Tag: podcasts

They’re Already Doing It

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

What is the greatest gift someone could give you?

Because I’m a line cook and a writer, I know the value of a dollar. If you’re going to be a writer and do manual labor, the kitchen is a viable option. Bourdain was onto something, this writing about the kitchen.

It gave me a place to go after my shift that a drink never did. Because even if I switched to Diet Coke or N/A beer, cooking is hard fucking work. I don’t need to be up all night losing rest I’m going to need in the morning for something as trivial as having beers. It’s a great thing once in a while, but not every night. In order to sleep, I need to wind down. I cannot have the endless cycle of “go out at three, wake up at 10, go out to eat, then do it again.”

I’d come home between 9:00p and 12:00a, depending on whether I was closing or not (I usually was). I liked working lunch the most, because first of all, few people do. The restaurant is not as busy, therefore the cooks stand around more of the time and the waitstaff complains because the tips aren’t as good. But “standing around” does not mean “lazy.” No, what I mean by “standing around” is that there are no orders coming in. When no orders are coming in, that’s when we are actually able to get things done. For me, “slow” meant cleaning and organizing. Moving things out of the way to deep clean in places that don’t normally get touched, etc.

I could have phrased it better when I said “lazy,” because what I meant is that it’s akin to being a stay at home mom. Just because the kids are sleeping doesn’t mean that you can “sleep while the baby sleeps” all the time. Pretty sure that when the baby sleeps is the only time you have to clean the kitchen. And yes, I have just compared customers to babies, because sometimes, that’s what we do….. babysit.

In a restaurant, I have no problem with “I don’t like the food.” I will remake it a hundred times until you’re satisfied. What I will not do is have you treat my waitstaff like shit to make it happen. There’s an epidemic, and Karen and Chad are driving it. I know it makes you feel powerful to dress down a waiter, because they’re paid to be nice to you and it feels good to beat up on someone that probably won’t “hit back” when you’re rude to them.

That does not mean you were not rude. It means that no one called you on it because they were dependent on your tip. The customer is not always right. They’re always right when they don’t like the food. They’re always wrong when they think that ad hominem attacks are going to make it arrive faster or taste better.

Most of the ire you have is actually at the kitchen, and I know you’re not going to come argue with us. You’ve seen “The Bear.” Line cooks are a unique breed, both fiercely proud and protective of the food if they’re a “lifer.” By protective of the food, we know when something is right and when you missed something on the menu. A waiter will not tell you that if you looked at the menu, you would have seen it was topped with capers, or whatever the fuck it is that you don’t like. All it took was a little more reading, and you think the problem is your waitress.

And then there are the women that won’t tip you because you “flirted with their husbands.” That’s not happened to me, but it’s happened to my friends (I worked front of house in college). In fact, there are a thousand ways a customer will try to make you feel bad for not comping something, not giving them free something, not telling them there’s no free refills when it says it twice on the menu….. or worse, using your children.

If there are free refills on the kids’ drinks and not the adults, you can bet little Timmy is going to “drink nine Cokes.” If there is a corkage fee, some customers don’t know what that is. Fine. No problem. But if you bring your own wine and complain that we wanted three dollars for you to open it, that’s three dollars for the privilege of not buying wine from us. It is not worth destroying someone’s self esteem, and it generally happens to all waitstaff multiple times a day. Working with the public has become a nightmare because of the epidemic of entitlement.

The hard truth is that you don’t listen to waitstaff when they go on social media and tell people about the things others say to express all this, and it has spread. Do you think doctors and teachers like working with Chad and Karen, either?

Karen and Chad have seen all the drug commercials. Hire them at a clinic while they still know everything……… #eyeroll I dated a school counselor for a while, and she said that in the history of parents’ conferences (majority white school), she’d never had a kid who’d ever done anything wrong………

My mother, who worked in a majority black school, did not have this problem.

So, the biggest thing my friends do for me is twofold. The first is that they don’t treat me as lesser than because I want to focus on writing. And in fact, they take it seriously. They don’t see it as “just this little thing I do,” they’re seeing that I’m becoming more popular and they’re about to have to hang on for the ride. I am more than the sum of my parts, and I’m beginning to show it to myself by believing my friends when they say I’m an incredible writer. Until now, I haven’t even given them that. I did not have the confidence to believe that I could be a popular writer, so even when I became one with my last blog, I didn’t believe it.

My sister-in-law ripped me a new asshole for writing something in which I’d actually locked it down so that only seven people read it, and it felt just like being ripped a new one by a customer…. and I reacted the same way. I folded into myself and stopped writing for four years.

I kick myself every day that I stopped, but it turned out that I was in the wrong family, not that I was doing the wrong thing. I’d already chosen what I was going to do and they didn’t like it, with the exception of Dana, but that support waned as I actually became a writer instead of just saying I was going to do it.

I wasn’t posting every single day. I wasn’t marketing myself because I didn’t believe in it (if people are going to show up, it’s because you’re sharing, not because I’m so full of myself…..). But what I didn’t realize is that writing is a business. If I want to be successful, I have to market myself. I don’t know how to do that with a blog, but I know I made some headway on SoundCloud, so that’s a distinct possibility for the future.

I eventually want to start Lanagan Media Group, but that will come later, when I actually need content creators under me to support what I’m doing. For instance, I am glad that Bryn has offered to record my entries, but I don’t have server space for her to store the files. I also don’t really want her to work for free, as it will be taxing (I write long essays to be recording them with ease and speed).

But that’s not all- I’m into a million different things, but I’m not a subject matter expert on anything. I’m not even a subject matter expert in my special interest because ADHD makes it where I can only read for a certain amount of time when it’s dry and boring. I will get the information down, but I won’t do with with speed or ease. 😉

For instance, I love science fiction, but I wouldn’t be the one to write blog entries or do podcasts on it. I could be a guest and shoot the shit about Doctor Who, but I am not the stereotypical fan who can tell you what Rassilon was wearing in his first appearance, which was probably 30-40 years ago (I don’t remember, he’s just an example)…. and that’s the level of detail I’d want to have if I was tapping directly into the fandom.

I’m going to kick another fandom’s beehive with my first novel, so I’m saving up any credit I have as a writer for that. It’s real and it’s deep, but it’s not fan fiction. You’ll just have to wait and see. The clues are all here, but I’m betting that only Dana would be able to tell you the entire storyline blind. That’s because she told me a fact that laid out the entire story for me.

Believe it or not, being waitstaff and line cooks are a central part of the novel…. which is why this one fact really ties the book together, does it not? It would make more sense if I could tell you what that fact was, but it’s a central plot point, so I cannot give it away. I can just talk around it…. so, don’t push me. There’s a drink here, man.

The kind of company I want is kind of like Nerdist and kind of like Linus Media Group. Nerdist got into podcasts, LMG is YouTube.

There are so many things I could monetize with either of those things, particularly on YouTube, because the research on autistic women is so muddled. Right now, I can only talk about my own experience with self-diagnosis (which is seen as valid because even most doctors don’t know the intricacies of how female neurodivergence presents). Plus, one of my friends brought up a good point- we’ve never been diagnosed, we’ve just been dealing with it our whole lives. What’s a diagnosis going to change? With autism, this is a very valid point, because if you get an official diagnosis, your life may or may not change the direction of your life. It’s a hard row to hoe.

I just have too many symptoms to ignore it, and coupled with my ADHD, it has been debilitating. I do not have the logical kind of autism, and by that I mean those that understand programming and other kinds of STEM to a savant level. No, I’m one of those people who is always lost in their own little world.

What I mean by the people around me already doing the most important thing is by saying “it’s ok for you to be who you are. We like all of it.” Whether I’m cooking or writing or staring off into space, that love is secure. What I cannot do is convince people that I will always have disabilities, because they are not completely obvious. Even my CP isn’t that obvious unless you know me really well.

I am starting to feel that everything is connected now that I’ve met another autistic person who also has CP. He works in a day center as a counselor, and he pegged me down to the way I walk. It was scary, because my life changed in a nanosecond. Then, I looked up stereopsis, and that’s a symptom of CP, too.

It’s hard being a very specialized person in a world that wants you to be a worker bee. But I’m figuring out what I can do, and gravitating toward it.

  • I can cook.
  • I can write.
  • I can be nice to servers when they’re on someone else’s line.

That’s enough for me in this life, because the writing trumps everything else. I could not live life as fully as I can right now without being able to look back over the year and see what’s been good for me and what hasn’t.

I don’t know that you’re aware of it, but I had a 60 day streak, took off one day, and now I’m on a 70 day streak. I thought I’d take a day off today, but then I realized it was “Bloguary” and it can’t be this month. But we’ll see.

I’ll think about it while I’m cooking. The love coming at me flows into my food, because I feel secure in everything when I feel secure in love. It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever been given.

Again, I have been invited to be on “The Dark Room” podcast. However, we are still confirming everything. I will post as soon as I’m sure of the date so that you can look out for it as soon as it drops. It’s a pleasure just to be nominated. I have no idea what they want to talk to me about, but it doesn’t matter. I have an answer to every question. It may not be the question that you asked, however……….

I Love College

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What colleges have you attended?

Don't even bounce...
Not in my house. 
Better hope you make it...
Otherwise you naked.
I am champion at beer pong.... 
Allen Iverson, Hakeem Olajuwon....

While this is my favorite verse of “I Love College” by Asher Roth (Houston represent), I cannot say that I’ve ever been to a wild party like that. I may have gone to some things that came close to frat-level foolishness, but we learned a lot while we were building communities.

The thing is, though, I became an adult before my time. I got married too young and didn’t handle it well. I shouldn’t have left University of Houston, and it’s been so long now that I just have to hope that now they don’t matter. Of course they do, but I’m a jack of all trades and most people who work with computers have a mixed bag of certifications, and a Bachelor’s may or may not be one of them. This is changing, perhaps, but I don’t think so. What I knew 10 years ago, people also knew 40 years ago. The information changes too fast for it to be published in books.

If you’re going to study computers in school, you need something like a language that doesn’t change. Object-oriented programming has the same concepts no matter the syntax. However, if you are the person in charge of taking care of every device in the department, you will not learn a single thing in school that you wouldn’t pick up in a week on the job. That’s because you’re dealing with problems with:

  • Apple MacOS
  • Windows
  • Ubuntu
  • Red Hat (sorry, Fedora….. old habits die hard…)
  • Android for phones
  • Android for tablets
  • Android for Galaxy Wear
  • Apple iOS for iPhone
  • Apple iOS for iPad
  • Apple iOS for Apple Watch

And if you’re a system administrator, you probably have to deal with even more operating systems than that. Maybe not now, but in 1999 I also had an account on our VMS/VAX machine, and flirted with Solaris (it doesn’t look much different from Red Hat or Debian back then).

Now, how likely are you to read about those things in a textbook when you need the information RIGHT THE FUCK NOW because Professor So and So is going to blow a gasket if she can’t receive e-mail on her phone for 30 seconds. Meanwhile, I’m Irish. I’ll deal with something being wrong the rest of my life. Probably why I have so many devices. I don’t put up with their crap. I have an extra to use when I have to blow away the whole thing and start over because such and such app has hosed such and such setting.

Knowing how to do all that is something I learned in college, but because I worked full time for the IT department while I was a student. It was a tremendous load for a person with AuDHD, and I did not last long in that position. When I got to DC in 2001, I collapsed for a few weeks while Kathleen got settled at the office and I took care of all the house stuff. Then, later, when I was supposed to start at George Mason, she told me that she couldn’t pay my tuition anymore. I understood, but it didn’t make me happy because I’d already paid her rent for a couple of years at that point…… because she was a student, and I had a job.

I never should have ended up with her to begin with, and the red flags that I should have seen were because I was her boss for three months. She was just a summer hire, so my boss didn’t worry that we were together. She wasn’t there all the time, I was.

Now, I’ve worked for my stepmother for an extended period of time, and then I wanted to be a line cook and my wife was the perfect teacher. Both of those experiences have told me that Kathleen’s behavior while I was her boss was just egregious and I should have fired her on the spot, because in that moment (not all the time, just when push came to shove IN MY OFFICE) I was the boss. Objectively. What I had that Kathleen did not was a willingness to recognize that she was not at the top of the food chain because she acted like she had my authority…. to me.

When most of my life, I’ve been calling my stepmother “Doctor” and my ex-wife “Chef.”

I didn’t have Kathleen fired, I was relieved when I found out we were moving and that would be the end of the line for me trying to manage the unmanageable. I know how to be on and off the clock. Most adults do……..

All of this being said, I did go to between four and six years of classes, because I went part time at one point. I really only have a few classes to finish up my junior year, and then I’m onto the last stretch. The problem with that is that I’ve already taken everything I liked.

I got an F in Intro to Poetry because I had a full-time job during summer school. So, I wrote two outstanding papers and had an A+ in the class, but my professor failed me anyway because I didn’t show up three times. I was at work- what could I say? If I had known you couldn’t miss three days in a semester if you had perfect grades, I wouldn’t have done it. It just never occurred to me that it was something that could happen, but I don’t do well with injustice and I think this is it. I know I’m not a poet, but I at least understand it well enough to write about it, even if I don’t use the form myself.

I’m starting to learn what I’m going to do in this one wild and precious life, and word is beginning to spread. I’ve been invited to be a guest on “The Dark Room Podcast,” and here’s the thing that really made me sit up a little straighter…… they don’t really know me. They know my work. Apparently, I am interesting enough to be a podcast guest now…. or maybe I always have been, I just didn’t realize it.

Maybe I should have gone to Georgetown.

My Stuff

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

As a long time reader of Vanity Fair, the first thing I turn to is a section called “My Stuff,” where famous people tell you what they use daily….. everything from sheets to watches to toothpaste. It’s amazing to me how many people make millions in different industries, and yet still love Crest.

(Well, now it’s the first thing I turn to……….. Dominic Dunne and Christopher Hitchens are dead…………….)

I’ve never done such a writing exercise, so I thought it would be fun to do my own. I’ll divide everything up into categories for easy reading. If you have something better that I absolutely must try, leave it in the comments.

Health & Beauty

  • I have a huge morning allergy regimen, because inside or outside, I’ll find something that makes me sneeze.
    • Pills- Zyrtec (getting Allegra next week) and Sudafed (NOT PE)
    • Sprays- Fluticasone and Sinex
    • Eye drops- Bausch + Lomb Alaway
  • Soaps
    • Bioré Charcoal (face wash)
    • Suave Professionals Shampoo and Conditioner in Almond + Shea Butter
    • Axe Body Wash- Fresco in the summer (sage and mandarin), Dark Temptations in the winter (chocolate and vanilla)
    • Nivea for Men shaving cream
    • Neutrogena Make-up Removing Wipes (a must-have with a tubing mascara)
  • Fragrances
    • Winter
      • Axe Dark Temptations body spray
      • Axe Dark Temptations deodorant
    • Summer
      • JASON Tea Tree Deodorant Stick
      • Liz Claiborne for Men
  • Hair Products
    • Garnier Leave-in Conditioner
    • Viking Revolution pomade or Gorilla Snot (moco de gorila) Gel
    • Aussie Sprunch Spray
  • Makeup
    • Mascara and eyeliner in “Brynn” (a deep black) by Thrive Causemetics
    • Lipstick by Burt’s Bees in Plum
      • A quick note about makeup- this is all I own. Jeremy Renner was a makeup artist before he started acting and he says you only need to frame your face. I’m going to go with Hawkeye on this one….. foundation on a hot DC summer day is for dummies)
  • Dental Care
    • Colgate Essentials with Charcoal- toothpaste
    • Crest ProHealth Advanced Enamel Care- mouthwash
  • Sleep
    • 10mg melatonin
    • Weighted blanket (basically a human ThunderShirt)

Devices

  • AMD Desktop running Windows 10 with 32-in HDTV as monitor. Bluetooth remote control for Kodi Media Center.
  • Original Kindle 7-in (useful for reading long periods at a clip)
  • iPad
  • iPhone
  • Apple Watch
  • Logitech K480 Bluetooth Keyboard
    • I cannot recommend this product highly enough. It’s relatively full-size and comfortable, yet will fit in a messenger bag/medium to large purse. Plus, it has a switch on it so you can connect three different devices- I have my iPad, my iPhone, and my desktop hooked to it now.
  • Android tablet connected to a Bluetooth alarm clock- makes an AWESOME stereo
  • AMD laptop running Ubuntu 20.04 “Focal Fossa” and Cinnamon as the window manager
  • MPOW H7 Bluetooth headphones (80’s “can” style)
  • Sandisk Fuse+ MP3 Player running Rockbox
    • I listen to so much music/so many podcasts that having one of these saves hours of phone battery.

Applications

  • Mobile
    • Carrot Weather
    • Clue (period/ovulation tracker)
    • Just Press Record
    • Amazon Prime Music Unlimited
    • Spotify
    • Pocket Casts
    • LastPass
    • ProtonMail
    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • WordPress
    • Google Chrome
    • Washington Post & Post Select (Select has an Apple Watch app)
    • NY Times
    • Goodreads
    • Uber
    • Blood Donor (Red Cross)
    • Ambience
    • NordVPN
    • Mega
  • Desktop
    • Operating System Agnostic
      • NordVPN
      • Kodi
      • LibreOffice
      • Mozilla Firefox
      • Mozilla Thunderbird
      • GNU Image Manipulation Program/Glimpse
      • Google Chrome
      • Vivaldi Browser
      • VLC Media Player
    • Windows
      • Amazon Music Unlimited
      • Spotify
      • Netflix
      • Microsoft OneNote
      • Picasa 3
      • MusicBee
      • White Noise
      • iTunes
    • Linux
      • Nuvola (streams music and videos from all sources on Linux)
      • Variety (wallpaper changer)
      • Conky Manager (adds widgets to the desktop for looking at processes and internet speed)
      • ANoise (short for Ambient Noise- has everything from forests to beaches to oscillating fans)
      • LollyPop (music manager)

Podcasts

  • The Moth
  • Modern Love
  • Risk!
  • Unlocking Us
  • The Confessional with Nadia Bolz-Weber
  • On Being with Krista Tippett (I generally download the unedited version)
  • The Robcast
  • Pod Save America
  • The Rachel Maddow Show
  • The Daily Show: Ears Edition
  • Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
  • SpyCast
  • Death, Sex, & Money
  • Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4
  • The Infinite Monkey Cage
  • Wild Goose
  • and, like, a hundred more but these are the ones I anticipate

Books I Read Often

  • Dynamics of Faith, Paul Tillich
  • The Solace of Leaving Early and A Girl Named Zippy, Haven Kimmel
  • All of William Barclay’s books on the Gospels
  • Hatchet, Gary Paulsen
  • The Giver, Lois Lowry
  • One L, Scott Turow (pretty sure this was in my bathroom for three years in college)

Clothing Brands

  • Nautica
  • Tommy Hilfiger
  • Ralph Lauren
  • American Giant
  • Dockers
  • Levis
  • Dickies

My Bags

  • XINCADA Men’s Messenger Bag, L
    • Not a messenger bag in the classic sense. Looks way more like a travel purse, especially since the canvas is advertised as “Blue/Black,” but is actually purple. The only reason I went with the large is that I needed it to fit my 10-in tablet and keyboard. If you have a seven or eight inch tablet and a foldable keyboard, the small is perfect. I was amazed at the quality of the bag for the price. It will last me years on end.
  • Swiss Army Backpack
    • Perfect for my 15-in laptop and all its accessories while traveling. Not my daily driver because it’s too heavy….. I call it “Leviathan” (Veep joke)

So that’s my stuff. I’m not going to include movies and TV because those things change frequently. If there’s something I haven’t covered that you want to know, just ask. I’m not energetic enough to be cagey.

Donate! Donate!

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to all you wonderful people, Stories is allowed to continue for another year without annoying ads. You can keep reading me at work, in those moments when there’s nothing but cleaning products in the bathroom. I paid the fee up front, and have now been reimbursed…. and let me tell you, it saved my ass.

I thought it was a good idea to get my groceries delivered because I don’t have a car. I usually take public transportation to the store, and Uber back so that I at least have access to a trunk. FreshDirect offered me $50 off a purchase of $100 or more. The coupon code did not go through, and I was charged the full amount plus delivery fee. I canceled the order, but there’s still a hold on my funds. They told me it would take 24-48 hours for the hold to be released, and if that doesn’t work, I need an extensive set of documents… and, of course, the vendor says it’s the bank’s fault and the bank says it’s the vendor’s fault. I have been around and around with them on the phone. PayPal was able to transfer funds within two minutes.

I am so glad I have a bit of breathing room, because I went into full-on panic mode. I can’t say I won’t use FreshDirect again, but I can say that we are not off to a good start. This is because they’re the only ones that deliver in my area. It’s probably for the best. I’m not sure I have enough room to store $100 worth of groceries, anyway, but the smallest amount they’ll deliver is $30, and only $7.00 delivery fee…. Less than an Uber, for sure. Perfect when I am out of coffee and creamer…. maybe a box of cereal.

It seems to be feast or famine around here. I got a call back on a position at University of Maryland, and a full-time cook’s job at Denizen’s Brewing Company. They have a brewpub, and they asked whether I’d prefer front of house or back of house. I told them to put me where they needed me. Servers make more money, but cooks don’t have to deal with the public. Pluses in all directions. Besides, my cost of living here is so incredibly low that I don’t need a fancy pants job. You’d think that DC would be so much more expensive, but the room I rent is all bills paid and I don’t have monthly bills like car payments and insurance. It’s just too much when you add in maintenance and parking fees. Plus, one of the reasons I wanted to move to DC so badly is that I have monocular vision, which means that driving is harder for me than most people. With the exception of running into a guardrail because a 25 mph curve was not marked, I haven’t had an accident in years… mostly due to my complete dependence on Waze… although that has bitten me in the ass, as well, because I was lost and trying to find where I was going and got caught on a red light camera while looking at my phone- in the middle of my windshield so I couldn’t exactly see the light. For the most part, as long as I drive slowly, I’m fine. For this very reason, I am in love with cruise control. I try as hard as I can not to be a stereotypical woman driver. Now, I’m pretty good at it. When I was younger, not so much.

I prefer to drive SUVs because I sit a little higher and have more visibility, but unless I was able to afford a hybrid, that’s just not happening. And, of course, as a Texan I love pickup trucks as well. Same idea with the sitting a little higher, much better on gas mileage…. and I hear that the price of gas is going up. The plus is also not having a back seat (people in groups are a “no thanks”). It’s nice to have someone in the passenger seat with stereo vision. Four or five people are just too much of a distraction…. plus, they don’t tend to like how slow I drive, a #biteme situation. Plus, it’s DC. During the day, the traffic is awful. During the night, construction blocks everything. I’ve been caught in traffic jams at both 1100 AND 2300. You just can’t win. Plus, in most areas of Washington proper, the speed limit is only 25mph to begin with. It helps because it keeps you from hitting tourists too hard with your car, as much as you might want to. Did I say that out loud?

I am also dedicated to not talking on the phone in the car on most days, because even with Bluetooth, it’s just distracting enough. Podcasts are my favorite, because music doesn’t keep my brain as engaged. Here’s my list:

  • ID10T (formerly The Nerdist)
  • WTF with Marc Maron
  • Risk!
  • Two Dope Queens
  • Fresh Air
  • On Being, with Krista Tippett
  • You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes
  • House for All Sinners and Saints
  • Radiolab
  • This American Life
  • Reveal
  • Criminal
  • Invisibilia
  • Wait, Wait…. Don’t Tell Me
  • Car Talk
  • The Robcast
  • Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
  • Hidden Brain
  • The TED Radio Hour
  • The Moth
  • Casefile True Crime
  • Reply All
  • Ask Me Another
  • Snap Judgment
  • Pop Culture Happy Hour
  • Modern Love
  • Meet the Press
  • The Tim Ferris Show

There’s no way that I can listen to them all every week, so I generally download a few at a time over wi-fi so that a) I’m not using my data plan and 2) most of the Metro is underground and the sound doesn’t cut out when I’m in a no service zone. If I had to pick a true favorite, it’s a toss-up between The Moth and Modern Love. I will download those the moment they come out. Third is probably The Robcast, because Rob Bell always has incredible discussions on progressive Christian theology. The four part series with Pete Rollins absolutely blew my mind. One of the most interesting things he said was that theism and atheism are one of life’s great love stories, because in theism/atheism, the truth lives somewhere in the slash. I think I’ve listened to that series four times now. I should edit it so that all four parts are one file.

And now, a finely crafted theological joke, which means I didn’t write it. Attribution is unknown:

Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, and James Cone find themselves all at the same time at Caesarea Philippi. Who should come along but Jesus, and he asks the four famous theologians the same Christological question, “Who do you say that I am?”

Karl Barth stands up and says: “You are the totaliter aliter, the vestigious trinitatum who speaks to us in the modality of Christo-monism.”

Not prepared for Barth’s brevity, Paul Tillich stumbles out: “You are he who heals our ambiguities and overcomes the split of angst and existential estrangement; you are he who speaks of the theonomous viewpoint of the analogia entis, the analogy of our being and the ground of all possibilities.”

Reinhold Niebuhr gives a cough for effect and says, in one breath: “You are the impossible possibility who brings to us, your children of light and children of darkness, the overwhelming oughtness in the midst of our fraught condition of estrangement and brokenness in the contiguity and existential anxieties of our ontological relationships.”

Finally James Cone gets up, and raises his voice: “You are my Oppressed One, my soul’s shalom, the One who was, who is, and who shall be, who has never left us alone in the struggle, the event of liberation in the lives of the oppressed struggling for freedom, and whose blackness is both literal and symbolic.”

And Jesus turns around and says, “What?”

There is nothing greater than studying theology and being able to laugh at yourself. In my own life, I rely on both Henri Nouwen and Paul Tillich. The Wounded Healer and Dynamics of Faith are my go-to in pretty much any situation. Although I will never forget hearing Marcus Borg preach at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, Oregon. Before he got up to speak, Bill Lupfer, the dean, said that any time you had a theological question, you should go and drink beer with a Lutheran. This is especially funny because the first time I ever met Dean Lupfer, we were in a pub.

Speaking of which, if I decide to start cooking again, it’s time to buy a set of bandanas. I am sure Amazon will deliver without incident.