Time out!

Lolsaints.com. This is what I leave with you while I go offline for a while. Part of the reason is that I want to preserve my existing list of future Cool Cats, and the other part is...well, mainly I want to build up my list before returning. I know, I know, you're all bursting into tears as you read this. Just find a cat. It'll make you feel better, trust me.

Gene Luen Yang - Comic Artist

Don't let the smile fool you. He gets smeared with ashes just like anyone else.

If you’re experiencing geekcaine withdrawals from the closing of this year’s San Diego Comic-con, then I have just the remedy. Gene Luen Yang is an award-winning Chinese-American comic artist and writer whom you should check out RIGHT NOW if you want to relieve that emptiness inside.

In all seriousness, Gene is a dream-come-true for Christians aspiring to do cool things on the nerdier side of life. Though comics may not be vilified today as they were in the decades following their inception, any involvement with them is unlikely to earn you a high-five with your priest, Sunday school teacher, or beams of praise from your German-Catholic grandparents. Gene, himself born to strict and devout Chinese parents, knows this and has written an insightful article entitled “Telling the Old, Old Story.” It details the commonalities between the histories of Christianity and the modern comic medium, going as far to say they’re complementary:

...(John of Damascus) suggests that our tradition of visual art grows from the very heart of the gospel. When "the Word became flesh and made a dwelling among us" (John 1:14), God expressed the desire to make what was once invisible (the Word) visible (flesh).
…
To respond to the Incarnation -- the making of the invisible visible -- we must express the Incarnation visually. In other words, we must make comics.

He also makes an astute observation that our beloved stained glass windows are just a graphical representation of a story, in other words, a very expensive comic.

I hate reading clockwise.

As fascinating as you probably think that all is, you should check out Gene’s work from the library, or buy it if you’re one of those people with money. His most well-known is American Born Chinese, which won an Will Eisner award as well as being a finalist for the National Book Awards in the category of Young People's Literature, which is rare for a comic book (maybe unprecedented, too lazy to look up). It interweaves an ancient Asian narrative, in which a monkey king travels to India to retrieve the Buddhist sutras (Journey to the West), with the identity-bending experience of a young boy living between two cultures. Superimpose a Christian interpretation of God onto the braided narrative, and you have a reflection of Gene’s life as well as that of his fictional characters'.

That guy's always in control. What's the deal?

In the end...I decided I wanted to do an Asian-American telling of this (Journey to the West). Christianity has had a profound effect on Asian American identity. I feel like it’s a particular style of Christianity that emphasizes where Western Christian morality and a Confucian-based moral system intersect. You visit any college with Christian groups or clubs, you’ll usually find a lot of Asians in those groups. -Gene Yang in an interview with talkingwriting.com

He openly admits that his religion is one of the most important aspects of his identity, the other being his heritage (talkingwriting), and you can certainly pick up subtle hints of that in all his work. It shows up in the form of philosophy, or theology if someone took out deliberate Judeo-Christian references to God and his works. This investigation into morality is very apparent in the collection Animal Crackers, The Eternal Smile, and Level Up. In other words, in pretty much everything he does.

Seriously, buy it so you can pretend to have a ridiculously large Game Boy (story's good too).

If by any chance Gene sounds too intellectual or not geeky enough to be your mentor in spirit, you should know that he's in charge of writing the Avatar: The Last Airbender comic continuation. Yeah, the series is in good hands.

More on Gene Luen Yang:

Geneyang.com

The Comics Reporter interview

Dark Horse and Avatar

The Millions interview  (Great insight about race representation)

and

THE ROSARY COMIC BOOK

The Amazing Nightcrawler - Superhero

...most people were afraid of me. But I didn't hate them. I pitied them. Do you know why? Because most people will never know anything beyond what they see with their own two eyes.
- X2- X-Men United

Why? ‘Cause it’s comic-con. And he’s awesome, and German, and as far as I know, the only Catholic superhero. In any case, Kurt Wagner, AKA the Nightcrawler, is a very rare, positive, and accurate depiction of Catholicism in mainstream media.

Making his debut in 1975’s Giant X-Men #1, the Nightcrawler has BAMF'd his way through forty years of comics, three animated series, multiple video games, and a key role in a major motion picture. It all started when a shape-shifting mutant, Mystique, hooked up with an actual demon, Azazel (you may recognize him from X-Men: First Class). Since Nightcrawler's blue skin and pointy ears blew Mystique's cover as a non-mutant, she abandoned him to a river, where he was later picked up by a traveling circus.

Among the ranks of freaks and geeks he had somewhat of a safe haven despite his monstrous appearance, but as a mutant, he knew he would always be an outcast to the rest of the world (pitchforks and torches gave him that impression). Despite his demonic ancestry, he would go on to find solace in God, even living in a monastery for a time. His exemplary faith is so compelling that some of the X-Men (Storm, Jubilee, and even Wolverine) have to pause to contemplate his words. Below, a video that better illustrates his origin and his interesting effect on Wolverine:

Cutting through the twists, turns, and multiple histories typical of a comic character, Nightcrawler was later recruited to join the X-Men by Professor Xavier, whose mission it is to alleviate the majority population's fears of mutants by using their abilities for good. Nightcrawler's abilities include hyper agility, teleportation/inter-dimensional travel (BAMF!), and his feet allow him to walk on walls. He also has an awesome tail, is a prankster, and loves a good swashbuckling adventure.

More on Nightcrawler:

Wikipedia page

A collection of sketches

Watch X-Men The Animated Series on Netflix!

Jennifer Paterson - TV Chef and One of Two Fat Ladies

"We will serve that to the nuns with a bowl of mayonnaise on the side and I hope they'll love it. Ymmm, I would."

As you may have noticed, none of my previous Cool Cats have yet joined our family in heaven. This is because my mission is to show that cool people living out their faith is not a thing of the past. It’s super easy to get hung up on the antiquity of the famous saints, which is unfortunate considering that we should all be striving for sainthood and thus a closer relationship with God. Jennifer Paterson may have passed away over ten years ago, but her incredible show Two Fat Ladies is still on the air and still serving up chortles. Needless to say, she is well alive in our hearts and worth including.

To call miss Paterson a mere television chef would be like calling a Cinnabon a mere cinnamon roll. So much more, Paterson can be seen every episode driving her compatriot Clarissa Dickson Wright around the country in a motorcycle and a sidecar. If that didn't happen, it's because they were singing on a balcony in Brazil or digging a roasting pit in the Caribbean. Often episodes ended—after many minutes of friendly British bantering, copious amounts of butter, and jabs at vegetarians—with Paterson seated with a spirit in hand and proclaiming “cheers.”

Yes, she drank quite a bit, would light a cigarette after popping something in the oven, and drove her motorcycle like a mad woman, but she was also a devout Catholic. She loved Latin mass and even gave up drinking for lent. It is also perhaps no coincidence that she and Wright would cook for Benedictine nuns, choir boys, and the Westminster Cathedral before the series was through. Sparing her British humor from no one, the Telegraph claims that she used to pray, “Dear God, please stop all this in Yugoslavia, it's too terrible."

Paterson’s life before chef stardom begins with a military father who was stationed in China, Berlin, and the UK at various points. Her jobs were equally as varied, from stage assistant, to nanny, to matron, to writer and staff cook at a magazine. At the age of fifteen she was expelled from her boarding school for being “naughty.” Couple this with her tendency to drink, and you might read between the lines that she was a loose young adult. However, you’d be wrong, because she’s a good Catholic. She was also a beautiful woman known for her eccentricities, and she is proof that being among the faithful does not mean having a stifling or drab personality.

Sadly, or blessedly, she joined the heavenly feast August 10th, 1999. As her co-Fat Lady Clarissa Wright said, "Jennifer is no doubt sitting on a cloud, with her bike parked beside her, smoking a fag and discussing menus with St Peter, singing hymns with St Lucy and writing recipes with St Honoré before going off to lunch with Noel Coward." (Telegraph)

More on Jennifer Paterson:
Obituary in the Telegraph
Obituary on the BBC
Two Fat Ladies Cookbooks

Chase Hilgenbrinck - Professional Player to Priest

"I couldn’t have dreamed this up for myself. I think that’s what’s truly divine about it." 1  

Even if we had an above average dedication and love for the game, most of us simply lack the natural talent to become a professional player. When someone does have that talent, it’s easy to think that it was meant to be, that it’s a gift from God; yet, this week’s Cool Cat serves to remind us that there are gifts greater than promising athletic careers.

In 2008, Chase Hilgenbrinck walked away from a career in the MLS to join the seminary. He didn’t walk away while he was near retirement, nor because he was injured. He had just spent four years playing professional soccer in Chile, becoming something of a celebrity, and had just signed up for a short stint with the Revolution. It was after only four games that Chase made the break, cutting off the Revolution’s offer of extending his contract. He instead switched to a career where heaven’s the limit.

Of course, God’s call did not become apparent to him overnight. After making his childhood faith his own during his college years, it became his cornerstone while he was in Chile. Separated from everyone he knew, Chase became terribly lonely, so he turned to the one thing he did know: the church. Not lacking for time, Chase would take advantage of the peaceful space to think about why professional soccer didn’t feel fulfilling, and why he felt lonely even with a girlfriend. It was tough eventually giving up the desire for a wife and kids, but through prayer Chase found himself moving naturally toward his new vocation.

And how did he celebrate the end of his discernment? With champagne! Such is the act of man who did not feel cheated in being called away from the pros. Though it was an act so counter-cultural as to make headlines, it did not surprise those who actually knew him.

Three years into his seminary education, how does he feel about his decision? “At the time I left soccer, I wanted to be obedient to my faith and to the call of God I heard in my life,” Hilgenbrinck said. “I never realized that I would be as happy as I am actually going through with everything.” (MSLsoccer.com)

If your interest has been piqued by this week’s kicking cool cat, be sure to check out the articles listed below, which each provide a more thorough and better written account of his life than this lowly blog post.

More on Chase Hilgenbrinck:

"Chase Hilgenbrinck, from the pitch to the priesthood" (ESPN)

"What Ever Happened To ... Chase Hilgenbrinck" (MLSsoccer.com)

1WBALT Interview

L'Angelus - Amazing Cajun Music

Once upon a time, sometime in the 90’s, a certain Linda Rees formed Linda Lou and the Lucky 4 with her four oldest children. They pleased their audiences with old country songs and old rock tunes, but as they were originally from Lafayette, Louisiana, they were fated to return to their Cajun roots. Those four siblings, Katie, Paige, Johnny, and Stephen, are now bringing the joie de vivre as L’Angelus, your premiere Catholic Cajun band.

It’s gotta be that we’re living our lives fully and not afraid of being right there in the middle of society and bringing Christ’s love and joy wherever we go. -Katie

Even if you aren’t Catholic, L’Angelus has the appeal of being a finalist in Billboard’s Independent Music World Series (2006), and has been featured in the PBS documentary, Washing Away. Not to mention, they’ve been interviewed on RTE (Ireland’s prominent radio station) and the BBC. But, if you are Catholic, their World Youth Day appearance just makes them that much cooler.

Being both Cajun and Catholic is not a combination in the sense of chocolate and ice cream, two great things that together make one great thing. Rather, their roots and faith are so intertwined, it’s more like a guitar (their faith) and its strings (their upbringing): together they work, separate they don’t.

We wanted to have that Cajun identity… it’s such an authentically Catholic culture that the faith is not separated from other things, other aspects in your life. It was a natural way to let…the faith influence everything. –Katie, the oldest, from Life on the Rock

Their name is the most obvious manifestation of this fusion of faith and culture. L’Angelus is the French name for the Angelus, a prayer that you hopefully know. At the sound of bells, the community would stop what they were doing to pray the Angelus together, a practice going back hundreds of years to the original French settlers.

Being named for a universal prayer, it makes sense that L’Angelus themselves have toured Europe in addition to the Unites States and Canada. What’s more, their songs range from the fun-loving “Rice and Gravy” to solemn hymns, and they try to only perform in family venues so everyone can come. Their typical performances could be classified as secular, but that does not dampen their perceived mission in serving Christ and facing the culture war:

We need to go right there into the middle of our culture, the middle of our society…to look at what’s good around us, the natural and the supernatural things, and say this is what we’re going to write songs about and how do we celebrate life and bring joy when often there is none. -Kate

Be sure to sample their albums (Ça C'est Bon, Sacred Hymns, O Night Divine) on Amazon. Or, sign up for their mailing list and get a free download!

More on L'Angelus:
Band website
Life on the Rock Interview (2012)

Tom Shadyac - Hollywood Director

"Coincidence is God's way of staying anonymous."

Ace Ventura, The Nutty Professor, Bruce Almighty…the guy is behind some of the biggest comedies of our generation. Yet, his most significant work is likely to be a documentary that seeks to answer two rather sober questions: What’s wrong with the world, and what can we do about it? I Am is the name of this work, and though Christian readers will recognize it as a Biblical reference, Shadyac claims it to be serendipitous, albeit one that was not an accident. (Dialog)

Several articles on the web state that 2011’s I Am is the product of a journey that began after Shadyac’s 2007 biking accident, an accident which left him with a concussion and lasting head trauma. Plagued with migraines and other symptoms, the director did not even know how long he had to live. It was a dark night of the soul, to be sure, but it was merely one more stage in the spiritual journey that has been Shadyac’s life, not the start of it.

Though Shadyac was raised Roman Catholic, he questioned its dogma and "exclusivity" for years. Questioning, however, is a good thing when done in the interest of pursuing truth, and it is at the very heart of our faith to seek out truth. As is clear from his having read Augustine and Thomas Merton, not to mention the rest of this LIST, Shadyac is very active in this pursuit. When asked about what he finds in common with all the spiritual authors he’s read, he answers:

“They all go within, where you have to remove yourself from the distractions of the world and find yourself within[…]But there's this intuition, that voice inside saying there's something to this. And that's what faith is. That's what I find in all the great religions--quiet down, be still and know that I am God. Go into that quiet place, Jesus said, and shut the door. And listen for me there. And then bring that out into the world.” (Beliefnet)

To listen to that voice, he attends silent retreats and practices Lectio Divina.

Though I Am took him to thinkers from all over the world, and through the depths of human existence, it was not his only film to ask hard hitting questions. Does the truth really set us free? See Liar Liar (1997). Is God ambivalent toward our suffering? See Patch Adams (1998). And, of course, how do you get someone to love you without affecting free will? 2003’s Bruce Almighty brings us God’s response via Morgan Freeman: “Welcome to my world, son.”

Yet, if Shadyac’s journey could only be evidenced by his portfolio, there’d be a superficialness to it.

God demands much more than our skin deep affections; He is known for demanding us in our entirety, and it should be noted that Shadyac’s extreme downsizing from an extravagant Hollywood lifestyle to a mobile home park, one that had made him grow rich in neighbors and happiness, was a gradual process that predated the bike crash. What the bike crash did was to compel him to open up about his journey, and in doing so invite others to see what connects humanity, the good and the lack thereof.

A cool cat caveat:

I found several articles that designate Tom Shadyac as a “professed” and a “devout” Catholic, and he may well be, but those words mean very little in a society where “Catholics” openly support abortion, same-sex marriage, and the infringement of Catholics’ liberties. This makes searching for cool cats difficult. Though my research didn’t turn up any mention of the sacraments, I’ll let Shadyac speak on his own behalf: “Do I support this or that? Am I pre-Vatican II or post-Vatican II? Jesus said, ‘You understand the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law,’” he said. “If Catholic means I have some exclusivity on the truth, I would say no, but (yes) if you say I’ve given my full life and my heart to God and given myself over to Jesus.” (Dialog)

In any case, I believe his spirituality is a Catholic one, even if I cannot vouch for what manifests in his practice of the religion.

More on Tom Shadyac:
I Am Official website
IMDB
"Crossing Over With Tom Shadyac" (Beliefnet)
"From Ace to the Almighty" (Christianity Today)
"I Am grew from Catholic director's spiritual journey" (The Dialog)
"Interviewing Tom Shadyac" (Indie Movies Online)