What price stupidity? 20 bucks.

Part of the greatness of America has always been the ability of people to turn a profit by making other people more stupid than they were before they bought whatever it was that somebody was selling. From P.T. Barnum to Jell-O shots, from Ozzfest to astrology, we often pay for the privilege of going dumb.

The most recent example seems to be down in Petersburg, Ky., where the Creation Museum opened on Monday. It costs adults 20 smackers to see exhibitions that purport to show that the earth is but 6,000 years old, that cavemen lived cheek by jowl with dinosaurs and that evolution is the devil's Sunday school because those pointy-headed atheist scientists don't accept the Book of Genesis as an accurate description of prehistory. The museum is run by "young earth creationists,'' the sort of folks who think the proponents of Intelligent Design are loosey-goosey liberals.

This is America. People have the right to believe anything they want, even nonsense. But I hope there isn't much of a market for this kind of malarkey. Maybe the place will go belly-up before too long. But I'm not holding my breath. The website for the new Creation Museum can be found at http://www.creationmuseum.org/

The real problem with Mexico

Talk all you want about the 12-20 million illegal aliens pouring across our border. The real trouble comes from the Mexicans who are staying put on their own side of the Rio Grande.
Reuters reports that Mexican farmers are setting fire to their crops of blue agave and planting corn for ethanol use instead.
Where's the National Guard when you really need them? This is just the kind of thing that calls for direct military intervention.
Look, I understand the need to wean ourselves off our dependence on foreign oil. Nobody wants to pay $4 a gallon for regular unleaded.
But man, no blue agave means no tequila and there are some things in this world that you shouldn't have to give up, no matter what.
I mean, sometimes a Tequila Sunrise or three is just what the doctor ordered for a wild romantic night.
If Mexican farmers want to burn down the Mexican Jumping Bean factories to make room for some corn, I've got no problem. But for the love of all that's holy, save the blue agave!
The agave tragedy story can be found at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18926019/

Vanity in the pulpit

I preached Sunday at a church in Woodbridge. I used to do that for a living. And it's nice to get back in the saddle once in a while to see if I still have the chops for sermonizing.

What was interesting to me this time was that several members of the congregation came up to me to tell me about a big-time preacher who had visited their church the week before. Getting this guy is a bit of a coup, and one imagines he is handsomely recompensed for his appearance.
They were glad to have him, the church members told me, even though he chastised the congregation for what he deemed a too small turnout for his pontifications. He told them they were lazy, essentially, or incompetent for not getting the word out that the Big Man was coming. Because if they had, he proclaimed, the sanctuary would have been SRO. The people who talked to me assumed he was correct, even though they had publicized his appearance out the ecclesiastical wazoo.

"Look,'' I said to them. "There's another way to look at this. Don't you see the monumental egotism at work here? As if the mere mention of his name would bring people running. Maybe he's not as popular as he seems to think, and talk about biting the hand that feeds you. If the guy was disappointed in the turnout, he should have sucked it up and ministered to those who did have the grace to show up. You shouldn't feel bad at all -- the size of his ego probably limited seating.''

I know all about vanity and ego. I have a pretty big one myself, they tell me.
But I am still amazed, after all these years, that people will come out to hear me speak.
And it really doesn't matter how many are there. As long as the check clears.

World enough and time

Turns out that time may not exist, although try explaining that to those editors so enthralled with the illusion of time that they tend to get loud and red in the face when you miss what they so charmingly refer to as "deadlines.''
And when I say that "time may not exist,'' I'm not talking about some epiphany during a bong-fueled late-night bull session at the frat house.
There are actual scientists, real smart folks, with big-time degrees, who are saying it.
Of course, these are the same people who say that space may not exist either, which at least explains why my apartment is so crowded.
Time becomes "timeless'' down at the the level of quantum mechanics, where Einsteinian physics throws a hissy fit, holding its breath and turning blue.
This, according to the June 2007 issue of Discover Magazine (p.78)
Admittedly, there are days here at the office that seem timeless, at least in the sense that time seems to stop dead in its tracks and last forever.
My wife may have a Ph.D. in physics that she's never told me about. Everytime we prepare to go out with friends, she takes just shy of forever to get ready, and after we're at last on the way, she says, "We're not late until we get there.''
It sure looks like time is real to me, and every gray hair is evidence.
But there are puzzles. In the words of that old country tune, "I'm too young to feel this damn old.''

Whoopi Redux

What follows is my reaction to Whoopi Goldberg's commencement address to my son's graduating class, the Montclair State University class of 2007, as recounted in my weekly "Only Human'' column:

Be the person you want to be" pretty much sums up Whoopi Goldberg's advice to my son Joshua. Ms. Goldberg was the commencement speaker at the Montclair State University graduation ceremony May 18 where Josh got his B.A.

Now, one does not expect a great deal of depth from college commencement speakers, no Kierkegaardian exploration of the existential issues of the human soul. Nevertheless, "Be the person you want to be" seems to me a tad on the shallow side as far as life advice goes.
What if the person you want to be is a selfish, greedy, SOB? Or worse? One imagines that Stalin and Pol Pot slept very well at night.
Now Whoopi did say that being the person you want to be may mean that you stand alone in this world, and it also means asking for help sometimes. Of course, if the person you want to be is someone who stands alone, who are you going to ask for help?

By a strange coincidence, that very night I met somebody who has become precisely the person he wants to be. I had been invited to a get-together of people I graduated from high school with and met somebody I hadn't talked to in maybe 30 years. In high school, this person and I didn't travel in the same circles. He was one of the jocks and I was one of those guys who tried to avoid getting towel-slapped in the gym showers.

I didn't recognize the guy, but a friend introduced us. This friend is of the "let 'em mix it up" school of social intercourse. She introduced us by saying that I was a minister and that the jock was an atheist. I hadn't had enough beer to rise to the bait, although I did say something about agnosticism being more intellectually honest than atheism.

Not a minute later, somebody made a comment about two women making love, and I stole a line from an old Seinfeld episode: "Not that there's anything wrong with that!" This old jock stopped laughing, looked me in the eye and said: "Do you have boys?" There was an edge in his voice, an accusation.
"I have four sons," I said.
"And if one of them were gay, would that be OK with you?" he wanted to know.
"It would be fine," I said.
Just then, the guy's wife sidled up to him.
"Now let's just talk about nice things, OK?" she said, and I walked away.

Now, honest to God, I don't know how things like this happen, how I became a magnet for weird conversations and strange people. On so many levels, his question made no sense to me: If one of my sons was gay, would I stop loving him? Would I disown him? Bundle him and send him off to a quack for some bogus "cure"?

Even at its best, "being who you want to be" turns out not to be the best advice. Too often, being who you want to be means settling for who you turn out to be, comfortable with your prejudices, fatalistic about the world. Some of us believe that who we want to be is inextricably tied up with who we are called to be by God, or, if we can't quite get that far, then who we are called to be by those who love us in flesh and blood. And who we are called to be may be, in the short run, a lot harder and more painful than who we want to be.

For we are called to be better than we imagine, more loving and more courageous, more forgiving and just than we ever thought we had it in us to be. But the kind of peace and joy at the end of that process is a far sight more deeper and more powerful than settling in for the siege that life often turns into.

Whoopi did say one profound thing. "Life," she said, "is a party." Indeed it is. But it seems to me that it is a party where the invitation is "Come As You Are" and you show up that way, but at the end of the night, you leave with a new heart and a great deal of soul.

Drugs saved my marriage...

Wednesday, May 23, was my 26th wedding anniversary. It completely slipped my mind, what with work and the 50,000-mile checkup of my internal defibrillator yesterday. Forgetting anniversaries is generally frowned upon, I know. But I escaped unscathed, praise Jesus. Turns out that my wife, Sue, forgot as well.

She might well have the better excuse: she sprained her back big time on Saturday and has been belly up for days, and on muscle relaxants and pain killers of the sort that would have knocked Elvis on his kiester right in the middle of a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.

That's the great thing about having been together for as long as we have: there's a little mercy that gets thrown in with all the passion, a sense that love can't be measured with a calendar, and that there will be time to celebrate soon. Even so, I can't depend on heavy-duty analgesics forever. You can bet that I will remember next year!

With a song in my heart...

There is, quite literally this afternoon, a song in my heart. This morning I had a visit with my electrocardiologist to get a checkup for the device they stuck in my chest five years ago when my ticker stopped and I dropped dead. I have a combination defibrillator/pacemaker inside me -- the same make and model, I understand, that VP Dick Cheney has. (And I think "Wow! If this gizmo works on a guy without a heart, it's going to work like gangbusters on me!'')

But I don't like to visit the electrocardiologist's office. The technicians there can push a button on a console and make my heart beat really fast. This is not only uncomfortable and disconcerting, but it raises existential questions about which comes first -- the physiological reaction or the emotion that accompanies it. I don't go to a doctor to get a dose of angst.

This morning, though, after the technician played patty-cake with my heart, she pushed another button, and a few musical notes could be heard coming out of my chest.
"Sometime in the next 12 months, at 7:30 in the morning, you'll hear that inside you," she said. "It's not your smoke alarm. It's your device telling you to get your batteries changed.''
So I guess there's something to be said for music and the savage breast, after all.

Another "heckuva job'' job

Here's what the president said recently about beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: "He has done nothing wrong.'' What's amazing about that sentence is you can lop off the last word and still have the sentence be absolutely true. The attorney general can fire U.S. attorneys willy-nilly for any and no reason. That's the deal that many of us "at will'' employees face. But Gonzales, judging from his appearances on Capitol Hill, didn't have the foggiest notion who he was firing or why. That's what minions are for apparently. Unless you happen to be Paul Wolfowitz, and then you sleep with minions and get them a raise.

George Bush's loyalty is an admirable quality, right up until the point those you are loyal to screw up big time. Remember the head of FEMA, who when it came to Katrina didn't know a levee from a crawfish? When Gonzales wasn't doing anything, it turns out he was going to the intensive care unit, not to visit a sick friend, but to get John Ashcroft to sign off on warrantless eavesdropping. This puts Gonzales in the running with other Republican hospital visits of note, particularly Newt Gingrich, who asked his wife for a divorce when she was in the hospital being treated for cancer. Gonzales may be a nice guy, a swell friend, who technically did nothing wrong, but he did it in a spectacularly boneheaded fashion and needs to go.

Making Whoopee

I won't be in the office on Friday. I'm attending my son's graduation from Montclair State college. My joy would be wholly unadulterated were it not for the fact that the commencement speaker is Whoopi Goldberg.
She's not exactly the person I want giving my child advice as he sets sail for the real world.
This should be quite the affair.

Jerry Falwell in Heaven

Of course Jerry Falwell is in heaven. I believe that, nothwithstanding the wags I overheard yesterday taking odds that he was off to hell, wags, who, in one profane statement manged to combine two sins -- gossip and gambling -- into one sentence.
I never liked Falwell, but if heaven was filled with only the people I liked, it would just be me, the wife and Jennifer Aniston rambling through Paradise every day. As a preacher, he never reached the oratorical heights of, say, the over-the-top Jimmy Swaggert, even when he wasn't confessing to trysts with a harlot, or the waterworks of that bizarro world Anna Nicole, otherwise known as Tammy Faye Bakker.
He seemed a little dour in the pulpit, Jerry did -- an occupational hazard for Pharisees, it seems to me. It's mean, exhausting work keeping track of how many of the masses are failing to tow the line. He seemed to reduce the Bible to an archaic rule book for a game that requires a little improvisational grace to play with any gusto.
On the other hand, when it came to things like ministries supporting pregnant women who wanted to keep their babies or give them up for adoption, as opposed to aborting them, the man put his money where his mouth was -- even if, many times, the money had to fit in his mouth when he already had a foot in it.
He was wrong on so many issues, and his very own theology made the phrase "Moral Majority'' an oxymoron. God is not now nor has ever been a member of the Republican Party (and God is too organized to be a member of the Democratic Party.)
But he loved Jesus, and I'm sure Jesus and he will have a little talk about some stuff in the hereafter. I imagine the conversation will be full of moments where Falwell slaps his forehead and says, "Oh! Now I get it!''

On not minding your own business

I'm sure the recent story about 91-year-old WWII vet Leonard Sims being savagely beaten while up to five people just looked on will be taken as more evidence that the world is headed to hell in a handbasket.
As if this is something new. Decades ago, Kitty Genovese was murdered in New York City and none of the dozens of people who witnessed at least part of the attack never thought of calling the cops. Or, if they thought of calling , ultimately decided against it. They didn't want to get involved.
But let's face it. The issue came up way back when, right about the time God asked Cain where Abel was and the world's first murderer responded with the rhetorical question, "Am I my brother's keeper?''
The question is so stupid, the answer so self-evident, that God doesn't even bother to respond directly to it, but rather confronts Cain with the enormity of his crime.
We are our brother's keeper, even when that brother is a stranger -- maybe especially then.
And we're not all heroes, we're all not even particularly brave -- but for God's sake, a phone call to 911 would not be out of line when your brother or sister is getting waylaid.
Pretending that something is not your business in a case like this is to take the mark of Cain upon yourself as you wonder through a world made more dangerous by your inactivity.

Little Drummer Boy

On Tuesday night, my 10-year-old son, Sam, will make his public debut as a drummer in his elementary school band during the annual Sprng Concert.
Of course, being the father of four sons, I am a veteran of these long, slogging campaigns known variously as winter or spring concerts.
I'm looking forward to watching my boy bang the skins. Other kids, not so much. Listen, when it comes to these things, your kids out there are either prodigies or perfectly dreadful. And the odds definitely favor the latter.
I think the jury is still out on Sam, although the band director has enough faith in him to give him what Sam calls "a triangle solo.''
Now all my boys are familiar with an old "Saturday Night Live" skit wherein Christopher Walken was the producer of the song, "Don't Fear the Reaper'' and insisted on "more cowbell'' being laid down in the studio.
"Sam,'' I said this morning as he headed off to school, "tomorrow night in the quiet before your solo, maybe you should say, I've got a fever and the only prescription is more triangle.''
''You really think I should do that?'' he asked me.
Before I could answer, Sue came swooping down upon us like a raging figure out of mythology and let us know that she would be wroth if such were to come to pass.
Let's just say that tomorrow night's concert should pass without incident.

In the wink of an eye

You know, you work with people, sometimes for years, consider them boon colleagues, people you would break bread with in the company lunch room and never suspect that they are capable of turning on you like a spitting viper.
I was having lunch with a coworker yesterday when I mentioned (and I don't remember quite how the subject came up) I mentioned that I am not able to wink. That is to say, I cannot will one eye closed while leaving the other open. (And no, it doesn't help to tell me to "just try.'') I can blink just fine. Blinking is no problem -- I can blink to beat the band -- it's just the winking thing.
And, through the years, I've lived quietly with the shame, and only tell people I trust.
Well, you would have thought I was a hunchback in the presence of uncilivlized boors.
I believe the word "freak'' was bandied about.
My own opinion is that the part of the brain normally devoted to winking has been filled with compassion for those who can't perform a simple task.
Are there other nonwinkers out there? Maybe we could form a support group.

Getting away with something less than murder

We've all gotten away with stuff that we shouldn't have. The cop that lets you off with a warning instead of a ticket. The extension granted on a term paper. The friend that stays your friend after a misunderstanding.
This is grace, and life would be a lot harsher if it wasn't around.
That said, grace is a gift, not an entitlement, and if you get your just desserts, you can't say you were entitled to cherries jubilee.
Now that the long arm of the law has finally groped Paris Hilton and plans to have her spend 45 days in the slammer for driving with a suspended license, she can cry and moan all she wants, but she can't cry "foul'' because justice is finally done. In fact, the more stamps one's little foot and says "No fair!'' the more likely that, in the future, you will be expected to hew to every jot and tittle of life's expectations.

"The Break Up'' fight

When Sue and I go on date night, we make it a point not to go to the movies. Both of us figure that sitting in the dark for two hours and watching a movie is no way to foster togetherness, closeness and intimacy. We do other stuff on date night.
Movies have their place, on HBO and the like. Watching movies on TV also has the added advantage of discussing the action while it's happening. Sue and I were watching the Vince Vaughn-Jennifer Aniston movie "The Break Up" last night. A big fight between them started out small and got ratcheted up pretty quickly.
I turned to Sue and said, "Now are we supposed to conclude that the guy is the doofus here, the bad guy, or do the filmmakers want us to see that both parties are at fault?''
"The guy is in the wrong,'' Sue said.
"Now, hold on,'' I said. "The woman here is all over the map. One small problem (his unwillingness to help with the dishes immediately) and she's off to the races, with a litany of every bad thing this guy did or might have done, or didn't do but thought about it. I think it's a little more complicated than that guy is 100 percent wrong here.''
Sue said that's just what a guy would say.
The conversation went downhill from there.
Two things:
a) If you've seen the movie, who's right about the fight? And don't worry about being dragged into the middle of a marital spat: you're bloggers, for Pete's sake!
b) Shouldn't there be a special rating for movies that are almost certain to cause this kind of discord?

God save the Queen

I hope the Queen of England is having a swell time here in the former colonies. On the other hand, hasn't she been here long enough for us to say, "Don't let the door hit your bustle on the way out, Your Highness.'' Honestly, didn't we open a can of whoop ass on the British a couple of centuries ago precisely because we didn't want the high-falutin' hoity-toidy crowned heads of Europe coming over here and eating all our finger sandwiches?
I have never understood Americans' fascination with the British royal family. We don't like airs, polo, crowns and thrones.
Paris Hilton purportedly once said that she's the closest thing we have to royalty in this country.
If by "royalty'', she means a "vapid, empty-headed symbol of an empire in decline''....BINGO!

Spending time in the principal's office

Yesterday morning, I was summoned to the principal's office on behalf of my son, Alex, who, if he manages to graduate this June, will be evidence that God cares for fools. Alex has the grades; what he doesn't have, in the words of the principal, is "seat time.'' Apparently, since the kid turned 18 and learned that he could legally sign himself out of school, he's used the pen like a new toy, racking up enough absences to jeopardize his credit for some courses.
So, a committee gathered to figure out what to do with the kid.
"You know, the problem with these smart kids,'' said the principal, nodding toward Alex, "is that you have to make things black and white. You give them any gray areas and they take advantage.''
Well, that's just swell, I thought. In one fell swoop, this educator has just undermined nearly two decades of parenting.
I've taught all my sons that the world is full of ambiguity, and rarely black and white.
Maybe I should have mentioned that sometimes it is black and white.
There's a plan in place to get Alex seat time. We're all crossing our fingers and holding our breath - which means we could all turn blue and add one more hue to our pallette.

McGreevey to attend seminary

Father McGreevey?
Oh, c'mon. This is too easy.
Make your own damned joke.

Jon Bon Jovi must be stopped!

It occurred to me last night during "American Idol'' that Jon Bon Jovi may well be responsible for the end of life on this planet.
All his songs beamed by television and radio signals for all these years are headed out of the solar system at the speed of light. Sooner or later, those signals are going to be picked up by an alien civilization.
"Listen to these earthlings,'' they will say to one another, "they have brains and a language capable of producing ideas and awe. But they apparently worship this Bon Jovi guy, a singer who can't string two lines of a ditty together without including a dozen cliches. Looks to us like this is a planet ripe for the plucking...''
And the next thing you know it's death beams, ray guns and forced exile for the survivors to some interplanetary zoo.
""Now, wait a minute, Riley,'' I hear some of you saying, "we got Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Bono adding to the music of the spheres. Maybe the aliens will decide that any species that can come up with 'Like A Rolling Stone' is worth saving.''
Maybe. But that requires the kind of luck that homo sapiens is not known for, and it seems pretty risky. Surely somebody can convince Bon Jovi to go into the insurance game, or bookkeeping or something like that.

South Jersey secedes from Riley Nation

I've been a journalist for over a decade now, but, to tell the truth, I'm still a little hazy on how the words I write actually make it onto paper and then into people's homes. All I know is that I sit here at a computer in what used to be called the newsroom of the Asbury Park Press (the term "newsroom'' has recently given way to some new phrase which calls to mind nothing so much as the bridge of the Starship Enterprise) in Neptune, N.J. and then voila! my words are reduced to fishwrap.
I do know that occasionally my column "Only Human'' has appeared in such flung places as Hawaii, and yes even in the wilderness of South Jersey. For a while, my column appeared in the Courier-Post, down Camden County way.
This was a bit of a thrill since the Courier-Post was my hometown paper when I was growing up in the park.
Just as suddenly as it appeared, the column disappeared from the pages of the Courier-Post. I know this because people began calling and e-mailing me about it. They wanted to know if there was anything I could do about it.
Now, I'm as big an egotist as the next guy but "no'' is the short answer. These are not my decisions to make. Any inquiry would sound self-serving on my part. I did get a message on my phone yesterday from a Courier-Post reader who informed me that my column had been replaced by one written by financial guru Suzie Orman, not someone with whom I would seem to be in direct competition for print space. I often think of myself in the same way that Jerry Garcia once described the Grateful Dead: "We're not the best at what we do; we're the only ones who do what we do.''
The lady told me that she told the folks at the Courier-Post that she preferred God over Mammon, but the powers that be informed her that the demise of my column had caused barely a stir.
I'm an acquired taste and consider myself lucky to have anybody interested in what I have to say.