Miss me?
Here we are in the middle of Advent and I’m still sick. Or, sick again, to be precise. Thanks to a wild travel schedule, a chesty cough that threatened to derail my speech at Terry Schilling’s American Principles Project luncheon in D.C. (it didn’t), and then a second bug when I got home (from the kids) that gave me a fever, and then, just when I was feeling better from that, a new nasty cold—I’ve missed all three Sunday mass this Advent! Dr. Fauci, take a bow.
But I did get to meet this very nice young man at the APP Gala, which made it worth it. Mark my words, he’s going places.
Somehow in the middle of all the excitement, I started going to a new gym. You know, for my health. A few days after attempting three sets of lady deadlifts I woke up and couldn’t move my legs. It felt like the front of my thighs had been torn in half. Apparently this is “quadriceps strain” and my RWBB son who just hit a deadlift PR of 535 pounds told me to suck it up.
I have been limping around for a few days and just need get my rusty innards back in shape in time for a little event taking place this coming Sunday evening.
In solidarity with my leg suffering, our 220 pound English Mastiff, right on cue, decided to suddenly refuse to go up stairs, leaving him stranded at the foot of the back patio in the rain. Early onset hip dysplasia? Not today, Satan!
Did Pop Culture Turn Me Trad?
Some of you know the outlines of my conversion story from my book, where I describe my “transition” from eye-rolling, deeply cynical secular atheist to believing trad Cath.
In my childhood, there was no God but Santa, and Rudolph was his messenger.
I was baptized in the Church of MTV. Pop culture was my religion, and I dutifully prayed the Gospel According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—that is, Matthew Broderick, Mark Wahlberg, Luke Perry, and John Taylor from Duran Duran.
But how? How did I cross the massive chasm from spoiled L.A. mall rat to (slightly less) spoiled L.A. trad wife?
I did not have a Road to Damascus, thunderclap conversion. The Virgin Mary did not apparate in front of me bearing roses, making springs well up from the Earth. On paper, it was simply a long process of attending Mass and opening myself up to the crazy, insane possibility that… maybe it was true. Maybe there was a God, and his son really was Jesus.
Men Think About Rome, Women Think About Michelangelo
It’s true though.
As a teenager, I don’t know how but I became obsessed with Michelangelo. He went right on my running list of childhood obsessions, alongside David Letterman, Don Johnson, Roald Dahl, Gene Kelly, Duran Duran, Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, and Groucho Marx.
(This list is proof that even us younger Gen Xers are just Volume 2 of the Baby Boomer gen).
Maybe because I’d picked up the Irving Stone bestseller The Agony and the Ecstacy. I don’t know why I had this book; probably one of my parents had it and I’d found it on a shelf. (Boomer UMC parents were deeply flawed but they did gift us with living rooms full of books they actually read. Try it!)
The Agony and the Ecstasy reads like a historical bodice-ripper romance novel, only the guy’s main love interest is a giant hunk of Carrera marble.
I visited Italy on a high school trip and later in college and got to see the marble marvels for myself. Freshman year at [redacted]. my genocide-loving university, I wheedled my way into a seniors-only seminar on Michelangelo taught by a famous art historian, the late Leo Steinberg, whom Tom Wolfe writes about in The Painted Word. He was a Russian Jew whose father had worked as Lenin’s lawyer, a Michelangelo scholar, and the best, most interesting professor I encountered in four years of college. There used to be unique benefits you could only get by going to elite colleges, and Professor Steinberg’s art history class was one such treasure.
He left the school immediately after I took that class.
Steinberg noticed things extremely closely. That’s what Steinberg’s lectures were—Steve Sailer-style noticings except instead of crime stats it was gestures, colors, expressions, visual details.
For example, did you know that in the famous Sistine Chapel panel of God touching Adam’s finger, the finger is actually not the most interesting part of that painting?
Steinberg told us how he’d been to Rome to consult on the cleaning and had been allowed way up on the scaffolding, inches from the priceless frescoes. The figure of God reaches out to Adam, but it is who he is touching with his left hand who is the star of the image—a chubby little cherub who gazes down, directly at the viewer down below. This child is the only figure on the entire Sistine Ceiling, in fact, who looks directly at you. And the woman under God’s arm, long assumed to be Eve, Adam’s plus one, is perhaps instead Mary.
I like to think of this moment as not being the right before but the right after. God has already touched Adam when we come upon the scene, and the electricity has jolted through Mary and her son, filling them with awareness of their fate. Look at their faces—they do not look joyful, but apprehensive, fully aware of the task ahead.
I learned all this as a devout atheist but let’s be honest: the extremely not-Catholic Leo Steinberg was my theology teacher.
Linus, the Gen X Apostle
The other main influence on my future Catholicism was, like all secular Gen Xers, Linus in the 1965 classic A Charlie Brown Christmas. How are they still allowed to show this little cartoon, the most overtly Christian thing ever broadcast on network television? “Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about. Lights, please.”
What is it about that speech that silences us for a minute in total silence, listening? There’s a reason they’ll never dare turn this cartoon into a live action monstrosity; the Godless studio heathens would have to rip its heart out to make it palatable to the hideous creatures in their marketing departments.
Deep down I know that these cultural trifles, some kid cartoons and some glib understanding of Renaissance art, maybe really did till the soil so the seeds of my future Catholic conversion could take root.
And Now, A Few Christmas Bangers
And finally, here are some of my tweets from this week. Is this low effort content? Sorry, my bad. In my defense I was too sick and tired and nursing my broken quadriceps to put together an actual column so I just tweeted a lot.
Admit it: these are healing. And comforting. And sometimes spicy. I know what you like and I’m serving it up hot:
Yes, sometimes I work blue. You should see the tweets saved in my drafts folder!
Christmas Movie Recs
The Crown: The last Netflix season, it got me good. Sorry!
The King: Timothée Chalamet at Prince Hal, a delicious Robert Pattinson as the Dauphin, and a wonderful depiction of the Battle of Agincourt. I loved it so much I’m re-reading John Keegan’s The Face of Battle.
Napoleon: Haven’t seen it yet, but we will this week. Yes, it will be somewhat disappointing, but I am in the mood to watch more Europeans destroy each other in beautiful costumes for no good reason.
Barry Lyndon: In honor of our late friend, Ryan O’Neal.
Willy Wonka prequel: I promised the little kids we’d go see it. I hated the trailer and will hate the movie but I am a newly minted Chalamet fan and a Hugh Grant defender, so it shan’t be too terrible.
The Iron Giant: We were rewatching Big Hero 6 and I remarked that it has the same plot as this Brad Bird gem. The 7 year old never saw Iron Giant so we will rectify that over break.
Die Hard: We’ll probably watch it this week. We just want to go back. Please take us back.
Any other suggestions?
Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas! More posts coming next week!
—Peachy
Merry Christmas, Peachy! You are a master chef of spicy tweets.
Merry Christmas! Get well soon!
Non-Christmas recent release recommendation: Golda. About as timely as it gets.
I'm sure you've seen all these but they don't get as much play around this time as the Christmas in Connecticut/Miracle on 34th Street standards, so you may have missed them, they are top notch Christmas movies, hope you enjoy them:
Shop Around the Corner (my favorite)
Holiday Affair
Remember the Night
It Happened on Fifth Avenue
For after Christmas, though, here's one you need to check out for your Michelangelo fix:
https://gaty.substack.com/p/saturday-night-at-the-movies-life