DocWatch Jan 21 thru Jan 26

Docs to explore this week:

Today, Monday 1/21
noon Sundance Murder on a Sunday Morning A 15 year old boy is arrested and charged with murder. The evidence? He's black and the victim was white and he was walking in the area. when did this happen? Was it one of the injustices Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was protesting in 1965? nope. 2000.
3:30 pm Sundance Blue Vinyl. Last Chance to see it in the near future.
4 pm HBO Hard as Nails Justin Fatica is not for everyone. When he steps up to the altar, the unordained minister becomes a frenetic whirlwind of energy, using a mix of professional wrestling, hip hop and Scripture to bring Jesus to thousands of young worshippers. Despite his success, Fatica's intense, over-the-top approach faces some serious resistance--even from his own beloved Catholic Church. This documentary follows the self-ordained preacher who started his controversial "Hard as Nails" ministry as a way to reach troubled kids.
5:15 Sundance Shakespeare Behind Bars Each year, inmates at the Luther Luckett Correctional Facility in Kentucky take on a difficult and challenging task: the production and performance of a Shakespeare play. This powerful documentary by Hank Rogerson follows rehearsals for "The Tempest" — a story heavy on the theme of redemption — as the cast, some serving life sentences for murder, develops their chosen roles, giving the audience an unexpected view of some complex, intelligent, thoughtful men in the process. "Ingenious"— Village Voice.

Don't miss this one.
8 pm Logo Brother Outsider. The Life of Bayard Rustin Watch preview Riveting Portrait of Forgotten Civil Rights Pioneer and Strategist About the Film Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Brother Outsider has won 20+ awards

Long before Martin Luther King, Jr. became a national figure, Bayard Rustin routinely put his body--and his life--on the line as a crusader for racial justice. Rustin's commitment to pacifism and his visionary advocacy of Gandhian nonviolence made him a pioneer in the 1940s, and captured King's imagination in the 1950s. In 1963, with more than 20 years of organizing experience behind him, Rustin brought his unique skills to the crowning glory of his civil rights career: his work organizing the historic march on Washington, the biggest protest America had ever witnessed.

But many viewed Rustin as a political liability. He was openly gay during the fiercely homophobic era of the 1940s and 1950s; as a result, the very civil rights movement he helped create frequently shunned him. The compelling new film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin chronicles Rustin's complex life story, a tale of race, prejudice, and idealism at the heart of 20th-century America. Though he had to overcome the stereotypes associated with being an illegitimate son, an African American, a gay man and a one-time member of the Communist Party, Rustin--the ultimate outsider--eventually became a public figure and respected political insider. He not only shaped civil rights movement strategy as a longtime advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., but earned the respect of numerous U.S. Presidents and foreign leaders.

Tuesday 1/22
8:00 am and 1:35 pm Show Showcase FLOCK OF DODOS: THE EVOLUTION-INTELLIGENT DESIGN CIRCUS Evolutionary biologist Dr. Randy Olson is the star of this tongue-in-cheek documentary that examines both sides of the evolution versus "intelligent design" debate, a controversial subject that has pitted faith against reason and school boards against scientists in an increasingly emphatic war of words and ideas. Which side will survive, and which will go the way of the now-extinct dodo bird?
8:30 am Logo Brother Outsider. The Life of Bayard Rustin Watch preview

Wednesday 1/23
5 am Disc Times John of God For 40 years, the Brazilian spiritual medium John of God has reportedly healed millions of people. Follow the journeys of skeptics, medical professionals and the chronically ill as they seek out the healing hand of this mysterious man. TV-MA

3 p Sundance Helen's War: Portrait of a Dissident . Helen Caldicott.
10 pm Dis Health Switching Sexes: The Aftermath For people who find that their mind's identity and physical sex are mismatched, sexual reassignment surgery is a viable solution. Follow two transsexual men as they struggle through the heartache and sacrifice of becoming female.

Check Local Listings PBS "American Made" is a compelling look at family, faith and racism as a Sikh family is stranded on a desert road and family members try to flag down passing cars.
Check Local Listings PBS "A Son's Sacrifice" What motivates a young educated New Yorker to take over his family's halal slaughterhouse? Visit Imran Uddin at his unusual workplace at this preview.

Thursday 1/24
1 am Dis Health Switching Sexes: The Aftermath For people who find that their mind's identity and physical sex are mismatched, sexual reassignment surgery is a viable solution. Follow two transsexual men as they struggle through the heartache and sacrifice of becoming female. (also 5 pm the 26th)
9:05 am TMC extra Genesis - a really cool look at the life cycle, follow-up films to Microcosmos and Winged Migration. Link to the trailer. You might recognize the narrator as Sotigui Kouyate, who played the lead (and won lots of awards,) in the film Little Senegal. also on at 6:05 pm

Friday 1/25
12:30 pm HBO Hard as Nails Justin Fatica is not for everyone. When he steps up to the altar, the unordained minister becomes a frenetic whirlwind of energy, using a mix of professional wrestling, hip hop and Scripture to bring Jesus to thousands of young worshippers. Despite his success, Fatica's intense, over-the-top approach faces some serious resistance--even from his own beloved Catholic Church. This documentary follows the self-ordained preacher who started his controversial "Hard as Nails" ministry as a way to reach troubled kids.

Saturday 1/26
10 am Sundance Murder on a Sunday Morning A 15 year old boy is arrested and charged with murder. The evidence? He's black and the victim was white and he was walking in the area. when did this happen? Was it one of the injustices Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was protesting in 1965? nope. 2000.
8 pm LOGO Out On The Job.

WATCH ON DEMAND
Friends of God HBO
Ghosts of Abu Graib HBO

WATCH ONLINE
NewsWar A Frontline 4 part investigation into the future of news.
Religion and Ethics Newsweekly
P.O.V Online Short Film Festival Scaredycat
No Dumb Questions Three children learn about, and talk with their uncle as she becomes their aunt.
Southern Comfort Robert Eads, a transman, is dying from ovarian cancer. A fascinating, touching, and beautiful portrait of his life in Taccoa GA.
Out On The Job. 3 people come out on the job. How's that work for them?

I seem to be morally average, and I'm not sure how I feel about that

A nod to Steve Caldwell for pointing out Two online quizzes on God at The Philosopher's Magazine on the Net. I started looking around the site. Great opportunities for COA and YRUU application. I took the Morality Play quiz, a more philosophical version of the values clarification exercises we did in the 70's. Turns out I'm average in terms of my moral parsimony. Parsimony. Great word. Means something along the lines of frugality and tightness in regards to clarity and internal consistency. See also Occam's Razor.

Actually, it said I'm average in terms of my moral parsimony for people my age. I may have to go back and answer it the same way, then say that I'm 20 and see how I compare.

It was forced choice exercise however, and I was often forced into the most true answer. I kept wanting a third option "find another way." (In another quiz, Taboo, I kept wanting another option as well "not morally wrong, but gross." Please note, there is no direct link to Taboo from this blog because it is most definitely not for church use with minors.)

This is the link directly to the games page.

Changed the number of posts on the first page

After some ponder as to why a colleague gets stuck on this blog... it's not a bug, and it's not a secret plot to force people to indulge in the beauty and brilliance of my opinions, so I changed the number of posts on the page. This way, if the problem is the sheer amount of stuff on the front page, particularly where I've put so many YouTube posts up lately, the problem should, could, might, stop.

So, if anyone gets stuck on this site now, please let me know by commenting.

DocWatch Jan 14 - 20

Docs to explore this week:

Today, Monday 1/14
4 pm Sundance Keep Not Silent Three pious orthodox Israeli lesbians live in vastly different circumstances.

Tues 1/15
8:30 am Logo Zero Degrees of Separation Selim and Ezra, a gay Palestinian-Israeli couple, are fighting for the right to live together in Jerusalem
8:40 am STZ Iraq For Sale

Wed 1/16
4:15 am HBO fam Middle School Confessions Drinking, sex, violence, depression, school failure, and harassment. These are just some of the daily realities of life for many of today's adolescents.
5:15 am HBO sig. A Boy's Life Cindy Sez: this movie is like a Family Systems R Us. What's wrong with Robert? According to the grandmother with whom he's lived for the past five years, he's an emotionally disturbed seven year old with a serious personality disorder. To the boy's mother, therapist and school administrators, however, the real problem isn't Robert...
10 am Sund Little Peace of Mine After witnessing a terrorist attack on a busload of children, Nadav, a precocious 12-year-old Israeli boy, founds Peace for the Future, an opposition party promoting a constructive dialogue between Arab and Jewish kids.
11:20 am Shocase Flock of Dodos

Thurs 1/17
10 am Sund Guerrilla Girl an idealistic 21-year-old middle-class Colombian woman from the city who joins the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, South America's largest guerrilla movement.
12:45pm TMC Genesis
12:45pm HBO Sand and Sorrow
8 pm Disc Galapagos: Beyond Darwin (with middle school lesson plan)
local - PBS Frontline Cheney's Law (you can also watch the full program online) For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power.

Fri 1/18
8:30 am Sund White Light/Black Rain
10:30 Sund Strange Culture What does it take to fall under suspicion as a terrorist in contemporary America?
8 pm Hist Cults: Dangerous Devotion
(Although I still have not seen this, it purports to be about dangerous/destructive groups, not new religious movements) -- includes Charles Manson -J im Jones and Jonestown, Warren Jeffs and the Yearning for Zion Ranch --Shoko Asahara and Aum Shinrikyo --David Koresh and the Branch Davidians
11:30 Sund Short Hymn, Silent War (20 minutes) the lives of four Afro-Canadian women are altered following an accidental shooting.

Sat 1/19
3 pm LOGO The Believers (The Transcendence Gospel Choir)

Sun 1/20
9:45 Starz Who Killed the Electric Car
3 pm Hist Jonestown Paradise Lost technically docudrama but quite accurate. useful for teaching about how politically progressive, charismatic leaders with good social values can still end up being dangerous.

I'm Tagging myself -- Hallelujah

There's an incredible version of Leonard Cohen himself singing it posted over at Monkey Mind yesterday. (thanks)

It is, in fact, the greatest song of all time. I'm just saying.

The best two uses of it have been in 3rd Watch's 9/11 episode (cried like a baby) and in When Night is Falling. Again, just saying.


One fun thing about this song is that there are actually 15 verses and you never know which ones artists will choose to include in their versions. Usually the same ones, but not necessarily.

This one is K.D. Lang live.




I'm not going to tag you, you tag yourself.

Today's Man an Extraordinary film for use in Teacher Training

This film is a portrait of a young man who was diagnosed at age 21 with Asperger's Syndrome, and shows him with incredible strengths and, to him, mystifying challenges.
I have not seen a film thus far that so generously and with gracious love shows the audience both, and also shows how the people around him interact with him in ways that help him be successful.

Run to the website and see when it shows (by now, when it repeats) near you.

Other websites worth checking out about Asperger's:

At Yale Med.
At Mayo Clinic.
Online Asperger Syndrome Information and Support

By People with Asperger's Syndrome, their friends and family

Cognitive Karaoke

It feels like a watered-down version of coming out as gay at age 17 (1991) -- while at the time the prospect of coming out might have perversely suggested sordid, unwelcome and unfathomable images into the minds of friends and family, now the only response to the question "Well, what do you *do* as an Asperger person?" is "I try not to get hit / fired / dumped." Not exactly fuel for conversation one way or another.

Wrong Planet
Delightful Reflections
Proudly Autistic (products including the t-shirt "I'm autistic, what's your excuse?")
Smart Software
Natural Variation - an anti-quackery and Pro Neurodiversity Blog
the office supplies blog. (new)

and a great instruction page on how to support/teach kids who fall on the Asperger's end of the autistic spectrum. She identifies challenges kids face, and suggests appropriate and helpful things a teacher can do. ( "Understanding the Student with Asperger Syndrome: Guidelines for Teachers" by Karen Williams, 1995,)

DocWatch --Documentaries to supplement Religous Education Programs

For teacher trainings - academic background for teachers - clips for supplementing curricula with children/youth - documentaries for Adult Education - our own knowledge -- there are lot of uses for documentaries in our work, but who has the time to look through all the listings for what is on when? Well, I'm just mad for documentaries and I scour the cable tv listings anyway, so I may as well take a few more minutes to post them here for other religious educators to reference.

I am going to post here a listing of documentaries that will be on television during the next week. My intention is to post every weekend-ish what's coming up the following week.

I will focus on overtly religious, social, and political documentaries, but sometimes science docs will leap out at me. Producing a listing of good and useful documentaries is, of course, completely subjective, but my subjectivity is grounded in an expectation of historical accuracy, in the context of Unitarian Universalist Religious Education, and progressive/radical social/politics. So, dear reader, if you aren't progressive or radical, or aren't a Unitarian Universalist, or have no interest in the light that archeology sheds on Biblical myths and stories, what are you doing on this blog?

I assume that DRE's will be able to assess for themselves how to use these docs in an age-appropriate manner and with which particular UU curricula, but I will occasionally annotate if I'm already familiar with the material. Sometimes I'll include links to further info on the docs, but if I don't google will get you there quickly.

I am of course, not suggesting that you videotape them off the television, although a case can be made for copying for educational purposes, I am simply suggesting that you preview them for future purchase.


All times are EST
Monday Jan 7

9:30 Black Starz UNSTOPPABLE: a Conversation with Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks and Ossie Davis - brief article/clip
10 Sund Heaven Came Down Appalachian Rattlesnake Handlers - I know you all know not to show this as an example of typical pentecostal belief and ritual
11:15 Starz E Iraq for Sale The War Profiteers.
12noon Logo Farm Family: In search of Gay Life in Rural America
9 pm Sund The Short Life of Jose Antonio Guiterrez José Antonio Gutiérrez was born in Guatemala and lost both his parents during his country's long, bloody civil war — a war that was covertly funded by the United States government. But it was as the first American military casualty of the Iraq War in 2003 that Gutiérrez is remembered. Documentary filmmaker Heidi Specogna traces Gutiérrez's short, eventful life and reveals a troubling story of illegal immigration, foster homes, and how the American military entices Latinos to enlist by promising them a fast track to citizenship.
10:30 pm Sund I Want To Be a Pilot
12:45 Sund 5 Days The 5 day removal of Israeli settlers from sections of the Gaza Strip. a clip is avail at the website

Tuesday Jan 8
3 am Sund The Short Life of Jose Antonio Guiterrez
7:10 TMC Genesis - a really cool look at the life cycle, follow-up films to Microcosmos and Winged Migration. Link to the trailer. You might recognize the narrator as Sotigui Kouyate, who played the lead (and won lots of awards,) in the film Little Senegal.
9 p Sundance Blue Vinyl A darkly funny doc about the uses and hazards of vinyl (polyvinyl chloride can kill ya)


Wednesday Jan 9
2:45 am Sund Blue Vinyl
6-6:30 HBO Fam Educating Peter

Thurs Jan 10
5:15 am TMAX Protocols of Zion antisemitism in aftermath of 9/11) also available on demand online here.
11:05 SHO Flock of Dodos (Evolution vs. "Intelligent Design") Really funny and good.
PBS Check local listings Today's Man: Adventures of a young man with Asperger's

Friday 1/11

5 am DiscTimes - Mysteries of Asia - Lost Temples of India
6 DiscT - Surviving Sudan
12:10 SHO - After Innocence men released from prison by DNA evidence
4 Hist Cults: Dangerous Devotion (Although I have not yet seen this, it purports to be about dangerous/destructive groups, not new religious movements) -- includes Charles Manson -J im Jones and Jonestown, Warren Jeffs and the Yearning for Zion Ranch --Shoko Asahara and Aum Shinrikyo --David Koresh and the Branch Davidians
Saturday 1/12
6 a HBO Friends of God A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi. excellent. It was filmed just before Rev. Ted Haggard was outed as a user of male prostitutes and crystal meth.
7: 30 am HBO sig. White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (There is a study guide for educators at the website)
10:15 Sund Guerilla Girl
12:30 HBO2 Sand and Sorrow
6:30 pm HBO Fam Educating Peter

A Unitarian Schism?

I was recently reminded about the Unitarian Jihad Name Generator, having noticed what might have been the best name ever. I realized that having been abstinent from the ether/internet world for so long, I might have been reborn as a new and different person, so I went over to see what my name is currently.

But I find myself in a conundrum of great magnitude. I did not realize a schism has developed.

And this schism is clearly of greater concern to the Unitarians involved than, say, boycotting a national democratic decision making event, for someone has already decided not to remain in community and struggle over their differences, but I don't know what those differences were, or to which group I belong, and which name I should accept?

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Spikey Mace of Looking at All Sides of the Question.
Get yours.

But the First Reformed Unitarian Jihad says that my name is


My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother/Sister Gatling Gun of Courteous Freedom. What's yours?


Oh to decide my jihadian fate without the context of theological specificity or the subtext of comprehension of a denominational schism. I fear I may accidentally join the wrong group and go to hell.

Oh. Right. No Hell.

Unitarian Universalist.

Phew.


P.S. Made you look.

Post on Happy or Cranky? New Year's Eve with Kathy Griffin

... on tv. I could never meet her quote to hang out with her in person...

I spent time with my beautiful godson and his family, then came home to discover a Kathy Griffin stand-up marathon on Bravo. If you're not familiar, she's the most incredible self-referential actor-mocking comic in America today. Tho' I think she's the only self-referential actor-mocking comic... Stayed up without napping till after midnight for the first New Year's eve in a decade.

I must admit that Kathy Griffin's CrankySnarkyness makes me Happy Cindy. So on which blog should I post about it? In a brief moment of cross-self-referentiality in honor of the Great Ms. Griffin, I'll post here a funny snarky clip of one of my favorite bits.

To set the context, she's referring to her ever so brief gig working for E! television interviewing stars on the red carpet outside the Golden Globe Awards in 2005. She decided that others were more suited to comment of gowns and such, so she's spend her time asking ridiculous questions and mocking the celebrities she interviews. Just for the record, she got fired for the story you'll hear if you watch the clip below



and because my mom reads this blog, I searched until I found a clip with the *%#!@s beeped out.