Gadget

Just a point of interest to my loyal readers--all four of you: Please note that I have added a subscription button to make it easier for you to keep up with The Green Room. My vice president of IT, Director J., helped me figure out how to add this functionality, and this blog thanks her.

I hope you will promptly sign up, and that you will ask all your friends to sign up--that is, if they are not overly sensitive about bodily functions and the occasional profanity. 

Before you know it, we will rule the world.

Meeting Forrest

I introduced M. Peevie to Forrest Claypool at a party this weekend.  "Forrest," I said, "This is one of your youngest campaign volunteers, my daughter, M. Peevie."  He smiled and reached out to shake her hand.  She looked confused.
 

"You remember waving signs from the overpass a couple of years ago when Forrest ran in a different election, M. Peevie?" I reminded her.  She tipped her head to the side and looked him up and down.

"But I thought we didn't know him," she said.

"You don't," I said, "but I do."

"But I thought he was famous or something!" she said, and he laughed.  "Only in certain circles," he said.

Later, at home, M. Peevie picked up one of Forrest's flyers for his independent candidacy for Cook County Assessor.  She pointed to his photo.  "Oh," she said, "That really was Forrest Claypool."  Because without independent verification, she might not be able to trust that we were telling her the truth.  That her mother was telling her the truth.

What is up with that?

Twitter, Twitter, Tweet.

Do any Green Room readers Twitter?

I do. But I don't really know why.

Why would anyone care what I have to say in 140 characters or less? Who cares if I am trying to decide what kind of bread I will make with my KitchenAid stand mixer? Or what I think about John Hamm from Mad Men hosting Saturday Night Live? Or whether I don't really care to watch grown-ups sledding, no matter how fast they're going?

Twitter seems like a useful and fun tool if you already have a following, or if you have a business to promote. But what if you're just a fame-whore like me? It's just a silly vanity.

But you know me by now. I'm totally on board with silly vanity. I have five--no, six now!-- followers on Twitter. Six people ostensibly care about my minutest random thoughts. My most recent tweets were about Dick Button's shoes (that make him look like a Rescue Hero), the implicit irony of trash-talking in men's figure skating, and Jason Mraz night on American Idol.

Doesn't that make you want to set up a Twitter account and start to follow me right away?

My friend K-Squared, a brilliant entrepreneur and social media maven, gave me a copy of Twitterature, which brought me literally minutes of entertainment and hilarity. The authors rewrote literary classics (and some definitely-not-classics, like Twilight and The Da Vinci Code) "for the twenty-first-century intellect," in 20 tweets or fewer. It's not for young kids, because there is colorful language; but it is sort of brilliant.

Here's a sample, from Paradise Lost, by John Milton:

FALLING UNTO THE ABYSS!!!!! I'll talk more about why in several hundred pages to avoid any confusion.

OH MY GOD I'M IN HELL.

'Tis Pandemonium down here. Would ROFL but it's very hot.

I'm bored. I'm the chairman of the board. My compatriots are r-tards. Inaction? Is that the best we can do? We are fucking demons!

Sitting on our asses waiting for an apology from G-d isn't exactly renegade. Pussies.

OK, that's enough for now. Pick it up at the bookstore, read it while you're on the El, and then hand it to someone as you leave the train. You'll make her day. Or offend her, if she's profanity-sensitive.

Follow me on Twitter @EPeevie!

Making Brownies

"Mom," A. Peevie asked, "Can I make brownies?"

"No," I said.

"Please, mom," he wheedled. "I know how."

"Hmmm," I said. "Really? You know how?"

"Yes," he said. "I've done it before."

"You know how to follow the directions on the box?" "Yes." "You know how to find all the ingredients, find the right pan, turn on the oven?"

"Yes," he said confidently. "But I might need your help to turn on the oven."

"Fine," I said reluctantly, "But I don't want to have to get up every two minutes to help you." I was busy lying on the couch while my uterus turned itself inside out. "And I'm watching People's Court. I don't want to have to answer a million questions."

"No problem, Mom." He grinned a big grin, and headed off to the kitchen. I could hear him pulling a chair over to the pantry to pull down the brownie mix. The kitchen was quiet for about a minute while he read the directions.

"Mom!" A. Peevie called, "Can you turn the oven on for me?"

"No, A.," I called back, "You can do it." I told him what buttons to press on our digital stove dashboard while my uterus and I remained supine on the couch.

Thirty seconds later: "Mom, what size pan should I use?"

"Where are the pans?"

"Can you come get the pan down for me?"

"What should I mix it in?"

"Where is the vegetable oil?"

Worried: "We don't have any vegetable oil!" After A. Peevie and I ping-ponged about the vegetable oil several times, my churlish uterus (try saying that three times fast!) and I crawled into the kitchen, pulled the vegetable oil off the pantry shelf, read the label out loud in a disgruntled voice, and crawled back to the couch.

Thirty seconds later: "Mom? What should I use to mix it?"

"What spoon?"

"Where are the spoons?"

"Is this mixed up enough?"

"Can I lick the bowl?" This was an awesome moment: he was asking if he could lick the bowl before emptying the brownie batter into the pan. I clarified the correct order of operations, and went back to Judge Milian.

Thirty seconds later: "What do I use to get it into the pan?"

"What's a spatula?"

"Where are the spatulas?"

"Can you help me put the batter into the pan?"

At this point, I felt like setting the entire kitchen on fire so I wouldn't have to answer any more questions about brownie-making. But Judge Marilyn had exposed the defendant as a lying liar and had rendered her judgment; my uterus was taking a break from twisting itself into a one-legged king pigeon pose, and I had nothing better to do--so I helped A. Peevie finish the brownies.

Moral of the story: When they say they can do it "all by themselves," don't believe them.

Book Review: Deliver Us From Me-Ville

With admirable transparency and a readable conversational writing style, David Zimmerman examines our need for redemption in the recently published Deliver Us From Me-Ville. He takes on an entire culture of narcissism, born in the Garden and bred in every human interaction since.

Zimmerman argues that superbia (the Latin word for an inordinate sense of self-regard; pride; or self-satisfaction) is common and calamitous, a "besetting sin among all God's children, nipping at the church's heels throughout its history, and as such it must be met by the vigilance of the people of God to hold it at bay." Superbia "sounds like a place," so Zimmerman dubs it Me-Ville, and urges us to endure vulnerability and the pain of re-training in order to allow God to deliver us.

Occasionally, Zimmerman enjoys his own sense of humor a tiny bit too much, and the resulting literary quirks become a bit distracting. He opens, for example, with a story about his niece that includes the colloquialism "yo," and then he continues to "yo" us for the next several chapters.

Also, there are times when the book makes assumptions or generalizations about people that obviously ring true in the author's life and personality--and often in my own, as well--but which do not necessarily hold true for across humanity. For example, Zimmerman looks at Biblical history (the Tower of Babel) and contemporary culture (and I use the word "culture" loosely, since I'm referring to American Idol) to illustrate his point that "...becoming famous is the holy grail for people steeped in superbia." Everyone is steeped in superbia, but not everyone seeks or desires fame.

In general, however, Zimmerman illustrates our condition with an engaging combination of contemporary culture and spiritual classics. His theme is clear and straightforward: "The way out of Me-Ville is unavoidably through Jesus, who visits us, displaces, us, delivers us, and sets us within the bounds of his city, his community."

His transparency is disarming: "My greatest fear in making my writing public...[is] that an audience will read what I write and disregard it as insignificant." This fierce desire to live a meaningful life, to produce something meaningful, or to be considered important or significant in the eyes of other people--this, not the desire for fame, is a universal human condition. It's why we start out in Me-Ville, and why we need Jesus.

Zimmerman dips into the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thomas Merton, and Henri Nouwen, among others, to develop a modern perspective on ancient Biblical themes; he takes the words of those writers and thinkers and connects them to our contemporary dilemmas. I love this about Zimmerman's book, because in giving me a taste of great thinkers and writers of the faith, it reminds me to pick up the source materials myself for some challenging reading and deep thinking.

Each chapter includes a section called "Escape Routes," practical applications of the preceding theoretical, exegetical material. These sections include activities and questions designed to move the reader to a deeper and more personal connection with the teaching of the chapter. Zimmerman often includes scripts for what we can say to ourselves in order to get more "in the way" of Jesus, such as this:

Before you get together with a group of people, imagine it as a mission, and consecrate it with missional language such as Isaiah's cry, "Here I am, Lord, send me." Be careful not to set a missional agenda for the time together; just make the effort to consecrate the moment.

Deliver Us From Me-Ville is a solid, helpful text that has the capacity to reach you exactly where you are today, and bring you more deeply into God's kingdom here on earth.

Radio Debut

Question: What do the second amendment, the Chicago Police Superintendent, parental responsibility, and unreached people groups have in common?

Answer: They're all topics that Dave and I discussed on last Friday night's stirring episode of The Dave and Chris Show, brought to you live on The Internet. You would have known that if you had tuned in.

At one point we had upward of four listeners at one time. As a virgin substitute radio host, I have to say, it was exhilarating. Well, OK, not exhilarating. But definitely fun.

We even briefly spoke to my brother DeeDee in Buenos Aires. We called him to ask his opinion about the likelihood of the existence of dozens of tribes un-touched by modern civilization, mostly in South America. He's the closest thing to an expert that we could come up with on short notice.

Plus, when I got home, Mr. Peevie said I had a deep and sexy radio voice. "Your voice on the the radio was deep and sexy," he said, "I was like, 'Whoa!'"

And then I made him say it again. A girl can't get too many compliments like that, you know. I'm used to hearing my voice coming out kind of shrill, in a yelling-at-my-kids kind of way, so I was pleasantly surprised.

Dave is having technical difficulties with posting the recording, but I'm confident that it'll be up soon and you can squander a perfectly good hour and a half listening to my radio debut.

Fame and Glory

Jenny the Bloggess, my blogging hero, gave me a shout in her Good Mom/Bad Mom column on the Houston Chronicle website. How totally excellent is that, man?

Check out the other blogs she mentioned as well--some are beautiful, some hilarious, some touching. Like this little snippet from Debbie on her blog, I Obsess:

Lying cuddled together with my kiddo a minute ago, because he had come into the room, suddenly, demanding a hug, and upon returning him to his bed, I discovered
his playmates, some toys he's not allowed to go to sleep with - because he *doesn't sleep* when they're present - and then we sang some songs and snuggled. And I felt his length, even with legs curled all pretzel-like around my knees, feet stuck randomly between my knees and thighs, hand curled around mine, and my breath halted, quick, brief, because - it's all happening. So fast. Too fast. Blazes of light and *poof* and he's growing, growing, grown.

And then, get this: my friend Dave gave me a call from his live internet radio show, The Dave and Chris Show, and asked me to co-host next Friday, June 27, at 6 p.m. I'm not clear whether Dave's co-host, Chris, will be there, because the whole conversation was very confusing, and the internet telephone connection was echo-ey, time-delayed, and muted. Chris claimed he could hear everything fine, so it's possible he has bionic hearing, or perhaps he's psychic. I'll check it out.

So tune in next week, Green Room Fans, and invite your friends to tune in as well. And heck! Call in, why don't you? I'd post the phone number, but it's not on their web site, and I think it's Dave's home phone number, which I don't necessarily want to put on the Internet. So just click on the Dave and Chris Show link, which should--should!--make it easy for you to call in.