I have a hazy picture in my mind of a living room with windows, light pouring in, and a tv in front of some seating, perhaps a basket of magazines situated in between a love seat and a chair? I remember sitting on the floor near the tv, as I was want to do when a movie started, because a padded seat was much too far away to get the whole story in my field of vision. Our babysitter and host pulled Madame Blueberry out of that yellow and green slip cover and popped the tape into the player. My five-year-old eyes remained glued to the screen as Bob and Larry discussed Larry’s new Jeep, which just wasn’t quite enough to keep Larry happy yet. As the story transformed from the kitchen counter host set to a treehouse being graced by a bee-you-teeful butterfly, plagued by the Rap Scallion Salesmen, who put on arguably the best sales pitch yet to be heard by any man or veggie, and pushed up the road towards the StuffMart, which felt more like Kmart than any other store in my young mind. Funny how that turned out.

This isn’t a silly essay, so I’m not recasting with humans or doing jokes about the whole episode. That’s fun when I’m in the mood for it, but there’s too much weighing on my mind to really enjoy writing that piece today. This is genuinely a very good episode with very good music. I still sing that thankfulness tune at least once a month, on average, nearing 30 years after it was written. And the story/lesson did stick with me, at least as a concept. If you buy too much stuff, you might lose it all, and then what will you have left? Just the non material parts. That’s a good message for a kid to think about while they’re glued to a tv. If only it had stuck with us beyond just the idea, more along the lines of application.

In the age of subscription-based devotionals1 and entertainment being packaged together in bundles by billion dollar corporations just so you can pretend you own your media when it shows up on your screen or plays off your Apple device, during a time when everyone my age is muting that one social media connection because they’re selling that weight loss fad and we all remember when social media marketing was just selling cult leggings via “Hey girl!” Facebook messages, past the day we first learned about being paid to post about the travel booking company we would never have used if they hadn’t reached out via DMs and offered enough to cover one bill that needed paid, consumerism has reached a frayed and frenzied peak stress point and an increasing number of us are now feeling the need to pare down to what we had before the technology made it possible to expand. Meanwhile, we deconstruct our faith and then the other white people who began their Journey^TM 0.5 seconds faster than we did are now selling seminar packages for learning how to think about maybe starting to think critically. Never mind the countless people of color who have already written their books and done their sermons and podcasts and training seminars on this decades ago, this was our idea and they just also happened to have it in the past, we don’t need to sit at their feet and learn because we are all experts now. Don’t you know we suffered enough to teach others to suffer in a different way now? Think of our trauma informed podcast we could do for two years before burning out and becoming a real estate agent! The Patreon just isn’t bringing in enough money now that everyone has hit their own stride and discovered Jen Hatmaker’s black friends who also write books.

Now wait a minute, Justine, aren’t you writing a Substack article about VeggieTales and consumerism on your laptop while listening to indie worship music in your noise canceling earbuds? Well, of course. My voice is unique, I was homeschooled and I’m queer. Wait, you- you’re saying that’s not unique, either? Oh. Right. But most of the rest of them stopped doing their podcasts after they got their self help coaching business started. I could never coach anyone on helping themselves, I worked a customer-facing manual labor job in the peak of Covid lockdown and the stress of it nearly killed me.

So why are we here? Well, I’ve been reflecting on excess lately…often. My own neurospicy brain fixates on collecting physical media, and it’s something that I’m hyper aware is just obtaining more and more space filling stuff in my life, while subscriptions and life expenses alike just keep going up in price. The battle to feel like my life is quiet and balanced while sifting through the disorganized Goodwill puzzles for JUST the right picture is not lost on me. My mind is always loud, always full of music and quotes and noise that I can’t turn off, and I crave absolute dead silence for that reason. But I also come home from work after eight hours of podcasts and music and audiobooks flowing into my single earbud and immediately turn on the tv so I can watch a show and laugh, or feel sad, or excited by a story that holds my imagination captive. I get up in the middle of an episode and go out on my deck to check my strawberries, less concerned about hitting pause because I would rather just have it playing longer so I can complete the show more quickly and move on to the next story.

It’s not all loud. I’m working on my eighth thrifted puzzle since the beginning of the year. I’m pretty good at plugging my phone in across the room and working away on my puzzle instead of staring at that screen, at least some of the time. I stopped using my iPad for anything besides church purposes a couple weeks after Grandma died, because I realized that grief and staring at a game for hours were mixing in a pretty bad way. I have approximately 15 plants either in my house or on the deck, and most of them that aren’t produce have been alive for a couple years now. I’m actually stretching before bed, finally (are you proud of me, Mom?). Despite being on a bit of a break from live shows this past month, my fall calendar is jam packed with out of state shows where the in-person community of a crowd that all knows the words is slowly healing parts of me that broke completely when we lost Grandma. Sometimes I make a card by hand. Sometimes I start a creative project with a group of friends who all live in other states. Sometimes I make memes for that same group of friends because now I help run the fan account for the artist we all love, and that artist is the one who asked me to make them first.

So what changed this year besides just starting some new habits? I canceled my Amazon when it was about to come up to renew this year, and I haven’t missed it once. Bought a lifetime subscription to Nebula around the same time and picked up a Dropout sub last year so I can watch more video essays and creative thinkers and funny people making original shows in place of paying for Netflix and Hulu and Disney+ and HBO (Three of which are just…together now? That’s a whole other can of worms that I don’t want to be really angry about right now). I’m buying music again, as often as possible.

So this is just consumerism, redistributed. And I think that’s okay. We can’t just stop existing in capitalism unless we all collectively decide to do it differently. Power to the people who make the art they’re proud of without having to pay out to a millionaire who doesn’t care if their employees live or die. I’ll dance around a term that fits this model, and other wealth redistribution/mutual aid/not for profit community run situations, because maybe we can just sit with the concept right now since I know not everyone is ready to acknowledge what that model actually is, at its core. For now we can just talk about how much good that’s doing in the world.

When I first started writing on this site, I did a piece about the Rack, Shack, and Benny episode, and how it radicalized me to believe in unions and the evil of corporations from a pretty young age, whether I understood what all of that meant or not. And now here we are, talking about yet another episode that depicted grasping after power and gaining more control, just via ownership of more stuff this time. Obviously we can’t just shove our excess out the door. The landfills are topped off to the brim and we keep dumping more. We participate in a society that keeps making more and more because that’s all we have known how to do for centuries now.

But maybe we trim the fat. Perhaps we learn the art of sailing the seas, pay for a VPN instead of just a free ad blocker, and cut some of those subscriptions. Purchase music from the bands we want to support and go to a show when they’re playing close enough. Buy some local art and have a craft night with friends to make some of our own. Tend a community garden and grow a few meager sprouts on our porches when we don’t have room for our own plot. Thrift more clothing and decor and furniture, because it’s all headed to that landfill but it can wait a couple more years, or decades. Putting more money into the pockets near us and taking more out of the year round Scrooges up at the top.

And for the love of all things climate and research data and battling misinformation, we never touch ChatGPT or any other LLM flaming hot garbage ever again. But that’s the next essay. This one is far too long now.

There’s a song lyric by moony that I’m going to quote, but the song isn’t released out wide yet, just available if you purchase the album (shameless plug for Bandcamp purchasing and media ownership again). I know, I know, very on brand for Justine to reference a piece of media that is tucked into a corner. It’s a very nice corner, I need you to know. Anyway, moony sings, “I pray to God for a simple life. You know you only start your living when your time starts running out.” I think that’s what I’m landing with. As tensions everywhere are feverishly close to exploding yet again, and the people in power are just hopelessly, stupidly incompetent yet again, we can plant a garden, and mind our business2. And our business can be taking care of each other, if we try, sharing resources and watching that treehouse full of stuff lighten its burden more slowly, not threatening to launch into a parking lot this time.

A simple life. A thankful existence. And maybe a piece of apple pie.

It’s more of an accurate assessment to say that I was a toys kid who grew up to be a writer. Stuffed Animal Land started first. Fuzzy, Lukey, Horton, Alexander, just to name some top players who lived in all the stories. Road trips? They were piled on top of my lap to keep me cozy and secure in the chilly back row of the mini van. School time? Perched strategically on the dining room table, “helping” me do math, we promise, Mom! Late at night? They were strewn around the bed in the middle of a story being told from across the room on the other bed, their besties Hoppie and Hippi and George similarly arranged with careless abandon around Nat, and Bobby’s grey head half-squished under Michael’s chin next to Bobo’s solid yet squishy frame as Michael huddled on the floor between the beds with Wuzzy clutched in one hand, poised to fling him towards Alexander with a bean-footed thud. Our children but also our best friends, our primary figures to act out stories packed with family drama and espionage, manipulation and mischief, and even some romance (Moosey and Nat happened LONG before any crushes and he may have been an irresponsible car owner, but he had endless money and he loved his children!). Every stuffed animal had a name, every name a voice, every voice a backstory and motivations in Stuffed Animal Land. And if you stuck around long enough, you might be adopted as an aunt or an uncle, to be loved and pestered even when only the voice actors were present in the room, hours away from their stuffed physical forms.

Many, if not most, don’t know the lore of how I became a writer these days. It’s long past now, nearly 20 years past, but in the Johnson Kid Extended Universe resided a rotating cast of Barbies and GI Joes living in Barbie Land (we did that LONG before the movie, but it’s not a very original name anyway). They lived in the stand-up drawer sets holding up that board shelf next to Nat’s bed, their clothes and belongings hidden away under the bed in the long flat tote with wheels and two opening sides. Some of the clothes were our first sewing projects and some of their food came from our clay baking kit. One of those casts found their way into a small worn notebook one Saturday morning, as more than a dozen characters solved their first mystery. Butter Cream Gang meets Electric Company meets Full House, 11-year-old Justine’s pencil scribbling basic dialogue in the margins (I never have been able to keep my handwriting large enough for anyone else to read it, sorry Mom). There was no doubt about it, The Kids were going to solve the case by the end of the day while their soft plastic physical forms rested on the bookshelf in Michael’s room, exploring the house they’d discovered that morning.

Most don’t know that I was a Playmobil kid, flipping through the same catalog all year with longing in my eyes and stabbing the same page while discussing with my siblings what we would do with the entire hospital set if we could add it on to the pirate set Michael already owned. Playmobil Land was a bit less expansive than Barbie Land, but that didn’t restrict their inclusion in Barbie Land’s stories in some crossover episodes. They resided in totes on the shelves in the tiny closet above the stairwell, and moved into book houses all over the floor upstairs or the turned-over dining room chairs on the table downstairs, with building block tables and borrowed Barbie food mixed with old furniture screw peg cover bread, and wrinkled JC Penney catalog cutouts fashioned into art pieces. I think I probably learned more about gender presentation and normalizing facial hair on all people from playing like this, thanks to Playmobil’s versatility.

The Barbies joined us in the swimming pool in their best swimming clothes (much to Mom’s chagrin) and the Playmobils floated on wood scrap rafts in the tractor tire impression mud puddles down in the lower drive by the clubhouse (much to Dad’s chagrin). But stuffed animals in Stuffed Animal Land were living in our world. They talked to us, and they traveled with us in the car to Humboldt to see Grandpa and Grandma, or to Aunt Michelle’s cabin by the lake up north, or to church to keep us company on the 40 minute drive every Sunday morning. Their handlers (their parents or aunts or uncle) may have been shy and well behaved and mostly got along with one another, but stuffed animals were naughty and silly and loud and fought with one another all the time. Any misbehaving I may have wanted to do as a kid was channeled into those plush friends and their words spoken in garbled voices to my siblings, whether they were present in the room with us or not. Poop jokes told by a bear and deeply sensitive dogs and singing monkeys in a rock group and a pink hippo flung across the room at your sibling’s head. Freedom to explore ideas and reject any notion of judgment about possible storylines.

I watched Toy Story 5 this afternoon. You were expecting that, if you knew the movie was coming out and saw the topic of this essay. I thought about not going (I missed watching 4 and I didn’t grow up watching the movies, only watched 1-3 a few times as a middle schooler/high schooler). But it’s Friday, and I was just itching for a solo movie time after a week of being at work but not really wanting to be. I pulled up to the 3:25 p.m. showing and sat in the back row, remembering how glad I had been to not be sharing a row with families when I saw The Sheep Detectives because of the eventual water works, and noting that this would likely be the case again.

The danger of writing about a movie that has only been in theaters for two days is that you really don’t want to spoil anything, but the nice thing is that you can be vague for the sake of just talking about feelings and no one judges you for not giving a more thorough analysis. So here we are again. I want to talk about Bonnie and being a stuffed animal kid.

Those animators were pretty rude to portray such a deep reading of a kid experiencing isolation and longing to just be liked when they’re interested in things they think no one else cares about. Try telling the kids at Sunday School that Hoppie threw a basket of bananas on the accelerator and zoom-crashed down the stairs in the Barbie Jeep yesterday, or that Lukey is sensitive about the size of his hips and you’ll make him cry if you mention them. Bob’s quarter is stuck in his foot again because Michael inserted it in the opening at the base of Bobby’s throat and it’ll be there for at least three business days while it gets worked back up to the top again. They just won’t get it, and why are you talking in that voice? Pretty weird, you’re 12.

I sobbed when Blaze found Jessie and Bullseye and instantly loved them. I giggled when Blaze’s living snuffling bestie served as the slightly inconvenient house dog rooting around for a new snack. Blaze the country kid wanting to befriend Bonnie the city kid because of toys they both love? That’s a goal to aspire for in a story about not changing who you are to meet other people’s expectations.

Bonnie’s hesitation to say hello to any possible friend when she could just play with her homies in the toy room just connected with me. It isn’t just shyness, it’s the security of knowing you have your besties already, and they’ll never laugh at you unless you decide they are. Where she lost me was the decision to leave the discarded toys on the floor, because you don’t leave your besties when a screen shows up. You share the screen with them. But Bonnie’s a toy kid, not a stuffed animal kid. We’ll cut her some slack there.

Blaze’s more confident claim to her interest in play is where I really leaned into the story the most. We can rediscover the silly and simple things we loved in younger years without it being a complete 180 from our current status in life. Sometimes it’s the embrace of the idea more than the actual practice. Every single voice I’ve created for a stuffed animal, and every single backstory and nickname and piece of lore related to my siblings’ stuffed animals is still archived in an easily accessible filing cabinet in my mind. You gotta be able to pull it out of thin air to make your sibling laugh on a random Saturday afternoon at age 32.

Watching the most heartbreaking scene of the movie (which I will not spoil here), I sniffled behind pretty significant salty drops falling down my face, thinking about my bois back in my room, the ones who traveled with me to college and then to camp and then to Ames. Any person coming into my room in 2026 will be allowed to meet Fuzzy and Lukey and Horton, and hear the story of why 32-year-old Fuzzy is wrapped in my baby blanket to preserve his ancient threadbare arms and observe Lukey’s (whispering here) hips that rest on my own every night.

There’s no shame there. I’m a stuffed animal kid.

Sorry, we were talking about how I was mellowed out by the great queso. I promise I just already had this opinion ready to swat over the badminton net. Back to The Sheep Detectives, or rather, the reasons I was interested in watching it.

Growing up, we watched the movie Babe at least once a week. It was on the short list of movies Mom would let us watch twice in a row on a Saturday if our chores were done. We’d rewind the VHS and plop back down on the floor with our bare calves sticking to our sweaty thighs on the tan carpet, glued to the screen and mimicking the mice the best we could, singing along with Farmer Hoggett when he had words to make a day for a small pig that could. Sometimes that song becomes a persistent brain companion for a few hours out of the blue and I never complain. Learning as an adult how much of an impact working on that movie had on James Cromwell, I stand by my love for the story and the aesthetic of slowing down and caring for your tribe in whatever way you can, against all adversity.

With my love of talking animals in media based on books (Homeward Bound, Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, Curious George — oh right, he doesn’t actually talk, I just have most of the earlier seasons of the tv show memorized), seeing the first trailer intrigued me immediately. What a voice cast! A murder mystery starring a Murder She Wrote sheep named Lily! Molly Gordon existing on the screen for a good portion of the film! Hugh Jackman is only in the first 20 minutes before he is murdered! What more could I ask for in a comedy featuring a flock of sheep?

I don’t want to give away the overall story, and definitely not the ending (although you probably could piece some of it together if you have read or watched many murder mysteries, this is, after all, a family film). I just think you should go watch it, with your parents, if possible. I’m certainly going to try to watch it with my own sometime this year after it is available digitally. It’s releasing on Mother’s Day weekend for a reason. I do, however, want to talk about what moved me in this silly cute comedy about some sheep solving a mystery and assisting a bumbling, incompetent local cop. Bear in mind, any quote from the movie is a paraphrase; I didn’t take notes, I am merely passing along the general ideas I took from the dialogue. This isn’t a movie review, it’s an essay about feelings, buds.

The people in this movie are obviously the ones who will commit and be caught for the crime, so I’m going to leave them for you to meet when you watch the movie. And so first, a brief list of the kinds of sheep we are following in this story. Lily, the smartest one; Mopple, the one who remembers; Sir Ritchfield, the oldest one; Cloud, the prettiest one; Wool-Eyes, the one who can’t see much; Ronnie and Reggie, the twin ones; Zora, the one who has a question; Sebastian, the lone one; The Winter Lamb, the outcast one.

This is a tale about sheep never losing their way after tragedies because they always close their eyes and count to three and forget the bad things happened. All except Mopple, who is blessed/cursed with the inability to forget anything. And you can see it in his eyes, those eyes that made me laugh so hard when I watched that one part of the trailer and later brought tears to my own while sitting in the dark theater. “Mopple, you have to promise not to let us remember after we forget.” And he does promise, with a sad, quiet sigh.

This is also a tale about sheep who lose their shepherd, the man they love so much who has cared for them and read stories to them and given them medicine when they are sick. He named every one of them and knew their personalities, gazing into their eyes and memorizing what he saw there so he could write about them in letters to someone far away, someone he loves just as much as those sheep. He wanted her to know his sheep, too.

But perhaps most importantly, this is a tale about sheep who know who they belong with: each other. When their shepherd is found dead, they learn from Mopple, the one who remembers, about death for the first time. Fearful to leave the pasture but desperate to solve the mystery of who killed their shepherd, the boldest few set off towards the little town to investigate. Lily and Mopple, guided by the exasperated but determined Sebastian, face their first crossroads. Literally. “What if we crossed together?” Pressing their heads and sides to one another, Lily and Mopple take their next steps in tandem. “I’m frightened.” Staring straight ahead, they make their paces across the pavement. “So am I, but we can keep going if we do it together.”

I was a church kid, and now I’m a church kid grown up. I’m a sucker for metaphors and imagery involving Biblical themes. This story is full of them. Obviously sheep and shepherds, but also good shepherds and bad shepherds and a local church leader who may not be shepherding well (there’s a VERY funny bit of dialogue where our protagonists learn from Sebastian who/what God is). The rescued sheep on the shepherd’s shoulders, the earnest sheep following their shepherd and knowing his voice and smell, the rejected winter sheep who is outcast because the other sheep decided he didn’t belong with them; it’s hard to ignore that kind of throughline.

Of course I couldn’t help but see myself in The Winter Lamb, looking eagerly into the crowd of older sheep and wishing to be accepted into the fold. And in Sebastian, the loner carrying trauma from his past life and loss of flock, a former winter lamb himself, willing to offer himself up to protect the flock he has gained but keeping himself at a location nearby rather than amongst them. Both living in isolation initially, both unwilling to change who they are.

In the decade of deconstructed faith life I have lived, and in the nearly as long a time I’ve been in a faith community that continues to welcome the outcasts and the trauma sufferers with gentle arms and kind words, I have never forgotten the feeling of being the sheep that was pushed out first, told that because I’m who I am, it just won’t be possible to let me be all of myself in those four walls of a community that was everything to me for the first 18+ years of my life. Even now, secure in a faith community that loves me unconditionally and unafraid to practice that faith as a queer person, I carry the more recent trauma of family rejecting my queerness in the context of their faith, with barbs that took chunks of flesh I won’t regrow.

Until watching The Sheep Detectives, a family movie starring one of the corniest adult theatre kids of our current time and a bunch of adorable CGI sheep, I didn’t feel ready to even bring up that wound because what if it gets worse for me when I do? That kind of heartbreak doesn’t just wipe off like the tears at the end of a cozy mystery comedy. I am The Winter Lamb, the eager baby who found a community after longing for one on the outskirts for years, but I am also Sebastian, the grieving adult carrying scars and trauma when my previous flock rejected me in one breath and asked me why I couldn’t just get over their caused harm in the next exhale. Current belonging doesn’t immediately erase past hurt or rejection. Nor should it.

A few weeks ago, I sat on my living room floor with my dear friends Abby and Brianne, reunited after a decade of online-only interactions for Brianne and me. Listening to my story of how I gained those scars, those two fellow flock belong-ers made it safe to reach that crucial stage of grief: acceptance. It didn’t feel good, but it wasn’t quite so scary anymore, either.

There’s a moment in The Sheep Detectives when Lily is face to face with deep grief for the first time, and her immediate instinct is to forget, like she and the other sheep always do. Collapsing on the ground, overwhelmed in the moment, she begs Mopple to let her just wipe it out as usual. Mopple insists with heartbreaking urgency that she must remember this loss. “But it hurts, Mopple,” Lily sobs. Mopple knows. He’s been carrying that grief alone for years.

“I can remember all of those sad things, but I can also remember all of the good things.”

I finally went to see Project Hail Mary today. Now, I know there are going to be numerous articles on this website and others written by people more qualified to gush about what a beautiful story that is, so this is not a piece about Ryan Gosling’s acting or the quality of the filmmaking or comparisons to the source material. I sobbed through probably a third of the runtime, off and on. People had warned me it would probably happen, but respectfully to my friends who cry way more than I do, I did not expect to actually do so myself to the extent that I did. No spoilers, but an awkward hug scene really messed me up, and that was before the biggest cry of them all.

When I drove home, still sniffling and running the windshield wipers as the sky wept with me, I processed through my plan for the rest of the day. Get home with my thrifted items from the morning and sit down to watch some Earth: Final Conflict, my current old sci fi show I’m working through. I’d tap around in my favorite iPad game and kill time with the show on in the background until it was time to drive to church and help Emily prep for Good Friday. And that’s what I started to do. I laid out my treasures across my bed, took a couple Snaps to send to my buds I’d promised to update on my findings, and turned on the tv in the living room. Plopped down in my chair and settled in, trying to remind myself of the current plot that wasn’t included in the Previously On segment, because again, it’s been on in the background while I puzzle or scroll my phone, I don’t always keep track of the episode to episode journey and I was more worried about relieving some of that emotional turmoil from earlier in the afternoon with my previous media choice.

If you aren’t familiar with the plot of Earth: Final Conflict, it ran from 1997 to 2002, telling the story of an alternate Earth being occupied by an alien race claiming to be here to better the world with their tech and advanced intellect, but actually seeking to use the human race to continue to evolve their own and fight back against their alien race enemies, the Jaridians. I’m on season four of five currently, the turn of the century marking the sci fi technology in ways I love. The Taelons, our alien antagonists (well, usually) are called Companions, with some of the human lead characters serving as their Companion Protectors, or body guards. The main character of the show, Liam Kincaid, leads the Resistance fighting to take back control of Earth, while serving in his day job as a Companion Protector to Da’an, who is, on a good day, the alien equivalent of a middle of the road Democrat Congressman wringing their hands and saying “Someone needs to take away all this power from the president!” on social media, and on a less bright morning, the Susan Collins of Congress (“Someone should have taken away all this power from the president before all of this happened, but it’s too late now and he learned his lesson, so be nice to him!”). Okay, back to the reason I’m writing about the show.

Season four, episode 12, titled Dark Matter, caught my attention. I won’t rest here with the plot for long, because I think it’s just an interesting episode to watch without knowing the turnout ahead of time, but one element contributed to my musings for the rest of the day. Liam has known since the beginning of his existence that he is part alien, and contains power that could serve the people of Earth well if he ever found a good time to use it. When the Taelons on the Mothership are frozen in time within the boundaries of their vessel because of a dark matter explosion (it’s complicated), Liam goes aboard with his typical crew to attempt to stop Ronald Sandoval, his fellow Companion Protector and human wind-up soldier in a suit, from causing some major life altering trouble for everyone. Since the time freeze doesn’t affect humans, Liam is popping out in all the important rooms and setting timers and typing on all the screens when Sandoval comes around the corner with his alien weapon, ready to stop Liam from stopping him. And then a bright flash appears in the room with them, revealing Ha’gel, an important glowy alien human guy who I truly do not remember from earlier in the series, but he is definitely a big deal to Liam, who you will recall is part alien. This freezes Sandoval where he stands, arm outstretched and ready to fire, and Liam has an emotional exchange with Ha’gel about sacrificing the alien part of him as part of his destiny to become fully human and ultimately save Earth from the Taelons.

Now initially when I watched this scene, I thought about the implications of a Christ figure showing his face on Earth and choosing not to use the physical power available to him to save the people from oppression, but rather using his words to teach and subversively change the culture, which is a trope in storytelling beyond the Bible but I definitely have that point of reference because of my religious background and current belief system. Again, I don’t want to dwell too much on the overall plot, but Liam does follow a non lethal path of resistance to tyranny as a general rule in the show. When the credits rolled on my tv, I sat with my thoughts folding over one another like a table cloth not quite ready to be placed back in the drawer after the Good Friday communion.

I’ve thought of Easter weekend in a much different context post-deconstruction, focusing a whole lot more on a man who taught a radical message of loving your neighbor and resisting empire with community care and organization, so radical that the state murdered him for fear that he would cause an uprising of oppressed people who rejected any kind of kingship that put people in different economic and social and racial classes. I know, fitting for the current timeline, and I’m the 8000th person to write about that this year alone, but it’s still a new story angle for a lot of people in every retelling. Imagine loving your community so deeply that you see no other move than to embed yourself in the day to day advocacy for the betterment of everyone’s lives, serving every person and treating them with equal dignity and grace. That’s such a Jesus thing, it’s THE Jesus thing.

I said that a Christ figure is a common trope in fiction, the person who sacrifices everything for the good of others because there is no other alternative. The obvious difference in the Project Hail Mary story is one that I won’t spoil, but I do think that despite that difference, we land in the same place by the end. Dr. Ryland Grace fights like hell to find the solution that will save humanity back on Earth while he is unreachable in space with a single alien companion. Throughout the runtime, Grace becomes more and more aware that he only has one option: give up his chance of seeing solid ground again in order to send back the life saving solution to the people waiting on a dying world and help his best friend find his way home, too.

Earth: Final Conflict is maybe a more clean cut version of this trope, slowly setting up Liam Kincaid as a leather jacket wearing, bleached blonde buzz cut sporting, clean shaven version of a Christ figure, with his palms sometimes lighting up with powerful energy that leaves behind painful round marks on his hands for days afterwards. Kincaid is not from Earth; he becomes a man five minutes after he is birthed by a mother who was given a pregnancy by an alien of a different race seeking a future that involves freedom from the Taelon oppressors. In a final act of his alien self, he raises his palms and merges that power with that of his father to become fully human, and what is set into motion will change the course of the Resistance moving forward.

This year even more than any other year, Good Friday signifies freedom from oppression to me. It displays a commitment to fighting for a version of the world where the powerful no longer press their booted feet to the necks of the disenfranchised, and an awareness that until everyone is free, none of us are. Maybe that’s why we need to keep sitting with the Friday half of the Easter coin, because we just keep forgetting that there are so many more chances to give up everything for the sake of love of neighbor. I think we zero in on the dying part of the story, which is certainly a valuable place to sit and learn, but in the backseat of this story van is what led up to it, and that’s where my mind is at this weekend. Loving your neighbor is dangerous to the status quo, and that’s why so many in power don’t want us to learn to do it. Because when we see inequality and violence and corruption and we push back, it lays a foundation of belief in the ability we each have to see someone other than ourselves as important to the story, as necessary to the end of the narrative.

So when I sobbed through Dr. Grace building a coalition with someone so different than him in the middle of deep space, and when I sat glued to my tv while Liam Kincaid raised his hands and ended his link to an alien race in order to someday save his human friends from their oppressors, and when I stood still and quiet in a dark sound booth by the glow of three computer screens and listened to the ever familiar story of Jesus being paraded before an angry mob and chosen to be put to death by the state for the crimes of loving the alien and the sex worker and the tax collector and breaking with tradition to heal the sick on the Sabbath and allowing his feet to be washed with perfume and tears by a poor woman instead of going to wealthy citizens’ homes for dinner…I couldn’t stop thinking about the sacrificial love that all of it represents. Every person deserves a home and a world to thrive in, so we go on missions of scientific greatness in hopes of making that possible, sometimes losing everything in the process. Every resistance to systems of oppression starts with a few folks saying “Nope, this isn’t right,” and then actually networking with their communities to educate and house and clothe and feed a generation of kinder people rather than just writing think pieces or making a social justice post on Instagram a couple times a month. Every system of oppression can be defeated with love, because love is the embodiment of who Jesus is, and who we can be. That active, socially engaged version of loving with food banks and gender affirming surgeries and affordable housing and legal defense funds and well stocked free little libraries in every neighborhood.

I’m ready for Easter Sunday, but I’ll keep Good Friday in the front seat as we pull around the corner of the weekend. Because both halves equal one part of the Good News that will someday free us, even if it’s light years and a bodily transformation away.

Shower thoughts sometimes hit you so hard you actually have to laugh out loud. Normally my shower time is reserved for having an Existential Crisis and wishing I could go back and end that conversation about three hours before it started, but every once in a while, you really latch onto an idea like a tick on a scruff and you only have one choice: finish the shower while casting the VeggieTales classic, Lyle The Kindly Viking, with human actors of our current time.

I recently watched the new live action remake of How To Train Your Dragon with some friends. I hadn’t seen the original since a couple years after it came out, if I recall correctly, so my memory of the story was fuzzy going in. It didn’t take long for me to realize just how much this story had similarities to the even older VT story, and I went home afterwards to watch it, too. Short and sweet, because it’s accompanied by a Hamlet parody and a Silly Song, but the Vikings storyline with a big scary guy in charge1 and a little wimpy guy as the hero just connected the two pieces of media perfectly for this very silly idea I had tonight. Hold that thought while we take care of some housekeeping.

First of all, this is a musical. Sven (Larry) reminds us of this fact often and it’s a running bit. Keep that in mind for when I cast Larry. Let’s take a look at our main characters in the original episode. For reference, I am pulling from the VeggieTales Wiki page for LTKV and editorializing slightly when it feels necessary to the piece. That means my formatting is probably going to follow theirs, and disclaimer, it isn’t consistent down the page. Also, I am only going to be casting the portion of the episode that is actually Lyle The Kindly Viking.

Bob the Tomato as Ottar

Larry the Cucumber as Sven

Archibald Asparagus as himself

Junior Asparagus as the titular Mister Kindly

Jimmy Gourd as Harold

Jerry Gourd as Erik

Mr. Lunt as Bjorn

Mr. Nezzer as Olaf

Mabel as herself

Penelope as herself

Pa Grape as the lead monk

Various Peas as monks

Alright, now that we have that out of the way. Let’s get to the “and potatoes” of this thing.

I told you to hold that thought earlier, and I hope you did, because Gerard Butler as Mr. Nezzer is an obvious choice in this context. The man has range. He used to be a bounty hunter and live on Nim’s Island and now he’s an airplane pilot and gets into shape to reprise his 24-year-old role as Stoick. So of course he’s playing Olaf, the big scary Viking In Charge.

Junior Asparagus is difficult to cast. In case you are unaware, this boy is canonically (and forever) five years old. Since I’m not really in the habit of keeping up with kids in Hollywood these days, I think it’s appropriate to do the opposite of VT (who regularly casts Junior as characters who are far older and more mature than he is capable of being in his tiny body) and cast an adult man as Lyle. I have to admit, this is the casting decision that made me laugh out loud while rinsing shampoo out of my hair. Timothée Chalamet, or as I like to call him, Tim Cham.

The guy is getting all the roles in Hollywood right now. He’s like if Chris Pratt wasn’t a shitty guy - constantly being cast in movies that Jeremy Allen White is more qualified for. I’m just saying, picture this anemic toothpick of a man doing his best Junior The Asparagus, singing Dear Monks. I’ll wait. It’s so funny, maybe only to me and three other people, but it’s so funny to us. Move over, Wonka.

Okay, the two big names in the story are out of the way. Time for some straight up fan casts, right?

Have you ever seen the film Logan Lucky? It’s one of my favorite heist movies, and the two brothers are played by Channing Tatum and Adam Driver. Very funny, also a great commentary on class inequality and law enforcement inefficiency. As soon as I remembered this, I knew they had to play the Gourd Brothers. Imagine, Channing as Jimmy and Adam as Jerry. Impeccable. The Gourds play Harold and Erik in this story. As a side note, Logan Lucky also stars Daniel Craig as a redneck hardened criminal who eats boiled eggs, and that is perfect if you want to cast him as Scooter in the first story of this episode, Omelet. That man can absolutely play a Scottish baker with a bushy mustache and I need to see it right now. I know I said we were sticking to the main story, but that is an important exception.

Despite being the main dudes on the counter normally, Bob and Larry don’t play as large of a role in this episode as they often do. That being said, there is a rather ridiculous and amusing musical number called Look Olaf in which the boy besties must be pretty energetic and hop around on a bunch of boat oars and such, so their human counterparts (heh) should be pretty solid in the music department, but preferably also have good comedy chops.

For Bob, I’m proposing Seth Meyers, and here’s why. I want Andy Samberg as Larry, and those two dudes are besties IRL. I think Andy has the perfect energy for Larry, who is a dork but always seems to be the most beloved in the room, and Seth can be the straight man in the comedy duo while running his own show, which is the most Bob energy I can think of.

While we’re on a trend of late night hosts/actors, Archibald Asparagus will, of course, be played by Stephen Colbert. Beloved figure in our current time, bespectacled and classy, perfect to sit by the fire and read the story of Lyle The Kindly Viking to us. Forget the accent, we’re just giving our boy some easy work between gigs because we love him so much. Also he is an exact match for the vibe I am picturing, anyway.

Mr. Lunt is a tricky one. You can go for someone with an accent, or you can go for someone who can do an accent that’s a match for how comically exaggerated that guy’s in every episode. So I submit to you: Jack Black, specifically the vibe he brought to Nacho Libre. A legend on his own, with the range for villain or hero, lover or wacky nerd professor, Jack already has the proof of mustache for Mr. Lunt. A dramatic actor who can commit to any physicality you ask him to achieve, perfect for playing a gourd who has no bellybutton. Mr. Lunt plays Bjorn, who isn’t one of the primary roles, which gives Jack more time to perform silly music routines on Jimmy Fallon between shoot weeks.

Pa Grape plays the head monk, aka the only adult monk in the story. This is one of the few necessarily older roles in the cast. Let me throw this out there: Jeff Bridges. The older that man gets, the harder it is to understand him, making him a perfect voice for Pa Grape. Now, there are some slight stereotypes in the voice acting role of Pa Grape that we are leaving behind by casting a man who talks like he has marbles falling out of his mouth, but I don’t think that’s all bad.

And not to give Mr. Bridges more attention than anyone else, but since he is playing a monk, I think it is perfectly fair to mention that one of my other favorite roles is as a Catholic priest (or is he?) in Bad Times At The El Royale. If you haven’t checked that one out, highly recommend.

The kid peas barely have a speaking role, but they do accept pot holders from Lyle and dance on top of Olaf’s head. That’s pretty funny. I’m casting the entire gang from the Star Wars series Skeleton Crew. They’re perfect for it.

You’ll notice that this episode barely has any women, but does feature Penelope and Mabel as spouses, and they have an opening number in this musical. So we will need vocalists. I’m gonna go out on a limb that I think you will enjoy: Olivia Colman and Meryl Streep. I think we could get them, especially if you look at the rest of the cast. Olivia seems down for anything and my love for her knows no bounds. God, I need to hear her sing the line “Good morning, Mabel, how are you, dear?” Meryl and Olivia are just a perfect pairing (which is not meant to be a joke about how Penelope is a yellow gourd but I always thought she was a pear when I was a kid).

To be fair, I was not even a little bit in order with my casting choices, but I did go in order of prominence in my mind. While this does open the door to the same actors playing their vegetable counterparts (again, heh), I think it also leaves room for other casting choices to be made. After all, there are no rules here, this is an animated children’s show turned into a live action remake of a Vikings-themed musical.

Another reminder this visual has brought upon me, though, is from the far-ish past, to my favorite episode of I Love Lucy, ever. But before we talk about why I love that episode more than any other in the six seasons full of banger physical bits and quotes I still run through my head on the regular, we should discuss the context from which this show impacted my middle school and high school self. So hold that thought. And maybe you are part of the 0.001% of people in my life who MIGHT understand why I now immediately am thinking, “I said hold it,” in proper Three Stooges on the football field fashion.

Anyway. So sorry for the interruption.

Back in the mid aughts, still teasing at the beginning of our most recent previous housing crisis, back when Kmart still breathed with its off-white shiny floors and giant flashing blue light and aisles full of Barbies and GI Joes just waiting for young Johnson children to purchase for their ever-growing collection and create new stories with the phrase, “okay but pretend like…”, there stood a DVD display near the checkout counters, featuring Season Six of I Love Lucy on the south-facing shelves of the four-sided kiosk (don’t ask me why I can picture this so vividly, I do not know). Now at this point, the Johnson family owned fewer than 10 DVDs, and 90% of that collection contained those five dollar six-episode compilations of The Three Stooges, Dick Van Dyke, or The Beverly Hillbillies. The closest we had gotten to approaching a full season of a series was the thicker box of discs containing four or five episodes of 20 or so classic shows, even a couple episodes of the Hillbillies in color! I’m pretty sure this is the first time I am realizing that Miss Hathaway really made an impact on my current taste when she was on the screen in full color. What a fun real time moment for ME.

So the day we brought home the sixth season of a show we had previously only gotten to watch on tv when we happened to be at someone’s house who had cable, everything changed forever. I really do think this purchase is what started my lifelong dedication to owning physical media. This season contained one iconic episode after another, with guest stars like Bob Hope and George Reeves in plotlines that aren’t even in my top 10 out of the 27 episodes (although Hope’s tobacco bit with Lucy in the baseball storyline is certainly very funny, even if it is extremely dated). This was the last season of I Love Lucy, and if you know the context of the married stars being at constant odds with one another, you can see through that in some places. But it also changes scenery more than once, with a vacation to Florida and Cuba before they permanently move to the country and have an entirely new set for the last 17 episodes of the series. (Truly, this show is embroidered into my memory like a cross-stitched pattern framed on the wall of my brain.)

We would watch several episodes in a day, sprawled out on the living room floor, our viewing times spread out between meals and schoolwork. We quoted lines to our parents from every new episode over clinking forks and swinging bare feet under the dinner table. As the season progressed and the Ricardos, followed later by the Mertzes, moved to the countryside, we scootched closer to the screen and giggled at the constant disruption of Ricky’s routine and the latest expansion of Lucy’s world of mishaps.

And this leads us to the proper scenery for my favorite episode of television of all time: Lucy Does The Tango. It feels appropriate to be discussing it now, with weak jokes about egg prices flying left and right over the very real approaching darkness of a recession that is already upon us, an attempt to distract us from human rights violations and increasingly difficult times for minorities and low income folks. If you know the plot of this episode, you are already shaking your head in bemusement at the timing.

Now, I won’t spoil the iconic scene, because it deserves to be watched in its entirety before it is discussed. So consider this your only homework before finishing this post. Watch the video below and then come back here.

Lucy Does The Tango

Okay, did you watch it? Please tell me you watched it.

I love this scene. The rest of the episode is also fun, but this scene alone has kept it at the top of my list of television episodes even after watching dozens of other series since I first saw this episode in 2006 from the carpet of my living room. The concept of carrying that many eggs under your blouse without dropping any, in a live performance that would be difficult, if not impossible, to reshoot in front of the same audience with the same reaction; the dedication from Vivian Vance to stand wide eyed on the side of the scene, unbreaking; the sheer willpower of both Lucy and Desi to perform that dance with the knowledge that they were about to get very eggy; the record breaking live laughter after the event occurs. It quite literally holds the record for the longest recorded live laughter, to this day, with a length of one minute and five seconds. What I wouldn’t give to be in the room experiencing this type of history with other people who were just as eager to be surprised and then laugh together. Forget the chocolate factory scene (which isn’t even close to the funniest scene of THAT episode, mind you), Lucy breaking three dozen eggs under her blouse because her husband pulls her into a dramatic finishing embrace while tango music plays is a visual that you’ll never forget.

I think the absurdity of this scenario, while not the strangest or even the most elaborate moment of the series, informed my taste in humor so strongly that I can find its influence in what I watch now, as well as how I approach comedy in an everyday setting as an untrained but always seeking to be funny person. Shows I watched as a kid mostly fit into the same vein as I Love Lucy, if we’re not talking just about PBS programming. The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, not to mention Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews in both tv and film, Tony Shaloub in much more recent tv history, and whispers of Red Green (despite the latter two being much less women-forward than the rest).

Looking to my current regular comedy consumption on YouTube, specifically certain cast members of Smosh like Amanda Lehan-Canto, Angela Giarratana, and Tommy Bowe, or Dropout’s Vic Michaelis and Ify Nwadiwe, I see the same nobody-gets-hurt style of absurd physical comedy with characters who find themselves in absolutely wacky and sometimes confusing settings. Word play blended with facial expressions that invite an audience to lean closer to the screen and catch every second of banter, because you never know when someone might quirk that eyebrow at just the right angle to sell the punchline, or supplement a subtle callback with a simple repetition of a physical movement several minutes later. Letterkenny brings the often crude but always clever and fast dialogue in a much less PBS-friendly form of Canadian humor than Red Green.

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I am also keeping in mind my hundreds of hours of podcast consumption per year (Spotify Wrapped only had one stat I was proud of in 2024). The wide range of both audio and video shows featuring the McElroy Family’s banter and research, the nonsense improv games in every episode of Dr. Gameshow, the smart and coordinated improvised character work of Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists, the light banter over one star reviews in Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet, the queer perspective and unabashedly brazen humor on Two Dykes and a Mic; my interest in all of this and other shows in the comedy realm is all laid out on a path that leads back to the comedy styles of Lucille Ball and Dick Van Dyke, Bob Newhart and Mary Tyler Moore. Some very physical and unforgettable visual comedy, some quick witted yet simple banter, and shows that put women’s voices at the front of the stage, and challenged the status quo for their times without becoming repetitious or using punchlines that cut anyone down with slurs or cruelty in the process.

Somewhere buried under all of these broken egg yolks and shells of comedy musings, we have reached the end of this thought I’ve been sitting with. No one is going to have identical taste in what is funny. But in this current period of history we are making, I see more and more of a longing for that silly and absurd humor, with smart quips and commitment to the long form joke that ends in someone going all-in on a physical bit. Escapism, one might call it, and that one would be correct. But I think the other aspect to that style of funny is empathy. Putting yourself into the shoes of this fictional person, in this fictional scenario, and just asking what you might do if you understood their motivation as a person in that moment. There’s a lot of kindness to possible versions of ourselves layered under there. What could be viewed as just a scene of old television where someone dances with three dozen eggs under their shirt could also be viewed as an opportunity to be living in bodies that get into harmless trouble without loss of relationship or housing or finances or health. An inexpensive and intelligent experiment for adults and children alike, with the statement, “okay but pretend like…”

I don’t remember exactly how old I was, or why my cousin Jenna and I were on a road trip with Grandpa Ron and Grandma Marge. But I do remember us stopping at a McDonald’s in Altoona, the one with the player piano. Back in the days when fast food was a treat and not an easy depression meal, so it was actually good because I hadn’t known the disappointment of a cold McDonald’s burger and fries yet. Jenna and I shared a small fry, and for some reason they hadn’t salted them. Being old enough to make dumb, impulsive decisions but not so old that we would recognize them as such, we each opened salt packets and dumped the contents on the fries. Too young to be unsupervised but not so young that our grandparents would stop us from learning a valuable lesson about too much sodium. I’m sure they were amused but I have no memory of any details past that wild revelation Jenna and I shared together.

Grandpa Ron died 10 days ago, as of writing this. Grief is a weird monster when you’re nearly 31 and your grandparent has been living with health issues for over half your life. It’s almost like you’ve been holding your breath for so long, it has become muscle memory to only let out a third of the air every time bad or worse news pops up in that group message with your mom. I think all of the past two weeks have been a slow-release pill of acceptance and sorrow that I expected to suddenly explode inside my consciousness when we sat in the church pew on Monday morning. And to a certain extent, that IS what happened. The burst of emotion, anyway.

The requested psalm at my grandpa’s service was Psalm 91. Because writing this is a part of my grieving process, I’m making the decision right now not to filter my disappointment in the pastor who chose to preach a sermon intentionally excluding that requested psalm, instead replacing it with Psalm 90. I’ll let you look that one up on your own, if you so choose, because we’re going to talk about the one my grandma and aunts and mom had agreed upon with that pastor before he decided to go rogue in a move from the pulpit that, to be perfectly transparent, filled me with rage that dried my tears during a time when I expected to be comforted in some small way in the midst of fresh grief. This is an essay written in honor of who my grandpa was.

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”

Few people in my life have ever embodied belief in God’s safety and shelter like Grandpa Ron did. Even when the handwriting in my birthday cards became shakier and less certain, the words never wavered in their steadfast expression of love for me, and reminders of how often he prayed for my wellbeing and quality of life. All those Saturday mornings shifting my socked feet on the soft carpet to find comfort in the texture while I rested my hands on the back of an intricately carved dining room chair, listening to Grandpa’s particularly soft timbre as he thanked God for provision, and for family, and for all the blessings before us. That squatty little can of root beer awaited me in the red cooler by the patio door but Grandpa had to thank God for it before I could work my way around the buffet with my plate and load up on Grandma’s perfect dinner rolls and way too many cheesy potatoes. Grandpa was never in a hurry to finish thanking God. “We thank you, Lord, for your provision, and for your many blessings. For family…for good food…for every opportunity to glorify you. Bless our time together…and may it be honoring to you.”

Surely he will save you
from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.

He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

Grandpa’s birthday was right after Valentine’s Day, and for years in my earlier childhood, our family would book hotel rooms for the nearest weekend to that date for a birthday party. Pizza and pop and sweet treats that varied by the year, because that’s what Grandpa loved and so did his grandkids, so we never complained. Memories of our gatherings in some event room are distinct, right down to the style of table we’d all gather around to take our grandkid picture with Grandpa at some point during that Friday evening, that typical patterned border strip running along the wallpaper serving as a backdrop for six awkward elementary and middle school cousins displaying gaps between their new teeth and smudges on their first pair of glasses as they posed around Grandpa seated in the place of honor. Mom got us into making Valentines to pass out to every family member, and my most vividly and fondly remembered party was the year we made mustaches out of thin foam and punched a hole in the middle to slip a Tootsie Pop and a little note into the carefully shaped piece.

After dinner, we’d usually go swimming with Grandpa in the hotel pool, the windows of the pool room fogged up from the contrasting warmth of the humid interior and the February chill of the exterior. Whether we were in between swimming lesson summers or sticking by the shallow end until he could steady us where our feet touched the bottom a bit less confidently, I always knew I could grab Grandpa’s shoulders when my security in the water felt threatened. His laugh would ring across the echoey chamber of water when one of us popped our head out of the water with goggles dripping and hair plastered back.

You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,

nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.

Cancer, heart issues, broken bones, and other unexpected obstacles stood in Grandpa’s path as I became old enough to understand the severity of such physical ailments. It was the ever-hovering threat, punctuated by visits to Mayo Clinic for years on end, that stayed in the back of my mind every time I thought of my grandparents beginning in middle and high school. Yet every family gathering was marked by Grandpa’s laughter, and the glint in his eye when he looked at Grandma and called “oh Marjorie!” in a falsetto trembling with a barely contained chuckle.

His enthusiasm for life and for seeing his grandkids accomplish things never lessened, even when chemo was the necessary route during my college years and early twenties. My college graduation in 2016, then Michael’s in 2017, then Nat’s wedding reception in 2021…we didn’t expect him to be around for any of those events, and yet there he was, with a smile on his face and a word about God’s blessing and how proud he was of us. No matter how much pain he lived with, he never wanted to miss celebrating his family, because they were so very important to him.

A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.

You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.

There’s been a running joke in the Herrington family for as long as I can remember, where Grandpa’s luck just never ran out and all he had to do was casually fill out a survey or drop his name and number in a bowl and wait for the drawing to reveal his name as the winner of an obscure prize. Super Bowl tickets, free t-shirts, a giant Hershey bar that took the strength of three people to cut into chunks on his dining room table and distribute amongst the grandkids in Ziploc bags with their names written in Sharpie. That luck passed on to my mom, and then to me, with the little wink and acknowledgement that maybe luck doesn’t even exist and we just all ended up in the right places at the right times.

Because after all, sometimes Mom’s wins have been linked to her photography, which she genuinely earned by a natural eye for framing shots and focusing on the right scenes. The click and high-pitched whine of Grandpa’s film camera after the flash is imprinted in my mind when I think of specific pictures in our albums, pictures he took of us on our bikes or in his garden, on the metal slide at the park near his house, huddled around the tree in his living room or hanging from the tree in his front yard (well, one of us hanging with tongue sticking out and the other standing on the grass with one small hand grasping the branch and a squinty-eyed smile stretched from ear to ear with relief to not be off the ground). That talent for capturing moments was inherited.

If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
and you make the Most High your dwelling,

no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.

When Dad started gutting and renovating the two story farm house in the backyard of our trailer home, most people didn’t believe he could complete the task. After all, he was a full time farmer with a full time wife and full time small kids living in that trailer. But Grandpa believed in Dad, his son-in-law whom he loved like his own child with no doubt in his abilities. My first memories of my grandparents are linked to the mornings we would knock on the guest room door in the addition built on the back of the trailer, wait for a quiet “come in!” and then crawl into the hide-a-bed between Grandpa and Grandma, nestled in their safety and grandparent scents as the light peeked through the curtains across the room by the back door. And then to the days Grandpa and Dad would work on the house while we baked bread with Grandma, and the nights cuddled up between them on the floor in front of the couch to listen to them take turns reading us one book each.

Grandpa lovingly refinished the woodwork in the house, all the pieces laid out in his garage as he stripped the old finish and sanded and revarnished them. He helped Dad dig out a basement by hand, amazed at the enormity of the task and aware that many had scoffed at my dad’s idea to put his entire house on jacks and pour a full basement beneath it, but faithful in his support for what would create a safe shelter for his daughter and her family during any future storms. Then later when the house was nearly completed, Grandpa’s further labor of love produced a set of chairs completely restored and placed around the new kitchen table Dad had installed.

For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;

they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

During college, my grandparents started checking in with me about the campus jobs I worked in, always interested in stories of my writing tutor sessions and film projects I was squeezing in between what was sometimes three jobs and 18 credits. When I moved to Ames and struggled to find a purpose for my life in the summer after graduation, I knew they were praying for me every day. They were just so proud of me for graduating. Several times in those first years on my own, my car would be undriveable and word would get back to Grandpa, and he’d call me to check in and chat about everything else, then sneak in an offer to pay for a car part if I couldn’t manage it. “We’re just so grateful you have a job, and that you’re finding things you like to do, and we pray every day that you’re safe and healthy.”

I remember those phone calls becoming even more important during Covid, when their health was far more important to my siblings and me than risking a visit. Grandma would ask us to describe what we were eating for dinner, and Grandpa would chime in from across the room with some remark about the dessert we mentioned eating for a recent birthday. “Grandpa says that sounds pretty good, and please send him a piece!” Grandma would say, and then Grandpa would come to the phone and ask the same questions Grandma had, because he hadn’t heard all the answers on the speaker phone. Then he’d pray for us on the phone, that steady quiet voice taking its time to finish each sentence, like lingering with God in that space for a collective 30 extra seconds added such seasoning to the moment that it couldn’t be sped up even a millisecond.

“Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

He will call on me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.

With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”

Grandpa was ready. He’d been ready for a long, long time. That paradox of his soul being prepared to be with Jesus for decades upon decades, but his body fighting for the same amount of time to beat cancer odds and heal broken bones and battle pneumonia and heart scares so he could do one more Thanksgiving, one more Christmas, one more birthday party with Aunt Stacey’s apple pie and Mom’s sweet potatoes and a plate full of cake and ice cream with a cookie tucked under a napkin for later. Year after year, it was one more of everything, and we kept leaning into the salt Grandpa’s life added to ours. Even when the burden of worry about him felt like a lead weight on my back, we marked it as another chance to see him slowly rally and show up to offer yet another prayer before our shared meal, and another opportunity to giggle at his expert flirtations with Grandma from across the room.

In the shelter of those wings he called his refuge and fortress, Grandpa poured salt on every small fry his family passed him, with measured amounts of wisdom and faith and the self control of a man who knew where he was headed someday. Grandpa Ron lived, long, and he loved, longer, somehow.

If you’re curious, I did get Archibald Asparagus and yes, I did take that personally; I may be a high functioning anxious oldest child with OCD who produces church livestreams and spends their free time ranting to whoever will listen about how every educated person should be required to take a rhetoric course and an Internet literacy course before they enter the workforce, but I would never rush out in the middle of a song and scold my bald green friend for singing about his special interest. That would interrupt the production, and for what, correcting an overstatement? Maybe most people DO have a water buffalo, I can’t assume my own experience is anyone else’s. And I would absolutely never tell ANYONE to stop being so silly. I am also so silly.

Personally I think I am more of a combination of the gourd brothers, but I’m not really interested in piloting a space craft or eating a giant ball of popcorn to save the galaxy, so I guess Jimmy and Jerry just have a similar quirky sense of humor to my own and that is where the similarities end. Oh, and I guess I also would burp in my spacesuit if I did end up eating all that popcorn. You can’t really help it at that point, it’s just so much butter and corn and those aren’t the most easily digestible once you hit your thirties.

Which makes me wonder how old Jimmy and Jerry actually are, canonically. I’m almost 31 and I feel like those guys have seen some shit by this point. Outer space, for one, but also if you walked around a gigantic wall in the hot sun for days and days, and some French guys in helmets were launching purple slushies at you because they just wanted to be kind of annoying until you stopped walking, eventually you would also give up and be a pizza delivery guy. Of course, you’re still known to be hungry all the time, so if you end up eating some guy’s pizza when you can’t find his house number and then when you do find him, he kinda looks like your old boss who told you to walk around that freaking wall every day, you wouldn’t feel so bad about it. Obviously he won’t tip you. You didn’t call and say you were driving around the same block for 20 minutes, you just stood outside the house with the upside-down six on the front and listened to a weird song about a pizza angel? You’re also known to love singing, but your brother isn’t working with you here and you only really sing with him, like you’re Bing and Danny after the war. SO awkward when you realize that actually IS your old boss and he lives in the neighborhood you deliver in now. Hopefully he couldn’t recognize you without the slushie in your ear. You definitely have to pack your bags and move away.

But anyway, maybe the brothers are in their thirties by now. Time moves really weird in the VT universe; Junior has been five years old for so MANY decades, and his hot mom literally never looks any older but she has to be in her sixties by now, right? There aren’t many women in the VT original universe but all of them are femmes and if the writers would like to take some notes from me, maybe Petunia should have been more butch. The red hair is hot but you already have Esther causing all kinds of gay panic across the entire gender spectrum so let’s just give Petunia a couple roles where she gets to swing across a pit of worms on a rope without clinging to Minnesota? Archeology or journalism, both very good for androgenous women looking to discover new meaning in events that happened centuries ago. She is lit-rally a fruit. Also Esther only shows up that one time and that’s quitter talk but maybe they actually did know what they had done to us.

There was that weird period of time when Phil Vischer was first out in the cold and Big Idea Productions was trying to come back from bankruptcy (thanks Jonah, you would thrive in theaters during the current cursed timeline of Angel Studios existing but some guys gave really sketch business advice in the early 2000s) and if you didn’t have cable and only a few stations came in on your tv out in the sticks of southwest Iowa, on Saturday mornings you could catch some reduced old stories from the golden years spliced between some newer, lower budget animation (I know, saying a lot here) of Bob and Larry experiencing some Odd Couple episode type situations in their shared home. Read into that whatever you want but I am convinced that those are a couple of queer roommates who really are JUST roommates. Bob and Larry are gay but not WITH each other, that would be so messed up, they’re practically brothers. Also Larry would be such an annoying boyfriend, my God. Zero hate to my ADHD girlies but good grief that boy needs to take a minute and get diagnosed so he can be a better coworker and roommate.

There’s an episode where Larry wants to be cool and special (oh honey, you are and we love you) so he wears an oven mitt on his head, but it’s covering his eyes so he falls into the sink and Bob has to tell him the story of Rack, Shack, and Benny to show him he can be different. Spoiler alert, that’s the name of the episode.

I’m pretty sure this is the episode we meet Mr. Nezzer for the first time, and it sets up future lore that is later revealed in The Toy That Saved Christmas, when you find out the Nezzer family is really a dynasty of factory owners (derogatory). Some families own thousands of acres to farm for generations, others pass their chiropractic practice to their nephew and retire in Florida, and some just have to be special and be factory owners who ignore all OSHA regulations and inspire a generation of children to grow up and be anti-capitalists in their thirties when the world is burning and no one can pay rent and have a savings account at the same time. That’s the Nezzers for ya. Big boys who love their toys and their chocolate so much that they build statues and own their own television network aboutit. But at least Nebby K touched grass before he had to go eat it.

Rack, Shack, and Benny truly radicalized me, though. It took me a long time to recognize just how impactful it was to hear the song Good Morning, George as a kid, but a lighthearted tune about abuses of power and wage inequality really comes to mind quite often now as I work in the dying print industry. Stand up for what you believe in, even if that’s just demanding a paid 15 minute break every shift or telling your supervisor that you are actually standing cuz the guy is too biased against tomatoes to immediately be able to identify when one is standing or sitting? Call him on that shit in front of his boss! He’ll have to admit you’re right eventually!

Also, it is always Laura’s fault but even broken carrots are right twice a day (once at almost 8 o’clock and the other around 4 or so when she swerves in to catch you before you land in a fiery furnace). Not really work wife material but you’ll make small talk in the breakroom now. She works in shipping and you work in production so you don’t really have time to talk much otherwise, anyway.

I think I also learned more helpful Spanish from Dance of the Cucumber, the Silly Song, than I did in the entire run of using the Rosetta Stone curriculum. More evidence of Larry being a very annoying coworker, intentionally irritating Bob when he knows Bob just wants everything to work right the first time and put on a good show for everyone. It’s for the kids, Larry, come ON. I’m realizing now that Bob yelling “I’ll show YOU no comprendo” kinda blends with him yelling “and I’ve got a LIST” in my mind, so I guess next time we need to talk about the interesting messaging of Oh Santa in the midst of yet another anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist story, the aforementioned The Toy That Saved Christmas. Obviously the best animated Christmas story to ever be sent direct to video. But now I am channeling Larry and I apologize, we were discussing Bob.

So what have we learned today? I can’t speak for you. However, I do think that Qwerty would probably show me an image of a 17-year-old wearing a homemade Madame Blueberry t-shirt to go to dinner with their cousins in 2011 and be like “this you?” Followed by a second image:

And unfortunately this IS me.

The black piano sat up on stage, Louise Hart’s skilled wrinkled fingers touching the keys with confidence. She was my favorite teacher from when I was littler, I liked to watch how she rocked left and right slightly as she played, the lamp over her sheet music glowing on her glasses lenses, and I thought about those core Sunday and MOPS day memories where her soft voice would read to us. She had the best laugh and the best hugs. I could always run up and get both from her, but right now I had to stay in our row, it was singing time. The grownups loved me because I always followed the rules. Sometimes they laughed at me when I said something without thinking about it first, but I never knew why, only that I wished I could just remember the times they smiled but didn’t laugh after I said something that wasn’t supposed to be funny.

Mom held a hymnal in her hands, and I could follow along if I wanted. Dad was so much taller, he would hold his own book if there were enough in our row. It was always funny to me when they shared one and I didn’t have to see over Mom’s head to read along anymore. Up front, a finger periodically crept into the glow of the sheet on the overhead. That was funny, too. This time we were starting “Give Thanks,” one of my favorites because of that one part where the voices mixed together really nice at the end of the verse. Give thanks with a grateful heart, give thanks to the holy one. I liked to listen to the soft alto voice reverberating through the head of curls I was nestled against; I could match what Mom sang if I listened first. And at the same time, up to my left and above my own head, I could hear Dad’s usual tenor melody shift down to baritone harmony as we started into the third line. Give thanks, he always did that and it sounded so nice; maybe someday I could match what he sang, too. …because he’s given Jesus Christ, his Son. There was that part I loved to listen to.

I shifted my hands forward to wrap my arms around Mom’s neck. Now I could feel her gently breathing in and out as we sang. I tried to breathe when she did. It was easier to sing what she was singing if I did that. And now, oh but maybe this part was even better, let the weak say, “I am strong,” let the poor say, “I am rich,” because of what the Lord has done for us. Everyone always sang that part louder. Okay, so that was actually my favorite part for real.

November 6, 2024 passed like a freight train stopped in the middle of town during lunch hour. Texts sent back and forth among friends were somber, or anxious, or angry. Jokes were fleeting moments of levity but they were few and felt inappropriate to dwell on for long. My typical Wednesday schedule felt like it would never be completed. When I sat down in Aaron’s office at 2 p.m., all the frustration and sadness and anger tumbled out after hours of pretending to focus on work. “The silence from most of my family has been deafening,” I told him. “They’re probably thrilled about this.”

Earlier that day, I’d gotten a text from my dear Brianne, once my college roommate and now affectionately nicknamed “Aaron” in my contacts in exchange for her nickname for me, “Moses.” An early twenties late night conversation between two teary and anxious students had locked itself into a lifelong bond of a Scripture-memorizing-and-performing pastor, Aaron, and a person-of-all-church-trades social media editor, Moses, checking in on each other at age 30 during a horrible week. Amongst her reflection on the day, Brianne sent me Psalm 139:19-24, along with gentle words of encouragement and acknowledgement that grief takes a toll on our bodies, so take care. I tucked it away in my memory, tears welling up as I put my work clothes away.

Both pastors Aaron in my life listened and vented and grieved with me.

Maybe in a different set of circumstances, I’d call one of my parents right now, and chat about neighborhood gossip and work drama and how far along harvest is so far. But it wasn’t those set of circumstances that we found ourselves in at that moment. No, this turn of events was one where I watched as my barely protected rights as a queer person were being rejected on personally held moral grounds, not on the grounds of basic human rights. And I knew most of my family chose those moral grounds over their child, their grandchild, their niece, their cousin, without a second thought about it.

That private grieving process had started long before I knew the outcome last Wednesday. The reactions and emotions I was experiencing were not ones of surprise, just anger and betrayal. “Keep the family together, we all have to get along,” I heard over and over from family members who more concerned about how the summer farm vacation went than if someone’s feelings were being actively hurt. Your rights don’t matter, you’re a bad influence and you’ll corrupt my children, is the further context I gleaned from the few who had no qualms with sharing what they heard in conversations had behind my back. Bless those gut wrenching quiet discussions had after the fact, they kept me safer than anyone who acted like nothing had changed after I came out four years ago.

The consequences of being open about your feelings in the Johnson family were mostly just isolation and surface-level conversations moving forward. Fuck your feelings, you’re not actually a Christian anymore and the fact that your church accepts you for who you are and lets you lead anything is proof that you need the Spirit to work in you. No one said that to my face. But the skepticism and lack of interest in how faith shaped my life post-coming out added all the color I needed to understand a loosely sketched picture of who I had become in this family who used to ask me when I was coming to visit, and could I stay an extra night so we could do a sleepover?

Their silence had been deafening.

I was 30, nearing 31, standing on stage behind the metal music stand, one hand resting on the edge of the djembe and the other locking my phone. “We’ll have to see if I make it through this one,” I told Emily. “It makes me think of singing it with my dad, and the church I grew up in.” Emily’s eyebrows raised slightly. “Aw. It’ll be okay if you cry.” I knew that. But I didn’t want to cry. Singing was my favorite part of the morning. Crying could wait. “I just hear him singing it. It’s a good memory.”

Crying did wait. We finished practice just in time for me to go sort out some things in the sound booth before the livestream. We hadn’t played our first song in over a year; I’d forgotten until that morning just how tired I got when I played it. But a good tired, I hadn’t thought about the song in a while and it was a good choice to open a morning that we’d had trouble choosing a set for. After all, the emotional and mental weight on all of us was enough that you could almost see it in the air. But Emily was right. It would be okay if some of us cried.

“Give Thanks” was second on the set list. We had a good crew out in the seats, they’d sung heartily with our first song despite having not heard it for a minute. I loved every second I caught their voices instead of my own, when I’d risk breaking focus on playing to just take in the various harmonies out there. We’d only done this one a few times since we brought it into the song list. Truly an oldie but a goodie. I didn’t have to play, just sing the second time through. I had some time to process those memories I knew were lurking. But even that time was too short.

I heard every voice in the room join Emily’s and my thoughts seemed to split into two parallel processes with equal volume. Everyone here sees two queer people on the stage and they are glad to be standing out there supporting you. And at the same time, my dad’s harmony rumbling through the back of my consciousness, Give thanks because he’s given Jesus Christ, his Son. Complete overwhelm.

One hand gripping the djembe stand and the other clutching at my leg as I tucked my chin and bent down, the sob that rose in a moment was so strong that when I squeezed my eyes shut and caught my breath, I felt every inch of my body go numb. I popped my eyes open in slight panic when every sound turned into a unified deafening roar behind my ears. The blood rushed from my head and my vision cleared. Well, the part that wasn’t blocked by tears. I could hear again. They sounded so beautiful all together. They sounded like the first few times I’d heard the song. Get it together, you love this song too much to not sing it, damnit. I couldn’t.

The plan was to read Psalm 139:19-24 after the song was finished. It took me a minute to compose myself, even with the full song past us now. I unlocked my phone to the screenshot of the exact passage, and read the most angry prayer I’ve ever uttered in my life. Surrounded by the people who knew varying percentages of my story and loved me not in spite of, but because of who that story had shaped me into. As Emily moved us into greeting time, I practically fell into my first hug of several, eyes still bleary. I could hear the friendly din of people saying hello to one another as first Ben’s, then Bev’s, then Renee’s voices rumbled in my shoulder in a hug. “I’m so sorry. We love you.”

The sound of their support was deafening.