edwards drive-in/off the rack

when I was a kid we had this great big tree in the front of our yard. it hads knots all over it and a huge trunk and it was the center of most games that went on. one of these games, the first one of them I remember playing, we called “super-heros”. basically the game involved being the super hero of your choice and figuring out ways to emulate that super-hero. it was my yard and I was a pain in the ass about winning games as a kid so I was always captain america. after a while no one ever thought about even trying to be captain america because it became a given. there were usually four or five of us and green latern and the flash and spiderman were the other favorites mostly. there was this kid next door named willie who was kind of crazy and we’d make him be the hulk because he was good at acting puffed up and he’d even rip his shirts once in a while. my father was a painter and my big claim to fame was painting the top of a garbage can. there were actually two versions of this, the first one was metal and it was retired because kids didn’t like to have it thrown at them.

all this came to mind because I started thinking about what I read as a kid and comic books were the first thing I can remember. comic books and the back of baseball cards. I also remember getting a book about basketball history out of the library the first time we went and reading it twice. this is why I can tell you that bob pettit played for the st. lous hawks, who no longer exist, and that he was the first player to score 20,000 points in NBA history. I found other basketball history books and in every one pettit was described as the guy who tried harder than anyone else. for some reason I identified with him although I would never see him play. he remained my favorite basketball player until I saw john havilichek a few years later.

after that I picked up one of my father’s spy books and that phase took up a couple years. I don’t think anyone ever knew I was reading them which made it better somehow. that morphed into books that I was told to read at school and then who knows.

this brief history is to point out the I never read children’s books, or what were considered children’s books. the hobbit was foreign to me until I saw lord of the rings and I think the movie picked up after that book. another one I missed was “the chronicles of narnia” by c.s. lewis. a lot of my superhero friends read this book if I remember correctly and I even picked it up once and just didn’t get into it. I always felt like I’d missed out on something for some reason so when I went to go to the movies tonight and showed up at the wrong time for the fourth different movie in about six months I asked if anything else was playing. the chronicles of narnia was in previews I was told. so I bought a ticket and thought I’d find out what I missed during my childhood.

it’s my belief now that I missed nothing. what a load of crap this movie is. it’s not just a bad movie that keeps trying to be overly cute and sentimental while reinforcing all those christian values we all already know about, but it’s a completely confused movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be. it’s made by disney so it has talking animals. it’s got a cute little girl who threatens to hijack the movie and nearly does deservedly so. it’s got lord of the rings type battle scenes. it’s got the whole story of christ, except that he’s a big lion with liam neeson’s voice I believe. it’s got tilda swinton doing good work as the white witch who gets to do an indiana jones don’t look at the ark type of scene. and finally at the end a scene right out the first star wars where they all get crowned at the end of the picture.

worst of all is that people are defending this movie because it does skew so close to christianity. it's the same reason people defended mel gibson's little torture fest. how did we become so stupid? the story of christ is a lovely story and for some reason you're not allowed to say that these days, or you're supposed to be ashamed of noticing that christianity happened so fast because it was a kind religion which wasn't the norm in a lot of ways. instead you have people trying to turn christ into a lethal weapon character or a lion with an irish accent.

jesus.