New Texas Monthly, Kinky Friedman, Lakewood, random thoughts

This morning I went and picked up the new August Texas Monthly with Joel Osteen on the cover (I also started the new Nick Hornby novel, which is as brilliant as all the rest).

I discovered Sunday morning on the way to church that I now have the largest congregation in America (world?) not far from where I live. Now that Lakewood Church has moved to the Compaq Center, there will be Rockets game-traffic every Sunday morning. (Note to self: take Shepherd onramp to 59 and not Kirby. You'll save at least 10 minutes).

The article on Lakewood and Pastor Joel Osteen by retired Rice professor William Martin was interesting and informative. I just missed taking Sociology of Religion at Rice with Dr. Martin, but I was just as pleased to take it with Dr. Michael Emerson, who was one of my favorite professors. As part of a class assignment, I visited Lakewood once. It's quite the experience, and I imagine it'll be quite the experience to go see Lakewood in the Compaq Center. It is extremely impressive that Lakewood is very diverse, and accurately reflects the diversity of the surrounding population.

Post-college, I lived in Northern Virginia for a little while. Once, I was flipping through tv channels and saw Lakewood airing on 3 different tv stations in the DC area. Wow. Of course, I watched the Redskins instead when they came back from halftime.

There was also an article on Kinky Friedman that is worth the price of the mag. I've emailed the folks at Texas Monthly to see if I can get y'all a link to the article, but in the meantime, here are some thoughts I jotted down as I read the article:

-- the Kinky campaign is currently in "phase one," which seeks to put Kinky in the spotlight as a serious candidate while laying the groundwork for signature gathering. I assume this means Phase 2 will be the signature gathering required to get on the ballot.

-- lots of one liners. Many of them are the same ones that appeared in recent articles and profiles of Mr. Friedman.

-- number of times Kinky is quoted using the f-word: 3.

-- Bryan Eppstein, possibly the highest regarded political consultant statewide in Texas, is quoted thus: "Could Kinky even pull 20%?"

-- Kinky's answering machine no longer says, "You've reached Richard Kinky "Big Dick" Friedman. (great, this means I'll start getting google search hits for "kinky big dicks")

-- the campaign claims that they've had 25000 offers to help gather signatures to get on the ballot.

-- there will be a CMT reality show this fall -- before Kinky will have even started gathering signatures to know whether he'll be on the ballot -- about Kinky Friedman's campaign.

Posted by Evan @ 07/18/05 03:33 PM

 
 

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