My cable has been out all day, I should have gone outside.
August 5th, 2002 | by Scott Jennings |Dave McKeel and Matt DeCoster are two of the voices in my head. (Andy Rocco is also a voice in my head, but he rarely says anything of consequence.)
And so it certainly was interesting to get to see these two disembodied muses take a corporial form and debate the existence of God at a corner booth in the Peter McManus Cafe over chocolate cake and chicken wings on Saturday evening. I had a cheeseburger, medium rare.
As you take out your scorecards, it shouldn’t surprise you to mark down DeCoster as the one who doesn’t believe in a higher power and McKeel as the one who does.
DeCoster takes us down a well-constructed and perfectly logical path. He defines a nonsensical question as a question that can not be confirmed or refuted by any test or evidence. And since there can be no test to determine the existence of a higher power, the very question is a waste of time. Medieval theologists dedicating their lives to writing tomes on the question of the existence of God, and they serve no useful purpose other than kindling. You can not construct an argument one way or another because an argument is meaningless unless it leads you to a conclusion.
It’s a pretty appealing argument. It starts with a set of valid premises, takes logical steps, and leaves no loose ends untied. It’s the sort of thing that allows you to clap your hands together, say “well, that’s that,” and move on to pondering what kind of doughnuts you’d like for dessert.
Naturally, McKeel is not convinced. The evidence is all around us! The test is our very existence! Can all of this be a random occurence, no matter how vast the universe is? We each have a relationship with a higher power whether we realize it or not, and that is the relationship with ourselves. It’s an argument that doesn’t appeal to logic or reason or anything that ends with a tiny square or quod erat demonstratum, but it appeals to me as a human being.
I’m somewhere in the middle, and I’m obsessed and embittered by the historical exploitation of the personal relationship with God to manipulate and control people. My first girlfriend, Rebecca, was a daughter of a church musician guy, whatever that’s called, went to church four or five times a week, and dragged me along. I tried. Lord knows I tried. I wasn’t having any of it, though, and my lack of a relationship with God that required the committment of so much early morning time was the clear death knell of the relationship with the girl. (She ended up all right — married a few days after her graduation from Dartmouth to another Dartmouth boy, announced her engagement to our high school friends by group replying to the e-mail I sent announcing I had won the student body presidency. You see what I saw in her.) My unrelenting college crush, Mindy, is a practicing Catholic, who insists that being in church makes her feel safe and useful and a part of something bigger than herself. I insist she’s far too smart for any of that, and should be revolted by what the Catholic Church has done and still stands for. She’ll grant me a point or two, but still feels the need for the ritual. My last girlfriend, Megan, who I mark down as an ex-girlfriend only to give myself a plural number of those, whose status as an ex-girlfriend is easily called into question despite the intense emotional connection we made since that relationship was never consumated physically beyond a kiss on the cheek, started the process of getting confirmed as a Catholic soon after she dumped me, and was confirmed in April. I consider it a direct slap in the face because 1) she knew how I felt and 2) I have an ego problem. At the end of the day, for some fucking reason, I just can’t compete with God.
We also talked about love over chicken bones and beer, and that conversation seemed far simpler. Of course love exists. Do soulmates exist? A super-majority voted yea, with DeCoster and the corresponding voice in my head holding out. It was so cute how we all talked about who we found interesting and who we wanted to ask out, but I was the one who obsintently insisted that there was no one I’d be asking out any time in the near future. Sure, I’m attracted to a few women, but they’re all either 1) unavailable, 2) clearly not worth the trouble, 3) intimidating as all hell, or 4) some combination thereof. And elsewhere on these very message boards, the notion that a man would need to get his life straight and his finances in order before entering into a relationship with a woman was laughed straight down, but I do relate. I don’t have the time for it. I don’t have the stress to spare. Why bother?
Somewhere in all of this I had the vision that I’d be more relaxed if I were eating a sack of doughnuts and drinking a quart of chocolate milk while I was watching improv at Surf, so I happily honored that, and I turned out to be correct. McKeel said it was a higher power directing me that way. DeCoster probably would have said my body was craving sugar to boost my energy and dairy because of the heat. Either way, I got a sack of four doughnuts from the Donut Pub on 14th and 7th, and two pints of Nesquik (they didn’t have quarts, blast it all, but two pints equals one quart) from the deli outside of Surf. And I ate and drank and watched good improv and felt better. Good for me.
I finally watched Citizen Kane for the first time tonight. I had kept putting it off for a variety of reasons, but mostly because of how disappointed I was in It’s A Wonderful Life. I really hated that movie, and not just because it was Megan who made me watch it on Christmas. But Citizen Kane was absolutely amazing and completely deserves its status as a timeless classic. (I’m sure the folks that makes those decisions are breathing a sigh of relief.)
Also, I’m rewatching Fail-Safe for the second time this weekend with Joe. I haven’t seen many movies, but when I find one I love, I’ll stay loyal to it forever. If you haven’t seen the original Fail-Safe with Henry Fonda and Walter Matthau recently, end the disservice you’re doing yourself. (Walter Matthau saying “I’m not your kind” is my favorite line in a movie right now.) And while you’re at it, for the best possible lesson on how thin the line is between comedy and tragedy, watch Dr. Strangelove immediately afterwards. C’mon over and I’ll give you the full experience with expert commentary.
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