Like other people of a certain age, I remember Sean Astin more as the guy from The Goonies, Toy Soldiers, and Encino Man, than as “fat hobbit” from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But without a doubt, the film that has endeared me most to the man is Rudy. Besides featuring a svelte, adult Astin, the film also goes the other way and introduces the world to a chubby, shy, bible class tutor, played by Jon Favreau.

To me, to this day, D-Bob is the defining role of Favreau’s acting career. This came before he was money with Vince Vaughn (who also played a bit part in Rudy), in Swingers, which is a ridiculously fantastic movie in its own right. This is long before he directed Elf, which is undoubtedly the greatest Christmas movie of all time. If you are “ahem”ing and thinking that I’ve forgotten about A Christmas Story, I haven’t. It’s not even in the same league as Elf. I will now proceed to beat you with your precious leg lamp.

So, Jon Favreau has obviously gone on to bigger and better things than having Notre Dame’s smallest player help him to pick up chicks. But here’s the weirdest thing. Even with all of the movies that he has starred in and directed (like Iron Man, Iron Man 2, and Cowboys and Aliens), he’s still not even the most influential Jon Favreau out there.

As you may have guessed from the title, this isn’t even the Jon Favreau that I wanted to focus on with this article.

Have you ever heard of a guy named Barack Obama? While I don’t want to get into a discussion about the man or his policies, I want you to think about his speeches. Really, is there a better political speaker than Barrack Obama?

Well it turns out that his head speechwriter is this guy named Jon Favreau. While the connection to my man D-Bob is fun and interesting enough, a quick trip over to his Wikipedia page gives away the jaw dropper: he was born on June 2, 1981. The guy was literally in his 20′s for almost all of his work with the President (as of this writing).

Now, I’m not sure where you fall on the Jon Favreau timeline, but I find my own birthdate slightly to the left of his. This blows me away. This guy is responsible for writing the words of the most powerful man in the world, and he hasn’t even been legally able to drink for a decade.

I tend to struggle a lot with my age. It’s not so much a kicking and screaming drag into middle age, it’s more of a feeling that I’m still too young to have the kind of impact that I want to have with people. I try to imagine a 51-year old putting any stock into what a 31-year old has to say, and I shake my head with disappointment.

My personal experiences have tended to back this up. I get along swimmingly with kids and teenagers, but with older adults, we tend to gel less. I know that a lot of this is in my head, and I’m probably causing a lot of this as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But I’m at a point where I have no more excuses.

Jesus was doing his thing by now.

Siddhartha too.

It’s time for me to get in the game a lot more.

I should thank Jon Favreau for that. So I will.

Thanks Jon Favreau!

If you are really interested in the story behind the “birthers” claim that Barack Obama is secret immigrant hell-bent on destroying America, Wikipedia’s page on the controversy is impressively full and well documented.

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show led off with this topic last night. He handled it all pretty much exactly how you would have expected him to. The five-minute clip below includes clips from the President’s press conference and the ensuing press conference from the Donald.

So, the real question in all of this is: What will the birthers do now?

It is very possible that those that would call themselves “birthers” may still not be convinced of the President’s place of birth. Well, at least they still support the President in his policies and decision making.

What’s that?

They aren’t Obama aficionados?

Well color me embarrassed. It’s shocking to think that there could be a correlation between disliking the President and believing this birthed hokum!

Are you sure about this?

A friend of mine recently shared a great article on why it is hard for people to change their mind in regards to deeply held convictions. At the very beginning, the author quotes the great psychologist Leon Festinger:

“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.”

The rest of the article revolves around the science behind climate change, but touches on a lot of the reasons for why people still do not change their minds, even with what seems to be overwhelmingly convincing information to some. It is well worth reading.

Well, it turns out that our emotions have a whole heck of lot to do with how we perceive things. We aren’t just perceiving “facts”, we are perceiving our version of the facts, and they are colored with all sorts of aspects of our emotional history.

When a new piece of information is processed in our brains, we automatically, subconsciously compare that new information to what we already believe to be true and/or understand about the world. If the information doesn’t fit, our mind starts to find ways to make sense of why it doesn’t fit. This process is on the conscious level, and we call it rationalization.

Maybe it’s the source of the information. Maybe it’s the amount of change and restructuring that we would have to do to assimilate the information. Maybe it’s something else.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that many birthers might have a deep down resentment of this President. Shocking, I know.

The birth debate isn’t the cause of people resenting the President, it’s the result of that resentment.

I’m not sure what the birthers will do next. I’m pretty sure that they won’t be voting for Obama in 2012, even with plans to unearth Obama’s placenta.

Here is Sarah Palin’s video released via her Vimeo account:

Click here to view the embedded video.

President Obama visited Tucson personally in order to remember and recognize the victims of the shooting in a community memorial service. You can see the full video of the President’s remarks here (courtesy of PBS and YouTube):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Will this day be remembered as the day that the trajectories of two polarizing political figures were unquestionably altered? Maybe…

But it has felt like there has been a theme developing…

I remember Sean Penn getting upset for the Academy Award for Best Actor award a few different times over the years, most notably for his role in I am Sam in 2001. I also remember that he finally won the award in 2008 for the film Milk, so I figured it was probably worth watching. It turns out that the movie is based the true story of the first openly homosexual elected official in the city of San Francisco in the 1970′s. The acting was nothing to get excited about, but I found myself really engaged in the story.

A film about the discrimination of homosexuals? Hmmmmm….

Sometime this summer, I caught part of an interview with Colin Firth on NPR’s Fresh Air mid-day program. It was the type of interview that has you sitting in your car for a few minutes after arriving at your destination, just waiting for something to break your interest free. He was speaking mostly of his motivation and experience in playing the title role in the 2009 film A Single Man. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to see this film for myself, my interest being piqued from the interview. While the cover of the film just shows Firth in the foreground, with a woman nuzzling his neck in the background, I didn’t know what to expect from the movie, other than this character being single, or (gulp) becoming single. This time, it turns out that Firth’s character is a closeted homosexual man, struggling in seeming solitude over the sudden death of his long time boyfriend.

A film about a homosexual man grieving the loss of his lover, with fear of judgement and persecution from society? Hmmmmm… Maybe there is a pattern forming here.

Penn and Teller have a controversial show on Showtime, designed to challenge and frustrate the status quo. They take many cherished and popular ideas and beliefs, examine them, and then finally pronounce them as B.S. One episode recently took the Boy Scouts of America to task for discriminating against homosexuals and atheists. The basic premise of their argument was not that discrimination was never acceptable, just that organizations that are government funded should not do so. It’s a fair point, and one that led me into a nice little debate on Facebook with some Christians who were appalled by President Obama’s choice to appear on the view instead of at the Boy Scouts’ 100th Anniversary Jamboree.

Christians wanting the President to support an organization that openly discriminates against homosexuals? Egads! The stars are beginning to align!

As I scoured the T.V. series shelves for the next season of Penn and Teller’s B.S., I came across an interestingly titled show called One Punk Under God. It’s a six episode reality show, documenting one eventful summer in the life of Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. It was a pretty riveting series, with several intriguing and fascinating story lines. In keeping with the theme of my summer, Jay (who is a preacher at a church in Atlanta) is grappling with the issue of homosexuality and the Christian church. If he goes with his heart, and announces a complete acceptance of homosexuals into his church. None of this “love the sinner” language. We’re saying that homosexuality is not a sin. Jay’s apprehension of fallout and the actual fallout are worth the time it takes to watch this show. I highly recommend it. In fact…

God has told me that homosexuality is a beautiful form of love between two people and that the church needs to reconcile it’s beliefs to reflect this! All the signs point to this! It has to be true!

This was confirmed for me when a friend from bible college posted this video by America’s Best Christian, explaining the biblical view of marriage.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I shared it on my Tumblr feed, and it subsequently garnered 300 times more attention than my next highest tumbl. (Really? Neil Patrick Harris posting a self picture with a double rainbow gets no love? If you still don’t know about the double rainbow, click here. Whatever. I digress.) So what if that was only 300 notes? It was a big deal to me.

You know how sometimes it seems like fate/destiny/the universe/God is really trying to get your attention with something by bringing it in front of your face over and over and over again? It almost feels like some sort of invisible hand is trying to give you a “sign” that you are supposed to acknowledge? Well obviously I’ve been having some of that lately, and it all came to a head this week, with the revocation of Proposition 8 in California that had previously banned gay marriages.

Does all of this sound a little fishy?

This is the part where I confess.

I should admit that I don’t believe in these cosmic signs some sort of transcendent meaning. Well, I guess I do believe in the transcendent meaning part, except I believe it to be completely a psychological phenomenon based on the function of the reticular formation of the brain. We give things meaning, and then they seem to jump out of the bombardment of stimuli that we see, hear, and smell as we live our lives. We decide that something is important (even at a subconscious or barely conscious level), and we start to see it everywhere. We make all of this transcend everything else we experience.

If you give a crap about civil rights in general or homosexual rights in particular, your feelers start to tune in to anything and everything that could help to inform or fortify your opinion. At least, that’s what my summer has been filled with. Every summer needs a theme. This is mine. Love who you love, and I will support you.

This week, Interview with the Vampire author Anne Rice officially outed herself from Christianity. Naturally, she did so via her Facebook wall. Here is the text of her post:

“For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian … It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”

Conscience? What exactly is it about Christianity that violates Rice’s conscience? Well, a few hours later, she posted this:

“As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

Much like her return to the Roman Catholic church a decade ago, her stark about-face in regards to the church has stirred up a bit of discussion and opinion. Many wondered if she was mocking Christ and returning to her atheist beliefs of yesteryear. Again, via Facebook, Rice offered additional insight into her decision and her remaining devotion to the “Christ” of Christianity:

“My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.”

A friend of mine on Facebook compared her comments to those of Ghandi, who famously repudiated Christians, while embracing much of the philosophy of Jesus. Other friends of mine cannot understand how one can embrace the teachings of Jesus without joining his followers as well.

It’s a pretty fascinating concept to wrestle with. Are you a Democrat if you support President Obama? Are you an anti-Semite if you support Mel Gibson? What if you happen to like Mel Gibson’s movies? Does appreciating Tom Cruise’s role in Interview with the Vampire mean that you need to embrace Scientology as well? And now we’re back to Anne Rice.

A local Christian church had a sermon series a few months back with the title “Fan or Follower”. It was designed to separated the sheep from the goats, and the faithful from the attenuated. The desire was to elicit a hardy response of  ”Follower!” to the not so rhetorical question of how one should respond to Jesus. It was very much a situation of “either you are for us, or you are against us”. It was a significant souring point on my own relationship with the church, which I discussed in a little more detail here.

So, Anne is a fan of Jesus, but does not want to follow him along with any fellow followers.

Sounds fair to me.

I can vividly remember the first time that I said “Goddamnit” in Matti’s basement, with my friend Ryan glaring at me in silent horror.  At the time, I felt shame and regret, but that didn’t stop me from arguing about the word’s relative evil or sinfulness compared to the others that we threw around as teenagers.  Most of the other swear words or put-downs that I employed in my youth didn’t seem to have much to do with the situation or people that I inflicted them on.  There wasn’t a real victim in my choice of language (other than my own vocabulary and the object of my malice, of course).  It wasn’t as if a proctologist would wince every time I said “a–hole” without regards for the literal definition of the word.

Not a lot has changed in my foul-language patterns since that time.  I’m not a saint, and my angry moments can still stir up the more colorful part of my tongue.

However, there is one word that has always given me pause.  It’s not just speaking it that bothers me, it’s hearing it as well.  In fact, it’s been almost 20 years since I used the r-word (retard) in a derogatory way.

Corky and the family from "Life Goes On"

I’m not sure why this word offended me so deeply, like the n-word.  I didn’t have a close friend or family member that was retarded or developmentally disabled in some way.  My closest relationship to anyone with a mental retardation was Corky from “Life Goes On“.  I don’t say that in jest.  I have always had an unusually close relationship with television characters.  I have kids named Kiefer and Evangeline.  I understand that it is a little odd, but it has always been an easy way for me to relate to the rest of humanity.

Nonetheless, when anyone would say the r-word, I would immediately imagine Corky standing next to me, turning to me, and asking the question: “Is that person saying that there is something wrong with me?”  This imaginary friend of mine helped me to keep my lips sealed from uttering the r-word in that context ever again.

During my sixth grade geography class yesterday, we somehow began a discussion about the r-word.  I asked the students if anyone had a family member who would be considered retarded.  A student raised his hand and shared some details about his uncle.  I explained my thoughts on the r-word and the lack of tolerance that would offered in my classes in regards to that word.

We talk about meaningful topics quite a bit, but this seemed different.  They were silent.  Pensive.  It was a powerful moment.  I could almost see the wheels turning in the minds of my students as they considered the potency of that word in their own vernacular.

Last night, I noticed that Sarah Palin has taken up a campaign against the usage of the r-word.  Although it may have started out as a political move to draw attention to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s use of the r-word  in reference to liberal democrats, the point is well taken by Republicans and Democrats.  It brings to mind the uproar caused by President Obama on the Tonight Show last year, captured in this CNN.com article from spring of 2009.

Political motivation aside, I actually agree with and commend Mrs. Palin for her stand against this word.  Kudos and cool points to her on this.

In less than a month, on 03-03-10, an organization is gearing up to spread awareness about ridding the world of the r-word, or at least as it is all to commonly used right now.  This group is an offshoot of the Special Olympics.  Their website is www.r-word.org, and even features an “r-word counter”, where you can see how often your favorite websites have used the r-word (Disclaimer: www.zacparsons.com was proudly r-word free before the publishing of this article.).  There are resources of how to get involved in the quest to “Spread the word, to end the word”.

Of note, there is a video of John C. McGinley (Scrubs) giving a talk to a group of elementary school students about using the r-word.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve stopped using the r-word for a long time now.  I’d be proud and encouraged if you chose to do the same.  What do you say?

Not all of the opposing opinions have been shared in a spirit of courtesy or love.  There have been more that couple blowhardy comments that do more to rouse the anger of those who disagree than to communicate some sore of salient argument.  In light of the fact that this is a prize to reward efforts towards peace, it is disappointing, to say the least.

The idea of world peace has been a frequent topic of conversation and contemplation in my life, as of late.  Emailing back and forth with a close friend, I was disappointed to learn that he believes world peace is not possible.  My view on this topic has been shaped recently by a documentary by Jeremy Gilley called “The Day After Peace”.  It juxtaposes the beliefs of those who believe in the possibility of world peace, and those who consider themselves “realists”.  You can view the short trailer for the film below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was referred to the video by a colleague from The Pacific Institute, where I am a consultant and facilitator.  You may want to add “Pollyanna” to that job description as well, as there are many people who agree with my friend about the inanity of believing in world peace.  Well, maybe that it too harsh of a way to put it, but there aren’t a lot of occasions where it is befitting to play the fool, as may be the case here.  If working towards world peace is one of them, then this sometime is my time.

Whether President Obama deserved the award or not may be irrelevant.  Peace will never be achieved while people are bullied or coerced into a certain belief or pattern of behavior.  Individual decisions to be agents of peace (six billion of them) will do immeasurably more than a prize given to our celebrity president (no intention of disrespect).

Maybe it’s best to ask the question, “Would you rather believe in world peace, and have your life embody that belief, or be someone who is realistic?”