Christmas with Kerouac: The Nazareth Principle [plus Roald Dahl and Subcontrario (In Stereo)]

Some Monday morning surfing suggestions: 1. Head over to mardecortesbaja.com for a stirring report from my father on Jack Kerouac's humble origins. [PZ has become a semi-regular contributor over there]. The first paragraph reads as follows:

Our son Simeon says that faith is summed up in something he calls the "Nazareth principle". This refers to the question in the New Testament where someone scoffs at Jesus the carpenter by asking, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

The idea was that Nazareth was a city, in the region of Galilee, which was known for its "mixed-blood" and therefore suspect practice of Judaism. Because the carpenter/prophet came from Nazareth, didn't that disqualify him from being the real thing?

Yet as Simeon says, in life -- time after time -- the best things come from the unlikeliest places. And this "Nazareth principle" extends to the fact that out of trouble and wounds, disappointments and closed doors, come often the actual breakthroughs of personal life.

2. While there, be sure to check out his review of Roald Dahl's short-lived 1961 television show Way Out. The particular episode which caught PZ's attention was "Soft Focus", the summary of which is just too good not to reprint here:

"Soft Focus" is 29 minutes of Barry Morse playing a photographer who has invented a retouching agent for his portraits of people, which has the side effect of retouching their actual faces. Thus a little boy loses an ugly birthmark which "Dr. Pell" has erased in the lab. Then, too, an actress whose face has been scarred is able to be beautiful again with the help of Dr. Pell. Dr. Pell's wife, however, Louise, is involved with her husband's young assistant. Louise doesn't know that her husband knows what is going on.

He begins to 'touch up' a photograph of her. She starts to age. (He touches up his own photograph, too, to make himself look younger.) When she begins to look about 50 or so -- and she looks awful -- her boyfriend jilts her. Enraged and abandoned, she enters her husband's studio and right in front of his eyes, pours the whole bottle of solution on his portrait. He screams, and in the climax, which no one who saw it in 1961 ever forgot, he turns towards his gloating wife, and towards the camera, with half his face wiped away, a perfect blank.

3. Finally, run don't walk over to rcrdlabl.com and download the first official release from our very own Trevor Giuliani's upcoming debut album, Subcontrario (In Stereo), due 7/21. The track, entitled "Wasting Your Town", is available for free and will blow your mind.