Reviews by Hubie Goode: Flipped

Flipped

Rated: PG [See Full Rating] for language and some thematic material

Runtime: 1 hr. 30 min.

Genre: Romance, Drama, Comedy

Theatrical Release: Aug 6, 2010 Limited

Starring: Callan McAuliffe, Madeline Carroll, Aidan Quinn, Rebecca De Mornay, Penelope Ann Miller, Anthony Edwards, John Mahoney, Shane Harper

Director: Rob Reiner
Screenwriter: Rob Reiner , Andrew Scheinman
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures

Back in my days of creative writing class the other students would look at me funny when I discounted the too often used device of writing human interest stories. But they are ubiquitous, and there is good reason for this. All the explosions and 3-D effects in the world are no match for well drawn characters with interesting personalities.

In Rob Reiner’s Flipped we get a sharp, professonially done look at the small world of two kids who live across the street from each other and the forces that move them as they grow up within their respective “family worlds” and the social world that they share.

Juli and Bryce are two extremely recognizable kids who start out as the boy crazy girl who has a thing for Bryce, and Bryce is the boy who embarrassingly hides behind his mother’s skirt to get away from Juli. Juli has a thing for Bryce’s eyes, no doubt recognizing in some hidden part of her brain a quality she knows to be familiar. Little does she as a child know that at birth her mind is a blank slate and the first thing her eyes will see on a regular basis will be her own mother’s eyes. With this dynamic in mind, who wouldn’t make intuitive connections about feeling love for anyone who’s eyes also carry that quality.

Bryce is somewhat more vanilla than Juli and finds her demonstrative and overt moves toward him to be incomprehensible and intrusive. He is a good kid though, and being non-violent and well mannered puts a lot of energy into finding ways to avoid his would be paramour. His own example of familiarity with Juli’s type are one generation removed in the qualities of his grandmother, who for the film has now passed away. But Bryce’s Grandfather recognizes Juli all too well, and in a bit of humanitarian indulgence honors Juli’s, and his lamented wife’s position on the world and its myriad of pleasures and crushing disappointments.

The story is told in the style of “The Wonder Years” with shifting points of view voiced over by both Bryce and Juli as they both explain their unique positions on events that they both experience during the flow of the overall narrative. We’re given inside views to their thoughts and motivations during events and shown how divergent and confused mere social contact can actually be, not that we really needed to know about this. In the meantime we learn things about Juli and her family and also Bryce and his family. We learn that Juli’s family is poor and have the worst kept house on the block. Bryce’s parents have many assumptions and opinions on why Juli’s family operates the way they do and unfortunately “bring down” the value of the neighborhood. Juli’s father is called a dreamer, a man who paints landscapes instead of taking care of the lawn. It isn’t until Grandpa breaks that “fourth wall” in his friendship with Juli that the bigger and more important issues come forward in all their prejudice correcting finality.

Bryce learns about Juli from the position of his own enforced exile, and as he sees her climbing an old sycamore tree to get a view of the sprawling majesty of surrounding nature, or caring for home grown chickens in her backyard or being charitable toward a boy in school who is ignored by everyone, he begins to find that perhaps he has been remiss to avoid her all these years. For Juli, her own maturity and development toward her own future “Norma Rae” personality, slowly comes to realize that perhaps her youthful judgments of Bryce have been all smoke and mirrors and, in her own words, “Bryce has never really been my friend”. She then turns her back on him. Bryce valiantly tries to save the day and fails in his own methods as he panics at the thought of having missed and wounded a girl who’s rivers run deep. He then draws on his genetic smarts and wisdom, manifested in his grandfather, and pulls a sweet “hail mary” move which hits Juli right where she lives.

This is a really sweet movie. Someone I know told me that if I went to see it, I’d be crapping rainbows. And yes, that is just what happened, but that’s not all that happened. It was a great pleasure to watch masterful directing and a well written script with a revelatory narrative. The actors are all amazingly up to the job, with one lone sour note (and I think this was just a poor choice of directive focus) among a wonderfully orchestrated story about humanity we can all identify with. Its great to see Hollywood green light something that isn’t just concerned with bringing in massive profits, but actually pays homage to what movies truly can be and what they do best.

You surely can go to see Rob Reiner’s film and not worry about being assaulted by the crude and hate filled language and attitudes of what mostly comes from the industry today. There is one nasty word which was a bit unneeded and also a scene in an ice ream shop that seemed overwrought and manipulative of the audience, but not to worry, nothing here remotely resembles the social deviant predilections of a Judd Apatow film.

Go see this film. Crap rainbows.

4/5 stars

Reviews by Hubie Goode: National Dissipation and Soren Kierkegaard Part 2

National Dissipation
and Søren Kierkegaard

Part 2

As the then intellectual world staggered on the brink at the end of World War II, it was then about that time that Kierkegaard was discovered by the English speaking world almost 100 years after his death. Leaders in religion and philosophy found his ideas extraordinary. He is often hard to understand, but even so, his writings have provided a set of influences that transformed the way in which reality was understood and also fixed new parameters on the concepts of faith and rationality.

The magic word here is existentialism. For the church he gave them something called neo-orthodoxy. It was as though these new views rushed around the corner from an unseen direction and captured the hearts and minds of men so quickly that few had the ability to resist. Kierkegaard became “cool” and the subject of intellectual debate among those who found that sort of thing a welcome distraction and interesting balm from the failures of the first half of the century.

Few theologians truly understood neo-orthodoxy, but it became insinuated within a new set of assumptions contained within the current national pulpit preaching. Existentialism, which no one really had a handle on, became a new way to understand, or perhaps, misunderstand life, depending of course on what end result you wanted.

What Can I DO Today? ..... or ANY day?

Born in Copenhagen in 1813, he lived a quiet and uneventful life, as far as he was publicly known. But his writings, for which by many he is known as the father of existentialism, often revealed him to be darkly conflicted inwardly, clinically depressed perhaps and also a bit tortured. But Kierkegaard never had an honest days work in his life. His father was so wealthy that when he died, he left his son an estate that survived his own life.

If there had been a Starbucks in his day, he would have been their greatest customer. Anyone who has hung out in one long enough knows that they are full of the unemployed during weekday business hours, and in Los Angeles, they are also full of screen writers and actors. Yes, more unemployed. He was often interested in becoming a teacher or even a preacher, but the draw of the latte proved to be too much for “Richie Rich”.

It was his voluminous writings on a myriad of subjects which have left their mark on the world and at least revealed to the world that perhaps his existence produced ...something, if anything. As a writer, as writers know, he was involved in a reclusive, solitary life. He hated crowds, but once he gained fame from his writings he didn’t have much argument with the accolades they lavished upon him. He was, of course, writing for a part of the world that had already lost its soul, so he was a bit of a local hero for his literary prowess. It took him 100 years to become internationally famous.

If you can't convince them with the facts....

One noteworthy event in his life was his engagement to Regine Olsen in 1840. The story of this romance illustrated the constant equivocation that came forth from Kierkegaard on a daily basis. For those not in the know about equivocation, it works something like this:

Equivocation is the use in a syllogism (a logical chain of reasoning) of a term several times, but giving the term a different meaning each time. For example:

A feather is light.
What is light cannot be dark.
Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.

Unable to withstand the constant waffling of reason and reality, (much to her credit) his fiance broke off the engagement . This started the first of three trips to Berlin that Soren would make soon after. In 1841 he took a Master of Arts where he presented his dissertation, The Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference to Socrates.

Three years later he would dive head first into writing and in this period he turned out no less that six books. His writing is both a call to stolid, logical thinking and also at the same time a jumbled mess of conflict. In much the same way as an eighties rock band might write lyrics, his writing could mean different things to as many different people as had read his writings. If someone had revealed that they understood him, then Kierkegaard most certainly would correct him.

This wasn’t anything really new to the educational world, as they had already had much involvement with the morass created in education by John Dewey and his inability to be penned down to any one truth or opinion, an affection that the world seemed to also love.

Kierkegaard’s translators understood that when his dark book, Either/Or was published, it created a sensation in Copenhagen. It couldn’t be adequately reviewed however, due to the fact that it’s subtle purposes could be hardly defined in clarity. This tome was written under one of Soren’s dozen or so pen names under which he wrote. A practice which seemed to spring forth from the naturally vacillating mind of the singular author. When the writings are delved into on a deeper scale, there emerges for the reader a calculated pre-meditation toward confusion.

Here is a quote from his writings in “On His Mission”:

"I was seated as usual, out of doors at the cafe in the Frederiksberg garden.... I had been a student for a half score of years. Although never lazy (wink), all my activity was like a glittering inactivity, a kind of occupation for which I still have a great partiality, and for which perhaps I have even more genius. I read much, spent the remainder of the day idling and thinking, or thinking and idling, but that was all it came to... (no kidding)

So there I sat and smoked my cigar until I lapsed into thought. Among other thoughts I remember these: “You are going on,” I said to myself, “to become an old man, without being anything, and without really undertaking to do anything. On the other hand, wherever you look about you, in literature and in life, you see the celebrated names and figures, the precious and the much heralded men who are coming into prominence and are much talked about, the many benefactors of the age who know how to benefit mankind by making life easier and easier, some by railroads, others by omnibuses and steamboats, others by telegraph, others by easily apprehended compendiums and short recitals of everything worth knowing, and finally the true benefactors of the age who make spiritual existence and virtue of thought easier and easier, yet more and more significant. And what are you doing?” (another grande latte and a biscotti, perhaps?) Here my soliloquy was interrupted, for my cigar was smoked out and a new one had to be lit. (And this meant he now had to get up from the couch, oh the horror!) So I smoked again, and suddenly this thought flashed through my mind: “You must do something, but inasmuch as with your limited capacities it will be impossible to make anything easier than it has become, you must, with the same humanitarian enthusiasm as the others, undertake to make something harder. This notion pleased me immensely, (although getting a job escaped him completely) and at the same time it flattered me to think that I, like the rest of them, would be loved and esteemed by the whole community.

For when all combine to make everything easier, there remains one possible danger, namely that the ease becomes so great that it becomes too great; then there is only one want left, though it is not yet a felt want, when people will want difficulty. Out of love for mankind, and out of despair for my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make anything easier than it had already been, and moved by a genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I conceived it as my task to create difficulties everywhere.”

*wise guy parenthesis are mine

One need only read through his text to see the extent to which he was successful in creating confusion everywhere. The difference between Kierkegaard and others of his day and the following century who can be considered as the birthers of great intellectual confusion still felt today, is that he was an indolent Christian.

He writes also:

“Sad as I was, ..... I found a sort of satisfaction in this life I had chosen, in the inverse deception, and its incredible success, to the point that I was the darling of the public eye. I was quite in fashion as a preacher of a gospel of worldliness, that though I was not in possession of a legitimate life that would bring legitimate rewards, I was regarded as witty and interesting by a (bamboozled) public.”

Kierkegaard knew he was a fraud and felt secret satisfaction that the public had bought his "snake oil". One might touch upon the brief summary of Kierkegaard’s reputation as Truth by Subjectivity. Like a funny Woody Allen movie, he often spoke of the difference between subjectivity and objectivity. Not surprisingly, in keeping in step with the bottom line intent of most of his day, such as Freud, Wellhausen, Darwin and Marx, his attempt was to deal with the influence of Christianity.

“The objective problem consists of an inquiry into the truth of Christianity. The subjective problem concerns the relationship of the individual to Christianity.”

He announced in many ways that the problem with the Christian was a lack of passion, and not information. This may indeed be true, and no wholly unexpected considering mankind’s recorded history, but Kierkegaard seemed to believe that everything is about passion.

As a result of Kierkegaard’s philosophy and “coffee shop” ruminations on all things deeper and meaningful, society now has something called dissipation. Often sounding like an agnostic, he railed against the organized church. As he was, he believed solely in the individual, treating the crowd as anathema. “The crowd is the untruth.” He was known to say time and again. He also attacked the traditions of theology, ethics, and metaphysics, saying that all were self-deceptions.

Baffle 'em with bull....

He was a renowned smoke screener. Having gone too far in his revolt against real or imagined restraints placed on the individual by organized society, he proposed an all out assault on clear and distinct thinking all together. Much like Dewey, he confirmed and denied many of the same things. If there was ever a time to point out the adage that a multiplicity of words is the sign of a fool, it was in the writings of Kierkegaard. And yet, the public loved the wall of literary confusion which brought them a quasi intellectualism that could fit anyone, anywhere at anytime.

More on this next time.

Reviews by Hubie Goode: National Dissipation and Soren Kierkegaard

National Dissipation
and Søren Kierkegaard

Part 1

dis·si·pa·tion –noun

a wasting by misuse: the dissipation of a fortune.

mental distraction; amusement; diversion.

dissolute way of living, esp. excessive drinking of liquor;intemperance.

Perhaps the beginner of historical provocateurs from the 1800’s, Kierkegaard lived as he lived in order to, as he put it: “create difficulties everywhere.” Living from 1813-1855, he was a man whom many of those who were to come later largely ignored and yet, his work influenced them with an “underground” thought life. Such other figures as Freud, Marx and Wellhausen could not have largely cared for Soren Kierkegaar or his writings, but little did they understand the ground floor influence he had over their own writings and others whose influence we still feel today in our society, much to our own regret.

His writings were often uninhibited but also cryptic. In fact, it took about a hundred years before his writings were given the light of day in the English language. When they did appear in English, they made quite the bombastic arrival upon the scene, as they were exactly the kind of thoughts that the world was looking for at that time. Known as the “melancholy dane” he was more often than not a sort of “God drunk”, if you will.

Considering the content of his writings and the brisk pace and fanciful nature they contained, it is surprising that he had almost no influence at all and remained unknown in the English speaking world until around one hundred years after his death. One possibility for this anonymity can be found in the makeup of western society during his lifetime.

Leading To Kierkegaard

The 1800’s were perhaps the most colorful and multifaceted of any century known to man in terms of the philosophical and religious influences that still remain with us today. Wellhausen’s arguments against the inspiration of Biblical scripture and the resulting rise of religious liberalism swept across Europe and attempted to conquer the west at the turn of the century. Liberal Christianity was the “cool thing to do” of the day.

In the early 1900’s, the liberal view of Christianity was a dominant thought process among denominations and schools of thought and education. Groundless human optimism was now the idol of the day and replaced the categoric theoloical tenets taught from the Bible. The deity of Christ was rendered irrelevant in the minds of the intellectual elite, and infected the common man also. Jesus became a teacher like any other historical figure, and a good man who taught about love and peace among all mankind. The cross became a metaphor for sacrificial living and less and less of an act of REAL salvation for a fallen mankind.

Personal salvation became an anachronism as education, optimism, positive thinking and noble ideals became the substitute. Darwinian evolution had made salvation more of a deliverance from selfishness and anger rather than any kind of window into everlasting life. Such a thing was now considered “grandpa and grandma’s” ideas.

Hope for the future had become, as it is today, a project of improving the world. Waiting on the blessed hope of a return of Christ was a nice idea, but obviously just a “social convention”. For the church, and I specify the Christian church, the mission was more or less now a matter of improving society. Despite the unflinching position of scripture, and especially the ideas of Revelation, Daniel and other books of the Bible that deal with end time prophecy, the mental attitude of the church shifted from the horrors for mankind that those books promise, to a more rational position of the church itself re-making mankind and society in order to create a perfect world for Christ to return to.

Happy Days are Here Again

The early decades of the 1900’s found the new human millennium a proud focus of the day. The World Council of Churches was formed. The National Counsel of Churches was formed in America. Christianity was now this kind of “thing” without form that moved among the people and made them “giddy” with a hope they had never known before. The future simply HAD to get better and better.

The world was now, after all, beyond the dark ages. There would be no war or famine or pestilence. The level of intelligence among man had reached an all time high. Never again would there be bloody conflict, ......for man had figured it all out.

So long sad times, Go long bad times, We are rid of you at last

Howdy gay times, Cloudy gray times, You are now a thing of the past

Happy days are here again, The skies above are clear again, So let’s sing a song of cheer again, Happy days are here again

Altogether shout it now, There’s no one, Who can doubt it now, So let’s tell the world about it now, Happy days are here again

Your cares and troubles are gone, There’ll be no more from now on, From now on ...

Happy days are here again, The skies above are clear again, So, Let’s sing a song of cheer again

Happy times, Happy nights, Happy days Are here again!

Copyrighted in 1929 by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen

Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

It was also thought that the 1929 crash was actually a great spiritual lesson. Man should not speculate on his hard earned cash for future monies and also keep money stored away that could have assisted the poor. The depression made everyone nicer and more considerate as the whole nation shared in a group hug of sympathy while experiencing the same afflictions. Very familiar isn’t it? When you consider that the polls of our present day show that people are now considering relationships and family more important than material wealth buildup during our current financial crisis. Sure, this is a good thing, but one hopes it isn’t just a result of the price for such thinking being within reach of everyone’s pocketbook.

Advances in science and technology also had the world thinking with Pollyannaish aplomb. Surely the world was coming together under the umbrella of progress promised by all the new inventions of the last 150 years. This would surely promote a shared vision among the whole world. In their foggy utopian dream world, the nations of the world then watched with bemusement as a power seeker in Germany made promises to the German people that it was they who were destined to rule this new world of mankind.

Germany was an amazing place to be at the time. It lead the world in philosophy, theology, medicine, and many forms of theology, and also including early work on a little something called “splitting the atom”. Hitler, with his thousands of brown shirted social control followers, and millions of troops, moved into the deadly business of war. This was no utopian peaceful takeover. This was the ugly, sinful side of man once again raising its “hydra” like head.

Cut Off One Head, Another Grows

Stalin, too, was a part of this dragon headed menace that rose up in the early 1900’s. Kulaks and Ukrainians were virtually exterminated. Christians and Jews alike were brutally persecuted in this dangerously communist land. The world ignored the Bolsheviks too, just like the Nazis, and the promise to bring communism to the whole world. Communist organizations were allowed inside of America’s own political structures, much to their own future dismay.

In today’s world we have the radical Islamic Muslim threat which has already made itself know with the attack on the World Trade Center and the ongoing terrorist threat. Recently thousands showed up to protest the proposed erection of a Muslim mosque on the site of the World Trade Center, and the national news gave it barely a passing thought. Jailed and outraged movie stars were more important to the news of the day. Few realize that America is full of mole cells all across the nation. These are people who are working and living the American way of life just like you and me, yet they are waiting for the mass call to arms, and when that day comes millions of neighborhoods will be under siege. Try and remember that I told you that when you find nothing wrong with President Obama claiming America is NOT a Christian nation. Our Muslim President.

How to Take Over A Country

Connecting back to the early 1900’s, there was in Italy a new thing called Fascism that was taking hold. It’s leader was Benito Mussolini. No matter what you call it, Fascism, Nazism, or Communism, they are all basically the same things, a political excuse for a dictator to grab a country. They kill all those who disagree with them and beat the country into submission by forcing their will upon the people, much like signing bills into law that the majority did not vote for. It is amazing to me how western intellectuals concern themselves with epistemological niceties and social conventions when in fact there are cruel brutalities behind all of these so called social reforms.

All of these “social reforms” lead to World War II. How could this be? Wasn’t mankind beyond all this? Had not we all figured it out? We had relegated the Bible and God’s Word to a quaint thing of the past that had been a figment of the uneducated, we were better than that now. We had evolved. And yet, here we were again. Surely that couldn’t be. Surely we could now provide our own salvation.

World War I was a piker compared to the carnage of WWII. Man’s invention, fueled by his quest for power, now marched millions of troops into the hell of mass murder under the guise of wartime. Planes flew high and into the night, entombed like the sacrificial right. Rockets few over great distances and blew human bodies into multiple pieces like so much shark chum. The massive explosion of cordite and hatred that was World War II was brought to a halt by atomic clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Forty or fifty million people had died in the war, and the bulk of the world’s substance had disappeared in the conflagration, trillions of dollars of it.

Umm....Oops?

The world was now stunned at it’s own lack of control over events. How could all this have happened? Weren’t we now evolved beyond such things? The world turned to the church at this time for the answers to the grander scale. But the true church had been removed. The liberal church now had it’s place, and had been caught with its pants down, so to speak. The majority of society now felt betrayed by the church. They had surely been hoodwinked. Millions of grave sites filled with young men who had been full of promise now presented a cold slap of reality to those who had believed the church when it said that mankind had outgrown the old teachings of the Bible.

Classic religious liberalism rolled over and died. The liberal establishment now needed a new clarion call. The educational world now joined them in this quest for something else to hang their hat on in the search for answers. Liberalism was a myth that had been blackjacked and crated by the stubborn facts of reality.

And that’s where Kierkegaard comes in.

More on this next time.

Reviews by Hubie Goode: What Gives Meaning To Life?

What Gives Meaning To Life?

There was a famous holy man who once wrote about an experience he had:

He was sitting on a beach one bright and beautiful summer day, watching a little boy and girl play in the sand. They were hard at work making an elaborate sand castle. It had gates and towers and moats and such. Just as they had finished the marvel of industrial ingenuity, a large wave came along and knocked it down turning it into a heap of wet sand. He fully expected that the children would scream and cry at the devastation, but instead, they ran up the shore away from the water, laughing and holding hands, and began to build another castle. What an important lesson that was! All those things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating are really built on sand. Only our relationships to one another endure. Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has someone’s hand to hold will be able to laugh.

I remember when I was younger, not necessarily when I was young, coming to the realization that life was not going to unfold like a Disney movie. I chuckle a bit at the resolution of TV shows like The Andy Griffith Show, that today are touchingly quaint and quite out of schism with the world we know today. But mostly, one can see how, if you look back at history, they were also a little out of touch with their own times. The paradigm being, that if you just work hard, were sincere, and didn’t do anything foolish, everything would work out the way you wanted it to.

Conversely, many things do not work out as we would like them, no matter how hard we work, no matter how honest we are, no matter how much we do for our fellow man. (and you ARE doing for your fellow man, right?)

Most of us in our lives have either believed we could or perhaps have valiantly tried to extract what we want from life. We crave for meaning, we demand purpose and we long for something to stay fulfilling and satisfying for the whole of our lives. But life has it’s own ideas. It tends to stare back at us with blank, uncaring eyes and deeply implies the inexorable finality of it’s own indomitable position in reality.

What do we want from life that it seems to have promised but has also seemed to have ignored with it’s own non-proffered ability? We thought we’d get meaning, purpose and love. We thought that we could succeed, that we would matter and perhaps make a difference. And that someone somewhere would care.


If you look again at the ruins of ancient Rome, a once gloriously painted city of stone and mortar, filled with a teaming populace that cared for and enjoyed it’s heightened civilization; you realize that if the buildings could speak, they would cry and wish for oblivion. Time moved on without them. Their people, their creators no longer walk their roads and tread down their halls. It’s a good thing for them they ARE just stone and brick and cement, for what soul could live with such long term abandonment?

But what if things are different for us? What if things are just beginning when we come to the place where we realize that if we had not lived as long as we have, or if we had perhaps not be born, that the world would have gone on without us? What if it’s a privileged to come to the end of our questions and have no answers?

When you reach a critical juncture in your life, that point where failure and hopelessness seem inevitable. We must seize the day! We must grasp the moment! Kick and spit and growl all you want, but when you come to the end of yourself, all you have left is the reality of God. And there is the place where you will find the deepest answers, no matter how much you want to live in denial, no matter how much you want it to be something else, something that makes YOU feel good or promotes the pride of life and mankind as a force to be celebrated. If it were not so, then your inner soul would be satisfied with those things, you would have found an answer there instead of a million different offerings provided from the world for the world. I once asked an adult, when I was a teen, what life was all about. And they told me it’s different for different people... no it’s not, that’s just their programming speaking, not a reality.

One of the promises of God is that even the most evil of persons can be saved from and eternity without him if they will only call on the name of Jesus. Even if that person is on his deathbed, having not done anything worthy himself. But unfortunately, our pride and dependence on cursed flesh guides us to take a multitude of answers that are NOT Jesus, down blind alleys that twinkle in front of our eyes like a Christmas ornament in front of a kitten or car keys in front of a baby, and we like it, and we reach out for it. And we fail to find those answers we long for.

It wasn’t all that long ago, that a favorite singer of mine committed suicide. He gassed himself to death and left behind a note to his fiance’ explaining his actions. In the note he told of how much of a lonely soul he was. The implication here is that he, like us all, was seeking an answer to his unhappiness, a cure if you will, for his depression. Well, we all seek happiness, and it is the motivation for practically everything we do, whether it is giving to a telethon or helping the homeless on the street; or perhaps it is other activities not so honorable. Whatever the case, churches and happy hours are full of people looking for happiness.

There is something we absolutely have to get past. Something we have to force ourselves to accept or else we will never find that happiness to fill that void that sits in the pit of our being calling out to be filled. Basically, it’s NOT our universe. Not OUR reality. And that is the answer. That is why it’s actually a great thing to come to the end of your rope. Until we do, we will be looking about a maze of offerings from the world that all lead to other answers and other answers and other answers. We were meant for God. We were created for God. And not just God, but Jesus Christ. I know for many, you can take the idea of God, but you scoff at the notion of Jesus, and that in itself, is proof of your separation form him. For if it didn’t bother you, then you could take his name and position just as easily as God. But God, for many, can be whatever they want. You can’t do that with Jesus, and this is some proof people, for God says you are separated from him, and he and Jesus are one.

3,000 years ago King Solomon wrote that he had tried everything. He was surrounded by wealth, treasure, pleasure, accomplishment, relationships, loved by man and had over a thousand wives and concubines, all the trappings of fame, and yet he did not find satisfaction. He was a winner to a far greater degree than any of us have time, talent and money to succeed and he said it was like trying to catch the wind. Just ask Michael Jackson. Just ask Rodney Dangerfield, a man who made many laugh over forty or so years with his self deprecating humor. He owned a house in California and a club in New York. He could treat the whole country as his home, he could fly anywhere and knew scores and scores of people, as could Michael Jackson. But Rodney was quoted as saying before he died, that he never really was happy. I think you know good and well Michael Jackson’s position.


Some say poverty is the reason for crime, yet there are poor people who are never criminals. Also, there are rich people who ARE criminals, and those who are not. It’s not enough to be talented and wealthy, or to just be poor so as not to get into trouble; for there are many troublesome things that can come your way if you DO have money and power. We find ourselves unhappy and we look for a fulfillment, a filling of the void, but we just can’t bring ourselves to bow our knee and let God, Jesus, be the Lord of our lives... for surely you will not be fulfilled. Surely you will not finally find that void filled.

And who told you that? Who told you you were naked?

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Car Dealership Hell

Car Dealership Hell

Over the last ten years or so, it has been my privilege to work for not one, but two automobile dealerships in the same capacity. Once on a while you can find a dealership that is interested in someone doing their “in house” advertising, that is creation of their ads for print and radio, right there on the property itself. As a graphic designer I have done this twice in two different states and have been exposed to some of the most interesting inside information and bizarre behavior that one would never guess was even possible of mature, working adults.

First of all, you must put away all assumptions on which you have been raised about what happens in a car dealership day in and day out. This also includes some of you who already suspect much of what I am about to tell you. Selling is a tough enough job for anyone, as it involves going for another person’s wallet on a consistent basis to earn a living. I do indeed feel for the person who has to do this every day. Some people are good at it, I suppose, and they find no problem with the exercise, and it’s important that they feel this way, for it is integral to their success.

I myself, however, have never felt that this sort of thing was a good idea and I doubt I ever will. That probably goes a long way to answering the question as to why I have never been able to make any money at this sort of selling. I have, to be sure, done several jobs in the past such as retail, and for quite a few years in my younger days I was a framer. I enjoyed that sort of work, for I could actually help out customers who needed assistance and I didn’t feel there was anything improper going on behind the scenes. This doesn’t hold true for auto dealerships and I have long spouted off about the many things I have been witness to as I toiled away in the little side office with the glass wall window and the two little seats that had no salesman to occupy them.

About twelve years ago in a small town in the south I had my first assignment while I also worked for a major newspaper in the area. This was my first exposure to the incongruity of image to that of reality put forth by public advertising performed by major auto makers which is broadcast all over the country. While toiling away at the little in house computer, I had a front row seat for things rarely seen and rarely felt. There was of course, the usual standing around of salesman all day. They stand around the showroom floor of the dealership for about 10 hours a day, and they work usually six days a week. Always in dress shirt and tie, they endeavor to make the best impression on practically anyone who enters the car lot, or the showroom. But that is pretty much where it all ends.

One particularly slow day at the first dealership, and there are many, many slow days, four salesman where so board with the lack of business that they lined up on the road, a nice sized four lane highway about twenty yards from the show room floor, and if anyone even thought to slow down to turn into the car lot, they all reached for the car door handle at the same time. The car was still moving, engine was still running and the embarrassed driver was red faced and frightened. The idea, of course, was to greet the customer first and get his attention, for once a salesman has gotten your attention and talked to you, NO ONE ELSE CAN! They would slap and punch each other aside as they jockeyed for the door handle even before the driver came to a complete stop. I remember watching this one day from my little office in the corner and seeing grown men in their forties, some older, get into a literal fist fight out in the lot over the possession of a customer. I kid you not.

After watching this sort of behavior, I once got a chance to chat with the manager of the dealership and I asked him about some of the things that go on there, for they sure didn’t seem to match up with the commercials on TV. A prime example of laugh out loud fantasy would be those Honda ads where the salesman informs you that it’s his job to be helpful. I chuckle as I write that, for it is by no stretch of the imagination a car salesman’s job to be helpful.

I was informed by the manager, with practically no emotion or concern in his voice that many car dealerships prefer to hire ex-convicts as salesman, and much of the habits they form in prison follow them into the working world. I found that to be logical and also a bit alarming, having bought a few cars from dealerships myself. Yes, I found out, I probably somewhere and somehow did business with an ex-prisoner. But why, I asked, are they hired with open arms? I was told they are more productive. Really? I asked. Ex-convicts make more productive salesman? Oh yes, I was told with a wink and a nod, they don’t mind at all!

Got that folks? Ex-convicts don’t mind at all.

After my stint there, I didn’t think too much more about this as I had signed it all off to small town America placed almost invisibly along side the open stretches of highway between the major towns of our nation, where there is nothing to do and no place to go except church on Sunday. Surely, I thought, this can’t be the way things are, like say, inside a dealership in a major metropolitan city. Surely, I knew, that if I were only to see a dealership from the inside, in say, the second largest city in America, I would indeed find modern and sophisticated personages happy and busy at the work of promoting a major auto brand that everyone knew and loved all over our glorious land, the home of the brave, the land of the free.

Heh.

My second auto dealership was just such the venue from which I was now going to find out just how different things must be. As before, I joined a major car brand dealership to handle their in-house advertising and in the meantime, unbeknown to them, I was now going to get the inside scoop on things, hopefully from a mature and progressive point of view. There was a young man, about the age of twenty two, let’s call him Tony, who began a job selling cars in this particular dealership about the same time I had arrived. His office was next to the one they gave me for the computer generated ads and I was able to “pick his brains” on many things during the short time he stayed there.

He did, as many salesmen seem to do all over America, stand around a lot, for hours at a time. We were located on the major thoroughfare in the area, so therefore there was no big highway to go stand out on. Most of the day, for everyone, was spent in the confines of the dealership showroom floor. In fact, if one of the salesman did indeed get someone to sell to, they had to walk a block down the street to a small fenced in lot that had a discouragingly small amount of inventory. The idea being that one had to sell what they had on the small lot, not acquiesce to customers who wanted something the dealership could not put in storage.

Tony stood around for ten hours a day, just like the salesmen at the other dealership I had been at. He was required to be on duty on Saturdays even if he was ill, in fact they told him to get another job if he couldn’t make a Saturday, no matter what the reason.

One day he had a couple of customers come in whom he managed to land while others were either busy or looking the wrong way. They were a couple of young men who were from a local church, one was an assistant to a pastor, I believe he told me, and the other was a young man who was on a work furlough from prison who was trying to put his life back together. Well, they were nice enough, he told me, and he did his best to try and give them good service, which I do believe was his true intention.

The pastor’s assistant, however, knew his way around a car sale better than Tony did, who was called a “greenie” by the salesmen, and dickered a bit too much for the young man. Seeing this, the assistant manager decided to take charge of a sales situation that was taking way to long for Tony to complete and systematically got into a loud and nasty shouting match right on the sales room floor with the pastor’s assistant, finally telling him to get the f**k out of his dealership right in front of anyone who was within the next block to hear.

After all, it’s his job to be helpful.

The assistant manager was all smiles after this, patting Tony on the back and telling him not to worry about it, despite the fact that the man had just blown Tony’s first sale. You have to understand, he told Tony, customers are stupid and they have to be shown who’s boss. Yes, you read that right, customers are stupid. This was not the first time I had heard this in dealing with the inside workings of car dealerships, but I had no idea it could be so widespread.

Yes, they do indeed believe you and I are stupid. And that’s the word they use. Additionally, they believe that much of what they have to do to sell cars is the customer’s fault. If only you and I weren’t so afraid of commitment, they tell me, then they wouldn’t have to shove you off the cliff, so to speak, when buying a car. You should thank car salesman for their abuse, and there is really no other way to put this, their “trickery” when selling you a car. It’s your own fault!

Tony didn’t make very many friends working at the dealership - he wasn’t allowed to. Older and more larcenous salesman made him a target and even used to call him “fugly” to his face. For anyone who doesn’t know, the term “fugly” is a derisive term composed of two other words, one of them being the word “ugly”.

One day, Tony casually spoke with a customer who was milling around the showroom floor, he didn’t know another salesman had already approached the person, and he only spoke with them for a moment. Later that day, while he was standing around again, the larger and more aggressive salesman who was only moments before, laughing and chatting with another salesman, suddenly saw Tony standing outside on the sidewalk and charged out there after him. He pushed his chest into Tony’s much like football players who “bump” each other after a stellar play, and put his face right into Tony’s face and yelled, “What the f**k is wrong with you, fugly????? You never talk to another man’s customer!!!!” Was there a fist fight? No, but then, since this man was an ex-prisoner, it was perhaps best.

Tony was constantly dogged by this man the whole time he was there and had to take up the practice of standing around on the opposite side of the dealership from wherever the man was. I could see him moving around from outside of my office in direct tandem relationship to wherever the other man was, if the man moved left, Tony moved right, and visa versa. A wonderful way to spend ten hours a day.

Tony landed another customer one day and was in the middle of doing the four square and the “going back and forth to see the manager” in brokering the deal. The customer was there at the dealership all day, as is the plan, and they spent way too much time for my taste sitting in the office Tony had, all by themselves.

Getting up for a break, I went into the break room the dealership had only to see Tony and another salesman sitting there watching soap operas on the TV set in the break room. I asked him what he was doing and he told me he was going over the deal he was trying to make with the manager. Really? I said with a bit of surprise, eyeballing the TV set with General Hospital on the broadcast. Yes, he told me, if the customer is here until about 4pm, then they will be more ready to make a deal that the manager will give his okay on. “Weren’t they here early this morning like about 8 or 9am?” I asked him. Yes that’s true, he told me, but the manager won’t let him do this any other way, and besides, their keys are on the roof anyway.

“Their keys are on the roof?” I asked. “Yes, I had to take their car to be judged for the trade-in and I was told to throw their keys on the roof in case they tried to leave too soon.” This is done to stall you at all costs I am told, never never, give them your whole ring of keys. Never!

Tony’s customer eventually bought the car, but could not take delivery for the next week. In the meantime, Tony could not wait to leave. He told me that as soon as the customer picked up their car he would give them the keys and keep on walking, so disgusted was he with the crap he had to put up with.

In the meantime, another salesman wrote down the customer’s name on a piece of paper, sideways in a notebook and brought it to Tony. “Look,” he said, showing the name written on a page in a notebook. “I talked to your customer first, so I want you to go tell the manager this and get him to give me half of the commission.” Not wanting to make any more enemies, Tony went and told the manager what the salesman had done. The manager laughed openly at him, but still refused to comply and told Tony not to give in.

This made no difference, he was then accused for the rest of the week of trying to screw the salesman out of HIS money. So Tony had to avoid this man also when standing around the same showroom floor for ten hours a day, six days a week. Every time the salesman would confront him about it, the other salesman, the one who pushed Tony around on the sidewalk, would start visibly chuckling to himself. I told Tony to watch this when it happens, for it is a sign of inside knowledge old salesman are aware of and to stand firm to get his money, for he was indeed being scammed.

Tony’s customer got his car and Tony did indeed leave with them, in fact I believe he left without his commission on the sale, but I am not sure of that. Before that however, I was privy to the paperwork Tony did on the sale and he showed me how the customer was actually paying over $6,000 dollars more over the life of the financing they received than they were even aware of.

I am not a financial person, and my understanding of this was a bit foggy, but according to Tony, there were so many hidden fees within the small print of the paperwork that they added up to about $6,000 dollars that was hidden from the customer’s immediate knowledge. I found that incredible! He showed me a hidden finance fee of 40% on window tinting which the customer didn’t know about because it was included in the whole financial numbers. I didn’t understand this, but he told me there were many other hidden things like this that the finance manager had done.

Tony warned me never to get financing from the dealer. No matter the great deal they want to give you. I knew someone who had once been the finance manager at a car dealership and I asked him about this at a later time. He giggled like a school girl at the mention of it. “Yes,” he told me. “Stuff like that happens all the time.”

Here are some other things I learned about buying a car from an auto dealership. There is such a thing as an informal warranty. When too many of the same new model of cars have shown the same mechanical problem, the manufacturer will inform the car dealerships that it will cover the cost of repairs beyond the standard warranty. These warranties, however, are never publicized. Buyers need to write to the center for auto safety to find out about these things, and discover which components of the car are likely to fail and qualify for these repair warranties. If the part is covered and the service manager won’t fix it, you’ll need to either have a factory’s regional office representative mediate the matter, or take them to small claims court. Documentation is always needed.

Keep an eye on dealerships in your area that you may think you’ll do business with in the future. Go and look around one when you are not going to buy anything. You just want a feel for the personnel, and how they operate. When they approach you, and believe me, they will after standing around all day, just tell them you are window shopping and you’ll come and get them if you need anything. If they don’t insult you right there, then that’s a good sign. But good luck on that, this is not retail, they are not there to just be helpful. Don’t let them intimidate you or engage in any random banter.

Go to the service area also and just hang out a few minutes. Notice if things are being run smoothly, if the manager there and working, are customers treated with respect. Make sure you know for sure. Look at the service lot, notice the license plate frames. In a good dealership you’ll see plates from competing dealerships.

Don’t go out on the highway for a dealership, the salesmen know they have just one chance to make a sale, they could get violent. Multi-franchise dealerships can add to the overall trauma you experience in car buying, too many people are involved and this will cause a lot of confusion.

You choose the salesperson, don’t let them choose you. Ask them about themselves, how long they have worked, where they have worked, and if you may have references from former customers. If this works and you aren’t reviled and insulted, you may have a good thing going.

Just to note, in the high pressure of a salesroom, everyone is a target even if they are in the same ethnic group as you are. I once got a message on the phone for one of two African-Americans who worked for dealership #2 and I didn’t know who anyone was at first, so I asked the only African-American on the floor if he was this man Raymond, for whom I had a message, and I was snapped at and told “NO, I am the OTHER one!” So even the brothers didn’t get along and the customers were treated with no favoritism.

Remember, they believe that you and I are stupid, and therefore deserve what we get. So educate yourself first. Get as much information as possible on the car you want before you even sit down with a salesman. Collect brochures and read magazine articles on the auto you want. Don’t let them try to fool you with their impressive knowledge of the car, as this is just a device to take control of the sale and establish authority in the transaction.

You have to be knowledgeable and strong willed, and ready to leave at any moment. Know the competition too, if you mention that you are wavering between them and the competition they will, of course, knock them and be very convincing if you are uninformed. This isn’t a friendly exchange folks, don’t be fooled. Big money is on the table when it comes to you as a customer and they are armed to the teeth with ways of getting your money.

If you don’t know what you want, you will be sold what the salesman wants to unload. The most expensive model, with the most extravagant items, and all those hidden finance charges. You will have to eventually take a test drive of the car you want in order for the salesman to get you to take mental ownership of the car, he will glowingly praise the car in the meantime and try to get you to have fun while driving - NEVER GIVE HIM YOUR KEYS. Make absolute sure you give the salesman a single copy of your auto key if they truly need it, be prepared for this. Be prepared to walk (and be insulted as you walk away) if you need to. At this point in the sale, the salesman can take on an attitude not unlike a serpent with forbidden fruit for you to try. “Go ahead, it won’t really hurt.” he’ll imply.

Don’t buy when you are tired, if you are there for any length of time, just leave. Don’t let them sit in the break room and watch TV on you. They want you to wear out and believe that you will be primed to take whatever they promise you, even if they don’t have it, under the condition of being tired. There are no such things as idle questions either, any question is a probe to get to know what they can say back to you to make the sale. If they ask you what you do for a living, tell them you drive a cargo ship from here to the planet Jupiter, and without batting an eye they will tell you they have a cousin who does that too! Avoid probing questions if you can.

Remember those hidden finance charges? Options are where the dealer makes his money. So say for instance the dealer tells you that ALL cars come with power windows. But you don’t want power windows. At this point they will tell you it has to be a special order and it could take months. Walk out at this point if he doesn’t “work something out”. They magically will, they need the sale.

Standard options are listed in the manufacturer’s brochure. Cars for the lot may be ordered without a standard option like say, carpeting. You’ll be told that it is extra if you don’t know any better, and you’ll be charged for it too. Know what you are doing people!

Turning you over is a wearing down tactic. If they feel that you are not going their way or responding in the way they want you to, they will go on a break and let another salesperson talk to you. This can happen four or five times until you actually get frustrated and either buy a car or you are told to get the f**k out. If your salesman leaves for a break, then you leave too. There is a Starbucks every five hundred feet in America. I mean it! Be tough!

When you do finally buy the car, insist on itemization of what you have been charged and look closely for incongruousness in the finance price and the final price. Many people are just too confused and tired after a day at the dealership to really watch the fine print.

Check the car over and make sure everything is working and is just like you dealt for. Sometimes a car can be dented in transit and the dealer will park the car against a wall to hide the dent. Balloons in the back seat can be fun, but they also can hide interior damages. Remember, when you drive a car off the lot, it’s YOURS, there is no return policy and you just lost about $3,000 dollars just for making it a sudden used car the moment you hit the tarmac. Really! The value drops about $3,000 dollars the moment you drive away.

Laugh at those commercials you see on TV folks, they are NOTHING close to the reality of the auto dealership’s attitude toward you. Buy a good used car and have a mechanic look it over before you buy. The value is worth the work. And don’t even get me started on leasing. Avoid it if you can.

Oh and one last thing. There are NEVER any "sales". Those Veteran's day sales and Fourth of July sales are all smokescreens. Most of the time the "sale" is bargained and dickered away. Nothing really special every happens price wise on those days, they are just advertising.

Good luck to you, I hope this helps. And to those of you who have different experiences than what I have outlined, well... lucky you. ;-)