Month: June 2026

Double Identity

IN ADDITION TO what else one may find in a wallet (money, DL, &c.), mine contains two cards that license me as a member of the clergy.

They’re neither what you think – I’m not a rabbi, nor will I likely become one in this life – but they do tell a semi-religious story nonetheless.

The first came c. 1999, after a friend who was a member of the Universal Life Church asked me if I too wanted to be ordained. “Sure! What do I need to do?” I asked him. After anointing my head with a frosty cold one (it was a very hot day, in the way that only Northern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire days can be very hot), he declared, “You’re in.” He then told me where to write and receive my free ordination credentials.

ULC espouses a single creed: “Know your beliefs and be true to them.” And because ULC is legally recognized in California (and other enlightened states) for solemnizing weddings, I have since married a handful of friends – which was, really, why I wanted ordainment in the first place.

The other ordination, also legally recognized in some places, belongs to the Church of the SubGenius. Those behind that inexplicable parody religion/religious parody/living art project published a trade paperback in 1983 which – much like science-fiction conventions and DEVO – assured lonely misfits that they too had a place, and a people, they could call their own. Of course, I took to it in a big, enthusiastic way.

Unlike the ULC, the CotS then charged $20 for an ordination kit. So, justifying it as for a good cause, I mailed a Jackson to their Dallas, Texas headquarters. Within a week I received an ordination card, a poster of Church frontman J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, and various pieces of SubG propaganda (some of which I distributed in the summer of 1985 at 2 a.m. in Times Square – but that story is classified.)

For a long time, my ULC and CotS “ministries” helped me feel as though I belonged somewhere spiritually important. I am grateful to be able to do that now in other ways. But I will always be respectfully grateful to the Revs. Kirby Hensley and Ivan Stang for opening their secretly famous doors and inviting me in.

Secret Signposts

HIDDEN SOCIAL NETS surround us everywhere we go, and those who know – know.

Example? Sure!

I was shopping in one of my favorite grocery stores earlier today when the guy behind the butchers’ counter noticed my black Firefly T-shirt.

“Nice shirt!” he said with a wide grin.

“Thank you,” I said, bowing.

Now, he could have added something like, “I’m a Firefly fan too.” Or “I really like that series.” Or even “How long have you been a fan?”

But instead, he indicated the leather bomber-jacket I was wearing (Sonoma mornings are cold these days) and said with a wider grin, “I see you’re a real Browncoat.”

If none of this makes sense to you, allow me to explain. Instead of stating the obvious, my fellow fan responded with another insider’s reference. You see, the shirt in question doesn’t feature the title of the show or anything like that – the only way to “get it” is if you recognize the image and motto: a burnt-umber image of the titular spaceship above the motto, “STAY SHINY.” If you don’t, then no harm done. His comment told me right away that he got it. And his grin told me that he was enjoying our little secret signpost as much as I was.

Connections. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Father’s Time

SOME TRADITIONS ARE axiomatic: just as a woman should inherit her mom’s wedding ring, so should a man wear his father’s watch.

My dad, who died at the end of January, didn’t like to faff around much. He was a happily simple man with happily simple tastes, and preferred straightforwardness in all things. That’s reflected in his choice of timepiece – a white-and-gold Timex Indiglo Easy Reader, mounted on a gold stainless-steel expansion band that conforms to the wrist without constant buckling and unbuckling. Simple and tasteful, and accurate without nerding out about it – it’s easier to say “a quarter to three” than “6:47 and 38 seconds.” After more than 40 years of wearing a cheap but rugged Casio Illuminator on a plastic strap that buckles, I actually and seriously feel “grown up.”

Maybe that’s why we inherit these things, or rather, that’s what it means to inherit them. In my dad’s absence, I am now the “man of the family” (for some values of “man of the family,” anyway, since now there’s just my sister and me), and in trying to figure out exactly what that means, it occurs to me that part of it means adopting certain cultural traditions.

Hence the watch.

Might there be the same effect as inheriting his car or house? I don’t think so, as these are not as intimate as, say, what I now wear to bed every night so that I can see what time I wake up. Or to synagogue board meetings. Or to conduct services. Or to the grocery store. Or even to simply look at and think about the man who wore it before I did, and wonder what he thought about when he looked at it.

Thanks, Dad. It’s good to feel like the man who’s your son.

Machine Time

HOW MANY HOURS do we waste waiting for our thinking machines to do their thing?

Browsers to load. Files to open. Printer jobs. Email delays. Forms to register. TFA codes to arrive. And a hundred other petty inconveniences that result in impatience, lost tempers, and general cussedness.

Now, I am a patient man, but I swear – if I had a dollar for every minute spent waiting for my machines to catch up to my schedule, I could retire to my own private Idaho. It’s a ridiculous feature of modern life that these (what used to be called) “labor-saving devices” may be actually causing more helplessness than enabling usefulness.

I have no solutions to this mishegas – what can one person do against a vast cultural tide anyway? – but I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way. Perhaps that Butler fellow had it right all along. Who’s with me?

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