Beautiful accidents lay all around us, waiting to be discovered. It was not by design that my last post was about Josh Seybert, and this one leads with my catching up with him and Jessie. In response to my most recent post, I finally got to catch up with Josh and Jessie this past weekend, and much merriment was to be had. Josh, the lizard I mentioned sits atop my monitor awaiting the day it will accompany the other toys in Jacob's ... store of toys.

In other news, I am compelled to share some musings on a long awaited viewing of the movie Bob Roberts, written by and starring Tim Robbins. This movie holds a unique place in my memory as it came out the year that I graduated from high school. It also has numerous clips that were shot in and around my high school while I attended classes at Mt. Lebanon. I distinctly remember walking by the auditorium and hearing music being played within on several occasions (the doors shut and locked, of course) as scenes were being shot. Students were not allowed access to the auditorium during filming. It was an honor of course, to have a Hollywood movie filmed at our school, but also kind of boring, because it was about politics, a Senatrial candidate. After 14 or so years, I finally took it upon myself to watch said movie and was delighted to see a few cameo appearances of some familiar faces, all of which surround the now famous Jack Black. Black played the bit part of a right-wing fanatic of sorts, but is unmistakable with his distinctive crazy-eyed look... clearly why he was cast in the role he played. Honorable mentions go out to Aimee Kane and Brian Gerich (I assume this is the correct identical twin brother) who appear in an auditorium crowd shot with Jack Black behind them, and to Andy Szsefi, who as a Penn State protester is shoved by Jack Black, accusing Szefi "You're all communists" or something of the like. I remember hearing about both scenes shortly after they were filmed, and though pleased with being in a movie, to their credit I suppose, none of the above mentioned people seemed exceptionally impressed with cameo-appearance-fame. Hex, it took me more than ten years to even watch the movie. By association, I am once again separated by one or two degrees from celebrity. Other 6-degree notables in my realm include Kim Zelonis, Jill Sobule and Leon Redbone. But instead of dwelling on flukish, superfluous fame associations, I think it is worth noting to the patient reader that Bob Roberts is worth checking out. It certainly holds relevance to those of us who remember the first U.S. engagement in Iraq, as certain significant dates (Jan 15, 1991) are echoed, and it raises consciousness to those issues we can point out in the current Iraq situation. These you should already be familiar with, gentle reader. But isn't it interesting to see these concerns raised, however marginal they may have been at the time of filming some 14 or 15 years ago, and think of how they are relevant today? Likewise, this week I watched a documentary about T.E. Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia as we know him, and found that these issues again surface. In apology, these items were disconnected in tehir interest to me, but connections are present nonetheless.

Thus the compulsion to write. As I will tell any one of my friends or students, there appear a great number of beautiful accidents to assist us in life. Knowing no more of the parallels or connections, prior to seeing them, between these two films (Bob Roberts and the PBS Special on Lawrence of Arabia) than the connections between
questions 4 and 9 (one directly beneath the other)in a 5th grade Math text book explaingin how to convert fractions to decimals and vice versa, there are beautiful accidents (?) awaiting discovery right in our midst. In parting, I leave you with two challenges:

1.) I challenge you to look for and to share these beautiful accidents with others.

2.) Consider the repetition of messages thorughout history, consider the infinite memory of God, how he keeps inventory of our every hair and every hair of our thought at each moment, and the incredible catalog of lists that must go with that task. If you beleive in an afterlife, let's hope it's not a bureacratic one, eh?