Today I have an opinion piece about Christian rock on ABCNews.com. There’s also an excerpt of the book.

Patton Dodd reviews my book. My favorite part:

But the question persists, because in evangelical circles there’s a lot of chatter and concern over whether particular music is “Christian” or “secular.” Well—here’s a fool’s axiom: Both inside the parallel universe of Christian music and in every other universe, the only one who can make music Christian is Christ. No matter what we make of Bazan or Crowder, Rebecca St. James or Michael W. Smith, Mute Math or Newsboys—or, for that matter, U2, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Sufjan Stevens, and a million other acts—when we’re talking about music, we’d do well to remember our categories are too simple, too inflexible, and too earthy to contain the truth.

Lars, a metalish young man who seems to intern at NPR, and a commenter on the below post, enjoyed my reading last night. So to you, Lars, I tip a hornful of grog and bellow a hearty “Góða nótt!”

I tried, I really did, to come up with some visuals to accompany the reading, per organizer Adam Mazmanian’s suggestion. But I ran into some weird iMovie problem and gave up around 12:30 a.m. this morning, so anyone who comes to this evening’s F.W. Thomas Performance at the Warehouse will just have to content themselves with my ugly mug and inept public speaking skills. That said, the evening will cost only $3, and everyone else on the bill looks pretty talented. I’m especially excited to meet this guy: I didn’t know there was such a thing as sex police. Sex Pistols, sure. Dream Police, most def. Cop Shoot Cop? I have that 7″ with the pig blood on it! But sex police? D.C. sure is a confusing place.

I just realized I have Randall Balmer’s name misspelled consistently through my book–this might be a good time to mention that I had so little time to actually write the book that I had to forgo a fact-check; be that as it may I’m horrified, and this will be fixed in the next edition should there be one.

Monday night I’ll be reading from Body Piercing Saved My Life at this month’s installment of the F.W. Thomas Performances. It will take place at the Warehouse Theater in Washington, D.C. at about 7:30 p.m. I’m curious to see this “Washington, D.C.” that I keep hearing about!

Say something like this: “Uh, hippies…Christians…crux…GAAAAACK.” At least that’s how I remember it, but otherwise today’s On Point interview went really well, and I was tickled to death to be on with Randall Balmer, whose book Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey Into the Evangelical Subculture in America was a really big influence on me while I was writing Body Piercing.

I think the show will be podcast or something soon.

Thursday I’ll be on WBUR’s On Point from 11 a.m.-noon EST. It’s shaping up to be a wild show, with guests all across the spectrum of Christian music and thought, and I’m pleased to be a part of it. You can listen live or catch the podcast later. And if you live near one of the stations that carries On Point, you can tune in the old-fashioned way.

A thoughtful post from a nice young lady in Louisiana about my book; I always figured if I moved to Louisiana, I’d know what it’s like to have my name pronounced correctly all the time. (Hmm. I see on her MySpace page that she’s an Elliott Yamin fan–my former hometown recently made a complete fawning arse of itself over that guy; I trust Renee is handling herself with a bit more aplomb!)

If you understand podcasting (I don’t, and never will, so don’t even bother trying to explain it to me), the podcast of the WNYC show on which I was interviewed today is here.

Big shoutout to my homeboy Rob Christiansen, who waters the plants in the WNYC studios when no one’s looking.