Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Saturday night, we got an evening out. The place where Lucinda used to take gymnastics offers a “Parents’ Night Out” every once in a while. They open up the gym for the kids to play in, and we get a few hours out.

So, being documentary geeks, we went to see “Jesus Camp“. This was very entertaining and kind of disturbing at the same time. While Pastor Becky Fischer seems like a very nice person, her idea that Christians should arm themselves and be prepared to die for their beliefs just because Muslims do it sounds more like a prescription for endless war than anything else.

A lot of the movie was actually really funny, although not necessarily because the people in it were intending to be funny. But the audience seemed to find some parts hilarious. And there were a few Christian families there. I wonder how they felt to have the audience laughing at them.

Today, we had another afternoon out, so we went over to West L.A. and the Nuart Theater to see “American Hardcore“, which told the story of punk rock from about 1980 to 1986. It was also very amusing. There were lots of old punks in the audience. The people who were involved in that scene are mostly about 40 now, and it’s interesting to see how everyone grew up.

It seems in many ways that the kids in “American Hardcore” and “Jesus Camp” were all just trying to deal with adolescent angst in their own ways. I had fantasies of somehow plugging the two groups together. That would be a larf.