“War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men. Though you follow the trade of the warrior, you do so in the spirit of Washington — not of Genghis Khan. For Americans, only threat to our way of life justifies resort to conflict.” Graduation Exercises at the United States Military Academy, 6/3/47
Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the five-star rank as General of the Army. Wikipedia
HEAVEN—Emerging from a grueling 90 minutes of cardiovascular exercise and light lifting for tone, Son of God Jesus Christ said Monday that He is “definitely on track” to achieve peak fitness condition for the Second Coming.
“If every eye is going to see Me, and all the tribes of earth are going to wail on account of Me, I think I owe it to them and to Myself to be in the best shape of My life,” Christ said. “Right now I’m up to 35 minutes at seven [miles per hour] on the treadmill and benching about 165 [pounds].”
“I’m really starting to feel like I’ll have the strength and endurance to move every mountain and island from its place,” Christ added.
Since His birthday last Dec. 25, Christ has committed Himself to a demanding daily regimen of exercise and prophecy fulfillment. Each of His workouts, Christ said, starts with an hour of cardio, after which He focuses on two muscle groups, replacing conventional free weights with the Rod of Iron with which He intends to rule all nations.
On Mondays, Christ works His chest and biceps and completes three sets of 10 transfigurations. On Tuesdays, He switches to triceps and abdominals, and passes as many sets of Last Judgments as He can in a minute. Wednesdays are devoted to the back and legs, and Thursdays and Fridays are for core and flexibility.
Even Sabbaths are spent doing yoga, swimming, and basic strength-training isometrics such as push-ups, leg lifts, and chin-ups.
“There can be no day of rest,” said Christ, His eyes filled with flaming fire. “Rest is for mortals.”
The determined Savior has also forsworn His favorite high-calorie, high-carb foods such as fatted calf, loaves, and even His own body and blood, instead embracing muscle-building high-protein shakes and electrolyte-replacing sports drinks. And when temptation calls, Christ need only look at two pictures taped to His refrigerator: an icon of Himself prior to starting His regimen and a reproduction of Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” fresco torn from a magazine.
“The thought of being unable to seize the seven-headed serpent and hurl it into the abyss really keeps Me motivated,” Christ said.
The Lamb of God said He made the decision to get in shape late last year when, after two millennia of relative inactivity, He realized that at His age there was “no way” He could return to Earth, judge the souls of the innocent and wicked alike, and reign over the Kingdom of God for 1,000 years without prior conditioning.
“The Second Coming isn’t just Me sitting on a great white throne and judging away,” Christ said. “I also have to make all of the stars fall and shake all the powers in Heaven. That’s why I’ve been working a lot with the medicine ball.”
Christ, however, admitted that centuries of heavenly grace had enabled Him to “really let [Himself] go.”
“I can’t lead the armies of Heaven looking like some flabby slob,” said Christ, who declined to disclose His “before” weight. “That guy can’t be the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. The faithful want a Messiah they can truly fear, not someone who’s afraid to take off His shirt in public.”
At first, Christ said He thought such a physical transformation would “take a miracle.” During the first couple weeks of His exercise program, He couldn’t work out on the treadmill for more than 10 minutes without gasping for breath and aggravating the old spear-point injury in His side. Now that He can deftly complete 20 ab-bench push-ups on the highest incline and almost as many chin-ups, Christ said, He feels more energetic than He has since His early 30s.
And not only has frequent exercise made Christ feel more healthy and confident, it’s “cleared [His] head, which will really help [Him] deal with the massive amount of smiting and condemning.”
Encouraged by His progress, particularly the increased definition in His pectoral and abdominal muscles, Christ is focusing all of His attention on visualizing the success of His Second Coming.
“Right now, it’s all about Aug. 2,” the goal-oriented Savior said. “And no matter how I look, there’s no going back on this one like I did seven years ago.”
Wayne White in an oversize mask of Lyndon B. Johnson in “Beauty Is Embarrassing,” about Mr. White’s career.Credit…Future You Pictures
Beauty Is Embarrassing NYT Critic’s PickDirected by Neil Berkeley Documentary, Biography, Comedy Not Rated 1h 28m
By Andy Webster
Sept. 6, 2012 (NYTimes.com)
The creativity grows like kudzu in “Beauty Is Embarrassing,” Neil Berkeley’s enlightening and often hilarious portrait of the Los Angeles artist Wayne White. And it yields a thousand blossoms. Mr. White, an Emmy-winning puppeteer for “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” has had his share of career dips, only to arrive as a popular painter of some very amusing canvases. Tracing his evolution, the film gets at larger issues — about imagination, relationships and laughter.
Mr. White, born and raised in Chattanooga, Tenn., came to New York City from Middle Tennessee State University in 1981 with a gift for cartooning and puppetry. He later found himself among the formidable brain trust behind “Playhouse,” Paul Reubens’s blazingly original Saturday morning kids’ show on CBS between 1986 and 1990.
(Image from IMDb)
“Playhouse” contributors — Mr. Reubens, the artist Gary Panter and the musician Mark Mothersbaugh — recount the show’s hothouse of invention, especially during its first season, when it was shot in a Manhattan loft. Mr. White designed and provided voices for some of the marionettes, including the musician Dirty Dog and the troublemaker Randy. A documentary highlight is priceless backstage footage taken at the time by Mr. White. “Playhouse,” he has said, “was a downtown New York art project on TV.”
But life after “Playhouse” — Mr. White followed the show to Los Angeles — had its challenges. Despite award-winning work in music videos (the Smashing Pumpkins, Peter Gabriel), he struggled in children’s TV (“Beakman’s World,” “Shining Time Station”). Then he found his own answer to Warhol’s Brillo boxes: wry, droll or superficial statements, often comments on the South or the venality of Hollywood (“Maybe Now I’ll Get the Respect I So Richly Deserve”), scrambled on a canvas or meticulously emblazoned across cheesy landscape paintings. The Los Angeles restaurant Fred62 displayed the pictures, and soon the designer Todd Oldham was inspired to assemble a monograph of Mr. White’s work. “Bang!” Mr. White says. “I’m in the art world, just like that.”
There are other forces sustaining Mr. White: his wife, the graphic novelist Mimi Pond, and their children; his banjo and harmonica; and his connections to the South. Seeing Mr. White parading in an oversize Lyndon B. Johnson head mask or assembling a giant puppet with his Tennessee buddy Mike Quinn, we appreciate the liberating, delirious joy of creativity.
But this exuberant documentary’s most affecting message concerns a timelessly profound verity: the value of roots, humor, family and old friends.
Beauty Is Embarrassing
NYT Critic’s PickDirectorNeil BerkeleyWritersNeil Berkeley, Chris Bradley, Kevin KlauberStarsWayne White, Mimi Pond, Paul Reubens, Mark Mothersbaugh, Matt GroeningRatingNot RatedRunning Time1h 28mGenresDocumentary, Biography, Comedy
Movie data powered by IMDb.com
A version of this article appears in print on , Section C, Page 15 of the New York edition with the headline: Far Beyond ‘Playhouse,’ Artist Remains Playful. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
FIVE MINUTE NEWS ✪ Members first on June 3, 2025FIVE MINUTE NEWS New profile pic? Trump’s official portrait tells us everything we need to know about who he wants to be. Waking up every day to news of more horror and chaos. This is dystopian America.
In our first discussion of the Lord of Disappointment, we said that none of us look forward to this card turning up… but since turn up it will, I thought perhaps it would help to have a discussion about how to reduce levels of disappointment in life, how to improve our chances of contentment and how to deal with disappointment when, inevitably, we have to face it.First and foremost, it’s important to realise that, whilst our disappointments often come from outside sources, the reason that we experience them is because of internal beliefs and expectations. We are disappointed when the company refuses to offer us that job we wanted and hoped for so much. We are disappointed when friends, lovers, family let us down and fail to treat us in a fashion we had believed they should. We are disappointed when something does not work out the way we had hoped.Yet we cannot go through life without expectations. And we cannot protect ourselves by holding negative expectations. Hope is a fighter.no matter how much we try to squash it down, it pops back up again.often in the sneakiest fashion.So… perhaps we simply have to be brave enough to hope, honest enough to assess our expectations realistically, and courageous enough to accept that sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we are going to be hurt by disappointment. Maybe we have to make the choice to risk ourselves, and accept that, sometimes, we will get let down…So on a day that is ruled by the 5 of cups, don’t go looking for disappointment… rather, spend some time assessing your expectations. Look for imbalance, or lack of realism, in your expectations of people and situations. If you find any, then be true to yourself, and adjust those expectations till they serve you better.Look for negative expectations (nothing good ever happens to me; I am always going to be lonely/miserable/unhappy; I am too weak/inadequate/uninformed to achieve what I need) and tackle these with gusto… they create darkness in your life, and serve no earthly purpose. Drive them out of your head with determined use of the affirmation, and agree to go after them every single time they surface.And finally… expect a nice surprise in every single day you live. Expect to find something that fills your heart with joy and gratitude every single day. Go looking for these things… make it part of your daily routine to discover something which makes joy arise within you…
Affirmation: “I expect happiness to flow through my life, driving out negative thoughts and emotions.”
ATLANTA—Saying it would violate his deeply held religious beliefs, area pornographer Chet Kirkendall, a 57-year-old Christian who frequently films explicit amateur videos for his clients, confirmed Friday he had denied service to a gay male couple that wished to hire him to direct their sex tape. “I’ve been in this business 25 years, and I strongly believe rim jobs, facials, and other hardcore sex acts should only take place between one man and one woman, or one man and two women, or in some cases five men taking turns with one woman—but never two men,” said Kirkendall, who told reporters that after a career directing hundreds of gang bangs, scenes of “barely legal” teenagers, and a variety of stepmother-themed material, he wasn’t about to violate his traditional Christian values by filming man-on-man action. “I take my work very seriously and am always proud to capture on video the sacred union of a man thrusting deep inside a woman and then cumming on her tits, or sometimes her face. God condones such sucking and fucking, but in His eyes, filming homosexual men bringing each other to orgasm through anal sex or vigorous fisting would be an abomination. It’s right there in the Book of Leviticus.” Asked whether he also would have denied service to a lesbian couple, Kirkendall refused to give a definitive answer, saying it might be permissible to accept such a job “as long as it was two hot chicks.”
Expanding consciousness through new paradigms of wholeness
September 5 – 8,
San Diego, California
In the midst of cataclysmic changes around the world we will use this weekend experience to explore the Ontological message : Back and behind the universe of time, space, and change lies a fundamental and changeless reality.
It is exactly in times such as these that we have the opportunity to turn our vision from “wars and rumors of wars” to the ever-living Truth that provides each person with their keystone for bringing Integrity forth in their personal life and finding their way to communal wholeness.From the Aloha settingto our dynamic program,and activities -You are warmly invited to join us in person! We are coming together at the Island Palms Hotel on the Hawaii-infused Shelter Island next to the Bay in balmy San Diego !
This is your opportunity for reconnecting in community, rejuvenating in nature and re-discovering the Self each person has that can heal a fractured world.More information including hotel and event registration can be found on The Prosperos website (follow link to the announcement).
Meanwhile, here is the introduction to your spiritually-infused haven :
“When the mind goes beyond the thought of “me”, the experiencer, the observer, the thinker, then there is a possibility of a happiness that is incorruptible.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) Indian Philosopher
AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
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