I’m pretty sure that Kanye West and Joe Wilson have nothing in common. Kanye is a swaggerific hip-hop fashionista who wears Alexander McQueen suits and Yohji Yamamoto gloves, and whose vanity is only eclipsed by his ego. Joe Wilson is an extremely white, Southern Republican congressman who has never heard a Wu-Tang Clan song and who once voted against the removal of the confederate flag at South Carolina’s capital. But West and Wilson do have one thing in common: Both men are tactless, disrespectful opportunists.

Christians today need to have confidence not in their own cultural dogmas or prophetic/martyrdom complexes (as in the Phelps’ insistence that God only smiles upon them and hates everyone else)—but rather confidence in Christ and his transforming, world-altering gospel.

On Tuesday, President Obama—following the precedent of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush—delivered a “Back to School” speech to American students, beamed live via the Internet and C-SPAN into thousands of classrooms across the country.

Not using profanity in today’s world is noticeable. It is the sort of abstaining activity that people will take note of. What an opportunity for Christians to truly show restraint and demonstrate the different-ness of the Christ-like life! I’m not saying we should chastise non-Christians for using bad language or avoid movies or music with salty language; I’m just saying that we, as Christians, should set an example by being different.

I wrote a new technology piece in Relevant magazine’s September/October issue, entitled “Short Attention Span Faith.” You can read the whole thing by clicking here, but here’s a short little excerpt.

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the summer of 1969, which for most people is a “so what?” sort of thing, but to anyone who lived back then or (like me) obsesses about “The 60s” period of American history, it’s a big deal. They don’t make years like 1969 any more.

There are very few directors in the world who can imbue a dollop of cream and a plate of apple strudel with the sort of pulsating, vivacious energy that Quentin Tarantino can. And there are very few directors who can make twenty minutes of table talk as utterly engrossing and tension building as Tarantino can.

District 9 is a smart, challenging film that also happens to be thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. It’s brimful of political and cultural ideas, but it’s also brimful of alien/robot/zombie action, explosions, battles, and video game shenanigans that I have a feeling will strike a massive chord with the gamers in the room. It’s a fresh perspective on an old genre, and a movie that blows the doors off most of the summer blockbusters we’ve seen so far this year.

Lorna’s Silence, the Dardennes’ latest film (and winner of the best screenplay prize at Cannes in 2008), is yet another masterpiece—if not their best work then at least their most emotionally complex. It’s a film that left me incapacitated and breathless in my seat as the credits rolled.

Funny People is a funny movie. But it’s also serious. It mixes genre in a way that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, and this will frustrate many viewers. It’s also a Judd Apatow film, which means there are about fifty too many penis jokes, lots of bromance comedy shenanigans, and touches of emotional depth and “growing up” insights. As part of the Apatow canon, it fits nicely in with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, rounding out the trilogy (if you want to call it a trilogy) with an appropriate graduation to existential self-awareness.

Two years ago, I was in Hiroshima. It was a short stop during a long trip to Japan, but it was one of the most meaningful travel experiences I’ve ever had.

In the year 2000, I wrote a list of goals for myself. Life goals. They included such things as traveling across the world, writing music, working at Disney World for a time, and opening a “small, elegant eatery.” Number 6 on the list was “write a book.”

(500) Days of Summer is a love story for my generation. Though it proudly declares at the outset that “this is not a love story,” the film is wholly about love. Or rather, it’s about our discombobulated, postmodern idea of love mixed with the rapturous ephemera of passion and romance. It’s about how difficult love is for a generation of youngsters who haven’t seen love first hand (their parents are usually divorced) and yet have been fed a steady stream of love abstractions as filtered through soap operas and The Sound of Music and Jesus and Mary Chain songs. This is a movie about “movie-style” love and “movie-style” life. It’s about the difficulties that arise when our ideas of love and life come entirely through artist renderings and Hollywood fakery.

When I was in New York City earlier this year, I took some pictures of a person lying on a couch on a sidewalk in the East Village. I wasn’t sure if he was a hipster or a homeless person. This question has come up numerous times in my hipster field research over the last couple years, and it’s definitely becoming harder to tell the difference. Apparently the homeless look is hotter than ever. Actually, I first noticed the trend a few years ago in L.A. and wrote a post on my blog entitled “Derelict Chic” back in 2007.

I attended an Episcopal church one summer a few years ago. I’m not Episcopalian, but I enjoyed the church and the experience. I loved the liturgy and tradition of it—the sense of being part of an ancient, worldwide, structured body of believers. I loved the use of organ and the singing of 500 year-old hymns. I loved the creeds.