Congrats to the Giants on an amazing win!
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Steve Jablonsky's TRANSFORMERS score is being used for the Super Bowl!
If you're watching Super Bowl XLII on Fox right now, you might have noticed that they're making lots of use of Steve Jablonsky's awesome Transformers score. I just caught them playing "Autobots" in the minutes leading up to the kickoff, in a spot featuring Troy Aikman. And earlier they were using some of the music from the final fight in a video spot with the Patriots and Giants introducing themselves. Very, very cool. Way to go Steve!! :-)
Need a new church? Start your own! It's what we did today.
Okay, maybe "new church" isn't the right way to put it. We are not out to start an "organized congregation" per se and I am definitely not a pastor!
Today was the first coming-together of... well, truth be known we don't have a name for ourselves. It's just a group of fellow Christians who came together mostly through Facebook after talking about our spiritual needs and the realization that we needed something more than "traditional" churches can provide. It hasn't been that we've wanted to "forsake the assembly" as Hebrews 10:25 exhorts against. Christians need others to edify them and hold them accountable, and we sell ourselves short when we deny the gifts that God has given us to help our fellow believers also.
That's one of the things that led us to consider taking this step: that we need to be part of an active, vibrant group of believers.
(As an aside, it was noted a few times that ours might be the very first church to start via Facebook. The Lord works in mysterious ways...)
For me personally, I can't help but think back to when I was in college at Elon, and the small group Bible study and discussions that we used to have. I took so much good from those times, and years later they are still with me. It's been a long time since those days and I guess that I still miss the small groups, for all the fellowship that I had and the growth that I gained from it.
So a few of us got together this morning at me and Lisa's apartment, for a time of worship and Bible study and prayer. Thus went our first foray into "house church": a return to the worship style of the very first Christians, and which according to some is a fairly rapidly growing movement among believers in America. It's already the predominant style of worship service in many countries where hostile governments have forced the local churches to "go underground".
It was with prayer that things got started this morning, as we thanked God for bringing us together and to lead our discussion. Then we went into Acts chapter 2 to examine how the first Christians worshiped, since they are the ones that we are most trying to emulate. And something I didn't catch until today: on the day of Pentecost, Peter and the disciples and the other followers of Jesus were in a house, not at the Temple or some other appointed place of worship, when the Holy Spirit came upon them. There's a lot of evidence that it was the same "upper room" that Jesus held the Last Supper in. And considering the architecture of Jerusalem at the time it might have been something very much like our own apartment.
There was no "leader" of this service. We just shared whatever God was putting on our hearts that He was showing us from the scripture. And this led into a lot of conversation about what it is that we're doing with coming together like this. I think today's service could be called an "icebreaker" or maybe the "orientation" meeting, but that's not the right terminology either. Acts chapter 2 was our jumping-off point for the kind of worship and praise that we are trying to have, over two thousand years after those first believers came together in Jerusalem, and how we are trying to go back to what it was that they held to.
This went on for a little over an hour, and then we decided that it was a good time to wrap up for now. We closed out with asking for prayer requests from everyone, and then held them up to God and thanked Him again for bringing us together and the time we spent this morning.
It was a Christian worship service without a church building. Without a pastor or some other individual leading the worship. Without fancy music (although if we need it Lisa can play something on her keyboard and we'd certainly welcome anyone to bring their own instruments if they like). Without dozens or hundreds or even thousands of parishioners. Just a small group of fellow believers come together in a humble abode to praise God together.
I will admit: we are still very new at this. But it's been a long time since I've come out of a worship service feeling so spiritually refreshed and uplifted.
And hey, in a lot of ways we are like a much larger church! We have a sanctuary (living room) with ample seating room. We've got musical instruments (the ones from Rock Band for Xbox 360). There's a fellowship hall (the adjoining kitchen) and a "pastor's study" (the back bedroom which currently serves as my video production studio and at the time was displaying new pics from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on the computer monitor). If we ever need it, there's also a baptistery in the form of the bathroom tub: yeah it's adjacent to the toilet but that's just a minor detail.
The one thing that we didn't do today, that seems to have been a part of the regular worship of the early Christians, was hold communion or a "love feast" as a lot of modern-day house church practitioners call it. We did have some blueberry muffins from yesterday that we offered everyone, however. But like I said: we're still a bit new at this. If we don't follow "the formalities" to the letter, that's okay. It's not whether we "jump through all the hoops" that matters as much as it does that we're doing this to honor and praise God with our hearts. We'll certainly start a communion service at some point soon.
And that's basically how it went today for our first worship service.
So how does this sound to y'all? You wanna come join us sometime? We don't know where we're going to be meeting next time: it might be here at our apartment again but it might be somewhere else too. Just please remember: it's not a "church" in the normal sense that we're out trying to create, with a name and a 501 (c3) tax exempt status. I don't know if we'll ever have a website. We're just a group of Christians trying to worship God in a way that He'll give us the most growth and encouragement from. That's it. But that's all that really matters to us anyway :-)
If anyone reading this would like to be a part of our lil' "house church" thingy, shoot me an e-mail at theknightshift@gmail.com with "Home church" in the subject line. I'll get back with you as soon as possible. We'd love to have you join us as we worship God together!
(And the blueberry muffins aren't bad, either :-)
Greensboro in the final days of the Civil War
There's a very fascinating article in today's News & Record about what Greensboro went through in April 1865, as the American Civil War drew to a close. Upon reading the story, one would easily get the impression that the spring of that year was the moment that forever defined Greensboro, as a relatively small town became a crossroads of military and political activity. Greensboro is where Jefferson Davis and his remaining cabinet fled to after abandoning the last officially recognized Confederate capital in Danville, and it was here that Davis received word that Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse. Thousands of soldiers filled makeshift hospitals throughout the town (including First Presbyterian Church, shown in the photo). The town also suffered an immense amount of looting and rioting as resources became scarce. Well worth reading if you're into Civil War or local history.Saturday, February 02, 2008
Return to Pigs R Us
Earlier this evening Lisa went up to Martinsville, Virginia and a place that I love a lot but sadly haven't gotten to go to very much lately: Pigs R Us Barbecue. You might remember that I first wrote about the place a year and a half ago. This was probably our fourth trip back and I honestly cannot recommend it enough if you want delicious barbecue. In fact, so far as traditional barbecue ribs go, they might have the best that I've had... possibly anywhere! Tonight I had the full rack of ribs, smothered in Pigs R Us's own brand of grilling sauce. Lisa got a half rack of 'em. We also bought two bottles of the grilling sauce on the way out.
Here's their website again. It may be a bit off the beaten path, but there's a reason why people are flocking to it, especially since this outfit is winning awards all over the country with their barbecue. Check 'em out!!
Friday, February 01, 2008
DIRTY HARRY is on the Sleuth channel right now
They just don't make movies like this anymore..."I know what you're thinking. 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head cleeeeen off, you've got to ask yourself a question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"
Sometimes on the playground when I was a kid, we would do imitations of "Dirty" Harry's speech. Yeah, it was a weird childhood...
In spite of his methods, you had to respect Inspector Callahan for how incorruptible he was. In his world there was absolute good and real evil, and the law didn't have to come in the way of that.
Does anyone else remember that song about "Dirty" Harry that was big for awhile, about 25 years ago? I heard it on the radio a bunch of times: part of it was Clint Eastwood's classic line from Sudden Impact: "Go ahead, make my day." That was about the same time that they were making songs of just about everything else, from the Three Stooges ("The Curly Shuffle") to that lady from the Wendy's commercials who asked "Where's the beef?"
What kind of actors do we have anymore who are anything like Clint Eastwood? Or Steve McQueen or Lee Marvin, or a lot of those other guys? I don't know if my own generation has anyone like that. Darn shame...
Those insane courses on Wii Sports: Golf
This afternoon Dad came by. It's been raining here for most of the day, and it was pretty chilly out in his knife shop and he'd wanted to take a break from his work, and I needed one from some projects too. So we played a nine-hole round of Golf on Wii Sports on the Nintendo Wii that I got Lisa for Christmas.
How did we do?
Let's put it this way: if Robert Trent Jones ever designed a golf course as evil as the ones on Wii Sports: Golf, he would have probably been dragged out onto the fairway and shot.
We were doing pretty good until the ninth hole. If you've played Golf on Wii Sports you probably know which one I'm about to talk about: it's that one where the hole is in the middle of a rocky island, that you have to drive the ball onto. Dad and I both tried our darndest to get it onto the green... but it's impossible! The ball either goes into the water, or it ricochets off the cliff-side and then goes into the water. By the time each of us had hit +12 on the hole the game told us to "Give Up".
Somewhere at Nintendo Headquarters in Japan, some smart-alecy game programmer is no doubt laughing at his supposed cleverness for creating the golfing equivalent of the Kobayashi Maru "no-win" scenario.
Okay so anyone else who has this game: how the heck do we get the ball over the water and onto that tiny island??
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Four minutes after LOST Season 4 premiere ...
Excellent episode!
Who would have thought that Jacob lives in a mobile home? :-P
Seriously though, it built extremely well on where things left off with "Through the Looking Glass". This story is moving along at a very nice pace toward what looks to be rather forbidding territory.
Creepiest line of the show: "Are they still alive?"
I'm gonna have to watch this again, 'cuz there was so much to absorb.
EDIT 10:18 p.m. EST: Oh yeah, here's the John Locke music video from last night set to Patsy Cline's "Crazy"...
It's that LOST "Bad to the Bone" promo with Sawyer!
If you watched the "pop-up info"-edition of the Season 3 finale of Lost last night, you probably saw this, and like me you no doubt laughed 'til it hurt. Here it is if you didn't get to catch it the first time, courtesy of YouTube...
It's "The Beginning of the End" as LOST returns tonight
In the Season 3 finale of Lost, ABC's hit show about the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, something loomed for the castaways that never, ever happened with Gilligan's Island: the promise of real rescue.
But as everyone who watched the mind-blowing "Through the Looking Glass" knows by now, that may not necessarily turn out to be a good thing.
Eight months later, and the Lost Season 3 finale is still one that has folks reeling in disbelief.
And now, tonight, Lost is back.
Season 4 kicks off with "The Beginning of the End", which is said to be a Hurley-centric episode (so the season premieres in their order have gone pilot episode, Jack, Jack... now Hurley?! Ooh-kay...).
This is the first of eight episodes that were finished before the Writers Guild of America strike. From here on until Lost's sixth and final season, there are supposed to be sixteen episodes per season. I've heard rumors that if the strike ends soon, that they might still get their quota in for this season, which would be good. If not, might as well enjoy Lost while we got it.
And from the looks of it, this is promising to be an amazing season from the getgo. Check out the picture on the right: that's Jeremy Davies who's now one of the new faces in the main cast. You might know Davies from Saving Private Ryan and Solaris (I first remember him from Twister). He's playing Daniel Faraday: apparently one of the people who are arriving from Naomi's boat. Also coming to the Island are Rebecca Mader, Jeff Fahey (if you ever saw The Lawnmower Man then you'll know this guy), Ken Leung (who's appeared in everything from Rush Hour to The Sopranos), and in continuing with the strange affinity that Lost has for hiring actors from HBO's prison drama Oz, Lance Reddick will be playing the sinisterly-named Matthew Abbadon ("Destruction" in Hebrew).
By the way, if you haven't already, you might want to check out the Lost: Missing Pieces "mobisodes". These are short vignettes from the Lost story that ABC has been releasing on cellphones (and then on the web) for the past three months or so. The final one that came out a few days ago, "So It Begins", is a very startling bit of Lost lore if you've been watching from the beginning. And judging by the cast list, it may or may not have some relevance for tonight's episode.
"The Beginning of the End", the Season 4 premiere of Lost, starts at 9 p.m. EST tonight on ABC.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
I've got one word that describes this "debate" going on right now from the Reagan Library ...
"Bullcrap".
(Only at the last minute did I change that word before posting from something else.)
And some of you still think this is a free country with a legitimate press?
Some of you even dare think that these are the people that we should give our prayers and support to?
Tonight Lisa and I watched The Remains of the Day on our DVD player. Probably Anthony Hopkins's finest film role ever. That line he says toward the end has never failed to haunt me...
"I'm sorry sir, I was too busy serving to listen to the speeches."
Some of us do listen to the speeches, regardless of how many other people are too damned occupied with American Idol or Britney Spears's underwear or with the dog-and-pony show that the mainstream media and the party bigwigs and the power-mongers in our own government parade in front of us... as if those things really matter.
Yeah, some of us are listening. And we know damned well what's going on with this country. What America is turning into.
I'm not just angry because Ron Paul is being treated so unfairly. I would be this pissed-off if any candidate was being treated this way by supposedly "objective" journalists. Because I'd rather every candidate be allowed equal opportunity to come to the table and make their case, and let the chips fall where they may. Let us decide which one we'd rather listen to most. Anything less than that is an insult to the American people (yah like these bastitches care about whether they insult us or not).
Four years ago I posted my now-infamous list of "People Who Should Be Shot When the Revolution Comes". I'm thinking of amending it in the near future. Perhaps I should put "Partisan Pathetic Excuses for Journalists" on the revised list? I mean, the threat of assassination can work wonders...
New PRINCE CASPIAN poster
This is going to be a fun thing for me to post 'cuz I was one of the first members of the general public who got to see Reepicheep in action from The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. That was almost two months ago at Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 and my wife has hated it that I've already gotten to see what Reepicheep looks like... nyah-nyah-nyah!!!
So now she and everyone else gets to check him out too...
Chad races 2 miles, eats 12 donuts and runs back. Did he hurl?!?
For the past few months my lifelong bud Chad Austin has been talking about running the Krispy Kreme Challenge. It's an now-annual charity race that takes place around the campus of North Carolina State University in Raleigh.Here's the deal: start at the bell tower on N.C. State's campus, run 2 miles to the nearest Krispy Kreme donut shop, devour a dozen original glazed donuts, and then race back to the bell tower. All within the span of one hour.
As you can no doubt imagine, people blow chunks all over the place on the return leg of this oxymoronic endurance test.
So, how did Chad do? Could he go the distance without adding his own decoration to the landscape? Here is his full report on this year's Krispy Kreme Challenge. And you can also read about what happened from Chad's friend Ashley, who not only ran but also has gory full-color pictures chronicling the gastrointestinal aftermath.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
LOST Season 4 poster
Close inspection will reveal why there's so much reason to be excited about this season of Lost...
Less than 48 hours now before Lost returns. Only one other television series in my entire life had had me this excited about a new season. Yeah I've never been much of a teevee person at all. It's the story that compels me to watch something. And they don't get any more compelling than Lost has become.
Lisa and I have been watching the Season 3 DVD set for the past several days. Tonight we saw "Greatest Hits", which was this past season's penultimate episode. Now we can either watch "Through the Looking Glass" from the DVD or the special "enhanced version" that ABC will be broadcasting tomorrow night with Pop-up Video-style "factoids" on-screen. Might be worth DVR-ing that one, in case there's some new tidbits of info.
Today's sign that the Apocalypse is upon us ...
New Kids On the Block are reuniting after 14 years. For real.
It's no joke. Danny, Donnie, Joe, Jon, and Jordan are coming back.
If Lisa even hints at wanting me to take her to a concert on their new tour, so help me I will tie her up and throw her into a dark bathroom until the band has left town. A husband should want to do whatever makes his wife happy, but this would be undeniable mental cruelty.
Oh well, might as well "celebrate" with one of the New Kids' better music videos...
I'll never do business with Amazon again
It's bad enough that they have a package sent out two weeks after it was ordered...
...but to waste my valuable time with a "customer service representative" who is talking to me from another country and can not speak discernible English at all, when there are plenty of people in America who could both use a job and would not be an insult to the intelligence of Amazon's customers as their "outsourced help", is the final straw.
Most AWESOME video game intro sequence EVER!
Last week I got Rock Band - Special Edition for our new Xbox 360. We finally got it out of the box last night and after getting the instruments put together (without a doubt the first video game that I've ever bought that has "some assembly required") we started playing the game.
I can already tell that Rock Band is going to be one of our favorite video games for a long while to come: we're having a blast with it! Lisa is getting really good on drums, and for once I'm not getting booed off stage while singing ("Don't Fear the Reaper" is my best song so far). We haven't done anything with the guitar yet. I'm gonna study the instructions some more, figure out just what the heck we're doing here before we start really jamming with Rock Band.
And if you've ever played this before, you already know something: that Rock Band has the most mind-blowing title sequence for a video game... probably in the history of anything. Here it is courtesy of YouTube.
And turn up your speakers. Turn them way up!
EDIT 9:34 p.m. EST: I just found out that this song is called "Highway Star" by the legendary English hard rock band Deep Purple. They were once listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as being "the loudest band in the world". And supposedly those are the band members as they appeared in the 1970s who are riding atop those vehicles.
