One Faith, Many Paths: Alyssa Huber

This month for my One Faith, Many Paths series, I have decided to interview Alyssa Huber. She is the main admin of the Facebook group Christians With Asperger’s and also has her own YouTube channel, where she has films that she has made to help others understand autism.

1) What was your childhood like? Like a dream world, in my opinion. I was always in my own head and very imaginative. I was obsessed with aliens, superheroes, and cats.  I would pretend the fort my dad built was a spaceship, and I made a little “hotel” for my alien toys in the sandbox. My supportive family (mom, dad, and two brothers) accepted my oddities. My bane was social confusion (mostly as I got older), stubbornly refusing to socialize (more people means less time in my world) and sensory problems like having to wear itchy clothes or tolerate noisy/busy environments.

2) When were you diagnosed with autism? 12 years old, in middle school when my teachers noticed I was “odd”.

3) What evidence can you give for God’s existence? I feel him in nature. I can give no evidence sufficient enough for humans, who are we to understand?

4) What inspired you to use YouTube as a means of advocacy? I wanted to make a documentary on Asperger’s to simply share my experience, and it got bigger than I ever expected it to. I realized by the reactions of viewers (Aspies, undiagnosed aspies, NT’s related to/friends with Aspies, etc.) that it has been quite helpful and much-needed, and I could do more of that on my channel by continuing to make videos on Asperger’s Syndrome.

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Farewell, Adam West

“I never needed to say I was Batman. I just showed up.”–Adam West in an episode of “The Big Bang Theory

This is a post I’ve been dreading even though I knew I’d have to do it eventually. With the news last week, I knew I’d have to make a tribute to Adam West. This was a person I would have to make a tribute post for because he was an important part of my childhood.

When I was in fourth grade, a new TV network started in New Orleans, WNOL-38. (It eventually was bought out by Fox and currently the WB/CW network) For its first two years, it was your basic channel that had syndicated reruns. One of these was the Batman TV series from the 1960’s starring Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin.

It was this show that introduced me to Batman, the Dark Knight. Each weekend, they would air both parts of the original episode back to back. Each week had a great old movie star or TV personality guest star as the villain. There were famous comic book villains such as the Riddler (Frank Gorshin), the Joker (Caesar Romero) or Catwoman (Julie Newar, Lee Meriwether, and Eartha Kitt) . The show even had its own villains like King Tut (Victor Buono) and Egghead (Vincent Price). It was fun and action-packed. I loved how the fights always had sound effects printed on the screen, just like a comic book.

Film Freak: Star Wars 40th Anniversary: The Phantom Menace

The prequels are often considered the worst part of the Star Wars saga. In fact, many fans would like to pretend they don’t exist. As I said in my review of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, fans don’t get to decide what’s canon. The films exist and it’s time someone said something positive about them.

Let’s get the negatives out of the way because they’ve been said to death. Was Jar Jar Binks annoying? Yes. Was Jake Lloyd bad? Yes, but so was everyone who treated him so badly afterward. Hate the film, that’s fine. but don’t tear down a kid like that in the process. Were the midichlorians a bad explanation of The Force? Yes, actually I would’ve preferred no explanation at all. The Force is magic, and magic isn’t cool once you explain how it works. It ceases to be magic at all.

Bookworm: The Outsiders

Last year, I did anniversary posts for the Adam West Batman TV series and my top 10 best and worst Star Trek episodes in celebration of their 50th anniversaries. 1967 is also a great year for pop culture. Pink Floyd started off their career with Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The Beatles released their landmark Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Peanuts gang debuted on Broadway with You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. And in Tulsa, Oklahoma, SE Hinton published her debut novel, The Outsiders. It would be followed by That Was Then, This is Now, Tex, and Rumble Fish. All of these encompass what I personally call the Ponyboy saga, because he’s in all four books. (although in the “sequels”, he’s not as important as he was in the first book.

The story focuses on two gangs–the Socs (the rich kids) and the Greasers–Ponyboy, Dallas, Two-Bit, Soda Pop, and Johnny  (our heroes). Most of the Greasers are orphans, with Dallas being the stand-in parent.