Steve Jablonsky writes this blog about TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON score CD!!!

When it comes to Transformers: Dark Of The Moon's orchestral score, you can't get much more authoritative a source than the man who composed it! A short while ago Steve Jablonsky sent me an e-mail about the current state of the score album's CD. In it he not only explains what's going on with it, he also provides a fascinating insight into the makings of a major summer blockbuster!

So without further ado, here is Mr. Jablonsky...

Hi Chris

Nice to hear from you. As you probably know the score is now up on iTunes. The physical CD situation has been more complicated. I finished the album weeks ago, but we didn't actually finalize it until a few days ago. Michael Bay is really happy with the score and he wanted to check out the album before it went out. As you might imagine, he's a busy dude. He's been flying all over the world promoting TF3, making it difficult to get approval. But I was happy that he wanted to be a part of the soundtrack and I did not want to release anything before he had his say. The record company tells me they need 4-6 weeks to get the album produced and into stores, which would put us into August at this point. A lot of discussion went into this, but the decision was made to wait on the physical CD, and release some kind of special edition alongside the blu-ray release (maybe autographed copies or other goodies, we don't know yet).

I know people are probably disappointed. Believe me I wish I could get physical CD's out there tomorrow. But it's just the way things went this time around. I can see why Paramount would rather not release a score CD almost 2 months after the movie release. To them it makes more sense to do something special around the blu-ray/DVD. I understand that.

So anyone interested in a CD should rest assured that it WILL happen. It just won't happen until later in the year unfortunately.

These big movies are so complex sometimes!! I hope you've been well!

Steve

In the past 24 hours a wazoo-load of folks have written in, wondering if there was going to be a CD at all, based on a number of indicators. But there it is from the man himself: Transformers: Dark Of The Moon: The Score WILL be coming out on nice and shiny physical media... and in comparatively the same amount of time that we had to wait for Transformers: The Score. Which in retrospect wasn't too awfully long a wait. It's just that too many of us wanted Steve Jablonsky's beautiful work to get the respect that it deserved... as it indeed it is getting this time, without a doubt :-)

In the meantime however, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon: The Score is already available on iTunes! I purchased it last night and have been listening to it like crazy all day!! This whole album is amazing and there are some positively powerful tracks on here. "Sentinel Prime" is particularly haunting (but that's all I'm gonna say, for sake of those who haven't seen the movie yet but who no doubt wil be doing so soon ;-)

So there y'all have it: the score CD is gonna be rolling out soon! Thank you Steve, for passing along the word :-)

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TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON: THE SCORE is on iTunes!!!

Well, that didn't take very long, did it? :-P

Seibertron.com is reporting tonight that Transformers: Dark Of The Moon: The Score is now available on iTunes!

All of you know what I will be doing for the next few hours :-) And now you know where to find it too. So go buy Steve Jablonsky's epic score now!!! Or, perish in flame.

It's your choice. But, not really.

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Cover for the TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON: THE SCORE album

This popped up tonight on Amazon.com's page for the product listing...

It's still listed as "Currently unavailable". But we've got the album cover art.

That has to be mean something good, right?

(Incidentally, at this moment I've got iTunes playing "Decepticons" from Transformers: The Score. With this one track composer Steve Jablonsky did something that had never adequately been done before in the whole history of the Transformers franchise: conveyed the utterly alien nature of the Transformers. I love this music!!)

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Review of TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

Dear Michael Bay: You may now consider yourself fully forgiven for Pearl Harbor.

I could also say that you are now also forgiven for the previous Transformers movie, but since you've made up for Pearl Harbor, saying as much would just be redundant.

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon... is at last THE Transformers live-action movie that I have dreamed of someday seeing on the big screen! Now I love like mad 2007's Transformers and I'm kinda starting to at last warm up to Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. But this third movie... I kid you not folks... is not only better than the previous sequel, it is by a wide degree better than the original film of the franchise!!

Whoa.

Michael Bay has been paying attention to his own handiwork. He has seen what is good and what is bad. And good googely moogely, the man has done something about it! If like me you cringed at the sight of Bumblebee "peeing", at jokes about masturbation, at jokes about marijuana, at Devastator's wrecking-ball testicles, at dogs humping each other, at those stoopid Autobidiot twins AKA "Car Car Binks"... your desperate prayers have been answered. We have, at last, a Transformers movie for real grown-ups as well as the kids!

The movie begins in 1961, with a flashback to some revisionist history starring among other people President Kennedy (is it just me or is Kennedy getting a lot of screentime this summer? Between this movie and X-Men: First Class, there's more JFK on film this season than there was in all of Oliver Stone's JFK). Earthbound instruments detect an alien vessel has crashed onto the Moon. We find that it was a Cybertronian ship piloted by Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) - the predecessor and mentor of Optimus Prime - and it contained technology that Sentinel believed could end the war between the Autobots and Decepticons. However, the United States and the Soviet Union have both spotted the downed ship... so it turns out that the entire race to the Moon of the Sixties was in order to be the first to reach the wreck. In one beautiful sequence we get to see the Apollo 11 mission landing near the site, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin going into the bowels of the ship before returning to their heroes' welcome on Earth.

Jump to the present day: Optimus (Peter Cullen) and his Autobots have been busy in the past few years since the battle with the Fallen in Egypt. When not hunting Decepticons, they're doing things like sneaking out of N.E.S.T. headquarters to raid rogue nuclear weapons sites in the Mid-East and elsewhere. But during a mission to the no-man's land of Chernobyl, Optimus and crew encounter Shockwave (voiced by Frank Welker, who also voices Soundwave) and his "pet" Driller (maybe the wickedest CGI-created monster yet depicted in film). The Autobots recover pieces of a Transformer vehicle and realize that the humans have been hiding a previous history with their race. Optimus's silent fuming about it results in the United States government coming clean about the true purpose of the Apollo program... and leads to a historic meeting between the Autobot leader and the real Buzz Aldrin, in what has to be one of the most geek-gasmic moments in pop culture history! Trust me: I was going completely bonkers at seeing the legendary astronaut being praised by Optimus Prime. THAT alone was worth seeing this movie in 3D (but more on that in a bit...).

Meanwhile we see what's become of Sam (Shia LaBeouf), now out of college and trying to hack it on his own in the real world. Mikaela has dumped him but no fret, 'cuz Sam has a far better girlfriend in Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, in a first dramatic role that already has many wondering "Megan who...?"). And Sam... well, he's trying to prove himself. The poor kid got a medal from President Obama for saving the world twice, but nobody but Carly and his parents really know about that and it's hard to find gainful employment when so much of his past few years is classified information. And yeah Sam's parents do show up but thankfully their presence is kept to a bare minimum (did I say that Bay learned from his mistakes, or what?). Sam does wind up with a menial job at a defense contractor... but on his first day he's accosted in the men's restroom (in a toilet stall actually) by a seemingly crazed co-worker who recognizes Sam from underground Internet footage. The guy gives Sam a package of information and soon thereafter is killed in his own office by the Decepticon spy Laserbeak.

And so it is that Sam is propelled once again into the eons-long civil war between the embattled brethren of the Transformer race.

I am not saying anything else about the plot. Because - brace yourself dear readers - THERE IS A PLOT IN TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON! And it's not only a brilliant one but it's easy to follow along! There are surprises out the wazoo in this movie. There is a nasty twist that you will not see coming. And it all winds down to more than an hour (out of a two hour and forty minutes running time... wow!) of the most retina-frying planet-pummeling toad-strangling ACTION that you have EVER seen in a movie. This is the highest grade of Bay-hem that you have ever been served with! If Transformers: Dark Of The Moon was street heroin it would be dang near lethal, it's so pure cut. And if you happen to live in Chicago, brace yourself: you are probably gonna cry some hard tears when you see what happens to your hometown. Yes, there is the human element in this movie, but director Michael Bay and screenplay scribe Ehren Kruger have made this Transformers movie about the TRANSFORMERS, gall-darnnit!!! You #@%&-ing want shape-shifting mechanical aliens kicking the slats out of each other? You're gonna #@%&-ing GET shape-shifting mechanical aliens kicking the slats out of each other, fool!!!

Especially if you choose to see this movie in 3D. And I'm gonna absolutely recommend that you do during this movie's theatrical run, because Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is bar none the most jaw-dropping use of 3D that I have ever seen. 3D has become so over-used and so horridly mis-used that by and large I avoid it. But I won't avoid it with this movie when I see it again (and I intend to). And the battle in Chicago in 3D is... horrifying. You've never seen utter and total devastation and widespread death like you have in this movie. Bay had held back on both the Autobots and Decepticons in previous movies but in this one, prepare to see a lot of familiar faces buy it. So many get killed that this movie coulda been called "Transformers: Nobody Gets Out Alive" and it wouldn't be entirely inappropriate.

Bay continues his trend of taking high-caliber actors and casting them as the most screwball characters. John Turturro is back as Simmons, wacked as ever, but somehow he's much more likable this time. Look for Alan Tudyk (who has previously been seen in the just-now finally becoming widely released Tucker & Dale vs. Evil) as Simmons' assistant Dutch. Frances McDormand (yah, Deputy Marge from Fargo) is a despicable government intelligence official. But by far the most wonky bit of such casting is John Malkovich as Bruce: Sam's boss. HOW does Bay come up with casting like this? It's almost like he's following the formula that worked in Airplane!... and it works well in a Transformers movie too!

But y'all are prolly more interested in the Transformers characters, right? Like I said earlier, "Step-and-Fetchitbots" are gone. Instead we get Wheelie (from the previous movie) and Brains (voiced by Reno Wilson) and they are much more fun to watch. We also get classic Autobots Wheeljack and Mirage, along with several others, including one who transforms into Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s #88 car (NASCAR fans should be flocking to this movie in droves this weekend). Soundwave is now on Earth and transforming into a sleek new BMW, but Laserbeak is again his minion just like in the classic continuity. And Hugo Weaving is back as Megatron: the leader of the Decepticons now having to hide half his face with a tarp because he's still damaged from the Egypt battle in the previous movie (a nice touch). But my favorite Decepticon in this movie has to be Shockwave: I'm a huge Shockwave fan, even though he's a total bastard of a Decepticon. And they completely got him right for this film. Color me astounded!

'Course, I couldn't do a review of a Transformers movie without saying something about the score, once again composed by Steve Jablonsky. Folks, maybe I'm a little biased, but Jablonsky's orchestral work in Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is the best of the series by far. It is majestic, sweeping, and perfect for an epic that spans the world and spans worlds. I can not wait to have this score album once it become available!

Okay, I have just realized that I have now probably written more about this Transformers movie than I did for the previous two. So I'm gonna try to contain my excitement and keep it from getting the best of me, and simply say: Transformers: Dark Of The Moon not only wildly exceeded my expectations, it fulfilled everything that I had hoped and dreamed of seeing in a Transformers movie for most of my life. The faults and problems of the previous two movies? I can let them slide now, because this third film - this second SEQUEL, mind ya - was like what everything we had seen before, had been building up to. And I can now die happy knowing that if I haven't at last seen the perfect Transformers live-action movie, I've seen darn close to it!

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon gets my maddest most highest recommendation for a movie. Go see it! And even though this is Michael Bay's last time directing a Transformers movie, let's hope that this won't be the end of the series.

Where could it go from here? All I gotta say is: bring on Unicron! Maybe voiced by Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones...

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Pope Benedict tweets (with an iPad 2!)

This photo is so fascinating, and I can't quite articulate why. Pope Bendict XVI, using an iPad 2 and quite obviously on Twitter, to "tweet" a brief message to inaugurate the Vatican's official news site.

And what was the Holy Father's first message in 140 characters or less?

"Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI"

The Catholic Church was the primary repository of knowledge and learning in Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire on through to the Renaissance. To have gone from a collection of scrolls and parchments, to seeing this photo of its leader communicating to the world with a piece of high-tech silicon and glass...

As I said: "fascinating"!

(But I'm also wondering if His Holiness might use his snazzy new gizmo for the occasional game of Angry Birds. Not that there's anything wrong with that... ;-)

Click here for SQPN's report on Pope Benedict's first tweet. And thanks to Fr. Roderick Vonhögen for the heads-up!

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"Jimmy V finally found somebody to hug."

It instantly became one of the most classic moments in sports history.

Coach Jim Valvano's North Carolina State - a scrappy team that had fought tooth and claw in defiance of all the odds - against University of Houston for the 1983 NCAA Basketball Championship. Houston: the team of "Phi Slamma Jamma". Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. No wonder one sports writer said that "Trees will tap dance, elephants will race in the Indianapolis 500 and Orson Welles will skip dinner" before Jimmy V's Wolfpack would beat the Cougars.

But we all know what happened. With seconds left in the game and the scored tied at 52, State's Dereck Whittenburg made a desperate launch of the ball. Lorenzo Charles was right at the basket, caught the ball and dunked it hard!

North Carolina State had done it! And in those wild seconds after the buzzer, Coach Valvano - overwhelmed with elation and disbelief - ran onto the floor looking for somebody, for anybody, to give a hug to.

It's moments like these that are the stuff of legends.

Jimmy V passed away ten years later in 1993, nearly a year after being diagnosed with bone cancer.

And yesterday afternoon, as '83 team member Thurl Bailey put it, the coach "finally found somebody to hug."

Lorenzo Charles died yesterday in a bus accident on I-40 in Raleigh. He was 47.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family and loved ones.

In his memory, here are the final seconds of the 1983 championship, featuring Charles making what many have said is the single greatest play in college basketball history.

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An encouragement for those who might need it...

God never writes a "perfect" ending to our story... but He is capable and ready to write each of us a happy ending!

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Germination of the Bhut jolokia has begun!

Awright, I've been putting this off for too long now. I knew that this day would come. Not gonna run and hide anymore. Here, live or die, I will make my stand.

This afternoon I began the process of growing my can of Bhut jolokia.

And as I said when I first wrote about coming into possession of this stuff back in February, "This is either one of the bravest things that I will have ever attempted... or it is the stoopidest of my entire life..."

The Bhut jolokia: regarded by the scientific community as THE world's hottest naturally-occurring pepper. Native to north-eastern India, in the local tongue "Bhut jolokia" translates into "ghost pepper". Because as the natives like to joke, one bite of this could send you to an early grave.

Spicy heat is measured in Scoville units. Regular Tabasco sauce has a "hotness" of 2,500 Scoville Heat Units.

The Bhut jolokia? More than ONE MILLION.

So ever since this can arrived (you can order some for yourself from the good folks at ThinkGeek) it's been sitting on my desk, and I've been... looking at it. Studying it. Contemplating its potency.

And finally today, like Jeff Goldblum's character does in that scene in The Fly, I finally came to the place where I had to say "What are we waiting for, let's do it." So I followed the package's directions, put enough water into it that it began draining through the opened bottom, and set it in sunlight.

In another month or so, the crimson red agony-ridden peppers will have arrived.

And then, the fun really begins.

My good friend and fellow blogger Steven Glaspie is still set to chronicle my eating this pepper on video (he also did an excellent job being co-cameraman on Vaporware Nevermore! the other week :-). That he is a volunteer firefighter trained in first aid, was of course another factor in considering him for the task. I have another friend who is scheduled to be here, who has brewed his own brand of beer just for the occasion. As beer is said to be a very fast and effective counter-agent for spicy-hot burning, we're going to have his brew on hand as a last resort.

So... have I finally gone too far? Have I crossed a terrible, terrible line? Is your friend and humble narrator gone mad? Will this be the end of Chris Knight?!?

Tune in later this summer to find out!! :-P

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SESAME STREET riffs on SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK!

It's not a good sign for Broadway's most beleaguered show when none other than Grover is mocking it...

That's a promo for Sesame Street and it's forty-second season, beginning in September! Would LOVE to see this as a full-length sketch :-)

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Someday, this could be a President of the United States...

Aimi Eguchi is a 16-year old music star in Japan, with a loyal following of several thousands of fans. She lives north of Tokyo, has an official website, and enjoys track and field sports.

And she doesn't exist outside of a hard drive.

Good friend and fellow blogger Lee Shelton was the first to draw my attention to the intriguing but also unsettling story of Aimi Eguchi: a computer-generated composite of six different girls, who until now had fooled many people into believing she was a real flesh and blood person...

Click here for more about Aimi Eguchi's "biography".

I'm telling you people here and now: one of these days, this is going to be an American politician who "runs" for office. Whether or not it wins is a commentary that I shall leave as an exercise for the reader...

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Weird Tolkien-ish map of "Flat Earth" comes to light... and it's pretty neat!

About the same time that Operation: Desert Storm was going on but before the ground war started in Iraq back in 1991, I read The Hobbit for the first time. Immediately after that I plunged into The Lord of the Rings. And it wasn't long after that when I thought that since I was on such a hot streak that I'd read The Silmarillion as well.

And my brain immediately got befuddled by the vastness of J.R.R. Tolkien's cosmology that had only been hinted at in The Lord of the Rings.

The thing which I most couldn't wrap my mind around was Middle-earth before the fall of Númenor: Tolkien had the world that would eventually be our own as a "flat Earth", and it stayed that way until the last king of Númenor sailed into the west to try to wrest away an immortality that could never be his. It was an act of defiance that led God Himself to break the world, sink Númenor and forever afterward made the Earth round.

I know, it's all fantasy... but Tolkien infused plenty enough realism that even such wild geography should make sense somehow... right?

That's been the most frustrating quirk of Tolkien's legendarium for me, for the past twenty years. Until last night when I came across this story about a fella named Orlando Ferguson and his clever "Square and Stationary Earth" scheme...

That's a map that "Professor" Ferguson compiled in 1893, combining his understanding of the world's geology as depicted in the Bible along with the scientific knowledge of the day. The result? A flattened Earth that... is kinda a viable model. Gotta love how it keeps all the water from Earth's oceans contained in a Roulette wheel-style bowl, with the North Pole at its center. Ferguson was a real-estate developer in South Dakota and he had ninety-two pages of lecture material prepared to defend his flat-Earth thesis.

Well, even if it's scientifically way off-kilter, at least Tolkien's mythical First Age geology finally makes sense to me :-P

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Peter Falk has passed away

A few weeks ago we lost James Arness, who played Marshal Dillon on Gunsmoke. I'd come to regret that I didn't post anything about it at the time and promised myself that I'd try to do better when it came to marking the passing of an iconic person who excelled at their craft.

Unfortunately, this afternoon I am having to do such sooner than I would have liked...

The very sad news coming off the wire this afternoon is that Peter Falk, who played Lieutenant Columbo from 1968 to 2003 (yowza!!) on the television series Columbo, has died at the age of 83. In addition to Columbo, Falk is also well known for playing the grandfather in the movie The Princess Bride.

Think that in remembrance of Peter Falk, that I'm going to spend the rest of the day carrying around a cigar while badgering and harassing people incessantly with questions. Peppering it with lots of "just one more thing..." 'course.

Seriously though: he was a terrific actor, and he will be greatly missed.

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Muppet cross-breeding

It is the eternal question: "What if Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy DID marry and have kids?"

Now we know...

All I can really say to this is: Heaven help us if the folks at Rovio Mobile ever see Avenue Q! :-P

Mash down here for more "Muppemathics" courtesy of one "idiotjim" at Picture Is Unrelated. Click here if you haven't been addicted to Angry Birds yet. And if you don't know who the Muppets are well, shame on you!

Thanks to fellow blogger Scott Bradford for a great find! :-)

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Look! Info about Steve Jablonsky's score for TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON!

Hey gang, we are just a few days away from Transformers: Dark of the Moon and, starting to get stoked about this movie in the biggest way! Maybe it's something to do with having bought the Blu-rays of both the previous films last week and watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for only the second time ever. And oddly enough, two years later I'm much more entertained by that movie. It still has its problems (namely "Car Car Binks" aka the Autobot twins, and I genuinely feel sorry for whoever it was at Industrial Light and Magic who was handed the task of digitally animating Devastator's ummm... "wrecking ball testicles") but y'know, I wound up digging it way more than before as a Transformers live-action flick. In fact, as I write this my desktop PC is busy ripping the Blu-ray so I can put both these movies on my iPad!

Awright, so we've got the third movie coming out next week. And a lot of you have been writing me about the score that Steve Jablonsky has composed for his third outing with the Transformers saga. Maybe the inquiries are coming here because of, ummmmmmm... how totally crazy I went for Transformers: The Score four years ago. Longtime readers remember how this lil' blog sorta wound up being where many people coalesced their desire to see that score released. We eventually got it and four years later, I've heard from bunches of people how it gets consistently played on their iPods or whatever (including my own :-). And thankfully we didn't have to go through that in order to get Jablonsky's score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (a score which was no less epic than the one for the first film).

But what about the score for Transformers: Dark of the Moon?

Apparently the CD (and presumably iTunes availability) was supposed to have been June 7th. Those industrious Trans-fans at Seibertron.com are now reporting that it has been pushed back to June 28th: this coming Tuesday, just before the movie smashes its way into theaters. However it's not showing up on Amazon.com yet. And as of this writing the official Transformers: Dark of the Moon music site is merely stating that the score album is "Coming Soon".

Hmmmm...

I'm inclined to believe that it's gonna be coming out and sooner than later (likely much sooner) 'cuz Film Music Reporter has snagged the complete track listing! It's there if you wanna read all the track titles, but be warned: there might be (read as: "definitely are") some spoiler-ish details about the movie that can be gleaned from them.

Oh yeah, that's not the official album cover art either. Just a placeholder that I'm seeing on a few sites. No doubt the real score album cover is gonna look much better :-)

Anyhoo, there y'all have it. Don't fret: Steve Jablonsky's Transformers: Dark of the Moon score is heading our way. We aren't going to have to fight for it this time either! And there's a good chance that a week from now we'll all get to have it in our grubby lil' paws.

Good times! :-)

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"The thing works!" On the church and history

The other week was Pentecost: the day that Christians remember as the start of the church as Christ's kingdom of emissaries in this temporal realm and age. It is the Sunday that many churches take to honor the coming of the Holy Spirit onto the followers of Jesus, as recorded in Acts, chapter 2.

I spent this year's Pentecost visiting with a friend, at a United Methodist congregation. It was also the final Sunday that the minister of this particular assembly would have with the people that he had served for many years. Per a tradition that hearkens back to the days of the circuit riders, United Methodist ministers will be at one church for a few years before being assigned to another, at which time the congregation will receive a new minister who will serve them until the next time that the conference gets to the task of re-assignment.

So it was that this wound up being the first and possibly last time that I listened to this good man of God. But as I told him when we left the worship service, he gave me a bunch to think about. One of which I was bursting to tell my friend when we got to the car...

"It really is one of the most amazing things about Christianity," I was feeling led to observe, "that the church has persisted for two thousand years... in spite of the most RIDICULOUS things that Christ's followers have done to themselves!"

Think about it. All the nonsense and stupidity and even grief that too many of us who bear the name "Christian" have done to ourselves, to the name of Christ, and unfortunately to those who we should be witnesses to as examples of Christ in this fallen world. We have condemned each other for trivial matters. We have tortured many and led a great number to their deaths, even... all in the name of Christ. We have split ways from each other over how one measly word might or might not be translated. We have even held others in slavery and bondage and claimed a biblical mandate for it.

Let's face it: Christianity has a reputation, and not at all entirely a good one. And that's not Christ's fault at all. It's like a bumper sticker that I once saw: "Lord, please protect me from your fan club."

And yet, despite it all: the church has endured, for darn nearly two millennia.

It has endured in defiance of everything that we who follow Christ have done. And I'm not talking about the historical stuff like the Inquisition, the sacking of Constantinople, the Salem witch trials and all that horrible crap.

No, I'm talking about the ubiquitous failings that all of us have... including and especially Yours Truly... as those who must live in this carnal plane. And we know from scripture that even those earliest Christians were not miraculously immune or imparted some special grace that kept them "perfect" in the ways of doctrine. Peter and Paul had severe disagreements with each other. Paul and Barnabas argued and went their separate ways. The church at Corinth had former prostitutes and idolators among its number... and not a few of them were being tempted to go back to their old ways. The seven churches of Asia Minor couldn't possibly be called models of Christian unity and non-division! The New Testament is rife with these examples and many, many more.

When one studies the historical record, it seems nothing short of a miracle that the church survived past the first century... let alone the twentieth!

Indeed. How could it be anything but a miracle?

Because man, for all his schemes and devices and cleverness, is still a fallen creature. And I can not believe that men left to themselves could have created such an enduring institution.

This good Methodist pastor emphasized something during his sermon, that I have also thought much about: that the work didn't begin or end with him. That the church was there before he came to serve it, and it will be there long after he would be gone. Because the man... and the woman too, no chauvinists we!... is not the finished work. The person is not and should never be the purpose and the focus of the one true great work. We, each of us, are only laborers for a time in the Kingdom of God. We do this not for our glory, but for His... and one of the neat incentives about working for Him is that He does honor us in His own wonderful way. But that isn't why we work. We do so because we love Him and because we love others as He has instructed.

And so it is, that the work has been done across the centuries, and across all the body of Christ. It matters not if we worship in a Methodist congregation, in a Baptist congregation, in a Catholic congregation, in a Pentecostal congregation, as a non-denominational Christian, or whatever. As I have written here before, there is NO such thing as "denomination". There are only different perspectives of Christ. Given that Christ is too magnificent and too wondrous for any one man or group of men to fully comprehend, that is only natural and only understandable that we see Him only with earthen eyes and mind. In the fullness of time we shall know Him as we are meant to. In the meantime we strive to gaze through a glass darkly...

...and even so, the church has endured.

How can this be, other than the work of the Holy Spirit which came to those first Christians at Pentecost? How has the church, as the complete body of all followers of Christ, persisted for all of this time against all the odds and against every screwy bit of craziness that His believers have done to others and even done to themselves?

I know of no other way to put it, than one another writer exclaimed after his own study of the Book of Acts...

"The thing works!"

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Review of ALPOCALYPSE: "Weird Al" Yankovic has conquered again!

Yesterday, June Twenty-First, Two Thousand and Eleven... was a date which will live in hilarity! It was almost five full years coming, but at last we "Yankovictims" (that term will make sense once you watch the accompanying DVD) got a new album from the crown prince of parody: "Weird Al" Yankovic!

Yes folks, the Alpocalypse has cometh!

I drove more than an hour and a half yesterday afternoon so a group of friends could party like true Al-oholics and enjoy listening to Alpocalypse together (contrary to rumor, Twinkie wiener sandwiches were not served... although they were contemplated during the planning stages).

So, what sayeth this life-long Weird Al fan? Alpocalypse was well worth the wait. And going further than that: this is some of Al's freshest and most vibrant material ever. I must confess than when Al began releasing many of the songs from this album two years ago as part of his Internet Leaks collection, that I couldn't help but worry: "If he keeps releasing songs before the album, what's going to be left for the album itself?!"

Be of good cheer, fellow Al-iens! Because this album is so well-balanced and orchestrated, that even if you know the Internet Leaks songs by heart, they'll feel all shiny and new when you hear them on Alpocalypse. How many other recording artists can pull off that trick? Only two honestly come to mind: The Beatles, and Elvis. That alone says much about Al's prowess as a musician, when ya think about it.

Okay well, on to the review!

Track 1: "Perform This Way" - A dead-on spoof of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way". Al released the music video for this song on Monday and it has gone viral big-time! I'm hearing a lot of people say that this is Al's best video since the one for "Amish Paradise" fifteen years ago... and it is definitely a hoot! The song itself is full-tilt distilled essence of Gaga's bizarre wardrobe. Al said earlier that this album was waiting for the next pop culture paradigm shift for him to parody. I would say that with "Perform This Way", mission accomplished! I foresee this song will be hot in demand on the karaoke circuit :-P

Track 2: "CNR" - One of the Internet Leaks songs (first reviewed here). A style spoof of the White Stripes, praising the metahuman might of the one and only Charles Nelson Reilly (similar to the popular "Chuck Norris Facts" floating around the Internet). I love this song! It's just plum catchy and that it's about Charles Nelson Reilly makes it all the more fun. And strangely quotable: "He had his very own line at the D-M-V, he made sweet sweet love to a manatee, oh yeah!"

Track 3: "TMZ" - A parody of Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me". Is it okay to say that "TMZ" is very entertaining... but it's also something of an indictment against our celebrity-obsessed media, and culture in general? Weird Al songs very rarely engender that kind of sober reflection on real life. But in true Al fashion, he does so with his unique style and good humor. And Al has captured Taylor Swift's style perfectly. I've already heard "Perform This Way" played on the radio and "TMZ" is just as worthy of airplay!

Track 4: "Skipper Dan" - Another song from the Internet Leaks set (first reviewed here). A Weezer-style original song about a poor guy who could have rocked 'em on stage and film, but instead has wound up a guide on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland. Every time I listen to this, I can't help but feel sorry for this dude. But it also ends on a bit of an upbeat note (especially if you watch the music video).

Track 5: "Polka Face" - THIS MIGHT BE THE FUNNIEST POLKA MEDLEY AL HAS EVER ARRANGED!!! Obviously "Pokerface" by Lady Gaga is in the medley (it's the first song to get the polka treatment) and also in the mix are Justin Bieber's "Baby" and "Tik Tok" by Kesha. I would rank this as perhaps my favorite polka medley that Al has done alongside "Polka Your Eyes Out" from Off The Deep End and "The Alternative Polka" from Bad Hair Day. It's just... go listen to it for yourself! I haven't the verbiage to describe how awesome "Polka Face" is!

Track 6: "Craigslist" - Originally released two years ago this month (original review here), this wound up my most favorite song from the Internet Leaks set. Two years later and it seems even more energetic now that it's on a proper album! Al sings about the anarchic Craigslist website, in the style of Jim Morrison and The Doors (with Ray Manzarek himself doing keyboard accompaniment!) At our lil' Alpocalypse release party last night I was wearing my "Craigslist" t-shirt that I got at Al's concert in Knoxville last year (LOOK HERE! :-) and... just couldn't help getting up to imitate Al's performance. Probably a good thing (for once) that that won't make it on YouTube :-P This was my favorite Internet Leaks song and it's one of my favorite on Alpocalypse. And as a dear friend noted, it's likely the only song in existence to make so many references to "styrofoam peanuts"!

Track 7: "Party In The CIA" - Miley Cyrus' "Party In The U.S.A." goes to Langley, as Al sings about the trials, travails and tribulations of an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. Has "water-boarding session" ever been used in a song before? Well, it sure has now. Another Al song that is inherently catchy!

Track 8: "Ringtone" - First released in August 2009, Al channels Queen and Freddie Mercury to mock the never-ending inanity of cell phone ringtones. Like the other Internet Leaks releases, "Ringtone" seems newly frenetic on this album.

Track 9: "Another Tattoo" - Parody of "Nothin' On You" by B.o.B. featuring Bruno Mars. LOVE THIS SONG!! Maybe it has something to do with how I've been watching for some time that there is too much tattooin' going on out there these days! Seriously people, don't you realize what a tattoo actually is? It's a permanent reminder of your temporary insanity! Something which Al celebrates(?) in this song. Favorite part? Boba Fett... playing clarinet!

Track 10: "If That Isn't Love" - an original song done in the style of Hanson (who I first heard about on CBS' The Weird Al Show back in '97). This one was fun the first time I listened to it and it's starting to grow on me even more. My personal favorite of Al's "love songs" is still "Since You've Been Gone" but this one is pretty good too :-)

Track 11: "Whatever You Like" - First released in October 2008, "Whatever You Like" was retro-actively declared to be the first of the Internet Leaks collection (original review here). Nearly three years later and Al's parody of T.I.'s "Whatever You Like" (yes the parody shares the same name as the original :-) seems even more fitting and appropriate to the times in which we live! A rollickin' fun anthem - or dirge, if you like - for our current economic downturn.

Track 12: "Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me" - I was literally honking with laughter when we played this song for the first time! But it took me awhile to recognize what Al is doing here: a style parody of Jim Steinman, who has written a lot of songs for Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tylor. And Al retains Steinman's signature lyrical flow with this screed-in-song protesting junk e-mail about cookie recipes and Mister Rogers' exploits in Vietnam. An awesome song and in my mind the perfect way to wind down Alpocalypse.

And that is the album itself. But that's NOT all! Because if you choose to buy Alpocalypse in stores you've got a choice between the CD alone, or for a few dollars more the CD along with a DVD with music videos for ten of the songs on Alpocalypse! The video for "CNR" (animated by JibJab.com) was released along with the Internet Leaks single two years ago. So were the videos for "Skipper Dan" (animated by Divya Srinivasan), "Craigslist" (live-action directed by Liam Lynch) and "Ringtone" (produced by Josh Faure-Brac and Steven K.L. Olson). Well for Alpocalypse we also get new videos like the Bill Plympton-animated "TMZ" (which might inure you to the sight of a naked butt, if you aren't already), "Party In The CIA" animated by a bunch of different people and directed by Roque Ballesteros, "If That Isn't Love" helmed by Brian Fisk, "Whatever You Like" (animated and directed last year by Cris Shapan) and the kinetic typographically-animated "Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me" produced by Koos Dekker. But by far the video that will be most analyzed by Al fans is the one for "Another Tattoo": Augenblick Studios' dizzying montage of eclectic body art, some of which has until now probably never been conceived of by mortal man. Or woman for that matter. And yes: Boba Fett does get to play clarinet. You'll see. Along with... wait, what is that happening to Papa Smurf? It's just a shame that the video for "Perform This Way" couldn't make it onto this disc. But word is that Al is even now working on a video for "Polka Face": his first ever for a polka medley! That means that there will soon be a music video for each and every song on Alpocalypse! Hey, maybe we'll get another release of this album with an updated DVD in the near future. I would certainly plunk down more coin for it!

So I'm gonna give Alpocalypse by "Weird Al" Yankovic my biggest-most possible recommendation: it's well worth buying from a store or from Amazon.com or from iTunes, but I must heartily suggest the CD/DVD combo: it's probably the best single original package of music entertainment that I've come across in a heap many moon. On a scale of 1 to 10, I hereby give Alpocalypse a 27... and 1/2!

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"Weird Al" Yankovic's DISTURBING "Perform This Way" music video!

Here it is! The so very wrong and yet so insanely right music video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody of Lady Gaga's hit "Born This Way". Here is: "Perform This Way"!

Weird Al's latest album Alpocalypse streets tomorrow! Can. Not. Wait!

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