Ross has turned the awful game of internet "tag" on its ear with a legendary post here. I am obliging by rounding out one of the seven stories.
For the record, this is not the full video or the original audio. I believe Ross used some James Brown or something.
How has this not completely played itself out by now?
(or Why Al Gore can’t save the world – Part 2)
[Part One here – reading this will help you think I’m less mean and more green (maybe).]
I’ve never really claimed to be a tolerant guy. I try, I really do, and I think I’m far more patient and humble than I used to be when it comes to interacting with the rest of the world. So, I ask that you extend me some grace as I peel back the more presentable layers and let you see some of the battle that still rages beneath my winsome smile and bubbly personality.
I’m not all that patriotic these days. Don’t get me wrong – I mean no insult to those who have toiled over the centuries to provide me the opportunity to live a life of relative freedom and prosperity. I’m grateful for those folks, truly. I’m also not opposed to the idea that drives our patriotism. It’s not my life’s mantra, and my core loyalties lie elsewhere, but I believe much of that American idea is rooted in the deep hunger for freedom and joy that rages in the soul of every man, woman, and child. I affirm that hunger and admire men and women who chase that dream with passion and resolve. I’m also not about to descend into a Sean Penn-ish rant on how embarrassed I am by the president and his henchmen. I am, perhaps to a fault, still largely indifferent to the political charade, be it national or global.
No, most of my lack of patriotic enthusiasm is rooted in my growing sense of what my life is and is not about. I’ve written about those things some here before. I simply can’t find the will to expend much energy on the advance of temporary kingdoms and perishing agendas. Call me a religious nut if you will; I’ll just take my chances with the hope of a Real Life that redeems our paltry attempts at goodness and devours the evil that incessantly marches against our hearts and souls.
That’s all true of me, even if the fruits of my life still tend to lag behind the conviction of my spirit in these matters. So I submit the following as less of an agenda and more of a confession: there is another, less admirable, reason for my reluctance to slap the "American Proud" bumper stickers on my non-functioning 1993 Toyota Camry with the busted side view mirror and passenger window. I find the prevailing, defining characteristics of our culture to be rather embarrassing, namely our addiction to affluence and obsession with celebrity. These things, at least as much as democracy, capitalism, and apple pie, mark the American Spirit as it is perceived (rightly) by folks beyond our borders. I’m certainly not innocent of these sins; I just want to violently shake them from every cell in my body.
So what triggered this little rant and what does it have to do with Al Gore and his new Rock-Star-Superhero status? (This is where I get mean and unpleasant, but hopefully it will just last a paragraph or two.)
Live Earth. Did you see this? I didn’t, but I’ve indirectly encountered some of the subsequent hype. Every year or two, someone decides it would be a good idea to put together a big rock show to promote their current agenda. Farm Aid. Live Aid. Live8. Now Live Earth. At least the names are creative.
In one hand is the key to a new
Prius; in the other the key to my
lockbox.
Listen, I’m a big fan of both the earth and of music. Lots of the bands and artists that show up for these gigs are favorites of mine. I’m for them playing their music live, whatever the reason. It’s just a bizarre scene to have many of the world’s wealthiest and least-in-touch-with-normal-life all showing up to sing songs and put on shows in the name of changing the world, usually "for the sake of" people who live well below the mark of the normal-life that these rich, famous folks aren’t in touch with. Seriously. Is anyone buying this? It’s not that I haven’t noticed this phenomenon before, but Live Earth may have set a new standard in the "When is the punchline coming?" vibe at these shows.
Case in point: Yesterday, I dozed off watching something on TV. When I woke up a few minutes later, the show had changed and one of these celeb-worship shows that are broadcast directly from the headquarters of hell was on – Extra, Access Hollywood – something like that. They were whipping through the highlights of the weekend’s orgy of famous people with a cause, and I was groggily trying to locate the remote control to kill the box. Before I could succeed, I was informed that Cameron Diaz not only drives a hybrid car to reduce her emissions but she also announced from the Live Earth stage (I swear I’m not making this up) that she turns off the water in her shower while she shaves her legs. Do I really have to do this? Are there actually adults in this country who will (a) say these kinds of things in public, (b) listen to these kinds of things without choking on their $9 bottles of Ethos water*, (c) report these things to thousands of viewers, and (d) see this on the tee-vee without throwing a large, heavy object at their the screen? The answer, apparently, tragically, is yes.
I can’t even bring myself to point out the many ridiculous angles of this. Like whether Cameron demands to use hybrid limos wherever she goes or whether she demands to fly in hybrid private jets. Like whether she shaves her legs often enough without the shower running to offset the amount of water used in her large homes and large swimming pools. I can’t do it.
And this stuff is everywhere. Today I made the mistake of looking through a few celebrity playlists in iTunes. It seemed nearly every song choice was made because the song(s) spoke about the awful wrongs being perpetrated on us all by the new and coming corporate America or the oil companies or the blah, blah, blah. This from actors who are making multiple-millions for and from some of the world’s largest and most aggressive corporations with every film they make (not to mention that this ranting was being delivered via an iTunes celebrity playlist, the sole purpose of which is to generate more revenue for Apple, Inc.)
Kanye drops a shocker on the Live
Earth crowd: "George Bush doesn’t
care about earth people."
Hey, I’m as paranoid as the next guy, and I have no love for corporations, governments, or other large machines that ultimately exist to self-sustain with me and you as fuel. John Cusack is probably right about that stuff. He’s just a flaming hypocrite who is either incredibly stupid, tragically lacking in self awareness, or brazenly arrogant. Or all three. It’s insanity, but we’ve so tolerated and applauded it that it’s become a sort of collective cultural lunacy.
I’m not saying Bono or Al Gore shouldn’t put on big concerts to push what they believe. I’m not saying John Cusack shouldn’t speak out against corporate power or wars. I’m just asking them to either quit pushing agendas that their lives fundamentally and dramatically oppose or, at least, be as honest as most of us common folk in saying, "This seems really important to me, but I haven’t figured out how to modify my life to reflect that, and I’m not entirely sure I care enough to change how I live – just enough to run my mouth about it." Seriously, I’d stand and applaud anyone from Paris Hilton to Bill O’Reilly to Alec Baldwin if they’d be that honest.
These folks are the uber-consumers. Most of them own multiple homes that dwarf mine or yours and fly from continent to continent once a month while you and I might do that once a decade. They have heated pools and air conditioned tour buses. They make millions from their work on expensive sets and elaborate stages littered with energy gulping light shows, sound systems, and film gear. They travel with entourages and are a never ending source of creativity when it comes to redefining inefficiency. So what better way to raise awareness of global warming and environmental irresponsibility (who have we missed at this point that we need to raise awareness anyway?) than to bring all these earth-scorchers together for a massive trash producing, earth stomping rock concert where they can lecture us about buying more efficient light bulbs and using public transportation? Talk about the assault on reason. I only wish the big screens at these shows would have included a scoreboard of sorts showing how many average Joes and Janes in the crowd would have to change their lifestyle to offset the massive consumption and pollution of the celebrity on stage at the moment (who wouldn’t be caught dead using public transportation). That would have been environmentally responsible and honest. And that’s the goal, after all, right? Honesty. Responsibility. Right?
Which brings me back to our friend Al and his quest to keep the planet from melting. As I said before, I don’t know whether or not he’s right about climate change. I think it’s possible, but certainly not certain. I also think it’s worth talking about how we better care for the world we’ve been given even if the oceans aren’t in danger of boiling in the near future. I just don’t think it’s going to happen on any meaningful scale, and here’s why: We love how we live too much. We’re too far gone in this lifestyle of consumption and conquering to turn back now. You. Me. Al. All of us. Funny (in a we-may-all-go-to-hell-for-this kind of way), isn’t it, that those early mega-benefit-rock-star-fests were aimed at getting poor folks in Africa to live more like us, and the new campaign can’t succeed unless we all suddenly become willing to live more like those poor folks in Africa? Anyone think that’s likely?
Nothing lends credibility to an
earth-shattering cause like an
appearance by Spinal Tap….
It’s been well documented that Al’s Tennessee homestead consumes something like twenty times the energy of the average American home. The nuances of that have been fodder for folks on both sides for a few months now. Some say he’s irresponsible and completely hypocritical. Others say he lives a different life than the average American, his home has 20 rooms so it requires more power (that his consumption isn’t out of scale per square foot), and that he voluntarily pays more for power because he’s installed some alternative power production methods on his home.
…except maybe an appearance by
the Pussycat Dolls.
Whatever. I’m not interested in skewering him over this fact, but there is one thing he can’t escape – he punctuates An Inconvenient Truth (and much of his subsequent campaign) with the question: Are you ready to change the way you live? I’m fair and gracious enough to recognize that Al lives a different kind of life. But here’s the deal, and there’s really no way around it – at some point we can’t ask people to do what we aren’t willing to do ourselves.
Leo and Al: Saving the earth one
mansion at a time
Does Al need twenty rooms? Maybe, but is he ready to change the way he lives? Does he need spacious quarters for security personnel? Maybe (Are there more people that want to see Al dead than, say, people who want to see me dead? Almost certainly, though I pissed a lot of people off in high
school), but is he ready to change the way he lives?
This is my point. Even most of the folks willing to speak the loudest about global warming aren’t willing to dramatically change the way they live. Whatever the reason for all of Al’s energy consumption, he has convinced himself that he needs that lifestyle more than he needs to reduce his energy consumption to match mine. And if that’s true for Al, it’s certainly true for most of the bandwagoning celebrities who are now hanging out in his "green" room.
To be fair, I don’t know that famous people are any more guilty of loving money than the rest of us – they just do it with more flair. With few exceptions, the American dream has its claws just as deeply in me and you. Some folks smarter than me did a little homework on the American sentiment toward money and material wealth and produced a PBS special (then a book) called Affluenza. A few hightlights:
The show and book conclude by arguing against materialism not on a moral basis, but on a pragmatic basis. Empirical evidence proves conclusively that money and possessions do not make people happy. But they sure have our attention.
A.W. Tozer writes this about our condition:
Within the human heart things have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within heir hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for the first place on the throne. This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets things with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns my and mine look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
This is why Al Gore can’t save the world. It’s not because he didn’t get enough rock stars in his corner. It’s not because he’s not persuasive enough or thin enough or cool enough. It’s not even because he’s not right enough. It’s because we would rather die a thousand other deaths than experience the death of material security, comfort, and convenience. It’s because, like the rest of us, Al is up against "a tough, fibrous root…whose nature is to possess" and not to sacrifice. This root can be extracted, of course, but not by movies or movements or festivals. This root only dies as an otherworldly Kingdom advances through his soul and mine.
I don’t offer this as justification for my inaction or as an argument against living a life that is more environmentally friendly. I actually believe we can and should do more to live simple, clean, efficient lives. My point is that we’re fighting the wrong battle first, and the cult of celebrity is unlikely to lead us out of the desert unless they decide to lead the way in another campaign – one to pry ourselves from the seductive arms of material security. If I were you, I wouldn’t save my money for tickets to that rock show. The lineup is likely to suck.
*I am also in favor of clean water for people all over the world.
________________________________
Recommended reading:
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic
Just Generosity
The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need
The High Price of Materialism
Born to Buy: The Commericalized Child and the New Consumer Culture
The Irresistible Revolution
Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
[Part 3 of this series of posts]
Well, it’s officially been two months since my last post (which was more of a non-post, really). I’ve generally tried to at least not have vacant months, but I managed to skip June altogether. However, I confess that of all the blog material I read, people blogging about why they don’t blog or how they want to blog more ranks within a few slots of the bottom of my list entitled, "Things I’m glad I spent my time reading online." No offense intended to anyone who does that unless, of course, me offending you causes you to do that less. Anyway, I’ve done it. And now I’m not doing it, but instead writing about other people doing it. Bored yet? I am.
I might soon post with some more personal updates about what’s up with our fascinating family, but right now I need to address something far more consequential: advancements (or lack thereof) in consumer product convenience technology. By this I mean: Did it really escape us for decades that you could use a flip cap on a toothpaste tube? Was the twist-off bottle cap really a revelation that eluded the beverage industry until the 1980’s? The condiment squirt bottle — were we not smart enough to figure this one out in the 1970’s? We aren’t talking complicated circuitry here – these are a matter of simple mechanics. Every time I see one of these little developments come down the line, my first question is, "Someone just figured that out?" Yeah, I’m that guy.
My current beef is with the folks at Dr. Pepper. I am baffled how people who produce such a fine sipping soda can’t manage to put together their cute "fridge pack" in an efficient manner. When I punch out the little perforated hatch, I expect to be able to then neatly place the "fridge pack" in my fridge, where it will store and dispense cold cans of Dr. Pepper. Instead, I usually get this:
And if you don’t think that scene isn’t followed by much cursing from me, you think too much of me. I am genetically predisposed to become unreasonably agitated with inanimate objects and then speak to them as though they are capable of being shamed and intimidated by my rage. Among many other admirable qualities, I got this from my father, and my not-yet-five-year-old son is already demonstrating quite a knack for it himself. We’re very proud.
Anyway, back to the cans. It’s not like this code hasn’t been cracked. Take, for example, the folks over at the Coca Cola Co. When I punch one of their hatches, even if I’m not overly cautious, I get this:
Not only is this packaging superior in its durability, but the end that remains after the removal of the hatch is tall enough that all 12 cans can be stored this way. Dr. Pepper also fails in this regard since, even if you manage to perform the delicate surgery required to successfully extract the hatch, you’re left with a front end that only serves to prevent an avalanche of 11 or fewer cans. It’s a crime, really. In fact, here’s a look at the current state of my refrigerator:
Yes, that is duct tape. On a Dr. Pepper package. Despite Aiden’s accurate contention that "Dad, duct tape is always awesome," I shouldn’t have to test that on my Dr. Pepper fridge pack. I mean, aren’t the daily threats to my security and the Texas heat enough? Must I also suffer this forever?
The new banner photo was taken by my friend Matt Book, once of Pennsylvania (where I knew him) and now of Ohio. That’s his boy Ryan hurling a rock into some body of water in Washington state. Once upon a time many moons ago, I asked folks to send me photos I could use for banners. When I was replacing The Plantersville Masterpiece today, I came upon the folder containing a few of those pictures, including this one. Thanks, Matt.
These are for the portion of our massive audience who visits here to keep up with the Norvell family in a more personal way:
[At the time I made this post, the following image (which you can click to enlarge) was the banner image for this page.]
As much as I hate to bump the visual tales of my lumberjack brother down the page, I’m way overdue in explaining the current banner photo you see a couple of inches above this text. It is not stock photography or something funny I found on the internet. It is, in fact, a little piece of my life, and not (really) because of its inspirational message.
For most of my life, my mom’s sister’s husband was the pastor of Plantersville Baptist Church, a tiny country church in Grimes County, Texas. For those of you needing larger, more recognizable landmarks, Plantersville sits between Stoneham and Dobbin. Uncle Mike entered my life when he married my Aunt Molly when I was about five years old (I was actually a specific age – I just don’t remember what it was). At the time, we lived near Aunt Molly and her son Clint, who is two years older than me. At some point Clint and I decided we were "cousin-brothers," and it stuck.
Uncle Mike’s arrival on the scene was significant for a lot of reasons. Aunt Molly and Clint’s Dad divorced before Clint can remember (I think), and there was also a brief chapter involving another step-dad who was, to put it kindly, friggin’ nuts. I spent a lot of time with Aunt Molly and Clint, so having a stable, fun man in that environment was great. It’s not that I lacked that in my own life with my Dad; it was just a welcome addition to the part of my life spent with Molly and Clint. And though I knew very little of the world and its fallen ways at that age, I remember knowing that this was a very important development for Clint as well. It’s not that Clint didn’t have a Dad who loved him; he did and does. But for that part of his life, Mike was the new every day guy, and I somehow knew that was a good thing.
Molly was not Mike’s first wife either. I suppose it would be more polite for me to not mention these parts of the story, but life isn’t always polite, and our stories are what they are. Besides, I don’t know much about Uncle Mike and Aunt Molly’s marriage, but I know their journey to the altar still stands in my consciousness as one of the greatest tales of love, loss, and redemption I’ve ever heard. Perhaps, with their permission, I’ll tell it here someday. The relevant details are that they dated in college, had their photo plastered on the cover of a religious magazine, broke up, rediscovered one another after many years and much pain, fell in love, got married, and had three beautiful girls. And by "rediscovered one another," I mean Aunt Molly hunted Mike down by lying to his mother because she knew his mother would never knowingly allow Molly near him again. I’m telling you, it’s a terrific story.
After a couple of years, they moved from Houston to a trailer house next to the church building in Plantersville and we moved from Houston to Longview (and then Crane). From that point forward, I spent what would amount to a month or so every year in Plantersville. We were usually there for a couple of weeks in the summer, and one of those weeks was always Vacation Bible School at the Plantersville Baptist Church. This was like a trip into another world for me, and in my memory it plays out like scenes from a children’s adventure book.
The time I spent in Plantersville was a curious mix of pure rural Americana, old time religion, true familial warmth, and snipe hunting. Yes, Uncle Mike found all sorts of joy in putting me and Clint through an array of humiliating and terrifying experiences, including the hunting of the mythical snipe (which actually exists) and keeping us up late watching horror movies so that he could scare the bejesus out of us later. We also watched The Karate Kid 27 times in a two week period in the summer of ’85 or ’86. The Norvell family did not own a VCR until 1989, so a trip to Plantersville also (oddly) meant I’d make every effort to gorge myself on this new fangled technology that allowed a guy to watch real, commercial-free movies on the living room teevee.
Sometime when I was in high school, our family Thanksgiving gathering also relocated to Plantersville. This event now involves 50 people (give or take), most of whom are related, cramming themselves into small spaces for days at a time. This year there will be four babies present at this gathering who were not with us last year. We multiply much more rapidly than we die, and Plantersville will no longer hold us. We’ve moved to a nice Catholic retreat center down the road, which is ironic both because this part of the family is historically very Baptist, and because a handful of Catholics have married into the family only to subsequently unmarry themselves out of the family (with, I believe, one exception).
Anyway, the little white frame building that housed the Plantersville Baptist Church became very, very familiar to me over the years. The main building stands today as the oldest frame church building in the state of Texas, and a historical marker will tell you things like this:
Organized May 19, 1861, by elders N. T.
Byars and George W. Baines. The Rev. Mr. Baines was the
great-grandfather of the 36th President of the United States, Lyndon
Baines Johnson.
and this:
Worship was in a schoolhouse until erection of this building, which was dedicated Aug. 4, 1872. Cost $2,701.73, paid in gold. Church bell came by oxcart from San Antonio. Building, including pews (hand-hewn), is in original state.
Some will find these facts uninteresting historical or religious relics. Perhaps I’d be one of those people if significant chunks of my growing up weren’t set around and inside that relic. Aunt Molly married Uncle Mike there. Other family members, including my
arsonist middle brother and his wife, Beth, have taken their vows between its walls. I pledged to two flags and a Bible there summer after
summer (and have repented of some of that since). I’ve played countless
games of hide and seek or flashlight tag in and around it. For over twenty years I watched
Uncle Mike shepherd a small, peculiar group of farmers, recluses,
and poor folks who scattered themselves among the pews. And I sweat and
squirmed through more Sunday services than I can count. Even through much of my childhood, the building was not air conditioned, and those 1872 hand-hewn pews were not built for comfort. They are shaped like this: L, but feel like they are shaped like this: /_
And it is one of these pews that you see at the top of this page. I believe this photo was taken at Will and Beth’s wedding, and I love it. The mixture of the simple, theologically imprecise spiritual enthusiasm and rebellious disfiguring of hand-hewn pews that merit mention on a historical marker (you can see that "original state" might be a bit of a stretch) reaches a place so deep within me that I can only communicate about it through laughter. I have no idea who carved what I simply refer to as The Plantersville Masterpiece, but I feel like I know him well. If he was found out, I’m sure he was reprimanded soundly. And, if I know the team he was pledging his allegiance to, I suspect they’ll be greeting him with high-fives on That Day. What a team, indeed!
Below are some assorted photos from Will and Beth’s wedding to supplement the story. They got married in November of 2002 during the Thanksgiving extravaganza, and Aiden was two months old. He’s the wide-eyed piglet you’ll see here. This series also features Britt with hair (LOTS!), me and both brothers when there was less of us in general, and my Mamaw (who you should read about here). She was with us for two more Thanksgivings after this one. Click the photos for bigger views:
I just read the following sentence on someone’s myspace page: "Everyone tells me I have an old soul." Pardon me, but no they don’t. No one says that. Except people who are reading from a bad movie script. Or people named Paula Abdul.
I urge you, brethren, in view of God’s mercy, to stay away from myspace if you can. That’s a weird little universe.
My brother (the middle one who once burned down a forest) introduced me to myspace at Christmas by showing me lots of people we grew up with. I signed myself up over there to utilize their odd networking scheme to contact a couple of old friends I hadn’t been in touch with in many years. I have since been amazed by how many other old friends have found me.
This post is not all about myspace.
But this part is about myspace. While I was in college, my parents moved away from the small west Texas town where I went to middle and high school. I’ve only been back a few times since then, and only once in the last ten years. I don’t see these people much. myspace enables you to see these people again. It’s very strange. What I find most puzzling is how many of these people have changed their names since high school. Seriously. At some point in their post-high school life they determined that the first name they’d used up to that point was no longer serving them well, and they went another direction. Very curious. My middle brother (the one who once burned down a gigantic forest, which not only destroyed lots of trees and all of the wildlife that called those trees home, but also triggered the mass global warming that now threatens to kill us all) once changed the spelling of his name. But he changed it back. This is odd, but not as odd as completely divorcing oneself from one’s name and making up a new one.
I have not changed my name. Maybe I should. Biff? Conan? Lance Armstrong?
Barack Obama is apparently a heavy smoker. This, for me, seems odd. I don’t know why.
I did not go to high school with Barack Obama, but he probably does have a myspace page.
On myspace, people list things like their sexual orientation and their income level and whether or not they smoke or drink. Can anyone explain this to me?
Do you think Barack admits to smoking on his myspace page?
Many people also have a clever little inspirational quote next to their photo on their myspace page. My favorite so far: "I WASN’T BORN WITH ENOUGH MIDDLED FINGERS" You and me both, sister.
Several people include photos of their car on their myspace page. Anyone want to see a picture of my ’93 Toyota Camry with the antenna bent at a 45 degree angle into (literally) the trunk?
Which reminds me: Did one of you hosers break off my antenna and steal it? It’s no longer bent at a 45 degree angle into the trunk. Now it’s just broken off.
Is the point of myspace, more or less, to prove to the world that you are, in fact, even stranger than we all thought you were in high school? I’m just asking because I am, in fact, even stranger than everyone thought I was in high school. I just need to know if myspace was invented for me to prove this.
This is my middle brother – the one who once burned down a forest the size of Vermont resulting in the imminent melting of the planet. I took this photo from his myspace page which I suppose answers my last question.
This turned out to mostly be about myspace. But you already know that.
Please ease up on the rabid demands for me to reveal the brilliant conclusion to my previous post on this issue. It’s coming sooner or later.
All of my blogging efforts are being directed here for a few days.
home anywhere 
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