XS Academy Awards

Kind of a big night for XS and possibly my all-time favorite Academy Award ceremony.

High point had to be Jeff Bridges getting an Academy Award. Such a cool guy. Love him. Pretty epic pic my brother doctored up of the Dude double-fisting Gold.

Also, was pretty stunned by the XS props on stage with the crappiest dance number ever. My friend Gabe highlighted the silvertone with a bit of green.



















the dude showed tonight
xs on stage I kid you
not, no fuiking way

Dudes Day

Interestingly, we are nearing the end of Lent and last night/today we celebrated the Dude's Day. Below are a few concepts of what it's all about from the Dudespaper:

This year on March 6th we’re going to get fired up about chilling and make it official: It’ll be the first annual sacred Dudeist high holy day, The Day of the Dude.

Every religion needs its high holidays, and no religion takes taking a break more seriously than Dudeism. Though we considered many days for the holy day, we settled on March 6th because it’s the day that The Big Lebowski was bequeathed unto the world way back in the year of our Dude, 1998.

At first we considered April 20, but that had already been taken by the Church of the Subgenius; then we though to have it on September 11th as that’s the day the Dude writes on his check for 69 cents at the beginning of the movie, but of course that would be offensive to many folks. So finally we settled on March 6th, the Day of the Dude. So that’s when and what you call it. Probably in the future we’ll have more high holidays strewn throughout the year but you’ve got to start somewhere.

We recommend celebrating The Day of the Dude by getting together with like-minded Dudeists, drinking white Russians, watching the sacred film, and going bowling.

However, anything that pays honor to the high principles of Dudeism is fine:

• Spend it alone in your private residence by taking a bath with candles and tapes of whale sounds.
• Go to the beach (or the river, or the lake, or the swimming pool) with some pals and symbolically scatter the ashes of the previous year (suggestion: the ash from some naturally-occuring herbal substance will do).
• Get dressed up in your robes, shorts, sunglasses and sandals and pass out the Take it Easy Manifesto at your local shopping mall.
• Organize a full-on Jackie-Treehorn style garden party.
• Set up a stand in a public area and ordain people into the Church of the Latter-Day Dude. Yes! If you’re ordained as a Dudeist Priest you have that power! You only have to get their name and their email address and email us the list. Or, even better - set up a laptop and a printer and do it for them right there on the website, then give them a free printout of the online certificate. People will definitely dig your style.
• Drive around while listening to Creedence, or the movie soundtrack and enjoy the occasional acid flashback.
• Make some strongly commendable Dudeist art and send scans of them to us for our online gallery.
• Go for a long walk and don’t answer your phone all day.
• Get a discussion group together to discuss The Big Lebowski, Great Dudes in History, Dudeist philosophy, etc.
• Write an article about how you spent the Day of the Dude and send it in to the Dudespaper via center@dudeism.com. The best one will receive a free copy of the Dude De Ching!
• Engage in a natural, zesty enterprise with a willing partner. Then tell each other about yourselves over cocktails and what-have-you.
• Go to In-N-Out Burger, or make your own.

So I posted this and got one little lady all riled up about until a group of Dudeists mellowed her out. Quality day.

Last night was pretty special, though. . .

I'm calling the night before Dudes Day something else--St. Dudesday Eve. Cathleen Falsani had a book party, served us all White Russians, aka "Caucasians," showed the film on the wall, read from her book and made us all show up in costume (see FaceBook). I was kind of swamped and didn't have much time to prep. Was considering going as The Dude, but then thought others would too. Then thought I'd sweep it by going as The Big Lebowski, but didn't have time to drive out to Costume Castle for a bald wig, at which point Nirvana poked me and I called my good friend, Glenn Rogers to be The Big, while I wheeled him around as Brandt. We won the Canadian-USA combined costume award, of course. I mean, does the Pope shit in the woods or what?















it's down there somewhere
dude, at least it's an ethos
lost my train of thought

Mission Impossible

Two days ago we had bigger-than-normal surf in Southern California. Nate Apffel, who made the Lost Prophets film I supported wrote this as his FaceBook status:

Scariest surf... HUGE 6-8ft hawaiin blacks. I take three on the head, almost drown. I go into the beach and see a surfer who was a paramedic giving CPR to a guy who had drown. 6 minutes of no heart beat and the guy is saved! After being stretchered up to a waiting ambulance he is concious and talking... I do believe in miracles!

From St Oswald today regarding asking for the impossible and believing that we will receive it:

This man received his sight. The most impossible thing to you is that you should be so identified with the Lord that there is nothing of the old life left. He will do it if you ask Him. But you have to come to the place where you believe Him to be Almighty. Faith is not in what Jesus says but in Himself; if we only look at what He says we shall never believe. When once we see Jesus, He does the impossible thing as naturally as breathing. Our agony comes through the wilful stupidity of our own heart. We won't believe, we won't cut the shore line, we prefer to worry on.

Not getting into details, I have some daunting tasks facing me, some challenges that seem overwhelming. I'm at the point of frustration where I start getting angry with people that I care about and love because of it. That's not who I like to be. These are my breakthrough moments with God and in my own personal development--the times when I have to breathe, pray and listen more. . .


lost amid the noise
scratching towards the surface
miracles of air

Threading Knuckle Babies

A bunch of friends from Wheaton College started a thread on FaceBook almost two years ago when our mutual friend, Mark Metherell was killed in Iraq. It's a wild place where we kind of started off assuming that we were all the same people we were in school and have found that almost two decades of adulthood has a way of changing folks. We simply refer to it as The Thread.

One of our friends who was raised as a Baptist has converted to Roman Catholicism (he spent over a decade in the Episcopalian/Anglican church from college to his recent conversion). We were discussing the theology of sexuality in the Roman tradition and masturbation came up. Most of the Protestants on The Thread were surprised that the concept of "making knuckle babies," as one post described it, was still verboten.

This was our friend, James' story about how he approached the concept with his mother, a conservative Baptist, whom he thought would side with him:

Regarding masturbation, I've kept my mom a little bit apprised of our discussion, and I thought at least on the issue of masturbation I could get her to agree with the Catholic (me). Mind you, I've never, under any circumstances discussed masterbation with my mother. So this shows you the lengths I'll go to try to reach her (I understand some might find my efforts misguided). So I presented the claim about Protestant liberty.

What was her response? Kind in mind that this is the same mother who banned rock 'n roll in our house growing up, disconnected our cable tv, and once dragged my dad and older brother on a mission to disrupt my brother Stephen's escapades with his girlfriend in high school. I don't say any of this with disrespect, but only offering evidence that would suggest I am within the bounds of logic to think that on this issue she would would agree with me, the Catholic.

"I've never seen that as that big of a crime," she said.

The shock and horror. I really did not want to persue the discussion and pretty much left it at that after a flailing effort, "what would Dad say about your theology now?...Dad?...oh never mind..."

how did jelly fish
make their way from the deep sea
to my shower floor?

Chub Chasers

My son Willem has a term called "Chub Chasers" that I will leave mostly to your imagination--it involves a category of person looking for a category of person. I leave it at that.

This video seemed to capture Willem's amusing terminology aptly.

expectations of
gaelic sean-nos magnify
the chubby humor

Newest Vanderveen

My brother, Joel and his wife Katie had a son last week, Emmett Joel (EJ), the newest addition to the Vanderveen Collection. Sarah and I went to visit him today, he had just been circumcised--eight days after his birth as per Jewish law and custom (my brother and his wife keep a version of Messianic Judaism). Beautiful boy.

Holding another child from my brother's family, now larger than my own, and his first son, I started to think more about what his boy will be like when he's a teenager like my own two sons. It's like you're looking at a blank slate, some of which will develop via the DNA and some of which will be shaped with environment, prayer and time. "Who's in there?" I kept asking.

EJ WTF?
peanut-like in size and shape
who are you? who? who?

Home Again

After traveling for two weeks of family time and work (Mammoth and Maui), I never really feel like I'm home until I reconnect with Sissi (Sarah), my wife.

Landed yesterday morning at 7am from Maui with an Ambien and Sarita hangover, worked out, surfed, coached soccer, took kids to band practice (forgot one--apologies Harrison), went out to dinner with a good friend and then crashed hard. . .woke up this morning with my well-tussled and beautiful wife to realize I was finally home again.

powdery mountains
azul tropic tubes and back
sissi brings me home