Judd Apatow

Points of Ponderation…..Episode 2.17

A semi-regular attempt to address some of life’s minutiae that might otherwise be overlooked…..

 

 

 

 

 

apatowDirector Judd Apatow on stress eating over Donald Trump: “I think it tests our ability to not want to numb out. There’s so many things that are hard to hear every day that you do want to have some Oreos. Like people say, what do you invest in during the Trump era? I feel like, Hostess Cakes. Most of us are just scared and eating ice cream.” No, not most of us Judd. The vast majority of real Americans outside the liberal Lands of Make Believe in New York, Chicago, & Hollywood are mature functioning adults with common sense & a soul. You enjoy those Twinkies though.

 

 


I’m not a green thumb at all, but some of y’all probably are, so here you go.

 

 

Very sad to hear of the imminent closing of Ringling Brothers/Barnum & Bailey Circus, which has been beguiling children of all ages for a century & a half. I loved the circus when I was a kid. Unfortunately a combination of the modern entertainment landscape & pressure from animal rights wackos doomed The Greatest Show On Earth. I’ll refrain from a rant about animal “rights”, but I can speak to the entertainment angle. I’ve opined in the past that I think brick & mortar bookstores might eventually become obsolete thanks to Amazon & other online book sellers. Netflix and streaming services in general have surely had an impact on movie theaters. The Internet itself can provide hours of infotainment. I’m as much of a homebody as anyone, but I’m not so sure that’s a good thing for any of us. It seems like our population is becoming less & less sociable, with business & technology as willing accomplices. We can shop at home. Watch movies at home. Download & read books onto our e-readers without setting foot into a library or bookstore. Food delivery & drive-thrus decrease the need of sitting down in cpotatoa restaurant for a nice meal. Grocery delivery is already a thing in many big cities and will likely become more widespread. How long until all schools are online, eliminating snow days & the spread of disease among children?? Many places of employment already offer work from home options. Pretty soon we’re going to be a nation full of Howard Hughes-esque hermits, the necessity…and the amusement…of ever leaving home virtually eliminated.

 

 


Food for thought.

 

 

 

Speaking of Donald Trump…

Whoopi Goldberg. Barbara Streisand. Al Sharpton. Amy Schumer. Cher. Jon Stewart. Miley Cyrus. Samuel L. Jackson. Raven Symone. Chelsea Handler. What do all of these people have in common?? They are all “celebrities” who indicated months ago that if Trump won the election they’d leave the United States. What else do they have in common?? If my information is correct…they are all full of crap and aren’t going anywhere because they know where their bread is buttered – right here in the good ol’ USA. Just like many similar people of their ilk they like to hear themselves talk but don’t have the cahonas to back up the garbage they spew. I wish someone…as a joke (sort of)…would just rent moving vans and have them show up at these morally bankrupt sycophants’ houses. I haven’t been able to verify it, but I think I read somewhere that alleged comedian George Lopez has already or atleast indicated that he is soon going to actually follow thru with his promise to leave the country. If that is the case then I atleast have to respect him for being a man of his word.

 

 

I have had occasion…twice…to catch the 1989 rom-com When Harry Met Sally on television recently. The first time I was pleased. The second harrysallytime my heart was filled with absolute joy. When doing my 100 Favorite Films series a few years ago I ranked it 46th, and upon further reflection I think I probably undervalued it by atleast a couple dozen spots.

 

 

 


 

Yep. Exactly.

 

 

 

stormjesusUpdate: I’m still doing well with staying away from sociopolitical debates on social media, and I’m not posting anything controversial or quarrelsome on my own page. However, I still do a bit of trolling and recently observed this gem in a thread discussing climate change: “The Right seems to think God controls the weather, which he does not.” Seriously…someone actually offered that up as a thoughtful opinion. I can tell that my transition from annoyed dissenter to quiet observer is going well because that particular comment made me laugh out loud rather than become ticked off as I likely would have not long ago. Look, to each their own. I understand that people have a variety of spiritual & theological views, and that’s fine. However, my Bible tells me…in the 8th chapter of Matthew…that “when Jesus got into a boat, His disciples followed Him. And suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea, so that the boat was covered with the waves. But He was asleep. Then His disciples came to Him and awoke Him, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’ But He said to them, ‘Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?’ Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. So the men marveled, saying, ‘Who can this be, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?’”. So yeah…God does control the weather. And that’s all I have to say about that.

My 2013 Lenten Non-Sacrifice

Ash Wednesday completely snuck up on me this year…came & went. I knew Easter was early (March 31), but I still wasn’t quite in that mode yet. To me Easter signifies spring, and since we just had a fairly significant snowfall here lentin West Virginia a couple of weeks ago my brain is still in the midst of the winter doldrums. Unfortunately I did not make it to the always lovely Ash Wednesday service at church a few days ago due to some untimely mechanical difficulties, and I am a bit tardy in publishing the present discourse, but hey…it’s a long season so we’ll just go with it.

 

At any rate Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent which is usually 40 days (give or take) before Easter. Ash Wednesday derives its name from the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of adherents as a reminder and celebration of human mortality, and as a sign of mourning and repentance to God. Lent is a time of preparation that symbolizes Jesus’ time in the desert where he was bibletempted by Satan (Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13), the forty days & nights Moses spent on Mount Sinai receiving The Ten Commandments from God (Exodus 19:1-25), the forty years the Jewish nation spent wandering in the desert, and the forty days & nights rains fell upon the Earth while Noah & his family were in The Ark with all the animals (Genesis Chapters 6-9). Forty is a very important number in The Bible, used by God to represent a period of testing or judgment. To that end it is traditional for Christians to make a sacrifice during Lent, which usually entails giving up a certain vice or bad habit that may be hindering our relationship with God.

 

For many years I did not fully embrace Lent. Sure I would go to church and participate in all the ceremonies & rituals, which since I am a Methodist doesn’t really involve all that much. But as with many other churchgoers who simply go thru the motions it really didn’t hold any type of significance outside the walls of the physical church building. However, citizens of The Manoverse will recall that I have mentioned on multiple occasions in the past few years my desire for a deeper, more genuine relationship with my Lord & Savior Jesus Christ and know that there has been an ebb & flow of growth, churchunderstanding, failure, and detours along the way. In 2010 I decided to make a true Lenten sacrifice, which meant giving up Facebook. And trust me…at the time it was a genuine hardship!! The following year I gave up fast food & chocolate. Again that may seem superficial to some, but honestly at that time those two things comprised the majority of my diet so it was difficult. In 2012 I was nearing the end of my year long sambatical from organized religion, a time that I regret but also appreciate because it was a necessary reset for many reasons. Since I wasn’t in church and still trying to sort some things out I didn’t choose any kind of sacrifice. I believe my running joke at the time was that I had given up church for Lent. Anyway, I returned to church right around Easter 2012  and have enjoyed the past 10 months or so.

 

In pondering potential sacrifices for 2013 God led me in a new direction. I am not exactly Mr. Excitement. My life is pretty basic and usually uneventful. That’s not a complaint because my lifestyle is a byproduct of my own choices, most of which I fully embrace or atleast no longer run away from. I didn’t want to make any kind of food sacrifice because I am already on a weight loss journey and have already lowered my intake of all those really good things that are bad for me. And there wasn’t really any other kind of sacrifice that seemed appropriate for a variety of reasons. As I pondered the issue I began to recall various things I have read and sermons I have heard wherein it was stated, in essence, that it is just as appropriate to add something for Lent as it is to give gregolsenup something. The whole idea behind Lent is to acknowledge that we fall short in our relationship with God and draw closer to him. I have done a lot of re-evaluating in the past few years and have stated my displeasure on multiple occasions with the superficial nature of the modern church, and it seems to me that Lent has become a perfect example of the problem. The Lenten sacrifice…for most folks anyway…has become nothing more than a sequel to meaningless New Year’s resolutions. If quitting smoking, giving up chocolate, or reducing your intake of booze & caffeine helps you develop a more meaningful relationship with God then by all means go for it & don’t let me stop you. However, I suspect that such removals are…most of the time…simply hollow acts of self-righteous vanity in which we all try to top one another with the level of our “suffering”. No thanks…not this kid. I want my relationship with God and my Lord & Savior Jesus Christ to have more depth. Your mileage may vary.

 

Having said all that what I have decided to do is refocus myself in a more dedicated effort to cultivate my relationship with The Lord. I feel like such an endeavor is a more positive way to approach Lent and something that won’t just last 40 days. Now lest you think that statement is too general…too “big picture”…I think there is a way that I can fit the task into the more rudimentary, more tangible paradigm most identify with Lent. One of the ways that I can palpably grow both my relationship with The Lord and my own depth of knowledge & understanding of things more profound than General Hospital, Double Whoppers with cheese, and Judd Apatow movies is by reading, studying, & writing. Sometimes I think that God really does have a sense of humor, and I have to smile sheepishly when I realize that after commenting at the beginning of the year that “I have an increasing hunger to write” and that “inspiration flows more steadily” the past 6 weeks have not been nearly as productive as they should have been. Sure I write superficial little ditties now & then, and that’s not always a bad thing. But The Manofesto is meant to be more than that. A year ago I promised a book-by-book look at writing-fountain-pen-400 (1)The Bible that I have yet to start. 31/2 years ago I started a series on The Fruits of the Spirit that is still incomplete. There are only nine of them for Pete’s sake…what is taking me so long?? Nearly three years ago I began a similar examination of The Sermon on the Mount that is still not finished. That is unacceptable. When I look at The Bookshelf section here and realize that I have only written 14 entries in four years I am ashamed. There was a time when I constantly had my head in a book. I don’t know what has happened as I have gotten older. There are dozens of books in The Bachelor Palace that I could write about and share my experience with The Manoverse. Therefore what I have decided to do for Lent is commit to adding atleast 6 entries each in both The Bookshelf and Values, Principles, & Truth sections here over the next 6 weeks. In practical terms that will naturally necessitate focusing my energy on reading & studying as opposed to wasting my time on more worthless pursuits. One of the  things I like about The Manofesto is that I feel a certain sense of accountability to the things that I publically proclaim, which is a good thing. I am not a disciplined person. I am single, which means I get up when I want, sleep when I want, eat what & when I want, and go where I want whenever I want to go. The only responsibilities I have are my job, my bills, & Rocco. While that freedom is kind of nice for the most part it also means that there is a tendency to become somewhat lazy & neglectful of other significant things. I want to use Lent as a launch pad to be more responsible to God, to the talents with which He has blessed me, and to the commitment I have made here at The Manofesto.

 

God bless you all and may you utilize this Lenten season to draw closer to God and improve your life as well.

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