Sabbath Reflections: Week 5

Today, a significant portion of my time was spent battling the creeping army of mold that continues to invade our home. It became so bad this week that Leigh could not sleep in the bedroom lest she wake up sneezing and clearing a seemingly never-ending accumulation of crud in her throat. So, armed with the most powerful stuff we could find at the home improvement store, I prepared myself for a tip-of-the-spear assault, pulled back pieces of the bedroom furniture and beheld the thriving, confident headquarters of the green and yellow army. All the while, I could hear that deep-voiced movie trailer guy narrating, “He thought it was over. He thought the war had ended, but now, they’re back, and, this time, it’s bacterial!”

The enemy has a face.

The second thing I thought was, “Hmm, green and yellow. Either this is a sign that the Packers are going to get thrashed today, or that they’re so resilient that nothing will keep them down.”

The third thing I thought was how frustrating it is when mold or dust or pests simply won’t go away. You take all the steps you believe are necessary, you resolve yourself to see the process of eradication through, and yet, every few days (or weeks, or months), your nemesis is back, mocking you. “You thought you could get rid of me,” it says, taunting you with its irrepressible presence. “You can’t get rid of me. I’m part of this place – even since the beginning – and that makes me part of your world!” Then (if you have a cinematically-charged imagination like I do) it laughs maniacally and braces itself for your industrial-strength spray.

The struggle is very similar to our own personal battles with selfishness, which is the deeply rooted, impossible to eradicate source of all the ugly, disease-spreading spores in our life – the anger and the arrogance, the lust and the laziness, the detachment and the despair. We can scrub away at our behavior and our attitude, trying to sanitize it and keep it clean, but we cannot seem to get down deep enough to completely abolish our selfishness. But that doesn’t stop us from trying even the most sworn-by products out there – the self-help and the psychiatry and the alternative spirituality and, of course, the top-seller called denial. They’ve each been known to do the job as well as anything, and yet the mold remains, and eventually it rears its repugnant but very familiar head once again.

We are constantly at war with our lesser selves – that fallen person who won’t quite go away, no matter how successfully you believe you have stripped him of his power. We would do well to ultimately put our trust not in products that promise to fight for us, but in the One who sustains us even in the midst of the battle.

Reality TV Like You’ve Never Smelled It Before

Please allow the following digression – it may not be a “wonderstuff,” but I still think it’s a smashing idea.

The Next Reality Television Stars!

Some people believe that Hollywood is wasteful – that, as an industry, it tosses out much more than it saves and recycles a fraction of what it produces. James Cameron’s assurances about a green production of Avatar aside, I would agree with the assertion that profligacy festers in many of Hollywood’s corners and those of its subsidiaries. It is for this very reason that I offer the following suggestion – it may not solve all the wastefulness, but if we each do our own little part, blah blah blah.

It was after the most recent episode of Top Chef (I promise, it’s the only reality show I watch) that a fabulous idea struck me and I devised a way for the production company, Bravo, to eliminate what must be a hefty portion of their waste.

Cash prizes not withstanding, Top Chef must be an expensive show. You’ve got your reality participant stipends, your weekly food budgets, your royalty checks forked over (get it?) to products, restaurants and guest chefs, your cooking equipment, set design, judge and host salaries, crew costs, boat rentals, car rentals, loft rental, et cetera et cetera et cetera. Sure, I know Buitoni is one of several sponsors, and that a popular show makes more money than it spends, but, please, you know the studio would be interested in figuring out a way to get more for their dollar (or at least establishing another hit show without inaugurating a whole new set and truck load of materials). And there is a solution – one that came to me as I watched yet another episode of the hot-shot chefs abandoning a disheveled kitchen, full of dirty pots and pans, messy plates and disorganized utensils. My wife is glued to the screen to see who’s going to win and who’s packing his/her knives, but all I can think is, who are the poor schlubs who have to clean up all that?

Coming this spring to Bravo TV! Ten of the country’s best dishwashers and busboys are about to be put to the ultimate series of tests. The Quickwash Challenge: How many dishes can you wash in two minutes? How big a stack of plates can you carry before they tumble? The Sanitation Elimination: Who can get his section of the kitchen the cleanest? What’s the best recipe for a mopping solution, or a grill cleaner, or an oven degreaser?

Think about it, Bravo. This could be huge? For crying out loud, half the set and props are already sitting there!

There’s Buffalo Hank, the grizzled, dishonorably discharged war vet whose been cleaning the Route 16 Truck Stop kitchen for going on three decades, and has plenty of wisdom to convey when it comes to staying a step ahead of the health inspector. There’s Paco, the illegal immigrant from Albuquerque whose table bussing techniques are so fast that you barely know he’s come and gone (necessary skills when the diner you work in becomes a favorite coffee and pastry spot for INS officials). There’s Oz, the seasoned dishwasher who has elevated scrubbing to a Zen-like art form and finds filthy kitchens an opportunity for greater spiritual transcendence. There’s Jolene, mother-of-six and part-time hair cutter who tidies her TGIFridays kitchen like she does her own, an ironic ambition considering neither ever seem to actually get cleaned. And there’s Turtle, the third-year college freshman/meth head who may not have the cleanest hands or the fastest mop, but he sure knows how to mix those chemicals. They’re all after the grand prize: to replace the outdated, politically-dicey lumberjack as the image of Brawny paper towels, and a lifetime supply of ammonia and bleach, sponsored by Lysol.

I’m telling you, it smells like another hit…

Okay, maybe not a hit per se, but it definitely smells.

p.s. – Tell me, readers: would you watch?