This is the blog companion to Apocalypse on Aisle 4, a seminar which I presented at the 2005 Cornerstone Music Festival.
It's a big festival. But the seminar did not take place on the Main Stage in front of thousands and between sets by bands like Urinal Cake and Tomfoolery.
It took place in the Imaginarium, a medium-sized tent full of people running their mouths about C.S. Lewis, Santo and Blue Demon vs. Doctor Frankenstein, Aurora monster models, G.K. Chesterton, film noir, Flannery O'Connor, kaiju, and the philosophical underpinnings of the "prime directive" as though all of this fits within some undefinable category. Call it "mythopoeic" or "the numinous" or "wonder" with a side order of "glow in the dark."
This is the crowd that listened to me go on and on about commodification and consumer culture and alien invasions and Guy Debord. The seminar is a three parter:
- Apocalypse on Aisle 4
- The Parking Lot of Babel
- Household Gods
Have at it.
P.S. Yes, I made up Urinal Cake and Tomfoolery.
7 comments:
Is the "excuse me, ghidorah" sign somewhere in Tokyo, maybe near the Toho building? Wasn't there a Godzilla statue in the financial district of Tokyo?
I found a nice blog of "Quest for Godzilla":
http://tblogs.bootsnall.com/theglobaltrip/updates/004769.shtml
and some better pics of "Gojira":
http://tblogs.bootsnall.com/djf/archives/013145.shtml
Great writing,
Gary in Portland
The "excuse me, ghidorah" sign is a mixture of (1) a ghidorah toy, (2) a strange airport terminal sign from a stock photo, and (3) the wonders of Photoshop.
Try this site for kaiju sound bites:
http://www.angelfire.com/ga/KingGhidorah/sound.html
Lint
Hey there, Lint - cool blog.
I discovered this afternoon that Barb Nicolosi, whose blog I like to visit, had an interesting Flannery moment while working on a screenplay recently... check it out: www.churchofthemasses.blogspot.com.
Kathie
Great talk! You stated that you went from agnostic to christian to catholic. Do you have a conversion story?
Well, if you want the Catholic conversion story,
go to http://www.theymademeacatholic.com. That's a sort of "conceptual" approach to the process, minus the personal events and sufferings and what have you that also played a part. As for the agnostic to Christian conversion, I don't really have anything on the web. Some of the ideas can be found in an article I did for Wonder magazine called "Monster Fan 200" which is at http://www.cornerstonemag.com/imaginarium/features/fan2000.html.
There was an article called "A Supernatural God"
that goes into the conversion to Christianity -- but
it isn't on the web. Maybe I'll look into that.
I'm glad you like the podcast. If you have any
ideas or critiques, please let me know.
How did you run across the podcast?
Lint
Also, Anonymous, (may I call you Anon?) I'm trying to figure out how your post ended up attached to the very first blog instead of to the most recent blog. Could you clue me in? Maybe I am supposed to fix it so posts can only be added to the most recent somehow...
Lint
Lint,
Anon here, or you can call me Mark. I found your site with a podcast search. I don't remember which one though. Peter Kreeft is one of my favorite authors and I think that is what led me to your site. My key search words are catholic. Remember its the web, one thing lead to another. Finished your 3 part series and thought it was great! In the third talk I liked how you put the stretching Christmas idea to be the liturgical year. I just printed out the theymademeacatholic.com site and will read it tonite. I could not find the other article though. Great job exposing the consummer culture we live in. Mark
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