It’s been about three months since the Aurora theater shooting trial began. A jury has already determined that James Holmes, while mentally ill, was not legally insane and, thus, culpable for his heinous actions July 20, 2012. Next week, they’ll decide whether he should die for them. I’m glad I’m not sitting on that jury. Does Holmes deserve to die? Maybe. What he did July 20, during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, is as persuasive an argument as there... Read more
The eye always gave him trouble. It was the price Billy Hope paid for the way he fought—full of unbridled, unmanageable rage. He’d sleepwalk through round after round, taking punch after punch. He had to be hurt, it seems, to let loose his beast, and so the blows rained down on the full of his face like hail blowing sideways. By the time Billy won—and he always won—his left eye was a bloody, pulpy mess … along with the rest... Read more
I’m actually in the mountains of Colorado right now, climbing hills and dodging coyotes. But I wanted to draw your attention to something going on right now in the wider world of Patheos–a huge conversation about the future of religion in America. This week, the focus is on evangelicalism–a branch of Christianity that has been particularly vibrant, and at times rather divisive, over the last several decades. After generations of steady growth is now seeing its first signs of contraction, part of... Read more
Let’s get this out of the way first: Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck was a crass, salacious mess in terms of its content. Schumer’s character, Amy, rolled around in more beds than a Serta mattress tester. She cursed like a Wolf of Wall Street understudy. She was, as the title suggests, a trainwreck: a life predicated on sex, drugs and taking as little responsibility as possible. I didn’t give it a very good review. Plugged In tends to like its protagonists to be,... Read more
So the new Comic-Con trailer for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice has been out for a couple of days now. People are talking about how great or horrible it is, or how nice it was to see Gal Gadot’s fist-throwing Wonder Woman. But did you notice how spiritual the whole thing was, too? Fourteen seconds into the trailer, you see Superman showing up for a hearing on Capitol Hill while scads of people mill around in protest. One carries a sign... Read more
“Have you seen God’s Not Dead yet?” An elderly gentleman at my gym asks me this just about every month. It’s usually his second, right after “Watched any good movies lately?” (Super-nice guy, but not one to deviate from previous conversations, at least not while standing in his underwear.) “Nope,” I say every month. “Haven’t got around to that one.” “Oh!” he’ll respond. “It’s wonderful! You’ve got to!” And then he’ll wander off to the showers, presumably muttering about Kevin... Read more
I’ve learned a lot from Bill Cosby. I learned how to deal with everything from stage fright to drug abuse from Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. I learned that dads can be wise, silly and obstetricians from The Cosby Show. I learned that that Jell-O is awesome and that kids say the darndest things. I listened to his comedy routines constantly, where he taught me that it’s possible to be (mostly) clean and insanely funny. Cosby taught me—taught many... Read more
I’ve always felt that the semicolon was a woefully underused bit of punctuation. While other strange symbols on the computer keyboard have come into their own in the Internet age—the ubiquitous “@” sign for e-mail and the “#” on Twitter—the semicolon has still not found a comfortable place in the 21st Century. Because let’s face it: emoticon winks just don’t count. But now, at long last, there are people putting the semicolon to good use. Project Semicolon was founded in... Read more
Christian music, like Christianity itself, is a many-faceted thing. It encompasses Handel’s Messiah and “Amazing Grace,’ Bill Gaither and Lecrae. For most of us, Christian music isn’t tied to a particular style, but rather to the message the music conveys—lyrics that speak of God’s grace and truth and love. But can music be Christian if it has no lyrics at all? Kirk Whalum thinks so. Whalum is perhaps best known for his saxophone solo on Whitney Houston’s 1992 smash “I... Read more
Ted 2 pretty much bombed this weekend, and it deserved it. The original Ted was pretty much a one-joke movie, and the sequel added nary an extra chuckle. It was simply (ahem) stuffed with too much profanity and drug use and plain ol’ ook for my taste. But even though Ted 2 didn’t exactly have a heart of gold underneath its crass exterior—or even one of polyresin fluff—it did have an oddly redemptive twist. And believe it or not, it... Read more
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