good night, sweet prince



there’s no doubt about it. in the t-town of my youth woodland hills mall was the king and eastland was a lowly prince.

when given a choice, my gang would rather roam the cavernous halls of woodland, which featured a first rate arcade (a little afterburner anyone?), cool smoking pits and hotter hot dog on a stick chicks. but since our homes were situated in eastland’s realm, our parents were often more amenable to dropping us off there.

it’s funny. although i pretty much worshipped woodland and worked for no less than five of its fine establishments (and was even fired by a few), most of my memories are of eastland. it was at eastland’s unrivaled regis hair salon that i submitted to the horrific “body wave perm” and it was the basement level general cinema location that i indulged in my first makeout movie (robin hood: prince of thieves, if you must ask, and no, i don’t remember the girl’s name), endured the worst sequel in the history of film (major league 2. i still remember walking out of the theater, hating omar epps and wondering why they had to make it into a kid’s movie) and got my first glimpse of the tribulation all of those redneck revivalists were always going on about (i still believe terminator 2 was the primary impetus behind my conversion). at eastland we bought cassette tape singles of “every little step,” rummaged through claire’s $1 button bin, finally got our hands on those air jordans everyone was raving about and, yes, bought our oversized chicago bulls starter jackets. even at the time we realized that eastland was a dirt mall, but it was our dirt mall where our middle class, sears and roebuck sportin’ asses could find refuge from the upper middle class pretensions of woodland hills.

why am i telling you this? because i just recently received news that the prince is dead. after a decade of receding sales, decaying storefronts and the heartless defection of hot dog on a stick simon properties has sold my mall to a heartless California developer who is likely to do 1 of 3 things: bulldoze it, re-develop it into an office park or turn it into a spanish language satellite campus for willie george church.

if i was a gambling man, i’d bet on the office park. but in my heart of hearts I hope it becomes a second home for willie george, for, when the revivalist’s apocalyptic dreams finally come true the signature towers will make a perfect perch for the two false prophets and the fabulous fabric covered roof will make a soft landing spot for the whore and her dragon.

for yet another fitting eulogy to eastland, visit deadmalls.com.

for additional pictures of my fast fading youth, peruse the snapshots at lost tulsa.

rear-entry gentry and kevin smith clark present: the mid-morning time waster

after failing to successfully complete his amazing underwater endeavor, david blaine is desperate to create another scene of extreme deprivation. since “deprivation dave” is currently soliciting creative submissions concerning his next stunt, we would like to challenge him to:

1. try and survive for two whole weeks as an innocent Iraqi citizen.

2. gamble his finances and psychological health by attempting to build a successful budweiser distributorship in salt lake city.

3. survive for six whole months in the rural south without making a single visit to wal-mart.

4. run the Yankees on a $50 million dollar payroll

5. . abstain from masturbating to pictures of anton lavey or david copperfield for one month.

6. make barry bonds' "cream" and "clear" disappear.

7. reunite pink floyd for a world tour...'cause live 8 made us tear up...

8. listen to larry the cable guy, non-stop, for one week. if he can't sack up for that, we’re willing to substitute hanson.

if you have other creative submissions, please know that we are willing to listen.

hey fans, it's time for tonight's aflac trivia question

in one of his most recent articles, noted seamhead scribe ken rosenthal completely slams royals owner david glass. among the charges he levies against glass is that he:

a) reaps tens of millions in mlb subsidies that he hoards for himself

b) promotes unskilled, yet eager employees into marquee administrative posts instead of paying the asking price of experts

c) fails to offer young players what they are worth, leading draftees to ignore the royals and budding stars to lust for their relase

can you guess which major fortune 500 company glass served as CEO?

if you're interested...

in ecclesiological questions and thoroughly shady theology, check out my recent post on the boston cohort page.

overheard...

last week, over on the monts blog, we had a number of interesting coversations about the value of christian music, the unintended consequences of pre-emptive war and the aesthetics of j-lo's ass. as you might suppose, each conversation was quite provacative.

last night, while tooling around on 7Ball.com, i read an intriguing interview with derek webb. in the midst of his interview, derek offers a Christian approach to pre-emption, skewers christian music and talks about a number of additional things besides. i have posted a couple of his talking points below, but don't let that discourage you from reading the whole interview. derek is one of the few celebrity christians who is constantly questioning, committed to provocation and always in process. thus, in my humble opinion, he is the most intriguing christian celebrity since rich mullins.

also, while you're over at 7Ball be sure to read b-low on the davinci code. anyway, on with the quotes.

"Don’t let your local Christian bookstore do your thinking for you and believe that everything they have there for sale is good and spiritually beneficial to you. If anything, we have proven that the Church unfortunately is identified with really poor art. The Church certainly does not have the market cornered on beauty. A lot of what we do is not very beautiful. The art we make is not very good. A lot of the songs I have heard on Christian radio are just outright misrepresentations of the character of God.

I think you have to learn to discern and look elsewhere and say, “I need to learn how to engage with a God everywhere I can find truth and beauty, regardless of the intention of the maker of that art.” I really believe that is a more biblical worldview. It also keeps us from being people who live in fear. There is no room for living in fear. There is no reason to be afraid. There is no reason to be fearful of secular music. We should learn how to chew on the meat, spit out the bones, to discern the truth and beauty, to commend that rather than to be just completely fearful and put all our security in these categories that don’t mean anything. It’s a dangerous way to live."

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"How do you proclaim a kingdom with no war? You say there are alternatives. We should be people of peace. We can fight for peace. We can be pre-emptive about peace as much as our nation is talking about our pre-emption about war. Africa is a perfect example of how you do that. How do you fight for peace? How do you represent the Prince of Peace in our culture? You think ahead. You plan ahead. You get creative.

There are opportunities where we can go and care for and make friends and neighbors out of people who could potentially be our enemies for the war of the future. That is the job of the Christian. Where you see people are hungry, put food in their mouth. That’s how you proclaim a kingdom where there will be no hunger. I really believe that that is a major part of the Gospel."