Cathing Up, Not fish

9:42 p.m.
Okay. It’s been several days since I’ve written anything for my blog.

Last week I saw “Napolean Dynamite” with Justin. We both liked it, but not as much as my friend Susan. When I asked her why she liked it, here’s what she wrote:

I liked ND because it's pretty much the best movie, and ligers are pretty much my favorite mythological animals. And because Tina needs to eat the ham.

I don't know. It's one of those movies that is a nice little escape. And any guy who catches his girl a nice bass is gosh darn swell in my book.

Oh, and how can you NOT love the scene in which N lobs a grapefruti at his loser uncle? Or the one in which Kip runs over the Tupperware bowl and speeds off after fuming, "Dang it!" ?


Yes, Susan is, once again, so right, so perceptive, so brilliant. Napolean Dynomite, though painful at every step, is very funny.

Friday, after struggling most of the morning with a piece on religious fundamentalism, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and 9/11 (don’t ask), I realized that I haven’t done enough research yet. Plus, I spent a bunch of time doing random things for my church job, then I headed off to UCI to try to generate some discussion of Ann Van Sant’s arguments about King Lear. She essentially argues that King Lear dramatizes the difficulty both hierarchical structures and Christian virtues (viz. charity and forgiveness) have in keeping social groups together.

I then went home to get ready for a weekend camping and fishing trip at Lake Irvine. My dad had purchased the trip for Justin (my 12-year-old son) leaving me to accomplish the task. We only fished for about an hour Friday night . . . and caught nothing. We cooked spaghetti on the camp stove, built a fire, and then turned in around 11:00.

I woke about around 12:00 to a woman’s very loud moaning, sighing, and exclamations: “Oh my God, Oh my God, don’t stop, don’t stop.” They went three rounds like this, going and going until 1:30 a.m. The vatos locos on the other side of us kept yelling taunts at them, taunts that went unnoticed by the happy couple, a couple I suspect did not know each other that well, given the fact that they had sex three times in an hour and half, making love like people who may never do it again. I suppose they were happy, in that moment, that moment before she would begin to wonder if sleeping with that big goofball was a big mistake, that moment before the exciting, loud woman turned into the crazy psycho stalker, or, maybe I’m too cynical, just maybe, it was that moment before they realized that their passion was the beginning of something more lasting, more meaningful . . . though I doubt it.

We fished the next day from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., and never got a bite. We were chasing catfish with mackerel filets which we smeared with “stinky bait.” Justin managed to coat himself in the stinky bait, quite by accident, which made the ride home almost unbearable, but we never caught a thing. I felt disappointed for Justin. I remember what it was like to be twelve, to fish all day, and catch nothing. I could hear him praying under his breath, asking God to let him catch a fish, this boy’s prayer to catch a fish being one of life’s first hard theological lessons.

Sunday, church, Crop Walk (to raise money for hunger), then home to study John Locke.

Today, more Locke, teaching, reading, etc., and work on a short story that’s been rumbling around in my head. I’m setting it in Belgrade, dredging up memories of when I used to live there. I also got my copy of McSweeney’s, the entire issue of which is devoted to short fiction. I read Chris Adrian’s great story, “A Child’s Book of Sickness and Death,” about a young girl who has spent her whole life in and out of a children’s hospital. She’s back for another round of treatments at a moment when she is writing a children’s book about animals who suffer terribly. I know it sounds dreary, but it’s really not . . . well, maybe a bit dreary, but also very beautiful and funny.

Not going to take time to proofread . . . sorry.