Chick-Fil-A & the Man Upstairs

Another departure from stoner rock, marijuana, rock bands, concerts, guitars, and politics, Firebirds & Chargers, or books, movies or TV shows, back to something more mundane, FOOD and RELIGION. 

Those who know me well, know my preference for fast food.   Lately Chipotle has been a preference, along with Roy Rogers and Jersey Mike’s.   But there’s a new preference emerging:  CHICK-FIL-A.

I’d known about it for some time and ignored it.  I don’t consider myself chicken-preferred, though at McDonald’s I ignore their Quarter Pounder and Big Mac in favor of McNuggets and Select Strips.  At Wendy’s I likewise avoid the burgers they’re famous for and stick with the nuggets.  However, my Mom & Sister recently converted me to the CFA cult, and it’s two major items which do so:

1.         Waffle Fries.  I love these.   Not to the exclusion of the thick fries from Roy’s or the steak juice flavored small things from McDonald’s.  But these are definitely awesome.  I dip them in ketchup.

2.         Grilled chicken bites.  More awesomeness, dipped in barbecue sauce.   I’m not a fan of chicken sandwiches, so yet again I’m avoiding the chain’s signature food for something less common.  About as close you can get chicken to taste like steak, this is it.  Love them.

Sunday.   Everyone goes on about how the place is closed on Sunday, and how the owner S. Truett Cathy and his family are devout Southern Baptists and believe in keeping the (Black) Sabbath sacred.  Just like how McGoldberg’s – you know, all that traditional Jewish fast food everyone loves - is closed on Saturday and Habib’s – are they Sunni or Shi’ite?  No clue - is closed on Friday.  But the funny thing is that this Sunday closing is the only religious thing I can tell about it.  I don’t see Jesus Burgers, Mary Fries, Moses McNuggets, or any other indications that the Cathy family are surreptitiously trying to get us to worship God and go to church on Sunday because damn it, we can’t eat our beloved chicken on that day so we might as well default to going to mass instead – which I’d find plausible if any church served waffle fries and Coke for communion, and of course we know otherwise.   And that’s fine. 

Ned Flanders.  Consider the Simpsons character:  a devout Christian (what IS his denomination??) who tries his best to live a good life and raise his two clueless sons accordingly notwithstanding the absence of anyone else in the entire town of Springfield who shares his devotion, even Reverend Lovejoy himself.  And of course his next door neighbor is far away from him in behavior, even if – remarkably enough – they attend the same church.  This leaves Krusty (Jewish) and Apu (Hindu) as the only ones out of the mix, so it seems literally the entire town is the SAME Christian denomination, apparently a Protestant one as Lovejoy has a wife. 

But as flabbergasted and frustrated as Flanders is with Homer, you never see him trying to convert anyone or judge anyone.  He minds his own business and does his best to keep his family in line. 

I’m Catholic.   I was baptized and confirmed and my Dad was a Catholic priest who got an honorable discharge from the Vatican back in the mid-60s and was allowed – fortunately for my mom, myself and my brother and sister – to start a family.  I go to church every Sunday and except for a brief time of my life when I’d drunk the Ayn Rand Objectivist Kool-Aid and wasn’t so devout, continue to do so.   Whether other people do or do not, is their own business and not mine.  Whether whichever church I happen to be in on Sunday is cram packed (unlikely) or only half full (more plausible) doesn’t matter much to me. 

I’m also American.  And I believe our religious beliefs, or lack thereof, are our own particular business. While the majority of Americans are Christian, not all of them are (the much-feared Muslims are 1% of the population, well below Jews and atheists).  The Founding Fathers themselves were Christians, but they were deists:  they believed God created the Universe way back when but set it on its way and is content to allow us to live our lives.  They expressly rejected any idea of making this a theocracy even to the point of insisting on the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment.  If you want to live in a theocracy your choices are the Vatican City or Iran – even Israel isn’t a theocracy.  If you want your kids educated in religion, send them to private school AND/OR bring them to church on Sunday, but in public schools religion is off limits.  

  

 I like that Chick-Fil-A limits its religiousness to closing on Sunday and is otherwise content to allow Catholics, atheists, Jews and Muslims to eat there, no questions asked.  So AMEN to Chick-Fil-A and God Bless America.  

Stupid is as Stupid Does

"Stupid is as stupid does" - I noticed many movies or TV shows feature ridiculously stupid people, but the show itself is actually pretty smart.  In a sense it’s wisdom cleverly hidden amidst idiocy.

The Simpsons is one of the best examples.  Although Homer himself is almost completely clueless, the rest of the cast are considerably smarter.  And Groening’s humor has yet to peak.  There are so many inside jokes, left and right, it’s like an animated version of Dennis Miller without being nearly as obscure or pretentious.  You can count on this whenever Sideshow Bob (Kelsey Grammer) makes another attempt to kill Bart (“’Vendetta’ in English is…vendetta!” and Sideshow Bob correcting the Italian villager’s pronunciation of “bon giorno”).  Futurama could be labelled the same way: despite Fry being such an idiot, the humor and plots are fairly clever.  Homer and Fry each have a sort of endearing charm despite their mental deficiencies.  I’m convinced that Groening is one of the most creative and intelligent minds in the entertainment business, in the same rank and class as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

Family Guy.  I mentioned this earlier in my comparison with “Peanuts”, “Snoopy vs. Brian”.  This show tries to be a little too clever, especially Stewie.  Peter’s stupidity has NEVER reached the point where I find it entertaining, unlike Homer and Fry.  But still worth watching.  Although South Park is clearly very intelligent, I can’t include it here because none of the main characters – even Cartman – are stupid.

Forrest Gump.  I have to put this one in here because of how stupid Forrest was, but I’m ambivalent about this movie.  On one hand, the story is amazing – including his trip to Vietnam.  On the other hand, he seems to triumph not through his own virtue or bravery but due to sheer dumb luck, as if we’re supposed to imagine some virtue in dumb luck itself, personified by Forrest.  Uhh, so what is the point?

Idiocracy: the whole point was that the world 500 years from now was incredibly stupid, thanks to something like 2000 generations of incessant breeding among the idiots who can’t conceive of, much less successfully manage, birth control or zero population growth, whereas the all-too-valuable intelligent fraction of the population has perfected it all too well.  But it is a good film.  Incidentally, it makes a fairly strong argument for the otherwise discredited doctrine of eugenics, whereby – “YOU!  OUT OF THE GENE POOL!!!” – the lesser among us are forcibly sterilized (possibly through execution) so that our inferior genes can be weeded out and humans selectively bred for superior traits.  This was brought to its logical conclusion, much to everyone’s horror, by the Nazis.  Before they slaughtered Jews by the train load, their initial targets for death were the old, crippled, and mentally retarded in a euthanasia program expressly designed to eliminate undesirable traits from the overall Aryan population.  This movie makes the doctrine make sense, at least as far as targeting stupidity as a trait worthy of sterilization if not elimination.

Beavis & Butt-head.  When I first saw this I couldn’t stand it.  They were just TOO STUPID to be entertaining.  This had to grow on me.  I noticed the satire of the touchy-feely social studies teacher, Van Driessen; the uptight Principal McVicker; and my favorite, Coach Buzzcut, who shouts everything as an order, as if he’s either a drill sergeant in the Marine Corps or back in Vietnam. But even the stupidity has a certain clever edge to it:

            Beavis [watching video of vintage Black Sabbath]: “Are these guys from Seattle?”

            Butt-Head: “No, they’re American!”  or

            Beavis [watching video of Slayer…or was it Pantera?]: “These guys must get lots of chicks!”

            Butt-Head [actually thinking for a change]: “Uhh, I think they probably SCARE chicks.”

            Beavis: “Cool. The only thing cooler than bands that GET chicks are bands that SCARE chicks!”

Bill & Ted.  In “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey”, two idiots from San Dimas, California, Bill Preston (Alex Winter – where is HE now??) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves, marginally more “whoa”-y in this film than later) are assisted by Rufus (George Carlin) to save Earth from its own thoughtless cruelty and preserve a most excellent and righteous future. 

            The first movie featured them collecting various historical figures: Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud, Billy the Kid, Napoleon (aka “short dead dude”), Beethoven, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, and Socrates (whose name they pronounce “So-crates”), in order to successfully complete their history project and not fail, as destiny requires them to remain together as a pair.  

In the second film, killed by an evil pair of Bill & Ted robots near the rock cropped hillside – featured in three separate “Star Trek” episodes – they go to Hell, where they experience various personal “hells” before beating Death at various kids games, an obvious homage to “The Seventh Seal”, the dark, cynical classic B&W film with Max von Sydow.  They get to Heaven and work out – carefully and none too quickly – that returning to Earth alive isn’t enough.  They need help defeating the evil Bill & Ted robots or they’ll simply be killed again.  They get the alien “station” pair to help them out, and emerge most triumphant.

With Bill & Ted, the underlying idea is "be excellent to one another". How can these two idiots somehow figure this out, yet it eludes all us smart people?  What you have is an essentially Christian message hidden inside two dolts from San Dimas.  This is the ultimate stealth moral – a clever, decent message hidden deep within what appears to be colossal stupidity.