Five Cent Stand

Lennox Hill (Hell)

2012-01-15T12:57:00.001-08:00

What if difference being Beyonce (being incredibly rich and famous) can make.

First off, I'm over blogging about celebrities. It rarely happens these days. But something struck me as I glanced at the Yahoo news and I had to speak out. Two words, to be exact. Two words that are synonymous with "pit" and "hell". Those two words are... drumroll.... "Lennox Hill." It was shocking to me that Beyonce had her baby at Lennox Hill. See, Kate (our daughter) was born at Lennox Hill and when I see pictures of Beyonce's decked out baby birthing suite I can't even imagine that they are in the same building, or the same region of the Solar System as Lennox Hill.

I will give you a brief rundown of our experience with Lennox Hill:

We arrive pretty early in the morning and the nurses aren't exactly super glad to see us. Understandable, the graveyard shift at any hospital isn't usually the all-star cast. And most night-shift people are usually a little weird and need some serious vitamin D in the old bloodstream. In the first hour of contractions, two doctors started arguing in the room over a changing shift. Then later, two nurses argued over something, I think over a machine that was malfunctioning or something one of the nurses forgot to do, like take Amber's blood pressure or take take their clue pill before coming to work. I dunno. There was ONE nurse that seemed to be in tune with Amber while Amber was pretty deep into contraction-world (Amber was going natural birth with no drugs; the pain was for realz, ya'll) but after the first visit, this nurse seemed to pop in long enough just to say something about the baby's heart rate being a little high and then leave. Another nurse talked on her phone to her boyfriend and had to leave the room because Amber's pain scream was just too loud to hear her boyfriend. I just couldn't believe it.

One of the first things that we realized about the hospital was the general hygiene of the place; it was pretty dirty. Granted, we come from Dallas Texas where the clinics have flat-screen TVs in every room, and the clinic doctors call you two days later to see how you are doing (I know that sounds crazy but it's true) so maybe be are a tad spoiled... but I'm pretty sure I saw dirt-scum in about every corner the room and the window shade looked like a few crusty truck drivers had a peeing contest before they delivered the window shade and the window shade was the target.

Finally, Amber's doctor arrived. Amber's lady-doctor is really a wonderful Doctor. She really is. She's so great that she came into the room and demanded that they change the pee-stained shade on the window. (the air conditioner vent is right under the shade) Well, that would have been all fine if the repair guys wouldn't have gotten into an argument in the middle of one of Amber's contractions. At this point I wondered if everyone had to pass some sort of ineptitude exam to make sure that they measured up to the Lennox Hill standard of crappiness. Then, we found out the shower didn't work in the room. So the repair guys decided to give that a go. Basically, it turned into a construction site, where everyone, it seemed, was arguing and hollering over a first time mom and her praying husband and in the middle of the some pretty intense contractions. It was hell.

To top it all off, they decided to move Amber to another room, after the shade is fixed and after the shower is fixed, in the middle of a contraction. The reason is still a mystery. But they tried to make it sound like it was imperative. This room was bigger, but it had sticky dried up soft drink on the chairs and the shower and the birthing light (that really bright and important light the doctor uses to see the baby) didn't work either. They had to change the light out. All the while Amber is trying to get dilated and screaming her face off. This kind of crap went on for about 10 hrs straight. Just one crappy hospital experience after another. Finally, after 22 hrs straight of stressed-out contractions, Amber went on the epidural. She still had her own contractions but without the extreme pain. At this point all the nurses seemed to relax and stop running around like chickens. Then it occurred to me: If the women don't let the drugs take over as soon as they step in the building, the doctors and nurses don't have a CLUE as to what to do.

One might ask, well, Seth, this hospital sounds pretty Ghetto, didn't you tour the facility before sending your precious wife into the war zone? Of course I did. But guess what? You don't really pick your hospital, you pick your Doctor. And our Doctor was awesome and well-known and just one year from retirement. And she has delivered at Lennox Hill since Lennox Hill was Lennox Mountain and according to some ancient Mages and old-timer NYC soothsayers, Lennox Hill used to be the best of the best. Then some rich group of investors bought it and all the good doctors (except our doctor) left. Plus, it's in probably one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, the Upper East Side in Manhattan. If you look at the room furniture and the equipment, you'd think it was twenty years behind and in one of Billy Bob Thornton's indie films. The rooms had that Motel 6 feel about them (before they changed their image) and the furniture looked like it had come straight from the Good Will without a good scrub down. I think we would have been much safer in a missionary tent in Africa. Not kidding.

I will say the postpartum section of the Hospital had their stuff pretty much together, for the most part, except the bed. Amber's bed made an incredible racket when she wanted to incline which woke the baby up every time and scared the crud out of me half the time myself. The nurse actually LAUGHED at me when I asked if there was internet in the rooms. Not even a connection. I might as well have been asking her hand me a handful of pink diamonds and a ride on the spaceship.

This was our experience at Lennox Hill. It was not the posh, royale-with-cheese experience that Sasha Fierce and Jay-Z's little bundle got.

IT SUCKED.

It sucked so bad that I will NEVER ever ever E-VER set foot in that hospital again and wouldn't if I had one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel.

They basically did everything they could to make the situation as stressful and uncomfortable as humanly possible. It's only because of prayer and the Doula that Amber didn't go into distress and the baby didn't either. I mean, it was that bad.

A part of me is glad that the Beyonce's or the Z's or the Fierce's or whatever their last name is.... renovated the whole wing of that Hospital. It's probably how they got the sweet deal that they got. Who else but a King would get that kind of arrangement in a NY hospital. Lot's of celebrities live here and they all play by the rules, for the most part. I see old Regis at our gym sometimes and he's gets his water out of the same fountain as I do.

But here, I can just see the convo: "Hey, Lennox-Hill-people, we the people of the Z family will renovate this whole CRAPPY floor if you let us be the absolute ruler and dictator of the baby hospital district during our stay. We want absolute power of the building and that means bouncing other parents out of the ICU area if we think they look like they want to snap a picture of our baby with their phones. I mean, cause when people find out about OUR baby, they aren't even going care about their own dumb and boring babies and will just be dreaming about getting the chance to snap a shot of our baby. Because our baby... is FIERCE and HAWT and SUPERFAMOUS and just downright Babylicious."

Lennox Hill People: "Deal. And may I say I agree with Kanye about that video and if I could go back in time and lift Kanye on my shoulders to the microphone, I would. And You deserved that Academy Award of Jennifer Hudson. I mean, have you seen that video of Hudson singing to her overweight self? Stinking weird. That's what getting an academy award gets you?"

Z family: "Don't mention her name in my presence and don't look me in the eyes when you speak... or when I speak. And don't look into my unborn baby's eyes when you speak either."

Lennox Hill People: "As you wish, Lord and Lady Fierce."

Z family: "Shut it, punk."

Alright: end rant.

God bless baby Beyonce. From all accounts (I really haven't heard any) it's a very beautiful baby. And babies are truly the equalizing force in all creation. They don't know how famous their parents are. They come out with one command for mommy and daddy whether they be pauper, prince or king: "Yo. Wake up. I just pooped. Clean it up. You dig? Awah."

The end. God bless Beyonce, and God bless Amarca.

Ron Paul Misconceptions.

2011-12-30T17:32:00.001-08:00

I am actually quite shocked at how people are snubbing Ron Paul. I'm mostly shocked because it's mostly conservatives who are snubbing him. I'm pretty convinced that it's because they listen to what the media says about him. For instance, Kelly Clarkson came out and endorsed Ron Paul. People got nasty and a few people stopped following her on Twitter. However, what the article didn't say was that her record sales spiked.

Ron Paul has two things going against him: The liberal media hates him because he's the only candidate that actually stands a chance to beat Obama. The only thing they can dig up on him is "He's a racist." The conservative media hates him because he's basically wanting to end the age of tyrannical banks by regulating and auditing the Federal Reserve. But what has really amazed me is how people will say, "Oh Ron, he's a nut" and then they have no idea why they think that.

I'm going to outline a few things Ron Paul stands for. This is directly from his website.

HEALTHCARE: He will work with Congress to:

* Repeal ObamaCare and end its unconstitutional mandate that all Americans must carry only government-approved health insurance or answer to the IRS.

* Allow purchase of health insurance across state lines.

* Provide tax credits and deductions for all medical expenses.

* Exempt those with terminal illnesses from the employee portion of payroll taxes while they are suffering from such illnesses or are incurring significant medical costs associated with their conditions.

* Give a payroll deduction to any worker who is the primary caregiver for a spouse, parent, or child with a terminal illness.

* Ensure that those harmed during medical treatment receive fair compensation while reducing the burden of costly malpractice litigation on the health care system by providing a tax credit for “negative outcomes” insurance purchased before medical treatment.

* Guarantee that what is taken from taxpayers to pay for Medicare and Medicaid is not raided for other purposes.

* Make all Americans eligible for Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and remove government-imposed barriers to obtaining HSAs.

* Stop the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from interfering with Americans’ knowledge of and access to dietary supplements and alternative treatments.

* Prevent federal bureaucrats from tracking every citizen’s medical history from cradle to grave by prohibiting the use of taxpayer funds for a national database of personal health information.

Ron Paul proudly worked every day to honor the trust his patients placed in him, and he will do the same as President with the confidence of the American people, who deserve a government that “does no harm” to their health care.

DEFENSE

As an Air Force veteran, Ron Paul believes national defense is the single most important responsibility the Constitution entrusts to the federal government.

In Congress, Ron Paul voted to authorize military force to hunt down Osama bin Laden and authored legislation to specifically target terrorist leaders and bring them to justice.

Today, however, hundreds of thousands of our fighting men and women have been stretched thin all across the globe in over 135 countries – often without a clear mission, any sense of what defines victory, or the knowledge of when they’ll be permanently reunited with their families.

Acting as the world’s policeman and nation-building weakens our country, puts our troops in harm’s way, and sends precious resources to other nations in the midst of an historic economic crisis.

Taxpayers are forced to spend billions of dollars each year to protect the borders of other countries, while Washington refuses to deal with our own border security needs.

Congress has been rendered virtually irrelevant in foreign policy decisions and regularly cedes authority to an executive branch that refuses to be held accountable for its actions.

Far from defeating the enemy, our current policies provide incentive for more to take up arms against us.

That’s why, as Commander-in-Chief, Dr. Paul will lead the fight to:

* Make securing our borders the top national security priority.

* Avoid long and expensive land wars that bankrupt our country by using constitutional means to capture or kill terrorist leaders who helped attack the U.S. and continue to plot further attacks.

* Guarantee our intelligence community’s efforts are directed toward legitimate threats and not spying on innocent Americans through unconstitutional power grabs like the Patriot Act.

* End the nation-building that is draining troop morale, increasing our debt, and sacrificing lives with no end in sight.

* Follow the Constitution by asking Congress to declare war before one is waged.

* Only send our military into conflict with a clear mission and all the tools they need to complete the job – and then bring them home.

* Ensure our veterans receive the care, benefits, and honors they have earned when they return.

* Revitalize the military for the 21st century by eliminating waste in a trillion-dollar military budget.

* Prevent the TSA from forcing Americans to either be groped or ogled just to travel on an airplane and ultimately abolish the unconstitutional agency.

* Stop taking money from the middle class and the poor to give to rich dictators through foreign aid.

As President, Ron Paul’s national defense policy will ensure that the greatest nation in human history is strong, secure, and respected.

What I think that most conservatives don't know is his stance on abortion. He was a doctor and he delivers over 5,000 babies and he's probably the only candidate who has come out totally against it in a while.

FAITH AND ABORTION

My faith is a deeply private issue to me, and I don’t speak on it in great detail during my speeches because I want to avoid any appearance of exploiting it for political gain. Let me be very clear here: I have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, and I endeavor every day to follow Him in all I do and in every position I advocate.

It is God Who gave us life. As He is free, so are those He created in His image. Our rights to life and liberty are inalienable.

I’m running for President of the United States because I believe that our traditions and way of life are under attack from an out-of-control federal government and reckless politicians who show no regard for what our Founders entrusted to our protection.

America became the greatest nation in human history because a dedicated band of Patriots believed their God-given rights were worth fighting for, even if it meant challenging the world’s most powerful nation in what many deemed a “hopeless” cause.

Being free meant so much to our forefathers that they put everything on the line – and thousands sacrificed their lives – to give the promise of liberty to not only their children and grandchildren, but to generations they knew they would never even meet.

Their courage and determination guaranteed they would defy the odds and achieve victory.

In this critical election, you and I must decide if the principles of limited government and personal freedom are worth fighting for once again.

Since I’m asking for your vote and your trust to lead this nation, let me tell you a little bit about my background and beliefs.

My parents raised my four brothers and me on a dairy near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they set clear examples for each of us about faith, honest living, and individual responsibility. Their Christian values helped inspire two of my brothers to eventually enter the ministry, and provided me with the foundation I needed to practice medicine and one day become a U.S. Representative.

In addition to my time in Congress, I am proud to have delivered over 4,000 babies as a country doctor in Texas. As I trained to practice medicine, I became convinced without a doubt that life begins at the moment of conception. I never performed an abortion, and I never once found an abortion necessary to save the life of the mother. In fact, I successfully helped women struggling with their pregnancies to seek other options, including adoption.

I am running to Restore America Now, and by that I mean that it’s time to protect and promote the basic God-given rights inherent in the promise of America.

We must pass on our heritage of liberty to the next generation – not tens of trillions of dollars in debt and liabilities.

We must stand for life – not allow millions of innocent children to continue to be slaughtered with the government’s approval.

We must follow the Biblical mandate of using honest weights and measures – not printing money out of thin air in almost complete secrecy and then handing it over to oppressive dictators.

We must only send our men and women to fight for our country when the mission is clear, every necessary tool needed to win is provided, and we respect the Constitution by declaring war.

Once war is declared, it must be waged according to Just War principles. We should only fight when it’s in our national security interest, and we should no longer do the corrupt United Nation’s bidding by policing the world.

In Congress, I never vote for any piece of legislation that violates the Constitution’s strict limits on government power. I also do not participate in the congressional pension system.

As President, I give you my word that I will only exercise my authority within the confines of the Constitution, and I will work every day to rein in a runaway federal government by binding it with the chains of that document.

For my stands and beliefs, I am told that my efforts are “hopeless.” Like those who were proud to stand up for what they knew was right to create our nation, however, I firmly believe that now is a better time than ever before to reclaim our liberties. No situation is hopeless for those who receive their strength from their faith, family, and freedom.

And like those Patriots, I have no doubt that liberty will prevail.

I invite you to join me and millions of other Americans in taking our stand to honor our forefathers’ sacrifices and Restore America Now.

My Aside: So there you have it. Doesn't sound so crazy to me. Sounds pretty awesome.

The squatters doth protest too much.

2011-10-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

I love America. I really do. Only in this country can a bunch of people get together and camp out in the greatest city in the world, for free, eat muffins, smoke cigs, eat their fill, and gripe about the country that is allowing it and then when the city wants to clean up their stinky mess, they can get online with their COMPUTERS and get a petition signed so they can continue their stint and stench as America's camper class.

And here's the beauty: They have no friggin idea what they are protesting. It's really a marvel. What a country!

Here's my problem with this so-very-brave, ignorant band of Patriot-vagabonds: They have no freaking clue that they are part of the problem. A huge part. So I am protesting THEM.

I am protesting the protestors for their laziness and lack of due diligence. I'm protesting because I'm tired of getting collection calls for James Lorenz, a man who seems to have applied to every credit card on the planet. James Lorenz... The richest man I know. Sometime I wish I were James Lorenz. He must have a huge house and a bunch of cool electronic equipment.

But I'm also protesting on behalf of some people that I consider more "American" than anyone on that scroungy lawn.

I am protesting on behalf of the illegal Mexican immigrant that brings me my food every-other night, afraid that I'll ask him a question while I'm paying the bill, because he can't speak a lick of English. That takes real courage, right there. So I tip big.

These are the people who are building our homes that we can't afford. They are working the jobs that we don't want to work, jobs that could actually pay for the homes that they are building for us. We used to build our own homes in this country. That country is long gone.

I am protesting on behalf of the cab driver from India, who used to be a doctor in his country. He's here on a green card and working 14 hr shifts, sleeping in his car, peeing in a plastic bottle so that he get as many people as possible cab fares and afford to send his kids to school in this country.

I am protesting on behalf of the teenagers working shifts down at the McDonalds and staying up late at night to study for their exams so they can get a good scholarship to go to a good college.

I am protesting on behalf of the single mom who is out working her tail off and leaving the baby with the nice old neighbor so she can pay her way through night school and get a good-to-decent job.

I am protesting because on my way to pick up lunch, I walked by four signs in four different stores that said they were hiring. And I'm protesting because the illegal immigrant, who hustled out of the restaurant (where I was getting lunch) into the rain, hopped on a bicycle to deliver food with a smile on his face. Thankful. I'm protesting because this man, who probably fled a mafia infested drug town in Mexico and crammed himself into a 8 person van with 30 people and drove to NYC to make a better life for his family, he can't apply for that job in the window, the one that none of the protestors want.

Someone told me last night during a discussion about this, "It's not the protesters job to know what they are protesting. Something is wrong and they want it fixed." I find that to be one of the most amazingly perplexing comments that I've ever heard. Not only are they not expected to apply for the job at Radio shack, they aren't even required to know what the hellck it is that they are protesting while they don't work. I guess they just woke up one day, looked at all their missed calls from collection agencies, saw all the fun revolts going on in countries where there is real tyranny and rape and horrors, and said...

"Wait a second. I'm so confused. Why don't I have a job paying me 250k a year. I mean, I got 200,000 in student loans for my degree in typing and a minor in Electric Guitar Performance. How am I supposed to pay this? Why are all those guys on Wall Street making money? Why didn't the government give me any money? Where's my check! Revolt!"

Then they pull out their government-subsidized iPhone while sitting at Starbux and text all their buddies to meet them out on the lawn and protest Wall Street. Because that's where the money is. "Yeah!"

Well, this just in, straight from the ILPCCC: (I'm-a-Lazy-Protestor Central Command Center) These big EVIL Wall Street guys, most of them, they lost big, too. I taught guitar lessons to one guy who said that one day he had $100,000 in the market and the next day, he was broker than the Ten Commandments. He was just a normal Wall Street guy that was trying to make it. (His girlfriend paid for the guitar lessons as a birthday present.)

So, you're on the wrong lawn, kids. Why aren't you on Obama's lawn? Congress's Lawn? They are the ones (Rebups and Dums) who cut the banks the checks. Start there. Then head on South to the dude who thought buying a $300,000 dollar house with 20k a year salary was a good idea. (I know a few of those.) Then find the guy who took out $200,000 of third party student loans, all-the-while dropping out his classes after the 3rd week so he could pocket the cash refund and live-it-up like an unemployed Tsar.

And I'm supposed to sign some petition to extend their free stay out on the park so they can protest, not "being poor", but, "not being rich"??? Well I got news: Do better. Figure it out. Even the dang hippies, arms all red and gnarly from trying to poke a good vein, and stoned into idiocy, knew what they were protesting about.

Knuckles cracking...

The real problem runs much deeper than Wall Street or our election process. It is the runaway sense of ENTITLEMENT that is eating away at the heart of our nation. Here's how everyone is responsible, including me:

Part 1. Everyone in this country feels like they are entitled to happiness. Well, we aren't. We are entitled to the pursuit of happiness, which used to be thought of as the greatest thing ever. Seriously. But, because nobody digs that "pursuit" part, the elected officials caught on to that and figured out that the way to get elected over and over was to make it possible for the poor to buy 300,000 homes.

Part 2. Re-election in the bag. I'm going to generalize some of this part because it would take a couple of hours to get all the details perfectly right. But here's the gist: Congress passed laws that put pressure on banks to lower their standards for people to get loans. (You used to be required to pay 20% cash before you could get the home loan.) They even kind of made their own home loan bank.... thing. The banks bended to the need (with government insurance backing them up) and loaned the cash. The smaller and more corrupt banks got in on the action and, in addition to home loans, congress passed laws to make it easier to get student loans. Well, the banks had already been doing that. But that paved the way for the third party lenders to get in on the action. These credit card companies with fancy bank-sounding names like "Wells Fargo" started offering student loans outside of the gov subsidizing at a ridiculous interest rate.

Part 3. And for eight years, everyone partied! Yes, everyone was having a gay old time (haha gay) in their new mansions and seemingly rich students were taking trips to Cancun, financed but their deferred summer loans at 18% interest. After about 8 years of that, it started to spiral of control and as it became apparent to the bank lender that the cashier at Costco couldn't afford his 3-story plantation mansion. They started to suspect that the dude who keeps racking up student loans and keeps dropping out after the third week is never going to graduate, or be able to pay the interest.

Part 4. Uhhh... I smell a dead possum under the house. The banks figured out a way, a perfectly legal, however on-the-edge-of-shady-cliff-legal it was, to start selling the bad debt for cheap. Then the debt kind of became this toy thing that was fun to bet on. Enter: Wall Street guys. These guys started splitting the debt up. Wall street started making bets on whether those debts would get paid or not.

And then it gets really stupid from there.

Part 5. Turning smelly water to vintage wine. The Wall Street gents trade all the time without knowing a whole lot about what they are trading. They look at statistics and charts. So as more people wanted to buy the bad debt the price went up. Supply and demand. For a while, they were making tons of "so-called" money on the value of the debt (weird, I know) and they got irresponsible. Yes they did. Of all the people, they knew better. They knew it was baloney. But then there was the Government in the background, still ready to sweep up the mess. And Uncle Sam's got a big broom.

Well, by the time the McRib hit the fan, they might as well be buying shibledabbers and scoodlydoodlies. Before you get too mad and spill your latte on your sleeping bag, you should know that this is not uncommon. It's as old as the hills. Remember when Cabbage patch dolls were like $300 bucks a pop? Or, do you remember that the same thing happened when the Internet bubble popped? Investors were runaway-investing in tech companies and they had no idea what the company was selling. As long as it had a ".com" after it's title, everyone went crazy over it. People doubled their money in a day on these "penny stocks." And sometimes the price of the company ran so out of control they were valued at 100 a share... twice the value of most Airline companies. $100 A SHARE. And the .com "company" was just some dude on his computer in his dorm room eating a snickers high-fiving his business partner/super-Nintendo opponent. But there were no protestors when that bubble burst. Because no one lived in an Internet house.

Anyways, I gotta wrap this up. I spent my lunch break typing this but I needed to get it out. My salad is calling me.

In short: Everyone is responsible. Period. That's why the government (We the people) cut the checks to the bank to bail their butts out. These guys on Wall Street... some of these guys go to my church. Most of them have worked their tails off their whole lives to get where they are. They are buying and selling stocks in real companies and investing in real people. Like Apple, and GM and Coke and Pepsi and the company that makes Pampers. Some came from nothing. And these guys who are mad that the Wall Street guys are richer than them are waving signs around and stinking up the park. GET. TO. WORK. JFK knew that the American way, the "pursuit of happiness" would only work if the heart of the country were built on the ideal that you work, whatever and however hard you can, to make your dreams happen. It all went to river styx when the government (that's our government, the one "by and of and for the people") lost sight of the words, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

Okay, back to work. Somebody has to pay for the protestor's muffins and hot coffee, the food that fuels their proud and brave freedom to not bathe, trash the city's lawn, and protest in glorious ignorance. Who's to blame? Take out a penny and look up the latin translation on your Adroid or iPhone. E pluribus unum.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Take a bow, Steve.

2011-10-12T21:48:00.000-07:00

Oh man. It's been a few days now since the Mac maestro went on to the great circuit board in the sky, and I'm still depressed about it. I've been waiting to not be depressed so I can reflect without any sappy or silly sentiment. But I've still yet to break the bummed state. Maybe it's because I'm sitting here typing on the greatest laptop computer ever designed by a member of the human race. A computer that I used, only two months ago, to write a play using a screenwriting program that I downloaded off of the app store.

Maybe it's because I've just updated to iOS 5 on the techno-miracle that is the iPhone and I just finished watching The Incredibles for the 13th time and someday, I can't wait to introduce my little girl to Buzz Lightyear. And I've got Jobs to thank for that.

That's why I'm depressed, I guess...

Or maybe it's because for the past 15 years I've been a huge mac fan. Not just because they make great products, but since I found out that the company was turned around by one man's vision and creativity. That kind of stuff inspires me. And every year after his first year back at Apple's helm, Steve put out something that pretty much that made me guiltlessly happy, (whatever that word means) even for the briefest of moments. If it wasn't some new film editing software or music editing software it was a new Pixar film. Steve was a real friend to the poor artist. Being that consistently brilliant and innovate on an immense scale and somehow not managing to screw up the world? That's not a gift that a lot of people have.

I think that's why comparisons to Walt Disney and Barnum are being made. Like these two great men, Steve was a magician and entertainer of sorts. But he was also a bunch of paradoxes. He was a giant personality that lived to connect people but he also preferred solitude. He was a billionaire that lived in a huge house... with no furniture, until he got married. He was a computer nerd but he had a flare for aesthetics. He dared to think that efficiency and beauty could produce a dynamo synergy in technology.

I'm also bummed because I know that without vision, the people perish. That means that in about 5 years, Job's ideas will dry up and Apple will start its slow decline into money-controlled-and-motivated mediocrity. It stayed great because Jobs believed in his people and he was also hard on them. We live in an age of entitlement. People want to hear that they are a genius and that whatever they produce needs no improvement. Steve Jobs said that his job wasn't to tell people how great they were. His job was to take a bunch of really great and talented people and get them to make something better than they thought was possible.

I'm also sad because about 5 years ago, I watched his Stanford address, before everyone knew about it and it only had about 300,000 youtube hits, and though I didn't agree with some of the philosophies, that talk sort of set me on a new course:Yeah, I guess you could say that it influenced my life. Again, not something that's happened to me very often.

Alright, by now, some might read this and say that I'm a big cornball or a big softy. I didn't even know the guy personally. Whatever, I still believe in a world where a single person, however imperfect, can inspire someone. And not just the the people the come from nothing, with no particularly great gift, or the firemen who risk their lives to save others. Those are inspiring heroes for sure and we owe so very much to all the ordinary heroes that pass us on the street every day.

I'm talking about the ones that are born geniuses and achieve the greater task of turning that genius toward the good of man and sharing it with all their might, rather than turning inward and bitter and angry and then move to the mountains and start mailing people bombs. Yes, sadly, many times it doesn't work out as well for the creative genius as it did for Jobs. Besides the Unibomber, have a look at Bobby Fisher: The man died a rancid old bigot, running from the US government for Tax evasion. Probably the greatest chess genius that ever lived. Died a nasty old, foul-mouthed anti-semite with a thousand more chess matches in him.

Yes, I know Jobs was no Saint and yes I've seen that little Facebook add that tells me that that millions die every day and there is no fanfare for them. But that doesn't mean that one cannot be saddened by the death of someone that you really admired. Jobs died an early and terrible and painful death. Painful for him and, I'm sure, painful for his family.

I suppose I'm sentimental enough to say that Jobs was, in a way, a hero of mine. It's hard to say exactly how, but I'm okay with that and I could give a crap if someone thinks that's dumb. Our world is too iconoclastic as it is. We live to rip people apart to feel better about ourselves. In the end, Steve Jobs left the world trying to make it a brighter and better place. He left it too soon, and we'll never see that next technological symphony, and I think in the end, selfishly, that's what really makes me sad.

From The Texas Refugee Camp

2011-08-31T10:33:00.001-07:00

Hi friends.

It's been an eventful week: Hurricanes, heat waves, US Open, Obama's Uncle was arrested for drinking too many Appletinis and driving... The usual stuff.

As I continuously defend my decision to flee the big apple and head to Texas, I would like to offer my thoughts about the hurricane and then proffer for some understanding concerning my decision to take the wife and child to the land of BBQ, big sunsets and Jumbo trons.

To help you understand, I would like to discuss two hurricanes with you. The two I'd like to discuss are Rita and Ike. (Katrina needs no discussing)

You see, Amber and I were in hurricane Rita. Rita, if you don't remember, was the Bramer bull of all hurricanes. Rita was a category 5 hurricane and the most powerful hurricane to ever hit the gulf and the 4th most powerful in recorded history of hurricanes. There were wind speeds of 235 mph with sustained wind at 185 mph strong. That's basically sitting through a 500 mile wide F3 tornado for 3 hours. Needless to say, the city was evacuated. But amazingly, here's what happened: Nada. The hurricane hit the land and fizzled like an Alka-seltzez in my dad's favorite Boomer Sooner glass jar/mug.

Praise God, right? Yes, for those that evacuated. But instead of being thankful, the squatters turned into the biggest pack of know-it-alls on the face of the earth and basically made all those that left town feel pretty dumb and faithless. But we evacuators endured and tried to forget the trauma of the evacuation. (That was hell all by itself.)

Then came Ike. Well, everyone who had fled Rita and got caught up in the largest traffic jam in US History (no kidding. Largest. EVER.) and were then subsequently ridiculed for evacuating, decided to take their chances and stayed home, waiting for the little-ole Categor 2 hurricane named Ike, (almost sounds like Tike, like, "Little Tike") to fizzle, too.

Long-story-short - IT DIDN'T. In fact, the squatters on Galveston Island and other places were greeted with the third costliest and damaging hurricane in Atlantic hurricane history. Many were sent to OZ. The island and all it's buildings, boats and bistros were pretty much wiped off the island like crumbs off a table. And that was just that island. The damage of hurricane Ike was bested only by the damage of Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew.

So, my friends, as I watched the news and observed New York's reaction to the monstrously huge hurricane ripping put the coast, I felt that NYC had that "about-to-experience-hurricane-armageddon-but-doesn't-know-it feeling to it. It had all the right ingredients for a horrible disaster... kind of like the people that lived on the beach in the movie JAWS -- It had a city that is totally unprepared for a hurricane; It had a population completely ignorant-bordering-on-arrogant about hurricanes; And finally, it had a Cat 2 hurricane with it's eye fixed on Rivendell. (Central Park)

It was when I heard that the Mayor was evacuating hospitals that I decided that I would accept the offer from my hurricane fearing family to fly us out and we were on a plane a day and a half before impact.

In closing, we left because we didn't want to take our chances with doom. Nothing happened though, and praise God for that. But here's the sad part about it. This should serve as a warning to those in NYC about the power of hurricanes. But it won't. Another Ike will roll around again sometime in the future and everyone will stay and people will drown.

I do know that the only thing I'll do different when that day comes is fly Jetblue.

I'm So Tired of being Back, I feel Like I have no Front.

2011-05-07T09:48:00.001-07:00

So here we are again. I did have a reason for dropping of the face of the blog universe. Someday I'll tell you all about it. Let's just say that the blog and facebook is a wonderful way for people to collect information on you.

Or, am I making all this up just to lead you along? Making it up just to plant some intrigue in your brain like on of those little weird worms in Chekov's head? (Wrath of Kahn)

The REAL reason I'm back here talking into an empty room to myself is because I saw a movie that really made me mad. I started going off on it on my facebook and then I thought, well, might as well blog about a film that came out 3 years ago and nobody cares about anymore but me! So here goes!

ME AND ORSON WELLES, (directed by someone who liked Orson Welles but wanted to the money to do it so they decided to cash in on Zac Eff-ron's Disney Powers.)

Prologue: If a dinner at an expensive restaurant, where the food is overpriced but you are there because some critic that you respect (EBERT) said the food was the "best food representing theater that I've ever tasted", and then the food was Garbage in a lettuce wrap. That would be this dinner.

It was poo on a stick.

It was a naked old biker on a couch.

It was blasphemous.

And here's why:

Quick Summary. However, it's becoming more and more difficult to remember the film.

Me and the wife deiced to settle in for the night after finding out that the movie about Lincoln had been bumped by the Thunder God. We pick this film because Roger Ebert says that it's the best film on life in the theater, evar. We download it on the Apple Tv, then I turn out the light and right about when I'm about to find the little notch on the gummy-lifesavers bag the credits start. The credits look horrible. It's all black with the thinnest font I've ever seen. So it's basically too dark to start in on my gummy Lifesavers. Strike one.

Plot: Zac is a highschooler who likes books and movies and Shakespeare and stuff. Okay, okay. I'm trekking. He takes a train up to NYC on a whim and meets a girl in a bookstore: it's a presentable meet cute, but, it's basically a farewell-cute because you DON'T EVER SEE HER AGAIN TILL THE END OF THE MOVIE.

Anyways, she's a young writer and Zac flirts with her muchly. (My yawn engine started warming up after the third or forth gummy-saver.) He then wanders around the city and finds some older crazy actor-types standing outside a building. He offers to play the snare when the doof playing it can't and, well, whatayaknowaboutit? He's amazing. (More on that later) So, on-cue, Welles, (played wonderfully by Christian McKay,) enters and pretty much hires him on the spot. (Heretofore More on that later=MOTL) Then he meets Claire Danes who is answering phones at the Mercury Theater and she's way older than him but they end up flirting a bunch and eventually get it on. (MOTL) Then he rehearses with the cast and we find out that Orson is kind of eccentric and a big fat cheater who hides it with some code names so that the cast can holler the code name if his real pregnant wife comes in so his ballet mistress girl can have time to sit in the front row and hide her pouty face. (Yawn engine warmed and ready.)

Then the kid... well... he gets in trouble with his mom, but not really. I actually don't really remember what his mom looks like. Maybe she's an idiot. Or the worst mom ever. I-duuno. Neither will you if you see it. Anyways, Zaccky goes home backy to his class and sits bored while the Shakespeare teacher gives the literary lecture equivalent to "Bueller.. Bueller..." Come on. (First Yawn. Started to fantasize about how we should have picked Tron 2) (MOTL)

Then the kid kind of learns the Ukelele... but oh wait, see, he told Orson that he was the best at it, and Orson totally bought it, and so, it sets up this tension - like Orson is totally going to blow his top when he finds out, and then, Crissy and Janet come in and Mr Furly and Zac stumbles over the couch and Mr Furley demands that Zac play a concert and Zac fakes the Ukelele and Mr. Furley is totally ticked because he thought Zak was GAAAY. Oh, man, was THAT ever mix up. HA. Classic.

And then Zack sets off the fire alarm accidentally and Orson accuses him and Zachy denies it and calls it bad luck.

Finally, we get the one and only true tension of the film: Orson makes a move on Claire and Claire tells Zach she's going for it because she's a ho, um, I mean, she can't say no, and Orson is just evil. And Zach pleads with her to no avail. And then some actor veteran in the play (who was standing in the shadow, eavesdropping, smoking a cigarette, I AM NOT KIDDING) told Zac to "fight for her" and so Zack goes and waits on Claire and Orson to come out of his clandestine apt/love-cave in the Village and then Zachsy gets mad at Orson and tells Orson that Orson's really mean for cheating on his preggers wife. Of course, Orson tries to choke him and of course he fires him. (MOTL)

And then Zach is all like totally mad at the veteran actor for the bad advice and the vet actor says, "Hey dummy, I didn't mean LITERALLY fight for her. Whaaaat an idiot." And then Zach pouts until Orson (who is all-through-the-movie too busy to be anywhere until he's completely late, which is crucial part of Orson's character) wanders over where Zacc is pouting. Orson barters with him all-nice and tells him the show must go on. So Zack does the play (MOTL) and sings the song with the Ukelele (MOTL) and there is much rejoicing. And then he goes to the afterglow party with the cast and finds out he is fired (The first time I believed the film) Then he's really depressed and then he goes home and finds a secret note left in his theater keepsake box, and HOLY SMOKES! It's the meet-cute curlicue girl!

The dénouement begins with a Duck Tale vengeance and Zackyboy runs back to NYC and it is suddenly daytime (MOTL) and finds the the girl (oh yeah, I forgot, he sees her one other time the film and offers to hand her short story over to someone who can give her her big break) and guess what? She's totally been published! By the NEW YORKER. BULL CRAP. Then they talk some more about stuff like... how its Fri-day Fri-day and who is going to sit in the front seat and how Saturday comes after Friday and then Sunday afterwaaaards.

And then the talk some more about life and possibilities and then a bird escapes from the museum where they met, and the camera pans up melodramatically like the bird has a camera on it's foot. Then, the tears really start to roll because... wait, Zemeckis and his crew accidentally stumble onto the set, and we realize that they have double booked the set. At first everyone is all mad and confused until... Forest Gump walk up in the middle of the turmoil. The mob grows quiet, only Eff-ron's silent sobs to his agent can be heard. Forest pulls out his feather, and says, "hmm, maybe that bird is looking for this" Suddenly, Lutinant Da-un and the cast of High School Musical flood the steps and they all start singing about freedom and Friday, and Forest gets up on the bench and starts throwing chocolate into everyone's mouth as they sing and dance and make music. And that's it. The End.

Knuckles cracking. Three main reasons the film sucked.

Number 1. I'm an Orson Welles nut. So I felt that they had the opportunity to make a great film about Orson Welles and they blew it. It was like I was watching some cheeze-slathered Disney flick - decked out in a zillion dollar period production - about a kid who finds a secret rock that takes him back in time and he gets to meet and work with Orson Welles like he some great paleontologist on a ride in Great Actor Jurassic Park. Zac even reacts throughout the film like he is at Jurassic park. "Hey, is that___ or "is that ____? Whoa. Like totally cool." But you know what? That would have been a better film. Much more believable than this kid skipping school and winding up on Orson Welle's doorstep and playing a "perfect drumroll" on a snare ( because the guy playing snare is playing it channeling Steve Martin in "The Jerk" who couldn't clap in Rhythm with his adopted black family) and then getting a part in Julius Caesar, hand picked by Welles himself. Yeah. And THAT'S the "ah-ha!" moment where EFF-RON gets his big break? At that second, then and there, I knew this film was a vanity piece for Zac Eff-ron and that's a dumb idea when you are making a film with Orson Welles in it and I should have stopped the film and restarted watching TRON II where the free preview left off.

Number 2., I feel like Zac has some potential but he's going to have to sneak into the Department of Disney Artistic Molestation to burn the current files and rediscover who he really is. I didn't believe his character until he called out Orson for cheating on his pregnant wife and by then, he'd been so ... nothing... that he just seemed like a little psychotic idiot and I was glad that Orson had him in a choke hold. Zac needs to stop looking in the mirror all the time and find himself. You know, Leo made me believe every single on of those craptastic lines in Titanic. I never got the sense that he was in love with anything but Kate and therefore he sold it. Zac has that potential but... gag me.

Number 3. Just some basic core elements went AWOL in the storytelling. There was no antagonist. Now, I'm all for art bucking the norms and the forms but this wasn't the time to do it. We really needed an antagonist throughout the ENTIRE narrative, whether it be his mom not letting him go to NYC, or some guy in the cast hating him for being him, (I don't know, maybe start with the failed snare drummer?) or some father that never believed in him (Dead Poets Society) or some principle that hated him (Ferris Bueller)... SOMETHING. But we got NOTHING. The closest thing we got was when that guy stole his ukelele.. but then he found it in the next scene. Oh, there it is. Haha. funny joke. When there was foreshadowing it was about as subtle as belch in a cathedral. Take that fire alarm foreshadowing business. Bad film work. "Do-di-do, My name is Zack and I'm using this match to look at the ceiling, where some really tall guy has scribbled his name (camera lens is focused now so we can see the fire sprinkler) uhhh DUUUUH, what's this?" Fire alarm goes off. Orson throws a fit.

3.1.2. Other than Eff-ron, the actors were great. Orson was great, though the real Welles was much more magnetic and hypnotic than this fellow. I felt like this guy was "playing" Orson too many times. (Blame the director for that) and I suppose that's the real problem with the piece. It was self-conscious, or even self-paradoy. Maybe it's a good handbook on how to act like Orson Welles playing Orson Welles. The guy who played Mark Antony in the production gave the most believable performance in the whole cast. Claire seemed miscast and because she was both superior to Zac in acting and in maturity she was always condescending with too much cutesy smiling and blah blah blah and in the end she seemed like a chester-molester.

And what the heck was that meet-cute with the girl in the bookstore all about? What was the purpose? How about a real romance there? Maybe Zach is trying to work his way in and he has to make a choice between REAL love with the younger woman and BAD love with the older broad... But no. We don't realy know why. Was it so Zac wouldn't be lonely at the end and he could have someone to talk to? The final meeting with Zac and the curlicue girl at the end was one of the worst executed dénouements I've ever seen. He gets the note in the middle of the night after he's been fired (finally, some realism), grabs his coat and then he's there at the museum meeting her and its daytime? Um, did he fly around the world? Was there a pole shift in the night?

I think the film would have made so much more sense had they just left him back in his dull boring high school class, suffering from being a big immature dummy. LASTLY, his singing of the song in the Shakespeare play was like he was a little popstar. No one sang like that back then with the little High School Musical pop-scoops before every note. And the scene itself was set up to be some magical moment and it was .... (cue Price is Right tuba loser-music) B- SNORING.

That was fun!

Peace out.

Ping

2010-09-27T11:28:00.001-07:00

Hello (cue echo)

It's been a while. I'm dipping my toe back into the blog world. I've learned a lot in the past year and I feel that I should share some of what I've learned. I've journeyed long mountainous roads, learned spirituality from croaking frogs and whistling reeds and Oprah reruns. I am much wiser than before. I promise. TRUSSSST me. Eckhart Tolle, step aside. There's a new guru in town, and one that doesn't talk through his German congested nose and laugh at his own lost-in-translation jokes.

But not really. I'm really back here by accident. Kind of. More like, "Wouldya look at all those safari links I don't use anymore. Why exactly do I have a link for a pyro remote? There's my blog!"

I stopped blogging for a while for a few reasons. First, it was really bothering me. I hated checking stats and I hated watching other bloggers check their stats and then blog about how they don't really care about sats or fans or whatever. (I guess that was several reasons.) Second, because my blog background was acting up and I was too lazy to fix it. So I tried a new format and this one works okay. Whatev's. It is actually easier to read. Amiright? Also, I got tired of griping. Believe it or not, I am pretty positive person. Something happens when I blog. I immediately want to make fun of people or gripe about something or brag about Apple. And that's just not me. Or not me anymore. Until today.

But I'm here typing a little and it feels alright, I guess. Kind of like going back to an old neighborhood and being flooded with a bunch of insecurity and whatever else that was felt during that time.

But life is good. We are enjoying the heck out of our time here in the city.

Not sure where this will go from here, but... HI THERE! Hope you guys are rocking and jammin and making babies and living your dreams and cutting old Joel Osteen some slack!

Shalom.

The iPad: The Jury is In

2010-05-20T08:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I've made my decision.

This morning I went straight to the NY Times over a cup of coffee, sitting on my deck in 68 degree heaven. Hey, I'm not saying that I deserve all that goodness, I'm just saying maybe you don't. Hehe.

Last night, to unwind before bed, I played chess and Scrabble and browsed the Wikipedia for whatever the heck caught my attention. I then flipped on the ABC free viewer and caught up on a few shows. Then I went to Netflix and watched a little bit of the Wrath of Khan, naturally. Last Sunday my printer broke so my flautist just read the pdf from the iPad. Next week a visually impaired choir member will use the ipad to read his words better.

Is the iPad going to replace my laptop? Not right now, but probably, most certainly. But what is is? It's not an iphone, it's not a laptop... it is something new. It's what Steve does. He creates something new that we need and we wouldn't want to go without. Pixar... the first commercially available personal computers... iPods... iPhones... laptops... and now this. Love him, envy him, disagree with him or hate him, the guy has some legacy.

Is the iPad necessary for existence? Of course not. Is a computer necessary for existence? Of course not. Are cars, televisions, credit cards, telephones, or microwaves? nope, nope and nope x 3. But like all of these things that make our lives easier and somewhat more strange and complicated at the same time, the iPad is a marvel. It's worth every penny (debit or credit card penny, that is.)

Flash Me

2010-04-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

Am I really watching Courtney Love play guitar on the tube with a Beck look-a-like?

It is interesting to see the evolution of the rockstar. Personally, I think that if we want a new generation of true rockstars wielding original music, the internet and itunes needs to explode. Oh, and fedoras will need to be banned from Nashville, as well as hair gel and polyester shirts and tanning beds.

What I want to really see is some fat guy with a bandana and pajamas blowing everyone out of the water with his out-and-out skills. I want to see some weird black guy playing the national anthem with his teeth and it sounds like a friggin guitar orchestra. I want to be wowed. Not only by content, but I want to see some flash. But gone are those days. Does anyone know how to play a scale on the guitar anymore?

Plus, everything is by comparison. Just like Broadway right now. EVERYONE wants to sound like two different singers: Kristen Chenoweth and Sutton Steven K Bernstein Foster... with at smattering of Elphaba. Don't get me wrong, I really like those two artists a whole lot, I just like to hear them do themselves... that sounded weird. You get my drift though.

So in other news... According to the new unauthorized biography of Oprah, It appears Oprah had some wild hanky-shpanky with John Tesh back in the day. And can I say thank you for that info? Because THAT is some serious TMI right there. I could have gone my whole livin' life and not known that. Same kind of thing happens when I go to a seeker friendly church where the pastor gives a sermon series on how God wants us to have some good hot-and-Godly sex with our wives. (Imagine "wives" spoken with a southern draw.) I really hate those sermons. As my friend Brant Hansen noted, it's really kind of gross to imagine deacon Bill with his wife Karen having plump Godly relation as they cuddle more and more with each subtle pastoral ever-so-SUBTLE double entendre.

Other than that....

I got an ipad and it rules. Yes, it rules. I rules like a gold pinkie toe to a toeless Gangsta. I rules like a shiny new shopping cart to the homeless-and-proud guy that sits on my street corner reading book after book in the beautiful new york spring.

That's all for now.

Dear Steve, I Hate You.

2010-04-06T07:32:00.000-07:00

It's been 3 or 4 long days since I've held Job's T-Rex iPod in my hands. My first impressions were underwhelming. The room was too bright and scorching hot and it accented the already-billions of grimy fingerprints smeared all over the screen. Yes, I walked out of the room scoffing at Steve Jobs and feeling a little like Alice after she drank from her little bottle.

Whew. That was easy. I don't need it, want it, nor love it.

That was the first day.

Second day was spent bragging about how much I didn't want it.

That was the second day.

The third day was spent reading a few hundred reviews of the ipad so as to justify my don't-want-it of the piece of sorcery.

That was the third day.

On day four (today) I now confess that I full-on want it. I want to own one. Right now. I need one. I feel very much that I shall cry if I don't have one soon. I am impatiently awaiting the arrivals of the 3g versions so I can immediately have one. The experience is very much like the first time I tried Cashew Chicken in Springfield MO. I didn't see the big deal after the first dose. Within 6 hours I was back for more and had it almost every day for 3 years. I even bounced checks at the Cashew Kitty. I basically robbed Cashew Kitty the need was so fierce.

Right now, I wish that my beautiful MacBook Pro would transform into a sleek, fingerprint-streaked ipad. I want to play that highly pixelated Madden 09 game blown up to stupid proportions. I want to read a book on it. I want to drink more from the little bottle and tumble further into MacLand.

Darn you Jobs. Darn you to heck.

Dances With Big Orange Dragon

2009-12-28T09:33:00.001-08:00

Avatar Avatar Avatar.

First of, all I can think of when I see that name is a goofy cartoonish face given to me for my Yahoo Chat 5 years ago, the one I never use and always wish I hadn't created when it turns up from time to time on various Yahoo question/answer forums. Now that that's out of the way... no, wait. I'm on to something here.

That's just it. Cameron needs to hire some script writers. The film is riddled with banal/unimaginative mines everywhere! like, Unobtanium??? That's the name for the metal that is worth destroying the biggest tree in the universe??? It's the same problem I had with Titanic: crappy script. Let's say I want to write a musical... and I do. I am writing one now. But let's say that when the time comes to direct it, I decide to choreograph the thing myself. I may do an okay job according to the handbook of "How to stupidly Choreograph High school Christmas Showtime Choir Concerts" but according to Broadway standards, D+ at best.

I honestly think if Cameron were born 100 years earlier, he would have been the greatest silent film maker of all time. He is a visual virtuoso of the highest order. It was just. so. visually. stunning. HOWEVER, at times, I felt like I was looking at a giant Thomas Kinkade gallery while tripping on acid. (No, mom, I've never really tried acid. Though that fire-hot chili dad makes is pretty hallucination-inducing sometimes.)

So yes, visually, the film is almost what everyone is saying about it. I wasn't overwhelmed like I was as a young lad watching Han Solo navigate through that asteroid field and into the belly of the space worm, but I was definitely impressed, enthralled at times, even.

I won't own it because you really have to see it in the big IMAX to get the full effect. There are plenty of reviews out there for this film and everyone knows what they are doing when they go see it. They are seeing the real King Kong chained up. They are seeing the three legged man dance ballet. They are watching a film spectacle that is so spectacular in its achievements that you forget what achievements are there, like forgetting that the Navi are digitally rendered. What has been accomplished in that 3-D arena is truly magnificent. However, it is so real, that I wondered how much money might have been saved if they would have had elaborate costumes and digitally rendered the tail and so forth.

As a visual spectacle, the film is worth seeing. As a moving story... I've seen Pixar shorts that are 3 academy awards ahead of this one in originality. It is a HORRIBLE Dances with Wolves rip. Throw in a little Gorillas in the Mist, equip with the woman who played in that movie and you've got a tasty little 90's save-the-natives clichéd film stew.

The worst problem I had with the film is Cameron's anti-American propaganda. It was garish and downright stupid. Even the liberal New Yorkers snickered at Cameron's BLATANT whack at W's regime and our presence in the Middle East. No sly wink. No little reference that would make you "aha!" later... It was whack over the head with a cinematic stick. "AMERICA SUCKS AND I'M USING MY 300 ZILLION DOLLARS TO EXPRESS IT WITH MY BIGTIME TITANIC MOVIE POWERS. I'M THE KING OF THE EFFING WORLD." That nearly ruined the film for me, honestly.

But I quickly forgot about it and was absorbed once again into the VISUAL world.

Go see it. But prepared to feel like you just had mom's dressing that wasn't quite as good as every other year but still good but still wasn't as good as every other year... but still good. "Humph. There's always next year. Hey! Wanna go to Sherlock Holmes???"

Avatar, Grade: B

Finished

2009-12-03T09:26:00.000-08:00

Hello friends.

Wow, it has been a reaaaaaally long time here. It is really odd when you've done something for years and years and then you just stop and then go back to it. Like clipping your nose hair or toenails or something. One day you take off your socks and, "WOAH! Look at those suckers! Get out the bolt-cutters!"

So I finished my dissertation. I'm Dr. Ward. I handed it in. The University said yes. My committee said yes. My wife said, "HELL YES!"

It has been a long long long long haul here, friends. But I'm done. I've missed writing. Oddly, I haven't missed blogging. I've missed the interaction with my friends, but I've been terribly productive and that's a good thing.

But recent events have shaken me from my blumber. (blog+slumber). So, you might see a few entries splatter up here from time to time, but we'll see. Stay sharp. Stay liquid, but most of all, stay away from star golfers.

Yours,

Dr. Ward

Goodbye 2.0

2009-09-17T11:58:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I feel like my blog-resignation should be more purposed. Therefore, here's the dealio: I am not blogging again until I get my dissertation finished and signed. Just can't do it. Sooooo, every time you click over here looking for a new post (all 250,000 of you) and you don't see a new string of wisdom pearls, paragraphs of penultimate petunias, or thunders of thoughtful wisdom from on high... rattle off a quick prayer for me, would you? Dreams are better shared.

In short, I'm pulling a Oral Roberts... light. Consider it a blog fast, even though when and if I return (for real this time) things will be different and I may move to a new address or something like that.

Until my finished dissertation or my next farewell...

Three Reviews in Three Posts

2009-08-17T21:10:00.001-07:00

I've seen three films since my last review and overall, I've been pretty pleased.

First off: Harry Potter and the Half Blooded Prince.

On the whole... not my favorite Potter film.

SPOILER ALERT:

I've always had a problem with this book. I hate the way Rowling kills Dumbledore. I hate hate hate hate it. Dumbledore basically arranges for his Kevorkian-style death. He dies a weak old man, disarmed by a dufus imbecile of a wizard and finally killed by Severus Snape because he wants to die and not get eaten and humiliated by the mean old werewolf.

That is not how a great wizard should die. Let me tell you how a great wizard should die: A great wizard dies plunging down an endless chasm stabbing a Balrog IN THE FACE with an Elven sword, and the sword is so amazing that it is called, "Glamdring, the Foe Hammer."

THAT IS HOW A WIZARD DIES.

Dumbledore should have gone down in a blaze of fire - yes weakened significantly - but fighting off a hundred death eaters, 3 dragons and 10 giants and doing it all to save the life of pansy-boy Harry. But nay. Rowling emasculated the greatest wizard in her tale (as she does every male character in her books - seriously, name one that isn't a wuss, or evil. The one that's not a wuss is a bachelor.) and then outed him later in a press conference. Notice that one witch who was taken out in an incredible duel with Voldemort and a few other powerful witches. Notice that the great duel of the last two books comes from Ron's mother and Bellatrix and the men basically blunder around.

Overall, the film slugged along and there wasn't NEAR enough Dumbeldore kicking butt. What we did get was pretty awesome, but there just wasn't enough magic in this film.

I liked it but I think it was my least favorite of the Potter films. They spent entirely too much time on all that love potion business.

Next Up: District 9.

Pretty Fun

2009-08-06T12:22:00.001-07:00

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Poem: Ode to MOMA

2009-07-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

Some thoughts on Bacon, Francis that is.

2009-07-27T12:59:00.000-07:00

Amber and I made our way through an Exhibit of Francis Bacon at the Met Museum of Art this past Saturday.

I had a great time, but Bacon was a sick fellow. A very talented image poet, but ultimately, a sick chap. Of course, people have said the same things about me after hearing some of my "serious" compositions. It is no secret that I tend to gravitate to the macabre and I also happen to like scary movies. But there is a difference here. Bacon was an Atheist. I am not. And that really does make a difference. You can compose a macabre piece without nihilism.

I have long believed that sin is a kind of madness. It causes madness. I also believe that Judeo-Christian ethics have serve as the greatest moral compass that mankind has ever known. I also believe that man, though fractured, is capable of good things. This is because man was not totally ruined when he chose a path that was opposite to the will of his creator. This remnant of good is still a reflection of the goodness of our creator, as we were and are made in his Good image. I believe that man needed help to show him this path and he can chose again to take that path. That means, even at our absolute worst, we can still be compelled to do a good thing. Salvageable. Redeemable. Savable.

Good and Evil. There is a difference, we all know it exists, but we can't really explain it scientifically. Bacon tries to embrace a Darwin outlook and say: there is no good and evil, only animal. All Darwinian explanations break down at Stephen Hawkings. Hawkings should have been killed long ago as he is weak and drains the pack of resources. Therefore, I believe that every act of man to disprove the existence of God ends in a kind of pure nonsense. It never works out.

But like it or not, I also believe that Darwin was the most influential mind of our time. He is a great and magnificent peak in humanity's vast range of scientific minds. Sadly, his influence is responsible for more mass deaths than any man in the history of the world. Man is reduced to simply another in a line of animals, and what's good for the pack is good for the individual. This of course is contrary to the idea of Christian love. If we were to abide by Darwin's idea of a perfect world, the weak would die, the less intelligent would be killed, and unattractive would be exiled. Now, no matter how much my instinct says, "YES, YES!" at times - as far as stupid drivers go - this is a tyrannical mindset. And some would say that it is me at my most animalistic.

And what about those animals? Even the animals aren't totally mad.

But take a painting of Bacon: Man is reduced to a sack of meat and bloody teeth. Cool looking, but no beast or bird thinks so madly. Just the opposite. Only one or two monkeys in the pack will go crazy and eat a baby monkey. Only a rogue lioness will secretly kill other cubs in the night. These are exceptions. According to Bacon, we are all exceptions and a vision of the mutilated is at the core of our real thoughts. To be "animal" is to be savage. Well, excuse me, my wife's dog Cromwell is far from your kind of savage. That dog wouldn't bite a flea. And there is no beast or creature that willingly bathes in piss (because he likes his piss more than water,) fantasizes about bloody teeth emerging from slabs of mutilated meat, or revels in the homoerotic blood of man's animal desire. There are a few exceptions to this; they are called necrophiliacs.

There isn't space here to examine the atheism of Darwin and its contradictions, but no matter how badly Bacon wishes to cling to this idea in his art, I say here and now: No art can convince me of an absence of God. The very God-despair that a painting of Bacon is meant to inspire, brings me instead to a meta view his sanity and the knowledge that there is such a thing as sanity, or deterioration of it, beauty, and creation.

Justice is Served on the Buffet

2009-07-24T15:47:00.000-07:00

Sweet, sweet, Old Country Buffet... I can still remember me and my dad, we are both sitting in his car. It was the day I got that first job serving as busboy beyond your scummy geriatric gates. And there sits my dad, behind the steering wheel, grinning ear to ear as I unwrap my new busboy apron. He looks a little mischievous in his smile. His hand reaches over the armrest to shake mine. "Good for you, son. Your first job. I'm proud of you." I remember that good feeling. That feeling of how easy it all seemed. "Just scrape a few dishes and get paid for it."

How young and stupid I was.

And do you remember that one manager, Mike? Yeah, you know the one. He's your first manager at your first job. You are just a lowly, pimply busboy and he's the big cool manager working on his third divorce. He's got one of those big German mustaches and he's always flipping his wavy, dyed-blondish hair. He claims to have a back problem so he can't lift any heavy trays or anything that resembles help. He always seems to find a worker to belittle when there is a pretty girl going through the buffet line. Yeah, you know the one. The one that's being super sappy nice to you one minute and you think that you are going to keep your job so you can pay for your car insurance so you can take out that pretty girl in your gym class but then the next minute he's berating you for missing a spot on a salt shaker in front of the whole staff and you feel like you just might be single for the rest of your life.

Most nights, as you fall asleep, you have visions of kicking him where his legs connect and spitting in his putrid blonde hair, but at the end of the fantasy, you are still alone, and dreading the next day. Your only comfort is that its not just you he seems to hate/like. He hates that guy in the dishroom too... It's the middle aged guy doing dishes that everyone calls "disher-dad." Disher-dad. Yeah, there was always disher-dad who got it the worst. Ah, sweet memories. I would have felt sorry for you, disher-dad, but you would give us busboys dirty looks and murmur profanity and kick the cup racks whenever we would bring in our full carts of dishes, as if we dirtied those dishes ourselves. I wonder whatever happened to disher-dad.

Ahhhh. Sweet, sweet bankruptcy. Good old Buffet. Good old, terrible, disgusting, nightmarish, I-wish-I-could-blot-out-that-16th-year-of-my-life Old Country Buffet.

Why I've Been Less Around

2009-07-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

NT Wright on Blogging/Social Media from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

I've been trying to communicate this in different posts but N.T. sort of sums it up beautifully without being condescending or snarky.

The Brah Conundrum: A letter to my Best Brahs

2009-07-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

Listen Brahs, there's been a lot of fussing about who is my number 1 Brah lately and well, I'm getting a little tired of to be honest. Totally tired of it. So here's the deal: All my Brahs mean something different to me, each and every one ya. I love that about you guys. You are all so different, even different in your color. I've got my Latino brah, dark brown and a serious danger to women up north, and my yellow brah, tons of fun and totally serves as a cheat-sheet for any math problem... etc. etc.

But some of you have been demanding that I declare my favorite and number 1 Brah... and I just can't do that. Honestly it works better if I divide you into subsets of number 1, as each of you are totally suited for different occasions.

So, you are all number 1, but...

Bob, you are my "A" Brah. I love to hang with you when I'm feeling heavy and need to get some things off my chest. You are totally a born psychologist.

Fred, you are my "B" Brah. I love just hanging and going to a killer action movie with you man. Just good clean fun all around.

James, you are my "C" Brah. You really are the master at having fun right up to the line of crazy. But let me remind you: I AM A MARRIED MAN. I don't like certain attention to be drawn to myself. You are a single guy and its just hard for you to get that sometimes. But I still love you Brah.

Ned, you are my "D" Brah. You are just ridiculously funny. You can't help but draw attention to yourself. You are just naturally over-endowed with too much personality. But you've got a real modest side to you as well and its that slightly embarrassed-about-your-personality side that is just so durn cool.

Joey, you are my "training" Brah. I can truly attribute all my physical fitness to your relentless training. But no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get as ripped as you. How does someone that is only 5 feet 5 inches get so ripped? I think you should quit wearing those sole-inserts to be taller by the way. Be proud of your height brah.

And last but totally not least, Aaron, you are my "Sports" Brah. There isn't a sport that I can win playing you. Somehow you just keep things together no matter how wild the game gets or how hard the play is. Amazing.

So there it is, fellas. I hope that puts to rest the "Main-Brah" questions. You are all my Brahs. And each one of you is cherished and appreciated.

Your Brah,

Seth.

Monday Off

2009-07-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

Monday is my day off. Well, not really. I teach a lesson or sometimes a few make up lessons on Monday, but compared to the other days of the week, it is my day off.

I have been a pretty sparse blogger in the past few months because the level of busy-ness has gone through the roof. I spend most Mondays answering emails and trying to get caught up.

Today, I FINALLY returned my friend Tan's camera. Every time I've tried to return it... well, it doesn't happen. The man has been nicely reminding me now for 4 months. If I were him, I'd be sending me a summons. Well today, I returned that sucker. And boy oh boy, does that feel good. It was becoming a little pile of black guilt. But no more. Sent that sucker. The end.

NYC has been pretty dreamy this summer. Barely above the 80 marker for the whole month of July. Of course now that I've said that, it will probably turn into a giant grill and cook us all in the next two days. I've refrained from bragging to my Oklahoma and Texas friends because the weather has been downright dangerously hot where they are. I think it was over 100 for two weeks straight in Houston. Old people dropping like flies.

Amber has been busy auditioning and Nannying and other than that, we've been having a hay old time.

Well, that's about it for today. Nothing more to report other than I am now living 99% sugar free. I've felt better and haven't been so moody, and I now rarely need naps. Plus I've lost weight.

Anywho, here is the last picture I took with Tan's great camera before it went back into the box. This is me, very tired, very oily, guilty, post-workout sweaty and three days overdue a beard trim. Also a little scary. Do I really look like this all the time? Sheesh. Seems a little intense and brooding. Maybe I should lighten up a bit.

Iphone 3.0 Review

2009-07-17T23:25:00.000-07:00

Okay, someones got to say it. Just like some one had to say it about the 3rd Indy installment:

3.0 ... IT SUCKS.

I hate hate hate it.

Landscape Typing: I've used the landscape typing a grand total of 3 times. Mainly, because it takes 3 minutes for the friggin screen to adjust to landscape. I could have typed the ENTIRE alphabet by the time it adjusts. Besides, I'm so used to typing the other way now, the landscape seems like I'm using the blind man feature.

Search Feature: The search feature is a good idea (duh, its been standard on every piece of apple equipment for the past 8 years) but its location is totally annoying. Why in the world they decided to give it its own screen directly LEFT of the home screen is beyond me. It should be as simple as spotlight is on OSX. Instead it is irritatingly in the way. I've accidentally scrolled too far at least 100 times now and I haven't MEANT to use it once. I am happy about the search feature in the mail. Finally. But again - something that should have been included in the first go around. And the search feature is a simple entry box in the mail feature. Easy. Chellooooo???

Voice Recording: I've used it twice, both times just to say that I've used it. I suppose its good feature but nothing to write home about.

Cut/Copy/Paste: Yaaaaaaaawwwwwn. Something that should have been there in the first Iphone. Its sort of like finally getting a G.I. Joe for Christmas when you are 19. And here, again, it is IN THE WAY. I don't want to see that feature pop up on the screen EVERY SINGLE TIME I press the screen to select a letter. It should pop up after at least 2 seconds of holding the screen, not automatically. I guess they thought we'd be so excited about finally getting to cut and paste that we'd be doing it every time we touched the screen.

Overall, I give 3.0 a big C------ and a barf bag in a pear tree. It is definitely the WORST piece of Apple software designed in YEARS. It has turned my little black monolith of joy into a black monolith of sloooOOOOoooowwwneeesssssss. I'm striking out 5 times as much in my baseball game because it mucks up the program. I have YET to score a perfect score in world cup Ping Pong since I upgraded, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is NOT cool.

I'm downgrading until they work these bugs out and put that dang search PAGE somewhere else.

Shaaaaaaaammmme on you, Apple. Steve is off for a few months buying out some poor slob's place in the liver transplant waiting list and you put this piece of Microsoft-esque CRAP out? I'm Ron Burgandy???

They should have called this software number 2.0 (Cue fart and flush sound bite.)

Been there.

2009-07-17T22:42:00.001-07:00

Don't Eat Me.

2009-07-06T08:51:00.000-07:00

I'm a little offended by this advertisement. It's a little disrespectful, not to mention unrealistic. If I don't take resveratrol then I am going to look like this? Better yet, its all just going to catch up with me and I'm going to age 100 years in a second and scare the crap out of everyone around me? That would be kind of awesome, come to think of it.

If I were this old lady I think I'd be suing someone for using my image as a warning label. Crap, the old woman looks like she is 200 years old. I imagine she's lived a long and full life. And shoot, she may have lived through a concentration camp. Who knows? And there's just no getting around it folks: WE ARE ALL GOING TO BE OLD. WE WILL ALL GET WRINKLES. WE WILL ALL GET BRITTLE. WE WILL ALL DIE SOMEDAY looking much older than we did at 30.

I'm not trying to build a case for sitting around on your butt and waiting to die, but I am saying this: Old age WILL catch up to you. There is NO escaping it. No botox or nose job or liposuction or new resveratrol pill will save you from the wrinkles or saggy ass. The question is, will you age with dignity and with a determination to stay as healthy and positive as you can? Or will you grow old scraping the dirt as age drags you to each year. Will you make your life miserable staring at the new wrinkles in the mirror and then everyone else's life miserable trying to live out some thing you were too chicken to do when you were young? (Not that doing that is bad; it's good! But you sure can make it easier on the people around you by not trying to do it swimming in narcissism.)

Nothing wrong with staying healthy. And there is nothing wrong with growing older. Those two things can coexist. But sooner or later, we all croak of the latter. And that's just all there is to it. Might as well enjoy the ride to the cliff the best we can. (See UP!)

I think some basic, cliche principles can help you grow old with joy and dignity:

(At least, this is what I've learned from really old and really healthy people.)

1. Love God
2. Eat healthy.
3. Drink some wine every day.
4. EXERCISE ONCE A DAY. Go for a brisk walk, at least.
5. Spend time talking to a friend or family, in person, every day.
6. Be passionate about something. God has made you creative. Make something. Write something. Play something. Whatever it is, do it as if there is no tomorrow.
7. Give freely. Give to others. Give to your church. Give wisely and joyfully. And if you can, give anonymously.
8. Read something. Read a poem, a proverb, the first chapter of a classic novel, a Far Side cartoon.
9. Turn off the tube and talk to each other. So many families never speak 20 words as the whole night is ruled by blinking boob-box.
10. Your turn. What are some of your suggestions? What are some things you are doing that you feel help you in leading a healthier, happier life?

The News from My Couch

2009-07-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

It's been raining a bunch up here. Oh great, one of thoooooose posts. Too bad. Its the weather or nothing.

I don't mind rain I suppose. I'd prefer it to the 1000 degrees cooking everyone else I know. But a little sunshine never hurt nobody. Except when you fall asleep in it... naked.

This will be our first 4th of July in NYC and I'm looking forward to it. This time last year I was dodging Mullet-deer, fighting off man-sized moths, and listening to the sweet sounds of decapitated copperheads while I played Merry Old Land of OZ.

Hopefully this year will be a little less prehistoric. Although, I wouldn't trade last summer's adventures for all the money under my couch cushion. I have been keeping up with Jenny Wiley's theater production this summer and it really looks and sounds incredible! Good people down there in that town. Probably the nicest people I've ever met.

Oh, this past week my dad retired from the pastorate after 40 years of pastoring churches. It has been a looooong and fun ride. What a guy.

2 Movies, 2 Lazy reviews.

2009-06-29T07:28:00.000-07:00

I saw two movies in the last two weeks.

First off, let me say that having the Lincoln Center Movie theater one block down my street is both amazing and torturous. The grocery store is right across the street from the movie theater so every time I need some dadgum milk, I've got to deal with the yearning pangs of smelling popcorn and seeing all the new release posters. I would probably go to the movies every night if I could. And that would cost about 300 dollars a month. Ain't happening.

Anyways, I saw The Hangover, and the new Transformers flick.

The Hangover... hilarious. I'm not going to suggest this film for the faint-of-christian-heart, or for kids that are still living with their parents, or for the general female population. This is sort of a guy-flick. THIS NO DATE MOVIE. You have been warned. Don't misunderstand me; it isn't some gratuitous strip-club movie - you all know me better than that. Its just full of "guy" humor, but somehow, still a really, really good movie.

I probably laughed a big belly laugh every 10 minutes or so.

But that's not what I liked best about the film. I liked that it was just good old fashioned movie making: Good acting, character development, plot, and clever editing. It was just a well crafted film. Crude? Yes. Over-the-top crude? Hellck yes. Knee-slapping-yell-out-loud funny? Yes, yes and a large yes with butter. And that's all I'm going to say about it. Anything else would make my mother mad and cause you to judge me.

Then I saw the Transformers. This film is getting filleted by critics around the world. Ebert gave it ONE STAR. Now, come on. Ebert gave Garfield more stars than this film. Get off the high horse. IT'S A TRANSFORMERS FLICK. By default it isn't going to be believable.

All that said, I'm going to list my reactions as I experienced them in the theater for a little change up.

Opening credits: What happened to the John Williams Dreamworks music??? Transformer music made the kid fishing off the crescent moon look slightly evil.

Oh dear lord. Primitive man meets primitive transformers. That looks hilarious. It looks like a farce of 2001...

Modern day now.

Riiiiiight, she is going to be sitting on that motorcycle like that with her booty in the air, wearing basically blue-jean underwear, working at a motorcycle shop... and NO ONE is going to notice? Riiiiiight.

Jive talking transformers? One of them has a gold tooth. Wow... and they can't... read... the ancient transformer writing. Al Sharpton anyone? Oh man... how did they get away with that little bit of robotic racism?

Again with the color saturation.

This looks more like Armageddon than the last Transformers. Where's Bruce?

Please, can you just keep the camera moderately still for at least ONE of these r-he-he-heeeeally ridiculously boring and stupid conversations? I'm getting dizzy here with all this 180 degree camera action.

Enough with the adolescent freshman LDR angst. Get to the robotic butt-kicking.

Freshmen can't have cars? Is this school in the USSR?

A Chihuahuas humping a Pug will always be funny.

Wow. Loud. Ouch.

Wow, double-loud. Pretty fun though.

Okay, Optimus is a badass.

Okay... why our sun? It's not like our sun isn't the MOST common sun in the Universe or anything.

Wow... That transformer is metallically bearded. Makes sense.

This is truly dumb. Dumb... but still fun.

Jerry: Slow motion does not equal E-motion.

I have never seen such gratuitous slow motion in my LIFE.

deus ex machina anyone?

Awwwwwe, I love movies!

ALRIGHT. DIRECTORS ACROSS THE PLANET. QUIT PUNKING YOUR AUDIENCES WITH SUDDEN CLOSE UPS OF ZITTY MALE BUTTS. NASTY. THIS LITTLE PRANK HAS BEEN IN THE LAST THREE FILMS I'VE SEEN AND I AM WEARY OF IT. STOP. IT.

The Pyramids... It's ALLLLLLLWAAAAYS about the pyramids.

Suuuuure that's Orion's Belt. If I saw three objects that bright in the night sky, I'd be saying my prayers.

Okay... do they think that this is the friggin Lord of the Rings? We are pushing 2.5 hours here folks. Let's wrap this up.

Sweet mother of mercy... Angelic transformers back from the dead. I think I just choked on a whopper.

Finally over. Waiting so see if the credits are in slow-mo.

I think if Jerry would have cut out the slow mo, or just played the film in real time, the movie would have been perfectly timed.

Ahhhhh, summer movies.

All in all, that was fun. Good clean fun. A bit much on the slow-mo, but all around worth the 12 bucks.

But Do You Have Town in Texas Named After You???

2009-06-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

This is no photoshop folks. It's confession time. Yes, there was a time where so many people considered me awesome that I had to lead them into the Texas wilderness to set them straight.

Something about my beboxing (short for "beatboxing") abilities... its just too much for people to handle. Amber tries to get me to do it at parties and so forth, but all I have to do is say, "Remember Seth Ward," and she drops the subject. People look at us strangely after that discourse, but I quickly move on to my amazing but psychologically harmless underarm-toot-pitch-matching skills and they forget about the beboxing altogether.

Someday I'll tell you of the great pilgrimage of the thousands that followed me to that big chunck of nowhere that is now Seth Ward, Texas, but right now the memory is too near and drear.

Let's just say that it all started at a church potluck... there were various games being played there, and through a serious of strange words spoken by two different people... one said "Hit it!", and the other cheered on a child and said, "RUN!"... the combo being, "HIT IT, RUN!" And I started beboxing, uncontrollably. I can now control that impulse, but back then when someone said, "Hit it, Run," it triggered in me a trance-like state of pure beboxing hypnotic power.

People started break dancing that had never break danced before... one large child tried to do the "worm" and ended up doing push ups instead as the worm was not possible for his prodigious young build. He is now the captain of football team and very "cut" because of his ongoing passion for push ups. He is now a full Aggregate Scout. (One step above Eagle Scout.)

There, there. No further. Let's just say that having a town in Texas named after you is a curse, not a blessing. It took quite a bit of finagling to get the Wikipedia article the way it is.

America, America, God Shed His Grace on Thee...

2009-06-17T07:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I read the news in TOTAL awe. I shall bold the parts that are extra special. It just makes my skin aggregate.

NEW YORK – The nation's newest texting champion has a message for parents across the land — although they might not want to hear it.

"Let your kid text during dinner! Let your kid text during school! It pays off," 15-year-old Kate Moore said Tuesday after winning the LG U.S. National Texting Championship.

After all, she said: "Your kid could win money and publicity and a phone." For the Des Moines, Iowa, teenager, her 14,000 texts-per-month habit reaped its own rewards, landing her the competition prize of $50,000 just eight months after she got her first cell phone.

Moore, with a speedy and accurate performance, beat out 20 other finalists from around the country over two days of challenges such as texting blindfolded and texting while maneuvering through a moving obstacle course.

In the final showdown, she outtexted 14-year-old Morgan Dynda, of Savannah, Ga. Both girls had to text three lengthy phrases without making any mistakes on the required abbreviations, capitalization or punctuation. (Seth insert: I believe the phrase was, "like totally! :-) Like,,, did you see the way he just dissed me totals?!?!?! He trted me like I was total preggers with a fat baby!!?!?!? LOL.) Moore squeaked through by a few seconds on the tiebreaking text, getting the best two out of three. As she anxiously waited for confirmation of her win, tears streamed down her face.

The teen dismisses the idea that she focuses too much on virtual communications, saying that while she has sometimes had her phone taken away from her in school, she keeps good grades, performs in school plays and socializes with friends — in person — on the weekends.

In between, she finds time to send about 400 to 470 texts a day. Among her uses of the text messages? Studying for exams with friends, (BS!!!) which she says is better done by text because she can look back at the messages to review.

The finalists, all 22 or younger, were among 250,000 people who tried to get spots in the competition. Some won their spots at the Manhattan finals by being the fastest people to text responses to televised ads.

It's the third year for the texting competition, sponsored by LG Electronics Inc.'s mobile-phones division. But it's the first time that it was held at a flashy sound stage with an illuminated platform and surrounded by TV cameras. LG, based in Seoul, South Korea, is considering using the footage in a televised special of some kind.

Twenty-year-old Jackie Boyd, who came in fifth in the competition, said she usually prefers text messages to phone calls because they get through faster and they're more private — leaving her unworried about other people listening in.
"You can get more of what you really truly want to say" across with texting, said the Syracuse University psychology major. "Especially if it's an argument, you don't have to worry about saying the wrong thing.
"And if you don't want to respond, you can always say, 'Oh, I didn't get your text.'"

Spinal Tap in Real Life

2009-06-13T12:02:00.000-07:00

Smell them thar roses.

2009-06-08T19:43:00.001-07:00

Every day I walk to work. I consider myself one of the luckiest guys on the planet that I get to walk through Central Park in order to get to work. However, lately, I've been so busy that I have forgotten to stop and just look.

There is this really amazing meadow in the middle of the southern part of the park called "Sheep's Meadow." The grass is as soft as you would dream grass should be... somewhere where grass doesn't have little sneaky sharp rocks or hidden hoards of fire ants and so forth.

You can walk freely in that meadow with nary a shoe or sock and the whole experience is almost a little bit odd. Odd and kind of thrilling. You forget how sensitive the bottom of your feet are and what emotions can come and go when those nerves are titillated by little vixen blades of grass. And even when I was a little country boy spending half my days fishing, I never walked ANYWHERE outside without shoes.

But today... I made myself stop and do something I always "think" I'd like to do but I never try. I walked into Sheep's Meadow (barefoot) and laid down on the grass under the tree without a blanket and watched the sun go down. I think I need to try that kind of thing more often. (If you are a fellow creature of habit, you KNOW how hard that really is.)

I put my shoes on for the picture. I promise you don't want to see my vampiric feet.

A Quick Addendum to that Last Blog

2009-05-29T18:59:00.000-07:00

I suppose I should modify that last blog a bit. I sounded like I was criticizing all my blogging buddies. Honestly wasn't meant to do so.

I read, or I used to read a LOT of politically charged blogs and entertainment-smut/gossip blogs and tech product critique stuff. I haven't read a theological blog in a billion years. And if I am guilty of anything, it is that I haven't been to ANYONE'S blog over there on my friend list with the exception of a few people that I see regularly.

My loss, entirely. One reason being that I've never been a RSS feed person. When I was teaching at Rice I had college students emailing me quite a bit and now with choir and all the stuff that is going on at the church, I usually spend my mornings answering emails. I've already missed two important emails this week.

Blah blah. All that to say, apologies to any friend that was offended...

Pay no attention to the complainer behind the curtain.

I'll be Loud.

2009-05-29T07:15:00.000-07:00

I'm John Conner and I do NOT smile. I do scream, quite a bit. I also enjoy screaming into CBs.

There was something about those first Terminator films that really made the films terribly likable and fun: The Govenator.

This film made me remember and miss the campy but HUGELY FUN screen presence of Der Arnold. This film didn't have that presence. Well, not until the end anyways. But even then it wasn't really Arnold, rather, some ridiculous CGI naked ken-doll version of Arnold.

One good thing about reviewing this movie: The plot won't take much summary time. Here goes...

The robots and humans are at war. John Conner (JC initials - okay, people. Enough with the Jesus Christ initial thing. Faulkner pulled it off but it is officially cliche.) is the leader of a rebellion of sorts... But I don't know, you never seem to know who is really in charge. Anyways, they discover that the robots are making hybrid human/machine terminators. The hybrid we get to know thinks he's human and he even has a human heart. Conner of course doesn't believe him. At the end, Conner's heart is damaged in the battle with the cheezy looking Arnold-CGI-Ken-Doll-Naked-Terminator and OF COURSE the hybrid donates his heart. Where's my hanky.

The whole scene is slathered with predictability and I suddenly felt like I was watching an old Stephen Segal action flick, except without the fun. What I used to love about all those old 80s action movies is the moment in which someone describes to the villian just how tough the Stephen Segal character was.

Villian: "Who is this guy?"

Plucky guy who used to know Segal's character way back when: "Well let me tell you... (bombs go off in the distance)... this guy's so bad he could yada yada."

We didn't get a moment like that, of course. What we did get was this: John Conner screaming into a CB "If you don't listen to me then we are dead. WE ARE ALL DEAD." Yawn.

I suppose the Matrix spoiled me to AI movies forever, even though the Terminator was the first great AI action flick. What was great about those first Terminator films was that we were visited by the future and were only given glimpses of the what was to come. Here we are thrust into a future, and unlike Zion in the Matrix, or the make-shift civilizations in Mad Max, humanity is lacking humanity. I was almost rooting for the robots. At least the robots were capable of lowering their voices.

Then came the robots stealing Humans or harvesting them or some reason. Why in the world they would want to harvest an old women is beyond me. More dramatic, I guess. Then there was the cut to the robot who was surveying the prisoners... the steal-skull-faced robot was WEARING A HEADBAND. ??? ??? ???

Again, what is with the color-jacking of current film makers? Does everyone just HATE the color green? I know its in the "future" and I know the planet's been nuked to smitherines by the robots and so forth, but would it kill the guys to at least slightly color the EVERGREENS???

I don't know... I feel like this review is so disjunct and odd -just like the film. It was just a bunch of chuncks and clunks all slammed together with a lot of screaming stuff like "WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE" and explosions. There was a cool robot who had fast big motorcycles for knees. That scene was cool. I liked the big Godzilla robot.

I hate to say this... but I found the oil driller planting a nuke on an asteroid much much more fun. Dumb, stupid, un-scientific fun.

I will say that the CGI was well done. But who gives a hoot if the story is a loud bore? And event though it was great, there was nothing new offered, unlike the other terminator films which were all cutting edge in their own ways.

I give it C---- I would give it a D or an F if it weren't for that bootlegged cussing outburst that we got to hear and then later as a techno song.

Hello Friends!

2009-05-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

Been busy. And I'm a little under the weather. I know I know. Why start your post with that tired old excuse? To be honest, it is better than nothing and the surest way for me to at least post SOMETHING.

A concert pianist friend of mine is coming to play this Sunday for church and I've been trying to whip u an arrangement or two for piano and pipe organ that will break the stained glass windows and blow a few hearing aids.

The weather has been quite euro here in the city and I am liking it: green, cool, lush and pretty.

I've been wanting to write more but between the church and students and fighting off the spring allergy/flu, the time has not allowed. I've been flat-out down for the count since monday.

I've been away from the blog world and haven't had a chance to really read anyone else's blog in quite some time. I have to say... it has been a little refreshing. I suppose partly refreshing because I've been working. But also refreshing because I didn't realize how negative reading a bunch of blogs can make you. I think that the majority of blogs are discourses on things that annoy the blogger, that includes me and my blog too. Sometimes, the things really do need to be said. But overall, negativity, even in small doses, can be a deadly deadly thing. The only problem is that really positive things aren't all that fun to read. I WISH that I cared about hearing about the daily progress of my mom's flower gardens, and I do to an extent... but I'm just not attracted to that kind of reading.

Darned if you do and darned if you don't. I'm not sure that colloquialism works for this scenario, but it felt right to say it.

Oh well... at least I typed a few paragraphs about SOMETHING.

Anyways, here is a post from my Jewish friend, Jenny (a PhD student in Talmudic studies and my guitar student) on the discussion from the "The Eternal Now of Grace" post. I thought it was incredibly interesting:

"A word about Jews getting carried away with "works". You are referring to the Pharisees, as depicted in the Gospels (we have very little knowledge of them outside the Gospels and Josephus, who doesn't talk much about this issue). It would seem that the rabbis, who succeeded the Pharisees as guardians and interpreters of the law among the Jewish people after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, shared Jesus' concern with an overly rigid or strictly works-centered notion of the law. The rabbis and the early Christians each dealt with the same problem in their own way. Jesus and Paul, followed by the early Church Fathers, stressed less (or no) importance to the practical observance of the law, while the rabbis developed a system of more flexible and practicable law, and concomitantly developed an array of more "spiritual" ideas and practices to buttress the law.

If I may, an example. Deuteronomy 6 says to speak of "these words" (namely, "You shall love the Lord your God...") "when you lie down and when you rise up". The rabbinic response was something like "OK, that's too vague; let's concretize it. Recite these verses ("You shall love the Lord your God...") twice a day - once in the morning and once at night. Of course, if you're sick or incapacitated, or, say, too nervous to concentrate because you've just gotten married and you're about to have sex for the first time [this specific issue, among others, appears in the Mishnah, a rabbinic code of the 3rd century CE], then don't worry about it." The Christian response was something like, "The point of the instruction to "speak of these words... when you lie down and rise up" is to have them on your mind and in your conversation all day long; so do that. Live your life in a way that reflects that commitment and focus." Both the rabbinic and Christian responses have great merit, and each found followers who felt that one or the other response resonated more for them.

Balancing actions and feelings has been on the minds of Jews and Christians, it would seem, for a few millennia. I agree, Seth, that we should just chill about the contrast or competition between the two and see them as complementary and conjoined - even if there are a variety of ways of navigating them. Every love relationship is different; just as every relationship to God - be it Christians and Jesus through the New Testament, or Jews and Yahweh through the Hebrew Bible - is different, and works out its needs, kinks, and manifestations differently."

The Eternal Now of Grace

2009-05-15T14:24:00.000-07:00

I've never understood the big tadoo about faith vs. works. Why are these things "vs" each other?

A mature(ing) Christian should strive to be unaware of each as separate compartments. Each act is obedience in love.

Its like loving your wife. I know I do and act like I do all at once. But I'm not thinking about either, at all. I'm thinking about her. And when I do, I'm as close to being in the eternal now of Grace that I'll ever be.

Sometimes one is more effort than the other, (I'm sure that's true more for Amber than me) but because I'm in love, (Not puppy dog stuff here, but cultivated husbands-love-and serve-your-wife stuff) most of the time, I don't have much of a choice. I love her, and that's all there is to it.

I think us greek-thinking Christians have been too darn hard on our selves for too long.

I'm a "musician." I play "music" by trade. I play in a church. But sometimes I don't. Which glorifies God? Both. But sometimes, some think that one does more than others. Why? Because of our DESPERATE need to compartmentalize. Both are obedience and both please God and myself.

Did you know that there are some tribes in Africa who don't know what "music" is? They make it all day long, but when asked about their music, they look completely perplexed. There is no word for it to compartmentalize it. It is simply a part of their communication and the joy of living. It is as natural to them as bubbling is to a brook.

But us western children of Aristotle? We've got music stores divided into THOUSANDS of musical genres.

The same thing goes for faith and works. We've got THOUSANDS of denominations, each one with a different rule book on how to better experience God by either more works or more Grace. But overall, the real separating factors between us are our different views on works vs. Grace.

Christians aren't the only ones who got all caught up in works. See, the Jews really took the works thing and made into something distorted. They got so stern about all the laws that NO ONE could POSSIBLY do them all. This is what pissed them off so bad about Jesus. He was living the law again in a way that was senergetic, a way that was both natural and supernatural to man. Sabbath made for Man, not man for the Sabbath.

So along came the early Christians and they took the "don't worry about works" thing too far and James, the brother of the Lord, came along and set things straight. You cannot separate works from acts of mercy and Grace flowing through you or visa versa. It is like separating air from the function of a lung.

But we just can't get over it, still. We love to have bible study after bible study, knocking the idea of works into the ground. Then we go lock ourselves up in a prayer closet and "get things right" so that we can FINALLY do something for our neighbor and not out of pride.

"Wait... If I help that homeless person am I doing to gain God's favor? Or did I do it because I have God's favor???"

I think that God gets quite annoyed with these questions. "Just feed the starving soul, you spoiled little idiot."

Most times, I don't think there's much time to figure all that crap out. And we've surely wasted too much time pointing fingers and sitting high in our ivory prayer towers "getting our hearts right" before we love our neighbor. When many times, the best way to experience God's grace is to do something for someone else when you are feeling very selfish.

I say that we stop altogether thinking about works vs grace and thinking about about them as extension of one another. In doing so, we start spending time with each other, and loving each other through kindness.

It is amazing how meaningless this debate is when someone you love is suffering. There is no debate. You love them and care for them. A synergetic moment. A darn-near hypostatic moment, when spirit and flesh work as they are meant to work: together all at once, sharing in the same nature, not distinctly different and in opposition, but as one.

I love the word synergetic. It means, "The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual."

Someday, we may be so lucky as to be perplexed by any question that would separate and compartmentalize Grace, faith and acts of love done in the physical now.

Beatles and Cutlass Ciera

2009-05-14T20:26:00.000-07:00

I am forever a Beatles fan. I never ever ever ever get tired of hearing their music. Never. EVER.

One of the greatest things my dad ever did for me was introduce me to St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band at the musically tender and impressionable age of 9. It was right about that time that we moved from Oklahoma to Indiana. It was also about that time that my dad got a new Cutlass Ciera SE equip with the COOLEST tape player and lots of console lights. I never forget seeing all the lights in that car at night for the first time. It was like a space ship. I remember it had this built in calculator on the console. Amazing.

But what was more amazing is that the Beatles were being re-released on cassette tape and my dad, being a HUGE Beatles fan, bought every tape he could get his hands on. Every time we got in the car, the Beatles flooded my ears and psyche. The combination of the 9 hour trips to Oklahoma, all those lights, the starry Indiana nights and A Day in the Life... a spell was cast. (Paul Simon's Graceland was another spell casting CD.)

The Beatles were my first musical obsession. I searched high and low for every Beatles recording I could get my hands on. Then came the Beatles records. I lifted the Tapes from my Dad's car and WORE them out. Literally. Eventually only one side of the stereo split worked. The came the CD player and the CDs. Still love the records best.

Just when I thought my love for the Beatles had moved into the golden years of fandom... LOVE appeared.

I didn't think much of it when I first heard about it, as I wasn't all that crazy about the studio rough releases back in the late 90s. The real albums, after all, were miracles. I had given up on any new kind of significant Beatles discovery.

It was my friend Josh Moore that sat my butt down, against my will, and forced me to listen to LOVE. See the thing about this record is that it was produced by George Martin, (considered by everyone to be the fifth Beatle) the Beatles original producer and George Martin's son.

LOVE is possibly the most unique of all Beatles records. In my opinion it deserves its place as the final great offering of Beatles music. When I listen to the tracks I am once again hypnotized. The odd thing being: There are no new sounds, only old sounds juxtaposed by the very producer who helped conceive the sounds in the first place. Some of the songs I've grown to love more than the originals. Hey Jude, for instance. While My Guitar is HEARTBREAKINGLY beautiful. It is George playing acoustic and singing solo with new string arrangements by the man who wrote the strings for Eleanor Rigby.

So, I've given up trying to leave the Beatles behind.

Sure the music is and always will be great, but still... all those blasted space lights in an old 85 Cutlass SE.

King Of Kong

2009-05-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've seen a good documentary or one that doesn't depress my socks off.

King of Kong is just great.

In a nutshell:

There is this whole subculture of mega-nerds out there that only play vintage atari games. There is a whole society that keeps track of high scores. There are heros and legends in this little subculture just as there are in any sporting event.

The heros in the video game world are just as you would expect them to be.

These are real life Napoleon and Kip Dynamites.

I haven't the energy for a full on review, but I will say that during the first 30 minutes of this documentary I thought I had found the Holy Grail of documentaries.

However, nothing yet has toppled the greatness of When Were Kings. And nothing ever will.

King of Kong is filled with little twists and turns and just brimming with hilariously odd characters and obsessions that keep you glued. It is also a heart felt documentary and mostly chronicles the journey of an out of work engineer and his attempt at toppling the world record for Donkey Kong. Normal OCD man with wife and kids meets the Empire of the single middle aged men with acne and mullets.

Worth every penny.

Blog Is Dead

2009-05-11T07:30:00.000-07:00

And Twitter killed it.

Honestly, Twitter and Facebook killed it. Or maybe something else is killing it.

My friend C-hammer stated in a recent comment that, "I think we're all consumers of so much information that blogs start to seem long and wordy. They take a little effort and involvement. Because I have a reader with lots of blogs in it, I can never seem to catch up on all of them."

I concur, and so does Technorati. In a recent release of data they stated that "200 million blogs have been created, but only 7.4 million have published a post in the past 4 months." 4 MONTHS. Hmmmm. And what has grown like gangbusters in the past 4 months? Grim.

However, its not all twitter's fault. Most blogs were never popular because of the first-class writing, they were popular because of their voyeuristic nature. We are a voyeuristic culture. We like to know what's going on across the rosebushes, behind the curtains, through the thin walls. We want to see and hear and live through other people's eyes. We are an unhappy culture. We are a culture that wishes we were all doing something different. We are never satisfied and therefore we are constantly looking for some new sweet that will satisfy our sweet tooth. We love to live vicariously through other people. I do, you do, we all do. (However, the good Lord is weeding that out in me in the past two years... well that's another blog for another... wait... NEVERMIND.)

I often wondered how long it would take for blogging to die out. It is dying out much quicker than people think. And the blogs that are surviving are the ones that provide the most information in the shortest amount of time.

Twitter is truly amazing because it doesn't give people enough time to get bored. Even thought the twitts or tweets or whatever are usually EXTREMELY boring, with every little blurb we clap our hands and bark as if we've been given a new treat.

As for me, I am glad that I was a part of this great blogging era. I'd like to say a personal thanks to my friend Joey for introducing me to the blog and then to Shaun Groves for showing me the potential of blogging. It has made me a better writer and it has also earned me many new and undeserved friends. The commenting on my blog has been some of the best and most interesting writing I've witnessed on the Internet and I do miss that. However, I feel that those days are over.

Blogging is another trinket on the long dangling, noisy, splendid, spectacular necklace around the neck of our pop culture. In many ways, I think that it was one of the healthiest of the trinkets. People started writing again and when people write, they exercise their imagination and their intelligence, or at least the ability to communicate more clearly and learn new things.

Now see, I've rambled on a good 300 twitts. And all I needed to keep your attention was a mere 5 twatts per hour. Sorry couldn't resist.

No, I'm not signing off. I have adjustment disorder so small change is hard for me. As a matter of fact, in a few years, I'll probably be the lone ragged man wandering in the endless fields of abandoned blogs, posting a thought or two or posting things that resemble paragraphs and complete sentences.

I might enter the twitter world someday, but who knows. By the time I do, people will have become so clever at it, that it will resemble an interesting art form but it will also have become passé. But people don't want steak at a movie; they want popcorn. And if it doesn't "pop" anymore, pop culture doesn't want it boring their sensory buds.

The people I really feel sorry for are those at places like the Rabbit Room where there is quite a lot of good writing going on by several good writers and creative artists. Just when I think they've caught their stride, the masses no longer have the attention span to read things longer than a paragraph. And when I say paragraph, I mean Hemingway paragraph: A sentence, if you are lucky.

Nor do they want to hear about anything that doesn't involve your minute by minute whereabouts or if you decided to wipe the boogie on the couch or the floor. However, they do have the benefit of several hundred fans, as most are performing artists, so maybe they'll become one of the last few bastions of good and surviving blogs. I hope so.

But make no mistake, if Blog is not dead, than it is surely dying. Fast.

Father and Son chat.

2009-05-07T18:33:00.000-07:00

My Dad came to visit me in NYC while Amber goes to spend time with her mom for mother's day.

Dad: Hey, you got any coffee? Caffeinated?

Me: Umm, no we are out. I'll take you to Starbucks in the morn... ing...

My Dad pauses brushing his teeth for bed... at 9:30

Me: What time are you getting up?

He pauses and smirks.

Dad: "I'll sleep in till O-seven hundred hours just for you." *Spit*

Me: Oh good lord. I guess that's 7:00 a.m.?

Dad: Affirmative.

He laughs.

Dad: That's right. I'm getting your butt up at 7:00. I ain't kiddn' ya. And that's late for me. I mean, half the day is gone by 7:00.

Oh my gaw oh my gaw oh my gaw!!!!

2009-05-06T05:25:00.000-07:00

President Obama totally ate a cheeseburger!!! (So did Biden, but who gives a hoot about that old dum-dum. I'm pretty sure that by now Obama thinks Biden is as worthless as a boar hog teat on an elbow.)

And not just any old gourmet-lean-sirloin-white-house-made cheese-turkey-burger... But a greezy-arsed pile of heart attack on a sugar-filled starchy bun at Ray's! No ketchup though.

Hey, nobody's perfect. Maybe it is some kind of Muslim thing against tomatoes. HA!

Ray sure got a sweet bit of promotion for his burger shack. Ray, look out. Next campaign you might replace Joe the plumber for Ray the gut buster. You really should look into getting fries, really. Tater... puffs? They'z called tater tots where I lube up the arteries. (Btw, Big Daddy's in Waco Texas USED to have the most AMAZING tater tots and burgers. It was sad sad day for the country when that place closed, as well as a sad day for the plus-sized elastic waist jean outlet in Waco.)

In other news...

Everything is almost in place to do the Beethoven Choral Fantasy on the 30th at CPC. I'm pretty pumped about it. I'll know tonight for sure if the Choir can make it.

It is green and lush here in the city. It's been cool and raining pretty steady for a few days. I'm certainly enjoying it.

I've officially joined a gym and I am loving it. It's time, friends. It's time. However, I did waltz into the women's locker room AGAIN yesterday. Praise the lord I didn't see any cougar thongs. See, the durn hallway to the lady's locker room is located just opposite to the hallway that leads to elevators. And once I make a wrong turn, it takes prayer and shock therapy to get me to take the right turn the next time... or the time after that, and after, and after. As a rule, I avoid any and all locker rooms.

I've been spotting quite a few celeb's lately. One thing I've noticed, they do look a good bit older in person. Kelly Ripa looks 3 times as skinny as she does on the tube. Barry Manilow is also abnormally skinny and much taller than I expected. Very tanned, and very botox'd. Regis looks like he should be on one of those Smuckers jars that Willard features during the Today Show.

I suppose the television adds 20 pounds and subtracts 20 years, (-200 in Regis' case.) Too bad it kills your brain cells, and causes ADD and ADHD.

What was I talking about? ... ... ... ?

Oh well, back to it. Man, I've missed blogging!

Still resisting the urge to twitter. Feels like blogging is dying a slow tweeting death. People are posting their twitters more and more. A little annoying, honestly. Kinda bugs the twit out of me. It is like opening up a novel to find a cooking pop out book instead. Or walking into room and seeing your mom and dad making out. Or walking into the ladie's dressing room instead of the elevator.

I wonder if Obama and Biden will make a trip to a local gas station to use the public crapper sometime soon. I'm sure the folks on the Today show and MSNBC would say that Obama's methane doesn't stink. I'm sure Biden would forget to flush.

All that to say, the presidential trip to the burger joint is a little cliche, me thinks. Almost as cliche as the tough-guy TV/film hero walking away unflinchingly from a mushroom cloud essplosion just in time, in slow motion. In real life that explosion would singe the hair and clothes right off their backside.

I miss Bill and his jogging detours into Micky-D's. Now THAT, was believable. Wouldn't want to see him eat in slow motion though. Shoot, I might even do that today.

Good ole Bill.

Shamwow workout

2009-04-29T23:31:00.000-07:00

I've started working out again. Yes, its true. I've decided that I refuse to be a hairy, middle-aged outtashape man, and I refuse to die of a heart attack in my forties. The heart attacks that run in my family are as common as five o'clock shadows.

So, I'm using up all the free passes I can until I can snag a few more students to pay for my fitness club membership. It will be a lifestyle change. Yesterday, I worked out for the first time in a long time and it was awesome. I'm going again tomorrow. Only one problem: I've only got one pair of gym shorts and no washer and dryer.

Sooooo... a few days ago I fell victim to that blasted shamwow infomercial character and bought a shamwow at the bed bath and beyond.

It has sat in my closet, unopened, until tonight when I decided to give it a test on drying out my shorts. After I washed and rung out my shorts I laid them on a brand new sheet of BRIGHT orange shamwow and rolled them up, just like the commercial. I unrolled the shorts, expecting a miracle. The only thing that was missing from the scene was the Price is Right tuba/trombone loser music. What a gyp. What a sham. ShamWow my butt. Worse, what an idiot. Even worse, the stupid ugly-assed thing smells like the microwave after you cooked your cheeze-filled hot dog too long. Now my shorts no longer smell like sweaty man parts, but they smell like fatty cheeze hot dogs. AWESOME.

But still... a hot dog filled with cheese wouldn't be too bad right about now.

Geeking Out

2009-04-27T18:54:00.001-07:00

I got a text from a friend a few days ago telling me that he heard Garrison Keillor on a Prarie home Companion mentioning that Central Pres was the church where none other than Charles Ives was music director and where Ives composed and premiered a bunch of his most played works. The organ is actually dedicated to him.

Charles Ives is one America's most famous composers. If you go to music school, you learn ALL about Mr. Ives. I geeked out so hard that I immediately emailed my professor.

So this past sunday, I improvised a postlude on the very same organ where THE Charles Ives sat and freaked out half his congregation with hymns played in two keys at once.

Pretty awesome.

Told you it was nerdy moment.

Rick, Rick, Rick

2009-04-24T23:16:00.000-07:00

Poor Rick. Everywhere the man turns lately, he's getting the shift kicked out of him. He ticked off all the gays in the country by comparing them to chester molesters and then turned around and ticked of the Dobsonites by saying that he "never reaaaaally gave a crap about Gays getting married" and that he misspoke about Gays being the same as chester molesters.

Now he's basically saying that he doesn't want to talk about Gays anymore and wants to focus on AIDS and poverty. If I could paraphrase his last statement, it was something like this: "Yes, no... I mean... I think I don't care about Gay marriage... God loves us and has a purpose for marriage for molesters... I mean, queeeeerrrwEATHER we are having ain't it? No really, what I really like to do is... Well, I'd like to teach the world to sing: A perfect harmony. I'd like to buy the world a coke and keep it company. SING WITH ME NOW!"

I think Warren basically has that good old "I want everyone to like me syndrome." Can't judge a man for that.

I also think, in general, pastors should stay away from journalists and the t.v. That goes for you too, Joel-meister. No more Larry King interviews for you.

Busy busy

2009-04-23T22:08:00.001-07:00

How in the hellck did things get so busy, AGAIN? As many of you know I started working as a music director at Central Pres. here in Manhattan. I haven't talked too much about it because honestly, I've been pretty much working my keister right off, which I've loved. And Lord knows the keister could use some of that working-off-business after that loooong winter. Luckily the Church is straight across Central Park so I get a good walk or two in every day. The scenery ain't too shabby either!

Tomorrow night Amber and I will be singing and leading with a couple other guys in a "contemporary" worship at our church. I really don't know what the heck that word "contemporary" means. I suppose it means worship that sounds like Coldplay. I think it should be changed to "whisper-worship or four-on-the-floor worship... on repeat." Whatever the case, its all music to me and it should be fun. It is sort of an interesting juxtaposition to be doing this music in a Gothic Cathedral. Some of the songs I haven't heard. Fun stuff.

I do have some big plans for this year. They may turn into little plans, but for now, they are still big. I hope to throw on an opera or two, and possibly do the Beethoven Choral Fantasy with our Choir, orchestra and this frigging unbelievable concert pianist friend of mine.

Also on the list is to start bringing CCM people in to sing. I think I'll start with trying for Shane and Shane or Beth Dillon first. I think the intimate setting would suit them kindly, plus a violinist friend of mine toured with Jeremy Camp and Bethany Dillon and he had the nicest things to say about those people. And I'm all about the good people. Plus I think that Shane Bernard and Beth Dillon have amazing voices.

I have to say that I do feel a little sorry for my choir. Every week I am throwing them a new challenge. And I change things constantly and they have to learn a LOT of stuff in short amount of time. However, they are just awesome. Incredible. For Easter they wanted to do the Hallelujah Chorus and I was too chicken to give it a go but most had it by memory and so for a surprise we did it for the postlude and it ROCKED.

Have I mentioned that I am now a confirmed fan of the PIPE ORGAN??? (No, I will never wear the slippers. Not happening. Not a chance.) Let me tell you something: There is not a more volcanic sound than the sound of a pipe organ in a Gothic cathedral under the fiery fingers and BUMBLING feet of Seth Ward. Maybe it is more fun for the player than for the listeners, but that baby can crank the db's! Last week I scared the crap out of the choir, and myself. I had punched the "pedal to great" button accidentally, which means all the pedal's foghorns go to the keyboard. So.... after we finished the apostles creed I busted into the Gloria Patri and it sounded like the a very close range rodeo horn... everywhere at once. The choir literally jumped. I almost let a cuss word fly myself.

On a serious note, sometimes I am playing in that church and I wonder what in the world I ever did to deserve to get to play in such a place and worship with such great people. I hope that I can continue to serve them in ways that only God will shine.

I get to play for the Harlem Boy's choir this week. (Now known as the New Amsterdam Choir.)

Provide Caption

2009-04-15T12:10:00.001-07:00

For instance:

"Hey Frankie, watch this! I can make mine cup carbonated!"

"And then the tiger awoke giggling and declared it the best dream he ever had."

E.T.'s Ark

2009-04-10T07:49:00.000-07:00

Knowing is a movie that John Calvin might have enjoyed. However, I'm not sure if Calvin would have been a Nick Cage fan. As for me, I like him. My first film memory of Nicholas Cage is H.I. in Raising Arizona - one of my favorite movies. I usually like Cage in most of his movies, even the crappy, crappy ones. He has an innate quirky humor that carries his "I'm not supposed to be saving everyone's life" bravura, and it helps us believe that he could actually pull off landing that Con Air jet in downtown Vegas or Manhattan or wherever it was to deliver that oily bunny to his daughter.

Knowing, Cage's most recent and best film in years, is a difficult movie to explain but I'll give it a go in layman's terms. (layman=lazy)

Knowing begins back in the 1950s with an elementary school classroom burying a time capsule. The time capsule looks pretty amazing for any school to own. It looked like some cryogenic thingy that should be on the set of Jurassic Park VI, but whatever, its the movies.

So the kids are all supposed to bury a picture of what they think the future will look like. I'm very surprised that a school would think that their school would last that long. Especially an elementary school. Very few elementary schools last that long. Because of city growth and ever-changing zoning laws, elementary schools can change every 10-20 years, depending on the city and economic climate. Plus school buildings aren't built for longevity. But again, its the movies.

Every kid draws a cute little picture of the future with the usual stuff: spaceships, rockets, bombs. Everyone except the weird little girl that can't stop writing numbers. The teacher stops her before she is able to write the last few numbers, which I think is pretty lame. First off, if I had a little girl in my class that looked like she had wandered off the latest Night of the Living Dead set -all pale and weird and quiet- and this little girl was writing a billion numbers for her cryogenic assignment, I would have given her 10 extra seconds to finish off the last 10 numbers. But again, its the movies.

So they bury it. Flash forward 50 years. Enter Nick Cage, a MIT astrophysicist who teaches a class on chaos vs. predeterminism. A pretty cool class if it actually existed. We find out quickly that he lost his wife years ago and Nick has come to believe that life is a series of meaningless events, all given an extra bolt of kinetic angst by the fact that he is also... wait for it... A PREACHER'S SON. Big Surprise.

So Nick's son, a good little actor, is of course the one who gets the little zombie-girls cryogenic note from the past and he is suddenly hearing voices and is showing urges to write down a bunch of numbers himself. Of course the movie wouldn't be scary if it didn't have a weird looking albino man always lurking in the distance or showing up to give the little boy apocalyptic visions or little black stones for some reason.

But before the visions and numbers and whisper-voices start for the son, Nick takes the note one night during a drinking binge and discovers that the numbers are a series of events that have predicted every major disaster in the past 50 years, including the death of his wife, and also the events of next 10 days or so which also happens to be the end of the world.

So, Nick discovers that the show is fixed. The world's days are numbered, and there is NOTHING he can do about it. But that doesn't stop him from trying. Nick quickly locates the daughter of the weirdo little girl from the 50s and tries to find out what he can. The woman has a little girl and like Nick's son, she is hearing whispers as well. This of course leads them all to some scary place in the woods where sits an old abandoned trailer. And yes, like all sane parents, they leave the kids alone in the scary woods inside the truck for the Albino men to kidnap. And that's as far as I'll go.

Look to the title and use your imagination, or go see the flick, to imagine the ending.

What I liked about the movie:

First off, I loved the notion that man does not control the future. He doesn't. Maybe a little here or there, but for the most part, the sun will either rise, or it will burn out. Not a thing we can do about it. Someday an asteroid WILL smash into the earth and there will most likely be NOTHING anyone can do about it. There isn't an oil-digger on the planet that could land on the durn thing and plant a nuke in its belly to save us. The sky is a big, big place and by the time we see the earth-killer, there won't be NEARLY enough time to do anything about it. But we don't like that kind of talk. Lately, a team of scientists have been urging Obama to send a bunch of pollutants into the atmosphere to slow global warming. Not going to happen. Neither can we control the Earth's magnetosphere. Scientists have been waring of the approaching solstice and the potential plasma storm that cold pretty much cook us all, but the gov. would like to think that they can manufacture a volcano to stop the sun instead.

Remember when I said that I wished that the film Armageddon had ended with the asteroid hitting earth and the credits rolling to the backdrop of a red and fiery earth? Well...

So, I liked this movie for that purpose. It was also filled with a bunch of cool action sequences and cliffhanging suspense. Yadda yadda. All that stuff, though vital to the life and believability of the film, isn't as important as the philosophical question the film poses. And because all the action and the special effects and suspense served as a platform for the question, it was a success.

What I didn't like:

Color. I wish directors would stop jacking around with film saturation. The whole film was sorta ugly. Is anyone going to get tired of this technique??? What is so wrong with the color scheme the good Lord gave us? Why does everything have to have a shade of green? You'd think the sun was a the big lime in the sky. I've only seen on movie where I liked it (and I think that I would have liked it had it been done naturally as well) was O Brother Where Art Thou?

New York destruction: Before I lived here, I didn't mind this so much. But the scene with the subway crashing and scraping squishing every soul on the platform just made me squirm, and not in a good way. Every soul in the theater wanted to say, "Come on, dude. Pick on London, or Paris. Subways are scary enough and this is all our worst nightmare. Thanks for giving us a glimpse. Preciate it."

Aliens. Why does it always have to be aliens? Now, I will say that this film blurs the lines between alien and angel quite well, but I would have just preferred the spiritual route. After all, if our days are predetermined, they ain't predetermined by the Borg or the Klingons. That's pretty much a job for the the Almighty.

Other than these criticisms, I enjoyed it. It was depressing, and didn't catch me at the best time. Especially considering all the stuff happening in the world and that Times Square Church pastor predicting fire engulfing our cities and 2012 approaching and all, and that recent article about the sun shooting us with a plasma storm when our magnetosphere is at a weird angle in 2012... the year the Mayans predicted to be the end of the world.

That's about all the energy I have for this review. I'd recommend it, but only if you are feeling especially over-optimistic about the future of our world.

As a final note, I'd like to add this: I do wish that these big hollywood stars would stop with the hair plugs. Just go the Bruce Willis route. And that goes for you too, Tom Hanks.

Grade: B+

U.S.A. new meaning...

2009-04-09T22:55:00.000-07:00

Under Socialist Administration

Look out Cuba! Pretty soon you'll be the free ones and well be smuggling our cigars your way!

I do look forward to the day when 57-60% of our paycheck goes to crappy health care and new government funded buildings and businesses that look like cement blocks. Ah... if only we could skip forward to that bright and shiny day when that stray chicken is running down the middle of main street... I mean, can't you just wait until all our businesses are run by the same AMAZING standards set by the wunder-pack that is our Congress? I know I can't.

And let's get rid of all the finger-pointing. We are ALL to blame for where we are. Every person as guilty as the next. However, the party at the helm has done a GREAT job leading everyone to believe that the evil "CONSEEEERVATIVE Capitalists" are the ones to blame for the mess we are in. Nope. News-flash: It's sin, folks. Capitalist or Socialist, man will sin. If we hand out checks, people will refuse to get jobs and lie about their number of kids and their disabilities. I've seen it. I've lived in town where 90% sit on their butts all day and gripe about the size of their government check.

Maybe it is time that every American read Animal Farm again. A strange thing that that book could be a prophetic treatise about the future of American rather than the past of the U.S.S.R.

I watch in wonder at how "capitalism" is turned into a dirty little word. But people, every car you drive, every movie you watch, every restaurant where you feast, every television you buy, every book that you read... these all came from the machine and fires of capitalism. Are people really that stupid to be so easily duped? Yes. Yes they/we are. Look what happened to the Germans. The Nazis threw up a few propaganda videos associating Jews with rats, among other things and with in a few years every Jew in the third Reich was wearing an arm patch.

Truth is, Capitalism isn't evil. Neither is socialism. The great thing about our country is that we are a hybrid, where capitalism and socialism support the American dream: If you want something, if you dream of something, here is the place where it can happen. But you have to MAKE it happen, if God so allows it. This has been uniquely American. And this is dying. It is hard not to see it croak when you live in the heart of Capitalism. It really is, my friends. Ain't lying. Half of Wall Street is now owned by Uncle Obama.

All the while, surviving businessmen and entrepreneurs are being vilified by... well, you know.

And yet, I still hold out hope that he will succeed and give our country back to the people once we get on our feet. But right now, Obama controls the banks. Obama controls ALL the money in this here nation. It is an absolute first in the history of our country. That is too much power for any man. Unfortunately, I suppose... a necessary evil. I just hope it is a short lived necessary evil.

Interesting times we are living in people. Interesting times.

Movie Set Fun

2009-04-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

I got to go onto the new Sarah Jessica and Hugh Grant movie set last night and watch a scene being filmed. VERY cool. I soaked up every minute of the process. It is amazing how many hours lights and shields and cranes and cameras and people and other odd and expensive looking things that must be put into place just so that two actors can stand in the rain for 5 seconds, peep into a window and sneak off into the distance. Incredible. They even had two double actors give it a go first. A good idea. I'd HATE to do that scene twice.

I felt sorry for Sarah Jessica Parker. Normally I wouldn't feel sorry for someone making 25k per day, but I did last night. And Hugh looked pretty miserable as well. As far as acting goes, it definitely took some of all the glitz and glam out of the whole movie star business. Because, my friends, the weather last night twas COLD. Those two had to jump around in non-winter clothing in uncommon 35 degrees wind while gallons of cold, fake rain was pumped upon their heads.

I clicked a bunch more pictures but Sarah requested those of us with cameras not take pictures of her soaking wet and miserable. Understandable. (She requested very nicely, and thanked our inconsiderate selves, btw. Very nice lady.) So, I won't post them. Here is a blurry one with their backs turned. I don't think they'd be upset about this one.

It was dark and unfortunately the iPhone doesn't take the best dark photos, and the best pictures of them are ones where they are SOAKING wet and hypothermic, but the pictures above gives you the look of the scene. They peek into a window, the UPS truck drives off and then Hugh and Sarah run like wild people our direction almost running into us on the sidelines. I'm pretty sure that what the were saying by the time they reached us wasn't in the script.

Looks like a fun movie!

I'm Too Sexy for this Pulpit...

2009-04-07T18:00:00.000-07:00

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The former pastor of a prominent North Shore Episcopal church stands accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from his parish to pay for plastic surgery and Botox injections, as well as prescription drugs.

The Rev. William Blasingame, 66, who resigned in January as pastor of historic St. Paul's Memorial Episcopal Church, Stapleton, stole a total of $84,537 over the three years starting in January 2005, authorities contend.

Read the rest here...

Speaking of Botox... I saw this actress last night at a restaurant and she looked a teensy bit Botoxed. I don't get that Botox business. I understand why people do it. Why is it that some look like the bride of Chucky while some you can't really tell at all. Percilla Presley, for instance. Not trying to mean, but ouch, woman. And then, suddenly a friend shows up that you haven't seen in 10 years and they look younger than they did when you last saw them.

Whatever. Its all vanity. Twitter is the Botox of the internet. That's the only way I could think to close this here entry.

Goin' All Emmerson

2009-04-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

I can't handle the news lately. It is just too depressing. Every time I turn it on I feel like I have just tossed my good spirits into a pond of starving piranhas. It takes me all of five minutes to want to start stockpiling cash, weapons and water.

I'm sorry, but I get weirded out when our President asks the CEO of GM to resign... and HE DOES IT. I know a couple countries where that could happen. Cuba, for one. I get a little weirded out when our president can put a cap on how much people at banks can make. I know another country where the government can do that... North Korea.

So, I turn the tube off. It does me no good. And there are better things in life than the news.

Anyways, they are filming a motion picture at our church this Monday and Tuesday. I have an opportunity to meet the A-listers but I think I might chicken out. What do you think? I'm pretty sure I'd just make a total nincompoop of myself.

They were there last week and I went down to grab a bite from the catered set in our church basement. I waited till I was sure that all the A-listers had left the building and everyone was done eating. At first it all seemed that I would make my way through the line unnoticed as everyone was now seated and eating.

And man, what food! Lordy, these movie people eat like KINGS. Thus the lingering and stacking... thus the lingering too long and stacking too much. I took my sweet time so as to not have to come back, and in doing so, I lingered too long.

As I loaded up a little plate of gourmet desert on top of my big plate of salmon something-or-other, a man started talking behind me to the seated and eating crowd of actors with a very loud voice. That wouldn't have been so bad had he not been talking directly behind me, causing everyone to look at ME and not him. And it wouldn't have been so bad had he not been the DIRECTOR. And it wouldn't have been so bad had I not decided to stick that roll in my mouth because I had no room for it on my 4 plates. By the time I was fully noticed by everyone but the DIRECTOR, I looked like the main event at a food Cirque du Soleil event. I prayed to the good Lord that I wouldn't drop anything and chewed at my roll as I left the room.

I Sure Like British Journalism

2009-04-02T08:17:00.001-07:00

I guess the NY Times aren't the only ones bewitched by our President. That's it, next press conference, I'm going to see if Obama twinkles his nose when a tough question comes his way.

Ahhh, if only we could trade journalists...

At least the Brits have the guts to stand up and say, "Excuse me, you've got a bit of drool there... yes, just there, Mr. Prime Minister. And, by the way, you wouldn't need any help sowing your lips to Obama's hind quarters, would you?"

You got to give it to our buddies across the Ocean, they know that a monarchy is better for show than for real. (Note Price reference to Obama... ahem. As in, "hint, hint, Americans...")

The State of the Union...

2009-03-30T17:38:00.000-07:00

Things are good. Spring is ITCHING to say hello. However, it remains on the chill side. Al Gore and his global warming man/bear/pig theories can kiss it.

Besides, talk to any non-pop star scientist and they'll tell you that the earth's climate is highly cyclical. And truth be told, we are experiencing probably the best and most consistent weather the earth has ever seen. Every planet in the solar system is heating up, or at least they were heating up. Anyways, poor Al. Seems like every time he trucks up to D.C. to promote global warming awareness, D.C. is hit by a record-breaking blizzard.

Plus, who the heck has anything to worry about with Obama in the White House? Problemo solved. I hear he's got a plan to subsidize sunshine and cut sunshine for people making over 250k a year by 3-8%. Besides, they don't need as much sunshine as poor people. We've got to spread the sunshine around.

How bout that new Government Motors? Huh?

I think New Yorkers are really ready for some Springtime weather. If the temperature even sneaks above the 50 degree mark and if the sun peeps out for a half hour, Central Park is overwhelmed with joggers and people with Frisbees.

However, the cold weather seems to linger on. And the City folk get a little grumpier with each passing day. A little old lady gave me the bird yesterday from the passenger's seat of her very nice car. That that little old wrinkly third finger studded with a 600 karat costume jewelry ring looked hilarious. Her facial expression was priceless. It made my day.

That should tide me over till the good weather hits.

Proud Hubby (Amber in NY Times!)

2009-03-26T15:40:00.000-07:00

My amazing wife made it into the New York Times again in a review of her show "Little Women." (That's her on the far left.)

"...A similar fresh-faced promise is exhibited by the actresses who play her sisters — Kim Carson as romance-hungry Meg, Amber Ward as gentle Beth...

Considering it is the Times reviewing, the show did pretty well. About one out of 20 reviews are even slightly kind. In a recent review of the musical "Shrek" the reviewer described as the experience as similar to watching people stand around in hot dog costumes at the mall.

As for Little Women, basically, the reviewer isn't the biggest fan of the musical adaptation, and in this production she thought that the mics were up too high for Joe.

Read the rest here.

Btw, it is REALLY hard to watch Amber die, or at least know that she dies offstage.

A Message From Dan Brown

2009-03-25T19:20:00.001-07:00

Dear world, (i.e. Five Cent Stand Readers)

My name is Dan Brown, and the Roman Catholic Church is evil.

What was the real cause of Katrina? The RCC

Who REALLY framed Roger Rabbit? The RCC.

Who is really covering up all the Roswell UFO stuff? The RCC.

Who put the bom in the bomsha bom ba bom? Who put the ram in the ramalama ding dong? The RCC.

Who is covering the horrible secret that Jesus was actually Jesusetta, a small but opinionated little old Jewish old lady? The RCC.

Who infused the Bible with some elaborate hypnotic codes that force people to watch Joel Osteen? The RCC.

What church is really run by a secret society of lesbian werewolf teletubbies? The RCC.

I'm Dan Brown, and the Catholic Church is evil. Just ask Tom Hanks. He was made into a small child a few years back when the RCC planted an evil fortune telling machine at a local fairground.

Beware of the Catholic Church. Every Church building is built upon a very creepy secret graveyard with a bunch of skulls. And not just any skulls, slippery skulls that snoopy-assed people like that Tom Hanks will slip on and get scared and think twice before he proceeds. They are the skulls of those who have tried to hide the secrets of all these secrets. If only we could find the ancient encryption device... we could unravel the whole Catholic Church and Tom Hanks could be avenged.

Also, has anyone ever noticed the creepy music that plays when you walk into the Catholic Church? Obviously evil and hiding something.

If only I could expose all the secrets... I could stop wearing this turtleneck and jeans, and I could stop carrying around this book everywhere and I could go back to the trailer where I first started writing my first big hit. That would just kick some serious Mary Magdalene Butt.

Or is it Left?

2009-03-25T08:32:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen. I am now responsible for a bunch of administrative stuff.

I would like for you to take a moment, and meditate upon that last sentence and the implications thereof. Just pause at the many dangers one little sentence can inspire.

I will give you the equivalent: Ladies and gentlemen, the one armed man will now play the Brahms Violin Concerto.

Yes, a miracle is needed. Seeee, I am an artist. An "ar-tist." And there isn't an ar-tist on the face of the planet who has made a hoot of himself (yes, mostly male artists need the extra help) without some sort of ... assistant, secretary, whatever. Someone who is right or left brained or whichever one I'm not. When people ask if I am right or left brained, I reply, "I'm whatever side of the brain that can never remember which side of the brain he is."

I shall now and forever be thankful for all those who have assisted me in bringing order into chaos. My wife is first on the list. My mother is second. Susan Dortch is third. The amazing, incredible Susan Dortch. Susan is the music associate at Williams Trace Baptist Church in Sugarland Texas and besides being an accomplished musician herself, she may be the GREATEST music administrative genius in the history of the Church.

Now that I am preparing all the music for everyone, getting checks requested, filing music, finding music, I usually pause at least four to five seconds every half hour to marvel at her skills and all that I took for granted when I worked there. She, my wife and my mother all have something that I have not. A left side of a brain. Or wait a second... what if I'm looking from the front...? Tthen it is right. See, I'll never really know or understand.

I once tried to unlock my front door with my remote car unlocker-thingy. I stood there in front of the door for a good 5 seconds punching the "unlock" button, pointing it at the doorknob. Perplexed.

I once walked out of my front door to work out, wearing tennis shoes, a headband, towel draped over shoulder, a Mr. Rogers work-out t-shirt, my ipod shuffle, and a pair of whitie tighties. No workout shorts. Just underoos. Not even boxer briefs. I was out of the good ones. Just down to the grandpa-specials. Me and my Spongebobs.

On several occasions my wife has opened the refrigerator to find all sorts of things that do not need cooling sitting on the shelves... keys... books... a pair of socks... a cup of coffee...

I once bought a box of efferedent instead of alka seltzer and almost drank it.

HOWEVER!!!! I once walked onto stage at a College piano showcase, in front of hundreds, and played a COMPLETELY improvised a piece of music that was in the program under the name of "Ornansky." (My real name is Ornan) Everyone leapt to their feet and wanted to know who the composer "Ornansky" was. I said he was the half brother of Prokofiev. Prokofiev's dad had Spanish mistress. It was AWESOME!!!!

I'm sure many of you creative folks out there have similar stories, both with fridge mishaps and with creative triumphs.

One thing that I am NOT is late. Nor do I miss appointments without calling. RARELY. And I mean that. If I do, I am depressed for days about it. My iPhone has been my best friend when it comes to this.

So, all that to say... pray for me. So far, so good. But soon and very soon, I am going to need an assistant. I feel a little like Tom Hanks in the movie "Cast Away" trying to get over the coming waves in a cruddy raft with half a flapping portapotty as a sail... and a disturbed looking volleyball as my only buddy.

I'm doing fine right now. Praise the Lord for Macs.

Oh, I forgot to ask all you right brainers, ANY TIPS ON STAYING ON TOP OF EVERYTHING? KAT? PAGING KAT...

Obama Dilemma

2009-03-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

First off, I like him. I've always liked Obama. Liking Obama is like liking the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto. (Even the biggest music snobs who think Rach is all schmaltz can't help but like this concerto.) I'm only human. If you read ALLLL my blogs about Obama you'll never find one single negative remark towards they man or his character. I've questioned his policies and his experience, but not his character. First off, I have no right to say nasty things about any man or woman's character.

Except for Madonna.

That being said, Obama... I've still got mixed feelings about the guy. It is sorta that same feeling I get when I have a friend that I really like, or a musician that is just excellent that I've hired, but I believe that they are doing something or they have an ideology that is very harmful.

My main beef with Obama has always mostly been over abortion. I hate it, and I think that abortion is the deadliest of sins to our world. It even goes beyond the "right" of the unborn and to the root of the moral, rotten weed. It is about the sanctity of life. "Sanctity" is one of those church words but essentially it is the belief that life, and the creation of human life is a sacred, sacred thing. It is the subtlest and deadliest of paradigm shifts when a nation decides that the creation of life is a nuisance or a pain-in-the-ass byproduct of our good times. It is a subtle turn to self that leads us to a TOTAL self-centeredness where we no longer "lay our life down for our friends," but we lay the unborn's life down for ours. We harvest unborn children for their stem cells so that we can live a few more years or repair our hip bone instead of a hip replacement. We take a pill after sex because we need a few more years to party until we are ready. Or we need a bigger apartment and a better job. We we we we we we.

Everything about the process of creating life is precious and selfless to a Christian. From sex, to conception. Contrary to what many popular Christian authors and pastors are teaching, sex was never meant JUST for our pleasure. Yes, it is a good good good good good good thing; the pleasure is there and it is good. Nuf said. But it is also something that is beyond physical. It deeply connects us to that "partner" in ways beyond the physical. This is why someone feels so empty when they've had casual sex or if they are involved sexually with someone they shouldn't be. In a way, they've given a part of their spirit away and it has been discarded. If it was just a physical feel-good then we should feel as guilty after casual sex as we do when we get a really good back rub, or a pedicure, or conversely, we should feel as spiritually fulfilled as after a back rub. And maybe that's okay to many. I think it cheapens it.

This is why we should teach our children to wait. Not JUST so they won't catch the creeping crud, (a very good reason) but because sex is also a powerful, life creating act. And how amazing and appropriate is it that a life is created in the greatest moments of human physical and spiritual pleasure. Of course, the value of life goes beyond sex between man and a woman, but I'm speaking here about the way it (procreation) is meant to be.

This could go on for pages and pages. What I'm trying to get at is this: I think Obama is a terrific guy. He canceled some fancy party thing this week so he could spend spring break with his wife and girls at camp David. He recently said this to Iran, "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." - Blessed are the peacemakers. It's about friggin time.

So the man's got his priorities in order. He sets a good example as a dad. No doubt. I also believe that his socialist tendencies come from a sense of what is right and what we should do rather than for more power. I believe that, even though I don't think it will work. As far as government, the socialist/capitalist hybrid is the best we can do until the Messiah returns.

I think Obama has done a good job thus far, and I hope he succeeds. He has already succeeded at many things not discussed in the media and as always, I pray pray pray for his daily safety. I pray that some scientist will develop some sort of bullet proof bubble that he can walk around in at all times.

More than that, I pray he will change his mind on abortion. I pray that his love for family will open his mind to the love and sanctity of unborn human life.

Just some morning thoughts on the Pres and so forth.

Thoughts? Agree? Disagree?

If you are interested in what caused the financial house of cards to fall... Watch This...

2009-03-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

Hedge Funds and the Global Economic Meltdown from Judd Bagley on Vimeo.

Isn't it wonderful to know that there are some people out there who got all the money that was lost? It is also wonderful to know that these people caused 150 year old financial institutions to drown while our government stood by. It is also wonderful to know that the government didn't do anything because they were in the pocket of a few, rich and powerful hedge fund fellas. Ever wonder why anyone hasn't been arrested? No one committed a criminal act? NO ONE? HALF THE WORLD'S WEALTH IS GONE AND NO ONE HAS BEEN ARRESTED FOR IT?

Always remember this about the stock market: When someone loses money, someone else is finding it. The wealth wasn't lost, it was transferred to a few, literally a handful, of criminals who have so much power and money that our politicians are afraid of them.

I want. Well, kinda...

2009-03-18T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Sixth Proof that there is a God

2009-03-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

You might be a redneck if...

2009-03-13T22:19:00.001-07:00

A very nice redneck though.

Reminds me of a story...

I was once running (a very, very long time ago... I despise running. Unless someone is shooting at me or if I'm being charged by a bull, both of which I've experienced; I very much appreciate running in those cases. Anyways...) So, I was running, and flying straight towards me was a bug the size of small hotweel. My peaceful jog turned into quite the spectacle as I gyrated all over the place to dodge the bug. After jumping, and feeing quite dippy, I searched for the bug. It was nowhere to be found. I didn't like this because the bug was so big I could have watched it fade into the sky over the trees. I searched my clothes high and low for the bug. Didn't find it. So, I went on my merry way.

I went home and started doing the sit ups. Except I noticed that every time I would sit up, I would hear a strange buzzing noise. At first I thought it was the couch or whatever was leveraging my feet. It quickly became apparent that it wasn't. I noticed a LARGE black lump in the armpit of my t-shirt. Then came the incredible pinch.

I went outside, bunched the bug up in the t-shirt in a little wad and started smashing it with stone from my mom's flower garden. And that just BARELY killed the biggest beetle that I've every seen. Not even a smattering of guts. In fact, I think I probably just gave it a concussion.

So, there's my hidden/stowaway creature story.

Seth and Amber, on growing old...

2009-03-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

So, we were watching this here commercial:

The following conversation broke forth from the zombie-like silence that usually comes with watching so many commercials in row late at night that you forget what show you were watching.

Seth: "Listen, if I ever have to use on of those babies, I fully expect someone to get a shotgun and..."

Amber: "Ummm, if I ever have to use one of those, I fully expect someone to move me into a one-story house."

Further evidence that women should be ruling the earth.

A Short Pause...

2009-03-12T08:50:00.000-07:00

Well ladies and gents...

I've been running around like a chicken on crack-corn feed. I FINALLY overnighted my Dissertation off to my committee (late) after a few Kinkos catastrophes - apparently, no one there had ever heard of the concept of "front and back" - and I'm set to defend the dissertation next friday.

For the past 3 days I've lived in a constant state of sweat. It is still winter up here and I've been sweating. I lost five pounds in two days. Not whistling dixie either. Five el-poundos.

So here's what I've been up to, besides trying to edit, print and mail a humongous orchestral work to a committee of geniuses who will comb through my work with giant red pens.

1. I've started a new church job as musical director. This job has tuned out to be the most exhilarating job I think I've ever had. That's saying a bunch. Its hard to beat touring... I have a new love and affection for musical assistants and associates at church... since I don't have one and I'm it. Wait... that sounds like I'm saying that I love myself...

Yesterday, I spent a good bit getting all the folders ready for my choir. It doesn't seem like it, but one can REAAALLLY waist a LOT of time copying music and getting them into folders if one does not have the proper system in place. One little missing "trick" and that could cost you 30 minutes to an hour. My Choir is AWESOME, btw. Just amazingly talented singers and they are truly excited about worship.

2. I went from not accompanying anyone for 2 years to preparing to accompany Metropolitan Opera stars for some upcoming Church performancesI. That's slightly stressful. I've got to learn the Mozart Alleluia in two days... Not going to think about that one anymore right now.

3. I've been just a-wailing on the pipe organ every sunday. It is an absolute BLAST to play on old Bessie. I get to Improvise a Postlude every sunday and I LOVE to improvise. I can't emphasis how much fun this has been to play hymns and improvise Postludes on the volcanic pipe organ in a Cathedral, all for the Lord.

That brings me to my next task. I would like to name this here organ. I usually name all the instruments that I play. My guitars are Lucy Taylor and Al Varez. (pretty cheezy, but so is naming your guitar.) Keyboard's name is Bigole Heavyba Stard.

So you guys get to help me name her. Yes, it is a woman. I'm not sold on Bessie Lou. Conan stole that title for his desk and that used to be the name of my big 76 Carpice Classic that I drove in high school. Back then I also liked to call it "Hot-Girl-OFF!"

That being said, I will NOT be turning into the oddity that is the "organist." I will not. No offense there to my organist friends. Organists, you know what I'm talking about. Don't deny it. You guys are an eccentric bunch. I dated an organist once (long ago) and she was the equivalent of 3 or 4 people. Not size-wise, but personality. I once went to an organists house and he had his whole house built around a HUGE organ he had imported from an old French church. It was quite amazing. But... come on. That's out there. The only people that can compete with the organist strangies are the true guitar-gear-heads. They worship their pedal boards and blog about them... and sleep with them. Sometimes their blogs are nothing but Pedal-porn. Veeeeery interesting that both guitarists and organists share the same obsession over pedals.

Anywho...

4. Teaching. I've been teaching quite a bit. I love to teach. I probably don't need to teach near as much now since I have the church job but I love to teach too much to give them up and many of my students are becoming very good friends. Plus, it is just so fun to haul that guitar onto the subway. It is the only time that New Yorkers will get heck out of my way.

No matter what I do in the future, I will ALWAYS teach students. Besides being very fun, teaching is the surest way for me to keep learning.

So that's been my world for the past few weeks...

Twitter Blog

2009-03-10T22:28:00.000-07:00

1:30 a.m. I have a headache.
1:30.25 a.m. Maybe I should drink some water.
1:31 a.m. My butt itches.
1:31.01 Ahhhhhh, better.
1:32 Toodles.

N.T. Wright: My New BFF

2009-03-07T07:22:00.000-08:00

I've been shelving-up a whole storehouse of things to write about how the good Bishop of Durham. N.T. Wright has reached out with his big English hand and has given me the final push, or smack in a paradigm shift that has been going on with me in the past 3 years, or maybe since I was 12.

I am not easily influenced by modern preachers and theologians. I am by default suspicious of any Christian Guru who owns a collection of hair gel and rectangle glasses, or the one who wears a monk's robe but isn't really a monk. Its not that I don't enjoy hearing the teachings, (sometimes) its just that the ones that try to give modern Christian critiques always "feel" nothing short of bitter and jaded, no matter how soothing their voice. Not only that, but they sort of seem like a character in a painting trying to step out of the painting and critique the painter. In short, they've been and felt like searchers who "sound" like they have the answers but are really looking for an "atta boy, you sound like you've got it figured out! How much is your book? And where DID you get those glasses?" As a result of this attitude, I have essentially retreated into the Orthodox teachings of the Roman Catholic and the Easter Orthodox Churches and even Judaism (Messianic, of course.) and, yes, last but not least, my buddy Joel Osteen. (Seth pauses to revel in the gasps he has just inspired.) And I've struggled with bitterness.

N.T. Wright has reached into my little protective huddle and smacked me around like a good pastor should and has awakened questions that I always thought were the "wrong" questions and when I've asked them I've been told that I am on the road to universalism and towards the old social gospel. One gets tired of being told that they are crazy, liberal, prosperity-lite, and Catholic/hellward. The mouth glues shut, the eyes zip from author to author at B&N and the heart grows nastier and nastier to the criticisms leaping forth from their pages. Negativity sets in, and that is poison. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I like Osteen so much. The man doesn't claim to be some theological bigwig, and sure his context is off at times, but the News he is telling is at least Good. And it is Good News, my friends. Don't try to convince me otherwise by whacking me with your suffering-club.

There has always been something that has always bothered me about my faith since, well, since I've been a Christian. I've known the Gospel is true no matter how many times I've tried to privately test it, or rather, I believe it is true by faith and the enormous historical likelihood that the Gospels are true has served to aid that faith. But that faith has always seemed costly. And not costly in a good way as in: "thinking of others before yourself," but in the bad way, as in: "I've got to figure this thing out and deny 'myself' and be 'born again" ... and somewhere in there I end up denying everyone else even exists... "wait a second... did I just ignore my grief-stricken neighbor?" The one has often canceled the other when it should not have.

The notion that "the world and all our passions are crap" has always felt at odds with the renewed spirit that came alive in me when at my best, when thinking clearly, because contrary to all that you've seen on ... certain channels, the Holy Spirit brings an unbelievable clarity and humility (humility=thankful), or contrary to what you've seen coming out of modern fatalistic, when-we-all-get-to-heaven hard-core pulpits, it does not make you a judge, but rather an giver of grace, mercy and forgiveness, as you have been shown grace, mercy and forgiveness.

He gives a true synergy to your body and spirit, even despite horrible circumstances or dire physical maladies. People filled with the Holy Spirit start rejoicing in their suffering. They do not feel sorry for themselves even though they seem to have every right to feel that way. They even walk to their their death in the Lions den, speaking words of forgiveness and love for their executioners, or they lie on their death beds in agonizing pain and share the Gospel to their grieving loved ones with a Joy that one can only reckon with as more real and true than any visible suffering.

And what is the "Good News?" Many times the Good News seems like the "Big Downer News" rather than Good News. More on that later.

No, it is the Holy Spirit that truly ignites your passions. When you seek first the Kingdom God and his righteousness, the passions make sense, and they need no explanation. They need no justifying. The become one great big sign post towards obedience. My tendency has always been, if by chance any passion ever surfaced that was outside the normal Christian mold of things, to quell that bad fleshly passion by becoming a religious zealot and retreat so far from the living breathing world that I damn near wore a white robe and petrified into a praying marble statue. I made the journey very complicated and noble one, when all along it was really a wrong perspective of the Kingdom, fueled by a fear of failure beneath the robes of religious zeal.

"Well, Seth, this is an awful lot of talk about what YOU want and YOUR passions... what about Loving your neighbor?" Well, my friends, loving your neighbor takes on a whole new synergy when you aren't feeling sorry for yourself and you are walking in obedience. There is actually Good News to be shared rather than News that you wish was good. Another Irony of the Christian life is that the weight of our Cross is carried by our supernaturally created passion to obey. Taking up your cross is not sacrificing all that God has made good in you and suffering the pains of that severing (as Philip Pullman tried to portray the children in his Golden Compass novels being severed from its daemon, or soul by the "Magistrate,") it is stepping out into world with that recreated and healed passion and into whatever trial that comes your way because of that faith and obedience.

I believe that that true clash going on in me has NOT been between a natural state of agnosticism and a striving for faith, but between my western-civ-Aristotle-Plato Gnostic roots and the supernatural and synergetic love of God that was and is always turning me towards the reality of "Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven" with my heart, mind, soul and strength. Not just number 2 in that list.

(Yes, I finished my dissertation, btw. I'll probably do a few small revisions but as of yesterday, I turned that sucker in.)

One Trillion

2009-03-06T23:42:00.000-08:00

HT: John Forkner

Sorry Folks

2009-03-05T06:26:00.000-08:00

I've been out of pocket here lately and that's no fun for the blogging MASSES that read this religiously. I know that I get a little grumpy when some of my favorite bloggers take a vacation and don't seem to care about the rest of us... Selfish. *cough*BRANSEN*cough* Seriously.

See, I'm important. And important people should be missed. Every word missing from the luminous monitor is like a empty honeysuckle for the thirsty hummingbird. Yes, yes. You know it is true. Even now, you revel in my genius metaphors. Okay, alright. Calm down. Here's another: Reading a healthy/amazing/genius blog (mine) is like the feeling you get when you pull the mother load of bellybutton lint out in the shower. Something about it just feels so first-class - an achievement of sorts: "Good morning world, navel clean! The fort has been retaken!" There. Satisfied? Well, no worries. There's more were that came from. But you'll just have to wait... like a little baby gimp mouse waits for hist turn at his momma mouse's teat, or like the wind waits for a young Afghanistan-slave-made kite... or like the Mexican summer beach waits for middle-aged-man-spandex-thongs to hover above its foaming shores.

In other news: Rounding third on my dissertation. Defend on the 20th. As of now, I will be defending with a little plastic sword, and instead of a cape I'll be wearing hot-dog vendor shock. (See: Confederacy of Dunces) I was supposed to have sent it to my professor yesterday + one day. (Tuesday) I guess that would be yesterday minus one day. Whaterr' you get the picture. I'm late.

In other GOOD news: The CPC Choir is officially up and rocking. We had our first rehearsal last night and holy schmolly, can these folks sing. I'm pretty pumped about conducting the Messiah this Christmas.

Speaking of singers, I also found out that sometimes Rod Stewart sneaks in the back of the church for a listen. I swear to all things under a dollar that if he comes in I'm going to bust into a very touching music-worship-style version of "If you want my body, and you think I'm sexy, come on sugar let me know!"

And speaking of rockstars, it is very difficult to concentrate on my dissertation when I know that 20 blocks down the street Bono and the gang are probably giving a surprise concert. They've named a street after them. I think it should be a permanent name though. None of this temporary crud. I'm veeeeeery tempted to be pathetic fan boy and go down there for an autograph. Alls I got to say is, if that happens, "Move over autographed photo of Def Leppard's one-armed drummer, and autographed picture of Heart."

Alright, that about does it for today. Maybe even for the next week or two.

Here are a few blogs that you should read if you haven't already:

See side bar.

Oh, and here is a picture of a dog in a diaper.

Note to self:

2009-03-01T18:49:00.001-08:00

Is not the same thing as...

Mmmmmmmm

2009-02-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

I didn't think I'd ever see an image that would psychosomatically induce diarrhea... How wrong I was.

P.S. This is a real product.

Nice Try

2009-02-28T11:39:00.000-08:00

What do you guys think of this?

2009-02-27T23:39:00.001-08:00

2009-02-27T21:43:00.000-08:00

I can write me some long posts...

2009-02-27T15:34:00.000-08:00

Exhibit A: See post below.

Well, I've been out of it for a while and my statcounter tells me I've got some new viewers. I don't really know why, but okay then. A bunch from this here city as a matter of fact. So here's the deal my new friends.

I started this blog a few years back to get better at writing as writing was something that I had always wanted to do but was too chicken to try. So, this is where I write a bunch. Not editing, but writing. You'll find that there are a bunchload of mistakes on this blog. I try to leave as many as I can stomach. The reason being that I think people, me, myself and I, have spent too long being afraid. Being afraid to submit to the viewing world something that isn't flawed. It darn near crippled my piano playing while I was getting a Masters in Piano and it kept me from ever writing as many songs as I wanted to write.

So, sometimes, I do spend a good bit of time (an hour or so) writing a post and shaping it up, nice and spiffy. But most times, you get it just like it comes out. Sometimes raw and smelly and sometimes quite catchy, if I do say so myself. But it is flawed, nonetheless. See, right there... two sentences in one paragraph that start with "but." But am I going to change them? Crap no.

So, feel free to comment, harass, admonish, PRAISE, jeer, and so on and so forth. Its all fun to me.

In fact... I think blogging truly lends itself to a kind of innate and raw imperfection. Even the best blogs seem a little rough around the edges however grammatically correct. Honestly, if I read a blog that is too perfect, I always feel like... someone just showed up to the movies in a prom dress.

But that's just me. What the heck do I know? Bottom line is I try to keep it fun. And short. However, I do fail that second one quite a bit. Again, thanks for reading and feel free to chime in and give me a hard time.

The Bono Conundrum

2009-02-27T08:46:00.000-08:00

We live in an evangelical culture of molds. We love them. Drive down any highway in the Bible Belt and you'll find 3 basic architectural molds of Church and Church people. Before I get started here, let me just say that this isn't a bashing fest, this a commentary. (How was that for a cheap and lazy disclaimer. Hey, I never claimed to be a non-hypocrite.)

Church

1. High Church people. These are usually Baptists. Baptist-lite. Extra-strength Baptists, and Baptist-Olestra. They mostly dress a certain way, and sing a good healthy mix of hymn and praise music. Every once in a while a long-haired, bearded pianist will wander who looks like Jesus at the piano, but most times, they keep things close to the chest and playbook as far as that goes. Good clean fun.

2. Superdome Church people: These are the guys that probably have the most fun on Sunday morning. Not much Calvinist fatalism taught here, and no hints of Gnostic "this-life-sucks-flesh-and-Earth-is-evil" talk. They've usually got some unbelievable band and some incredible media team that rivals the pop culture that they are... well... rivaling.

3. Then you have the occasional small neighborhood church. This is my favorite church. It is a church and built-in small group all in one nice package. You aren't allowed to drop by, sing a few words off the wall and hit the Luby's. If you come, you will be hugged. Sadly, since the rise of the mega-church, these important congregations have been weakened and the onslaught of hugs one receives when visiting can often times scare a family away. But, here, IMO, we find the most non-conforming group of interesting Christians known to man.

That's the Church culture. There be the molds. Anything outside of that mold is considered suspicious and should be discouraged.

Christian Art

Then we've got the ever-splendorous Christian Music Industry. I'll admit, I'm a bit jaded here. So forgive some of the words that follow. It is in this industry that we find, IMO, Christianity at its absolute worst. When I first came to Rice, Amber and I were just visiting Nashville for the first time and dipping our toe in the waters. I told the Music Business and Law prof. about some of our upcoming meetings and he told me that I should buy some lubricant for the initial screwing that was coming. He went on to say, not in a judgmental tone, but as a warning, that the Christian Music Industry is notorious for paying late, or never paying, and absolutely abusing songwriters.

We heeded his advise and dove in. We met some wonderful folk. However, long-story-short, it wasn't for us. A label fellow (VP) at one of the big ones liked our record and had it in his car for a week but said that it was perhaps too strange and -get this- complex for the radio and would need to be simplified. Well, we went a different direction and God bless them.

The thing to note about the CCM industry is that there are molds. Those molds are cast from tried and true molds found in the "mainstream" pop world. Yes, there are molds there as well, but CCM music, (specifically radio tunes) are the grand mold-followers. And yes, there are original voices that make it through from time to time, but they are rare. Who in the hell would sign a man today who would want to showcase the hammer-dulcimer and have lyrics like "and the moon is a sliver of silver, like a shaving that fell on the floor of a carpenters shop"? Nobody.

However, there are many reasons to listen to CCM rather than participate in the business. Much good comes from the guys sweating it out in that industry and it is appreciated. However, I do feel sorry for many who wish to be more expressive and individual than they are allowed to be. The mold will not allow it.

All these things are representative of molds. These molds, though good in some way, have contributed to many, many painful things in our faith. This is because molds cannot be kept. No man is plaster. No man is marble. We are absolutely flawed. And from those flaws God creates beauty. There is great beauty in man, for what God makes is good and Holy. But a mold is nothing more than an unattainable idol. It is the Golden calve that we want to so desperately see, when God wants us to simply desire Him.

Then along comes a S.O.B. like Bono. He doesn't appear in all the molds. He pays no homage to the popular and well-known mold gurus. Is he crazy? What the hell? Did someone read that Rolling Stone interview where he flat-out says that he is a "Christian," even though he doesn't like the moniker because of the loss of its meaning to the mold idols.

I truly believe that the life of a saint should be extraordinary. Nothing plain or mold-like about it. Obedience is a terrible and wonderful journey. It will make your parents think you've lost it. It will make your friends say, "are you out of your frigging mind?" Obedience calls unto a radical life of embracing who God has made us to be. Following Jesus is not an easy thing, but it is like that Mountain hike that is to tiring and irrational. What good is a mountain hike anyways? You get hungry; its dangerous; you get tired; but the view is spectacular. No trading it. Or it is downsizing your monthly expenses, even though you don't need to. It is a trip into the plain and ordinary, but the obedience brings the bliss. The wood-paneled walls might as well be Sistine Murals.

There has been a story that I heard or the news that has stuck in my mind since I viewed it. It was an NBC special report about a man who was a football star who suddenly quit his multi-million dollar career in the NFL and took a job as a border patrol officer instead. People thought he was nuts. He doesn't think so. He believes that it was obedience because it was what he had always wanted to do. Yes, he was big and brawny and could knock down a tree on the football field, but that's not the vision that was in his heart. The obedience was to monitor drug trafficking from Mexico. He had grown up around drug dealers and when he was a boy he dreamed of being a peace officer so he could make a difference. So you have a man who the world thought should enter into a societal mold: Big black man = potential NFL star. Try again. The life of obedience is NEVER predicable. It never promises a grand retirement fund, because you don't really retire. No, not all of us will do something so odd as to question our sanity, but... you just might. No, I take that back. Sometime, you will. Period. No exception. You'll be asked. It's up to you to play it safe or take the leap.

I'll end this here incredibly long blog with a great quote by Thomas Merton. (Himself a strange saint, in that he decided to go live with a bunch of Buddhist monks as a Christian Monk. No, he didn't convert. Lewis greatly admired his writings.)

"One of the first signs of a saint may well be the fact that other people do not know what to make of him. In fact, they are not sure whether he is crazy or only proud; but it must at least be pride to be haunted by some individual ideal which nobody but God really comprehends. And he has inescapable difficulties in applying all the abstract norms of "perfection" to his own life. He cannot make his life fit in the with the books." Thomas Merton

The grand evangelical illusion of our time is that there is a real tried-and-true created mold. There is no mold. There is only obedience. And obedience is a vast, unending gallery of art that might at any moment transform into a cool brisk world, with snow, a Lion and an evil queen, or a barbed wired fence separating two countries, or in front of microphone staring down a million reasons to believe that you are better than you are.

Dangerous business, that obedience.

...

2009-02-26T15:20:00.000-08:00

First off, this is a real float in a parade in Germany. Second, I'm sorry... but there is something TERRIBLY wrong with this float. TERRIBLY. WRONG.

Many

Levels

of

Wrongness

A tier of wrongness, culminating with one great wrongness that overshadows all other wrongs.

Boom Goes The Dynamite

2009-02-23T17:32:00.000-08:00

If you watched the Academy Awards last night and you were maybe one of two or three Americans who didn't know what the heck "Boom goes the dynamite" meant when Will Smith invoked it after flubbing his line, here is the reference.

First the Will Smith refresher:

Now, say hello to my secret living-hell-fear. This happening to me is up there with being buried alive.

Holy at Redeemer Presbyterian

2009-02-23T08:21:00.000-08:00

Hi friends!

We've been so humbled that quite a few people from the services yesterday at Redeemer Pres. have found us to request a copy of the song Holy. We are so glad that you were blessed by it and we wanted to thank you for sharing that with us.

For those of you that have requested a copy, you can get it on iTunes under the artist name "Five Cent Stand" and on the album "Bitter Kiss."

Here is the link to Holy on iTunes!

New Job

2009-02-21T11:04:00.001-08:00

So my good friend Matt called me a few weeks ago and said that his church, Central Presbyterian on Park and 64th, was looking for an interim music director and he thought I would be a good fit. Soooo, a few weeks ago I went and played their awesome, volcanic Pipe Organ (yes, you heard that correct, and no, I didn't wear the slippers), led worship with Matt, William and Amber, and a guy named Tim Shew (who was Jean Valjean in Les Misérables on Broadway) and felt right at home.

So, I've been hired.

And I have to say, as far as buildings... this is one of the most interesting churches I have EVER set foot in. The building was built by Rockefeller and it is just flat out beautiful. There are all kinds of things going on in its SEVEN STORIES (threes stories below ground and four stories above) at all times. Anything from a Messianic Jewish service to major motion pictures and even episodes of Gossip Girl and other shows that need a church setting. (Quite a few Sex in the City episodes were filmed there...) It is on the corner of 64th and Park Avenue and if you been to the city you've probably seen it, or you've seen it in a film or T.V. show.

More than a beautiful building it is home to some truly wonderful people. They've already been so unbelievably kind to us and I am VERY excited about all the possibilities there, as the church is open to so many ideas and it has so many things to offer the community and each other. The interim pastor is Howard Eddington. He used to pastor a large church in Orlando and he is just a fantastic guy. He's written a book on Joseph (also semi-autobiographical) and he used to be Bill Bright's pastor.

Even though the building is very old with a rich and interesting heritage, it is a young, growing church, thirsty for the Spirit of God.

So, if you are in the neighborhood on a Sunday, please, drop by!

Bowm Chicka bowm bowm. Thank You For Flying Southwest, no seriously, baby. Thank You.

2009-02-20T07:01:00.000-08:00

Say hello to the view from new "metal detectors" coming soon to an airport near you. I'm not so sure about this business. First off... el-creepola. Believe it or not, I'm a slightly modest chap. I go into the bedroom to change my socks. Maybe my buddy Forky wouldn't have a problemo with the nudy show at the airport but I would. I suppose the thing that bothers me more than me is my wife having to go through. If they so much as make her stay 1 second longer than they make me stay, I think I'll lose it. I'll just be forced to bring a suitcase full of LARGE, un-ziplocked shampoos in my carry-on next time I travel. Uh huh. That'll show em'.

As for me. When I go through, they might hear me manufacture a little "moood" music. A little, "bom chicka bom bowm chicka chicka. How bout that? Huh? Huh? Chicka bowm bowm" OR, maybe I would put a plastic bible verse on my chest. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Maybe just good old "John 3:16." Nahhh... How bout, "I'm, too sexy for this x-ray." Oo Oo! Or maybe I'd put two d's on each rear-cheek so it would spell "Did." Okay, I'll stop.

I do that - I'm sure those of you who have read my blog long enough know this: When something makes me feel uncomfortable, I go ahead and take it to the extreme. Sort of the Harry Potter Bogart trick. Don't judge me. At least I didn't say I'd put two M's and spell "Mom." "Did" is funnier. Yes, I'm a male.

Still, all potential butt-words aside, it all seems a little wrong to me. And just how long will it be before there are goggles available to buy that will allow us to see through each other's clothes. You know that some dirty company somewhere is already designing the perv glasses.

So, how do you guys feel about all this airport x-ray vision stuff? Do you feel like you need to sort of... buff up... before you go to the airport now? Do you mind that someone can see the delineation of your private spheres? I know I do.

I think they should have a picture posted of what they can see, and you should be left with the option heading on through the "no, you can't see my captain and corporals before I head to grandmas for christmas" -detector.

But that's just me. A good old mid-western/southern/New-Yorker who likes to keep the places where the sun don't shine in the dark, or at least shaded.

After almost 6 years... still pathetic, and proud of it.

2009-02-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

My wife just left for NYC. I'll see her in 3 days. As soon as she stepped out of the car, I missed her. I'm sitting here working on my dissertation and I miss her. Every time I leave, I miss her. Yeah, yeah. You are all grossed out. Call me a sap. Abuse me. Tell me that BDA (blogging display of affection) is lame and you don't want to hear it. Too bad. Sorry; my blog, my party.

Yes, I am a big baby. I admit it. I embrace it. After almost 6 years of marriage, I feel a little lonely at every meal not shared with her, and I despise every single night that is not spent with her pretty head on the pillow next to me. She is my better 3/4... 8/9... 9/8.

No matter what the circumstance - if I know that I won't see her in few hours, I get a little aching in my soul. And that is the one aching that I'm thankful for.

Maybe the BEST Reality Competition EVER

2009-02-09T23:13:00.000-08:00

Stop With the Gate Business

2009-02-07T13:50:00.001-08:00

I am interrupting my study-silence to bring you this important rant.

It seems like very time something goes awry in anyone's life, the press slaps on that "Gate" crap. Troopergate... mommadidn'tlovemegate, gate this, gate that. But it was Phelps' "Potgate" that did it for me. I've had it. POTGATE??? COME ON. It is POT. He was smoking a dooby from a bong, not committing treason or pumping up with steroids. Yes, smoking pot is lame. But this gate business has just got to stop. It's just lame. There is no other creative word for it. Lameola.

Pretty soon we are going to be saying that our pets were involved in poopgate when they diddle behind the couch or refuse to stay off the carpet. (Shout out to V and J.)

My in-laws have a dog named Cromwell. (The best dog ever.) But you know, no dog is perfect and Cromwell likes to get a little rowdy and he chews up a cardboard box or two when mom and dad are gone. Puppychewgate.

I'm a man, and sometimes I forget to close the toilet lid just like every other red-blooded hubby. Squatgate.

Give it a rest already...gate.

An Urgent Message From Nancy Pelosi...

2009-02-05T19:40:00.000-08:00

500 MILLION AMERICANS... EVERY MONTH... LOSE THEIR JOBS... FIVE-HUNDRED-MILLION!!!!! (even thought there are only about half that many in the U.S., including illegal aliens.) NANCY PELOSI ROCKS!

E*Trade Babies (Outtakes)

2009-02-01T14:23:00.000-08:00

And speaking of babies... I do love talking on the phone to a friend who has just had a new baby. We are in the middle of a conversation about the economy or Astronomy and suddenly I'm being asked if I made a poo poo. Or...

Me: "Yeah, can you believe the crap that guy pulled, and what exactly is a ponzi scam...?"

Friend: "Yeah, seriously man... awwwwwe, is it da booby-milky time? Do you need da momma?"

The odd thing about the whole senerio is that the friend seems to continue the conversation by answering your questions.

Attention! Dissertation Defense

2009-02-01T14:20:00.000-08:00

I will be defending my dissertation on friday, March 20th, at the Shepherd School of Music at 3:00 in the conference room on the second floor. It is free and open to the public! Please come and leave your tomatoes at home!

The Next Book On My Reading List

2009-01-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

Let me get something straight here. I'm not with Limbaugh. I don't hope Obama fails. Why in the hell would I hope that? From the beginning, the only real beef (a big beef) I've had with Obama has been with his views on abortion. I don't hate Obama. I actually like the guy. I think he's a good family man and he's got integrity. Yes, he's a politician. And because of that he's probably part-scumbag, but as scumbags go, he's pretty squeaky clean.

My biggest problem, through this WHOLE election, and even now, has been with the stinking, slobbering, Obiased media. And my reasons are good. They have betrayed us. Just as Richard Nixon betrayed his country by lying and cheating, the Press has left their CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED rights at the door in exchange for an Obamopiate, a love potion number 9.

They really, really screwed this up. The media's job is to keep the politicians in line. It is their job to provide UNBIASED reporting to the American people. From the beginning of the campaign, they not only fell in love with Obama, but they fell in love with the moment. Now, they have lost a very valuable thing: trust. I can no longer turn on NBC and trust that they will be providing me with an unbiased report. They now have to cover their asses. They played a MAJOR role in turning Obama into the rockstar that he is and now they have to protect that. They are accountable. They are now responsible if Obama's "progressive taxation" policies (i.e. socialist) do not work. They have stepped into a realm that was not theirs to step into. I'm sorry, I know it is an emotional time. But save your tears for the bar after you report the dadgum news.

And now they are in a pickle. The burden of any possible failure is partially on their shoulders now. I honestly feel that the ENTIRE NBC staff should be fired. I'm serious. I'm not talking about MSNBC or FOX here. I'm talking about the non-"opinion"-columnists. I'm talking about the "Journalists."

Because right now, journalism is dead.

(p.s., I'm sorry folks for the continued ranting here about the media. What can I say? I'm half-Irish.)

Frost/Nixon: Review

2009-01-26T12:53:00.001-08:00

I like Ron Howard. I've always liked Ron Howard movies. In fact, the Ron Howard movie that all the other critics seem to despise is one of my favorite Ron Howard movies. (Far and Away.)

So that being said, there is no sense in wasting any time here, might as well get to the things that bugged me about Frost/Nixon.

There is a difference in documentary and narrative film. The line can be completely forgotten when doing satire. This is Spinal Tap changed that forever and Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show) carried the torch where Reiner left off.

The lines are too solid in drama. That being said, I think that the only mistake that Ron Howard made in this film was in the interviews. Unlike the historical films of Stone, the film was mostly told linearly. All the historical stuff was fired at us in the beginning of the film with actual news clips from the Watergate scandal, interspersed with CGI'd actors.

I've always had a little problem with this CGI-ing actors into real events. Zemeckis got away with it in Forest Gump because he had triggered the audiences mind to be prepared for such a thing and there was no real Historical Gump in the first place. The result was a warm and affectionate smile from the audience back at the filmmaker who was winking at us through the screen as Forest talks to Nixon about his war wound on his buttocks.

In Frost/Nixon, Howard seems to need us to believe that the actors portraying the real characters were the real thing. No director-to-audience winking allowed. However when he interspersed the reminiscing interviews with the narrative story, using the actors in the film as the "actual witnesses" it always made me uncomfortable. Documentary lines were crossed. The imagination disengaged and I longed to see real footage. I found myself wanting to get home to watch the actual Frost/Nixon interview and study the real people. Of course, that's all a sign of a good storyteller, but one who has tried to mix genres in a way that leaves us in an emotional limbo wanting one or the other genre but not knowing why.

This caused a few other things to suffer in the film, mainly Frost's character development. I couldn't get into the actors recreation of Frost because I was too busy trying to remember if I even knew who the real Frost was and who would be the modern day equivalent if say, Bush would have quit. Regis? ... Maybe.

A few other things bugged me. I didn't really think that Frost's fiance, or whatever she was, was needed. She was a bit of a wallflower emotionally and I would have preferred a string of girlfriends to further develop Frost's character. Even if it showed his flaws.

There were many, many strong things about the film. Howard is a good filmmaker with an eye for spotting good stories to tell. He BELIEVES in the story that he is telling and in this case, he wanted us to believe that the actors were real too badly.

Stong points: Frank Langella played Nixon and he was fantastic. He was much more dark and brooding than the real Richard Nixon who, if you watch the interviews, was so incredibly likable. Langella's likeableness was more along the lines of a cult-leader fascination. Otherwise, Langella was mesmerizing. My favorite moment in the film was his phone call to Frost the night before the last interview. What an amazing performance.

Frost was played by Michael Sheen and he was compelling, though his character was most certainly written aloof. I'm sure that was intentional, but I could have gone for a little more Frost-nitty-gritty.

The best thing about this film was that it made me re-think the whole Nixon ordeal. A few years back, don't ask me why, I got on a Watergate kick and spent a few days doing nothing but studying and listening to the tapes and so forth. I came out thinking... "whoopide do."

I believe that though Nixon was wrong in trying to cover up evidence, he was a President on the cuff of the technological age. And if every president before him would have withstood the scrutiny that he had, I believe we'd be very surprised at what we would find. His greatest crimes, in my opinion, where not in the Watergate tapes but in his Vietnam escalations. Maybe even a greater crime was quitting. Strange how that worked out.

I'd be interested in hearing from some of those who experienced the real Watergate and a how it measured up to your memory of the incident.

Seth's Fire Side Chat: The King

2009-01-26T10:41:00.000-08:00

Sunday Corn

2009-01-25T07:43:00.001-08:00

Tan

2009-01-23T21:35:00.000-08:00

I need to take a moment here to talk about a good friend of mine.

My friend Tan is probably one of the most generous and kind-hearted people that I know. If I were to get started on all the things that he has done to help people, without expecting a THING in return, I'd be here all night. Instead, I'll just let you in on the latest installment of unexpected Tan-niceness. (Hopefully, he won't mind.)

A few days ago I called Tan (who knows EVERYTHING about cameras and soundboards and mixing and video editing) for advice on the best fancy camera to buy for my (meager) buck. Amber needs some new headshots and I felt it was time to bite the bullet and buy a camera. It was either that or pay an incredible amount of money for someone to take pictures that I could have taken if I had owned the camera instead of them. The ones that I couldn't take myself are done in studios that cost in the several thousand range.

Anywho... so I told Tan about the camera I was thinking about and he did some research for me, since it was a new model. A few minutes later, he called me back and told me that the camera that I was looking at was fine, but he soon had me convinced that I didn't really need to spend the money and that he would LOAN me his expensive and amazing camera until I had what I needed. Now, even if I lived around the corner, that would be nice enough. But Tan is in Houston. I am in New York. The man took time out of his busy schedule, (and I mean BUSY) boxed up the camera and lens, batteries and discs and sent the whole kit'n'kaboodle UPS. In doing so, he saved the Wards about 1,200-2000 bucks. (Good, competitive headshots are expensive, as are good/descent cameras with the fancy lenses)

And my friends, that is just one of the many goodness's that come out of the man on a daily basis. I have a hard time lending people a pencil. If it weren't for Amber, my family probably wouldn't get any Christmas presents because I'm so forgetful. And cheap.

So, I thought I'd just take a moment here and say, THANK YOU to a good friend that I do not deserve. So Tan, being the true sap that I am, I'd like to dedicate this Youtube video to you. (This song... just gets me... every... time. Snif.)

Obama Priorities

2009-01-23T15:46:00.000-08:00

Three Days into office and President Obama has done two major things to help with the limping economy. As more and more Americans lose their jobs Obama feels it is important to give the terrorists their rights and some new prison digs. Awesome.

Then next thing that needs to be done is to delegate tax payer money - you know, all that money that we have to spend - on more abortion funding. Double Awesome. I just wish he had put a touching segment about terrorist rights and abortion funding in his MGM Studio sap film before his election. These things seem to be the impetus of his presidency so far. I mean, if only he had showed his passions for these things more clearly, he'd have had me at "Change."

I gotta say, I'm impressed. Man, so far... I really kicking myself for not voting for him. However, maybe in a few months we'll be paying for illegal immigrants to have free insurance... One can only hope. The audacity of such a thing.

That's One Big Bible, Joe.

2009-01-21T15:41:00.000-08:00

Where in the world did Biden find that honking Holy writ?

That thing is almost bigger than his little lady. All I can say is, he better keep his word, cause he is bucking for a seriously huge bolt if he breaks it.

Question to Ponder

2009-01-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

"How could an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself?" - C.S. Lewis

It's About That Time...

2009-01-18T20:15:00.001-08:00

Yes, indeed. The date has been set. The plane tickets reserved...

Come March 30th I will be defending my dissertation at Rice University. Significant meaning of that is: Defending is the very, very, very, very last thing I have to do to get that darn degree. No, I'm serious. That's it. No more German tests, no more bells and whistles... finishedimo. If they pass me, I'll be Dr. Ward, and yes that title looks a little creepy. You may all call me Dr. Ward for a grand total of 1 day (if you want.) After that, if you call me Dr. before I'm 50, I might send you a picture of my armpit or something. And why don't people with Masters degrees get to be called, Master Ward? That, I would have enjoyed.

So to all my dearly beloved Houston buddies, (Especially the WTBC pals) that means that I've basically got three more trips to Houston coming in the next 4 months and then, that's all she wrote. :-( You'll no longer have me begging for a bed and gruel when I come into town. "Please sir, can I have some more?"

I'll be coming back in 3 weeks to do any last minute cleaning on the dissertation with my prof., (trying to get Amber to come on that trip!) then I'll be defending in March, then I'll be walking in May!!! Wahooo!!!!

All that to say, things are going to get pretty quiet around the blog for the next few months. Today, for some reason, I even briefly considered closing shop for good, but I doubt I could stick to my word on that and every time I think about doing that it only makes me want to post more.

I am considering starting completely over with a new look and new name and new purpose... but we'll see. I do know a change is coming for this here blog, soon, just don't know what kind yet.

US Airways plane crashes into Hudson River

2009-01-15T13:13:00.001-08:00

Never a dull moment in the hood. Thank God it looks like everybody is getting out... Geeze... Those darn geese. However, when the news came that it was geese, I almost sensed a sense of disappointment in the news anchor's voice. I thought for a second that the MSNBC anchor was going to suggest that it might have been Al-Qaeda geese.

Whatever the case, the pilot of this here plane rocks for landing IN THE WATER and keeping control of the plane. Pretty amazing. If he hadn't kept a clear head, there would be hundreds of mourning families across the states tonight, including his. Praise God.

Bless His Heart...

2009-01-15T09:56:00.000-08:00

A few months back, my sister and I were discussing the wonders of the Southern language. After examining all the single syllable words that are made into two-and sometimes-three syllables, (Like, "Seth" becomes, "Say-eth.") we decided that our favorite thing about the Southern language is "Bless his heart."

I love this phrase. It is the most wonderful (and arguably powerful) phrase in the Southern language. "Bless his heart" is the verbal equivalent to the sound that a sword makes as it is leaves its sheath. If you hear "bless his heart," you know that someone is about to be sweetly lanced.

"Bless his heart, he's just slow in the head. Maybe he hit it on somethin' when he was little..."

"Bless his heart, he's put on a few pounds."

"Bless his heart, he's just a gay."

"Bless his heart, he's dummer than a box of dirt."

"Bless her heart, she's awfully flat upstairs."

"Bless her heart, she inherited her daddy's metabolism."

"Bless his heart, his momma told me that he just can't seem to stop wettin' that bed."

"Bless his heart, his acne just makes ya wanna throw-up."

But don't get me wrong; "Bless his heart" doesn't really make you feel bad. First off, the recipient rarely hears it. Secondly, if you do hear it, it can really be consoling to your poor slob-self. It is like a big, warm dummy blanket.

"Bless your heart, you just got all tangled up in those words, didn't ya?" - Laura Bush to Dubya after any old speech.

"Bless your heart, you didn't know that your swim-trunks had slipped off on after that second lap. You just swim too fast. You're so fast, I think I'll call you 'flash'... no, scratch that... awe, bless your heart, don't cry, I didn't mean to make a joke..."

"Bless your heart, you may not have hit the ball, but you sure did swing that bat good! Bless your heart, if you don't make it in baseball, you'd be an expert wood-chopper!"

Yessir. You can have your snobby "to be or not to be,” or "I have a dream."

I'll take "bless his heart" any day of the week. Because, unlike the other lofty preambles, "bless his heart" is really a prayer. "God, bless his heart, because You obviously aren't going to bless much else on the poor sucker. In Jesus name, a-men."

Just. So. Beautiful. Sniff.

The Barnes and Noble Hypocrite

2009-01-14T16:22:00.001-08:00

I love Barnes and Noble. That whole sentence has almost become one single word in my vocabulary. Ilovebarnesandnoble. It means something powerful. It sinks into the soul. There is only one sentence that is more powerful to me: I love the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble.

I walk through the swrirling door, past the security guards and into sweet, sweet nirvana. I can smell the coffee brewing two flights up. I feel smarter just typing about it. It makes me happy. Very happy. The way to know if I am depressed beyond normalcy is if I am not cheered up by the thought of going to Barnes. I have been known to stay there all day. I think that's why they are getting rid of couches and comfy sofa chairs, because of people like me.

So today I stood at this big table full of discount books reading a great piece of American art, and a teenage girl opened up a large book next to me. I glanced over to see what she was looking at.

"Gag me, the Jonas Brothers," I thought, and shook my head in disapproval.

It was the most gigantic book about the Jonas brothers imaginable. The book took up half the table. She flipped through each page slowly, drinking each image as if it were as good as the pink tea or whatever it was she was was sipping. On one page there seemed to be these really cool things amongst the pictures... yes, there were words. I think their presence threw her off for a minute until she exclaimed loudly to the other girl across the table about some favorite dish that Sneezy Jonas loves best. Then she giggled. And slurped. Then moaned.

"What the heck. Can't I get any peace from teen-chick pop culture" I thought... and turned the pages of the giant, oversized annotated Star Wars Encyclopedia that lay open before me. "Wow! I didn't know that about the Sith!" I said to no one. Then I laughed and smacked my leg in surprise. And sipped my coffee. However, I did NOT moan.

Who Would Jesus Smack Down? (NY Times Article)

2009-01-14T09:28:00.000-08:00

Excerpt:

"God called Driscoll to preach to men — particularly young men — to save them from an American Protestantism that has emasculated Christ and driven men from church pews with praise music that sounds more like boy-band ballads crooned to Jesus than “Onward Christian Soldiers.” What bothers Driscoll — and the growing number of evangelical pastors who agree with him — is not the trope of Jesus-as-lover. After all, St. Paul tells us that the Church is the bride of Christ. What really grates is the portrayal of Jesus as a wimp, or worse. Paintings depict a gentle man embracing children and cuddling lambs. Hymns celebrate his patience and tenderness. The mainstream church, Driscoll has written, has transformed Jesus into “a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ,” a “neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that . . . would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.”

Read the rest. It is actually a very good article and fairly balanced. Let's hear those thoughts! Agree with Mark? Disagree?

Ouch

2009-01-13T23:43:00.001-08:00

Think About It...

2009-01-13T21:27:00.000-08:00

Wouldn't it suck (for the Calvinist) if, at judgment day, all the predestined were the Arminians, even though the Calvinists turned out to be right???

Could happen. Read the Institutes. It's all there...

Into the Archive: The Chain

2009-01-12T14:06:00.000-08:00

I'VE DONE IT!!!!

The secret is out ladies, or should I say, MASTER!!!!!

I have discovered the ever elusive "chain" that one refers to when the ancients spake of the "ball and chain" (el ballius chanus) It took me a while to unravel this mystery but finally, through much prayer and discernment, I have ascertained the truth of the enigma that is the "chain"..... The purse.

That's right, The Purse: that blasted, everliving curse of man's freedom to wander. I wish I could claim my intellect and keen deduction skills as the revealer of this truth but alas, I cannot. I stumbled upon it just as Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin, by accident. It was so SIMPLE!!!! Yet, soooo Powerful. I don't know why I have never seen it before.

I will tell you the tale of discovery if you are ready for the truth.

We (my wife and I) were eating at the "Sweet Tomato" tonight and I had just finished a round of made-from-scratch pepperoni pizza. Wanting more, I swallow my last bite of tasty pizza bliss and prepared to get up for round 3. "I need to beat the chubby kid in the table next to me. We have both been eating our pizza and eyeing each others progress from the start," I quietly thought.

As I cast a triumphant smirk to the portly toddler and prepared to move, to my surprise, my wife was already stealthily sliding out of the booth.

"Don't go anywhere" she said in a hypnotic mono-tone.
I looked her in the eyes. She continued,
"My purse is here and I need you to watch it."
Slightly confused by the scenario I mumbled pathetically,
"but... I hungry... too"
Then she waved her hand in front of me not unlike the Jedi does when performing the "Jedi Mind Trick" and said,
"you don't NEED anything right now, you NEEED to watch my purse"
I found myself answering almost involuntarily
"sure honey, I NEED to watch your purse"

I sat there paralyzed. Hunger alone was my only source of sanity.
"I want food" my mind and tummy proclaimed.
"but the purse,...I must stay....the purse (cue echo effect)."
I began using my hunger-driven rationale.
"Well, I could just assert my will and go anyway," I thought.
"No, then if the purse was stolen I would be responsible"
Again I pondered,
"Well, I could just take the purse with me it is rather small."
But there again my shameless masculinity instinct would forbid such an action.

There I sat, in perfect stillness. I stared at the immobile purse and it stared from her seat back at me.

It was at this moment my friends, I had my "apostrophe"

I realized that I was chained. I cannot move. There is no alternative. I am aware now that the dangling bag that women carry around their shoulders is actually a very powerful tool of control. It is disguised by the fact that it serves some practical purposes. It even comes in fantastic colors matching the outfit of the female so as to camouflage and distract the weaker sex (men) from knowing its true and real purpose- Bondage.

So from this day forth, I do hereby begin my study of this tactic to develop a counter-attack.

I will brief all those who have ears to hear when I have formulated an effective counter-chain.

Until then... Beware.

(Btw, I usually don't like archive posts unless I'm in dire need of time... However on a recent visit to the the supermarket... I was faced once again with The Chain and decided that it was worth reposting.)

Colds, Subways and Holiness

2009-01-10T12:40:00.001-08:00

I'm finally coming to the end of this cold. It's been a knock-down drag-out for the past three weeks and I think that my immune system has finally surrounded the enemy and is near to storming the hill, taking the bridge, toppling the wall.

It seems that everyone in NYC is suffering the same cold right now.

In many ways, living here has been simultaneously the hardest and most rewarding experience of my life. Since I suffer from general anxiety disorder and I'm slightly OCD, I am, by nature, prone to isolationism. Isolationists do very peculiar things that cloak their deadly love of being alone. They usually spend hours on the phone every week with friends. Another outlet for the isolationist is blogging. We can blog and blog and get a pretty good fix for the need for being relational. However, there is a problem with this scenario: Depression. It is ever-looming at the end of each phone conversation and at the end of each blog discussion.

Karl Menninger said that the best way to tackle depression is to "walk across the railroad tracks and do something for someone else." He also said that "Love cures people -- both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it...." And you can't really experience love, humanity and sanity the way we were meant to if we aren't investing our physical self into other people. I truly believe that real Holiness can not be activated unless you are using your physical limbs to serve someone else. Sure, I feel really Holy after I've sat in a room alone, studying the wonders of the Blessed Trinity, but it all turns... odd... and distorted --and eventually unholy and self-righteous-- if there is no physical manifestation of that revelation.

And that's the deal. We are both physical and spiritual beings and for us to truly experience peace and Joy the way that we are meant to experience, we have to walk out of our self-made monasteries and into the pressing and frustrating flesh of the world. This is one of the reasons why the Eucharist is so important. It is God's reminder that true spirituality is not the absence of the flesh, it is the harmony of flesh and spirit in the journey towards "Shalom." My Jewish doctoral student told me two days ago that Shalom doesn't simply mean "peace." It means "the way things are supposed to be."

And this is where this City has been good for me. I cannot sit in my office and tap away on a keyboard and be happy. It is impossible to even FEEL really alone unless I force it. In this way, loneliness is a conscious, moment by moment choice rather than a conceded necessity. Therefore, if you make the choice to be lonely, it is all the more poignant. In many ways, somehow, this place won't allow it.

To get anything I need, I MUST interact with other human beings, and that means experiencing all the baggage that comes with that. To get downtown, I can't get on my modern-day steed, pop in a CD and drive my lonesome self to the supermarket and cover the loneliness with NPR or Gospel Music or some book on tape. No, to get my favorite cereal, I have to get on a subway and squeeze in between two people who I have never met. More than that, I usually have to ask for help, and more often than not, I usually have to help someone else in the process as well. The subway roars to a stop and people push their way in and off the train. Then that person appears face to face with you. They are frantic, desperate and scared. "Does this train go uptown or downtown," they speak fast like an auctioneer.

Instant connectivity. "It goes uptown." A look of relief melts across their face as they jump into the train next to you before the door takes off one of their limbs. In one second, you've helped someone you've never met, and though they didn't mean to, they've helped you.

It may sound funny, but it is those little interactions throughout the day that punch the isolationist out of you and engage you in the small physical acts that bring holiness into the real world. Sure, people can experience this other places, it's just that this particular environment has shown me just how much I NEED to know people, interact with people -whether voluntarily or involuntarily. It kicks my selfish lonely self out into the human race and forces me to either be Holy, or not. A good lesson that I'm still learning.