can understand the sentiment offered by the well-meaning few who use the Mr. Mom moniker, perhaps not embracing it fully, and use it as an impetus to get back to a sensible family dynamic. I just won't be using it as my 'mom de plume'.

Changes

Well. It's been a while since I posted, and many things have been happening since then.

The big news is that Benjamin Tucker MacDonald was born, happy and healthy, on November 24th, 2008, just in time for Thanksgiving! He is a very pleasant baby – the one before him was born with bi-lateral clubfoot, so she spent the first six weeks of her life in full-length leg casts, which made her a little cranky (but understandably so) that first year or two. She has since made a full recovery, started walking earlier than her older brother did, and now runs around like the crazy kindergartener she is with no problem. But Ben was born with no problems.

The second big news is that I was laid off after almost 20 years. The company laid off 7% of their personnel, which is about 37 people. The stuff that I was responsible for were not big sellers, so eliminating me was not a big stretch of the imagination. It’s not particularly bad for me (more on that below), but it was a bit sudden (“A BIT”?????????) so now I’m going to take some time to network, run the numbers, and see what this next phase of my life is going to look like.

The good news is that my wife just got a new position at her job, meaning more per hour, so my being home frees her schedule up to take those new hours, since I'm home to drive Ben to my in-laws during the day (or take care of him here, which gets a little noisy and time consuming, so he's over at the in-laws more often than not), pick him up and be here when the other kids come home from school. Her new hours give us over an hour in the morning to actually be together with just Ben, which is very nice and relaxing. We hadn't had morning breakfast together on a weekday in a long time. I get more time with her, more time with the older kids, and more time with Ben. Win/Win/Win in my book. And I get to write for the rest of the day. Win^4!

Also, it frees up a bunch of time during the day for me to take paying writing and editing projects. With wifey's new pay increase, all I really need to cover is our insurance costs. I could work freelance as long as some money is coming in. On top of that, the severance package was very generous, so I don't need to scramble to find a new job right away. This is an opportunity that I wouldn't have had if I were still working, so, even though I miss the people, I can now get more traction on what I'd really like to do, which is write and edit.

The bad part was that it was so sudden, although I imagine that I would have tried to line up another 9-5 job if I had any warning, so maybe that wasn't so bad. I already have a few different ponds that I'm fishing in, and one international ministry already asked for my resume, so things seem like they're moving right along. God certainly knows what He’s doing.

We have also been 'blessed' with the wonderful cold/disease/whatever that has been lingering around the Boston area, so I haven't had much time to update this weblog, so I apologize for that, but I should be back pretty regularly from now on.

Deconstructing deconstructionism

The problem with looking for Christian elements in modern films (or books, etc.) is trying to look for something that isn't there. Projecting your worldview into a movie (or TV show, book, etc) is dangerous, as we humans are hard-wired to find things that we recognize in what we see. I'm sure someone could find something in porn that might resonate with their worldview. When doing this with the Bible it is called 'eisegesis' and is why some people seemingly get crazy theologies out of Scripture. If anyone ever asked you "what does the verse or chapter mean to you" then you've experienced eisegesis.



In real life it is a major element of postmodernism. Basically it assumes that the author is 'dead' (for the purpose of deciding what the work really means) and throws the responsibility of deciding its meaning onto the viewer/reader/listener. Many artists now produce thematically ambiguous material as a way of tapping into the postmodern mindset and don't care what people get out of it as long as they get something out of it. This is wrong. Things mean what they are supposed to mean (especially the Bible, as defined by Itself), do not mean anything else (even if the viewer/etc. thinks it does), and if they aren't supposed to mean anything specific then they are pretty much meaningless.



Christianity deals with very human issues, like good and evil, repentance for wrongs committed, love and hate, faith, and the merit of performing good works as an outward indication of our faith. These have all been used by thousands upon thousands of pieces of art in various ways, and since they are human issues we as Christians might tend to view them and project our Christian worldview on the piece of art. Many see God and Satan as the dualistic Light/Dark sides of the Force, for example. Spiderman forgives Sandman, so the element of redemption seems relevant to us. But unless they are trying to present actual Christian elements, these are simply the pale reflections of Christianity's better points.



The heart of the Bible is the Gospel, and there has been no movie to date (that I know of, and I've seen so many that I've even forgotten some completely) that accurately conveys the true Gospel (Sin's reality; Repentance of sins; Faith in Jesus; Jesus as the Anointed Messiah, or Christ; Jesus as the only Savior; Jesus as Lord of one's life) outside of the Christian industry (and, sadly, very few within the Christian industry as well...but I'll save that for another diatribe). Without that solid base in place, any other perceived Christian element is lost in the special effects and witty banter.