Reginald came into my life when I was in high school. His arms flailed around when he danced, he didn’t watch what he said for fear he’d say the wrong things, and if anyone made fun of his voice, a voice that could only be described as Kermit-esque, it never fazed him. I’m fairly certain […]
Read more "Reginald & Me"No one wants to go back to middle school. Not a single person, with the possible exception of Billy Gilman, wants to revisit that period of our lives. Nothing went right, everything was unfair and we feel trapped inside our moody, horny, sprouty selves. We kick off adolescence excited we’re no longer in elementary school […]
Read more "What’s in a Name?"Each summer, our youth group joined other churches from our Super-Christian North Texas district for a week of camp that took place at a Pentecostally-sanctioned camp ground. It was a week of field-day games, non-coed swimming, sexually-repressed flirting with other sexually-repressed teenagers and no less than two hellfire and brimstone services each day. None of […]
Read more "Summer Camp"My youth group’s fine arts program was a robust organization. I’d been a part from its inception, proudly standing in the second row of the choir loft singing a song called “Sounds of Heaven,” a staple on Christian radio around that time. I felt grown and mature singing with the other teenagers, no longer a […]
Read more "The Tiny Foxes"Karen Walker once said on Will & Grace, “You are never closer to God than when you are on television.” Nowhere is this more evident than now, when cable stations have multiplied faster than rabbits and regular people with small town Christian ideals have become the sought-after subjects and stars of reality TV. They’re interior […]
Read more "To All The World: Christians on TV"In the late 90s, the Bible Belt was an almost mythological place to live if you were of the Evangelical persuasion. The economy was flush, your religious liberties weren’t really in jeopardy and you rested easy within your enclosed, profanity-free, abortionless corner of society. Oh the world may be falling apart everywhere else, but in […]
Read more "Home School, High School & Hebrews"In the year 2000, there wasn’t much in life I loved more than award shows. Not much has changed since then, but the 1999 Video Music Awards marked a pronounced shift in my pop culture trajectory. I hadn’t stopped talking about the show for months and I re-watched it endlessly on my VHS recording. I […]
Read more "The Impact Awards"