Virtual Methodist

I've just finished reading the Hunger Games Trilogy of books, and, if you are interested you can read my views on them over at Goodreads, ( here , here and here ). There is a slight case of the law of diminishing returns with them... but I was so impressed with the first one that the second and third instalments had an extremely hard act to follow. Some reviewers have been a little condescending about the central premise of the first book, which has the children of conquered districts of a post-apocalyptic America (or Panem) taking part in what is effectively televised gladiatorial combat. This is not a novel idea... But it well textured and well told, especially given that it is essentially a piece of teen fiction, with appropriate parallels to contemporary TV "talent/reality" shows as well as to ancient Rome. It may be centred around the violence of the eponymous "Hunger Games" but nowhere does it buy into the myth of redemptive violence that is so all-perv...

Here is a link to yet another video ... but this is substantially longer than the others I have posted recently, and, as it leads to a programme on BBC iplayer, has a limited lifespan (only 3 more days as I write). I was feeling a bit off colour this morning and rather than pollute my brain with what passes for daytime TV I looked up this programme as I had heard some good things about it, and I wasn't disappointed. Too much of the media today portrays young people as feckless and feral, and programming aimed at them is usually aiming at double digit IQs (at best)... This, however, showed 9 young people between the ages of 13-15 tackling Shakespeare monologues in front of a large audience at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon, and a panel of 3 judges: Sam West, Imogen Stubbs and Simon Schama. These were the best of thousands from across the country who had entered the "Off by Heart" competition and represented young people from all sorts of backgrounds. It was particula...

Readers of this blog will know by now that I do a monthly stint on a local independent radio station, offering reflections on the Sunday newspaper headlines and a "Review of the Week" as part of an early morning religious magazine programme, which in its latest incarnation is called "Dawn Reflections". Today the headlines covered three broad areas depending on what papers you looked at. The Irish nationals (eg. the Irish Independent and Irish Times ) had stories critical of the past and present Irish governments' handling of the economic crisis, and reflected a spirit akin to Fraser from Dad’s Army telling us “We’re all doomed!” The erstwhile broadsheets of Britain , meanwhile, filled their front pages with photographs of a beturbaned Saif al-Islam Gaddhafi, who was captured yesterday trying to flee Libya... (Although the Observer also found space to highlight a letter from Church of England Archbishops and Bishops critical of the current indescrim...

As I write this there's lots of hype about who will go on to win X-Factor and subsequently gain the prize of the X-mas No.1 record... By the time this is posted we'll know who will carry Cowell's imprinature in the Christmas charts... But I can't be bothered revising this in the light of whatever the result is... Last year the Cowell-machine was derailled by the campaign to put (Sony-EMI backed) Rage Against the Machine, into top spot, but there doesn't seem to be a coherent alternative being offered this year, although blogger Cranmer was, earlier in the month, pushing a facebook campaign to at least make Sir Cliff's "O Little Town" (one of the few of his offerings that I can actually stomach) chart, and a group of other artists have banded together as "Cage Against the Machine" to record John Cage's (See what they've done there?) "4 minutes 33 seconds" of silence. Given some of the artists involved, this will be the be...

Last weekend there was a whole hoo-haa about the injustice of 50 year old Dublin Tesco employee Mary Byrne getting axed on the X-factor ... Even prestigious Anglican bloggers have been vexed by it... However, I'm not convinced that the X-Factor being unjust is particularly newsworthy... Indeed, whether the decision as to who stays on is decided by a democratic phone-vote, or by a Cowell-dominated cabal, justice is unlikely to play a huge part in it all. But today, my thoughts are not primarily with a 50 year old singing Mary from an unprestigious area of Dublin, but a somewhat younger singing Mary, from an equally unprestigious village in northern Palestine. Carrying on the story from yesterday's annunciation, we turn to Mary of Nazareth's song of praise to God in the light of his promise of pregnancy to Elizabeth, her elderly cousin being fulfilled. This familiar song of praise, read or sung in various forms not only in advent, but throughout the year, should resonate powe...

Occassionally I go into Primary schools to do assemblies and my general principle has always been wind the kids up, walk away and leave the teachers to scrape them off the ceiling... Well, not quite, but almost... I try to make what I have to say as memorable as possible, so I try to do something a wee bit different each time... What is interesting is the response I get for a few weeks afterwards... some of the children who are in the youth and children's organisations associated with our church will greet me with a cheery/accusatory "Hey Mister! Weren't you at my school!?" Others who see me on the street quite often do the classic double-take, or 180 degree head-turn... which could potentially cause an accident... I rarely get the same response from adults... the closest would be when, as at present, I appear on Radio Ulster's "Thought for the Day" (I'm on again tomorrow for those who are interested). This happens about 4 mornings in the yea...

I wonder what Simon Cowell would make of this? Being a little under the weather over the weekend I ended up watching the nonsense that is "The X Factor" and remembered again why I loathe these programmes... What passes for talent in Britain's pop culture these days is so mass-manufactured and over-produced that it has no real depth or authentic poignancy. That is occasionally subverted in the auditions and more frequently in "Britain's Got Talent" but in both, the genuinely talented is more than swamped by those who are simply wanting to ape other artificially produced celebrities and those who are more to be pitied than scolded. The following entry from "Ukraine's Got Talent" would never make it within a million miles of its British equivalent because of form, subject matter and, most importantly, its length ("Sorry dear, it has to be less than 3 minutes...")... It's long even by the standards of most of the things I post...

For obvious reasons (being a Methodist minister) I don't get to watch much TV or listen to a lot of radio on a Sunday, but happened to tune into a number of interesting things today, before and after church... Before charging out to an early meeting I did manage to listen to a bit of William Crawley's Sunday Sequence , which began with an interesting piece based on a survey by Ship of Fools. I would regularly check in with this site myself, but haven't done so much recently, but under the heading of "Chapter and Worse" they've been having a poll of some of those puzzling, perplexing and downright disturbing verses and passages in scripture... Its worth a look, and might perhaps be a good point for jumping off in a series of Bible studies with a more thoughtful group. Then, honouring the 25th Anniversary of Powerpoint, the programme went on to cover similar ground to an earlier blog , and indeed one of those I cited, Alan in Belfast , was a prominent co...

The poor girl had won the X factor, but by the time Alex Burke had stopped crying (which was an incredibly long time according to some) the knives were already sharpened... Not only here in Northern Ireland, where Eoghan Quigg's failure was put down to some kind of huge anti-irish conspiracy... but also among those who loathed the idea of a Cowell-produced version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" being number one at Christmas. Now, to a large extent I am one of those people... her version was overblown, but it could have been worse... It could have been Eoghan singing it! Or worse still, Cohen himself ! But this has produced a huge surge of support for the threatened Christmas single by Peter Kay as the Northern Irish Transexual "Geraldine" which is unashamedly aimed at causing Simon Cowell maximum annoyance. After all this is the season of "Goodwill to all men - except Simon Cowell." It has also sent a huge number of people scurrying to it...