Read more about it here.

Visit the artist’s website here.

A Brave New Book

I can understand why some Germans would like it if the rest of the world’s fascination with Hitler, the Holocaust, and the rise of the Nazis would dissipate. One German woman told me the Germans find talk of all of this “boring.” I was supposed to be helping her with her English so I probably should have helped her determine if boring was the word she really meant. Another German woman told me that what happened in WWII wasn’t the fault of her generation and she wishes people could stop talking about it.

At the same time, some people are engaging with and adding to our knowledge of this particular part of history impressively. One such project is a book written by a German historian called, Mein Großvater im Krieg 1939-1945: Erinnerung und Fakten im Vergleich (My Grandfather in the War: 1939-1945: Memory and Facts Compared). In the book, Moritz Pfeiffer, who is a historian, interviews his grandfather who was in the Wehrmacht infantry.

After interviewing his grandfather and examining letters written by his grandmother, who he describes as a “committed, almost fanatical Nazi,” Pfeiffer checked the testimony of his grandparents against factual, historical documents. The result is what I would imagine is an uncomfortable confrontation with painful truths, a brave act. About the project, Pfeiffer says:

I believe that people will learn a lot if they understand how their respected and loved parents or grandparents behaved in the face of a totalitarian dictatorship and murderous racial ideology. Dealing with one’s family history in the Nazi period in an open, factual and self-critical way is an important contribution to accepting democracy and avoiding a repeat of what happened between 1933 and 1945.

Pfeiffer is encouraging others to undertake similar oral history projects, to listen to those who were involved in the war before we lose access to their testimony and perspectives.

Another piece that engages bravely with history is the film, “Eyewitness Archive of the Nuremberg Party Rallies,” made by Reiner Holzemer. The film is shown at the Documentation Center in Nuremberg, an exhibit that chronicles Hitler’s rise to power and the details of the Nazi rallies on the Nazi rally campus. There is much to criticize about the exhibit—it offers facts that have been sterilized, ironed, and starched. They are so clean one is almost able to forget the horror to which they are attached. The highlight of the museum is Holzemer’s film, which is shown in the last room of the exhibit and is comprised of interviews with Germans and Jews who lived in Nuremberg during the war.

My favorite quote from the film is that of a German, Edi Sers, who explains with impressive honesty how exciting it was to see the Nazi tanks and machine guns. He describes himself as a “fellow traveler,” in the course of Nazi history, as one who went along with things—with “enthusiasm,” even. He says a fellow traveler can’t claim to have been detached, that in going along with things, he “indirectly supported” the movement. He says now he realizes, “You had to shoot yourself in order to stay alive.”

Oh, hey.

And wherein, instead of writing an intelligent and/or introspective review of the film, I answer the vital question: “What book would I buy each of them for their birthday?”

Steve Rogers (aka Captain America)

After a long day of leading an underprivileged troupe of boy scouts through the Catskill Mountains, which included him fighting off a cougar with his bare hands and quoting FDR, the Captain and I would enjoy a romantic birthday dinner at Mel’s Diner. We would then attend a drive-in movie. Always a perfect gentlemen, the Captain would only be comfortable going to first base (and maybe a little over-the-sweater action). Regardless, I would still end the evening thinking “God bless America.”

The book would need to be classic American. It should reflect boyish adventure.
The book I’d give Captain America for his birthday: “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain.

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Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye. Not to be mistaken with Hawkeye)

After a day of hanging out with Katniss Everdeen, talking archery and bows ‘n arrows ‘n shit, Hawk and I would steal away to enjoy a romantic dinner at Circus Circus in Reno, Nevada. He’d  reminisce about his rogue childhood and life in the circus. I wouldn’t ask questions if he told me to dress up as a spy from the Soviet Union/speak in a Russian accent. Mama’s not gona argue with a guy who knows how to handle his arrows that well (if you catch my drift).

The book I’d give Hawk for his birthday: “If I Ran the Circus” by Dr. Seuss. Hawk has problems with authority and this book would allow him to escape into a world of ruling everything under the big tent.

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Tony Stark (aka Iron Man)

After Stark invents his own brand of hologram e-readers, available in palm-size or wall-projection format, we would enjoy a romantic birthday dinner atop the Eiffel Tower. And I don’t mean in that restaurant where Tom Cruise wooed Katie Holmes, I mean on top of the Eiffel Tower. Stark  would install a balancing platform that rests on the tip-top, with just enough room for an intimate dinner. No need for candles, our meal would be lit by his magnetic chest plate. And our love.

The book I’d give Iron Man for his birthday: It’s so new it hasn’t been written yet. I’d give him a vial of human genes, those of a future genius writer, soon to be born in a lab. He’d say something snarky, which I know is overcompensation for his deeply-touched emotions.

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Thor (aka God of my thundering heartbeat…amiright?)

After Thor goes missing for a day, I imagine fighting crime in another world (although the lipstick smudges on his cheek tell a different story), we’d enjoy a romantic birthday dinner inside a secret “God’s Only” club in Iceland. His brother Loki would blatantly mack on me the entire night and I’d end up saying something like “brothers, please, there’s enough of me to go around.”

The book I’d give Thor for his birthday: “The Weather Identification Handbook: The Ultimate Guide for Weather Watchers” by Storm Dunlop. We would both chuckle at the author’s name being Storm and would most likely mock him for thinking he has any actual connection with the heavens.

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Dr. Bruce Banner (aka Hulk aka Hulkykins)

After a couples-therapy session for anger management the Dr. and I would enjoy a romantic birthday dinner in a very large, very remote field. After I gave him a juice-press the previous year, which he took as me insinuating he could lose a few pounds, I wouldn’t want to risk another incident. Bruce would be the first boyfriend who doesn’t find it flattering when I call him “too big.”

The book I’d give Bruce for his birthday: “The Art of Happiness” by the Dalai Lama. We would read it together while listening to Enya. We’d maybe light some aromatherapy candles, too. Who knows how crazy we would get.

It’s not like I’m unaware that description is important. I’m sure every workshop leader has mentioned this fact, along with the apocryphal axiom: use all five sense by the end of the first page.

Over Saturday brunch with my mom, she suggested (in a nice way) it’s because my head is a bit in the clouds. “Like me, you don’t really pay attention to what kind of clothing people wear.”  True enough.

And, if I may play a small violin for myself, I was also classified with a minor learning disability as a teenager: poor visual memory.  So that could be part of it.

But I think the main reason is that when I read, I tend to skim over physical descriptions of characters and instead, form my mental image of each character based on his or her actions, thoughts, speech-patterns, etc, as found in the text.

Then I read this disturbing Jezebel article about kids being upset that the characters in the Hunger Games were correctly cast as dark-skinned.

On page 45 of Suzanne Collins’s book, Katniss sees Rue for the first time:

…And most hauntingly, a twelve-year-old girl from District 11. She has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that’s she’s very like Prim in size and demeanor…

Later, she sees Thresh:

The boy tribute from District 11, Thresh, has the same dark skin as Rue, but the resemblance stops there. He’s one of the giants, probably six and half feet tall and built like an ox.

Dark skin. That is what the novelist, the creator of the series, specified. But there were plenty of audience members who were “shocked,” or confused, or just plain angry.

The tumblr Hunger Games Tweets has collected a smattering of Twitter postings, with the goal of exposing “Hunger Games fans on Twitter who dare to call themselves fans yet don’t know a damn thing about the books.” What people are saying is disappointing, sad, stomach-churning, and just plain racist.

The posts go on and on and on. It’s not just a coupe of tweets, it’s not just a coincidence. There’s an underlying rage, coming out as overt prejudice and plain old racism. Sternberg is called a “black bitch,” a “nigger” and one person writes that though he pictured Rue with “darker skin,” he “didn’t really take it all the way to black.” It’s as if that is the worst possible thing a person could be

So the overt racism is depressing and disgusting, though at least to me not really surprising.  There are a lot of stupid ignorant people in the world–thanks to the Internet, we know a lot more about them.  I thought the lack of reading comprehension skills was funny, and/or, why bother using physical description if readers don’t even notice.

But is this lack of reading comprehension skills limited to these less-than-politically-correct-teenage-tweeters? Or would I, and other educated white people, picture the Hunger Games characters as looking like me–white?

I was surprised to learn Jesus wasn’t white, for example.

When I was a scrawny little kid, my favorite Greek god was the young, boy-like Hermes, who looked like me. When I was a scrawny teenager, my favorite football player was the small (5’10) Wayne Chrebet.  Sharp readers will note that like me, Wayne Chrebet is white.

Whether rooting for small white football players is a bad thing or not, I’ve decided, like eating my vegetables at dinner, to force myself to include more physical description of my characters. Hopefully, it will become a habit.  And let it be known, I fix myself salads with dinner several times a week these days.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Being Flynn is a newly released movie, based upon the best-selling memoir by Nick Flynn, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.   At some point over the next few weeks, I plan to see this film.  But before I do, I wanted to write a review so as not to be over-influenced by the subjective experience of it.

First of all, Nick Flynn is a poet and prone to madness.  That is to say, he’s genetically predisposed to delusions of grandeur, which is the non-technical name of the condition suffered by Nick’s father, Jonathan Flynn.  Plus, and this truly sucks, the mother of the writer committed suicide when he was 22 years old.

Second, Robert DiNero plays the part of Jonathan Flynn, which is reason enough to fork over the funds for a $9 matinee viewing.  Spoiler alert:  it’s his best role since playing that scary father-in-law in Meet The Fockers.

And third, I’m now officially wondering (and worried about) what my children, presently ages 17 and 20, may write about their dear ol’ M.F.A. student Dad.   I mean… don’t misunderstand:  I would be proud to have the same thespian who honed his craft on “taxi driver” interpret my curiously complex personality in his dotage.  There are things far worse than having your own chromosome-kin write something like  Cartoon Physics, Part 1, only to then revisit and rehash your own life’s closing chapters:

 

Children under, say, ten, shouldn’t know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down — earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come
with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,
& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point
the bridge will give, who will swim to safety
& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.

“I think the guy in the hat did something awful.”   –William Hurt as Nick Carlton, character in The Big Chill [1983]

Are the categories of good guys and bad guys always clear?   Any literary aficionado would know the answer to that question automatically.

For characters to be interesting they must be complicated and nuanced in their motivations.   And to be complicated and nuanced in their motivations, they require a backstory.   And to have a backstory, they must have an opportunity to be understood — either as protagonists or as antagonists, or as heroes or as villains, or as some convoluted amalgamation of virtue and vice.

I am no fiction writer, and perhaps no writer to speak of, or to be spoken of at parties, where publishers glad-hand and editors wash their hands like Pilate, but I am aware of myself as someone who has not been imagined within the confines of an author’s repertoire of intriguing personages.   I am not written.   And the downside of that should be obvious.

Unlike Captain Ahab the villainous things I manage to accomplish will never be understood.  Not everyone will care to read very far where there is no threat of a breaching white whale.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And likewise, if Owen Meany (at the Christmas pageant of A Prayer…) has embarrassed his parents, never fear:  John Irving has promised his fans a moment of lucid and forthright altruism.  We’ll get Owen.  We’ll get Owen by unraveling the sordid religiosity that has been wrapped around his backstory like swaddling clothes around his erection.

By the same token, a novelist like Anne Rice will deliver the goods on Bianca Solderini as she chomps down on her prey in Blood and Gold.   The recent convert back to Catholicism has recently backed away from “organized religion” altogether, which may explain the indefinite delay in Christ the Lord:  The Kingdom of Heaven.   As we have the prior two novels in the trilogy (Out of Egypt and Out of Cana), of course, we have a shit-load of backstories on nearly every Hebraic and Hellenic name that’s mentioned in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  My favorite involves the woman whose wedding takes place in Cana of Galilee; it turns out Rice’s Jesus knew the bride and that the miraculous wine came from a deep fissure in the Messiah’s psyche.  And, as avid readers, we can be happy for the masterful and myriad ways that an author may connect the dots… even with a figure that still wreaks havoc with every self-respecting theologian.

So, the problem with which I’m wrestling is essentially this:  the human animal, in his or her natural habitat, cannot be comprehended by him or herself.   Nor may others comprehend in toto a single, autonomous person with whom they’ve had coffee at the Rocket and beers at the Elk for more than a year.  It’s simply beyond the pale.  It cannot be done.

You may wish to argue the point, and enumerate the number of people passed in and out of our lives.   You may even be extremely eloquent in articulating who they seemed to be.   These individuals may even return the favor and somehow acknowledge that they’ve been blessedly pegged and pigeonholed by us, their best buddies and their closest relatives.   And yet, it’s unclear whether or not we’ve proved anything about the whole of person by simply claiming that we do in fact know them and can provide references.

Philosophy, as fun as this discipline is, can be of no help.  Especially Hegel.

Psychology and psychiatry have a few fascinating theories.  But let’s remember that only a few years ago, narcissism became an official disorder while certain modes of sexual expression migrated from categories of abnormal to normal.  These are hopeful developments.  But the prospect of further developments in any mental health field makes me wonder about Freud’s staying power.

Journalism, of course, has jerked us around for centuries.  And Hunter Thompson notwithstanding, there aren’t enough drugs in the world to keep an objective reporter in touch with his or her subjective side.

Historical analysis — in that way lies paralysis!

And that leads us back to literature and creative writing.

I read a fresh poem the other day in The New Yorker.   C.K. Williams calls it “Salt.”   And I recommend, for both the good guys and the bad guys, a long and healthy jaunt through its lyrical verses.  Here are a few:

Abashingly eerie that just because I’m here on the long low-tide beach of age with

briny time

licking insidious eddies over my toes there’d rise in me those mad weeks a lifetime

ago

when I had two lovers, one who soaked herself so in Chanel that before I went to the

other

I’d scrub with fistfulls of salt and not only would the stink be vanquished but I’d feel

shame-shriven, pure,

which thinking about is a joke:  how not acknowledge — obsolete notion or no — that

I was a cad.

***

Peace to you who write, and to those who remain unwritten…

We didn’t pack mules.   We packed a mini-van.

We didn’t trap beaver, possum or mink.  But a brave undergraduate with a beautiful soul knit me a wool cap without leaving the passenger seat.

We didn’t track any hostile natives.   We ate and drank with them at bars and coffee shops.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As part of our Literature of the Northwest course, a group of five set out from The Elk, a pub in Spokane’s Brown’s Addition.    Then, it was onto the inspiration for Marilynne Robinson’s book, Housekeeping, which is situated in the fictitious town of Fingerbone, a pseudonym for Sandpointe, Idaho.   After an over-night stay at the K-2 Inn (the smell of rose petals combining with Marlboro to great effect) we rose one by one and made our way through slushy streets to the Monarch Cafe.  There I overheard a dude with a walking cane talk about his missing journal with the barista/cashier.  After receiving my IV of caffeine and reading through some Richard Hugo (a prelude for later) I listened to smatterings of monologue:  “I’m all in favor of retiring early!  I told my mother-in-law that I’d be done at 45… I’ve got things to do, personal things.”  With those ditties of wisdom mixing with the I-pod play-list of Nickel Creek and Death Cab, we hit the trail around the legendary Lake Pond Oreille.  The snow-capped Cabinet mountains turned on a hinge in the windshield.   Acres of larch, oak and ponderosa pine reflected upon the glassy surface of the water, and Highway 200 careened us through Kootenai, Hope and Clark Fork…   Somewhere in the meringue that is Montana mist, a bald eagle flew between two clear-cut hills and disappeared.  And all the while, the author of In The Land We Imagined offered his stunning commentary on all things awesome!

Jonathan Johnson, of course, is no relation to Jeremiah Johnson.   He bears little resemblance to the Robert Redford character with the animal skins draped over his head and shoulders.  He doesn’t tote a rifle.   He’s not been known to ride a horse.  And the only meat he consumes has spent a considerable amount of time swimming upstream and downstream, or perhaps hiding beneath a shack upon a layer of ice in Lake Superior.  If immediate impressions count for anything, he is a slight-of-build, be-speckled forty-five year with blondish graying hair down to his shoulders.   His cheeks are ruddy and his smile might lift the depression of a Billy-Goat troll. Upon closer examination, he is the descendant of Scots, a child of two literary parents and a tremendously effusive teacher, who perhaps loves and savors his students nearly as much as his latest cup of Chai.

I exude so much fondness for my professor primarily because he’s just the right medicine that I and many other aspiring poets need to survive.   We need him like an encampment of Ice Age nomads probably needed a shaman.   We need him like the yiddish violinist in Fiddler On The Roof, to balance the “tradition” with spontaneous bursts of passion.   But, on this trip which enfleshed our imaginations, and could have doomed us to seasons of wanting to write amid a thousand of bohemian elsewhere’s, Jonathan would thrust his hands into his pockets and stride into stretches of terrain we scarcely knew existed.   Inner terrain of the self.   Outer terrain of whatever frontier remains.

Once arriving at the Dirty Shame Saloon, and other local haunts of Rick Bass, the Yaak became for us a metaphor of where we might go with nearly any locale on the face of the earth.  Existence in Winter has both a volume and a texture that spills out and occasionally drips from nearly any eave, and just as often it freezes like an ice-cycle before the eyes of the as-yet-to-be-published.

Next up, The Only Bar In Dixonisn’t just a poem in the collection of Richard Hugo; it’s a freaking dump with a neon sign, in which the lady that serves drinks hasn’t the foggiest idea of  how the poet validated her world.   Not that she’s looking for validation from you or me or anyone with a degree.  But damn it!  She watches Hogan Heroes and pours a steep shot glass of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey, and someone got spread the word!

Likewise, the tree that watches over Hugo’s grave, across from the frozen-over softball field, is doing some fantastic work.   Dried leaves covered the stone, embedded flat in the soggy loam, before Jonathan brushed them out of the way.   The cemetery was chained and locked on Sunday morning, but we managed to climb the caste-iron fence and complete the pilgrimage.

And finally, lest we forget, all literature that’s rooted in the Pacific Northwest, began with the journal entries of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, two military grunts with none other than Thomas Jefferson bankrolling their audacious trek.   After leaving Missoula’s Motel Six, sushi from Saturday still mingling with a bagel in my stomach, Jonathan pulled into one of those overly-signed rest stops at Lolo Pass.   He wheeled the minivan around the crowded lot and said magnanimously, “Well, this is where they camped.”   We were nonplussed, and nearly disappointed… until making the turn onto Highway 12 and spotting a newly built museum.  Behind the museum we walked a gravel path over the two hundred year of creek bed and stood near the literal latrine area (discovered in 2005 when archaeologists detected an abnormal amount of mercury in the soil; evidently Dr. Benjamin Rush’s “Thunderbolt” pills were comprised of sixty percent of the chemical).   Thank God for laxatives!

Well, that about sums up the whirlwind tour… all except for the sheer wilderness areas through which we drove and drove and drove.  Jonathan, as you might have guessed, pulled off the road at one point and invited us to traverse a hanging bridge which led into dense forest.  The snow near the entrance and the exit of the bridge had accumulated to about three feet.  Our teacher leapt from the guard rail and sank into the drift up to his knees.  Before leaving he made sure we each had an ancient and polished stone of a distinct color.   One was blue.  One was brown.  One was gold.  One was red.  Hugo had written a poem on each particular (and yet seemingly random relic), and so we read.

And so we dreamed that one day we could write… on just about anything under the sun, moon or stars.

Peace–

These people don't wish they were in Chicago.

• Learn the art of macrame.

• Make a Diet Coke and Mentos fountain.

• Troll for men at the Apple Store.

• Troll for women in an improv class.

• Try the sport of wife carrying.

• Write a poem with Oprah.

• Turn your hair into a sunset.

• Knit yourself some Pokemon.

• Make sardine mini muffins.

• Paint by numbers.

But here’s my dilemma:   as a co-chair on the script committee for this year’s rowdy rumpus, I tried to do that double entendre thing.   That is, overseeing 18 other writers like myself, I tried to corral those who wanted to introduce a plethora of fart jokes and other assorted potty humor.   For the most part, we were successful and the dialogue for Ham Times At Ferris High is not half bad.   (You might want to check out a show.)  Unfortunately, what wound up on the cutting room floor were seemingly innocuous lines like “Shut up” (changed to “Be quiet”).   When Dick Vitale, an ESPN mainstay, says something about going “number one in the pool, but having Duke at #2 going all the way…,” instead of smiles, we recently got frowns of disapproval.   Moreover, when another hilarious personage complains that the Bible is boring, one individual asks us not to disrespect the Old and New Testaments.   I guess my point is this:   the suburban superego has gone into hyperdrive!

Or, to put it more succinctly, censorship in America shows no signs of abating.   And for a liminal poet like me there’s nothing to do but sigh…   Sigh and write my ass off!

What in the world are folks afraid of?  It’s not as if we’re running around the stage, shouting F-bombs.   It’s not as if what we think of as juvenile humor isn’t in fact funny at all.  It clearly is.  Consider the staying power of the average innuendo…  Wink!  Wink!  Nudge!  Nudge!  Know what I mean?!   We have one scene with the Ty Pennington character from all those Home Make-over Shows, and when a pretend-student approaches him with a stud-finder, the device beeps like crazy!   Inference?  He’s a stud — Get it? — “and this happens all the time.”

***

Now I’d like to contrast this Pleasantville motif with what happens to aspiring writer who finds himself among other writers in your standard MFA program… or PHD program or… BFD program (stands for Big F**king Deal).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let the expletives fly!  O You Allen Ginsberg proteges!  Howl!  Is there a body part out there that rhymes with Carolina?   Are there any dirty diatribes that have gone unexplored by Philip Roth or John Updike or even Mitze Szereto?  What might be the vernacular of your most authentic composite character who stars in a porn flick — and might it induce the real-life one to blush?  The answers to these questions are border-line offensive, and I suppose that’s the crux (or the crotch) of the matter.

Suburban sensibilities, which thrive in certain areas of Spokane, ought to be challenged.   There ought to be holes that we can poke through the thin veneer of piety, that is the banner of morality that we want succeeding generations to uphold.  But why?   Why poke holes in the cultural chit-chat unless we’re prepared to say something more than it’s all a pile of shit?   Why not give the people their delusions in spades?   Why not allow the Wizard of Oz to remain comfortable behind the curtain?  Why not grant the space to figures like him to manipulate the levers and gadgets, which billow smoke, which scares us to death?

Well, nearly everyone knows the answer to each of these questions, and it finds renewed incarnation this week in the remarks of presidential candidate Rick Santorum.  Santorum wants us to beware of the liberal education our children are receiving from professors who want to peal back the curtain.   He wants us to learn technique and to be trained in the theatrics of modern-day citizenship, but to leave the truth to the experts, who undoubtably harbor no doubts about anything spewed forth by the Vatican.

It’s a shame really, a shame that nothing gets the attention like a good ol’ fashion “K’ak,” as Gary Snyder’s Coyote would have it in poem, A Berry Feast.   But so be it.

***

I know that I am now and will never be a completely cutting-edge persona.  The term Avant-Garde, applies to enfleshed souls like me only in the most modest and mundane sense.   Yet, a guy can dream, can’t he?   At my core, in the middle of the night, I’m either a raccoon or a recluse.   That is, I don’t mind having a bit of china in the cupboards, just as long as I can smash a goblet to pieces once in a while.

Are there idiots who act out of their Sigmund Freud ids without the constructive balance of a corrective?  Yes, probably so.  No body comes to mind at the moment.  But where both the id and the superego thrive, let the ego pull back and renounce everything.

Cursing with four-or-more-letter words was never meant to elevate you as a writer into the spotlight.  That vocab is just the means of keeping you alienated and isolated from others long enough… until the real inspiration arrives… so you can write…

Peace–

1. New Wes Anderson movie trailer, if you haven’t already seen it. I believe my actual reaction to someone sharing this was, “I just peed a little.”

2. Portland’s version of community libraries.

3. A roundup of religion-approved sex toys. Not just for Christians, either– Jews & Muslims can get some, too.

4. If you thought Bark was a Tebow-free zone, think again, my friends. (And yes, the religious sex toys provided a natural lead-in for this.) To mark his exit from the playoffs and in the hopes that we won’t hear about him for a while– at least until he pays for more obnoxious ads during the Super Bowl– I give you…Tebowie.

5. For all you Apple diehards: NPR wants you to know where and how all those great products are made.

If you’re lucky enough to have the day off, enjoy the hell out of it, all right?