TWILIGHT FRANCHISE LOCKS LOGIC IN THE CLOSET

I just watched TWILIGHT and TWILIGHT-MOON because we are getting a free SHOWTIME weekend. I am so confused by some of the basic tenets of these 2 movies. Can someone help me?

First of all Bella, the female lead, is a mere senior in high school, and not very impressive to me.  We are supposed to accept that this handsome vampire boy and his competitor stud muffin wolf boy are both madly in love with her.  I just do not get it.  Is she particularly pretty? NO. Does she have a deep  personality? Not in my opinion. Does she show intelligence? Seldom. Does she ever even smile? More rarely than snow in Phoenix.

As I understand it, vampire boy is over 100 years old. So although his body may be very youthful, he has had more time on earth than most of us will ever have (in 1 life) to emotionally mature. Yet, he still has the hots for a little high school chicky pooh? The oldest person I know is my dad. He is 98 years old, and if he had the hots for a high school chickadee I would talk to his doctor about a change in medications! Yet this vampire boy (who I understand only eats road kill because he is environmentally sensitive?) is in love with this little pom pom girl with her perpetual frown.

Of course, the same argument goes for wolf boy. And all I can say upfront about wolf boy is WOOF! He has a beautiful physique, and a lovely soul, yet Bella prefers a guy that makes normal human albinos seem tanned in comparison. Now, as a gay guy, I can see the male beauty of the actor selected to play wolf boy. The movie certainly rewards all the teen girls’ deepest lusts by showing him wearing very little most of the time. He has a classic pretty high school jock face. Put a varsity jacket on wolf boy, and he would be the classic high school girl’s dream cum true boyfriend. But Bella prefers the walking dead guy who also has a perpetual frown. When I look at his hair, I feel like yelling "surfs up" because it always looks like an ocean wave about to crest. If he had head lice, they'd all be on little surf boards!

The other foundation tenet I do not understand is, why are 100+ year old vampires going to high school? Haven’t they had a lot of years to learn how useless algebra, chemistry and geology are in normal vampire life? Imagine it. You are 109 years old but full of the vitality of a youth of 20. You have supernatural powers. You also seem to have lots of money. So what do you do to pass the time? You enroll in a rural high school. Uh, huh…..sure, makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? This would be like Paris Hilton deciding to spend her life studying how to be a maid. You would think the author would find some logical reason for vampires to act so dull,  such as claiming it is a vampire initiated effort to improve public education. Or perhaps this family of vampires lost a bet and is being forced to attend high school in punishment.

The other foundation tenet is that everyone human accepts the vampires as being human. Let’s see: they are whiter than snow, they have eyes that change color from BLACK to brown to GOLD, their skin glistens in the sun, and they can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Human? There must be something in the water supply of this little town that is blurring everyone's vision.

So to sum up, the latest film franchise has the following tenets:

1.      Supernatural studs naturally fall madly in love with this dull dreary girl named Bella, a mere high school student who could use a powerful anti-depressant and therapist.

2.      Bella naturally falls for a guy who looks like he’s been in a freezer 100 years and is covered in freezer burn rather than the ultra hunky tanned warm blooded wolf boy.

3.      Teen vampires, even though they are hundreds of years old, naturally attend the local public high school to learn how to conjugate verbs and disect frogs.   

4.      Humans in the town naturally mind their own business and see nothing unusual about snow white people with glowing golden eyes and magical powers.

I understand that later in the franchise vampire boy and Bella have a baby? I thought vampires were supposed to be like the walking dead and did not have sex. I thought they were ice cold. Ladies, how would you like something icy cold “doing the deed” with you? This would be like having a popcycle thrust.....well, you get my drift.

I understand that eventually Bella gets her wish to lose her soul and become a vampire girl. I wonder if she is then able to shop at Saks - Transylvania branch. I understand that Bella and vampire boy  settle down and raise some little blood suckers. How sweet! This sure is the stuff of every teen girl’s healthy sexual fantasies, eh?

Oh, well, it’s just a movie franchise, and I am finding some of it rather predictable. Since girls like to be the center of attention (which is my theory why they bellow so loudly in packs at the Arrowhead Mall), I bet there has to be a battle over Bella (gag) eventually. Yeah, (sigh) beautiful wolf boy and anemic vampire boy will probably fight over Bell as if she is a piece of prime fillet.  And she will watch it all with the same pasted-on sad look she carries through out all the movies.

 Boys, she isn’t worth it.

I wonder if vampires and wolfmen have dating agencies, like vampire Match.com?

A Typical Retirement Friday for Will Christie

Today is Friday, which is a big deal to YOU poor working class slobs. We retired folk live adventurous lives of freedom every day. I thought I would attempt a stream of consciousness download of my typical retirement Friday. That way you poor working class slobs can see what you are working towards when your job is outsourced to India (as mine was in 2004).

Let’s see, the day started out with me giving my customary greeting and snuggles to my dog Chandler, who awaits my appearance outside the bedroom door. I’d let him sleep with me, but he takes all the covers. When I complain, he reminds me that he has huge fangs.

In my jockey shorts (the rest of me may be feeling the pull of gravity but my butt is still tight enough to crack a walnut) I sat at the PC reading FACEBOOK.  I had sent out a shocking private piece of gossip to one “Friend” and was awaiting a response. I got my payoff later in the day when the person responded “I’m shocked”). 

Chaos ensued around 10 a.m. when I suddenly realized that the bug spray man was coming today. The house must be spotless before he arrives.  I don’t mind if he finds rats taking a bubble bath in the kitchen sink, but perish the thought that there is dust on the tables or fur balls from my dog rolling across the tiles. So I and my jockey shorts scrubbed the floors (with my dog trying to smell parts of my anatomy that are better left unsniffed).

Then I attempted to go to the Temple of Prosperity (Wells Fargo Bank) to get some old fashioned paper money for a haircut, but the path was blocked by my doubts (in Unity terms). Actually, putting all the Unity metaphor shtick aside, there was literally a big hole in the street gushing gas or water (hard to tell since they both smell the same in Anthem). Evidently, in building a new Mormon “Ward” center in Anthem the righteous workers in yellow vests had smashed into the existing pipes and turned Main Street into a postmodern art fountain.  Hundreds of people stood around and applauded. People in Anthem are easily entertained. Give them each a flashlight and they will stand motionless for hours just flashing the light into the sky, waiting for the Rapture.

So I sat in my car for about an hour listening to Valerie Crabtree on CD annoyingly promote herself on her UNITY FM program for the first 10 minutes of the show, then finally offer some  spiritual instruction for a successful life. 1. Constructive Thought 2. Faith in God 3. Listen for Guidance 4. Act on Guidance 5. Thank God. 6. Repeat until it works.

Upon returning home, a friend called who wanted to download the last 3 months of her psycho analysis. When the conversation shifted from having a hot toddy (my contribution to the call) to inadequate potty training (the caller’s obsession) I suggested that she fax me the doctor’s notes instead. I hated to sound callous, but the bug spray man always calls before he arrives, and so I must leave the line clear.

I actually read some of Emilie Cady’s views on DENIALS for the class I am taking next Tuesday at Unity. Emilie tells us how to deny any power to “appearances”. For example, if you are up to your neck in alligators, you don’t deny the presence of the alligators, but Auntie Em says you should deny any POWER to the alligators (even as your fingers float by, followed by your arms, etc.).  Auntie Em says we can ignore appearances because we are each an eternal manifestation of God, even if that manifestation has been chewed down to a stump by powerless alligators. There’s a picture of Emilie Cady in the book, and she resembles Granny Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies. Could it be? She also resembles Barnie Fife in drag – remember the episode of ANDY GRIFFITH where he got in drag as a little old lady in order to place bets with a bookie working out of Floyd’s barber shop?

I got a personal invitation to attend an all-night gay dance party at a huge gay dance palace (5 floors, 40,000 square feet) in West Hollywood, where 2 top gay models would appear to arouse the jaded crowd of LA boys. For those straight people who don’t know, gay top models are extremely handsome and have more muscles than a statue in the Vatican of Hercules. Yes, this ridiculously misplaced invitation took me momentarily into memories of the rather shallow land of youth, steroid induced muscles, and the most handsome young men on the planet, dancing with each in dry ice clouds until the roaster crows!

I suspect there is a 20 year old Will Christie who is wondering what happened to his invitation in the Phoenix area. The days of taking my shirt off and dancing into dawn with hundreds of my “tribe” are over for little old me. I could make a charitable contribution to send 1 gay teenager to the nearest gym to pump iron (which is the only way he will get his invitation to join the so-called White Party Circuit), but I decided to cut back on such urgent causes this year.

Speaking of the gay world, I was also offered the opportunity to spend $19.95 for a calendar featuring erotic poses by Rodiney Santiago (he has a FACEBOOK Page so check it out) a top gay model. Each calendar came with a written guarantee that the model sat on the calendar with his naked butt before it was sent out. Great! I can imagine ordering such a calendar and then upon receipt needing to spray it with Lysol.  You can’t be too careful these days. If a man has a furry butt, I’m concerned about lice!

Then another friend called and told me he had piles. I asked him why he needed to share this information and his response was “When I heard I had piles, I immediately thought of you”. He insisted this was a compliment because he claims I smell like Preparation H on a hot day. I defended myself, telling him that it was just my natural masculine musk scent!

Then I began to channel my inner evil Queen of Hearts. I sat at the PC yelling “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS” while deleting a few FACEBOOK friends who have not lived up to expectations, e.g., no messages of slobbering adoration, no dedications to me in their soon-to-be published books, and no one to tell me that I’ve got this spirituality thing down pat and should move on to napping 20 hours a day. Actually, when I first began my FACEBOOK page, some of the people I removed insisted on filling up the news page with hundreds of pictures of their newly born baby, each picture looking exactly the same (like a ripe melon with Mr. Potato eyes and lips). If you are going to inflict hundreds of pictures of your baby on FACEBOOK, at least change the pose, have him balanced on his head, put him in the dog's mouth or dress him up as an alligator.

Finally 4 p.m. arrived, the time the 3 reruns of GHOST WHISPERER are on TV. At that time, a hush descends upon the house. Chandler my dog curls up at my feet with a big sigh, and for 3 hours I watch to see who is going to be sent into the light by a pretty girl who wears a lot of low cut blouses that show mucho Grande cleavage and her handsome stud of a husband, whose major role on the show is to take his shirt off and kiss the pretty girl every ten minutes. He’s every girl and gay guy’s dream of the perfect husband, a really hot looking guy who just takes his shirt off and kisses you every 10 minutes.

Soon I must retreat to bed. I don’t like going to bed, any more than little kids do. I have such weird dreams. Last night I dreamed I looked in a mirror and was Carrot Top, the comedian and magician. I woke up clutching my Howard the Duck doll in fear of what my therapist would make of this.

So there ends a typical Friday. Was it worth a blog post? Do you still want to retire? 

Note: On a serious note, I've made the best of my retirement by being a Unity Chaplain for 4 years and a Hospice of the Valley worker for 3 years. Due to illness in 2010, I had to drop both service functions. My goal is to find new ways to serve in 2011 that won't disrupt my GHOST WHISPERER watching schedule (unless someone buys me the series? Any wealthy philanthropists out there?)

Love, Will

So Much To Read, So Little Time, So Little WillPower

When I was a young, I could read a book a day. I’d often sit on the lawn of a pillared mansion that then served as a regional library, or I’d curl up in a chair on the roof overlooking the distant high-rises of downtown San Francisco. I loved reading about magic, architectural design and self-help books titled HOW TO BECOME PERFECT BY READING THIS BOOK.

But now I never seem to have time to read. I have a home library with about 500 books, most of them on metaphysical/spiritual topics. They sure look pretty and give me great comfort just awaiting my attention like colorful little toy blocks on the shelves. In some cases, I’ve insulted them by putting framed pictures in front of them, along with little Winnie the Pooh figurines. I also have a 12 inch size copy of the robot from the original LOST IN SPACE TV show. When I get close to selecting a book, he shouts “Warning, Will Robinson. That does not compute!” Then I get side tracked by my 50 year old collection of plastic Roman Soldiers and my dinosaur statuettes. My subconscious mind seems to be keeping me away from my books by turning my bookcase into a carnival wall of cheap prizes. If you have a choice between reading THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND (Julian Jaynes) or playing with Roman Soldiers, which would you do?

Is this the only reason I have trouble reading? I could blame it on my hectic life since I retired! I have a golden retriever who constantly needs to be talked to, petted, fed, played with, let outside, brushed, and walked. This is just the beginning of my retirement duties. I have to prepare my own breakfast! I have to put on my own pants and remember that the zipper goes in the front!

I have to breath! Now someone might say that breathing takes care of itself, but not when you are a Unity Truth student.  Then you consciously take deep breaths in through the nose, and then slowly release them through the mouth to calm yourself. This is a great practice if you feel anxious, as I do when I must decide whether I want chunky or plain peanut butter toast. Unfortunately, my conscious breathing usually upsets my dog and he barks (he thinks he is a paramedic), so then I have to reassure him that I am not having a strange fit.

I have to check FACEBOOK and see if anyone has written to me. What joy when someone takes the time to write to sweet little me. I feel like an old nanny hoping to receive a card on Valentine’s Day from her now grown up charges, or at least a lewd note from the little old man who gooses her in the park (Do nannies secretly wear underwear with the zipper in the back?). 

OK, I do make an effort to read books that are good for me, but after about 10 minutes, I suddenly shudder and realize that I’ve been napping for an hour with a spiritual book on my lap. Staying awake, even when reading the latest Unity book on Bliss, Oneness and Gratitude….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Forgive me, there I go again into the stillness and silence that others might call sleep.

I truly want to be a Truth student and read all this enlightened wisdom in a linear fashion, with my eyes moving from left to right, row after tedious row.  But my subconscious tells me that reading about Bliss, Oneness and Gratitude is so powerful and I am already so “deep” that I fall into a heavenly trance where my snores are equivalent to speaking in tongues.  

One time while enjoying the Stillness with God, I found myself walking down a Beverly Hills street naked. The cops came and were going to arrest me, but Brad Pitt appeared. He told the police that I was his special friend. He just happened to be carrying a soft white bathrobe, so I put this on and became respectable again by Lindsey Lohan standards. We drove around LA in his black SUV enjoying the toxins in the air together. He even put his hand on my knee! Yet, then I opened my eyes and I was in my home library again. Thinking of the recent movie INCEPTION about many levels of dreams that can become quite complicated, which is real, my library or my ride with Brad in his black SUV? Are Bliss, Oneness and Gratitude manifested by hanging out with Brad Pitt? DOes my angel manifest as Brad Pitt? Hmmm…..could be. But I know the real Brad Pitt is fickle (per PEOPLE magazine) and would eventually dump me and return to Jolie or Jennifer.

Taking an amateur philosophical approach, could I just be spoiled? I am being bombarded every day by so many new methods of communication. These are often little devices with dazzling colored lights, noises, voices, music, and a sense of interaction – I get to press a button once in a while! WOW! This somehow seems much  more exciting than turning the page of a book. Books just seem dull. They just lay there in your lap. Is that why Amazon.com is selling Kindle? Amazon takes a mundane paper book and puts it inside a little electronic box, and ABRACADABRA, the written material becomes interesting again. But isn’t that rather silly?

What better medium for providing information is there than a book? If it’s a paperback you can fold it and stick it in your back pocket or purse, you can write in it, highlight passages.  Please be prudent: as Unity Lending Library Meister I’ve seen books where the reader went berserk and highlighted in yellow every single word in the book. You can drop it in a mud puddle, and it still works, unlike Kindle.

So getting back to basics, how do I bypass a subconscious mind that doesn’t seem to want me to read about spiritual truth and would rather have me dream about being Brad Pitt’s special bro? Do I read while sitting in a bathtub full of ice cubes? Do I read standing up? (Not sure that would work – I think I’ve learned to sleep standing up). Do I put on music I loathe like rap or heavy metal? Maybe that would side track the subconscious and I could get some reading done. Should I clip clothes pins on my body? (Hmmm....turning book reading into an S&M experience? Maybe I should suggest that on certain websites). Maybe I could offer myself rewards, e.g., if I read a book from cover to cover, I get to buy myself yet another book! Hmmm….something doesn’t seem quite right about that concept of a reward. Maybe a chocolate chip cookie would be better.

Right now I am reading ASK YOURSELF THIS (Wendy Craig-Purcell), HEART CENTERED METAPHYSICS (Hasselbeck), JESUS 2.1 (Thomas Shepherd), ANGELS IN MY HAIR (Lorna Byrne), WHORES OF LOST ATLANTIS (Charles Busch), PUTTING ON THE MIND OF CHRIST (Marion). And THE MINDFULNESS CODE (Altman). If I take a Unity class on Emile Cady later this month, I’ll have to prepare by rereading her complete works.

I probably just need personal responsibility and discipline. I can tell myself that I do not get to watch the GHOST WHISPERER rerun on ION cable TV unless I’ve read a chapter in each book.  Where there is a Will there is a way, right?

Will's Traitorous Celebration of New Year's Day

Eckhart Tolle wants us to “be here now”. But there are times I find it more peaceful NOT to be here now, e.g., when the New Year’s Day Rose Bowl Parade brought to you by Honda is on TV. I remember watching the parade as a little boy on TV (yes, Virginia, they had TV back when I was a mere mite). When I was a child, the parade was quite exciting, even in black & white, since everything was made of flowers. What was there for a little gay boy not to like?

But do I really want to be here now with the 2011 parade? Let’s take a short peak into Nowness. Hmmm. There is a high school marching band from Lynchum, Mississippi playing “When the Saints Come Marching In”. How original - nothing from the Rocky Horror Show? I take a moment to use my Spiderman vision to look into their sweet young eyes, and I see terror. I empathize with these dear Southern sisters and brothers. They came from Lychum, Mississippi to Los Angeles in just a few hours by flight! They are in cultural shock.

How can there be a town like LA in the greatest nation on Earth without a Southern Baptist Church on each corner? And why do all y’all talk so funny? There’s something slightly non-Christian about the California accent (did you know that California is where most porn is made?).  On each side of the band I see adult keepers, ready to reign in the righteous kids if they lose control. It would be so easy for one of the Lynchum trumpeters to freak out and summon the archangel Michael to help rapture their butts out of Sodom & Gomorrah. I shift my clairaudience to focus on the cute young lady twirling a baton. Her eyes fall upon the address 666 Colorado Blvd. “Oh Lordy, protect us as we pass by the devil’s house” (Actually, it’s the Southern California corporate address for everything on late night TV that sells for $19.95).

See where “now” can take you? If you have great psychic powers like me (or just a wild imagination and the power of projection), "now" can be quite scary. So I turn off the TV.

I feel social  guilt arising from my conscience. How dare I not watch the parade? Have I no ethics left? Surely I will be watching the football game (which football game? ANY football game) this afternoon, right? Well, no. You see, I just don’t enjoy watching guys who look like they were turned down for the movie TRON for being overweight. They are so padded that they look more like Power Rangers than athletes.

I like to see a bit of thigh when I watch sports, so I am a big soccer fan, like just about the entire rest of the world except the USA. I love watching those handsome guys running around in their tiny tight shorts, kicking the little ball around with their muscular hairy legs. It is just so cute. You can actually see the guys’ flushed faces and their hair flying through the air.

But I am not a total traitor to my culture. No!  Chandler my golden retriever has a glow-in-the-dark football that squeaks when he bites down on it. Chandler and I celebrated New Year’s Day in the backyard. I’d throw a pass, and Chandler would catch and run with it while I tried to tackle him. Neither of us wore helmets or padding, but we had a lot of fun until we had every dog within a half mile barking at the noise made by the football.

Oh, yeah…..isn’t New Year’s Day also the day when red blooded American guys drink a lot of beer in front of the TV as they root for their favorite tribe?  Well, I am a spoilsport here also because I cannot drink alcohol due to some medications I take. But I fulfilled my duty as an American man in the culinary snack department. I gorged myself on bottled water with a hint of grape flavoring, and ate some air puffed potato chips (these are the latest rage, but the way).   

As night falls, I am back at my new Christmas HP PC. Beneath the screen is a little chrome frog that Chaplain Barbara (some of you will remember her) gave me. She told me years ago that the little statuette stood for God. I responded “God is a frog?” “No, you imbecile! F=Fully R=Rely O=On G=God”. “Ah, I see.” I haven’t seen dear Barbara in years (she is quite elderly and can no longer travel to Unity Phoenix), but her frog gift reminds me of spiritual truth every time I sit in front of the PC.

While performing the rituals of the first day of the year might be fun or provide some deeper sense of continuity with life (i.e., my grandma and mom watched the Rose Bowl Parade, and now the crown – made of pansies - has been passed to me), you can sneak in deeperness (no, that isn’t a real word but it’s my blog and I’ll make up words if I want to). Perhaps during the silence (between beer commercials) you might whisper “Fully Rely on God. “This became a life preserver for me in 2010, when I suffered a serious downturn in health in June that made me feel that I was being sucked down into a vortex.

My illness brought home the truth that I must rely totally on God to guide my next baby step or mighty leap (you never know with God). I’ve learned that at any time I can take deep breaths in through my nose and slowly let them out through my mouth. So soothing and relaxing – no yoga training required and you don’t have to like sitar music. By the way, the yoga show on Unity FM drives me crazy with the sitar music in the background. “SHUT IT OFF, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!”

I close the eyes – it is so comforting, I think constructive thoughts, I have faith that I am part of a great gestalt called “All That Is”, and then I listen. I test what might be a message from a higher source against my sense of logic and intuition. If it asks me to put on a Ronald McDonald’s costume and leap from a tall building, I toss it away. If it asks me to take the medication the doctor suggested and then do my best to serve others, I do it.

And now I’ll share my ultimate secret weapon. I give thanks. Giving thanks is the best practice for “Now”. And if you do not want to be here “now” (e.g., if you are having a root canal), give thanks for “then” (past/future).  While you are at it, give thanks for that inspiring rendition of “When the Saints Come Marching In” and give all your love to the boys and girls from Lynchum, Mississippi.