Stretchy Pants, Gagging of God, Why the University Library is Great

a)

Well, two years ago I learned that a movie was coming out that I thought I needed to see. Why? Because, it appeared to be created specifically for me. Consider the following facts:

- Nacho Libre stars Jack Black
- Nacho Libre is directed by the dude from Napolean Dynamite
- Nacho Libre is about Lucha Libre, ie. Mexican wrestling.

Yet is has taken two years for me to watch it. It was worth it however, as Nacho Libre is the greatest Jack Black movie about wrestling ever.

Yes, and it is the only one. But I can only hope it will be the first of many. One of the greatest things about the movie is its wardrobe. Consider the following three articles of clothing and how they lend themselves to brilliant Jack Black bits:

Friar Robe – Ignatio (Black) is a Friar and wears a robe. The looseness of this robe allows Nacho to catch on fire when he is lighting candles during a prayer session. This also reveals his stretchy pants (revealing his secret identity, the Luchador Nacho).

Stretchy pants – Ignatio, a very poor Friar, must wear stretchy pants to enter the wrestling match. Where will he acquire the stretchy pants? He steals them from a fat Mexican orphan. Comedic genius…

Expensive pants – Ignatio, having begun a successful wrestling career, now sports some expensive and tight pants. He wears them to hit on Sister Encarnación, who asks him “Ignatio, where is your robe?” This sets up Jack Black to stretch and flex his awesome buttocks. Probably the best butt scene in movie history.

Thus ends my discussion about Nacho Libre.

b)

Been reading The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism by DA Carson. Real good, and very intellectually stimulating. Here's an excerpt:

“Miss Christian goes off to the local state university, full of zeal and the knowledge of a few fundamental truths. (If she has that she is ahead of many of our church raised young people.) There she will not find lecturers who will devote much time to overturning her truths. Rather, she will find many lecturers convincing her that the meaning in her religion, as in all religion, is merely communal bias, and therefore relative, subjective. No religion can make valid claims of a transcendent nature. Truth, whatever it is, does not reside in an object or idea or statement or affirmation about reality, historical or otherwise, that can be known by finite human beings; rather it consists of fallible, faulty opinions held by finite knowers who themselves look at things that certain way only because they belong to a certain section of society.

Miss Christian is told, a trifle condescendingly, that if her religion helps her, she should be grateful, but that no intelligent person this side of Derrida, Foucalt, and Fish, could possibly believer that her beliefs have a transcendent claim on everybody everywhere. Thus without denying her faith, Miss Christian discovers that its vitality has been sapped. It has been relativized, trivialized, and marginalized. Without ever having had a single one of its major tenets overturned by historical or other argument, the whole edifice of Christian truth has been detached from the objective status it once held. Miss Christian drifts off, and it may take years before she thinks seriously about Jesus again—if she ever does.” (slightly reformatted by Adam)

Really interesting, especially as you think about campus ministry.

c)

I still like to go to the University library to chill even though I've graduated. Why?:

i. I get a discount on coffee. $1.30 for a tall, bold, Starbucks coffee. So good...

ii. Free internet access on their computers.

iii. There are nice chairs by the newspaper section.

iv. It is more relaxing and conducive to doing work/meditation than home.