MOMMENTARY |
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Thursday, March 27, 2008 ( 11:06 PM ) Elinor Dashwood Eli Stone: Get Stuffed About halfway through tonight's service . . . I mean, tonight's episode . . . I said that I would give this show one more week. If it continued to deliver left-wing sermons, I said, I would give it the push. I've changed my mind. I'm giving it the push now. Eli Stone started out as a quirky, unpredictable program with an excellent cast. The plots were offbeat and the characters were realistic, behaving in complicated and interesting ways. That was the first few weeks, anyway. Last week I was calling the plot twists five minutes before they happened. This week it was ten. On top of that, this week's homily was even more obnoxious than last week's. It's over. It needs to make a noise like a hoop and roll away. Of course, I deserve it, for allowing myself to engage with the popular culture in such a downmarket medium. Well, I've learned my lesson - again - television sucks. # Monday, March 17, 2008 ( 9:27 AM ) Elinor Dashwood Hurray! We had "All Glory, Laud, and Honor" for Palm Sunday, which is just as it should be. Our organist has a dreary taste in general, and cleaves to the line hewn out by Oregon Catholic Press, but she occasionally becomes aware of the suitability of a particular hymn to a particular feast. (It still hasn't struck her that "O God Almighty Father" would be especially apt on Trinity Sunday.) I daresay that, having given us a treat, she'll now revert to the usual rubbish for a long spell. It doesn't really matter: in all probability our parish will be closed in a year or two, and I'll have to find someplace else to go to Mass anyway. One extremely funny thing happened during Mass. The church (built in 1964) has one of those three-tiered baptismal fonts through which the water recirculates. As a rule, it trickles gently from one basin to another, and everybody seems to be used to the slight noise it makes. I suppose those sensitive to the sound of running water use the bathroom before Mass. (I'll say this for ugly modern churches: the bathrooms are good, and easy to find. In handsome Gothic churches the facilities are too often hidden away down twisting stairs and long dark corridors, and have a scary, forgotten look once you find them.) What I didn't know was that the flow is variable. Somebody who had a toddler of a roaming disposition was seated in the back row, and the child found the wall switch that controls the water speed. Suddenly there was a loud engine noise, and the font became a roaring waterfall. I just about keeled over from trying not to laugh. One of the ushers eventually figured out what the trouble was and turned the dial back down from Log Flume Ride to Serenity Garden, and not before time. It'll be the dickens to keep the boy away from the switch, though, now he knows what it does. # |
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