Billboard banter

Three things, one based on a comment and two from driving around last night…

First, I am also amazed that MacGyver the movie has not been greenlighted yet. I know that he doesn’t use guns and that takes away from some of the huge action scenes but still, this would definitely rank above my spec script for Simon and Simon. I even checked online and didn’t see anything about any plans (and if it is not in Wikipedia it is not happening). We’ve pretty much already written the opening scene, MacGyver is grabbed off the ice of a celebrity hockey game and thrust back into service. Because even in a fictional world MacGyver would be a celebrity. I mean, the announcer would just announce him as MacGyver and someone in the crowd would go, “Hey Maurice, who the hell is that guy” and the other guy would go, “Come on Guy, it’s friggin MacGyver. He’s the guy who MacGyvers everything together.” There, first ten minutes of the movie done.

Next, I saw this a few times last night on my way back and forth to Lawrence. There were several houses that still had their Christmas lights on, including one that featured blinking Christmas canes. I’m not talking about the lights still being wrapped around the house, they were all plugged in. It’s the end of January people, we’ve already crossed the line from kitschy to just really trashy here. You can’t even use weather as an excuse since it’s been in the sixties for the past few weeks. At least have the decency to unplug them. It’s great that you have Christmas spirit and all but the rest of us are putting up our Groundhog Day decorations and if you can’t get with the program it will really screw up the entire neighborhood motif.

The last thing is probably the most interesting and most important. When you turn off of K-10 and on to Mass. St. in Lawrence you pass by this church that always has clever sayings on its message boards. You know, a few puns that try to make you aware that you haven’t been to church this decade and you really should start now. Well, last night they had one that has stuck in my head. It read, “You will never B good enough 4 heaven.”

That’s a rather sobering thought. It’s like they are telling you to just throw up your hands because no matter what you do, you are destined to a life in a rather warm climate. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything quite like that on a church sign, it is truly a negative connotation. It’s like a parent telling you that you will never amount to anything. I mean, you read that and you wonder, “What is the point of being good then?”

Of course, if you dig in a little deeper theologically speaking, you can understand that as individuals none of us possess the qualities needed for heaven but through God’s grace and mercy we can cross that threshold. But that’s a pretty deep thought and not one you are going to have when seeing a sign out of the corner of your eye at thirty miles an hour. Maybe the fact that I’ve spent a day wondering what they meant by the sign is the entire point. They made me reflect, which makes it very effective advertising and/or proselytizing. Still, I would rather avoid a church that starts off by going, “You’ll never be good enough. You’ll always be a failure.” I’d prefer a religion that is a little bit more upbeat, a little bit more forgiving.

(End note: I’ve decided to give this another try. Once again I’m going to do a “readers choose the topic” entry. Last time this resulted in two days of writing about the decline of the music industry. Just send me a topic, any topic, any question, that’s the challenge and that’s the risk. We’ll see what happens.)