Your assignment, should you chose to accept it (the coming-unto-christ svithe)

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I was asked to speak on what it means to come unto Christ. I asked for the topic a couple months ago but the chaos of late means I didn't get it written until this week. I suspect it's a little long so I'll likely have to do some editing on the fly. But hey—what's all we can do, again?

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Often, we interpret the invitation to “come unto Christ” as a direction to “be like Christ.” But so much of what Christ did, we cannot do. And even if we could, he already did it for us. Consider what Christ did in the Garden of Gethsemane: In some way untethered to human time, he stepped out of his own life and experienced each of ours. Not so he could judge us but so he could understand us and comfort us and atone for us. Somehow, that evening, he lived my life and your life and everyone’s life, then came back to his own, prepared to do his impossible task.

None of us can do that. Nor do we need to. Christ did it for us.

So what do we need to do? How do we come unto Christ?

Let’s dance through the scriptures for a moment.

Amaleki, the final writer in the Small Plates, tells us that we “should come unto Christ…and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him…and, as the Lord liveth, ye will be saved.”

I like this idea that coming unto Christ is kinda the same thing as being saved.

Moroni, the final writer in the Book of Mormon, tells us to come “unto Christ, and be perfected in him…and love God with all [our] might, mind and strength, [because] then [will] his grace [be] sufficient… [and we] may be perfect in Christ.”

That being-perfect thing reminds me of Jesus’s commandment, the crazy one, that we be perfect. That’s a heavy instruction. I started this talk by saying Jesus does things we can’t be expected to do and now he himself tells us to be perfect? Coming unto Christ means being perfect first??

No. No, no, no.

That is not what Moroni said. We come unto Christ. Then we’re perfected in him. Because his grace will be sufficient to make us perfect.

Okay. We’re getting somewhere.

Now, here in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the most famous bonmot on grace has to be Nephi’s: “We labor diligently…to persuade our children…to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for”—here it comes—“we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.”

Now, most of my life I’ve tended to think this means that we’re saved by grace after getting ourselves as close to perfect as possible

Is that correct?

Well, let’s continue our dance across the scriptures.

Our first stop is Anti-Nephi-Lehi, the brother of Lamoni and the inheritor of their father the king’s responsibilities.

The Lamanites have split into two groups. Anti-Nephi-Lehi leads those who have been converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who have not been converted are filled with rage at what they see as a betrayal of their traditions and they have taken up weapons and are marching forward to destroy these converts.

Anti-Nephi-Lehi is their king. His people are filled with faith. But they fear for their lives. And the lives of their families and friends.

What would you say?

This is what Anti-Nephi-Lehi said:

“I thank my God, my beloved people, that our great God has in goodness sent these our brethren…to preach unto us…. And…I thank my great God that he has given us a portion of his Spirit to soften our hearts…. And I also thank my God, yea, my great God, that he hath granted unto us that we might repent of these things, and also that he hath forgiven us…and taken away the guilt from our hearts, through the merits of his Son….

“Now behold, my brethren, since it has been all that we could do—”

Let me interrupt Anti-Nephi-Lehi here to point out that we were just wondering what it means that “it is by grace…we are saved, after all we can do” and now this good man is about to tell us exactly what “all we can do” is. Let’s let him do it.

“Now behold,” he was saying, “it has been all that we could do…to repent of…our sins…and to get God to take them away from our hearts…it was all we could do to repent sufficiently before God that he would take away our stain—

“[And now]…my best beloved…since God hath taken away our stains, and our swords have become bright, then let us stain our swords no more….

“The great God has had mercy on us, and made these things known unto us…because he loves our souls…. In his mercy he doth visit us by his angels, that the plan of salvation might be made known unto us as well as unto future generations. Oh, how merciful is our God!”

In this moment, the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi attain a sort of perfection unique in the Book of Mormon. They lay down their evil tools, their swords and their cimeters, and rather than staining those tools with the blood of their fellow children of God, they allow themselves to be slain. This is a remarkable choice. No one else in the Book of Mormon has such courage. And their courage changes the hearts of their enemies. Their courage brings many of those enemies, too, unto Christ.

So. According to Anti-Nephi-Lehi, what is “all we can do”? We can repent.

That doesn’t seem like much.

That doesn’t seem like very far on the road to perfection.

But remember what Moroni said: it’s by coming unto Christ that, in him, we are perfected. All we can do is repent—and then we are saved by his grace.

Paul taught that “We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.” And the truth of Christ is that he was born, he lived, he died, and he lived again—all for us.

Ammon was one of the missionaries who brought so many Lamanites, including Anti-Nephi-Lehi, to Christ. Reflecting on that great labor, he said, “Let us glory…in the Lord.

“Yea, we will rejoice, for our joy is full…we will praise our God forever…. Who can glory too much in the Lord?... Who can say too much of his great power, and of his mercy…?

“Who could have supposed that our God would have been so merciful as to have snatched us from our awful, sinful, and polluted state?

“[But] he that repents and exercises faith, and brings forth good works, and prays continually without ceasing—unto such…it shall be given…to bring thousands of souls to repentance, even as it has been given unto us to bring these our brethren to repentance.”

In Lehi’s dream, when he saw the Tree of Life, his first thought was to share it. So it was with Ammon and his fellow missionaries. So it was with Lamoni and his fellow Lamanite converts.

Joseph Smith tells us that missionary work “should…be attended to with great earnestness.” Even when we feel like our actions are small and insignificant, we should not “count them as small things; for there is much which [lies in the future]…which depends upon these [small] things.

“You know,” Brother Joseph said, “a very large ship is benefited very much by a very small helm in the time of a storm, by being kept workways with the wind and the waves. Therefore…let us cheerfully do all things [all things!] that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.”

Our little things are little. But they are enough.

With Christ, they are enough.

Jesus teaches us that if we “have not faith, hope, and charity, [we] can do nothing.”

So we come unto Christ by repentance—it’s the only thing we can do. He gives us faith, hope, and charity. And then—we can do things. Which only means little, small things. All we can do.

Last month, on the way to my uncle’s funeral in Idaho, my parents, sister, and I went to church in Beaver, Utah. There were two youth speakers who talked about girls camp, then the first adult speaker opened with this observation:

No one will remember this talk.

No one will remember any talk they hear.

My mother and father and sister later insisted they remember lots and lots of sacrament-meeting talks. Maybe they do. I kinda doubt it, but maybe.

Regardless, giving a talk? It’s a pretty small thing. I’m taking up ten minutes of your time. Probably you will have forgotten this talk before Sunday School’s over. But, today, it’s what I can do. That and repent, I suppose.

Jesus taught we can do nothing without faith, hope, and charity.

Not even repent?

Paul explained that even if we have “the gift of prophecy, and [understand] all mysteries, and [have] all knowledge,” without “charity, [we are] nothing.” Yes, he said, “faith, hope, charity,” all great, “but the greatest…is charity.”

Jesus is clear that he always has his arms open to us. The only thing keeping us from his grasp is our own selves. Which is all sin is: Rejecting Christ’s grace. And this is all repentance is: Accepting Christ’s grace. Repentance is accepting as real the relationship we have with Jesus Christ—the relationship he never stops believing in.

Perhaps that is why the greatest of these is charity. Because if all we can do is repent, and if all repentance is is accepting the Savior’s love, then perhaps all we can do is have charity for ourselves. Perhaps that is all repentance is: Learning to love ourselves. Just as Christ does.

My most profound spiritual experiences have been about just that—recognizing that I am loved.

I was at the end of my mission, sitting on an airplane. It was too late to do anything better than I had already done. I worried that I hadn’t been as good a missionary as I should have been.

Then the Lord told me to stop comparing myself to other people. He had called me to be a missionary. And I, me, as myself, had been a missionary. It may have been a small thing, but it was enough. And I repented. I chose to love myself and my service. I accepted myself as Christ accepted me.

This is all any of us is asked to do.

Think about your current responsibilities—family, calling, whatever. What you do may not be large in the scope of world history. But “a very large ship is benefited very much by a very small helm….being kept workways with the wind and the waves. Therefore…let us cheerfully do all things [all things!] that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.”

Our little things are little. Our small things are small. But they are enough.

All we can do is enough.

And all we can do is repent.

And all repentance is is allowing Christ to love us—to feel his charity for us.

We can do that.

We can do that.

We can allow our Savior to love us.

We can have charity, as he does, for ourselves.

From there, we can learn to feel charity for all.

“By small and simple things are great things brought to pass”—including the salvation and perfection, of our own souls.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Fifty-three days and only nine books (American literacy truly is in decline)

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Man alive. Reading Moby Dick is really slowing my ability to finish other books. I am enjoying it, but tell you what—I'll be glad when it's done.

Kind of blown away I've been building this set since June. Get reading, Theric!

Incidentally, my essay on Napoleon Dynamite just helped launch Waypoints, a new pop-culture site. Check it out! 

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035) Okchundang Candy by Jung-soon Go and translated by Airin Park, finished May 22

Why are there so few picture books for adults?

My guess is economics. Adults don't reread like kids do and so the dollars spent on a picture book divided by the number of minutes spent with it just doesn't make sense.

This book is much longer than a kids picture book (the library put it in Juvenile Graphic Novels) and might appeal to kids, but even with its juvenile p-o-v (sorta; it's an unseen adult remembering) I feel that this story about her grandparents' love and how it navigated lung cancer and widowhood is inherently adult.

It's a lovely and moving book.

(Yes it's a library book and yes this is 2026 but it didn't feel like cheating because I'm not the one who checked it out and it didn't take that long to read.)

one sit before and one sit after dinner 

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036) The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card, finished May 27

I actually picked up this book with the intention to get rid of it. I'm a fan of Card's and I do want to finish reading all his early work but this last YA novel didn't hold much interest. Out of respect, I decided to read the first couple paragraphs, however, and here we are.

In the afterword, Card says he's been developing this world and its magic system since 1977. And no question this is one of my favorite magic systems I've ever read. He also, in the afterword, says that he finished this novel by cranking out a chapter a day and getting it to his publisher after the deadline. This may show.

I don't like a lot of of things about this book. It seems to be trying to fit in aberrant sex with the subtlety of a 14yrold writing sex for the first time. It's weird and gross and off. It doesn't work. And all the characters under the age of twenty-five talk like . . . well, not like humans circa 2010, I can tell you that. It's crazy because writing about precocious kids is Card's wheelhouse and these kids aren't real.

But the plot and story are excellent. I'm tempted to read more of the series simply because those aspects are so strong. But that's exactly what one could get from a Wikipedia summary. But as the characters age, they should become more realistic. But, having read a lot of Card, I think I already know how a lot of their characters will develop and related to each other as time goes on.

So in the end, a bit of a mixed bag. I would say I wish he had more time to refine the novel (I feel he could have), but I'm told he recently said in an interview that, since the death of his son, he hasn't been able to tell if his work is good. So maybe not.

(It's a biographical detail imbued with pathos, regardless of this book's quality.)

I understand why people like this novel but in the end, I think it gets a soft thumbs down from me. There are many better Card books. Save this for when you're hungry for second-tier work.

One other quick observation: this book is unfilmable. A new kind of narrative artform demands invention before this book can be adapted to something involving actors. Something deeper and more internal than "virtual reality"; something that can affect your proprioception the way films affect your retina.

perhaps a month 

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037) Bad Kitty Goes on Vacation by Nick Bruel, finished June 1

The Bad Kitty books are great. But me, a fuddyduddy, does not prefer them colorized.

a june first 

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038) Backward by Ben Abbott, finished June 10

Read or performed, Ben's work is great. This is his final thesis for his MFA and it's terrific. A man relives each day of his life in backwards order then relives them once again—once more forward. I love playing with time. Some of my favorites of life being scrambled include one of the stories in Hyperion and the novels Replay and The Time Traveler's Wife, but Ben's found something new and it's wonderful.

It's a one-man show and I'd love to know how it turned out. It seems like a real challenge for any actor and I'd love to see how it all turned out.

Wonderfully, following the play (because this is a thesis), Ben takes us through the writing process. And I maybe loved that as much as the play (although only the play made me cry). The perfect thing to read, really, before I disappear for a week to rewrite Honeymoon in Copper (this is then world premier of the title—feel special!). Some of the holes in the novel are coming into focus and Ben has pushed me to nail them down. Exciting times!

The play's nominated for an AML Award and you can read it yourself by clicking the title above. I certainly recomment it. 

one long sit 

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039) Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout, finished June 12

This is my second Nero Wolfe novel, though I've collected maybe half a dozen since the first.

The structure of this novel was quite different from Fer-de-Lance which made me happy. This was a big more what I expected the first time but, since it wasn't last time, now it wasn't this time. The reveal wasn't until the penultimate chapter in a gather-them-all-in-one-room scene and since Archie's our p-o-v character, I really had no idea what was about to go down. Fun. Less interesting as a mystery, perhaps, as the previous volume, but good.

What was more interesting was how Stout explored racism and misogyny. I know!

Amazingly, this novel not only gets Wolfe out of his apartment but clear down to West Virginia where we encounter some plainfaced Southern racism. Archie's a bit disgusted by it but not because he isn't also racist (though he may dislike d***s more than n*****s) but because it's crass how these white Southerners act. Show some dignity, you crackers.

Anyway, Nero Wolfe does treat the black characters with respect. Partially that's to his own ends, but also, one senses that he means it. That his more worldwide past has led him to a place where he knows better—genuinely knows better—than to judge a man by the color of his skin. He means it.

Yet Nero Wolfe is, simultaneously, the worst misogynist of them all. I suspect his decision to live a life undistracted by such things as romance and wiles was only possible by developing an antipathy for women. Mere disinterest was impossible. Hatred was the only path to safety and he took it.

Mind, most of what I'm saying here is my analysis—it's subtext. But I think I'm right. And it's a richer book for it.

This isn't to say the book as aged brilliantly. But I think it has aged acceptably. 

couple weeks at most 

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040) Pickles by Brian Crane, finished July 7
041) Pickles, Too by Brian Crane, finished July 7

Brian Crane is an old friend of my in-laws. We're visiting them now and they have his first two collections, signed, and I picked them up. Good stuff.

two days

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042) Lost & Found by Shaun Tan, finished July 13
043) The Arrival by Shaun Tan, finished July 13

Lady Steed insisted she had no idea who Shaun Tan was which seemed insane to me. Who can read The Arrival and ever forget it? But I put some of his books on hold at the library and they came and I couldn't let the opportunity go by without re/reading some myself.

Lost & Found is a collection of three earlier works. They're concerned with some of the same things as The Arrival but they all rely on words which keeps the reader a bit more grounded. The Arrival has words only in an inaccessible tongue. This is part of what makes it perhaps the greatest exploration of the immigrant experience. You the reader will feel as lost and confused as our immigrant protagonist. At the same time, you'll gender a renewed appreciation for the greatness of nations that welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of other teeming shores, the homeless, the tempest-tost. That act of welcoming such peoples may be the best way to define a nation's greatness.

The Arrival's very much in the tradition of the one-image-a-page artists of a century ago, but his artistry has more options available to it. For instance, pacing, as when he spends a single spread with 60 individually drawn images of clouds, or a spread of 24 images of one plant's entire life cycle to show the passage of time. Truly a masterpiece by a master artist.

I would love someday to go to a Shaun Tan retrospective at a museum (are you listening SFMOMA, Cartoon Art Museum?) and just stand in front of his art at the size he made it and just take it all in.

one evening 

☞

 

previous books

Top Five X of 2001–2025: Horrorthe movie's playing inside the house

 

Therefore we must judge a weird tale not by the author’s intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point. If the proper sensations are excited, such a “high spot” must be admitted on its own merits as weird literature, no matter how prosaically it is later dragged down. (HP Lovecraft)

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Okay. To qualify for this list, it had to genuinely terrify me at some point. This does mean that some excellent movies classified, say, on Letterboxd as “horror” (Godzilla Minus One, Frankenstein, Presence, Sinners, Mad God, A Ghost Story) were left off my list, while some I, at least, don’t think of as “horror” got more serious consideration (mother!, Pan’s Labyrinth), although in the end, I wanted a horror movie not just a great moment ala Lovecraft’s definition.

And few genres are as subjective as horror. Your mileage will certainly vary.

Special honorable mention to LAIKA’s ouevre because they are amazing and scary and I love them, even if I didn’t include them. I fear I may have a bias against “kids” movies when considering horror. But LAIKA’s films are amazing and should make anyone’s short list. Watch for Wildwood this fall.

When we get to my top five, I’ll tell you right now that the top three required no internal debate. The last two really had to battle it out among some other great movies, so let me chronologically shout out now my honorable mentions which, on a different day, may well have made the list (1 = review on thutopia; 2 = review on thubstack):

Barbarian (2022) — Probably may favorite basement in all of film. Plus, it’s like three great movies in 108 minutes. Best bargain in this entire write-up. (1,2)

Bubba Ho-tep (2002) — Who better to fight a mummy than a couple old guys stored away in a retirement home? (1)

Get Out (2017) — Truly a masterpiece. Works as both comedy and horror. Gives students the power to see and analyze film at a higher level. (1,1,1,1,2)

The Host (2006) — My favorite big-monster horror movie of the century. A more manageable size than, say, Godzilla. But since it can hide, isn’t that kinda scarier?

Let the Right One In (2008) — Lot of little-kid monsters in movies but this is the best of the century so far, imo. (1)

No One Will Save You (2023) — Maybe the only grey-aliens movie I like. I love that it chose to use no dialogue in the entire film. Should have been a star-making turn for its lead, but I guess people didn’t see it in Obsession numbers. (1,2)

A Quiet Place (2018) — I think we could get broad agreement that this movie did more for broadening the soundscape of horror than any other movie in living memory? (1,2)

The VVitch (2015) — One of the most frightening trailers I’ve seen. I grant that my first watch didn’t work as well as I wanted, but now, as I understand Eggers’s overall project better, the movie has grown in my estimation. Excited to watch it again someday! (1)

And now for our Top Five!

I’d kind of hoped I would end up with a little less mainstream a list but I won’t apologize for being a populist for once in my life. I stand by all these movies even though I’ve only seen each of them once. They’ve stuck with me in and still make me think and that’s really all that we want from a horro flick, n’est-ce pas?

5—10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) [1]

This film balances (and often improves on) elements from films like Night of the Living Dead, Silence of the Lambs, Saw, and other classics, but it’s reorganized them into something new. It even makes bold with answering its primary question in the final scene (maybe a requirement of the sereis?) and I’m still not sure if that was a good decision or not, but I’m always happy when movies take risks. Plus, this is a three-hander and two of those hands are Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman. That would be enough to sell me on any movie in any genre.

4—Midsommar (2019) [1]

Every once in a while, a horror movie will come out that will attract even Lady Steed and she’ll end up watching it with me and sometimes—Midsommar might be the purest example of this—she will regret it and (so far, at least) never cease to regret it. Midsommar spends so much of its time in bright sunshine that it seems impossible that it could be genuinely terrifying. How can a film scare us without endless shadows and spooky trees for things to hide behind? Ends up, the scariest stuff is inside those smiling faces.

3—Cabin in the Woods (2011) [1]

It has some genuinely scary parts up top but as it spins, first into meta and parody, then into lovecraftian cosmic horror, it’s a bit less successful at “scary” but it’s so intelligent and such fun I can’t hold that against it. Watching men in suits discuss how best to murder the young is the banality-of-evil recast as entertainment, and no less for it. Unquestionably the funniest movie on this list.

2—The Ring (2002)

This is the first scary movie Lady Steed and I watched together that has never quite left her. It’s funny, because when we watch movies I’m the one who’s jumping and yelling, but they don’t haunt me the way they haunt her. And we didn’t even have kids then! Needless to say, we’ve never talked ourselves into watching the Japanese original. But Gore Verbinski’s version is him at his his image-making best. I don’t think even Jack Sparrow beats his girl crawling out of tv. We all remember that, no matter when or how we first saw it. And even though the movie is trapped in early-oughts green and blue.

1—It Follows (2014) [1]

The End of Oak Street is my post anticipated movie this summer and it’s entirely because It Follows is the greatest horror movie of this century (and because his follow up [1,2] is such a perfectly Lynchian conspiracy mindfold). David Robert Mitchell has earned my trust. And it all began with It Follows, a film that captures nightmare logic (slowly everyone disappears but yourself / you can’t trust your own eyes / the sense of relentless unstoppable persuit) but places it in a world that feels actual and lived. Maika Monroe’s performance is perfect. (And, to be clear, she’s not the reason Long Legs [1,2] failed.) But if It Follows can’t make you look over your shoulder or stare at some face a little too long, wow. Lucky you. Because I’m getting nervous looking at you not being nervous at all. What are you??? And why are you standing dead center along my landscape’s point of convergence?

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previous Top Five X of 2001–2025: RomCom [1,2]

Thanks(things friends say)

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Luckily, I’ve know this guy a long time and I’m familiar with the manifestations of his schizophrenia, or two elements of our conversation could possibly have been interpreted as offensive.

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You look different. Are you a vampire now? Or maybe you stopped being a vampire?

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[On having learned he may be a father, thanks to an incident in 2001 he does not remember.]

But I really think I’m still a virgin. But that could be, right? It makes me think of people like Donald Trump and you. Do you think there are men who’ve gotten married and had children but are still virgins?

Let’s fix America with a good movie(it’s worth a shot)

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One year, the NBC comedy Community did a Claymation-esque Christmas special. The conceit was this: Christmas was broken for Abed (he used to spend it with his mom and she blew him off to be with her new family) and he was lost, trying to figure out what Christmas was all about.

In the end, this batch of outwardly cynical but inwardly loving friends decide that the meaning of Christmas is that it has a meaning. And as long as you believe that, it doesn’t have to be the same for everyone.

No one else’s meaning of Christmas needs to define your own.

That might be a helpful way to think about Independence Day in 2026.

As a Bicentenniel Baby, I’ve been looking forward to this July 4 my entire life. And…it’s been kinda ruined by a corrupt president who makes everything about him. Which sucks.

But I am an American. And July 4th means something to me and no one can take that away. And no one can take it from you either.

This is our holiday.

And patriotism is whatever we say it is.

Now with most of the country locked down by a deadly wave (even Philadelphia with the first parade I kinda wanted to go to since I was like ten!), you probably need to stay inside and crank the AC anyway. (I won’t tell you our temps by the Bay. You’re better off not knowing.) So why not watch a movie?

Movies are a great way to celebrate America. We make them, we watch them, we love them.

Here are some suggestions based on my own tastes and nostalgias.

But before I start, I should note that loving Americans is not quite the same thing as loving America. I decided to stay away from movies that only do the former in favor of ones that take a stab at revealing the latter. In part, that’s because America is a concept and so loving something like the First Amendment or the idea that all men are created equal is de facto being American and loving America.

Speaking of the First Amendment, you can’t hate on movies about those Great Americans, journalists—especially when they’re taking on the Federal Government. That’s patriotism, friends. And this is a grand tradition, but I suppose if you can only pick one (and you haven’t seen this before), it must be All the President’s Men.

But I don’t mean to imply that our government is the enemy of the people. That’s nonsense. Individuals can be awful (like Claude Rains in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) or excellent (like James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) or dumb schmucks doing their best (like Dave in Dave), but goverment is an excellent source of patriots. I’d kinda like to (finally) watch Lincoln this weekend, myself.

 

Some movies call America to repentence, which is a deeply patriotic duty. Casablanca does this (and, bonus, is one of the greatest films ever made), but it’s most patriotic moment is French. But it’ll make you cry. So maybe save that for Bastille Day, later this month?

Uniquely American genres are a good source of American ideals. High Noon is about the individual standing up for right even when they must stand alone. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence is about how we use stories to create a better America. Neither is simple, clean, rah-rah patriotism. But it is patriotism.

Capitalism is America’s greatest blessing and curse, and movies can find ways to make you grapple with capitalism’s sins while still making you feel proud to be an American. Movies as different as The Solid Gold Cadillac and Annie have done that for me.

But ambivalence is an important part of being a thoughtfully patriotic American. The Mountain of the Lord captures this from my own tradition—we see both the Utah War when America once again tried to destroy the Mormons, and the Mormons delightful celebration of the Centenniel. Being a good American means grapping with contrary ideas. The Founders are our best evidence of that.

But this never goes away. I only recently learned the name of this movie (haven’t seen it since I was a kid and never knew how to locate it but it’s The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band), but its portrayal of how people feel when they put their all into an election only to lose has never left me. And now I know that feeling well.

I don’t want to dismiss big (often) dumb actioneers. These work for lots of people and they work on me too, when they have enough honest moments. So there is nothing wrong with watching Captain America: The First Avenger or Independence Day. Heck yeah.

Lots of movies are at their most American when they’re about immigrants. No one loves this country like someone who chose it. Maybe try An American Pickle? Most people haven’t.

Although I knew even as a kid that it’s final naturalization ceremony is manipulative and sentimental and kinda terrible, I have to recommend Short Circuit II, even though I’m shying away from anything AI these days. The scene where Johnny 5 reads all those books still gets me, and its unabashedly earnest equivalence between being human and being American makes me feel something even if I’m annoyed at it afterwards.

But the number one movie I want to recommend to you this holiday weekend is Born Yesterday.

As I wrote when I first saw it, only earlier this year, it’s a “a romcom for you and America. And you need that right now.”

I stand by that.

 

Watch this ditz learn to read and then discover America all on her own. It’ll make you want to sing Independence carols with your fellow citizens across America.

Don’t miss it.

And share with me your recs! I can use more!

June rhymes with cartoon

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June came in like a lion with the end of the film unit. And then dozens of hours on the road for a funeral and camping, not to mention an internetless norovirus quarantine and, in the end, just the movies you see. And, right now, I Love Boosters and Disclosure Day and Toy Story 5 and Supergirl are ALL in theaters.

Got some catching up to do.

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ELSEWHERE
our dvd

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

Honestly, it does feel sixteen years old. But not in a bad way. It holds up but, for instance, the soundscape can't speak to an audience of 17yrolds the same way it speaks to people who grew up with a great intimacy with certain digital ephemera.

Interestingly, one of my seniors said in her writeup that the sound it part of what makes the movie "timeless" which either means I'm very wrong or she doesn't know what timeless means.

Readings: 1, 2.

ELSEWHERE
our dvd
until it froze on Susie's face
then a series of pirate sites
until we found one that worked

Citizen Kane (1941)

It was great to watch this movie on a higher resolution. It really is amazing, visually. Why don't more movies embrace depth like this. One student couldn't believe it was old because it still feels creative here, now, in 2026. I love to look at it.

But I still can't get behind it as being in the conversation for the greatest film of all time. I can't even be persuaded it's better than Casablanca. I mean. Come on.

But I also want to praise Welles the actor / the makeup team. He ages so much in this film and it holds up great.

Readings: 1, 2.

ELSEWHERE
our dvd
(this particular one,
criterion collection,
found unopened in a free pile)

Stray Dog (1949)

Watching this right after Citizen Kane I'm struck by how both Kurosawa and Welles are into depth. I feel like movies hardly ever use the frame's potential depth as well as these two movies do. I'd like to see more of this.

I also love the protagonist's connection to the gun used in the crimes and how and why that motivates him. That's an emotional and philosophical element frankly not available to an American cop movie.

But Kurosawa's visual sense is the true highlight here. He was good at this already. (This is the earliest of his film's I've seen.)

Readings: 1, 2.

ELSEWHERE
our dvd

Vertigo (1958)

The break between class periods happend as Scottie was catatonic in the hospital. And that made me realize: Vertigo is kinda two movies. Movie one, The Mystery of Madeleine. Then the intermission in the hospital. Then movie two: Judy's Secret. The begin kinda the same. They end kinda the same. And that symmetry is part of what makes this such an astonishing experience.

Some loved it, some were disturbed by it, some were left confused. But everyone had an experience.

Readings: 1, 2.

ELSEWHERE
our dvd
but it froze
so we watched some of it
on the same pirate site
we'd finished Citizen Kane on
but then we finished back on the dvd

Singin' in the Rain (1952)

There's nothing like finishing an ancient movie with a bunch of 17 and 18yrolds and seeing their delirious smiling faces and happy reactions to the bundle of joy we just wrapped up.

May Singin' in the Rain offer its pleasures to centuries of future filmwatchers.

Readings: 1, 2.

ELSEWHERE
Kanopy

Memento (2000)

Fun to rewatch this, first time in over twenty years.

I didn't really remember where it was going, but still, the ending wasn't quite as satisfying. Maybe too much Nolan in the interim?

I bet this is movie is the best when you watch it immediately after watching it.

I probably won't do that this time.

Readings: 1, 2.

ELSEWHERE
YouTube

Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

For the last movie of the year, classes had the opportunity of voting to finish up with a terrible movie so we could discuss what went wrong. Two classes took me up on that. (No readings for the bad movies.)

This is, indeed, terrible. But it does have a handful of cool elements that could be something in a better movie. But the lousy sound mix, laggard editing, and general stupidity keeps the priest's costume or the painting from working. Not that I'm surprised. I head that MST3K held off on doing Manos because they didn't think they could successfully make it entertaining. I'll bet they did just fine, but I'm not ready to watch it again. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Indeed, if I offer bad movies again next year, I may need to swap the watched ones out.... We'll see how I feel next May.

HOME
library dvd

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Huh.

I...don't think I liked it.

I appreciated all the Raymond Chandler stuff. It had some funny bits. But it didn't allow us to really like any of the characters. And it wants to be a comedy but the violence didn't work with that. And it seems like Shane Black is to Jeffrey Katzenberg if sexy ladies' nipples are to animated action sequences.

Also, it's very 2005 in that they're addicted to weird color-correction choices. You might think things are yellow because it's a flashback. Or you might think yellow's tied to a time of day. Or to an emotion. And you might be right. Or you just might be a human seeking a pattern because that's what humans do.

Anyway. Are people still watching this movie in 2026?

ELSEWHERE
Internet Archive

Nukie (1987)

I think I last saw this circa 1991. It was so bad. My family is still making fun of it. Its awfulness binds us together.

I made it available as an awful film and the students in one class voted it in.

It's still terrible.

And people worked so, so hard on it. Those alien suits were complex. They went to Africa. They had a helicopter. And they somehow got Glynis Johns. Glynis Johns! She was in Mary Poppins! "Send in the Clowns" was written for her! How did they get Glynis Johns???

You can see all the stuff they're ripping off (most notably E.T. and The Gods Must Be Crazy) but they don't understand what made their source material work in the first place. For instance, Nukie and the kid go flying before Nukie's resurrection. That doesn't work.

Anyway. It's terrible. But it's terrible in the way that forced us to regularly laugh in amazement.

ELSEWHERE
our dvd

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

It never gets old.

ELSEWHERE
Prime Vodeo

Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

Research watch.

Though it didn't take me long to remember why plan had been to take the dvd with me on Amtrak. The wifi...'s not great.

It was interesting watching the last half of the movie with the video twenty seconds ahead of the audio.

HOME
our dvd

Rubin and Ed (1991)

Somehow I haven't seen this (probably) in over twenty years. Which is insane. That's so long that the film was basically a reminder of all the things Lady Steed and I used to quote to each other. Maybe now we'll bring them back. With the help of sons two and three who watched it with us.

(Son One never saw it because Lady Steed kept saying they weren't old enough. Guess now he never will be.)

Besides being one of the most quotable movies I know and hella weird (unless compared to other Trent Harris movies), it's one of the hottest movies ever made, up there with Do the Right Thing and Stray Dog.

Honestly, I don't love it as unabashedly as I once did, but I have nothing bad to say about it. Let's all express our gratitude for Trent Harris and the band of nutjobs he assembled to bring this world to life.

HOME
our dvd

Toy Story (1995)

Seriously, how is this so good? I mean, I know "Luxo, Jr." was a decade earlier and that, for a "computer company," Pixar always cared a great deal about story, but it's still a remarkable achievement. It's such a good movie.

Incidentally, here are a couple great things I recently read about Toy Story. The first is about toy teleology and the second on how they learned to create people immediately following Toy Story.

HOME
our dvd

Toy Story 2 (1999)

Joan Cusack is a national treasure.

Previous films watched. . . .

"The Uncanny Valley of Procedural Language: on Thubrina by Theric Jepson"(reproducing a review by D.W. Baker)

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I have a review of this reviewer’s book published on the same page. It’s a review-swap thing which is a cool idea. Although I misread the instructions and thought you had to give every book five stars. I was, like, what is this, Uber? But I went along with it. Who knows what stars mean anyway.

Really, the engine(idling is just a cool place to read and publish (see my “Were my band to play the Roadhouse” and “Glitter sifts from sky, sifts hell from beauty or beauty“) and I recommend checking them out.

This is the review:

Reading Thubrina, a bag of procedural tricks subtitled “Theric Jepson rewrites Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend,” is choosing to gaze into the uncanny valley: is this language poetry, or something else? Jepson’s tongue-in-cheek romp through the lexicon of Carpenter’s 2025 hit record comprises one 2,600 word story, 12 poems, 15 “oldtimey black-and-white-life-of-Jesus illustrations” (Jepson defines and explains this choice in the foreword: “Like Sabrina, Jesus was a carpenter”), and what might be considered the main draw of this book: a 16 page appendix with a detailed account of the methods used to generate each text.

Jepson’s command of procedural techniques is impressive. There are Dada games such as n+7 and v+7, in which every noun or verb of a text is replaced with the entry seven places ahead on a dictionary page. By applying the n+7 technique to the lyrics for “Sugar Talking,” Jepson offers readers phrases such as “Boy Scout, do you win a probabilism?” and “Yeah, your paralinguistics mean shiver to me.” There is a google translate algorithm (detailed in the appendix using 4 pages of arrow diagrams) which transforms the lyrics for “Manchild,” resulting in a sequence of uncanny lines: “The boy / Why do you always come to me? / The nest of my life. / Don’t you feel sorry for the innocent woman? / I never heard that be careful / Half of the brain was destroyed.” The book’s most imposing read is a short story designed to include every word from an alphabetized list of words from the original lyrics to “My Man on Willpower.” The text is a leviathan abecedarian of strange contortions, as in a fit of confused dialogue that accommodates four instances of “don’t” as they appear in sequence from the list.

Alongside such impersonal procedures, Jepson rounds out the collection with a number of poems that retain a subjective impulse. The crafting procedures of traditional forms result in one sonnet (using the lyrics of “Such a Funny Way”) and one villanelle (using the lyrics of “We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night”). Jepson also transforms lyrics using subjective semantics, such as “first deleting three words from every line, then [letting] it marinate in forgetfulness before returning to add three new words per line” (using the lyrics of “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry”), as well as sonics, such as the poem which “attempt[s] to replace every word while keeping the meter intact” (using the lyrics of “Nobody’s Son”). The subjective encounter with language is also prioritized by Jepson’s choice to avoid listening to the album; according to the appendix, “he definitely will as soon as this book’s for sale.”

How does such an oddball, experimental work fare in the world of starred reviews? The readers most likely to award Jepson’s book a 4- or 5-star rating are those eager fellow travelers into language’s uncanny valley, in the tradition of John Cage and Jackson Mac Low, hoping to discern not only what animates the poem, but also what delineates it from inert text. Any unprepared readers—wayward Sabrina Carpenter fans, perhaps, or simply those expecting a more traditional poetics—are likely to award a 1-star rating. This review splits the difference to award 3 stars.

You can buy Thubrina many places, including Bookshop and Barnes & Noble. You can use your library card to access it through Hoopla.

 

What he said

 

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Every so once in a while, a student to collect things I say in class then gift me that list at the end of the year. It’s one of my favorite gifts.

(Arthur was not a real person.)

1. Embrace the religion of rewrites

2. You shouldn’t JUST drink urine, to be clear

3. Let’s set things on fire! Not really

4. Don’t let your table walk away from you

5. I do remember it but my memory is false

6. Bomb threats! Oh, my favorite

7. If you are going to call in a bomb threat to cancel a test, my advice to you is to call in a few fake ones to throw them off

8. Good job everybody, you signed your name twice

9. Have you guys beaten a lot of poems in your days?

10. Why is this not alive?

11. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with looking up guns on your school computer

12. Oh no! Is one of you kidnapped?

13. I’ll just suffer

14. The world is filled with printers, you can figure it out

15. I believe in feeding you MIND grapes

16. Your sentences hoped out of the car on the highway and hitch-hiked to albuquerque

17. Their lives all suck equally so they have equal opportunity?

18. I blame school for this

19. Before you know it you have a house full of words and no one wants to visit you because it smells like cat piss.

20. I think I might be broken

21. Tell us about feet

22. Baby’s gonna baby and there’s nothing you can do about it

23. I regret to tell you, that in this world, there is racism

24. You don’t exist, we already established that.

25. Do not write a poem for your mothers funeral in triple rhyme

26. I guess you guys have never thought about Christmas before

27. We should all know when William the Conqueror, Conquered

28. Even the bad babies are still babies

29. They typer typed what the typer chose to type

30. It’s the way you kill a baby, legally

31. Just because you are attracted to dead things, L***a, doesn’t mean you have to kill people

32. I don’t think he’s going to grow up to kill people, I just think he’s just going to commit a lot of white-collar crime and get away with it.

33. My goal is truth and justice, you guys!

34. He was a playwright, which isn’t as bad as being an actor, which isn’t as bad as being a prostitute, but they are all in that sucky section of society

35. Mathematically, at least one of you is probably gonna be dead by the time you are 30, but I can safely say that it won’t be because you caught fire and burned to death in the kitchen.

36. I can safely say that none of you will catch fire and burn to death in the kitchen at any point in your life.

37. Fairies love humans, but they love them in the same way that you love a peanut butter sandwich

38. It’s good to know that that yard will soon have no more plants

39. Americans live on the cusp of just enough sleep, so if you take away an hour, we just die. Let that be a lesson to us all

40. Can’t have too many twins in a comedy. That’s for sure

41. Dick jokes are eternal

42. The best part about smoking is the cigar boxes

43. Some people are less electromagnetic than other

44. Maybe this is how they graduate high school. They turn into a tree. A cathedral

45. I think Arthur has developed a cocaine problem

46. I did not know one mouth could home so much white bubbly goop

47. It smells like someone has opened a dispensary in one of the bathrooms

48. Wow, democracy has failed us again

49. Maybe that’s why you’ve been acting out, Being raised by a couple of desiccated old corpses

50. If I wanted you to die, I wouldn’t have said anything

51. And then I rolled into the other lane of traffic

52. But that doesn’t mean YOU will, you might do terribly

53. Everyone is raising their hands in my peripheral vision, and having nothing to say! I feel very gaslit

54. The past is a foreign country, as they say

55. You can fail, but you can’t embrace failure

56. Everything is far away until its here, and then its closer

57. Get your mind greasy again

58. I could stab you quite happily, D*****k

59. MIT is famously contagious

60. Thats what phones are for, unfortunately

61. Dish soap in my gas can

62. You ever bring home a half dead squirrel?

63. The rest of you can repent and do better next time

64. Its my job to corrupt you with wisdom

65. What is the fun in being attracted to something NORMAL

66. You guys are cursed

67. That’s academia baby. You are going to love college

68. Then you’ve never gone grocery shopping with me in my 20s

69. Shut up G**n!

    
    

I come before you today, hat off, held outward

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Two projects I am working on are currently fundraising.

First, I was accepted to the Mormon Lit Lab’s Book Mentoring Program. I’ve finished my new novel’s rough draft since then and finally found its title:

Honeymoon in Copper

It’s new to this world and I can see that phrase lending itself to some dandy covers.

You can read the pitch on the fundraising page.

I’m tapping into MLL’s funds THIS WEEKEND as I travel to San Diego to hole up in a friend’s backyard cabin to rewrite rewrite rewrite for almost a fullweek of 15-hour days. I’m excited. And MLL is covering my gas which, in 2026, makes a huge difference. I’m so grateful. And you can help lil writers like me pull off our projects by suporting the Lit Lab. It’s a good thing to do! I’ve done it myself!

Second, this Kickstarter won’t actually launch until September, but you can ask to be notified when it goes live.

It was one of the more fun prompts I’d seen so I had to write something. Someone named Glen must die. Gotta use the phrase Crystal Palace. Well, you can’t say Crystal Palace to a Kern County boy like me without visions of Buck Owens coming to mind.

I don’t want to say more about that one now, but I will share the story’s official playlist:

 

Anyway! If you click the notify button now, you can read one of the stories—a comic necromancer piece (what else?).

And if you’re poor, share this post with all your rich friends. That’s what they’re for, right?