Theme Time Runs

This post is the result of extraordinary amounts of pressure from my wife, parents, neighbors, the IRS, God, and several anonymous late night callers. Apparently I'm failing in manifold ways by exercising restraint and witholding my passing thoughts from the world at large. I've twice decided to start a blog in the past, and I've twice thought better of it. In any case here are some reflections on things that I've been doing lately, compelled by the higher duties of holy matrimony.

Many churches follow a liturgical calendar through the year from Advent and Epiphany to Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and everyone's favorite - Ordinary Time. This system worked well as a method for teaching a largely illiterate peasantry the life and Jesus and central Christian doctrines, but it has long since outlived its usefulness. After many minutes of careful experimentation and consultation, I've devised a new calendar oriented around the central eucharistic event in the life of most Americans - watching tv. There are three seasons in my television watching liturgical calendar: Notre Dame football (Sept. - Nov. & Jan. 1), Lost (Late Jan. - Early May), and Summer Time. The first two are fairly self explanatory, and each has its own unique rituals and liturgical vestments. It is important to note that the relationship between the two seasons does not follow the same pattern every year. The inbreaking of God into history orders the life of the tv liturgical year in ways slightly less open to human discernment, and sometimes this leaves the seasons messy and prone to disastrous reversals. Notre Dame (the season) either climaxes in glorious ascenscion and the team militant or utter loss and despair, followed by an offseason of penitential prayer. Usually these are accompanied by even more imprecatory (the nasty kind) prayers against the demonic forces of this world and their poodle prince of darkness Pete Carroll. (With his current hairdo Pete looks like a poodle to me. No offense to those otherwise fine animals or their owners.)

Anyway, Lost takes on a very different meaning depending on the conclusion of Notre Dame. After Notre Dame (the team) got beat senseless by LSU on Jan. 4, 2007 during the Feast of Deflated Expectations and Inflated TV Ratings, the abysmal run of episodes the marked the middle of Lost season 3 could not have come at a worse time. It reached rock bottom on the 10th wednesday in Lost when Hurley found an old van and drove it around. I'd never wanted one of the original plane crash characters to die before...or since.

Currently we're in Summer Time, and like Ordinary Time there isn't much to write home about. Which must have something to do with why I decided to run another marathon. Luckily I conned three other guys into doing it as well, but one of them had to drop out for reasons that I won't share here because they reflect poorly on his manhood. It is the fourth week of our marathon training program, and my originally steely resolve to pr is going the way of all my good intentions. So to spice things up a bit, we are considering doing themes for our long saturday runs. This idea occured to me the other day when I wasn't listening to the radio show "Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan." That's a show where Bob picks a bunch of songs that all have to do with a single topic and talks about em. Here's what I have so far:



We get lots of bugs in the morning, which are almost as bad a leaches. Chris seems to attract more than the rest of us,



and inevitably:



Please let me know if you have any other suggestions or would like to donate a subscription to Sirius/XM radio.