EPISODE 702: THEY TOTALLY SOUND LIKE JACOB RIGHT NOW
Is Jost around, by the way?
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Did you happen to catch SNL over the weekend? In case you didn’t, check this out:
The kid who plays Connor is hilarious, right?
Love this hero moment so much.
Crazy but true: that kid is my nephew, Patrick Scott McDermott, who is 12 years old and a professional actor.
He and his mom, my sister-in-law Julie, relocated from Chicago to New York for the last three months while Patrick has been working as the understudy to Young Cary Grant in Lincoln Center’s production of Flying Over Sunset (which is the semi-true story of Cary Grant, Aldous Huxley and Clare Booth Luce doing LSD). And while he was here he got a chance to audition for SNL, and days before they were going to drive back to Chicago he found out he had gotten the part. He spent the night before he left New York shooting it with the Please Don’t Destroy team, who were apparently amazing to him.
Suffice to say we are all massively proud of him and also just blown away. From the time he was very little, like 2 or 3, Patrick has always been performing. For years all he wanted for Christmas was costumes—I once gave him a Jesus costume; it was a big hit. He asked his parents to build him a stage in the basement so he could put on shows for the family. And slowly over the years he started doing some acting locally and then slowly it has just snowballed.
It’s funny, no one ever really talks about the experience of being an aunt or uncle. It’s a lot different than being a parent in some ways, but one thing they have in common is the experience of having the kids challenge any road map you might imagine for them. There’s that idea that you’re always fighting the last war—i.e. that when a country gets into a military situation, its first instinct is to try and overcome the problems it faced in its last conflict, even though the situation it faces now will almost certainly be completely different.
I wonder if relating to children is the same way, in the sense that I go in wanting to make sure they don’t repeat my mistakes or buy into advice that didn’t help me. And then it turns out that advice is often completely irrelevant, or relevant but not at the times you expect. In a sense the job of being the uncle is maybe less about trying to protect them at all and more about letting them surprise and delight you with who they are and what they’re up to. Maybe they even show you possibilities that were outside what you thought was possible.
Certainly my nephew Patrick did that for me today…
Saw this as soon as I went to Twitter to brag about Patrick and realized oh, I don’t even need to say anything, do I, everyone knows him now.
This week I finally finished rewatching Battlestar Galactica. If you’ve never watched the reboot of that series from the early 2000s, I really recommend it. It’s very much not the clunky robot suit nonsense from the original. It’s much more of a response to the post 9/11 world, which might make it seem a little dated. But in fact it proves to be very relevant to our situation today as well, with the deep divides between different groups.
One of the more controversial elements of the show is its religious dimension, which takes some REALLY unexpected turns by the end. And I have to say they land a bit better on a rewatch than they originally did. The end argument of the show really is that there are actually three different goals in play—there’s that of each side, and that of some other mysterious force who has spent the whole series trying to guide the sides to some better resolution.
Honestly, I’m a little shocked at how far the series goes in this vein; truly, it’s pretty evangelical in its beliefs by the end. But I found it really consoling to think in those terms. Its presence in the story pulls you out of the us vs. them of it all; it’s a reminder that there is more to all this, and that we’re not alone.
And there’s an ultimate, existential hopefulness to the show as well, in the sense that it looks upon our existence as just the latest iteration of the same us vs. them problem. We may screw it up, but that’s fine; it’s happened a thousand times before in other places, and it may happen a thousand times again. But eventually someone is going to find their way out. We can definitely #!% up our existence, but the world will go on, and there is other life out there.
Definitely a show worth checking out, whether for the first time or a repeat viewing.
A year ago last week I wrote an article about being gay in the priesthood. I’ve written about all that here before.
I haven’t entirely known what the next step is for me in terms of being of help or just being authentic. One thing I thought I’d try is to be an online voice of support to queer clergy, religious and employees. There are so many queer people that work here, and so few who feel safe to self-identify, or like there’s any public forum in which all of who they are is okay and allowed. And I think even just acknowledging that they exist and are wonderful becomes a way of creating more space for them in our church and world.
If you want, you can help me with this. From time to time, just post something supportive on social media about queer church employees, words of encouragement to lesbian nuns or gay priests or queer Catholic school teachers or whoever. Let them know that you see them and they they’re fine.
Trust me when I say, it will make a real difference in the lives of people who have worked so hard to support the church.
THREE TWEETS ABOUT THINGS I DON’T UNDERSTAND
Long live non-binary candy, and also what the what?
I agree, it is definitely okay, and also what does this sentence mean?
I’ve had this same experience!
Finally, one last SNL sketch, something from earlier this season that I hadn’t seen until now. Stick with it, it gets funnier and funnier.
If you need a pick me up this week, maybe give yourself a minute to just sit quietly and listen to the world around you. The world is full of treasure just waiting for us to notice. <3
See you next week!