I've learned how to laugh and I've learned how to pray
Two years ago, these were the closing words of my post about The Last Jedi.
We’ll find out in a couple of years whether Abrams is up to that task. Past performance does not guarantee future results, but I don’t like the odds.
Having seen the movie a few hours ago (I’m living in the future right now), I can tell you the accuracy of that statement was somewhere between 0 and 100%.
Come back in a few days and I’ll try to narrow down the range.
I live in a fairy-tale land, a land where logic and mathematics and common sense were banished long ago. A land where the impossible is possible, where certainty is forever uncertain, where the probable is very unlikely.
I live in the land of the Dallas Cowboys.
The land was not always this way. Long ago, when dinosaurs and a fedora roamed the earth, the Cowboys were in the NFC championship game 10 out of 13 years. They set the record for most consecutive winning seasons at 20, a record that still stands, at least until next year. They played in a stadium with a hole in its roof so God could see His team play, or so the saying went.
(Where has the time gone? Where have I gone? I know, I know, I’ve been a poor caretaker of this web site. Let’s see if I can do better.)
The church we are a part of celebrated their 20th anniversary a couple of weeks ago, and as part of that celebration produced a video about the first 20 years. Almost nine minutes in, Tim Harris talks about greeting visitors at the church’s first building, and says, “I didn’t do it to the degree of Loyd…”. We did meet Tim and Cindy very early on in that building, but nobody did (or does) it to the “degree of Loyd.”
We had been members of a church for half-a-lifetime (35 years for me, 20 for my wife) when God called us somewhere else.
Rorshach tests are supposed to tell us all kinds of things about our psychological condition. I find what we think is funny does a much better job.
I thought about this recently as I was reading Lauren Bacall’s first autobiography. (We’ve been watching the B&B movies, I’ve had the book on the shelf for a while, what are you gonna do?) Bogart had died, they’d just had the funeral, Bacall had told everyone to make contributions to the American Cancer Society in lieu of flowers. A large group of friends came back to her house after the funeral, and the telegrams are pouring in.
They did a study at the Chronicle of Philanthropy years ago where they asked people who inherited money, “What amount of money would you need to feel totally secure?” And every single one of them, no matter what they had, named a number that was roughly twice what they inherited. So that’s what you need to know about money, right? If that is your primary measure of success or value in life, then good luck with that, because it will never feel good.
From an interesting interview with a Disney heir.
I generally don’t like to quote from people talking about “studies” unless I’ve seen the original study.
The search for “the elusive Wasp.” Mesmerizing.