"Happy Shiny People": A Review

 

 Yes, I have the Red Notebook around here, somewhere.

In high school, I went twice to The Institute Of Basic Youth Conflicts. I went to The Institute at The Omni, a recently built arena in Atlanta, to show you how long ago it was. Gerald Ford was President during one of my Institutes, and Jimmy Carter was the President during my other.

The Institute of Basic Youth Conflicts was a man named Bill Gothard.  He came out and stood behind a podium. Next to him was an overhead projector where he drew Basic Youth Conflicts and how to overcome them.

Since I was a basic youth, I was his target audience.

The Omni was packed both years I went. Gothard gave the same lecture in a plain Midwestern accent.  He was not flashy or charismatic at all unless you consider wet socks charismatic.

He taught "Basic Life Principles," which were: Design, Authority, Responsibility, Suffering, Ownership, Freedom, and Success.

A lot of time has passed since I went to The Institute, but I remember the teaching on authority, in which he drew an umbrella showing how God gives an umbrella of authority to protect kids from Satan.  It goes from Christ to Husbands to Wives.

I also remember he mentioned how your birth order in the family could determine how you act.  It always made sense to me that an only child behaves one way while the youngest of four acts another.

Besides that, I only remember a little from my nights at the Omni.  I remember feeling good about going, although I'm not sure why.  I remember thinking some of it was good, and some of it was legalistic. (Note: this is Evangelical talk for "too strict" and not in a good way.)

 On Amazon Prime, there is a documentary streaming called "Happy Shiny People" about the Duggars, a family with 19 children.

The documentary is good, sort of.

The documentary shows that Jim Bob Duggar and his wife popped out 19 kids, all with a first name beginning with "J."  The whole dang family ended up on a reality TV show.

Ma and Pa Duggar were big Bill Gothard fans, and their reason for having so many children was Psalm 127:  "Blessed is the man whose quiver is full." The documentary says that Gothard taught Christians to have as many kids as they could physically have.
 

As Larry Wachs said, when Jim Bob took off his pants, he was all business.

The documentary discusses the oldest Duggar child, Josh Duggar, who is currently in prison for Child pornography.  He also admitted to assaulting his sisters. He's really a piece of work, but you're bound to have some bad apples when you have 19 kids.

There are as many problems with "Shiny Happy People" as with Gothard's theology.

"Shiny Happy People"  paints with a BROAD brush that everyone went to a Bill Gothard seminar came out a Baby Making zombie.  My wife and I have gone to the seminar, and we had ONE child because I was convicted that if we had two children, we would have to live in a van down by the river.

 
The documentary makers lump all fundamentalists and evangelicals in one bag, going so far as to call Wheaton College "the Harvard of fundamentalists," which I'm sure is news to their professors and students.

Besides not knowing the difference between an Evangelical and a Fundamentalists, the film makers don't know the difference between a denomination and a para-church organization. By the time the Duggars met Bill Gothard, Basic Youth Conflicts had morphed into the Institute Of Basic Life Principles (IBLP). They seem to say that IBLP was a "cult" mainly because most people who were into it were nuttier than a fruitcake. Case in point: they are conservative Republicans. Horrors. 

The IBLP was big into "homeschooling, " meaning someone (usually mom) stays home and teaches the kids.  Like most educational matters, homeschooling is only as good as the instructor.  I know homeschooled kids who grew up to be fantastic adults with multiple college degrees, and I've known some who are unsuccessful.  Just like the kids I've known who have gone to public school.

The documentary features an "expert" (a journalist who had an article published) who claims the homeschooling movement is a bunch of prejudiced white people (the journalist was white) who don't want their precious children going to school with a bunch of minorities.

That may be true.  Maybe they just want to provide the best education possible for their children because sometimes the public school system leaves a lot to be desired.

The IBLP got into Republican politics, so you know that's a bad thing.  The politician that gets the worst of it is Mike Huckabee, who is shown chewing out a potential voter over Josh Duggar.

The documentary shows how these conservative Christian Republicans try to "infiltrate" the political world by working for congressmen, PACs, etc. Another way of saying it is: participating in American democracy.

The saddest part of the documentary is the various former IBLP young people and how participating in IBLP ruined their lives. Particularly the girls because Bill Gothard has been credibly accused of being a predator and sexually harassing young women.

All of these kids are "deconstructing" their faith. That's a fancy term for not going to church anymore, wearing cotton candy-colored hair, nose rings, tats, and dropping F-bombs.

These guys all had an ax to grind, and since Gothard (or the kids' parents) refused to participate in the documentary, you have no idea how accurate the stories were.

 So we're left with a documentary that gives a cursory glance at an Evangelical phenomenon, along with a look at a goofy couple from Arkansas and the apparent power of reality TV.

The best thing to do is never turn off your brain at church or when you are watching Amazon Prime.

 

 

A High School Epiphany

 

 "Seek, and ye shall find" ~ Matthew 7:7

 

I might as well admit that I am entering the stage of life called "Old."  You may have heard about it.

When you get to this age, you start reviewing your life and think back to when you were "young,"  and the future was so bright you had to wear shades as long as your parents let you borrow the car.

Some things you think about usually involve you doing something stupid, which didn't include doing homework. However, there were events that happened that you still believe wasn't your fault. 

All of this made me think of an incident in my life that wasn't my fault (honest!) and I have sought to understand why this event happened.

As you know, I went to Wheeler High School ("Where The Grandparents Of Tomorrow Are Attending The High School  of Today") and was a student in the "Advanced Grammar" class taught by the old Grammar Hammer himself, Roger Hines.

As a bit of background: Mr. Hines was considered one of the premier teachers at Wheeler, and (generally) only the best and the brightest took his courses.  How I got into this class is a mystery of life since I was nowhere near the brightest and I certainly could have been better.

One day, Mr. Hines was going on and on about how gerunds were our friends or something when something happened.

The bell rang.

We, the students, got up and left the class filled with the knowledge that gerunds were verbs acting as nouns, and with this knowledge, we could change the world or even go out on a date.

The next day in class, Mr. Hines was clearly upset.  

Now, Mr. Hines ran a pretty tight ship, but he wasn't one of those yelling teachers, which were common back then.  

He calmly but very firmly told us,  "I don't know who told you that you were dismissed from class when the bell rang.  The bell does not dismiss you.  I dismiss you. I am very disappointed in you."

I remember thinking:  Cobb County Public Schools told us. The school bell was used to start class and to end class.  I thought it was a pretty good system.

Plus, Wheeler was an oddly shaped school with added buildings like patchwork.  There were basically two ways to get from where Mr. Hines's class in what was called "The Old Building" to "The New Building," where my next-period class was held. 

One was through a small hall that connected the Old and New Buildings. This was where the mass of Wheeler humanity would cram into trying to get to their class before the bell rang. Or you could run through the Smokehole (in the 70s, they let you smoke at school as long as it was outside and on concrete.)

Both could take a while, and you could be late.  If the bell rang for the start of the next class, the next-period teacher wouldn't care that their colleague would not dismiss a class just because something silly like a bell rang and you would have to go to the principal's office to get a permission slip to get admitted to the next class, plus you had to be issued a hall pass because you couldn't just walk up and down the hall like you owned the place.

I have wondered about this event a lot over the years.  Mr. Hines was such an excellent teacher and swell guy that the whole idea that I was part of a group of students, and these were the cream of the crop at Wheeler, except for one, um, notable exception, would disappoint him so much, truly puzzled me.

Then one day, I had an epiphany.

My wife also went to Wheeler and was in The Riff-Raff Class of '79. That was the class in which Coach Diffley gave an obscene arm signal to at a pep rally. (Historians disagree on the actual act Coach Diffley did. Some say he "flipped off"  The Class of '79 while others claim he did the "Bras d'honneur" which is involves both arms and has lots of moving parts. While I am confident that Coach Diffley did the "Bras d'honneur," I'm pretty sure he didn't call it that.)

She said she was in a class once where the teacher said, "the bell does not dismiss you."

Under intense questioning from me (right after: "Did you get Chick-fil-A sauce?") my wife said the teacher who said this was another Wheeler English teacher, and it was in a class taught in the same year and quarter as my Advanced Grammar class.

I came to the conclusion there must have been an English department meeting where the consensus was that these East Cobb brats are so entitled that they get up and walk out of class when the bell rings like hoodlums.

I don't know if that happened, but it makes sense. It gives me a sense of closure and I'm a peace with that.

Like It Or Lump It: "Citadel"

 

Welcome once again "Like It Or Lump It," in which we recap a new series on one of the streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Peacock, Hulu, Paramount Plus, Paramount Minus, Apple, Disney +, Pluto, Uranus, Philo, Sling, Slang, Slung, Tubi, Doobie, Doo, et al.

Today we look at "Citadel" starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Special Agent Bosoms and Richard Madden as Special Agent Butch Deadlift. I never heard of them either, but they are the stars here.

"Citadel" is a secret international organization that isn’t loyal to any nation—rather, it exists in the shadows to protect all of humanity from Republicans.  Citadel's office is in a super secret location on the side of a mountain in Utah because nobody would ever think to look in Utah. 

Their boss is Bald Man, who is smart because he has no hair. But listen buddy; grass doesn't grow on a busy street.

The show starts on a train passing through the Italian Alps, where Agent Bosoms and Deadlift are assigned to track down a Russian carrying some uranium that would hurt all of humankind.

One thing leads to another, and soon a massive gun battle and brawl take place on the train.  Sort of like an all-night IHOP at 2:00 in the morning. 

Well, you know how Russians are.  The Russian detonates a bomb. Somehow both Agent Bosoms and Deadlift survive the explosion.

There is a time jump, eight years into the future, and Agent Deadlift lives on a farm in rural Oregon, although it is unclear what he does for a living.   He is married to Mrs. Deadlift and they have a daughter, Missy Deadlift.

He has no memory of his Citadel days or Agent Bosoms. He's a happy guy with a happy family and happy he doesn't live in Portland.

Bald Man kidnaps Agent Deadlift to retrieve a case containing nuclear codes before it falls into Manticore’s hands.

Manticore is the E-VIL rival to  Citadel. Manticore is an infamous syndicate whose members manipulate world events to accrue more wealth and power among themselves. Then they sit around the table and laugh about how much wealth and power they have.

The head of Manticore is a British woman who says terrible cuss words in a British accent.  Hey, it is a pressure-filled job, and a gal has to blow off some steam.

Meanwhile, Agent Bosoms works in an upscale restaurant in Spain. Again, it is not really clear what she does in the restaurant except stand around and look hot. If you can get paid for it, more power to you.

Bald Man instructs Deadlift to find Agent Bosoms so they can foil the dastardly schemes of Manticore and their potty-mouthed British Woman boss.

In the following adventures, we learn that Bosoms and Deadlift were once "lovahs," and Bosoms gave birth to a baby girl.  Deadlift was so infatuated that he gave Bosoms an engagement ring which she turned down. 

There are several million action scenes that are really well done if you don't understand what a bullet can do to the human body. 

There are lots of punches. Lots of jumping out of planes. Lots of standing on submarines in the middle of the ocean.

Agent Bosoms is easy on the eyes but she can punch like a man. Agent Deadlift is handsome, but it doesn't seem like his Happy Meal has many French fries.  Bald Man Boss is shot with a high-powered rifle but somehow survives, which you gives him some serious bald man cred.

There are some surprises. Mrs. Deadlift turns out to have been a former Citadel agent. Manticore's boss has a connection to Deadlift that I cannot reveal without violating the 2017 No Spoilers And Debt Limit Extension Act.

"Citadel" is a good action series that doesn't make much sense. The action scenes are well choreographed. The dialogue is stupid, and there are the obligatory swear words.  

If I had to choose, I say....Like It, but I'm easy to please.