apocalyptics

Revelation wrestling

From USA Today:

Tonight on ABC's World News, correspondent Jake Tapper reports on a pro-wrestling match Saturday in Winterville, Ga., complete with body slams, men in tights and a revved-up crowd.

“Ultimate Christian Wrestling is like any other pro-wrestling bout you might see on a Saturday night in rural Georgia,” Tapper says. “Except the characters and story lines come to a dramatic climax at the end of the show straight out of the Book of Revelation: At the end of this show, dozens of folks in the audience said they were called to accept Jesus into their hearts. It was quite a thing to behold.”

Along with rock music, video games, movies and car racing, “wrestling is one of many non-traditional ways evangelicals are reaching out to Americans in what seems a very significant spiritual revival going on,” Tapper says.

From Iconculture:

Wrestling enthusiasts are a diverse group; Christian grapplers hope to tease out those eager to find God and bring them into the fold. The Lord is popping up throughout the culture, from U2 sermons to Papal text messages to Christian paintball. But pro wrestling seems a particularly powerful fit, since it’s already proven well suited for political evangelism. Hardcore piledriving fans can forget about WWE-style bloodbaths, though. Founder Rob Fields promises family-friendly, spiritually uplifting entertainment. Well, as family-friendly as a “Dr. Shock” vs. “Nightmare” grudge match can get.

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Spielbergian meditations

Manohla Dargis' review of Munich in the New York Times make's Spielberg's new film sound much more interesting than other reports that I have read:

"Munich" is as much a meditation on ethics as a political thriller, but it takes nothing away from the film to say that the most adrenaline-spiked part of this genre hybrid involves getaway cars, false papers and the sight of the future Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who pops up during a mission in Lebanon, mowing down terrorists while dressed in a woman's wig and high heels. In between the cloak, dagger and drag, the telephone bombs and a veritable alphabet soup of intrigue (C.I.A., P.L.O., K.G.B.), the years pass with increasing desperation and the team's numbers dwindle. Forced into a new kind of exodus, far from the homeland meant to provide justification for their every action, Avner and his men wander the continent that three decades earlier had been the staging ground for the extermination of European Jewry.

For these wandering, bickering, argumentative Jews, every safe house and port of call becomes an occasion for yet another discussion about Israel and identity. Nothing if not conversational, "Munich" is organized around three crucial dialogues: Meir's discussion of vengeance with her advisers, which ends with her declaration that every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values; a brief discussion between Avner and a Palestinian who predicts Israel's defeat; and, finally, a bitter encounter between two Israelis who fail to find common ground even in that multicultural utopia known as Brooklyn. With its dead-eye view of Lower Manhattan and the twin towers, this scene makes clear (as if there was any doubt) that Mr. Spielberg is as worried about this country as he is about Israel.