Twisters, a Slightly Unhinged Reaction (spoiler alterts!)

As a native Oklahoman who has lived most of his life in Tornado Alley, when the original Twister movie came out 28 years ago it felt like I and my people had been Seen.  Finally, here was a movie about living and surviving the storms that are native to our land.  

Having watched that movie again a few weeks ago, I felt that perhaps I needed to revise my original assessment.  It's a somewhat dopey movie about a dysfunctional couple that should never have been together in the first place and who get back together in the name of scientific discovery, with all kinds of cool special effects thrown in.  While the motivations and the actions of the leads haven't aged well, it's still a watchable movie that proved the truth that all we really need to do to survive a storm is run away from it, or at least not drive into the path of the storm.  

So this summer, almost three decades later, we finally have a sequel: Twisters.  Sure, there are no returning characters, only the tragic figure of Muskogee State College's once-proud doctoral program in Tornadology, town event planners who can't read the freakin' weather forecast and pray their liability coverage will absolve them of responsibility in case of a natural disaster, and the evil villains of Corporate Funding.  Seriously, Helen Hunt didn't need the paycheck?  We couldn't have at least gotten a cameo from Preacher whose near-death experience all those years ago helped him start a TV ministry about the glories of Aunt Meg's steak and eggs?

Instead, in our new movie tornado chasing has become a cross of big business, redneck freedom signaling, and YouTube stupidity.  Our heroine needs to be convinced 5 long years after watching her boyfriend and employees get sucked into the maw of the beast that she needs to return to Oklahoma, but only for One More Job.  See, it's gonna be the tornado outbreak of the century!  Whereas once she failed to kill a tornado, killing Sally Draper instead and only narrowing escaping a charge of manslaughter, her old corporate friend wants her back to guide around the countryside a pack of the most educated Ph.Ds he can afford but who have no storm-chasing instincts.  At first she won't come, because now she's a New Yorker, because, as we know, that's where the hot weather action is now (after all, there was an F1 in Brooklyn only two years ago!).  We know it's New York because she has a meaningful conversation with corporate friend in a coffee shop near a subway station (at least we think it is, but none of the subway lines are listed).  She wakes up with a ghost in her bed as a subway train rolls by her window, and realizes that she's got unfinished business to do.  

After a long and relatively pointless scene where she negotiates her vacation time with the HR office of the National Weather Service, back she comes to lead the polished flock of clueless men.  She doesn't know their equipment, plans, or goals, much less the evil funding behind it all, but she'll immediately direct the day-to-day operations of the new startup.  Soon, though, she's confronted with a YouTuber with a heart of gold, who was raised by wolves in the foreign country of Arkansas and is recognized in the deleted scene as the bastard unknown son of Bill Paxton.  His motley crew, who likely all were inspired by the legacy of Philip Seymour Hoffman's Duffy (he'll tell you why he is who he is, OK?), rally around their hero as they seek to engage in the profit sharing of his videos.  

Tornados immediately sprout from the depths of the plains like sea monsters off the Japanese coast.  Everybody cheers, though, whether for profit or simply for entertainment.  To the side a tiny child tells the adults in broken English, 'Tornado is a friend to all children everywhere!'  The child is quickly obliterated by a flying windmill that was uprooted by a tornado (see, Trump is a genius when it comes to windmills!), but the heroine quickly recovers to survive increasingly powerful twisters that wipe out rodeos, movie theaters, oil refineries, and random houses both in towns and fields.  All the while she and YouTuber come increasingly close as they share their love of tornados under the watchful eye of mama Maura Tierney, whose barn remains to this day a shrine to her daughter's precocious middle school science project.

It's worth noting that all the while the effects of global warming (more tornados! higher seed prices! crazy weather!) are discussed but never named.  It is evident that the producers of this Peabody-winning documentary know that the greater portion of audiences will not be the smug New Yorkers who have a subway train outside their bedroom window, but honest Red-State Americans who know that global warming is as much a hoax as foreign pickups.  The terrible tornados who are not the friend of children everywhere might well be defeated, however, as long as fireworks are shot into the tornado before the diapers.  

Finally, cut to the money shot of the Biggest Tornado Ever Seen descending upon El Reno, Oklahoma.  Lots of running in 200 mile winds enables most of the endangered children at a softball game and vendors at a  downtown street fair (dang it, doesn't ANYBODY have a weather app on their phone to advise them to stay home instead???) to smartly run away from a flying trolley and into a movie theater playing a 1930s monster movie.  Fortunately the power stays on throughout the total destruction of the town and its paper-mache water tower, so we can see what happened in that movie, which would have been a better use of my $6 than this turkey.  

In the midst of the storm, however, our heroine tosses aside sanity and runs out through the swirling debris to the YouTubers' pickup and steals it in order to run it straight into the path of the ongoing tornado.  Much like the original movie, they fortunately over the course of 6 hours had revised their entire game plan, loaded up 30 barrels of diapers, and bought a trailer (aluminum) to carry it all, as well as created a whole new class of fireworks to shoot at the enemy of plains-loving people everywhere.  The hard-charging non-foreign pickup takes our heroine straight into the storm where she immediately demolishes the tornado just as it's sadly bringing to a end the monster movie, and YouTuber and corporate friend run out to celebrate her heroism as she complains about the slight scratch on her forehead.  

Our heroine is ready to go back to New York, but sadly Will Rogers World Airport is closed because of a slight wind.  YouTuber has just enough time to cause two weeks of maintenance closure to the airport drop off line (oh, that lovable scamp!) before running into the airport to sweep the heroine off her feet.  And they live for happily ever after, we think, or at least until the adrenaline wears off.  The End. 

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Wild horses couldn't have kept me from seeing this movie.  A 4pm Saturday showing was as packed as any movie I've seen in awhile, because here in the heartland we LOVE our tornados.  If last summer was the year of Barbenheimer, then can we say that this is the summer of Inside Despicable Twisters?  

But once is enough.  I was entertained and annoyed all at once, but most importantly I feel dumber for having watched this movie, and this comes from a guy who has watched every episode of the Dukes of Hazard.   

6/10

Folks, We're Screwed

A little more than four months before a third straight election that makes millions of Americans want to put their heads in the oven, and last night they had the first debate.  Joe Biden or Donald Trump.  I didn't watch it, but by all accounts Trump continued his lunatic legacy by spouting lies, and Biden was barely coherent.  

I don't really feel anything about Joe Biden one way or another.  After four years of the Trump Trainwreck, we needed greatness, but we got Medicore Joe instead.  No matter how much his people keep trying to tell us that he's engaged and laser sharp, we can see with our own eyes that he's a doddering old man who needs to enjoy retirement, not try and run a country. 

Early last year Biden should have found a microphone and said, 'Folks, it's been an honor and a privilege.  I ran back in 2020 in order to kick that orange fraud to the curb, and I did.  Now that we're back on track as a country, I'm gonna retire and turn things over to the younger generation.  I'll be here to help make sure that that nimrod doesn't come back, but I'm not running next year.  Good luck with everything, see you soon.'  

Joe Biden could have wandered off the stage that day and we would have added him to Mt. Rushmore in our thanks.  But that never happened, and the Dems are too clueless to know what to do.  This should have been a slam dunk.  Trump is a criminal with no moral framework and supported by a limited base living in an alternative universe.  All the Dems needed to do was find a governor or senator who was at least somewhat centrist, and they would have won this in a landslide.  The fact that they have no plan in place tells you everything you need to know about them...incompetent, inept, inert. 

As it is, Trump is likely gonna win again this fall.  And when that happens, we really are screwed.  

Wonka, a Review

Tonight I went with my wife and son and some friends from church to go see Wonka, a PG movie that was a thinly-veiled re-imagination of the drug wars of the 1980s.  Young and idealistic Wonka comes to town to move his product, a drug that is far better than anything anyone has ever seen, causing people to get high in a delirious kind of way.  But the drug cartels that exist plot to have Wonka put out of business, robbing him of his initial profits and confiscating what remains of his stock.  They did this because they know his product is far superior and fear what might happen if Wonka is allowed to push in their territories.  Eventually, Wonka finds himself destitute and working in a sweatshop under the cruel terrors of local profiteers.  

Yet Wonka won't give up, and with the aid of a young girl and others who have been imprisoned, he finds a way to get his product out on the street, once again driving its consumers to ecstasy, so good is his drug. Eventually through various slights of hand, he becomes a 'legitimate' dealer alongside the more established pushers in town, but seeing how their profits have gone down, the cartel seeks to have Wonka decimated.  They utilize Wonka's former sweatshop masters to poison his product, and bribe various corrupted police and religious entities to do their bidding.  Eventually Wonka himself gets discouraged, and having won the release of his fellow prisoners (or so he thinks), he leaves town.  But the cartel owners know that Wonka will eventually return, so they plot to kill him by blowing up his boat.  

Wonka discovers in a nick of time the plot, and miraculously survives the assassination attempt.  As he makes his way back to the city, he plots his revenge.  With the help of his former fellow prisoners, he exposes the corruption of the cartel and the police.  His plan works at first, as he is on the verge of finding their secret records.  But the cartel leaders quickly discover the plan, and Wonka is captured and left to die a terrible death of drowning in the drug mixture.  Fortunately once again Wonka is saved by somebody he had once thought to be his blood enemy and he escapes.  

Finally out in the town square Wonka confronts the cartel leaders and corrupted authorities.  The drug bosses think they have the upper hand, but soon are hoisted upon their own petard because they had so enjoyed Wonka's product.  Wonka is now free to be the sole drug kingpin in his new adopted city, and everybody lives happily ever after.  

Oh, and there's a giraffe and an orange midget and a lot of great song and dance numbers along the way.

7/10

Why Not Drive A Bus?

Yesterday I was in another town and I saw on the side of a school bus an advertisement begging people to come be bus drivers.  Since I already am a bus driver and have been now for almost 7 years, I know something as to why a lot of people don't want to become a driver.  Every district is hiring, but there never seem to be enough to go around.  And since the purpose of this blog is to get stuff out of my head, I thought I'd list out some of the reasons why there are never enough bus drivers.  

1)Imagine a job that you arrrive at before dawn but don't get done with until late afternoon.  But you only get paid for 3-4 hours of work.  There's a reason I tell people that it can be a great second job if your first job is flexible.  But it can really suck if you don't have that...and most people don't.

2)Most jobs work and pay for 250 days.  Bus drivers, because of the school year, only work about 180 days.  This is OK if it's not your prime source of income or like a lot of days off.  But if you need to work like 99% of the population, this is sub-optimal.

3)School districts, even the wealthy ones, don't want to pay bus drivers as it is not one of their core prcoesses.  If they wanted to pay us what the market really bears, we'd make a lot...but if I wanted to go drive for private industry and be a unionized delivery driver, I could likely make twice what I'm being paid now (and work full-time as well). 

4)Bus drivers have to have a Commercial Drivers' License (CDL), and they are not easy to get.  I have multiple endorsements (student, passenger, air brakes) on top of the license as well.  DMVs don't make it easy to pass the test, and since we have random drug tests, bi-annual physicals, and can easily lose our license for various infractions, it's not always easy to keep them for some people. 

5)This coming week I will be out in the dark starting my bus in temperatures in the teens.  This comes only a few weeks after doing afternoon routes in 100+ temperatures on buses that are not air conditioned.  Not only is this not the most comfortable thing in the world, for people with certain health conditions this can be dangerous. 

6)Oh, speaking of working conditions, my old school district has most of its routes on terribly maintained dirt roads that went from being extra dusty to extra soaked.  As a rookie driver I got stuck in the mud multiple times.  But what is worse is the daily vibration of those roads, which I think took some years off of my life.  

7)Even on good roads, the buses we drive are not all that reliable.  When they are being shaken apart by bad roads, it feels like it's a daily gamble to drive and hope that something does break off it.  I've driven several types and brands of buses over the year, and the one thing that they all have in common is that if they were regular car brands they would be considered lemons; the breakdown rates on these buses is astronomical.  Occasionally somebody I will hear somebody say they want to buy an old school bus and fix it up.  I always tell them that this is stupid...not only are you buying a 25-year old vehicle that has been abused (and probably not well-maintained in the past five years due to budget issues), it was probably not well-built to begin with. 

8)Then there's the problem of driving a semi-sized vehicle through small neighborhoods, trying to squeeze through cars parked on both sides of the road and vehicles pulling out in front of me and children running out into the street.  A colleague of mine hit and killed a child who had done such a thing several months ago.  This driver was at fault in no way...but the guilt she feels will stay with her the rest of her life.

9)Ah, the kids.  When I tell people what I do most people say, "Oh, I couldn't do that!"  Yep, you probably couldn't.  Everyday on my current route I drive 50 hyperactive middle school kids (main ingredients: snark, anxiety, hormones, and energy drinks) to and from school.  Now that I've driven them for awhile and have gotten to know them I know most of them are OK.  But kids, even good ones, by nature will test adult authority.  And that's why a lot of adults can't do this, because they are too insecure in themselves to have a hundred eyes on them at all times.  Once you built relationships and trust with the kids, this can get easier...but even a good bus will have a few knuckleheads on it.  

10)Far worse than the kids are the adults in school administration.  Since I started driving every once in awhile clueless school administrators will come and try to suck up to drivers, and one of the time-tested line they use is, "The job you do is so important...it's like you are in charge of a classroom on wheels."  When I hear that, I know they've never been on a bus, because a)school teachers can actually see their students, not just in rear-view mirrors and b)we're not actually teaching them anything...buses are only classrooms in that the kids are learning about life (good and bad) from each other.  Drivers have no idea what goes on with the kids when they sink down below the seats.  

11)There are some school administrations who will occasionally recognize that transportation is not in their skill set, so they farm their bus services out to independent contractors.  I've never worked for one, and don't want to, but sometimes I think they can't be more clueless than educational administrators who talk about desired outcomes and assessments.  Real-world problems, like how to finish an afternoon drop off while arriving at a school at the same time to take a volleyball team to another town, are things they have no clue about.  

12)Finally, being a bus driver means that you have to deal sometimes with other bus drivers.  And most bus drivers are...different.  Maybe it's the strange hours, the PTSD of dealing with future psychopaths, or any of a hundred other reasons.  But do this long enough and it will change you, and not always for the better.  

So after all these points, why do I keep doing it?  Because I'm one of the few people for whom most of these obstacles are not deal-breakers.  My first job is flexible.  I get along well with most people.  I don't go running with minor problems to clueless administrators who think they know my job better than me.  I'm healthy enough that extreme heat and cold are not problems (yet).  

Who knows how many more years I will do this job part-time.  But I fear that somehow it may well become a dying industry.  If they can't ever create enough drivers, maybe they'll figure out a better way.  I'm guessing that 20 years from now my grandkids will go to school on buses run by UPS or Amazon.  

The River of Ministry

I've been in a strange place in recent months.  I quit one bus driving job because I couldn't stomach a terrible administration and am getting ready to start one in another district, hoping that things will be better.  My kids are getting older, and rarely do they need me much anymore beyond just me being the 'provider' so they can do their own thing.  My body in recent months has finally started to feel older than the young man I thought I was, even into my mid-50s.  My heel has been through a period where insoles and stretching are necessities; my flesh continues to grow as my energy seems to wane; waking up in the morning do I rarely fly out of bed; even my libido seems to finally be slowing down.  

And my ministry, the thing that sometimes I feel has been my defining quality for almost three decades, seems to be in a strange place.  Church attendance is down everywhere: the amplifying COVID shutdown pushed people out of church, increasing secularism means that people realize that they have options that make it where they don't 'need' organized religion, and the realization that many 'Christians' are little more than MAGA acolytes means that genuine evangelism is getting harder all the time.  Even here in the heartland of America, where trends finally arrive years or decades after the begin on the coast, I'm seeing this more and more.  In my own ministry I've seen numbers go down, and even those who have come to our little church as the effects of consolidation mean we get members from closing churches have not offset the deaths of older saints and the indifference of too many others.  Far too often I wonder if my preaching and teaching and ministry is making a difference with people.

I still love to preach.  But I wonder if my life of being a Preacher is coming to an end.  I'm starting to think about what my next decade looks like, and more and more I can see that perhaps the other aspects of my life change are just preludes to a different career altogether.  Lots of churches would still need me to come and fill on occasion, as there are less and less people willing to preach almost everywhere now.  But the adminstrative side of being a preaching minister may end sooner than I once thought.  I don't have any desire to move to a new full-time ministerial position, as I don't know if I could start all over again.  What has been my second job for the last few years may well now be the first job or the gateway to some other kind of career entirely.  

So what does all this mean?  Several times this summer I have been taking days to pray and spend out in the wilderness to consider this question.  Today I went down to a place near the river that has a bunch of nice hiking trails, and I spent a few hours in consideration of the Future.  Through the heat and the spiderwebs I made it down to the sandbar and saw that the river was very low, as it has been around here for almost a year.  Even as we have had some summer rains and it is surprisingly green almost everywhere you look, almost a year of drought meant that the river remains low and slow.  

But I took time to watch it, and yet it continued to move.  Slowly, without any sense of urgency the waters continued to flow.  The mosquitos and water bugs would make little indentions in the water, small branches would float by, and patches of riverbeds that are still uncovered continued to sprout green grasses that normally are drowned.  And it hit me in this that perhaps this is my stage of ministry.  I've never been much of a raging river like some preachers, crashing down like a mountain stream or even at times flooding so much that destruction followed in its wake.  I've prided myself on always been a simple, steady kind of mature river that never got much out of the banks but nourished everything.  Maybe now, in my later middle ages, after years of spiritual drought of COVID, exhaustion with aging and family and driving, and just the increasing apathy of American culture when it comes to the Lord, slower and drier is now the norm for my life.  Maybe I shouldn't get so upset that the expectations of a young man to do great things are no longer realistic.  Like the river, I'll be low and slow yet perform a vital function in ways that may not be awe-inspiring yet are vital to the health of everyone.  

I don't know what this means for my life as the Preacher.  But I trust that somehow the Lord will find a way to use me to his glory.  I just wish I knew what that is...