I Heart Werner Kelber

The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q by Werner H. Kelber

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Published in 1983, this seminal work by Kelber marked a paradigm shift in biblical hermeneutics. "Oral and Written Gospel" is the culmination of Kelber's editorial and journal work of the previous years regarding the ancient near east textual transition from oral communication to written text. Kelber counters many of the assumptions made by 20th century scholars immersed in print-based culture regarding how texts (oral or written) were interacted with and maintained within their social context. Most of the reviews at the time of its publication said this book would start a wave of new hermeneutical approaches, and they were absolutely right. While being a classic, this work is still breaking new ground. A critical must-read for anyone trying to recover a sense of the vital oral tradition behind the gospel of Mark (and the New Testament) as well as the rhetorical implications of Greek oratorical culture. This was one of the first works to say that, as far as the New Testament goes, most of what has been relegated to black and white print, was and is meant to be heard aloud in community. Good job, Werner
View all my reviews.

One Small Step Toward Narrative Theology

Hearing Mark: A Listener's Guide by Elizabeth Struthers Malbon

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
A refreshing commentary that serves as a cue for how to hear, remember and follow the story in Mark. Unlike most commentaries (and Bible interaction in general) Malbon's book resists the urge to break things into tiny, applicable pieces, and instead, guides the reader through the complete world and narrative journey of the earliest gospel telling. Though most of my exposure to Malbon's writing is rich but DENSE, "Hearing Mark" is clearly meant to be readable for non-seminary folk- a definite plus.

I might buy this one to keep handy.

View all my reviews.

On Reading a TV Show

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home by Joss Whedon

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
As what I believe is the first case of a television show continuing as comic book (this first batch of comics is called Season 8, just as if it were the next series of episodes), this breaks all kinds of creative ground, and of course has the potential to step into some pot holes as it forges its way to unknown territory. (Have I mixed my metaphors enough yet?)

It's hard to imagine what it must be like to be in Joss Whedon's shoes. With the transition from sound stages and scripts to paperback and text boxes, your long-loved characters are no longer bound by location shoots, film crew budgets, actor schedules, or frankly, reality of any kind. The stories are free to go wherever the imagination takes these people. Far more significant than those thousands of Star Wars books that supposedly carry on the story, the Buffy comics are crafted by the creator himself, and are meant to hold the same tenor, language and quirkiness of the TV series. This transition from one television media to comic book media is both a total a paradigm shift, and in another way, a totally logical next step: from one pop culture temple to another. And I'd say, it pretty much does it perfectly. Though I'm not a comic book reader (i have trouble tracking the different text styles- dialogue, narration, etc, and I sometimes forget to look at the pictures) I can hear the characters voices clearly in the dialogue, and the stories still abound with Whedon's obsessive love of underlining his genre while subverting it. It's a meta meta meta comic book- always reminding you it's a comic book while totally engulfing you in the plot.

Though I agree with other critiques I've seen of this volume, that instead of being normal people in supernatural circumstances, the comic books have these characters basically becoming straight up- mega-institutionalized super heroes, I trust Whedon to take us to new places safely, even if its awkward sometimes.

It's a one of a kind experience that I recommend. (though not so one of a kind anymore since Whedon is doing comics for his canceled show Firefly as well).

View all my reviews.

12/1/08 1:29am

Does your heart break in
December? Mine does. A cold,
little ache inside.

When did Solar become a verb?

Having my longtime (longest) friend Mackenzie and her husband Matt visiting this past weekend from San Diego, meant ventures into the world I rarely see, ie: anywhere that isn't Mars Hill Graduate School, Intiman Theatre or my bedroom. One of these trips was a visit to Fred Meyer- a chain of stores that rides somewhere between K-Mart, Target, Ross and Pier 1 Imports. Matt had visited one in his youth and wanted to see if he'd still be impressed. Many things made an impression on us at Fred Meyer, not the least of which being a miniature water fountain made to look like glowing, melting candles. Is it just me, or should water not be flowing from one burning candle to another??
But most earth-shattering was the discovery of the word "solar" being used as a verb. Check it out. It's pretty amazing."You have purchased a solar product that is solared by the sun." Thank goodness its not one of those crappy Lunar solaring products! This is the real deal.

Thanks for the pictures Matt and Mackenzie. I haven't solared at all since you left.

Haiku for a Friend

Hope is believing
your desire isn't dumb
even when it hurts

"Fill Your Hearts With Christmas"

Yes, it's true. For me, Thanksgiving is the half-way mark of the Chrsitmas season, not it's prelude. But out here on the West Coast, there's a particular harbinger of the season that I quite actively miss, strange as it is. Kim, my Brooklyn kindred knew this fact, and pre-emptively sent a loving email with this image included.

I've never even seen the Radio City Christmas Show, but the TV adds for the production are so annoying that I began to love them and get excited every time they came on. I particularly like/hate the poor rhythm scansion when they sing "The Rock ETTES are all a-Dancing!". They place the syllabic emphasis on the second half of Rockettes as if its iambic, but the word should be spondaic, "stress- stress." And I sing along to it every year. But not anymore. And I can't seem to find the classic commercial on Youtube (anyone else?).

But nonetheless, for me, Christmas is officially here. More on that later.

"I'm Ready For the Big Time, Is It Ready For Me" - Kermit & Fozzie

It's official. In February I'll be headed to Albuquerque, NM with Ian to present our paper at the Southwest/Texas Popular and American Culture Association's annual conference. Their theme this year is "Reeling in the Years: 30 Years of Film, TV and Popular Culture".

Ian and I are presenting a paper that explores issues of faith as escapism and fundamentalist identity in Joss Whedon's Firefly. It still hasn't really hit me that I'm gonna be presenting a paper at an academic conference, much less that I'll have four days of attending lectures on these topics:

American Culture
Libraries, Archives, Museums, & Popular Culture
Computers, the Internet, & Technical Writing
Literature
Ethnicity
Material Culture
Gender & Technology
Music
Film, Television, & Radio
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Human Relations
Special Topics
Teaching and the Profession

I also can't quite believe that my first foray into the academic sphere will be in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category. But hey, we all know that's where all the real theological discourse in popular culture happens.

We'll be fine tuning, and well, writing the paper for the next two months, and I'll be finishing my crash course in Angel and Buffy, Whedon's epic TV contributions. I love this kind of homework.

Walking Back into Barnes & Noble

I have for years idetified myself as someone who avoids buying books at Barnes & Noble. I've probably forgotten most of the reasons why I don't "support" them, but its probably that general stuff about how they're ruining the publishing industry and killing local booksellers kind of thing. In true uninformed-hypocritical fashion, however, I purchase all my books and DVDs from Amazon.com. Nonetheless, I try not to pour too much money into the B&N vacuum.

But I found myself the other day killing time at a Barnes & Noble that opened near my house. I have to admit, it was a surprisingly pleasant expereince. First, I perused 2009 calendars, and opted for a poster style calendar of vivd Japenese woodcuts. Runners up were the vintage postcards from Italy and Paris. I failed to buy a 2008 calendar, last year and as a result, have had not one but two 2007 calendars hanging in my room on the December page since, well, December 2007. I want to avoid that next year.

Then i went in search of Sarah Vowell's new release "The Wordy Shipmates," another of her whimsically ironic, rigourously researched examinations in American History, in this case, the Mayflower. On the way, a paperback on a new release display caught my eye. I recognized Edward Hopper's "Rooms By the Sea" wrapping around the front of a book and looked closer to find that it was actually the paperback release of a former professor of mine's memoir. I've had Allen Shawn's Wish I Could Be There: Notes on a Phobic Life on my wishlist for awhile, and was stoked to see the paperback sitting right there, looking engaging and well-marketed. I studied music composition with Allen, and also rank seeing the play he composed and co-wrote with his brother Wallace Shawn as one of my top ten most enjoyable nights in the theatre. Did I grab that book and purchase it? No, I updated my amazon wishlist to have the paperback instead of the hardcover.

What did I buy? Um, well, after six different people offered to let me borrow their copy of Twilight but never remembered to bring it, I caved an just bought a copy. I figure I might have lots of snarky or celebratory comments to write in the margins.

Then last of all, at the checkout counter, I was asked if I wanted to purchase a book for a charity book drive. They had three options. One was some generic looking juvenile fantasy novel, one was an Aztec-themed Choose Your Own Adventure, and the other was Oliver Button Is A Sissy by Tomie dePaola. This is one of the best children's books in existence, and I was happy to add $7 to my purchase so that a kid somewhere can have their own copy of it.
Overall, I didn't feel too awful about the money I spent at the Mega Bookstore.

Too Much Going On- Plus...

So my blog database (read: Brain) has been overloaded with things to write about to the extent that I just haven't written any of it. But here's a quick one: mystery gift appears in mail. An all-too precious yet bad-ass Johnny Cash pin, (which, if I hadn't lost it some years ago, would look great with my original, vintage Shirley Temple Fan Club pin), showed up in my pile of mail today.

But though it appeared enveloped and stamped- there is no postage meter marking or return address. Was this a drive-by gifting? And if so, was it a late B-day or quite early Christmas present?

Either way, I'm delighted, mildly disturbed and found this occurrence entirely blog-worthy.

I welcome any theories. The handwriting looks familiar, but not sure what to make of the missing postage info. Hmm...