Hot Rod Anglican

Oksana Grishina

2012-02-01T19:36:00.000-08:00

At the intersection of bodybuilding and dance, at the exact point of confluence of form and function, lies NPC and IFBB Fitness Competition. No one does it more beautifully than Oksana Grishina! I've seen her perform on stage three times, and each time was in awe of her artistry! I would love to do a painting of her someday.

The Two Paths (or How My Long Lost Friends Turned Out)

2012-02-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

There is a lot you can learn from facebook. Partly, this is because people will write things on there that they would never say to you in public (or in private, for that matter). facebook has enabled me to re-connect with many friends, some of whom I had not heard from in over 30 years. It is interesting to see what has become of them.

Some of them have become successful and even famous. Some of them seem to be changing the world. Others appear to have been changed by the world. Some of them state that they are thrilled to have finally found me again ... then don't post anything on facebook for years in a row. It is as if they wanted to confirm some suspicion about how I would turn out, and once it was confirmed, they had no need of further contact.

The Great Divide

I do see one great division among my friends, and that is between those who are busy doing things and those whose business is to try to get me to do or believe certain things. The first group has many subcategories, from those whose lives center around their children, to those trying to create cutting-edge art, to those who seem shell-shocked by the world and seem as if they are just trying to survive it all.

The people in the second group, for the most part, have attached themselves to a cause. The are activists. In the saddest of cases (and there are many I can think of) they have become totally lost in the cause, so that the person I thought I knew is no longer visible at all. They have become flattened out, one-dimensional.

Various causes have been embraced: socialism, environmentalism, diet supplements, Ron Paul. But in each case, the person's presence on facebook is only a mask. You rarely (if ever) get to see behind the mask. They are not on facebook to interact with me person-to-person; they are their to sell me something: a product, a theology, a service, a worldview.

Every so often, one of these "hollow men" forgets himself, and posts a status update which shows a piece of his life, in which his old personality shines through, however briefly. I typically cannot help responding to these, thinking: "My old friend is back, and in his right mind!" But I am nearly always fooled. The scrap of real humanity was just bait. The reply to my comment usually goes back to the sales pitch: Try this supplement, Come to this workshop, Watch this brand new Ron Paul video.

Some of the most creative people I've ever known have become no more than propagandists, and uncreative ones at that. It is a real pity. We shall end by having no real shared lives, talking to each other merely by posting antagonistic "Shared" quasi-humorous images on each other's facebook walls.

Introspection

Of course, it is a good thing to turn this around and ask myself: What kind of facebook friend am I to other people? How often am I just parading my worldview across the width of the status update bar, like some strutting peacock, or like a dog marking his territory? And how often do I invite real dialogue? I believe that I have a lot of room for improvement.

Afraid and Ashamed - A Poem for my Wife

2012-01-26T14:26:00.000-08:00

This is a small poetic offering to my wife.

Those of you readers who are long-time Anglicans should easily recognize the source and inspiration for this poem.

Afraid and Ashamed

But, O my love, who all my weakness knows,
And my corruption, how it overflows;
How comes it that you daily send me out,
To meet with temptings manifold and stout?

Whence comes such holy strength and bravery?
(In view of my historic knavery!)
God's Spirit gives continuous assistance,
To make you brave and end all my resistance,
That I may be effectually restrained
From sin, and to my duty be inclined.

I dread your holy judgments, gentle lover,
In case my pondered misdeeds you discover.
But, too, with grateful sense I shall endeavor
To recollect your goodness to me ever.

Feeling thus, I craft this verse to send you,
Both afraid and ashamed to offend you.

© 2012, Paul Erlandson

Okay, okay. So maybe form DOES follow function!

2012-01-18T19:40:00.000-08:00

The beautiful Erin Stern:

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Mocking the Hippies

2012-01-18T08:54:00.000-08:00

One of my nephews was kind enough to send me a copy of this DVD, Free Spirits:

It is the story of the Brotherhood of the Spirit, which later became the Renaissance Community. That story is also told in compelling manner by Daniel A. Brown, here. Brown was one of the commune members interviewed for the documentary.

Since my nephew had given me the gist of the story over the phone, I had prepared myself for an evening of merriment, laughing and making jokes at the expense of the stupid hippies and their stupid experiment in communal living. But that is not quite the way it turned out. Granted, I did Laugh Out Loud at many points, such as the description of "Toilet City", seven toilets arranged in a circle, so that the community members could continue their endless dialogue on the life of pure spirit even when attending to the basest needs of the body.

And there were several other times at which the folly of the community or its leader (Michael Metelica Rapunzel) made the documentary seem more like a Spinal-Tap-style mockumentary.

But I was sobered by the realization that I myself share the personality type of the people who joined this commune and put up with so much from their abusive leader. My father noticed this trait in my when I was in my early twenties, and though I denied it at the time, I now must conclude that he is right.

How do I describe the combination of traits that makes me a candidate for membership in a hippie commune? Let my try listing a few:

1. A dissatisfaction with the world and a concomitant urge to either change it, or build a better one. This is kind of the core value of that drives not only communal-living hippies, but is also behind the productive industrialists of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. It can also drive people to become monastics, or revivalist Gospel preachers.

2. The sense that "regular people" lead boring lives and are "missing out". This is a close relative of the 1st trait. It has some validity, in that the lives of most people leave much to be desired. But it also comes from not studying closely enough the drama of the average human life. We miss a lot, and assume a lot. Eventually, we may come to assume that there is an ontological difference between us an the "regular people". I think that this is incredibly dangerous. You see it clearly in Free Spirits in the words of one of the children raised at the Commune, in his disdainful words (as an adult) about the closed-mindedness and limited lives of everyone he knows who didn't grow up in the Commune.

3. The pride of youth. Time has graciously arranged it so that I can no longer fall prey to this one. But I remember one LSD-soaked Saturday in Central Park, circa 1979, when I asked my fellow acidhead friend: "Why is it only we young people who understand, who are wise?" In retrospect, this is one of the most embarrassing moments of my own personal documentary. In retrospect, the answer is: It's NOT, you dunderhead! Get over yourself!

4. Failure to appreciate tradition. Why have traditional institutions grown up? Why do we have governments? Why do we have towns? Why do we have any of the "establishment" institutions. In general, the answer boils down to: Long ago, our ancestors tried the "pure spirit" method of the Brotherhood and, thanks to some abusive personality like Michael, various safeguards were put in place. We wander onto a dangerous path when we ignore what Chesterton called "the democracy of the dead": Tradition.

5. Attraction to charismatic personalities. I have this. I guess a lot of folks do, given the passion with which people seem to follow celebrities of all varieties, trying to fill their own empty lives with substance from the celebs' lives. If you read the Daniel A. Brown article, please note the moment in which Michael invites him into the Community. It puts a powerful spell on him. Just reading it gave me the shivers, as I realized that I would have felt the same reaction he did.

My possession of theses "cult joiner" traits made me not laugh so hard at the "stupid hippies" as I had intended to, and that is probably a good thing.

I loved the documentary for several reasons. One reason was that there was a good bit of film footage from the Brotherhood/Community, so the filmmakers did not need to resort to that horrid documentary practice of showing the same exact still photograph 50 times over, but zooming and panning to try to add some life to it. They don't just tell you about making the silk-screened posters of Michael, they show you!
Then, too, the tone was very balanced. Those who had left the commune, forced out by Michael's increasingly bad behavior, still had a wistful nostalgia about the Community. The best and perhaps saddest remembrance appears in the trailer for the film, and is a statement to the effect that none of the attributes that had attracted the woman speaking to Michael at the beginning were present at the end.

Of interest to me also was the rock band that Michael Metelica Rapunzel started with commune members: Spirit In Flesh. From the brief snippets of music on the documentary, I had expected a hard and heavy psychedelic sound, perhaps akin to Iron Butterfly. So, you can imagine my surprise when I heard this track from their album on YouTube, and found it to be almost 10 years behind the times, sounding more like Freddie and the Dreamers or Herman's Hermits than Blue Cheer:

I have to ask myself, had I joined the Brotherhood in its early days, at what point would I have left? I don't know the answer. I also ask myself what sorts of brilliant things this community could have achieved had Michael, its founder, been more interested in seeking to encourage to vocations of others, and less interested in pleasuring himself. God only knows.

Cool, Quiet, and Time to Think.

2012-01-17T09:40:00.000-08:00

This article is chock full of gems, and is well worth reading: The Rise of the New Groupthink, by Susan Cain.

A few quotes from the article:

SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.

The story of Apple’s origin speaks to the power of collaboration. Mr. Wozniak wouldn’t have been catalyzed by the Altair but for the kindred spirits of Homebrew. And he’d never have started Apple without Mr. Jobs.

But it’s also a story of solo spirit. If you look at how Mr. Wozniak got the work done — the sheer hard work of creating something from nothing — he did it alone. Late at night, all by himself.

“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me ... they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone .... I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone... Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

I completely agree with this. I have had internet friends that I have had to "unfriend" because they were brutal and constant in asserting that everything was teamwork, covenantal, and corporate. That, indeed, there was never and could never be such a thing as an individual act, much less an individual act of brilliance or heroism.

Once, back in the early 1980s, I attend a church retreat. One of the themes of the retreat was how we are always stronger as part of the Covenant (this was a Reformed Church in America congregation, so we used the C-word a good deal). I'm fine with that. I agree with that. But the way that the outside teacher we'd hired to lead the retreat spun it, it sounded more like: Decisions of a group are always better than decisions of an individual. Committees are always wiser than individuals.

And so we played a little game to prove this. A sort of puzzle was handed out. We first were required to answer the puzzle (which yielded a score from zero to 30) on an individual basis. We then formed into six groups of 5 people each, and pooled our answers together, filling out a new sheet with the group answers.

The point of the exercise was to prove that the group is always wiser than the individual. But I rather ruined that for the retreat facilitator. Although our group scored 26 of 30 points, the highest of the 6 groups, my individual score had been 29 of 30. So, not only had a lone individual outscored all the "committees", but joining a committee had made the lone genius stupider. Still, the retreat facilitator could have saved face, had he not made a crucial mistake: He asked us to summarize what the exercise had taught us. I won't relate to you what I told him I had learned, but it wasn't pretty. I'm pretty sure I ruined his whole weekend.

In case you are wondering about the title of this blog entry, it comes from this fine song:

I Was a Teenage Pietistic Dandy

2012-01-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

This is a little film that my brother, the Rev. Charles Erlandson, made back around 1983 or 1984. We did it as a project for an evening class at our church. It was shot with a pretty primitive Super 8 movie camera, and it lost some fidelity in the translation from film to video as well. Some points to look for are: the giant donut, my old Vox Phantom VI guitar, musician Kemper Crabb, and my brother walking on water.

Part 1

Part 2

Captain Q and the False Angel of Light

2012-01-13T09:34:00.000-08:00

Careful long-time readers of this blog may recall that in my younger days (from around 1978 to 1980) I experimented with LSD. This blog entry mentions it. That's what we druggies always say, isn't it? We are "experimenting". It sounds more dignified than "using".

Anyhow, shortly after I stopped using LSD, I wrote out a little "gospel" tract to hand out to people on campus at Purdue University, where I was a Mechanical Engineering grad student.

To read the thing, you will have to click on each image in turn. Even if you normally would not read an evangelical tract such as this, it may be of interest to you, because it tells the story of my last two bad acid trips.

I have to say, I kind of miss that Ampeg Telecaster knock-off I'm holding in that photo, as well as the "Sergeant Pepper" jacket. The jacket wouldn't fit me now, though, even if I still had it.

Cindy Phillips to Compete in WPD!

2012-01-11T20:24:00.000-08:00

I just read on Cindy Phillips' blog that she has been downsizing her physique, and will be competing as an IFBB Pro in the Women's Physique Division. She plans to compete in the 2012 IFBB Europa in Orlando, Florida, on April 27/28. It will be great to see Cindy on stage again!

Read her blog entry here.

Hating the Success of Others

2012-01-09T08:05:00.000-08:00

The proximate cause of my posting this blog entry is the hatred and/or disgust I've seen on Facebook for Tim Tebow, particularly from Christians. Many opine that he should keep his faith to himself, that God is not sovereign over the affairs of the National Football League, or that he is a mediocre quarterback, at best. But what seems to be the common thread in all their seething rants is hatred of Tebow's success.

It made me think of something a good friend of mine said when I proudly displayed one of my bodybuilding photos on Facebook: "Paul, nobody likes a good example." I took it, of course, with in the same good spirit of humor with which he intended it. But it made me think: we really do hate the success of others. We hate it when others have things that we do not, and especially when they are things that we are not and never will be.

This inability to revel in and hatred o the success of others is none other than Envy, one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

I remember turning the corner out of Envy and into the larger world of being able to appreciate the success and possessions of others. You will not be suprised to learn that it came to me through the car hobby. I used to get quite envious of those who had cooler cars than I did. But suddenly, one summer many years ago, I was able to appreciate the beauty of these machines, and to thank God on behalf of the men and women who owned them. It came to me in a flash how foolish I had been, and how impoverished my total appreciation of the world had become, by only being able to appreciate beauty and virtue in things I personally possessed!

We should be able to rejoice with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15)! Here is the Biblical account (from 2 Samuel 6) of one woman who was woefully unable to do so:

Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the LORD with all his might, while he and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets.

As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart.

They brought the ark of the LORD and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the LORD. After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD Almighty. Then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes.

When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”

David said to Michal, “It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD’s people Israel—I will celebrate before the LORD. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.”

Let us be a little less like Michal, bitter at the rejoicing of another, and a little more like the slave girls, able to keep to the dictate of Romans 12:15, to rejoice with those who rejoice.

Walter M. Miller, Jr. -- Dark Benediction

2012-01-07T20:18:00.000-08:00

Dark Benediction, by Walter M. Miller, Jr., is perhaps my favourite short story of all. I say "perhaps" because there are 2 or 3 by Flannery O'Connor that I love with approximately the same passion.

SPOILER ALERT! If you would like to read this story without first reading my analysis, stop reading now and go obtain the book!

Synopsis: Meteors have fallen to earth, but they were not mere rocky projectiles. They had been sent with hopeful benevolence by the beings of another race, with the thought that the "neuroderms" ("intelligent" micro-organisms) contained in the meteor would be a blessing to some other race. Surely, the neuroderm parasites had been a blessing to their own race, granting them almost superpower levels of sensory perception, by benevolently changing the nervous systems of the host beings.

When earth scientists (actually an engineer, I believe) sawed open one of the hollow spherical meteors, the parasites were released into our world, and began to spread through the human population. Unfortunately, besides gradually enhancing the senses of those "infected", the neuroderm parasites also turned the skin of the host a sickly grey, and gave them a longing to touch uninfected human skin. Other than that, the "dermies" (as the infected humans came to be known among the uninfected) were quite happy. Happier, in fact, than before they had become infected.

Those not infected fled from the major cities in a panic, throwing the nation into chaos. The uninfected desperately did not want to be infected and have their own skin take on the sickly grey appearance. But the dermies chased the non-dermies, with a sort of dual purpose: (1) they took physical pleasure in the smell and touch of non-infected skin; (2) they felt that the non-dermies (the called them "non-hypers" and themselves "hypers") would be happier once they became infected with neuroderm.

There is a love story, and there is an interesting Church-based hyper colony on Galveston Island, in Texas. I won't spoil the story and further for you. I would like to comment on how effectively Miller has done something here, and that is to explain Christians to non-Christians, and vice versa. When I read this story for the first time, a little over 20 years ago, it immediately occurred to me how very like dermies we Christians are.

The parallels are amazing. It is a regular occurrence for instance, for me (and all Christians) to be treated as crazy, mentally-diseased people, by atheists on the internet. They treat us as subhumans. It will happen to you daily if you go to certain places on the internet. And yet my testimony and the testimony of many other Christians is that we are much happier this way than we ever were before, before we were "infected" with the Gospel. And, don't you know, we like to try and infect others, too, so that they can share in the joy! And this desire to confer the blessing we have received on the uninfected ... well, it makes them fear, hate, or avoid us like the plague.

I think the convinced Christian and the non-believer can appreciate Miller's story equally, and that is part of its genius. I highly recommend this story to you!

Theodicy Explained with a Cartoon ...

2012-01-07T15:16:00.000-08:00

I found this to be interesting:

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Cell Phones in Church

2012-01-07T06:30:00.000-08:00

While I really like the humor of this ad, and despise the ringing of cell phones in church, the Presbyterianism of the ad shows through painfully! The highest level of fine should clearly be for a cell phone ringing during the Eucharist, not during the sermon!

1958 Chevrolet Apache - Hallelujah!

2012-01-03T17:53:00.000-08:00

I think that this picture, plus the YouTube link to the song, says it all!

Hot Rod Anglican Buys Another Mercury Meteor

2012-01-02T08:15:00.000-08:00

This is not the exact depiction of an historical event. Nonetheless, it does capture the spirit of the many discussions which my wife and I have had on the subject of purchases related to my car hobby:

Note the reference to Dave Ramsey's book, The Total Money Makeover. I highly recommend it!

I am Episcopalian ...

2011-12-30T21:42:00.001-08:00

Because this deserves MUCH greater circulation:

The Artist Militant versus The Artist Triumphant

2011-12-30T06:44:00.000-08:00

Every painting is a battle for me. Some are not as difficult as others, but they are all battles. Some are rather protracted campaigns, while others are shorter skirmishes. Some end in decisive victory, and others end with my signature on a treaty of surrender.

My point today is about how different the battle looks during the battle from the way it looks a year or two later, in hindsight. I have made several paintings about which, upon their completion, I could not say whether or not they were successful. And certainly during the middle stretches of each painting, success seems very much in doubt.

Here is a painting that I worked on for about 2 years. I finished it in the summer of 2010. While it was going on, I always doubted whether the glass blocks (which took forever!) and the granite would be at all convincing when the thing was finished. Now, 18 months later, I am convinced. I am happy with the result.

Funny how that works.

Rickenbacker Evolution: Vintage Guitar Collection!

2011-12-29T10:43:00.000-08:00

This is a spectacular video tour of a large, unique Rickenbacker guitar collection. A must see video for all fans of Rickenbacker musical instruments! From PREMIERGuitar.

Thought-Provoking Atheist Bumper Sticker

2011-12-29T06:03:00.000-08:00

I don't know why it is that lately I am running into more (or am more attuned to notice) atheist advertising. First, it was this Santa billboard. Then, a few days later, I saw this bumper sticker on the back of an SUV:

This has several features to commend it. First of all, it carries a complex thought in a relatively small number of words. You cannot effectively squeeze a lengthy manifesto onto a bumper sticker size rectangle. But this sticker manages to say something philosophically profound in 15 or 16 words, which makes it rather elegant.

The second thing I like about it is its refreshing acknowledgment of the awesomeness of God, and of man's smallness, dependence, and frailty by comparison. In short, it adequately recognized the Creator-creature distinction (pretty good for an atheist!): It realizes what an audacious thing it is to question Almighty God. The whole phrase just rings with the injustice of puny man daring to confront and question God his Creator, of daring to drag God, Job-like, into court to press one's complaint against Him. In fact, the sentiment as expressed could almost have been lifted out of one of the later chapters of the book of Job:

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. (Job 38:1-4)

The next commendable thing about this atheist bumper sticker is a startling thing, indeed. For it assumes a Calvinist understanding of God's work in creating faith in the hearts and minds of men. The clear assumption here is that God is Sovereign over mankind, choosing those in whom He will create faith. This is a Romans 9 understanding of human salvation, a rare enough thing to find in Christians, an odd oracle indeed in the mouth of an atheist. Or, is it? I have long noted that non-believers can often be more honest in the interpretation of Scripture than Christians since, for the atheist, nothing (as he supposes) is "riding" on it. Since Scripture is hogwash from his point-of-view, he is free to be totally honest about what it says. And what it says is that God determines who will answer the call of the Gospel:

All that the Father giveth me shall come to me ... (John 6:37)

After all this praise, you may be asking what it is that I find wrong or lacking about the sentiment expressed. Two things, primarily. One centers around the use of the word "want". To use it without comment (as one must needs do in a bumper-sticker length sentence) confuses God's Decretive Will and His Prescriptive (Preceptive) Will. God does "want" every atheist to believe, because He commands it:

And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent. (Acts 17:30)

Finally, the atheist is being presumptuous in assuming that because he does not currently believe in God, that it is God's will for him never to believe. That is a totally unwarranted conclusion. And chiefly because of this error, I'm afraid that the poor atheist in the SUV is likely to keep having Gospel seed flung on him by Christian after Christian, all his life long.

World's Greatest Drag Race?

2011-12-28T06:32:00.001-08:00

I don't know if this lives up to the title, but it is worth watching:

East Coast Drag Times Hall of Fame 2011 Reunion

2011-12-27T06:52:00.000-08:00

This event looks to have been a blast! All the old drag cars look great!

East Coast Drag Times Hall of Fame 2011 Reunion

Our fried Bob Lees was there with the "High & Mighty II" Ramchargers tribute car.

More on Planet Fitness

2011-12-26T07:48:00.000-08:00

These are kind of long (and the first has needless use of the F-word), but they illustrate the position which Planet Fitness has taken up in the market. They really DO have pizza night.

I Want To Be a Bodybuilder (Part 3)

2011-12-26T07:38:00.000-08:00

I think I may have posted some of the videos here before. I like Part 3, because it gets into the whole Planet Fitness thing. Of course, I support their right to refuse membership to anyone they choose, but their anti-bodybuilder stance still amuses me. It is not a "Judgment-Free Zone", as they claim.

In case you missed them, here are the other parts from YouTube:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 4

Cemetery Gates: Death and Mourning Through the Ages

2011-12-25T20:39:00.000-08:00

Those who are regular readers of this blog may know of my interest in cemeteries, and in photographs and paintings of cemetery scenes. I recently had one of my photographs published in this book, but interestingly it was not a cemetery photo (see B&W photo below).

Here is the photo that was chosen for the book. It is of Ivy Blue, and was taken at St. John's Episcopal Church of Detroit, on Woodward in downtown Detroit.

I have not given the book a close enough examination to be able to write any sort of meaningful review. But I did find the images it contains to be interesting.

Sometimes, You Just Have to Feel Sorry for Atheists ...

2011-12-25T13:10:00.000-08:00

I was driving my family home at about 1:00 am this morning, through the darkness of I-75 in Genesee County, we saw this billboard, blazing at us with what seemed a million watts:

You kind of have to feel sorry for the atheists, really. I mean, the odds are long enough, what with them pitting themselves against centuries of belief in God.

But now, to take on Christmas ... I don't know how they think they can win this one?