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True story: Your humble scribe once got sucked into a conversation with a guy who thought his own taste in music should settle the argument for what is good and hip and cool. A few minutes in, I let slip that I enjoyed the songs of the late lamented crypto-Christian rock group Creed, which launched my friend on a whale of a rant.
Missed the first bit of MTV’s latest installment of Choose or Lose: “Sex, Votes, & Higher Power” Wednesday night, but I caught most of it. I must admit, the segment dealing with abortion wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared. Host Christina Aguilera, wearing a pink button down sweater over a not-too-short (for her) periwinkle blue dress and less makeup than usual, interviewed two girls who got pregnant out of wedlock.
In the final chaotic moments of the frat-classic “Animal House,” a well-endowed young woman with very little on is catapulted from a parade float and just happens to fly through the open window of a young boy who is secretly reading “Playboy,” landing safely on his bed. Stunned by this miracle, the boy looks to the heavens and says, “Thank you, God.”
Here are two tidbits — something old, something new — from the weeklies that arrive at my snail-mail address.
Of the many stories devoted to Hollywood Hellhouse, one of the best is by Jeffrey Weiss of the Dallas Morning News (registration required).
Brad Stine landed the gig, sort of. The conservative and Christian comedian, who really wanted to perform at the Republican National Convention, didn’t win the same billing as Michael W. Smith or Third Day, but NPR’s Talk of the Nation mentions that he performed at “R: The Party,” hosted by the hard-partying Bush twins (click here for Talk of the Nation‘s interview, which lasts just over three minutes).
Every weekend, I spend a large chunk of my time doing exactly what many of you would assume that I do. I surf around on the World Wide Web looking for religion news stories.
As Doug just noted, this whole “Christian comedy” story is really, down at the roots, about the wider issue of Christian and conservative subcultures.
Standup comedian Brad Stine faces the same dilemmas as many other evangelicals in the performing arts. In the Aug. 9 & 16 issue of The New Yorker, Adam Green describes Stine’s surrendering his ambitions to God:
