The revelation by director Casey Affleck that his documentary I’m Still Here, which purportedly chronicles the mental breakdown of actor Joaquin Phoenix, is in fact a piece of “performance art,” has been met with both outrage and ill-humored dismissal. The poorly-reviewed film, detractors note, was viewed with skepticism and incredulity from the very beginning. That Affleck is only making this admission now, when the full scale of the disaster that the movie has wreaked on Phoenix’s career has become apparent, is a cause for deep cynicism and mockery. But should it be?

Leaving aside the widely acknowledged fact that the project was so obviously a hoax from its outset-that this was such a lame and amateur attempt that even small children could see its sorry duplicity and desperate emptiness-let’s pretend that Phoenix and Affleck weren’t so incredibly incompetent. All great work requires risk, and that is indeed something that Phoenix and Affleck took, even if they were remarkably maladroit in the execution. The mystery of why something works vs. why something fails is the eternal conundrum of the artist. We use the word “formulaic” to describe something tired and predictable, but it also underscores the point that there is no formula for success. If there were, people would use it every time. The fact that Affleck and Phoenix’s failure could also be described as “tired and predictable” shows how difficult it is to construct something lasting and believable, particularly when that construction is conducted with the laughable level of effort that Phoenix and Affleck put into it.

Don’t we want our artists’ reach to exceed their grasp? Wouldn’t we rather be given the gift of something timeless that results from a willingness to fall on one’s face rather than a strict adherence to playing it safe? The greatest moments in film, theater, literature-any of the arts, really-come from those who were prepared to face the scorn and derision of the crowd because somewhere deep within they had a vision that they were willing to see through to completion. They believed when no one else did. That some of these visions are juvenile and worthless ideas on the world-historical scale of failure that Affleck and Phoenix ushered forth only makes the successes shine that much more brightly. For every purely realized work of genius like Citizen Kane you need to suffer through twenty such epic disasters like I’m Still Here (although the scope of the latter’s shocking awfulness is indeed difficult to top).

It’s not pretty, but great art rarely is. If we want our leading lights to keep providing us with moments of sheer electricity we need to also allow them the room to fail. I’m Still Here, for all the critical, commercial and existential hatred it has deservedly received, is an important work for that very reason: we need abysmal catastrophes like it to help us recognize what is really worthwhile. In many ways you could say that Phoenix and Affleck are some of the most important artists of their age because they have shown us just how difficult it is to pull something off, especially if you have no talent for the type of creation you are attempting in the first place. They deserve to be recognized as such.

“Only if they asked.”
—Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno on the likelihood of his baptizing an alien, a question that came up after he talked about his sci-fi-borne love of the stars and noted to reporters in the UK that “any entity — no matter how many tentacles it has — has a soul.” It would seem that he’s even including the “narrow group of creationist fundamentalists in America” that he railed against elsewhere in his Q&A; session in that soul census, which reads like something of a relative olive branch.

This month marks the twentieth anniversary of All Shook Down, the final album by the Replacements, a band from Minneapolis that I am now finding greater difficulty writing about than I thought I would because of their huge, huge importance to me. Let me puke out something like that, in the mid-80s when I was a teenager and they were at their peak, their fuzzy, blaring rock n’ roll was the sound of truth and freedom and glory as I heard it, and that Paul Westerberg’s lyrics carved what I felt to be a secret message into my soul that told me what it meant to be alive. Okay, there. I feel a little better now. But I’m sorry you had to read that. Anyway, by the time All Shook Down came out, they were not at their peak. They were close to calling it quits and they knew it, it seemed.

Westerberg intended a lot the songs to be solo material, apparently. Session musicians play the parts of band members on many of the tracks. On the whole, it’s not nearly as good as their best work. That said, listening to it now, it sounds better than I would have expected. The playing is lackluster and the production somewhat ill-fitting, but the songs are still more satisfying than most of what you hear from other artists. A few of them, the slower ones mostly-”Merry Go Round,” “Sadly Beautiful,” the title track-measure up to any Westerberg has written. And then there’s the last song, appropriately titled “The Last.” If there was one thing that set Westerberg’s songwriting apart and above that of so many others, it was a sense of self-awareness, a realism about the imperfections he found not only with the world, but with himself-the teenager bragging about things he doesn’t understand in “Sixteen Blue” comes to mind, or the megalomaniacal suicide in “The Ledge,” or, of course, the desperate yearning to be special of “Here Comes a Regular.” That was there to the end, in a quiet little song about getting sober that also served as a goodbye note to Replacements fans, an honest admission that it was over. It’s about as perfect a way to end an album, and a band, as anyone’s ever come up with.

The wire-service headline: “US Internet users staying connected during sex: study.” (Lede: “Computer security firm PC Tools late Wednesday released a study showing that nearly a quarter of US residents think it is fine to be ‘plugged in’ to the Internet during sex.”) The official release touting the poll: “More Americans believe it is acceptable to be ‘plugged in’ while honeymooning (29%) than during a wedding (6%) or a religious service (8%)”; a find-and-replace on the term “sex” only finds the word buried in the boring bit about the poll’s methodology. Whew! (For now, at least.)

If your commitment to making fun of Glenn Beck is just as strong as your commitment to helping Jon Stewart sell his new book, then you are totally in luck!

Bethany Storro, the self-proclaimed “nice girl” from Vancouver, Wash., who claimed that she was accosted by a woman who called her “pretty girl” and offered her a drink — then threw a cup full of acid in her face, resulting in fairly severe chemical burns on her face and neck — has admitted that she made up the whole thing. “In many ways this is something that just got bigger than what she expected,” a flack for the local police said. It sure did! And it sure makes certain details from the story originally recounting the attack stand out even more:

Neuwelt said it was unusual that Storro was wearing the sunglasses that protected her eyes.

“She on a whim decided to buy a pair,” only about 20 minutes before the attack, Neuwelt said. “The weird thing is, she doesn’t like to wear sunglasses.”

The police actually credited the “weird” aspect of this particular detail with helping them crack the case. Of course, now it makes sense: How else was she going to know which buttons on her phone to press in order to dial 911 immediately after dousing herself?

The assailant was described as a black woman between 25 and 35, who wore a green shirt and khaki shorts. She had medium-length black hair that was pulled back, said Stefan, who is hoping for more information from the public.

Sigh. Etc.

Neuwelt said her daughter had never seen the assailant before, and it would be only speculation to try to explain a chemical attack she called “senseless.”

“It happens in the Middle East all the time,” the mother said.

All the time. Somehow there are only about 550 results for this young woman’s name and “Park51.” I’m kind of surprised! Maybe it’s because she’s Canadian. (Actually, she’s from Vancouver, Washington. So restore my surprise!)

Anyway, it’s a good thing that the rumored Oprah interview didn’t quite work out. Could you imagine the public shaming that would have resulted in?

Did you get caught out in the rain yesterday? Were you traumatized for life? As Awl pal Rod Townsend remarked in passing the above video along,

“The tornado reminds me of why I rooted for the monster in Cloverfield.”

“I personally have felt the bite of having no name. In my time, I have played ‘Ranger Bob,’ ‘Ringmaster Bob,’ ‘Dr. Bob,’ ‘Father Jon’ and ‘Father Joe.’ For the TV movie ‘Last Flight Out,’ my name was ‘Tim’ in the first half of the script and ‘Jim’ in the last half. One of our stars was Richard Crenna, the funniest man who ever lived; he would always call me ‘Tim Jim’ with a straight face during our scenes and in serious discussions with the director. No one noticed.”
-Awl contributor Stephen Tobolowsky illuminates the plight of the character actor in the New York Times.

Ann Powers takes on the Camille Paglia/Lady Gaga flap in the Los Angeles Times (as well as the always-present, always-thorny topic of sex in pop music), and here’s part of the setup: “[Paglia’s] prose style is bloody and lurid and sometimes effectively comical, like a Rob Zombie-directed horror movie; it’s hard to turn away.”

by Paul Hiebert

“If I had the money I spent on drugs and alcohol, I would buy this building, remodel it, and then take everyone here on a cruise,” Senior Pastor Carrie McEachern told her congregation of about a dozen. Sometimes she shouts so loud that the PA system becomes redundant. “I enjoy that cocaine that goes up my nose, but the Devil doesn’t talk about the consequences!” she said.

McEachern is a small woman with a large presence. That day she wore a navy-blue dress with matching blazer and a black bob wig somewhat in the style of Supremes-era Diana Ross. During worship music, McEachern bangs a tambourine against her hip. Sometimes she whacks it against her grandchildren’s shoulders and knees when they start falling asleep in the front row. Her tempo is usually a bit off.

Her congregation is primarily middle-aged, African-American women. They are nurses, teachers, students. Others are retired or unemployed. One just got out of jail. There are a few children, men and Hispanic women.

The room has a white tiled floor, white walls, and a white grid ceiling with fluorescent lights. Banners hang from the wall, providing the space with a shred of color. One reads “Love” and has a red heart on a purple background; another reads “Peace on Earth” and has a white dove on a red background. A keyboardist and drummer huddle over their instruments in the corner opposite the entrance. Congregants sit on black stackable chairs arranged in rows; they face a wooden pulpit around which McEachern roves. Behind the pulpit, a large American flag rests against the wall, curled around its staff.

McEachern is 75. She divorced her first husband due to his alcoholism and outlived her second. She watched two of her children die from cancer. When alcohol no longer elevated her mood, she moved on to marijuana; when marijuana turned impotent, she moved on to cocaine. For several years, McEachern worked two jobs: she was a nanny by day to pay for her rent and a barmaid by night to pay for her habits.

At 37, she tried to kill herself by overdosing on sleeping pills and a bottle of gin. McEachern’s daughter found her and forced black coffee on her. McEachern felt like a failure because she couldn’t even succeed at suicide.

“I was a good person, I worked everyday, I took care of my family, I took care of my children, but I was still miserable,” McEachern said. “There was something missing.”

Then she heard that an evangelist from Texas was coming to New York City to lead a month-long, 5000-seat tent revival on 149th street. McEachern showed up for all 31 nights, never missing a single hallelujah.

“It was so joyful and so peaceful,” said McEachern. “They had the singing, they had the band, they had different people just telling their testimonies for what God had done in their lives, how He had delivered them. I would sit there night after night after night.”

“I went from wrong to right,” she said. “I didn’t need a drug program; all I needed was God. I was transformed forever over night, and all it took was commitment. I surrendered totally to Him.” McEachern likes to say that her only current addiction is to Mountain Dew.

Pastor McEachern founded The United Church of Deliverance 12 years ago. It is non-denominational in allegiance. It joins a long tradition of African-American storefront churches. McEachern’s plan is rescue. “We’re working to deliver men from drugs and alcohol-that’s what we say when we talk about the ‘spirit man,’” she said. McEachern’s sermons accentuate the idea of redemption and draw upon her biography, and her entire congregation seems to agree that lasting salvation cannot be inhaled or swallowed or injected.

Vanessa Reyes, a congregant at The United Church of Deliverance, has three children from three different fathers-something she said she would “never, never do.” Now she sends out daily devotional text messages to everyone on her cell phone. A recent one read: “Who r u committed 2? Ur job kids clubs liquor friends jewelry shoppin etc? When u die and u r one on one wit God what r u goin 2 say? That u knew Him? How?”

The church is located on the corner of 133rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue, on the ground floor of a six-story apartment building made of brick. It is on the same strip as a pawnshop, a small electronics store, a Mexican restaurant, a convenience store and a family-owned business that sells flowers. The storefront used to be a dry cleaners. “It was clothes to clean, now it’s souls to clean,” McEachern likes to say. The sidewalk is often littered with Styrofoam coffee cups and paper plates from local pizza and fried-chicken dives.

On each of its street faces, the storefront has two identical signs that display 2 Timothy 4:2: “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine.” On one side a poster featuring the Autobots logo from Transformers is taped to the inside of the storefront window, facing out. A cross is stamped onto the logo’s forehead and the words “BE TRANSFORMED” are written beneath it.

The building is owned by a Muslim man. One church elder said that he never bothers them when they’re late with the rent; he only asks that they pray for him.

* * *

Services at The United Church of Deliverance begin with a swell of prayer, a cacophony of voices. This segues into the music segment, where a few women stand near the front and lead the congregation in worship. The women select which song to sing on impulse. Attendees sway their hips with eyes closed and arms raised.

On some Sundays, people become so ecstatic that they reach states of delirium. One morning, a thin woman with gray hair flapped her arms and flailed about her head as if possessed. She whispered to herself in an unknown language. Other members formed a circle around her; a man stood behind her with open arms, waiting. When she did fall, he lowered her to the cold, tiled floor. Others put a pillow beneath her head and a blanket over her twitching body.

A blind woman stomped the ground so hard with her heel it sounded as if she was trying to break through the floor. She stopped to hug those around her, slowly guiding her way down the row with a hand on the back of each chair.

Most Bible reading is done from the King James Version; the switch from urban vernacular to the English of the 1600s is a bit abrasive.

After the message, a church member puts two plastic white buckets on a wooden trolley near the front for tithes and donations. One bucket goes to whoever gave the sermon that morning, whether it was Pastor McEachern or a guest speaker, the other goes toward paying the rent. Over the summer, the church collected additional money to pay for an air conditioner.

White tourists occasionally sneak in during the service to observe from the back row, but they never stay longer than five minutes.

Vanessa Reyes sends out another text message: “A must see. On YouTube Christian rapper disses jay z back for Jesus Christ. Read the lyrics.”

* * *

Overall, churches in Harlem are are losing their significance. Older generations are dying and younger generations often do not fill their empty seats in the pews. Gentrification of the region is bringing in new residents with no original connection to the community, and, for an array of reasons, no interest in joining a local church. “I have come in contact with young ones who say ‘your religion is for old people,’” McEachern said.

Pastor McEachern worries about the young people in her neighborhood. She doesn’t like how men wear their pants so low, the lyrics in rap music and seeing so many women pushing strollers without a man beside them. McEachern spends her days praying with other women over the phone about their financial issues and incarcerated sons.

She is of the opinion that in general things are simply getting worse.

This past June, Harlem held its inaugural LGBT Pride block party. It didn’t draw a huge crowd, but it did feature a performance by a drag queen named Sugga Pie KoKo and an appearance by State Senator Bill Perkins, who represents much of the Upper West Side and the majority of Harlem.

“According to the word of God, it’s an abomination,” said McEachern. “To me, it’s not normal, it’s the spirit that gets people like that-it’s not natural. God made a man and a woman, not a man and a man. That’s the word of God, not my opinion. I’m a firm believer that it’s wrong. I don’t condemn them, I try to help them, but I let them know it’s wrong and I’m not going to accept it.”

McEachern was born in North Carolina, 1935. She had nine siblings. They had an outhouse and a fireplace instead of a television. They bathed in a huge tub twice a week. In the 5th grade, she dropped out of school to pick cotton. Her work hours were while the sun was in the sky. She moved to New York City at the age of 16 with her mother and sisters, where she began work in a factory, assembling parts for eyeglass cases. She earned $32 a week.

McEachern’s son Tommy McEachern grew up across the street from what is now The United Church of Deliverance in the Manhattanville projects, where his mother has lived since 1961. He rarely attends the church.

Tommy is 51 now. When he walks up Amsterdam Avenue, young men in baggy jeans and baseball caps nod in deference, convenience-store clerks with collared shirts smile and wave, tired-looking women with carts full of dirty laundry stop to say hello, although he said that “I don’t have a lot of friends.” Tommy has a shaved head and is of average height. He has a thin moustache and dark eyes. He wears big boots, loose jeans, and a puffy black jacket.

Tommy grew up playing basketball at the Manhattanville Community Center. He was a shooting guard. He was offered a basketball scholarship from North Carolina State. “As long as I was in that center, I was alright,” he said. “I was amazing.”

“He had kids following him,” his mother said. “He was a role model when it comes down to basketball-you should see the trophies we have at the house.”

At 13, Tommy started noticing who had nice cars and who didn’t; who had gold chains and who didn’t; who had the admiration of women and who didn’t. Tommy started hanging around with the older boys who had the things he wanted, and asked them a lot of questions. They took a liking to him.

That year Tommy got his start in the drug business. His first job was to retrieve small bundles of heroin wrapped in cellophane, stored underneath parked cars and inside of trashcans, while the older boys did the work of negotiating with potential customers. The idea was that, as a minor, if Tommy got caught holding the drugs, the penalty would be less severe than it would for the older boys. When a deal was reached, they’d tell Tommy the quantity of drugs to give to the buyer and the amount of money he should expect to receive.

“The first time I was scared,” said Tommy. “But I wanted what they wanted, I wanted what they had-new sneakers, the pants, the shirts. I wanted to be that cat that had what other kids didn’t have.”

The summer that Tommy was 14 he was instructed to go to a condemned building on 127th Street and 7th Avenue to give out samples of heroin. The fifteen or so people there were so fixated on a feeling that had long since vanished that when one user overdosed, everyone else wanted to know from whom he bought his drugs and if they could have some too.

“I ain’t never seen so much nasty stuff in my life,” said Tommy. “That was an experience for me, seeing them getting off in their groins, in between their fingers and their toes, and their neck. Anywhere that a vein wasn’t burnt out, more or less.”

“I didn’t even really care,” he said. “I didn’t have no heart. All I cared about was what I was doing. I didn’t care who I hurt.”

Tommy would come home with new clothes concealed beneath his jacket, to keep his mom from becoming suspicious, and run upstairs to show his brother James. James was two years younger than Tommy and was impressed. Tommy got James the same job, but James got arrested on his second day of duty.

Tommy was rattled. He decided to quit. At 18, he got a job for Merrill Lynch, running on the commodity exchange, delivering slips to brokers. “I’d never done anything like that and I didn’t really like it too much,” he said. “It was corny. Some like to get sarcastic for no reason cause they’re in a better position than you are, but that’s just something you got to deal with.”

He was at Merrill Lynch for three years before moving to a law firm to work in the mailroom. That lasted for two years. He didn’t like working in an office and he went into business for himself.

“We ain’t talking about holding drugs for somebody else-this was my shit,” he said. “In my building, we were selling drugs from 8 a.m. to 4 a.m.”

Heroin was falling out of favor and cocaine became more affordable to people in the neighborhood. To supplement his income, he also became a “stick-up boy.”

One day when he was 26, Tommy and some friends went to a KFC at 125th and Broadway to get something to eat. They noticed a side door to the back room was open. They noticed the restaurant had no security cameras. Tommy was hesitant, but his friends walked through the open door to see if there was anything worth taking, leaving him to keep watch.

There were two doors for customers to enter and exit the KFC, and Tommy could only guard one. So he allowed customers to come in but kept anyone from leaving to notify the police. One customer, however, escaped, and the police arrived shortly after that.

Tommy tried to make it back to his mother’s apartment on foot. “I knew if I got into my building I could have went to anybody’s house,” he said. Police from two different precincts, along with the task force, showed up at his apartment block. “I lit that project up,” he said. He was charged with 2nd degree robbery and went to jail.

And then, “after I got out, I went back,” he said. Once he spent just a week out of prison before being put back in. From 26 to 41, Tommy went to jail four times-three times for either robbery or attempted robbery, the last time for selling drugs. Time served totals eight and a half years.

Now he has a bad back, a wife to whom he’s been married since 1997 and three kids, aged 4, 10 and 16.

“If I had a decent job, I’d get out of the game,” said Tommy. “I’d walk lightly, for real, but I can’t get one. I’m 51 years old. I already did the first half, now this is the second half. I gotta do it right. I just think about my kids and how I can get some money to help out. I got a family and I don’t know what else to do. You wouldn’t hire me. You wouldn’t and you know it. I wouldn’t hire a person like me.”

* * *

Vanessa Reyes sends out another text message: “The devil is out 2 destroy families & friends. By sickness, guns, hate, jealousy, gossip, drugs etc. Let God in ur life. He will fight the demons. Wit Him u win.”

* * *

Carrie McEachern sat on a chair in her living room. She was watching an all-white choir, dressed in baby blue robes, singing on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. There are plenty of framed photographs and certificates on her wall. Two thick Bibles rest on the coffee table. McEachern has braces on each hand. Her bob wig was over on a hook near her desk. Her desk had a computer on top covered by a white sheet to protect it from dust. Tommy sat on the couch.

“This will put you to sleep, man,” Tommy said. “I ain’t trying to go to sleep.”

“I love this-the orchestra and the different types of instruments,” his mother said.

“Well, they need to speed it up a little bit. My Duracells are running out,” Tommy said.

The conversation turned to his mother’s conversion.

“So why it ain’t happen to me?” Tommy asked.

“Because you didn’t surrender,” she said.

“I cried and everything,” he said. “Felt good, and all that.”

“You don’t go by the way you feel,” she said. “You’re not tired. You’re not tired of your mess. I got tired. I was working two jobs. The more I worked, the more I spent, the less I had…. You see people today who steal and rob to support their habit. I had class. I was sophisticated. I had morals. I had standards. There was just certain things I would not do as a human being.”

“I just knocked people in the head and said ‘Give me that,’” Tommy said. “So where I get this from?”

“From you,” his mother said. “From the streets. I wasn’t a street person; I never hung out on the street.”

They returned their attention to the choir on TV.

“You hear how he’s singing? It’s a worship song,” she said, of the male soloist.

“He’s got one of them soft voices, man,” he said.

“Tenor. He’s got a tenor voice,” she said.

“Well, tell him to sing tenor-more miles away from here,” he said.

They both laughed.

For 15 years, McEachern did prison ministry. Together with other evangelists, she held services for local inmates. One time she made a trip to Rikers Island when Tommy was there.

“I said ‘Ma, don’t embarrass me. Please, don’t embarrass me,’” Tommy said.

“Will you shut up? I didn’t embarrass you,” she said, and laughed.

“Yeah, you did,” Tommy said.

Tommy’s version is that, in the middle of McEachern’s sermon to the prisoners, she stopped abruptly. Then she said, “Most of you think I don’t know what I’m talking about, huh? Well I know what I’m talking about, cause I got a son in here now. Tommy, stand up.”

McEachern laughed. Tommy lowered his head and shook it, a grin on his face.

“You see a lot of volunteers go in and they preach down to them, instead of preaching with them,” she said. “You don’t go in there saying ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have done this, you shouldn’t have done that.’”

“I’m hanging out with straight killers, and we always play the back,” Tommy said. “The next thing I know, my man Lee went up front. I hear someone yelling, ‘Ah, thank you Jesus! Thank you God!’ and guess who it was? My homie, Lee!”

“You see?” she said. “If we wouldn’t have been there, he wouldn’t have changed his life. That was the purpose of going there: to change lives.”

“I looked at him and said ‘No, not you killer!’” Tommy said. “Lee was yelling at the top of his lungs. He was crying and everything. First time I see something like that.”

“God can change the worst person,” she said. “There’s nothing that He cannot change.”

“That was some funny stuff right there,” Tommy said. “I laughed at him.”

Paul Hiebert lives in New York City and attends classes at New York University. He can be reached at paulryanhiebert [AT] gmail [DOT] com.