Tungsten Fluff

Intervention

Anybody else watch Intervention on A&E?

Monday night was fold-and-sort-the-laundry night – Julie washes and dries now since I shrank her two new Happy Bunny shirts this weekend – so I watched a couple of episodes I had recorded.  I have to watch it solo and laundry night I’m on my own.

If you haven’t seen it, Intervention producers hook up with an addict or someone else with a compulsive behavior like an eating disorder or gambling on the premise of filming an addiction documentary.  What the subject doesn’t know is that their family and friends are setting them up for an actual intervention and treatment.  The result is the absolute best reality show on television.  I even hesitate to use the term reality TV – this is not in the same class as Flavor of Love, The Hills, America’s Got Talent or any other show Joel McHale ridicules weekly on The Soup.

About 10 minutes in, you’ve seen the subject (sorry, I can’t think of a better word) shoot up, drink, argue, borrow, eat, puke and generally inflict suffering on themselves and those around them.  Then, with a photo collage and remorseful music, loved ones describe the past.  Life was good, they were strong people, they had a lot going for them and then IT happened. 

Sometimes IT is a single event: an instance of abuse, a parent bails, a spouse’s death, a rape.  Other times, the IT shapes the addict over years: verbal or physical abuse by a parent, physical injury or sustained sexual abuse.  It’s really heartbreaking to see a person’s psyche damaged by the careless words and selfish actions of others.  What’s worse is the attitude of people who think the addict should just get over their past and stop the destructive behavior.  Really?  If it were really that easy, they would have stopped on their own already.

During the actual intervention, the subject arrives at the “final interview” to find loved ones and a professional interventionist waiting instead.  The family reads prepared letters to the addict about how much they care, worry and love them along with statements about the effect of the behavior on the relationship.  After this, a treatment program is offered – and not, “We’re thinking about this place in Phoenix” either.  It’s more like, “We’ve got a plane ticket for today to start treatment tonight.”  If counseling is refused, family members read from another statement that details how they will cut off the addict, forcing them to rock bottom faster.  Few refuse.  Most go.  A lot are successful and recover.  Some don’t.

I get two take-aways from every show:

First, drugs suck.  Every middle and high school should show multiple episodes during drug education classes.  Watching a former high school athlete’s eyes roll back in her head when she injects heroin or the genius stumble around after eating a bottle of cough suppressant might yield more than current abstract teaching methods.

Second, think about what you say before you say it.  Words have the power to create or destroy things inside other people – especially in children.  Most of the parents on the show did the best they could at the time and they were damaged in a lot of ways themselves.  It’s that cycle of hurt that goes back to Adam.  Paul’s Spirit-inspired admonition, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29, NIV) has a purpose.  And God is willing to help us with that if we ask.

Ultimately, Intervention’s best quality is showing that love in action can overcome the problem.   In fact, treatment is called a Gift of Love.  And it is given in spite of the brokenness of the ones giving and receiving it.

30 Days

We don’t watch TV very often any more.  I can’t say I miss it much either.  Deadliest Catch, The Closer and Saving Grace are the only shows Julie and I watch regularly that are still airing new episodes.  But, I’m a sucker for a good documentary – especially one that challenges my thinking – so I recorded Morgan Spurlock’s FX show 30 Days and watched several season 3 episodes in one sitting the other day.

One line summary: someone spends 30 days immersed in an opposing worldview or difficult, but realistic circumstance and we get to watch.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the show.  Of course, I expected heavily edited, one-sided viewpoints, a la Michael Moore, but Spurlock actually pulled this off well.  Some examples:

- Spurlock went home to West Virginia to work in a coal mine and live with a coal mining family for 30 days.  We get most of our electricity from coal-fired plants in this country; a lot of it from WV.  Now every time I see the lights or a TV left on in an empty room at the house, I think of the guy in the mine hunched over shoveling the coal that has fallen from the conveyer.  Spurlock makes the point the 25-year-old father of two works all day in that 4-foot crawlspace in constant danger to power the PC of some guy looking at porn.  Harsh, but possibly true.  Even more true is that it probably takes the output of an entire mine just to power the transmission losses incurred by the inefficiencies in the power grid.

- NFL star Ray Crockett spent 30 days in a wheelchair without the use of his legs.  Within 2 days, he had outfitted his entire home with ramps and his Super-sized SUV with hand-controls and a lift.  I wondered if he donated that stuff to the people he met after the show was done.  The wheelchair rugby match was incredible.

- An avid North Carolina hunter spent 30 days with a vegan family in California, staging PETA demonstrations and working as an animal rights activist.  Although he was understandably put off by their manic view, he softened considerably when shown an industrial farm and participated in the rescue and recovery of a sick calf from one of them.  I’m eating PB&J for lunch now.

- My favorite was the story of a Boston woman who spent a month with the avid gun enthusiast father-son duo in Tennessee.  A friend of hers was a victim of gun violence and she couldn’t see the need for anyone but police and soldiers to carry firearms.  It wasn’t the gun store job, target practice or concealed-carry experience that changed her view.  It was meeting the family who defended themselves in their home from a killer on the loose using a personally-owned firearm that brought about that shift.

I think too many people socially compartmentalize themselves; surrounding themselves with like-minded individuals who only serve to validate personal preference and worldviews.  Morgan Spurlock redeemed himself with 30 Days – I have forgiven him from the “McGurgles” scene in SuperSize Me where he pukes up a Quarter Pounder meal.  The previous seasons are also available on DVD.  Check it out.

Worship Channel...

We were listening to a worship mix on our trip out to Sam's Club last night.  I forgot how good this song is.  Enjoy...

Linkage

Here’s some interesting linkage:

Fractal art and Math Haiku at mathlesstravelled

My recent experience with AmbienCR led me to theangypharmacist.  This is probably not the one I worked for at my first job.

Interesting “think-tank” policy papers over at the Strategic Studies Institute.  I thought Dr. Jeffrey Record’s comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq were particularly enlightening.

A former gunship pilot is interviewed concerning the use of the AC-130 in Iraq.  Aside…my father-in-law tells a gunship story from his Vietnam service that makes me smile.

“Survey shows corporate mentality of American church culture a turn-off to young people.  Series of meetings, conferences, guest-speakers and workshops planned to discuss this.”  Forest…Trees…

Want to know what a real Christian libertarian thinks?  Check out William Grigg.

On John Adams

I took some time this weekend to finish watching my Father’s Day gift.  Julie and the kids gave me the HBO mini-series John Adams, which is based on the David McCullough biography of the same name.  I really enjoyed the book several years ago and the DVD set has turned out to be a great supplement to it.  It’s good to see a man of Adams’ historical importance finally get his due in the public arena.  He worked just as hard along-side others in the pantheon of the American founding - Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison – but always seemed to be relegated to the status of an also-ran.  McCullough’s Pulitzer-winning story boosted Adam’s image and this series goes even further.

What I liked best about the DVD episodes were the honest portrayals of life in late 18th century life; subtleties that are easily overlooked when studying such momentous times.  While the battlefield fireworks were absent, realistic portrayals of the following really made up for it:

A captain of a British merchant ship is stripped, tarred and feathered at the Boston docks while John and his cousin Sam (brewer, patriot) look on.

Abigail Adams’ decides to have herself and the children inoculated against smallpox - complete with upper arm incision and pox-stricken sufferer/donor in the wagon outside.

Adams’ crossing of the Atlantic with his son John Quincy was complete with the pitching, rolling and heaving (yes, both kinds) passenger compartment.

French men and women were wearing makeup to appear more pale (!?)

One of the remarkable things about John Quincy from the book that is only alluded to in the DVD was his return from service as secretary to the American ambassador to Russia.  The movie shows Father John sending the 14-year-old off from Paris to Moscow but didn’t make explicit mention of the fact that the boy returned from Moscow to Boston, over land and sea, by himself only a couple of years later.  Not a show-stopper by any means, just an historical detail that I found fascinating.

What made this version cool was knowing that Paul Giamatti's portrayal of Mr. Adams’ pugnacity was based on his written correspondence with his wife Abigail and, in later life, Thomas Jefferson.  His lack of decorum, tenacity, toughness and self-criticism are not dramatic license but are real.  Adams is the kind of honest and genuine American figure we could look back to and associate with – perhaps more readily than those on Rushmore.